Sunset Bridge (6 page)

“No problem. I’ve thought about getting a cat, only I never liked being pinned down. I don’t even keep houseplants. I tried a few, but I had to give them back to Janya when I forgot to water them. She’s the gardener around here. She’s also the one who wanted a baby. And look who got pregnant.”

Maggie filled two glasses with ice and water, and handed one to Tracy. “Want to sit outside? The evening seems cool enough.”

“Don’t you have to unpack?”

“I’m all done. I didn’t bring that much, just whatever I could stuff in the car with my camping equipment.” They walked to the door and settled themselves on the bench beside the entryway. Maggie had the odd feeling they had been friends for years.

“Camping equipment?” Tracy said. “I just went camping in the Everglades.”

“Ooh, too bad. Next month will be nicer.”

“I’ll pass. Where were you? Your mom didn’t say.”

“Backpacking in the Blue Ridge. Georgia all the way up
into Virginia. Anywhere there was a lake I could swim in and a skyful of stars.”

“Did it help?”

“Not as much as I hoped.”

Tracy sipped her water, and they both stared in the direction of the Gulf, which was too far away to see. Still, Maggie could hear distant waves, and the salt-tinged air wafting through palm fronds smelled like home.

“Your mother’s worried about you,” Tracy said at last. “I know a little about what happened.”

“That I quit the only job I ever wanted and left the only man I ever loved?”

“You don’t get over that quickly, do you?”

“You sound like you know something about it.”

“I was married to the wealthy man I’d been trained to catch and shackle. I even convinced myself I loved him. Then one day we lost everything. All our money. Our dignity. All our friends. He’s a con man of the worst sort.”

“What sort is that?”

“The kind who could bottle a mud puddle and claim it’s fifty-year-old scotch. Worse yet, you would swear it was the best you’d ever had.”

“Did he get what was coming to him?”

“He went to prison for a while, got out on a technicality, came to visit while he waited for a new trial, then…” She glanced at Maggie. “More or less disappeared.”

“More or less?”

“I think he’s living someplace south of the border with no extradition treaty and lots of cheap labor, so he doesn’t have to mix his own drinks or press his own pants. Last time I saw him, he as much as said that’s what he was planning. I’ve
passed that on to the authorities, but it’s not much help. CJ lands on his feet. Some people always do.”

“Right, like the guy I built a case against in Miami, who was never brought to trial.”

“Your mother told me the story. You worked on the case for almost a year, gathered a ton of information, and then the prosecutor refused to indict him.”

“Paul Smythe, the state’s attorney, is as crooked as a trail through a mangrove swamp. And nobody would do a thing about it.”

“You didn’t know that going in?”

Maggie wondered. What had she known exactly? And what had she continued to believe in spite of that? That if she did everything exactly by the book, nobody could dispute her case? That if she worked hard enough, she could overcome corruption at the highest levels? That if she believed in miracles, somebody would wave a magic wand and make sure she got one of her own?

“I should have known,” she said. “If anybody should have known, it was me.”

“Why?”

“My early years in police work should have been a warning.”

“I hear it can be tough for women, even now.”

“Tough? Right. There was the subtle harassment. Like my first day on the job when somebody went through my locker, and I found a little message on my desk spelled out in my own tampons.” Maggie shook her head. “‘Get Out.’ Cute, huh?”

“The kids I work with have a similar level of maturity.”

“These weren’t kids. I’d have been okay with the little stuff, even though it kept coming and coming. I thought maybe they were just testing me, to see if I cried easily or couldn’t
take a joke. But it was more than that.” She stopped, not sure whether she wanted to go on.

“Wasn’t that bad enough?” Tracy sounded genuinely interested.

Maggie wondered why she was telling a stranger the story she’d never even told her parents. But the answer was simple. Her father would have pulled every string, gone to every official he’d met in all his years on the force, to get justice for her. Maggie hadn’t wanted to be daddy’s little girl. And her father’s fury would have played right into the hands of her tormentors. Even after the fact, she’d never told Felo the story, for the same reason, but Tracy had just shared hers. Maggie thought she, of all people, would understand.

