A Daughter's Story (18 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY

T
HE
FIRST
THING
C
HRIS
DID
when he got back in his
truck was check his phone. Her doctor’s appointment had been at four-thirty.

He couldn’t move on until he knew for sure that he and Emma
Sanderson had not made a baby together.

Adrenaline pumped through him when he saw two missed calls.
Both from her.

He pushed a button to return the call, and then just as
quickly, his thumb hit the end-call button. She’d called twice. Which bespoke
urgency.

Meaning her answer was that she was pregnant? Or was she just
in a hurry to let him know he was free?

If she was pregnant he needed her to know that he would be
there for her. That he was not going to desert her.

Or be shut out.

Not a message that could be imparted over the phone.

* * *

T
HE
PHONE
RANG
while Emma was in the
bath. She’d brought it in the room with her.

Chris’s number flashed. And the call was lost.

Drying off, she put on a pair of cotton underwear that her
mother had bought her for Christmas. A no-nonsense bra that she’d bought to give
her extra support when she exercised. A T-shirt, baggy sweatpants and dark blue
slipper socks completed her attire.

She needed a glass of chocolate milk. A glass and syrup in
hand, she jumped when the phone rang again.

But she didn’t procrastinate. She wanted to be brave enough to
be fully alive. Journal entry number two in mind, she grabbed her phone, trying
to ignore the fact that her hand was shaking.

She’d be fine. She always was.

“Emma? Lucy Hayes here. I hope it’s not too late.”

“Detective Hayes?” She hadn’t even looked at the caller ID.

“Don’t we know each other well enough to be on a first-name
basis?”

“Yes, Lucy, sorry. I…” Stopping short of telling the detective
who she’d thought she’d been about to speak with, Emma’s mind went to Rob. “It’s
not too late,” she said.

“I just got off the phone with Ramsey Miller,” Lucy said. “We
have some news, and I told him I’d give you a call.”

Flipping off the kitchen light, Emma sank into a chair.
“Okay.”

“First, Cheryl Diamond came in today. Ramsey had already told
her that Rob was in custody, hoping that she’d want to make a deal, but she’d
denied knowing Rob. But computer-savvy woman that she is, she went on the
Comfort Cove police public website, found Rob’s booking record and when she saw
the charges—when she realized she could be named an accomplice to kidnapping,
blackmail and attempted murder—she decided to talk.”

“Rob was charged with attempted murder?”

“He’s being held on those counts, but charges are pending a
grand-jury indictment.”

“What about the fact that Chris was holding the gun when the
police came in?”

“It was Rob’s gun. He brought it to the scene, which
incriminates him. And the officers testified that Rob had an arm locked around
your throat on the floor when they burst in, and the marks on your neck
supported that account.

“Chris was there at our request, as part of a
department-approved sting, and he agreed to give up the gun as soon as Rob was
in custody. Ramsey talked to the D.A. and he agreed that there was enough
evidence for an indictment.”

Numb inside, Emma ran her fingers along the glass of milk. Her
ex-fiancé was in jail for what would probably be a very, very long time.

She’d almost married him. Her life, her mother’s life, would
have been a total nightmare.

She’d once thought she loved Rob. Now she wanted him in
jail.

“What did Cheryl Diamond say?” she asked softly. If the woman
had led them to Claire, Lucy would have told her that first. Miller probably
would have called her himself.

Sometime over the couple of weeks, Emma had come to accept that
her baby sister was gone.

The need to know what happened wasn’t about finding Claire
anymore. It was about learning to live without her. Learning to live with
whatever had happened to her.

She no longer needed hope. She needed closure.

“Cheryl testified today that she met Rob through a website
where men have sex with women via webcam, just like we thought. They became
close enough for Rob to tell her about you. About why he stayed with you. He
told her he first met you at a fund-raiser you and you mother were hosting to
raise money for child-safety awareness.”

Rob had sex online? In her office? She shuddered, vowing to
sterilize everything in the room.

“We were holding a fingerprinting clinic.” She forced herself
to remember that day. “Statistics show that if there are fingerprints for a
missing child, there’s a much better chance that they’ll find the child during
the critical first hours.”

“That’s right.”

“I guess you knew that.”

“Yes, but not enough people do. The work you and your mother do
is so important, Emma. Please don’t stop.”

“We won’t.” Even moving on now, she knew that she wouldn’t give
up helping others have a chance at a happier ending.

