Chief of police? That was just more craziness.
CiCi let it drop on him, then blithely went into her studio.
So he took a solo walk on the beach, hoping the air would blow his brain back to sanity.
He sat on the rocks and brooded. He walked some more.
When he finally went back, CiCi sat on the patio, a cozy throw over her legs and a bottle of wine, two glasses, on the table.
“You need a nice glass of wine.”
“I can’t be a police chief.”
“Why not? It’s just a title.” She poured the wine.
“It’s not just a title. It’s being in charge of a department. It’s administrative.”
She patted a hand at the chair next to hers. “You’re smart, and the current chief would work with you until you got your rhythm. You’ve told me enough over these past days and entertaining evenings for me to know you’re not happy in Portland. You’re not happy with the box your own chief or captain or whatever put you in. Get out of the box, Reed.
“You have a purpose,” she continued. “Your aura absolutely pulses with it.”
“My aura pulses with purpose?”
“It does. And you’d fulfill that here. You’d also fulfill your just-as-essential purpose of working on the investigation of that Hobart psycho. The off-season here isn’t without work for a police chief, but you’d have that time and space.”
She looked at him. “Tell me you’re happy where you are, and I’ll stop.”
He wanted to, but shook his head. “No. I’ve thought about transferring, but there’s Essie. And some others. My family.”
“You’re less than an hour from your friends and family here. You want that house. I don’t have to be psychic to know that because it was all over you. But since I am a little bit psychic I know you’ll be happy here, happy in that house—because it’s your place. Clear as day. You’ll have your purpose, your home. You’re going to find the love of your life.”
“I already did,” he interrupted.
She reached over and took his hand. “You’re going to find the one who’ll share that home with you. You’re going to raise a family there.”
“I can barely afford the house. Who knows if I’m qualified for chief of police, or if the island council would offer me the position?”
She smiled over the rim of her glass. Silver hoops with bloodred drops glinted at her ears. “I have some not inconsiderable influence. We need good, young, bright blood in the job. And here you are.”
“You’re biased because you love me, too.”
“I do, but if I didn’t think this was right for you, for the island—not even just right for you, but the answer—I wouldn’t have spoken with Hildy yesterday.”
“Hildy?”
“Mayor Hildy Intz. She’d love to talk with you.”
“Jesus, CiCi.”
Laughing, she poked him in the arm. “Shit’s getting real, am I right? It makes me think of Simone. I told you how she tried to fit in the box, and finally realized she couldn’t. When she took that leap, she found the answer. Or one of them. Don’t let them keep you in their box, Reed. Damn, that’s my phone. I left it inside.”
“I’ll get it.”
He hurried in, brought it back to her.
“Huh. Barbara Ellen.” With a wiggle of her eyebrows, she answered. “Hi, Barbara Ellen. Yes. Hmm.”
She listened, nodded, sipped wine.
“I see. Oh, I absolutely will. It was wonderful to see you, too. And Cody. Yes, he’s done beautiful work. It’s no wonder you’re proud of him. Uh-huh.” She gave Reed an eye roll. “I know you will. Let me get back to you? Bye now.”
She ended the call, set the phone down, took another sip of wine.
“Barbara Ellen’s anxious to pack up and move, just go back with Cody and be done. Factoring that, she’s nagged Cody into lowering the price—for you, if you take it as discussed—another seventy-five hundred.”
“Oh, shit.”
“She knows you’ll love the house she loved, the house where she raised her children. Obviously, she’s right about that.”
“I shouldn’t have gone up on the widow’s walk.” More rocks, he thought, sinking fast. He rubbed a hand over his face. “It was bad enough before that. It was bad enough just feeling that place, but going up there did it. I can’t talk myself out of it.”
“I’ve never understood why people are always trying to talk themselves out of things they want. You just got another signpost, my man. You ought to follow it.”
“Yeah.”
“Why don’t I call Hildy, invite her over for a drink?”
He looked at her, nodded. “Why don’t you do that?”
* * *
As soon as he returned to Portland, Reed contacted Essie, asked her to meet him at the park. He sat on the same bench where they’d sat more than a decade before. He’d taken a new direction right there, with her help.
Now he prepared to do just that again.
In the brisk November breeze, he watched the water, the people, thought back to that hot summer day. Angie’s funeral—a girl who’d never had the chance to change directions.
Maybe that was part of the whole—part of his whole anyway. He’d been given the chance—twice—and believed he had to make the best of it.