“That was the first time they went after me, a warning of sorts. But I’m not good with threats.” Even thinking about it made Maggie’s throat tighten. “I started out in public relations, stuff they thought a woman should do. But by the end of my second year, when I was still sitting at a desk, I started talking about a lawsuit. That department had already been in trouble, so rather than chance another investigation, they put me in a car with another cop, a guy who’d never given me any problems—one of the few—and sent me out on patrol to learn the ropes.

“The first couple of nights went fine. Nothing much happened, and even though my partner hardly spoke, I figured things would improve once he saw I was holding up my end. We got a call, domestic violence in a housing development where it wasn’t uncommon. Too many hopeless people crowded together, with too much anger. It was a two-story building, two apartments up, two down, little courtyards separating them. We went to the door together, and we could hear shouting, so of course nobody answered when
we pounded on the door. My partner told me he was going around back to make sure nobody left that way. I was supposed to stay at the front and keep pounding on the door until somebody answered.”

“Somebody did,” Tracy guessed.

“Yeah, a big guy, maybe two hundred forty, fifty pounds? With a baseball bat.” Maggie turned to her. “My partner didn’t come back, even though I know he heard the guy screaming at me. He could have killed me. He was hopped up on something, out of his mind with rage. He came after me swinging. I managed to evade him, but I couldn’t get close enough to stop him, and I probably wouldn’t have been able to restrain him, even if I could have gotten my hands on him. No time to pull a weapon. I knew for sure two of us could have taken him down, but me alone…?”

Maggie remembered, as she did every time she relived that moment in her all-too-frequent nightmares, how terrified she had been. She had expected to die, simply because she was a woman trying to break into a department that didn’t want her.

“That’s an awful story.” Tracy sounded outraged. “I can’t believe that goes on.”

“Believe it.”

“What happened?”

“A miracle, really. The guy’s neighbor came out and tackled him. I don’t know what would have happened otherwise. He dropped the bat, and I managed to cuff him. Then, when it was all over, my partner came strolling around the side of the house. I can still see his grin. In the car he asked how I liked my first encounter with real police work. Then he told me I might as well prepare for more of the same and not waste
my time whining, because nobody was going to believe my version of anything.”

She paused. “And, of course, he was right. From that point on until I moved over to Miami City, nobody had my back. No matter what went down, I was alone out there, worse than alone, because the people who were supposed to be there for me were out to get me, too.”

“Things were better in Miami?”

“I thought so, until recently.”

“But you stayed in police work after all that. Why would you?” Tracy sounded genuinely perplexed, and Maggie figured her confusion made sense.

“Even after everything, I still believed I was better than the bad guys. All of them. In the end, as it turns out, they might not be
better,
but they’re stronger and have better connections. When the investigation Mom told you about was tabled, I was pretty sure I was slated to be taken out of crime suppression and moved to something really important, like community relations again. Wasn’t ready to repeat.”

“Bummer.”

“Well said.”

“So, two of us, looking at our futures, without any real idea what they’re going to hold. I think maybe you and I have a lot in common, Maggie Gray.” Tracy held out her water, as if in toast.

Maggie toasted her right back, and their glasses clinked.

Maggie wasn’t sure about a lot of things in her life, but she was sure she had just made a friend.

T
he women of Happiness Key met every Thursday evening for dinner, alternating houses so nobody would bear too much of the burden. If grouper was fresh, Wanda grilled and slathered it with lime butter, always careful to have plenty of vegetables for vegetarian Janya, too. On Janya’s night she re-created the succulent dishes of her native Mumbai, and nobody missed meat. When it was her turn, Tracy usually picked up deli salads and fresh rolls. Alice specialized in casseroles filled with rich sauces and tender vegetables.

Tonight Alice had prepared her special four-cheese macaroni, laden with mushrooms, tomatoes and onions. Except for accepting one of Wanda’s pies for dessert, she had refused all offers of help. No matter where they ate, Wanda’s pies capped the meal.