“Anyway, when Rob heard your story, he saw a lawsuit in the
making. Apparently he’d been on the lookout for the perfect suit ever since
taking a law class in college. In your case, he had no idea if there was proof
of wrongdoing, but he knew he could make it look as if there was. When he told
Cheryl about you, she wanted in. She got the clerk’s job at Comfort Cove’s
traffic division so she could have access to the evidence box. There was no
reason for anyone to trace her to you or anyone who knew you.

“The plan was for Rob to plant some incriminating proof that
the police didn’t do their job regarding Claire’s abduction. Rob told Cheryl
that the police never tried to find your sister. That they were so certain the
culprit had been Frank that they never looked anyplace else.”

He’d heard that from Rose. And Emma hadn’t denied her mother’s
assertions. She didn’t know them to be true. But she didn’t know that they
weren’t.

“But Miller went looking for the box before they could get it
back into evidence and the whole thing fell apart.”

“What was in it for Cheryl?”

“A quarter of the payoff.”

Her milk was getting warm. She didn’t want it, anyway.

“That’s it, then? Another dead end?” The missing box of
evidence had nothing whatsoever to do with her sister’s whereabouts.

“That’s it.”

“Well, thank you. For everything.”

“I’m not giving up, Emma. I’m not going to quit working on your
case.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll be in touch if I hear anything else.”

“Thank you.” What else was there to say?

“You can call me anytime. If you think of anything else, or
just need to talk, I’ll be here.”

Just like she was there for Tammy.

“Okay, I will. And…if you ever need to vent…about your mother
and all…I’m here, too.” She needed other women in her life. Her journal said
so.

“I might be taking you up on that sooner than you think.” The
detective’s answer surprised her.

“Why? What’s going on?”

“We have a lead on the guy who took my sister, the guy who
raped my mother. I can’t say anything more just yet, but when I can, I’d like it
if I could call you.”

“I’d like that, too.” Emma heard a car out front and, phone in
hand, got up to peek around the front window blind.

Chris’s truck was in her drive.

Hanging up with Lucy Hayes, tucking the knowledge of a new
friendship inside her heart, Emma prepared to say goodbye to the man she’d been
willing to kill for.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

“L
ET
ME
JUST
SAY
what I have to say.” Chris didn’t even wait for
her to invite him in. He had to speak first. Before she thought that anything he
said had to do with the possibility of a baby.

He went straight to her living room. Sat on the couch. And
looked around. “There aren’t any lights on in here.”

“I know.”

“You don’t ever come downstairs without turning on a
light.”

“I turned them off after I came down.”

That meant something. He wasn’t sure what. He couldn’t get
sidetracked.

“I don’t know if I could ever give up the sea, Emma. If I was
in love with a woman, married to her, and she asked me to quit fishing, maybe I
could.”

“If a woman loved you back, she’d never ask you to.”

“She would if having me out at sea scared her to death. If she
couldn’t handle it,” he stated emphatically. “Anyway, that’s not what I came
here to say. I’m not my father. But I’m a lot like him in some ways. If I ever
fall in love, it will be with one woman until I die. No matter what.”

Her eyes were wide as she stared at him. She was standing about
a foot away, close enough to touch. But he couldn’t reach for her.

“All of that aside, what I really have to say is that I don’t
believe that fishermen have to be alone. I believe that being married to a
fisherman is hard. That a woman has to be strong enough to deal with the
lifestyle, but that it could work. All of that stuff I said, about it not
working out, it was because I used fishing as an excuse not to risk my heart as
my father had done.”

“You were afraid?” The odd note in her voice stopped him for a
second. Was she smiling at him?

Or crying?

He wished she’d turn on a light.

Or come closer.

“I didn’t trust women.”

There. He’d said what he came to say. He’d been lying to
himself. He hadn’t trusted Sara to be true to him. It wasn’t the sea that ran
her off, it was his inability to commit completely to her that had done that.
His horrified reaction to their possible pregnancy had stemmed from the idea
that Sara would have his baby and be unfaithful to him while he was out earning
the money that would feed them. He’d been petrified at the thought of being so
irrevocably tied to a woman that he’d have to stay with her no matter what she
did behind his back.

“Fishing is all I know,” he said aloud.

“Why are you saying this?”

“Because I had to be honest with you.”

“Well, thank you. I appreciate that. You’re a good man, Chris.
I will never regret having known you.”

Her words reminded him of the note he’d left her that first
morning in the hotel across from Citadel’s.

What an ass he’d been.

“You were willing to kill for me.”

“I’d have done the same for anyone.”

He didn’t doubt that. “When I saw what you were going to do,
when I heard the gun go off, I…” He didn’t know what else to say.

“Would you like a glass of wine?”

“Hell, yes.”

