Playing Dead in Dixie (28 page)

Jackson wrinkled his freckled nose.  "Girls are icky!"

"Yes, they are," Wes agreed, swinging him up onto his shoulders once they were inside.

"You're a bad influence, Wes Hollingsworth," Shannon scolded.  But sympathy glimmered behind her blue eyes.

He carried Jackson to the sofa and deposited him onto one of the cushions, turning back to Shannon.  He peeked over the edge of the baby blanket at the red-faced newborn peering up at him with wobbly blue eyes.  "She sure turned out to be a cutie, considering the source."

Shannon gave him a swat.  "Where's Nate?"

"J.B. took him for a walk to let him do his business before he came inside.  He's looking pretty good, considering how bad he was hurt.  The shaved patch on his rump looks a little funny, but the stitches are out and he's walking pretty good."  The bullet had hit the dog a glancing blow at the top of his left hip.  The wound itself hadn't been life-threatening, but the impact had cracked the hip bone, and Nate had developed a post-surgery infection that had nearly cost him his life.

Bootfalls on the porch signaled J.B.'s arrival with the dog.  Nate strained at the leash when he caught sight of Jackson, and J.B. bent to detach the leash from the bloodhound's collar.  Wes watched with a mixture of pride and irritation as his father forced his weaker hand to push the button that released the leash.

He'd been after his father for ten years to work at getting back the use of that hand.  It had taken Carly two or three visits and some sarcastic comments to push the old goat back into therapy.  Now he had to feel grateful to her when he wanted nothing more than to hate her guts.

He clenched his jaw, wishing he could forget her altogether.  But in the short time she'd been in Bangor, she'd left her mark, big and indelible, on the town.  Everywhere he went, Carly was the topic of conversation, from the mini-scandal of her secret identity to the excitement of the gun battle in the pecan grove next to Wes's house.  The fact that she left town that night and never came back only intensified the gossip, as people hashed over all the reasons why she'd fled and left poor Chief Wes brokenhearted and blue.

He'd have liked to deny that particular vein of gossip, but he couldn't even fool himself, let alone anyone else in town.

He missed Carly more than anyone did.

He couldn't even bury himself in his work to escape her, because the last two weeks had been dedicated to mopping up the unpleasant mess of Sherry Clayton's fraud arrest.  She'd been indicted, along with a sales rep at Shelton Industries, within a week of the county prosecutor's office taking custody of the hardware store's books.

Though it had been his father's statement that set the ball rolling on the criminal case, Carly had instigated the investigation in the first place.  Everybody knew it.  Sherry's lawyer was even hinting that he might make an issue of it in the upcoming trial.  Wes was trying not to latch onto that subtle threat as an excuse to track her down.

He took advantage of Nate's distracting romp around the living room to slip outside.  He crossed to the ancient porch swing and sat. A hint of coolness drifted through the September air, reminding him that summer was over.  The really cold temperatures wouldn't arrive for another month or so, but already the leaves were starting to turn, painting the valley in hues of gold and crimson.

What was it like where Carly was?

The door opened and Shannon stepped onto the porch.  She wrinkled her nose at him and hobbled to the swing.  Her belly hadn't flattened back to its normal size yet, but she looked good.  Bursting with health and happiness.

She sat on the swing beside him.  "Too much confusion in there for you?"

He took the offered excuse.  "Just needed a second of quiet before I head back into the fray."

Of course, being a woman, Shannon snatched the excuse right back out of his hands.  "What you need is to get up off your mopey backside and go find Carly.  You're never going to be happy until you do."

"I can't make her come back if she doesn't want to."

"I don't think Carly knows what she wants."  Shannon stretched her arm out across the back of the swing, giving his shoulder a pat.  "Did she ever tell you about her childhood?"

"Bits and pieces.  Enough to know it wasn't an easy one."

"She didn't like to talk about it," Shannon conceded.  "But she said enough for me to realize that she's afraid of becoming her mother."

The comment surprised him.  "Strange.  I thought her mother was the stabilizing force in her life."  From what he knew of Carly's parents, he thought she was in much greater danger of becoming her father.

