In Too Deep (39 page)

West cupped Piper’s nape and she
fell forward, burying her face in the crook of his neck. Her arms
slid around his waist and clung.

Me
. He wrapped himself
around her as she wept.
I’m here for you. I’ve always been
here.

But the greasy chill inching down
his spine told him he wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.

***

The tendons in Piper’s neck
protested as she walked away from the graveside service at Oban’s
cemetery. Behind her, Peter Reynolds and Gav’s older brother, Seth,
remained at the open grave. She peeked over her shoulder once again
at the two men, silhouetted against the churning pewter clouds. The
smaller figure hunched in grief, while the other stood to
attention, his arm awkwardly positioned around the older man’s
shoulders.

Five days had passed since her
squad returned to Wellington, leaving with casual but pointed
assurances they’d see her in a week. She waved them off with a
smile that wouldn’t have fooled anyone. But she made it through
Gav’s service—thank you, God, because she
hated
funerals—and
hadn’t once given in to the temptation to glance at her father’s
memorial.

She held on to her mother’s arm as
she and West helped Glenna navigate the damp, slippery
grass.

“
Such a terrible waste.” Glenna
dabbed her nose with a tissue and stuffed it into her jacket pocket
as they reached Ben.

Her brother grunted and folded his
arms, leaning back against Due South’s courtesy van. Piper sent him
a warning stink-eye. While Gav hadn’t been the most popular man in
town, Glenna suggested it would be more sensitive to his family if
Ben remained by the parked cars.

Over the past few days gossip had
sprouted wings and flapped from front porch to back, house to
house. But while her brother received a few sidelong glances, no
one dared accuse him of anything. People chose to gloss over the
fact the deceased had been a bully who’d planned to vandalize a
half-a-million-dollar boat, and instead lamented the loss of a
hardworking, authentic bloke.

Glenna patted Piper’s hand. “I’m
sure Peter and Seth are very grateful to you for bringing Gavin
home, darling.”

“
At least Piper gave the
Reynolds
a body to bury,” Ben muttered, as he opened the
passenger door of Due South’s courtesy van for Glenna.

Piper’s feet, in borrowed kitten
heels—since combat boots or sneakers didn’t seem appropriate for a
funeral—glued themselves to the asphalt. Her stomach lurched to her
throat as if the ground had started to roll like the Strait on a
rough day.

“
Benjamin Michael Harland.” Glenna
whirled, her voice chipped ice, the tone all three Harland siblings
had been terrified of as kids. “Everyone in the van, right now.
Since there’s no privacy at my place, family meeting at
West’s.”

“
Asshat,” Shaye hissed as Ben
climbed into the van ahead of Piper. “Look what you’ve
done—
another
family meeting.”

West flicked Piper a questioning
look as he slid the van door shut, but she just shook her head.
She’d accused herself of everything Ben thought or tactlessly said
out loud. She just wanted this awful day over with.

Glenna was a demon matriarch when
she got her mad on. Ordered into West’s living room, the four of
them sat when told and kept their mouths wired shut as
instructed.

“
That was an insensitive thing to
say.” Glenna stopped pacing and stood in front of Ben, who was
slumped into an armchair. “I can’t believe you’d imply Piper was in
some way to blame for us not getting Michael back.”

Curled into one sofa corner, Piper
massaged her forehead. “It’s okay, Mum, it doesn’t bother
me.”

“
No, it’s not okay.” Her mother
fixed Ben with a loaded gaze.

“
Who should we blame for Dad’s
death, then?” Ben laced his fingers together. “You, for not being
there that morning to stop him? Shaye, for sleeping through the
whole thing? Me, for being out drinking with my mates? Yeah, I
blame all of us too. But Piper’s not innocent—” He tossed his head
in her direction. “She could’ve refused to go out diving with Dad
that morning. He wouldn’t have gone alone.”

Glenna sunk onto the other sofa
next to Shaye, her rigid posture suddenly dissolving into that of a
much older woman. “Not while he was sober, no.”