* * *

L
EAVING
C
HRIS
IN
the
living room, Emma took her time opening a new bottle of merlot, and pouring two
glasses generously full, but not so full that she spilled them as she carried
them into the other room with trembling hands.

Settling next to him on the couch in the still-dark room, she
held a glass out to him. “Here’s to truth, Chris,” she said, and watched him
over the rim of her glass as she sipped.

He tipped his glass and drank.

“I’m not sure why you’re here, telling me this, but it doesn’t
really matter.” With no plan, no analyzing or forethought, Emma started to
talk.

“I’ve been keeping this journal.” It was her private secret.
“More and more I’ve been looking at it. Reading it.”

“When do you have time to read?”

“It’s only six sentences long.”

“Six sentences?”

She nodded. Feeling tears burn the backs of her eyes, she said,
“That day I found Rob in our bed with another woman…I was…empty. I knew I didn’t
want him in my life for another second, but I didn’t know what would be left
when he was gone. I didn’t plan to keep a journal. I never made a conscious
decision to try to work through my thoughts. It just happened. And it helped.
Anytime I felt absolutely certain about something, anytime I made a discovery
about myself that felt completely true, I’d write it down.”

“And you came up with six truths?”

“Yes.”

His gaze serious, his eyes glistening with an emotion that took
her back to the night she’d first heard him play the piano, he said, “I’d like
to read them.”

The journal was in the drawer next to him.

She’d held it on her lap while she slept on the couch after
Ramsey Miller had dropped her off at home last night.

She’d read it that evening when she’d come home from the
doctor’s office.

And she’d known that she was meeting her true self.

“We have a lot of things against us,” she said. “I have an
aversion to the docks, you live on them. I want to be loved by a man who loves
me so much that love changes him. My mother will probably hate you. While I have
to admit I didn’t hate being on the water, or even helping with the catch, I did
hate throwing up the whole time we were out there. I’m eleven years younger than
you are, and I most definitely want children. As many of them as I can have. But
all that aside, I also know, clearly and unequivocally, that I love you, Chris
Talbot. Not only that, I am
in love
with you.”

“Is that in your journal?”

“Some of it is.”

“The loving-me part?”

“Wait—” she held up her free hand to ward off his questions
“—let me finish. I’m not asking you for anything. I’m just telling the truth.
You said that age brings experience, which brings wisdom, and that being true,
I’ve gained something really valuable from Rob Evert. I now know the difference
between settling and living, and between security and being in love. I didn’t
love Rob. And I know that now because of how I feel about you.”

She could see his eyes shining in the darkness. “I’m afraid of
a lot of things, Chris. I’m afraid of the monsters out there who do terrible
things to people. I’m afraid of living life without the feeling you bring into
it. But I am most definitely not afraid of loving you. I would have killed Rob,
without hesitation. And in that moment I wasn’t thinking about anything or
anyone but you.”

“Emma Sanderson, will you marry me?”

“What?”

“I think I was pretty clear.”

“Well, yes, but…” She sipped her wine, clinging to the glass
with both hands. He drank, too. But he put his glass down afterward.

“It’s not going to be easy. For either one of us. But you’re up
to whatever challenges life brings you, which means that you have what it takes
to keep me on the straight and narrow and I…I just know that when that gun went
off, when I saw Evert’s arm choking the air out of you, when I thought I might
have lost you…every bit of hope I’d ever known went out of my life. I can’t live
without hope, Emma.”

She’d been willing to do that. To give up hope. Even though
she’d known that holding on to hope was the one thing she did best. Was it
because Chris had become entwined with her hopes?

Hope wasn’t just about Claire. It was about all that life held.
It was about living.

“You’re a wise man, Chris Talbot.”

“I’m an old man, Emma. Wisdom comes with age.”

“Wisdom comes to those who are willing to open their minds,”
Emma said. “That’s what I tell my students.”

“See, I need you as a teacher, Em.”

She needed him period. But…

“There’s someone I want you to meet,” he said, his gaze warm as
he studied her face. “My Aunt Marta and Jim. They’re not blood relatives, but
they’re family, and I know, the second I mention you, they’ll be clearing out a
space for you in their home, too.”

“You think I should live with them?”

Chris laughed. “I just think they’ll cling to you—especially
Aunt Marta. She needs a daughter-in-law.”

Emma smiled. She was overwhelmed, too.

“And there’s something else.” Chris’s voice was serious.

“What?”

“I wasn’t ever going to mention this, but, well, I can’t bring
you into my life without telling you.…”

Her heart pounded with fear. Dread. “What?”