After DownEast, he’d wondered and worried if there was a bullet on pause, waiting for somebody to hit the play button. Patricia Hobart had hit that button, and two, not one, bullets found him.
And he’d survived.
No wasting time or opportunities, he thought. No looking back later and thinking: Why didn’t I?
So he sat while the wind kicked through his hair, while winter began to poke its chilly fingers through the balm of autumn and thought of yesterdays and tomorrows. Because, hell, the right now was already here.
He watched her come, his partner, his mentor, his friend. Quick strides in sturdy boots, dark jacket zipped against the wind, dark ski cap over the short, careless do she called mom/cop hair.
Without her, he’d have bled to death on a refinished hardwood floor. As much as he loved his family, Essie was the person he most wanted never, never to disappoint.
“Okay, let me take a look.” She did just that, eyes narrowed and critical on his face. Then she nodded. “Yeah, you look good. A couple weeks on Tranquility worked for you.”
She sat, looked him in the eye. “How do you feel?”
“Better. A lot. Walked every day, jogged a little. Kept up the PT. Fell in love with a sexy, fascinating woman.”
“That didn’t take long.”
“Boom.” He snapped his fingers. “Have you heard of CiCi Lennon?”
“Ah … Artist, right? Local. Isn’t she … like, your grandmother’s age?”
“Maybe. It occurs to me, women have had a profound influence and effect on my life. My mom, sure, and my sister, too. And in a strange, awful way, Angie. You and I sat here the day of her funeral.”
“I remember.”
“You. You’ve had a profound influence and effect.”
“You made your own way, Reed.”
“I like to think so, but you helped me find it. I love being a cop. I hated seeing that worry on my parents’ faces in the hospital, and I hate knowing that’s going to be inside them from now on. But I know they’ll deal. I need to be a cop.”
“I never doubted it.”
He studied the water. “The thing is, neither did I. Even lying on the floor, wondering if that was it. Game over. The decision I made right here—or at least started to make—was the right one. A big part of that decision was Angie, and that night. I can’t stop pursuing that, Essie. I can’t stop trying to take Patricia Hobart down.”
Essie angled toward him. “The bitch shot my partner. Look, I’m pissed we got locked out, and I can still hope the feds run her to ground. But either way, we’ll work it, Reed. We’ll work it off the books, on our own time.”
“They’ll keep me on the desk for a while. Three to six months, I figure. The department doesn’t have our backs on it. You’ve got a family, Essie. We could carve out some time to work it, sure, but by the time they let me come back to full duty, they’re going to have you with another partner.”
“I’m pushing back on that,” she began.
“We’ve got to work the actives. That’s priority. They’re never going to let either of us work the Hobart investigation, even peripherally—and I can’t get too pissed about it. But Hobart’s the key to the rest, and I’m not letting it go. By the time I’m cleared, they’ll put me with someone else. We can both push back, but that’s a big, gaping maybe. And we’ll both have cases that have to come first.”
“You’re circling around something, and I’m not feeling good about it. Are you thinking of requesting a transfer?”
“Not exactly. I found the house. I found it on the island. It’s everything I want and need, and it’s the reason I never found that here.”
“Well, Jesus, Reed, I get how much you want to find a place, but—”
“The place, Essie, that’s the thing. I stayed in CiCi’s house most of the time I was on the island. Not like that,” he said with a quick laugh. “Though if she’d give me a shot … Anyway, I found a lot of things. Bloody Marys and pancakes, yoga on the beach—”
Jaw dropping, Essie held up a hand. “Wait. You did yoga on the beach?”
“CiCi’s got a way. The thing is, I ended up sitting on the rocks down from her place because her house was one I remembered, especially, from a million years ago when we had a couple of vacations on the island. And she ended up asking me to stay because she recognized me—from the shooting, and from my connection to the mall. Her granddaughter was there.”
“Wait, wait, that’s it.” Now Essie punched her palm at the air. “Nagging at me. She’s Simone Knox’s grandmother.”
“Right. You answered Simone’s nine-one-one. I’m looking at all of it, Essie. Angie—I talked to her, made a half-assed date with her minutes before she died. I end up hiding with Brady in her kiosk, with her blood on me. And I end up on this bench with you. I end up on the island because of all of it. I don’t want to get all metaphysical or whatever, but it just means something.”
“Are you telling me you bought CiCi Lennon’s house?”
