This gets Marty’s attention. He’d like to think the guy’s impressed, but he can’t be sure.

“You’ve always done good work. Always helped people. Everyone round here knows that, same way they all know I . . .”

His heart races. Should he slow down, try to do this in stages? He’d sure like to get it over with, but what he’s trying to do is bigger than this one conversation, and he knows it, so what’s the damn rush?

“Well,” Marty says quietly, “maybe it was out of line to bring your mother up the way I did.”

“Maybe.”

“That look you gave me, though.”

“What look?”

“Before you drove away, I just . . . it felt like I’d shoved an old lady or something.”

“You calling me an old lady?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Not sure I do.”

“The fight had gonna out of you. Not sure what it means exactly, or if it’s good or bad. But I could see it in your eyes . . . you aren’t that little jerk I wanted to strangle when you were in high school. Or at least you’ve lost hold of him for now.”

“Thanks. I guess.”

“None of it’s a load off my back, Deputy Prescott. But it might be helpful information for you.”

“Thanks . . . I guess.”

“Mona tell you to come over here and make this right?”

“She didn’t have to.”

“Would she say the same?” Marty asks.

“No. Probably not.”

“There’s a reason she’s sheriff.”

“Yep.”

“And there’s a reason you’re one of her deputies now and not working for the FBI, from what I hear.”

Well, that was a turn, Luke thinks.

“Oof. Got you there, didn’t I?” Marty asks.

“I got to go to some kind of class for my face.”

“A class for your face?”

“So I can keep it from giving everything away.”

“I imagine that’s probably important for a career in law enforcement. Even if it’s not the career you planned.”

“You’re good, man. Real good. Those drunks aren’t gonna get anything by you.”

“Takes one to know one.”

“I’m not a drunk.”

“I wasn’t talking about you,” Marty says.

“So what’d you hear?”

“About what?”

“About my career, or lack thereof?”

Marty’s jaw tightens. “Heard you rolled all your chips on a job with the FBI. Even got yourself fluent in a couple different foreign languages ’cause you heard all they want is linguists now. But it didn’t work out, apparently.”

“Is that all?”

“Is it?”

“Is that all you heard?” Luke asks.

“Yes.”

“You lying?” Luke asks.

“You gonna take me in if I am?” Marty asks.

“I told you I’m off duty. Don’t even have my cuffs.”

“You might be able to take me bare-handed if you tried real hard.”

“Fight’s gone outta me. Remember?”

“Yeah, it’s all I heard. It’s not like you kept in touch with anyone from here. Up until you called Mona asking for a job. But, you know, thanks for letting me know there’s more to the story.”

Luke grabs for the first thing he can think of to change the subject.

“Trina,” he says. Her name comes out sounding like a grunt. “Trina Pierce.”

“What about her?”

“How is she?”

Now Marty’s the one struggling to hide his reaction. He brings his coffee mug to his lips, looks out the window as if he’s suddenly planning the route he’s going to take to the recovery house. “She’s fine.”

“I’d like to talk to her.”

“Why?” Marty’s full-on pissed now.

“Call me crazy, but I’m pretty sure if I apologize to you for what I did to Trina, you’re just gonna tell me it doesn’t mean anything unless I say it to her face. So I’m trying to save us both some time. Is she still around? I mean, I know Luanne’s store is gone but . . .”

So much of this day has been about Marty having the upper hand on him; Luke is stunned to see the man so visibly thrown off his game.

“She’s all right, isn’t she? I mean . . . she’s alive, right?”

“And why would you care?”

“I just told you why, Marty.”

“All right, well, let me tell you something. Apologies aren’t worth shit. Apologies are a string of words people put together so they can off-load their guilt in five minutes.”

“You didn’t have a problem accepting the one I gave you.”

“That’s still pending. You go back to being the little son of a bitch I remember, it won’t be worth horse dung.”

“OK, well, maybe Trina should have that opportunity, too. Horse dung and all.”

“She doesn’t want it!”

It’s not exactly a shout, but it’s loud enough to draw the attention of the waitress, and it embarrasses Marty enough to turn his face red and make him reach for his fork even though his plate’s only got bits of pie crust on it.

“Look,” Marty says, once he’s caught his breath. “I appreciate you coming over and—” The man’s cell phone rings, and Luke figures he’ll ignore it. But maybe that’s not a luxury you can afford when your vocation is talking fragile drunks away from the bottle. Whatever number Marty sees flashing on the caller ID, it drains some of the recent color from his face.

He looks up at Luke, confusion in his eyes. It’s like he thinks Luke might have something to do with whoever’s calling.

“I gotta take this,” Marty says.

“You want me to go?” Luke asks.

Marty shakes his head, slides out of the booth, and gets to his feet. He takes the call and brings the phone to his ear. “Give me a second,” he says to the person on the other end. Luke watches as he peels a twenty out of his wallet and drops it on the table.

He’s a few steps from the table when he seems to realize he’s left Luke sitting there without much of an explanation. He turns.

“Later, Deputy Prescott,” he says.

14

The last time Charlotte slept this deeply, anesthesia was involved, and she’d woken up with her wisdom teeth removed. The shrill beeping that calls her out of slumber now is almost as unpleasant as regaining consciousness with bloody gauze in her mouth.

Almost.

The shades are drawn, but around their edges, she can see it’s almost dark outside. As Kayla walks toward the front door, she looks just as put together as she did that morning, which makes Charlotte feel like a drunk emerging from a blackout.

“Don’t be mad,” Kayla says, as if the prospect barely frightens her. An electronic peephole viewer is attached to the wall next to the door frame, about sixty bucks from an appliance store. Charlotte priced them out for her house before she found a system that came with cameras included.

Kayla studies the small monitor, sees whatever she’d hoped to see, and sends a text in response. Whoever this visitor is, she doesn’t want him to just walk up to the front door and ring the bell. Or she’s told him she won’t open the door for anyone who doesn’t also have her phone number.

A minute or two later, Kayla turns the knob.

Charlotte gets to her feet. She’s not sure whom she’s preparing herself for, but she’s sure she should be prepared.

When he steps inside the house, Charlotte’s breath leaves her with a startled grunt, the kind of sound you make when you almost knock over a water glass. Maybe it’s just the sight of him that does her in. Maybe it’s the smell of his Old Spice aftershave, familiar and nostalgic at the same time, wrapping her in a cocoon of such vivid, comforting memories she feels like it might keep her standing even if she let her knees go out from under her.

They’re fragmented, but her earliest memories of him are still vivid.

The memory of his face among the many others in that dull conference room where the psychiatrists brought her a few weeks after her rescue. The way he’d stood behind her grandmother’s chair with one hand resting firmly on her shoulder as Luanne cried softly into a Kleenex. They’d both tried to let her father lead the conversation, even though it was clear, even then, that her father was treating her like an alien being, a creature irreparably changed by her time on the Bannings’ farm.

The way he’d taken her hand and walked her down the stairs to the beach in Altamira during those first early visits to her grandmother’s after she was rescued.

Had there ever been a man in her life she could trust more than Martin Cahill, her grandmother’s on-again, off-again boyfriend? And what had she done? Turned her back on him because her love for him reminded her too much of her grandmother. Practically banished all thoughts of him because they summoned her grief. Now the sight of him, his snow-white hair brushed out over his back, his denim shirt perfectly pressed, his smile warm and welcoming and eager, it’s exactly what she needs to break the hard shell of shock that’s grown around her over the past twenty-four hours.

“Heya, Charley,” he says softly.

That he can manage to say her new name with such warmth, it makes her vision wobble.