“Aunt Marta and Jim knew your father.”

She shrugged. “He was a biological fact,” she told him. “He was
not my father in any true sense.”

“I know that.” Chris sounded completely certain of that fact.
And when he finished telling her what Marta and Jim had told him about her dad,
Emma had tears in her eyes. But not for herself.

“My poor mother…” she said, feeling a huge rush of love for the
woman who’d sacrificed so much—and lost more. “All she ever wanted was to love
and be loved,” she said. The age-old desire….

“I just didn’t want you to hear something about him and think
that it bore any reflection on you.”

Emma shook her head. “I already know he has no reflection on
me,” she said. “I wonder if Mom knew about Kennedy? About what happened to
him?”

“Maybe someday she’ll be at a point where you can ask her.”

“You never know.” She smiled sadly. “There might come a day
when she asks
you.
”

Chris reached for her hand and Emma let him take it. Knowing
that they were crossing over into a life that was going to burn all the bridges
behind them.

“This isn’t just because you think I’m pregnant, is it?” She
always had to look on the negative side of things.

“No. At this point, I wouldn’t mind if you were, if it meant
you’d marry me. I wouldn’t know what to do with a journal—except maybe feed it
to the fish—but I’ve spent some long nights on the ocean lately. And had a talk
or two with Marta about things I assumed, but never let myself think about.
Until you. You made me ask questions of myself, Em. Even when I didn’t want the
answers.”

“If I hadn’t come looking for you after our first night
together, and you hadn’t assumed that I was pregnant, would you have ever looked
me up?”

The shadow on his face was her answer. And her heart sank.

“I’m not sure what I would have done in the end,” he said,
looking her straight in the eye. “But I know that that night changed me. I
couldn’t keep my mind on the job. All I kept seeing were your glorious legs and
your long dark hair fanned across my pillow.”

“So the sex was good.”

“It was far more than that. I went to see Aunt Marta before I
had any idea that you might be pregnant.”

Emma wasn’t sure about the significance of that, but she knew
he’d just told her something big.

“I might not be as quick as you, Em, but I fought my way
through a lifetime of scars to admit to myself that I love you. That the reason
everything about me was changing, the reason I needed to ask questions and face
the answers, was because I was in love with you, and that love would not let me
run from the truth.”

Her eyes filled with tears again. Happy tears.

“The reason I wanted to have my say first tonight was so that,
if you are pregnant, you won’t just think I’m just saying all of this because I
have to. I knew when I docked this morning that I was going to ask you to marry
me.”

“You spent the night on the ocean?”

“I intend it to be the last night I ever spend out there
alone.”

“You said goodbye.” Not to fishing. She knew he’d never leave
that—but it sounded as if he’d let go of the idea that life as a fisherman had
to be a solitary one.

“Maybe.”

“I didn’t expect this.”

“I know. But I also knew that if I waited to find out if you
were pregnant, and you were, and then I asked you to marry me, you’d turn me
down for sure.”

“Wise man.”

“I just understand the woman I love,” he said, and then added,
“I don’t think my father ever did.”

She wasn’t sure what he meant by that statement, but she had a
feeling that he’d tell her. When he was ready.

“You never answered my question. You aren’t going to make me
ask again.”

She reached in the drawer beside him, pulled out the journal
and handed it to him opened to the first page.

“‘I want to be loved by a man who loves me so much that that
love changes him,’” he read out loud and then looked up at her. “Wow, you hit
that dead on.”

“I know what I want and I know I can’t settle for less than
that.”

“You’re making me nervous.”

Shrugging, she nodded toward the book.

“‘I want to be brave enough to live life to the fullest,’” he
read. “Oh, God, Emma, you’re the most courageous human being I’ve ever met.”

“I quake inside just getting up in the morning,” she told him
because he had to see the bad to really love the good. “Read.”

“‘I need other women in my life—and their presence is not
disloyal to my mother or Claire,’” he read, and looked up again.

Putting her wineglass down, Emma wrapped her arms around her
middle. “Growing up, I never had a best friend, or even a particularly close
friend. It was always just Mom and me, on our mission, apart from the rest of
the world.”

He brushed at the dampness beneath her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too. I heard tonight that Rob was just with me because
he’d been on the lookout for a potential lawsuit that would give him a life on
easy street, and I fit the bill. He didn’t know anything about what happened to
Claire. He just stole the evidence box, or rather, he had one of his bimbos do
it, so he could plant evidence that would gain him a win in the lawsuit he was
going to force Mom and me to file.”

“He’ll get his justice, Em. I have no doubt about that. Fate
has a way of evening those scores.”