Shadows on the Sand (17 page)

Carrie looked at him briefly, then returned to her study of the counter. “Do you realize that’s the first time you’ve ever told me anything about Ginny?”

Greg was surprised at that since his wife and kids filled so much of his thoughts. “Maybe I’ve gotten to the point that memories don’t bring pain.”

She looked at him, her dark eyes earnest and hopeful. “Maybe you’ve let the guilt go?”

A spot-on question that personal should make him angry. Even as recently as last week, he’d have pokered right up and left as soon as he could. It was his guilt, he’d earned it, and he should be allowed to wallow in it as long as he wanted. Yet today he felt she had the right to ask, and he had the responsibility to answer.

“I don’t know about the guilt being gone or ever being gone. It is, after all, the gift that keeps on giving.”

She looked at him with understanding. “My issue is lack of trust, not guilt. It’s too dangerous to trust. I’ve always thought people who do so are naive and foolish. They’re asking for the knife in the back. Smart people like me know everyone has an angle. Everyone wants something from you. No one’s safe.”

“You don’t seem lacking in trust to me. You’re very caring and interested in people.”

She traced a vein in the pink marble. “I’m much better. I know that. But it’s taken years. I used to dream of a quick fix, of a knight in shining armor riding to my rescue and carrying me away from Mom and her men. From
my life in general. He never had a face, but I knew he was handsome and strong and good and kind. Then I met Mary P and Warren. They might not have been handsome, but they were strong and good and kind, so very kind. God gave me what I yearned for. Rescue just didn’t look like I thought it would.”

Greg thought of his family, his mother and father so strong and dependable, his brothers all grown to fine, trustworthy men. “It breaks my heart things were so rough for you, tiger.”

She made a face. “You should be glad you didn’t know me back then. When I met Mary P and Warren, I doubted them. Mary P and Warren! I wore my lack of trust like a Kevlar jacket protecting me from their unending potshots of love and kindness. The greatest gift they gave me was waiting me out. It couldn’t have been easy for them because they were so open and accepting and I was spitting in their faces.”

“Figuratively speaking, I presume.” He grinned at her.

She grinned back. “Figuratively speaking. Lindsay trusted them from the first, but every time they were nice to me, I looked for the catch. It was so wearing because they were always nice, not just to me but to everyone. No one I knew before I came here—except Linds of course—was nice just to be nice. Everyone had an agenda.”

“What changed you?” he asked. If she could ask personal questions, so could he.

“Time. Genuine people. Reliable people. And the Lord.”

“But you did change. That’s what counts.” He had to admire her for that.

“It’s taken seventeen years and people who cared enough to stick with me through it all.” She took a pull from her nearly empty glass and flinched when the straw gave its all-gone
blat
. “Warren would take me aside and say
things like, ‘Not everyone’s lying to take advantage, Carrie. When I tell you you did a good job, I want nothing from you except to see you light up.’ Or Mary P would say, ‘Trust me, Carrie. I will not cheat you out of any of your tips added to the bill electronically. I have to ask, have I ever done anything to make you doubt me?’ And of course she hadn’t.”

“You know the ridiculous thing I get angry about because of my guilt?” He couldn’t believe he was going to say his darkest thought out loud, but she’d shared her heart, giving him the courage and freedom to share his. “I get mad at Ginny for not making me move my car so she could get to hers. If she’d done that, she and the kids would be alive and I wouldn’t feel their deaths were my fault.”

“But you’d be dead.”

He shrugged. “There were many times I wished I was.” He glanced at her. “But I don’t anymore.”

Their eyes locked, hers widening. He thought she understood the words he wasn’t saying though he couldn’t be one hundred percent certain. She blinked and looked away first.

“Anyway.” She straightened and gave the counter a gentle slap. “The learning to deal, whatever the issue, can’t be hurried, can it? It can be helped and eased by those who care, and the Lord changes attitudes and heals hearts when we seek Him, but it still takes time. It’s just a good thing God walks that healing road with us.”