“No. There were two that hit me back then, back when I was, like, ten years old, and I told her about it because, Jesus, you can talk to CiCi. Or I sure can. And it means something, Essie, that the owner and her son are fixing up the house I remembered—to get it on the market. It matters that when I started going through it, it was—here’s another stupid word, but it was visceral. It was mine. I tried to talk myself out of it. But it was all there.
“I said okay, fine, I could think of it as an investment, rent it out, take some vacation time there. Because a cop has to live where he works, and I need to be a cop. But the thing is, I don’t want to rent it out.”
“Reed, please tell me you’re not going for an island deputy job. You’re an investigator. You’re—”
“No, not a deputy.”
“Then what the hell?”
“Chief of police.”
“You—” She stopped, let out a whoosh of air. “Seriously?”
“I don’t have it yet. The island council has to vote and all that. But I did an interview—a couple of them. And I wrote up a résumé. They’re going to call you, Bull, the lieutenant pretty soon. If I don’t get it … I’m young, not from the island—those are strikes against me. I’m a police detective with a few years under my belt, a good closed-case history, who’s already got a contract on a house there. Those are pluses for me. And the big guns? CiCi. So I rate my chances at about seventy-thirty.”
She sat awhile, saying nothing, working through it. “You want it.”
“Downside? Farther away from the family than they’re going to like. And not working with you. Not being able to drop by, see you and Hank and Dylan, and mooch a meal. I’m hoping to offset that by having you guys come and hang out. Because, yeah, I want it. I want it because I found things I needed there. And because I think I could do good work. I want it because I’ll have the time and space, especially in the fall and winter, to work Hobart. I can’t be a cop, look at myself in the mirror, and not work Hobart.”
“I hate this.” She pushed herself off the bench, walked toward the bay and back. “I just hate it.”
“Essie—”
She threw up a hand to stop him as he rose. “I hate it because it feels right for you. It just feels like the right thing. And I’m going to miss you dropping by to mooch a meal. I’ll miss working cases with you.”
“It feels right?”
“Yeah, it does. When would you leave?”
“I don’t have the job yet.”
“You’re going to get it.” It felt too right for otherwise. “When would you leave?”
“Not until after the first of the year. The current chief’s leaving in March—see, he told CiCi, hadn’t even told the council yet. It all just slid into place.”
“Chief Quartermaine.” She shook her head. “Isn’t that a kick in the ass?”
He felt that kick ten days later when he formally accepted the job as chief of police of Tranquility Island.
* * *
In the spirit of fence mending, Simone agreed to a fancy girls’ lunch at her mother’s country club. She’d have preferred spending the blustery November afternoon in her studio, but her relationship with Natalie had improved.
Natalie wanted the lunch, and pushed. So here they were, eating elaborate salads, drinking Kir Royales, and making chitchat about a wedding that was still nearly a year off.
She’d already gotten her mother’s eye for the short, shaggy do in a color her adventurous hairdresser dubbed Burning Embers. But the fact that Tulip held her tongue, for once, helped keep the interlude civilized.
Besides, she couldn’t deny she’d chosen the over-the-knee boots, suede pants, and a bold green leather jacket to push her mother’s buttons.
In any case, she liked seeing Natalie so happy, even if a lot of it stemmed from debates on wedding dress designs and wedding colors.
When she felt her mind melting over the perfect signature drink for a fall wedding, she steered the conversation toward the house Natalie and Harry had just purchased.
“So the new house. That’s exciting. When will you be ready to move in?”
“There’s certainly no rush,” Tulip began. “Especially with all the holiday festivities coming up. Simone, you really must attend the Snowflake Ball next month. My friend Mindy’s son Triston’s coming in from Boston for Christmas, and I’m sure he’d be happy to escort you.”
“Yes.” Glowing, happy, Natalie all but bounced in her seat. “You could double-date with Harry and me!”
Under the table, Simone gave Natalie’s leg a quick, firm squeeze.
“My calendar’s already full, Mom, but thanks for the thought. About the house—”
“For once I’d like to have my whole family present at an event that’s important to me.”
Simone picked up her glass, took a careful sip of a drink that struck her as too sweet and silly. “I know the Snowflake Ball’s important to you. So’s the Winter Gala, the Spring Ball, the Summer Jubilee in July, and so forth. I’ve come to several of them over the last few years.”
“You haven’t once come to the Jubilee, and we raise money for the arts with the proceeds.”
“It’s a bad time of year for me, Mom.”
Tulip started to speak, then looked away. “It helps to do something positive.”
“I know, and I do. For me. I really want to hear about the house.”