Piper’s gaze flipped to Ben, then
back to her mother. “Dad didn’t drink. He couldn’t with his
cholesterol medication.”

“
Your father never took
cholesterol medication. He used the idea of needing medication as a
cover for not drinking alcohol,” Glenna said.

Piper’s heartbeat went from a plod
into an out-of-control sprint. “But he was always at the
pub.”

“
Drinking ginger ale. Or lemonade.
He never touched alcohol, even though he caught a bit of grief for
it at times.”

“
Why, Mum?” Piper tried to swallow
the words back—to keep her mother from speaking the harsh truth
written in her tired eyes and down-turned mouth.

“
Your father once had a problem
with alcohol, but he’d been sober for more than fifteen years when
he died.”

“
A problem? Like an alcoholic?”
Piper recoiled back into the cushions.

West slipped out of his chair and
sat on the sofa arm beside her. The warmth of his hand on her
shoulder steadied her.

“
He didn’t like to label himself
that, but yes, as a younger man he was an alcoholic and it shamed
him terribly. He drank to cope with the demands of being a city
cop. That’s why he moved to the island, for a fresh start. He told
me he quit drinking the day we met.” Her lip quivered once then
steadied. “By the time we got married he hadn’t had a drink—said he
hadn’t
needed
a drink—in a year. I promised him then that so
long as he kept his vow to remain sober we need never mention it
again. You know your father and how much he prided himself on being
a man of his word, of how much self-discipline in free-diving and
in life meant to him.”

Glenna sighed and sent Ben another
look. “So if you want to blame anyone, blame him and then blame me.
We kept a secret from you kids far too long when it should’ve been
out in the open.”

“
Sounds like you kept a lot of
secrets,” Ben said sourly. “Were you telling the truth about
arguing over finances that night?”

Glenna shook her head, her lips
pinching so tightly that harsh grooves cut canyons around her
mouth. “I was ashamed to admit what we really fought about—his
free-diving. I accused him of being old and foolish, and then I
gave him an ultimatum—‘Quit the Nationals or I’ll divorce you.’”
She paused to blot her eyes with her tissue.

“
Oh, God.” Piper sank back into
the sofa. “You threatened to divorce him?”

Glenna exhaled a shuddery sigh.
“At the time I truly meant it. I was just so terrified of losing
him.”

“
So you went to the Komekes’ after
dropping that bombshell on him.” Ben’s voice was as stiff as new
cardboard.

“
He refused to discuss it any
further and froze me out. I decided we’d be better to have some
time apart to think.”

“
By then it was too late,” Ben
said.

Glenna nodded and pulled a fresh
tissue from her pocket. “It wasn’t until Shaye and I cleaned out
his office two months after his death that we discovered a half
empty bottle of whiskey hidden at the back of the closet. I
couldn’t speak, couldn’t
breathe
, when I realized Michael
had likely started drinking after I left that night.” She pressed
the back of her fingers to her lips.

“
I saw him.” Shaye toed off her
heels and tucked her legs up onto the sofa.

In the maelstrom of emotion
whirling between her, Ben and Glenna, Piper had forgotten Shaye.
Icy prickles swept down Piper’s spine. “Shaye?”

“
I got up for a drink of water and
Dad was sitting at the kitchen table in the dark—he scared the crap
out of me. He had a tumbler in his hand—” Shaye paused to scrub the
heel of her palm across her cheeks. “He apologized for frightening
me and told me to get my water and go back to bed.”

“
You couldn’t tell the difference
between a glass of water and a glass of booze?” Ben
said.

“
She was fifteen,” Glenna snapped.
“And it was dark.”

“
So you knew?” Ben said to Shaye,
lurching out of the armchair. “You knew he’d been drinking
something
that night and you never said anything to the
police, or to Mum?”

