Replacing Gentry (20 page)

Chapter Twenty-two

S
unlight through glass panels beat warm and reassuring on my face. I lifted my chin to accept its soothing gift. On a warm afternoon like this, the sunroom was the perfect place to sit back, bask in solitude, and give myself a moment to think. But that multi-headed dragon rose up again to interrupt my rest, this time with a few additional heads.

If Gentry had been replicated to infiltrate Daniel’s life, then why wasn’t that woman here instead of me? And was Daniel a part of the unthinkable conspiracy Anna-Beth and her crew of clandestine agents claimed to be fighting? And what about Anna-Beth? Demure, charming, flighty, and yes, a wee bit shallow, today she’d turned out to be anything but. Who would she be the next time I saw her? Would I ever again be able to see her as my friend and ally? Squeezing my eyes closed, I tried to squelch the growing monster in my thoughts. Concentrating on steadying my breath, I held my eyes shut tight as long as I could before allowing my lids to slide open again.

Out on the lawn, Bridger and Bodie were dragging leaf rakes over the grass, making neat piles out of the clippings Herbert had shaved from the shrubs. Bridger worked with his head bent, focused on the task, his white t-shirt soaked through with sweat. Bodie had removed his shirt altogether and tucked it into the back of his low-slung shorts. His thin chest and arms glistened in the late afternoon heat, his cords of developing muscles pulled tight as he raked his portion of the work into his brother’s pile. Consequently, Bridger’s mound of leaves had grown to twice the size of Bodie’s, resulting in more clippings for Bridger to pick up when they were through raking. Very soon Bridger would notice, and a fight would ensue. Life as usual.

It’d been my idea to have them help Herbert in the yard. They’d groaned, and Cooper had professed the idea out-of-the-question. Cannon children were not to be seen publically (which apparently included their own back yard) engaging in manual labor. But Daniel had backed me up, and the boys accepted his decision without further question. They would never admit it, but I could tell by how they only halfheartedly complained on their hasty way out to the yard that they secretly looked forward to it. Knowing that they would be leaving for baseball camp in the morning was already making me feel lonely.

“I tink ez good what you doing with the boys.” Electra’s voice jolted me from my thoughts. I turned to see her standing next to a grouping of wicker chairs. She set the cloth and bottles of oil she was holding down on the coffee table. “You no listen to what Miss Cooper say. Miss Gentry wood approve.” She knocked her hands together as if dispersing unseen dirt. “Boys need to use their muscles. It help them focus on something other than their crotch.”

My mouth fell open. “Electra!”

“What?” She jutted out her chin. “I no say nutting you don’t already know.” She pointed out the window. “Herbert take good care of ’em, teach ’em right. Yes?”

I followed her gaze to where Herbert was instructing the boys on their next task. Yes, there was something very calming yet capable and protective about him. I remembered Daniel telling me how Herbert didn’t seem to have any family. He’d simply shown up one day looking for work after Daniel and Gentry had taken over this house from Daniel’s parents. Now he was family.

“Yes, I think you’re right,” I agreed.

“Come, sit down,” Electra insisted. “I take care of that bruise.”

Turning away from the window, I followed her instructions and dropped down into a chair. I relaxed back onto the cushion and watched as she shook drops of oil from three different glass bottles onto a sterile white rag. The woody scent of cypress mixed with wintergreen and peppermint had me feeling reassured, and a little homesick.

“Electra, do you have family?” I asked, realizing for the first time that I knew very little about her.

“Si, you and Mister Cannon, the boys, ez mi
familia
.”

She pressed the compress to the lump on the side of my head. I winced away from the pain. But then the oils diffused through my skin bringing the cool gentle sting of natural antiseptic to the wound.

“I come to America with Miss Gentry mother and father. After they die, I stay to take care of her. Now, I watch out for you and them,” she said, nodding toward Bridger and Bodie on the other side of the window.

“That’s sweet, but I can take care of myself, there must be someone you—”

Electra cut me off with a well-aimed stare to my bruised temple. “Yes, that I can see,” she said. “How you say this happen again?”

“Oh, um. I don’t think I did, exactly,” I said, chewing my bottom lip. “I sort of . . . fell down, I guess.”

Electra’s eyebrows bowed to make two perfect arches. “Mmm, I see,” she said, her voice a mixture of concern and compassion.

And that was when I realized that she was family too, and I needed her.

“Electra, have you ever had to stop yourself from doing something.” I glanced out at the boys again. “Something every natural impulse in your body was telling you to go after?”

She adjusted her gaze to follow mine. “Sure, we all have to make sacrifice for the ones we luv,” she said then directed her focus back to me. “But you no forget, God make us the way he do for a reason. We all have purpose. When time is right, he let us know.”

I had promised Anna-Beth I would back away from my investigation regarding Unidentified Woman 
1
; and yet new questions had already surfaced, tugging at me to discover the answers. The spicy-mint scent of the oils reached out from Electra’s cloth, reaffirming the danger I’d put myself in today. It would take all the strength I could muster to squelch my compulsion for answers. The idea settled like a nest of angry bees to the pit of my stomach. I leaned forward with a small gasp and pressed both palms to the center of my ribcage.