They’d begun with a toast to Maggie and welcomed her to their ritual dinner. Now Tracy waited until Alice joined them before she reached for a complicated layered salad served in a cut-glass bowl. She wondered how long the salad had taken
to prepare, and what she could say to convince Alice that next time, she didn’t have to work so hard. Alice’s age had never been more apparent than tonight. She looked exhausted.

Tracy passed the bowl to Maggie beside her. Maggie’s hair was down, and she wore a simple scoop-neck blouse of pale gold over faded jeans. She really didn’t look like her mother, but there was a hint of resemblance around her lips, and she definitely had Wanda’s stubborn chin.

“Alice,” Tracy said, reaching for the casserole. “You worked so hard tonight. Everything looks fabulous.”

“I like to cook…” She hesitated, as she sometimes did, while she waited for the words to form. “…for all of you.”

No one rushed Alice. The halting speech was left over from the stroke she had suffered several years ago. The gap had closed considerably, and now it was more like a missing beat or a hiccup, but Tracy was afraid it was going to get worse if Alice kept pushing herself.

“Why don’t you tell us what you’ve been doing,” Tracy said. “It’s your house, you ought to start.”

Across the table, Wanda had dished up applesauce, and now the bowl reached Alice, who took some before she spoke again, as if she was too fatigued to do two things at once.

“Olivia…is very busy, and I’ve been busy…keeping up with her.”

“I remember when Maggie was that age,” Wanda said. “I told Ken I was going to need a chauffeur’s license and a spiffy black cap. Then Junior made the travel soccer team, and I pretty much lived in the car for three years.”

“I know how busy Bay can be,” Tracy said. “Coming and going from the key a couple of times a day must be exhausting.”

“We manage,” Alice said. “It’s good for…Olivia.”

And it was. Tracy knew that. The girl, who was studying with a friend tonight, had suffered so many losses, but she had managed to overcome the worst and move forward. She had been voted most congenial at the rec center youth camp this past summer, and she was vice president of her class at middle school.

“Isn’t middle school a lot harder to manage?” Tracy asked.

Alice nodded. “And she’s in a youth group…at our church. So Sunday nights now…” She didn’t bother to finish.

“We can all help out, you need us,” Wanda said. “Olivia could come to the shop after school—there’s a city bus stop at the end of the block. Do her homework at one of the tables, and I’d take her home, or Maggie would, once we finished for the day.”

“Or she can always come to the rec center,” Tracy said. “She’s no trouble. She could join the after-school program.”

“She likes to work on murals with me,” Janya said. “I could help, too.”

Tracy expected Alice to refuse. Olivia was her only grandchild, and they were particularly close. But Alice nodded, as if she might think about it.

“Good,” Wanda said, when nothing followed. “We’ll expect you to let us know, and we’ll say no if we can’t help.”

“That’s settled, then,” Tracy said, watching Alice’s expression. “Anything else going on, Alice? How’s your bridge club?”

“I…” Alice shook her head. The message was clear. She had dropped out, and nobody had to be told why.

Tracy knew they were going to have to keep track of this. She had enough problems to keep herself occupied for, oh, the next twenty-one years? But she was more than fond of
both Alice and Olivia. She wasn’t going to let a problem go long term.

As unofficial facilitator, she turned to Janya. “What’s up with you, Janya?”

“Very little. Rishi invited Indian friends to visit on Saturday. The woman, Kanira, is so unhappy, and she makes everyone else unhappy along with her. I want to help and have no idea how. Rishi says we should just be there if they need us.”

“Why’s she unhappy?” Wanda asked. “Is it one of those arranged marriages again? I never did understand that whole notion, but then, I never did understand why normal marriages don’t work, either. I’m not sure any of us are meant to spend our whole lives with a man.”

“Your
normal
marriages fail because romance is not the only part of marriage leading to success. Family ties and culture are important, too,” Janya said.

“Your family’s far away,” Wanda pointed out. “And you and Rishi get along just dandy.”