Shannon cocked her head.  "I guess you could call it stabilizing.  I think Carly might call it stifling.  From what she told me, her mom was miserable.  Trapped in a bad marriage, stuck at home raising three little girls while her husband tomcatted hither and yon—"

"She could have left the marriage.  Packed up the kids and found a different kind of life."

Shannon's brow wrinkled.  "It's not that easy."

Wes realized too late that what she'd said about Carly's mother could easily apply to Shannon herself.  Married young, without a lot of marketable skills, save the talent at clothing design that she wasn't sure how to exploit.  He bit his lip, wishing he'd kept his mouth shut.  "I think Carly's more like her father than her mother."  He sounded more bitter than he'd intended.

Shannon didn't disagree.  "Maybe she needs someone to point that out to her."

"I can't pick up and leave town to go chasing after her.  I have responsibilities."

"You have vacation time," Shannon pointed out.  "You have family who'll make sure your daddy's taken care of.  Surely you can take off a week or so to see if you can change her mind."

The idea of putting his heart back on the chopping block for Carly to take another swing was a terrifying prospect.  But holing up here licking his wounds wasn't exactly a better alternative.

If he loved her as much as he thought he did, she was worth chasing.  She was worth a long, hard look at his life, at what he'd let it become after he left the Marines and come back home.

Yes, J.B. had needed him, but he'd really come home to hide from the harsh world he'd found outside his sleepy little hometown.  He'd seen joining the Marines as a chance to finally have all the excitement and adventure he'd never find in a place like Bangor, Georgia.  And he'd found it, along with some of the  poorest, meanest, most miserable places and people in the world during that six-year stint in the Corps.

He thought his father's stroke was a wake-up call from God, telling him to stop his restless rambling and come back home.  But the truth was, he'd been ready to come home anyway.  Especially after that tour in Kaziristan.

Maybe clinging to hearth and home was an act just as cowardly as Carly's restless wandering.

"Oh, almost forgot."  Shannon reached into the breast pocket of her oversized T-shirt and pulled out a couple of small photos.  "Got these at the hospital.  Sarah Jane."  She handed them to him.

"She's a cutie."  He smiled at the scrunched up little face, red with infant rage at having someone pose her and flash a bright light in her eyes.  "There are two photos here."

Shannon nodded.  "I want Carly to have one.  I thought maybe you could track her down and send it to her for me."

"Shannon—"

She took his hand.  "Do it, Wes.  Don't think about it.  Don't talk yourself out of it.  Just track her down.  Get an address.  If you don't want to pursue it any farther than that, fine.  Stick that photo in the mail and tell her it's from me."

Wes took a deep breath.  "She's already told me she's not the settling down type."

Shannon snorted.  "Baloney.  She wasn't here a week before she was tangled up in this place.  Settled into this little town like she'd lived here all her life.   And she loved it."  Shannon stood up and looked down at him.  "But okay.  Let's say she's going to be a rambler for the rest of her life.  Ever thought maybe you could ramble with her?"

To Wes's surprise, a flicker of excitement sparked through him at the thought.  The Marines had given him the chance to see the world.  And if a lot of what he saw was a nightmare, there had been good parts, too.  The ruins of ancient Greece, the ancient holy places in Israel and Saudi Arabia.  He'd seen the sapphire waters of the Mediterranean and the breathtaking pyramids of Egypt.

All experiences he couldn't have sitting behind a desk in the Bangor Police Department until he was old enough to retire.

The sound of Sarah Jane's hungry howls broke into his thoughts.  Shannon turned at the sound.  "The parasite's hungry again," she drawled, the snarky words softened by the love shining in her eyes.

"Go ahead.  I'm going to stay out here a little while, if anyone misses me."  He watched her go back inside, his mind already drifting back to thoughts of Carly.

What if he could find her?  What if he offered to go with her, wherever she wanted to go?

Would that defeat her purpose for roaming in the first place?

He'd never know unless he tried.

SHE'D THOUGHT IT WOULD be easy to move on, once she got her life back.  Her savings account was still in the Atlantic City Federated Bank, enough money to make picking up and moving on a whole lot easier.  She paid off the back rent she owed on her apartment and enough extra to make her landlord tear up the lease.  None of her furniture was worth much, so she'd paid the landlord's college age son haul it off to Goodwill in his truck.