“Miss Marlie?” Electra gazed down at me with a concerned look. “You okay?”

“Fine,” I lied.

“You need to rest now,” she said, taking one of my hands and placing it over the compress to keep it in place. “You sit back, close eyes. You feel better in no time.”

Stretching, I looked around at my surroundings. Gone were the tall glass windows and floral seating. In its place I was surrounded by a vast expanse of beach, the waves rolling over themselves with a gentle whoosh. A raised section of warm golden sand served as my pillow. Overhead, white gulls flapped against a light breeze. Lying back, I gazed up into the clear azure sky. Like a blanket of peace, it fell over me until my heart was so light I couldn’t remember what it felt like to worry.

“
I’m home,
” I realized, closing my eyes to sink fully into the bliss.

“Wake up, sleepy head,” a gentle voice urged.

Who was interrupting my rest? I looked up but couldn’t see who the voice belonged to. His face was shadowed against the backdrop of the bright sky, but still, I knew him. A smile slid across my lips. “No, I don’t want to leave this perfect spot.”

Leaning close, he pressed a kiss to my forehead and then my mouth. The touch brought a name to my lips. “Finn,” I hummed, yearning to feel his kiss again, to share this paradise with him.

“Finn?”

As if I’d missed an unexpected step and nearly fallen, the curtness of his reply caused me to start. My eyes burst open. A small yelp escaped from my lips.

“Whoa, sugar.” Daniel reached out to steady my shoulder. “You were dreamin’,” he said, with a placid smile. “Should I be concerned about this Finn?” He cocked a mocking brow over playful eyes.

I pulled in a long breath and pushed up to sitting, taking a quick look around as I re-acclimated myself to my surroundings.
The sunroom, Tennessee
. Then, rolling my mind back, I thought about Detective Ripley, the elbow hitting my temple, Anna-Beth, Iphiclesians, and the boys working in the yard. I was in Nashville. Disappointed, I wished I could have stayed in my dream just a little longer.

Why did Daniel have to wake me?
“Um, no.” I rubbed the sleep from my eyes glad that I’d never told Daniel about Finn. “Of course not. It was just a dream.”

“Marlie, are you feelin’ all right?” Daniel asked, studying the bruise on my temple.

“Yeah, sure.” I took his hand and pressed a kiss to his knuckles. “It was no big thing. I just tripped is all,” I minimized with a rueful smile.

Straightening, he slipped his hands into the pockets of his trousers, regarding me a pensive moment. “Yes, Electra said somethin’ about that. You missed supper. Are you hungry?”

His question brought me all the way back to the present. “The boys?” I bolted upright, the pain in my temple shooting across my forehead. “Did they eat?”

“Yes, hours ago,” Daniel said with a chuckle. “They’re upstairs readin’.” Leaning down, he took my chin in his hand. “Why don’t you sit tight while I warm us both a plate,” he offered, dropping a kiss to my lips. “We can eat out on the veranda, just the two of us for a change.”

“Sounds perfect.”

He headed back through the sunroom toward the kitchen.

“Daniel?”

He paused at the door and looked over his shoulder. “Yeah?”

“Does Gentry have a twin?” I blurted.

His face registered a mild look of surprise. “No,” he said. “What would make you ask such a strange question?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Probably just that weird dream I was having. Forget it. It does sound odd now that I said it out loud.” I shook my head, pressing my fingers to my temples as if readjusting my fanciful brain.
What was I thinking?
Thankfully, he dropped the subject and disappeared through the doorway. I swung my feet onto the floor and shuffled out through the French doors and into the balmy Tennessee evening.

The lightest of breezes tickled the tips of my hair. The warm humid wind dampened my skin like a moist breath. Along the tree line, fireflies, or lightning bugs as the locals called them, danced lazily around the foliage. The spark the little insects gave off was more of a flicker than a flash and always left me feeling a smidge melancholy. As much as I loved to watch the graceful ballet of the firefly, I always looked forward to the dramatic lightning of an actual thunderstorm. While others might fear the fury that nature could unleash, I found the lightning strikes and the beating rain exciting. It was like the storm’s energy reached inside me with a power I feared, and admired at the same time—much the same way I felt about my new family.

Anna-Beth had been right in admonishing me to focus on Daniel and the boys. It was time I fully embraced my calling as a wife and mother, to carve out a new future and take advantage of the possibilities that fate had lain at my feet. From this moment on, I would be more careful. I would put my family first.

Only along with my affirmation also came doubt. How could I fully embrace the firefly when the lightning was what I craved?

Chapter Twenty-three

S
ee ya in a couple of weeks,
Madrastra,
” Bodie said. Lately, he’d taken to calling me step-mom in Spanish. I loved it. After hugging both boys, I reminded them to behave and then left them safely deposited at the University of Kentucky’s athletic dorms where they would stay while attending baseball camp.