Janya smiled. “I think sometimes Rishi and I get along
because
my family is far away.”

“Your new friends…have children?” Alice asked.

“Two, and the sweetest children you could ever meet. I hope for their sakes the parents will learn to make a happy home together.”

“Or split up,” Wanda said. “Sometimes that’s best for everybody. Better than fighting all the time.”

“That doesn’t sound like you, Mom,” Maggie said. “Who liberated you? It used to be all ‘till death do us part.’ The first time I went steady, you preached a whole sermon on being loyal and supportive of my man. I was twelve.”

“She exaggerates,” Wanda told the other women. “Pay her no mind.”

“I exaggerate only a little.” Maggie was clearly feeling at home with the group.

“What else is going on?” Tracy asked Janya.

“Murals. Two lined up for next month. I will be busy.” She paused. “Which is good, because there is no baby coming to bless us. Not yet.”

Everyone made sympathetic noises.

With no real experience in theater, Tracy still knew a cue when she heard one. “Alice, you’re the only one here who hasn’t heard my news. There is a baby coming to bless
me
—and Marsh, too, only he doesn’t know it yet, and I don’t want anybody to tell him. So, please keep this a secret. Let’s not tell Olivia, okay?”

Alice looked stunned. “You’re…pregnant?”

“Symptoms, test results, the whole nine yards.”

“You were planning…?”

Tracy shook her head. “And we’ve been so careful about birth control. I’m never careless…except, well, once. The first time we, you know, did it. It was the evening of Bay’s birthday party. Marsh and I had been keeping our distance. I went to drop off a present, and Bay wanted me to stay. Afterward, Marsh and I made up big-time. I didn’t have my…anything with me to prevent pregnancy, and we just kind of fell into bed—actually the floor—before either of us thought that far ahead. But it was just that once. Man, who’d have thought just once would do it?”

“Anybody who’s ever had a sex-ed class,” Maggie said, fork halfway to her mouth.

“Oh, great, another wiseass at Happiness Key.” Tracy tried a bite of the macaroni and waited to see if her stomach would rebel. It didn’t. She took another.

“So, there’s got to be a good reason you aren’t acquainting
the baby’s own father with the situation,” Wanda said. “Let’s have it.”

Tracy ate another three bites quickly, more because she wanted to strike while the iron was hot than because she wanted to avoid answering. She wondered if that was how the entire pregnancy would go. She would eat during the brief moments when her stomach was behaving, and the other twenty-three and a half hours each day she would avoid food and any mention of it.

“That casserole’s not going anywhere,” Wanda said. “Spill, and I don’t mean macaroni.”

“It’s complicated, and this is the first thing I’ve eaten since noon that’s stayed put.”

“Then talk with your mouth full.”

“You can’t let Mom bully you,” Maggie said. “Give her an inch…”

“You think they don’t know that?” Wanda said. “We been neighbors more than a year now. They’re still standing, aren’t they?”

Tracy thought if everybody had been sentimental, touchy-feely about her announcement, she probably couldn’t have said another word. But she felt reassured, somehow, by Wanda’s matter-of-fact digging.

“You’re not sure you’re going through with this pregnancy?” Wanda said, turning back to Tracy. “That’s why you don’t want Marsh to know?”

Tracy couldn’t say that the idea of
not
going through with it hadn’t occurred to her. A woman carrying a baby she hadn’t planned for had legal options, and she wasn’t naive. Still, she felt those options existed for circumstances decidedly different than hers.

“I’m glad women have choices,” she said, “but I don’t think
that’s one of mine. And I would never leave Marsh out of a decision like that, either.”

Wanda didn’t look surprised. “I figured. I only wanted to get you talking.”

“Marsh and I were just getting started.” Tracy looked around the table. “We finally got past all the garbage, and we were starting to figure each other out. Now, how will I know what he really feels? Whatever he does will always be mixed up with this baby. I’ll never know if we were falling in love big-time, you know? It’s all going to be about custody, and whether we live together for the sake of the kid, and who gets him or her when and for how long. Not about
us,
but about
all
of us.”