She picked up the dirty cake dishes and silverware, all business now, Carrie of Carrie’s Café. “Excuse me, will you? I’ve got to call Andi yet again and see if she’s answering. Every time I tried earlier, all I got was voice mail.”

“She sure took off lickety-split this morning.” He slid his empty Coke glass toward her.

She frowned. “You saw her leave?”

Greg nodded. “She glanced up, saw Bill, and got a horrified look. She slouched way down in the booth, slid out, and almost crawled to the back door so she wouldn’t be seen.”

Carrie went rigid. “She
is
afraid of him. She told me she wasn’t, but she is. I knew it!”

Greg shrugged. “I think it’s more not being so enamored anymore and not wanting to talk to him.”

Carrie didn’t seem to hear. “Do you think he’s harassing her or something when she’s not here? Has he hurt her? More than when he grabbed her yesterday, I mean. Do you think he hit her like he hit Jase?”

Physical abuse definitely in her background, he thought. She was projecting her experiences onto Andi. “There’s no doubt Bill has anger management issues, but we may be jumping to conclusions here.”

She frowned and took a deep breath. After a short pause during which it seemed she was trying to collect her thoughts, she said, “You’re right. It’s my lack of trust issues. I’m getting carried away.” She made a face. “Probably. Maybe. But maybe not. Greg, the guy’s a loose cannon. And he doesn’t leave tips!”

Greg laughed at her indignation and without thinking laid a hand over hers. “Easy, tiger.”

She froze, and he thought she might take exception to his touch. Instead she turned red and couldn’t look at him. Very interesting response. He gave her hand a light squeeze, then released her. “When you talk with her, you’ll get a better idea of what’s going on. See what she has to say, and we’ll go from there.”

She nodded and pulled her phone free from its waist clip. He listened to her side of the conversation, and she didn’t seem to mind.

“Then you’re all right? You’ll be here tomorrow morning?” she said. “I’m counting on you.”

Andi must have answered in the affirmative because Carrie said, “Fine. Good. Just don’t run out like that again. If Bill’s bothering you, I won’t let him in the café, okay?”

“All’s well?” Greg asked as Carrie closed her phone.

“She assures me that Bill isn’t a problem.” Carrie’s skeptical look was a mirror of his own.

“I think I’ll mention to Clooney about her running when Bill appeared,” Greg said. “Make sure he’s aware.”

“Would you?” Her relieved smile was lovely. “I’d feel so much better.”

“Done. Do you fish?”

She looked startled at the abrupt change of subject. “Uh, no, never tried it.”

“You live at the shore and you don’t fish?”

“I know lots of people who live at the shore and don’t fish.”

“Name two.”

“Lindsay and Mary P.”

“Huh. Well, Warren loved to fish.”

“He did,” Carrie agreed. “Off-season they closed on Sunday and Monday, and he’d often get up early and go out on the bay in this little boat with a twenty horsepower motor. We’d have great freshly caught flounder for dinner. Mary P would make homemade French fries and coleslaw. We’d all eat like pigs. Even Bess Meyerson, our landlady, would come.” Her eyes softened with memories. “I still miss Warren.”

“Let me take you fishing.” It would be fun to introduce her to one of his favorite pastimes.

Several emotions flashed across her face: disbelief, uncertainty, longing. “I’ve never fished in my life. City girl here, remember?”

“So I’ll teach you. It’s not hard.”

“I just hang the line in the water, right?”

“A slight oversimplification, but that’s the general idea.”

“Do you promise to clean anything I catch?”

“The Barnes rule has always been that you clean what you catch.”

She shook her head. “You’re telling me that Ginny cleaned her own fish?”

“Ginny didn’t fish.”

She looked surprised and a tiny bit pleased. Because he was doing something with her that he hadn’t done with Ginny? For some reason that touch of one-upmanship on her part warmed him.

“It was a great shock to me when I found out. We started dating in the late fall, and by the time spring and fishing rolled around and I learned the terrible truth, it was too late to turn back.”