The trip from Lexington back to Nashville was uneventful, and by my closest estimation, I would make it home in record time. “Life is Good” said the tire cover on the CRV rolling down the interstate in front of me. At the moment I had no definable reason to disagree. Still, my life felt unsettled and I worried that the secrets Daniel and I were keeping from each other could potentially rip our family apart. When I got home I would press Daniel, once and for all, for answers to the rumors surrounding Gentry’s death. Hopefully, whatever else he was hiding would follow. We needed to be in this together if our marriage, our family, was going to survive.

From my car’s stereo speakers, Miranda Lambert was singing
Over You
, a forlorn tune that spoke about loss and the inability to move on, when the ringing of my phone lapped over with a call from my sister.

Pressing the button on the steering wheel, I called out, “Hey Maureen,” into the speaker above my dash. “How’s my sweet little baby nephew?”

“Built like a brick and growing chunkier by the day,” she said, her voice filling my RX with an audible sigh. “I swear this kid would eat a cheeseburger if I let him. I don’t even know why I bother getting dressed. Most of the time I’m either breastfeeding or pumping. This baby’s had more action in the last few months than my poor, neglected husband has in the last year.”

I crinkled up my nose at her blatant honesty. “Ew! Maureen, that’s just,” I really wasn’t sure how to describe her over sharing of information “. . . weird.”

“Oh lighten up, Marlie. It’s just a little mommy humor. Cut me some slack. I’ve not had more than three hours sleep at a time in I don’t know when. My belly looks like a melting jelly bowl, and it’s been two days since I had a shower,” she said like I was the one who needed to get a grip. “How are you?”

My husband belonged to some surreptitious group that may have had something to do with his first wife’s death, my best friend turned out to be the secret agent who’s hunting them, and I was kidnapped yesterday, all of which I’ve been forbidden to talk about. So how was I—scared, befuddled, not sure which way is up?

“I just dropped the boys off at baseball camp,” I said when I couldn’t think of anything less alarming to say.

“I asked, ‘how are you,’ not
what
are you doing,” Maureen said. “What’s wrong? And don’t say nothing. I might be sleep-deprived, but something in your tone and the way you avoided my question tells me something is wrong.”

“Things are fine,” I said, pouring a little too much sunshine into my voice. “I promise.”

There was a pause on the other end and I thought the call had been dropped, until Maureen piped up again. “Liar. What happened? Did you and Daniel have a fight?”

“
Noo
,” I denied, drawing out the word sarcastically.

“He’s cheating on you, isn’t he?” she said, the words shooting out like the next loaded bullet in her question arsenal. “Those politicians are all the same. They think they have the right to sample a little piece of everything they see.”

All of sudden, I felt very tired. “He’s not cheating on me,” I groaned.

“How do you know?” she asked.

My memory spiraled back to the Nashville Airport, the day Daniel had promised: “
I can guarantee you that I will never belittle you . . . never be unfaithful. And you can be assured that I will make love to you as many times and as often as you will allow me to for the rest of our lives.”

I had believed him enough to give him a tentative yes. And even with all that had happened since our wedding, with all the unanswered questions, he’d been true to every one of those promises. But was he hiding some serious character flaws, twisted or depraved? Of that, I couldn’t be sure.

“Hello!” Maureen yelled into her phone. “Marlie, are you still there?”

I snapped back to the present. “Uh, yeah. Sorry,” I said, giving my head one firm shake. “I think the phone cut out there for a moment.”

“Well?” Maureen prompted. “How do you know he’s not cheating?”

“I just do, that’s how,” I said as I drove through the gate that led to the house. Out front, Daniel’s hired car sat waiting in the horseshoe drive, his driver leaning on the hood enjoying a smoke. My heart leapt with urgency at seeing that Daniel was home.

Circling around to the garage, I punched the button to open my door and put an end to my sister’s interrogation. “You’re going to have to trust me to handle my own marriage. Kiss the kids for me. Love to your husband and get some rest.” I made smooching noises and then disconnected the call before she could protest.

In the distance, a clap of thunder exploded. I pulled the RX into the garage and hopped out. Slinging my purse over my shoulder, I closed the garage door behind me and made for the house, dodging the first drops of rain.

Once inside, I stopped off in the powder room to check my hair and makeup and then headed for the study in search of my husband. We’d shared a nice dinner the night before where we’d talked easily about everything except what truly needed discussing. Two weeks without the boys. This was it, our chance to really connect, to share the unspoken truths that were keeping us apart. Making my way through the entry, my heartbeat grew faster with each step that brought me closer to Daniel. But as I hurried across the expanse of black and white tile, the combatant tone of the voices coming from the study had my pace slowing, my momentum giving out just shy of the threshold.

Leaning closer, I listened through the narrow crack between the doors.

Daniel’s question boomed like a cannon blast. “Then whose body is in my wife’s grave?”

My purse slipped from my shoulder, landing in a heap on the tile floor.