“
The police asked me where I’d
been all night and I told them the truth—in my room! I didn’t think
seeing Dad in the kitchen was important.” Shaye hugged herself.
“How was I to know he wasn’t just thirsty, like me? Then Mum and I
found the whiskey bottle and we figured it out.”

Glenna straightened her spine. “I
decided it would do no good for the gossipmongers to find out about
Michael’s problem. Nothing would bring him back or make his death
any easier to bear. So I made Shaye promise we’d keep his
secret.”

Ben limp-stomped to the picture
windows facing the ocean and turned his back on them. “All these
years I’ve blamed myself, blamed Piper for agreeing to go out alone
with him, and it turns out our father was an irresponsible
drunk.”

“
He wasn’t irrespon—” Piper
said.

“
Don’t dive drunk or on
drugs—wasn’t that rule number two or three in that damn litany he
taught us? Christ.” Ben whipped around, the cords of his neck stark
either side of his bobbing Adam’s apple. “Didn’t he stop to think
if something went wrong his teenage daughter would have to deal
with it? Irresponsible bastard.”

Glenna flinched and Shaye covered
her face with her hands.

“
Don’t talk about him that way.”
Piper scrambled to her feet, her nails cutting into her clenched
fists. “You don’t know what Dad thought. He made a mistake and he
paid for it with his life.”

“
Well, you’ve paid for it too.”
Ben threw up his hands and stormed out of the living room, clomping
down the stairs and slamming the front door.

“
He’s right,” West said behind
her.

She whirled to find his intense
blue stare stripping her of all her defenses.

“
You’ve carried this burden for
nine years and it’s eating you from the inside out. Time to let it
go, babe.”

The guilt was a cold weight in her
chest, but unlike a diving belt she couldn’t just press a button
and have it drop away.

“
West’s right, darling.” Glenna
touched her arm. “And I’m sorry for being so self-absorbed I never
realized how much your father’s death still affected
you.”

Piper forced a smile to her lips.
“I just need some space to get my head around this.” She patted her
mother’s hand, on the outside trying to look as if she’d pulled
herself together, while on the inside her whole belief system
crumbled.

Alcohol still in her dad’s system
impairing his judgment, emotionally distracted by relationship
difficulties, and pushed by innate competitiveness to prove
himself. If she examined the facts objectively she came to a simple
conclusion. Diver error was the cause of her father’s death.
She
wasn’t entirely to blame.
But it still
felt
like
it.

“
Well, don’t take too much time,”
Shaye said with a sniff. “You’re heading back to the city at the
end of the week.” Her sister switched her red-rimmed gaze between
Piper and West. “Or maybe not.”

Piper sank back onto the sofa.
Clouds scudded past outside and the same light wind blowing them
across the horizon shook tree leaves in a continuous rustle against
West’s house. Donny padded onto the deck and slumped down, rolling
onto his back as a hint for someone inside to rub his
belly.

And West said nothing. Not. A.
Thing.

Not a, “Like hell the love of my
life is leaving a second time,” or, “Piper won’t be going back to
the city alone because I can’t live without her.” Not even a, “I’m
hoping to convince Piper to stay longer so we can continue bonking
our brains out every night.”

“
I hope you and Ben can clear the
air before you go,” said Glenna. “And he’s not the only one you
need to sort things with.”

Her mother glared at West who
still stood behind her. Fabric rustled and she imagined he folded
his arms and gave Glenna a stare right back.

Piper linked her fingers on her
lap and squeezed. “We’ve got one more shark dive booked before I
leave on the Saturday morning ferry. Back to the grind on Monday.
My holiday’s over and I’ve got a job to do.”

“
Speaking of jobs,” West said.
“They’re expecting me back at the pub to help at Gavin’s wake. I’d
better get going.”

Rough fingertips closed on her
earlobe and tugged gently. “You’ll be okay?”

Piper turned to West and forced
her lips to hold the fake smile she’d slapped on. “Sure. I’ll get
changed and wander down to help Bill and Claire in the
kitchen.”