“You could always ask him and get it over with,” Wanda said.

“The man’s never even told me he loves me. I might ask and get silence, because I don’t think Marsh knows how he feels.”

No one seemed to know what to say to that, until finally Janya broke the silence. “Some men don’t know how to admit such a private thing.”

“Marsh had a bad marriage. Maybe it soured him on saying the love
word,
” Wanda said. “Maybe he said it the first time, then things didn’t turn out so hot. Maybe he’s afraid he’ll jinx what you have.”

“Or maybe he’s just not that into me,” Tracy said. “It happens.”

“You spend every waking minute with that man, and some not-so-waking ones.” Wanda dished more macaroni and cheese onto Tracy’s plate. “A man doesn’t spend all that time with a woman he’s not into.”

“Maybe not, but I think I need some time without the
baby in the middle making all our decisions. I need to gauge what’s going on before I tell him he’s going to be a father again. Then I can tell him, and maybe I’ll have some idea how to break the news. He has a child. Who’s to say he wants another?”

“You could tell him tonight and watch his expression,” Wanda said. “Either he’ll be as happy as a chick in a bug patch, or he’ll be figuring out how fast he can pack.”

“Tracy should…do what she wants,” Alice said. “If she needs time, she should take it.”

“She’s right,” Maggie said. “I know I’m new here, but I just got out of a relationship, and I wish I’d taken some time to pay attention to what was happening around me before things fell apart. That’s all Tracy’s trying to do. She wants to pay attention, without distractions.”

“A baby is not a distraction,” Wanda told her daughter. “A baby is a human being with needs and feelings. Some of them even come into the world with colic. Like certain people I know.”

Maggie ignored her. “Once Tracy has to consider the baby’s needs and feelings, her window of opportunity to observe the baby’s father will be over.”

“Is this a test?” Janya asked Tracy. “And if it is, will you know when to give Marsh a passing or failing grade?” When Tracy didn’t answer, she added, “Perhaps it’s not only Marsh who is unsure how he feels? Perhaps the baby’s mother is also wondering.”

The table went silent, then Wanda pushed her chair back.

“Let the unwed mother eat her macaroni. I’ve got news to share.”

Tracy had never been more grateful to be out of the lime-
light. As pushy as she was, Wanda never shoved anybody over the edge.

Well, okay she did, but rarely.

“I’ll be baking pies for the new Dancing Shrimp,” Wanda said. “Gaylord’s is gone, and the Dancing Shrimp is back, only the dessert menu will be featuring my pies.” She explained how the pie order had come about, and everybody applauded spontaneously.

“So I brought a new one tonight for you to try,” Wanda said. “I’m calling it Citrus Sunrise. But not only that, while the restaurant’s being renovated, Phillip Callander is going to be doing a little catering. And guess who it’s for? For Derek Forbes and his film production company from Hollywood! They’re going to be working on location right here in Palmetto Grove and staying in the Statler mansion where Janya fell in the pool. And guess who’s going to be baking pies for the cast and crew?” She hitched a thumb toward her ample breasts. “Little ol’
moi
.”

Maggie departed first, claiming she needed a good night’s sleep before another day at the pie shop. Wanda followed soon after; then Janya shooed Tracy out the door, promising that
she
would help Alice with the rest of the cleanup. Now, as she neared her own cottage, Tracy realized how tired she was when she found herself nearly on top of Marsh’s pickup before she realized what its presence signaled.

As Alice might say, she had a gentleman caller.

Marsh was sitting on the stoop, lolling on his elbows and gazing at the stars. His tan skin was burnished by the moonlight, and the golden highlights in his hair were luminous. She thought of everything she had told her friends, and all
the insecurities she hadn’t fully admitted to. Then she steeled herself.

“Did I know you were coming?” she asked.

“You’ve been dodging my calls. I thought I’d better find out why.”

Tracy’s heart picked up speed, but she managed a smile. “I haven’t been dodging anything. I left you a message. Didn’t you get it?”