She'd met with Agent Phillips and found out that her car had been impounded by the FBI after she disappeared from the casino.  He'd helped her get it back last week.  She'd gotten her replacement driver's license in the mail a day earlier.

This morning, she packed all the clothes she'd had to leave behind when she hopped the casino tour bus, stuffed the bag in the trunk of her car, and hit the interstate, heading west.

She should have been happy as a clam in butter.  Free from fear, no longer hunted by Manning or the FBI. Free to use her real name, her real resume.  She could go anywhere she wanted, take any job she liked, rent any apartment she could afford.

So why had she ended up on the front stoop of her mother's tiny house in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, slumped and miserable as she waited for her mother to answer the door?

The house was a little bungalow, with peeling paint and a sagging awning over the concrete stoop.  A weathered wooden plaque hanging on the wall by the door read "God Bless This Home."  Carly touched the faded lettering, unexpected tears stinging her eyes.  She'd made this plaque in fourth grade art class.  She had no idea her mother still had it.

The door swung open.  Carly dropped her hand from the plaque and braced herself for the first sight of her mother in almost six years.

Bridget Devlin Sandano was only fifty-four years old, but her hard life had added ten years to her pale, freckled face, carving lines of misery in her cheeks and brow.  But that tired old face lit up from the inside when she saw Carly.  "Lottie?"

"Hi, Ma.  How ya doin'?"

Bridget smiled.  "I was hopin' you'd come and see your old ma.  That man from the FBI called to let me know ya hadn't died in that crash—"  Her Irish lilt broke off, tears welling in her green eyes."

Carly's heart dipped, guilt flooding her in big, queasy waves.  "I wasn't sure you'd even heard about the crash, Ma.  I'm so sorry."

Bridget touched her cheek.  "It's all right, Lottie girl.  You're here now.  I'll call Lorna and Teresa.  They'll be wantin' to see ya."

"I don't want them have to drop everything."

"Don't be silly.  They miss you as much as I do."  Bridget led her into the tiny living room and motioned toward shabby but comfortable-looking sofa.  She sat in the worn recliner across from Carly.  "Sit down, love.  Tell me all about what happened to ya after the crash."

Carly lowered herself to the sofa, trying to organize her thoughts.  What could she say about the last few weeks of her life that wouldn't make her burst into tears?

But the tears came anyway, spilling into her eyes and down her cheeks as the story came out in soft hiccoughs and sobs.  Her mother left the recliner and came to sit on the sofa beside her, wrapping her thin arms around Carly's shoulders.  Murmuring soft words of comfort, she listened as Carly told her about Wes, about the little town of Bangor and the people who'd welcomed her into their lives there.  She related the nightmare of Dominick Manning's murder attempt and the hell of realizing, when a life with Wes was in her grasp, that she just didn't have it in her to stay.

Bridget patted her knee and offered her a tissue to wipe her tears.  "If the man loves you like you say he does, why'd you run away?"

Carly dashed her tears away with the tissue.  "How can you ask me that?  You know what it was like, being trapped in a marriage the way you were.  Papa could go anywhere he wanted any time he wanted, and you had to stay at home and raise the kids and try to keep it all together."  She stroked her mother's cheek.  "You cried every night, Ma.  I heard you.  I don't want that for me."

Bridget pushed a lock of hair away from Carly's damp cheek.  "I can understand why ya wouldn't want to become your old ma.  But I don't see why you have to turn into your papa instead."

Carly looked at her mother, horror dawning.  "You think I'm like Papa?"

"Have you stayed put for more than a year at a time since you left home?"

No.  She hadn't.  She'd spent the last ten years roaming, moving from place to place, breaking leases and quitting jobs whenever she felt the noose begin to tighten.  It wasn't an instinct, she realized.  It was a habit.

"Do you love this man, Wes Hollingsworth?"

Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks.  "Yeah, Ma.  I do.  I've never known anyone like him.  I don't think I ever will again.  I'm so. . .homesick for him."

Bridget smiled.  "Then stop runnin' from him.  I'd love ya to settle down near me like the other girls, but if you've found a man who's good to ya, who makes ya happy, go back to him.  Tell him you're sorry and you'll not leave him again."