“Haven’t you hidden yourself away on the island long enough? If you’re not there, you’re off somewhere else. You’re never going to create a social network or meet someone as wonderful as Harry on that island.”
Here we go again, Simone thought. “I have the social network I want, and I’m not looking for someone like Harry. And he is wonderful,” Simone added with a smile for Natalie. “Mom,” she said before Tulip could speak again. “Let’s talk about things we can agree on. Like how happy Natalie is, what a wonderful wedding she’ll have. How fabulous her new house is.”
“About the wedding—again,” Natalie said, so obviously trying to right the ship, Simone gave her knee another squeeze, a grateful one. “Will you be my maid of honor?”
It surprised her, touched her, and both showed on her face. “Nat, I’m so honored. Really. It means so much to me you’d ask, and if it’s what you truly want, of course I will. But…”
Now she took Natalie’s hand on the white tablecloth. “Cerise has been your best friend for a decade. The two of you are so close, and she knows exactly what you want for your wedding. She’ll know how to make it happen for you. She should be your maid of honor.”
“People will expect—”
Simone looked at her mother, so fast, so fierce, the rest of the words died. “What matters is what Natalie wants. Ask Cerise, and let me do something special for you instead.”
“I don’t want you to feel slighted. You’re my sister.”
“I won’t. I don’t. I’d like you to have Cerise stand for you. I’d like to make the topper for your cake. I’d like to do a sculpture of you and Harry. Something you’d keep to remember the biggest day of your lives. Something that shows not only how happy you were on that day, but how happy I am for you.”
“We’ve already started looking at cake designs and toppers,” Tulip pointed out.
“Mom.” Natalie reached for her mother’s hand, effectively joining the three women together. “I would love it. Honestly, I’d just love it. Could you do something fun for the groom’s cake? Like Harry putting on a golf green, or swinging on the tee?”
“Absolutely. You get me the cake designs once you have them. And when you have your dress, I’ll do some sketches and photos—same with Harry when he’s got his groom clothes. We can brainstorm ideas for the groom’s cake if you want, but the wedding topper’s going to be a surprise.”
She looked back at her mother. “I won’t disappoint or embarrass you. I want to give something to Natalie, something that’s a part of me. How about the two of you pick a couple of desserts to share and order me some black coffee? I’ll be right back.”
She wound her way through the dining room, escaping to the restroom and vowing no matter how many fences needed mending, she would never agree to another ladies’ lunch at the club.
To counterbalance, she decided she’d pick up some of her grandmother’s favorite veggie pizza on the way home, and they’d gorge while drinking some good wine.
She had to push herself mentally to go into the bathroom stall—she always did. But the little flutter came and went, as it always did.
When she came out, she barely glanced at the blonde carefully touching up her lipstick in the mirror over the long silver counter with its line of deep vessel sinks.
She needed to figure out how to put a cheerful smile on her face, get through dessert and coffee. And escape.
“Simone Knox.”
She looked over at the blonde. She heard the sneer in the voice, saw it on the deep rose lips. Before she realized the physical sneer was caused by the pull of carefully masked scarring.
The left eye—boldly blue—drooped just a fraction. A casual observer might not have noticed, but an artist who’d studied facial structure and anatomy couldn’t miss it.
She kept her own face as neutral as her voice.
“That’s right.”
“You don’t recognize me?”
She hadn’t, in those first few seconds. But it all flooded over her. All.
“Tiffany. Sorry. It’s been a long time.”
“Hasn’t it just?”
“How are you?”
“How do I look? Oh don’t be shy,” she continued, waving her hands on either side of her face. “Eight surgeries over seven years. Add years of speech therapy, some brain bleeds. Totally reconstucted left ear,” she added, tapping on it. “Of course, the hearing’s pretty well shot in it, but you can’t have everything.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Sorry? The fucking bastard shot me in the face! They had to put it back together. You walked away without a scratch, didn’t you?”
None that showed.
“But all these years later, they’re still talking about the brave, quick-thinking Simone Knox who hid and called for help. While I lay there under my dead boyfriend with my face in pieces.”
She didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to see the flashes of gunfire through the door wedged open by a dead body. She didn’t want to hear the screams.
“I’m sorry for all you’ve been through.”
“You don’t know anything about what I’ve been through.” The drooping eye twitched as Tiffany’s voice rose up another register. “I was beautiful. I was important. And you were nothing. A castoff. You got lucky, and they call you a hero. Why do you think people buy that crap you make?
“You’re sorry? You should be dead. I’ve waited twelve years to tell you exactly that.”