“A hard lesson in how tricky assumptions can be.”

“Tell me about it. In my defense, I came by mine naturally because my mom is a great fisherman. It doesn’t matter whether it’s fresh water or the bay or deep sea. She loves fishing.”

“You’re telling me your mom cleans her own fish?”

He nodded. “Always.”

“Well, I make no promises. Does she put on the worms too?”

“If that’s what she needs.”

“Worms are slimy.”

“We won’t be using worms. We’ll be using squid.”

At her horrified expression, he laughed. “If you’re too chicken to bait your own hook, I’ll do it for you, at least at first. Just say you’ll come.”

She studied him a moment, then nodded. “I’ll go fishing with you. If you want.”

If she only knew.

W
hen Andi ran home in a panic, Clooney had been at the beach, practicing the fine art of retrieval as only he could. She had been so tense as she walked into the house, expecting a well-deserved lecture for running out on Carrie, that her knees went weak with relief when she found herself alone. She went to her room and fell back on her bed. As she stared at the ceiling, she took deep calming breaths. She was safe here. She was safe.

If she said it enough, she might believe it.

She’d thought she was doing so well—her heart no longer raced any time she saw a dark-haired man; it just sort of speed walked—but all it took this morning was one look and she’d panicked.

“What’s wrong?” Clooney demanded when he came home and found her all pale and shaky.

“Nothing.” Like there was a ghost of a chance he’d believe that.

He took her by the shoulders and forced her to face him. “Andi darlin’, this is Uncle Clooney. You can’t fool me. What’s wrong?”

She thought for the briefest moment about stonewalling, but Clooney was not some idiot from The Pathway’s compound who believed whatever he was told. In fact, except for herself, she’d never met a more skeptical, cynical person. She told him the truth, just not all of it.

“They were talking at the café about The Pathway. Jase was found dead this morning, and he belonged.” She let her fear show.

“I heard about Jase on the news. I’m sorry. And you knew him from there, from The Pathway?”

She nodded. When she’d first seen him at Carrie’s, she had been both glad and scared. Thanks to Jennie, he’d been one of the few normal people at the compound, so she was happy to see him, just surprised that he was alive.

“You’re looking good,” she had said the first time they were alone in the kitchen. “For a dead man.”

“So it worked.” He looked pleased with himself. “I couldn’t very well hang around to see.”

“It worked.” She thought back to the shock of his “death.”

“They found the burned-up car and said the fire was so intense you were completely incinerated.”

“Good. I was afraid the cops would say a body never completely burns, and they’d have doubts about my ‘death.’ I kept thinking I needed a body double.”

“They gave you a very nice memorial service. Michael’s comments were most inspiring.”

“Oh, I just bet.” Jase studied her. “You were so much smarter than me. You saw them for the phonies they are from day one. It took me a long time.”

“It took Jennie.” Even thinking about what happened made Andi feel sick. “I’m so sorry about what happened to her. I don’t think I got a chance to tell you.”

He was quiet for a moment, like the pain still sliced deep. He smiled sadly at her. “You must miss her too. She was your best friend.”

“My only friend. She was the one who made life bearable for me.” After a minute she added, “She loved you so much.”

He took a deep breath and held up a hand. “Enough or I’ll start to cry, not acceptable behavior at work. Distract me by telling me how you got from Arizona to New Jersey. I want to know how you escaped. If there was
anyone they kept an eye on, it was you. You were at the top of their troublemaker list.”

“I hitched a ride with some motorcycle guys.”

“What?”

“Not as dramatic as a torched car but not too shabby either, right?”

Jase laughed. “How did you ever meet motorcycle guys? You were confined to the compound.”

Her jaw went rigid with fury as she thought about how constrained her life had been. “I looked for an escape for years without success. Then there it was, just like that, a few weeks before I turned sixteen. Some of the little kids got really sick, dehydrated and all. We thought they were going to die. They had to go to the hospital.