“Now you have.”
“It’s still not enough. It’ll never be enough.”
As Tiffany stormed out, Simone thought: Her left shoulder’s just a fraction lower than her right. Then went into the stall and threw up the fancy salad and Kir Royale.
When she got back to the table, her mother and sister had their heads together, laughing.
“I’m sorry. I need to go.”
“Oh, Simone, we just ordered dessert.” Natalie reached up for her hand.
“I’m sorry.” How many times would she say that today? she wondered.
“Just because we disagree doesn’t—” Tulip’s quiet tirade stopped in midstream. “Simone, you’re white as a sheet.”
“I’m not feeling well. I—”
Tulip got up quickly, rounded the table. “You sit. Sit a minute. I’ll get you some fresh water.”
“This is fine.” Water, she thought. Yes, some water. But her hand trembled a little. “Honestly, I need to go. A little air.”
“Yes. Some air. Natalie, stay here. I’m going to walk your sister outside.” She slid her arm around Simone’s waist. “We’ll get our coats. I have the check.”
Smooth, efficient Tulip retrieved their coats, helped Simone into hers. “Take my beret. You should have worn a hat.” She steered Simone out to a patio festively decorated for the holidays.
“Now tell me what happened.”
“It’s nothing. Just a headache.”
“Don’t lie to me. Give me some credit for knowing my own child. Give me some respect.”
“I’m sorry.” There it was again. “You’re right. I need to walk. I need to breathe.”
“We’ll walk. You’ll breathe. And you’ll tell me what happened.”
“In the restroom. Tiffany Bryce.”
“Do we know her?”
“I went to school with her. She was in the theater that night.”
“Of course. I know her stepmother a little. She—they—have had a very difficult time.”
“Yes. She told me.”
“I know it’s hard for you to be reminded, but—”
“She blames me.”
“What?” Absently, Tulip brushed at her hair as the wind disturbed it. “Of course she doesn’t.”
“She does, and she made that clear. She got shot in the face. I didn’t. Nothing happened to me.”
“It happened to all of us, whether or not we were physically injured. All of us.” Now she gripped Simone’s hand. “What did she say to you, sweetie?”
“She gave me a recount of her injuries, harangued me for not having any. And told me I should’ve died. That she wished I had.”
“I don’t care what happened to her, she had no right to say that. It’s very likely she would have died without what you did that night.”
“Don’t say that. Please, don’t say that. I don’t want to be thought of that way.”
“You were brave and you were smart, and don’t you ever, ever forget it.” She took Simone by the shoulders. “That girl’s bitter and angry, and I can forgive that. But what she said to you is wrong and hateful. You said in there you wouldn’t disappoint or embarrass me. Don’t disappoint me now and take one single thing she said to heart.”
“I hated her. That night, before, when she came in with Trent, so smug and dismissive of me. I hated her. And now…”
“Now you’ve grown up, and she, obviously, hasn’t changed a bit. Not everyone changes, Simone. Not everyone can move through and beyond a tragedy.”
Simone let her head drop to her mother’s shoulder. “Sometimes I’m still stuck there. In that bathroom stall.”
“Then—God, I’m going to sound like my mother—open the door. You have, and you’ll keep opening it. Even if I don’t like where it takes you. I love you, Simone. Maybe that’s why you constantly exasperate me. I mean, honestly, why do you do that to your hair?”
Simone managed a watery laugh. “You’re bringing up my hair to take my mind off the rest.”
“That may be, but I still can’t understand why you’d chop it off and dye it hellfire red.”
“I must’ve been in a hellfire mood when I did.” She drew back, then kissed her mother’s cheek. “Thank you. I’m better, but I don’t want to go back in. I couldn’t face dessert anyway.”
“Are you well enough to drive?”
“Yeah. Don’t worry.”
“I will, so you’ll text me when you’re at your grandmother’s.”
“Okay. Tell Nat—”
“I intend to tell Natalie exactly what happened so we can gossip about that stupid, ugly woman over dessert and coffee.”
This time the laugh came easier. “I love you, Mom. That must be why you constantly exasperate me.”
“I’ll give you one touché. Your color’s better. Text me—and have CiCi make you one of her crazy teas.”
“I will.”
Rather than go through the club, she walked around the building to her car. She hadn’t wanted to come, she thought, and couldn’t claim she’d had a good time of it.
But she could be glad she’d come. However strange and awful, the fences got mended, and they felt stronger for it now.
Maybe they could keep them that way awhile.