Riptide (21 page)

He reached over and put his hand on her back, gently rolled her halfway toward him. He pulled the collar of her tee shirt down and looked at the back of her shoulder. “Clean through.”

He put one hand on her waist and the other under her good arm, and pulled her up to a sitting position. She saw the skinny man a few feet away, face down in the dirt.

“Is that Fain?” she asked weakly.

“No. Just some dead guy.” He put his face in her face, forcing her to look at him. “Maybe he was irritated with you, too,” he said, but Maggie saw his eyes moisten.

“If I help you, can you stand up?” he asked.

Maggie gave him something that was half shrug and half head shake. “Yeah,” she said.

Wyatt sighed and helped her up. Coco licked at Maggie’s hand, which hung limp and forgotten at her side.

“Well, let’s get you up to the house and call it in.” He started walking, leaning her against his side. Coco jingled behind them. “Then you can start dinner.”

Early the next morning, Boudreaux was sitting across from Miss Evangeline at the kitchen table. The local paper was a weekly, and not published on Sunday, so he had the Tallahassee paper in its plastic bag beside his placemat.
 

He watched Miss Evangeline reorganize her flatware into some microscopically different configuration that was somehow better than the original, as he stirred his second cup of coffee. The smell of bacon assaulted him from the kitchen island, where Amelia stood over her cast iron skillet, spatula in the air.

Boudreaux was tired, and he was tired of thinking. He needed things to proceed in an orderly fashion, and the things didn’t seem to want to do that. People. People interfered with the rightful order of things.
 

Miss Evangeline looked up at him, the early sunlight reflecting off of her thick lenses and making her look like she had flashlights for eyes. She glanced at the paper beside him, then looked him somewhere in the vicinity of his eyes.

“I need you go through them coupon, find me one to get my hair cut,” she said

Boudreaux sighed. “Why? You only have seven.”

She raised her chin just a little, presumably to get a better look at him. Then she made that irritated little clicking sound she made. “I see your sass got up wit’ you this mornin’,” she said. “I pass you a slap you don’t forget.”

She looked over at Amelia. “’melia, bring me a flippy-turny.”

Amelia sighed as she flipped the bacon over in the pan. “I don’t have time for y’all nonsense. You want a spatula, you come get it.”

Boudreaux was about to say something when he heard the clicking of heels behind him, and saw Miss Evangeline sit up straighter.

“Amelia, is my tea ready?” he heard Lily ask.

“Yes, ma’am, it is.”

Lily tapped over to the island, her fuchsia Diane von Somebody dress swishing with each step, and picked up a cup and saucer. She took the tea bag out of the cup and dropped it onto the counter, then turned to face Boudreaux.

“Are you coming to Mass?”

“Yes,” he said, picking up his coffee.

“Good,” Lily said, then gave him a tight smile. “You can pray for your little girlfriend.”

Boudreaux’s cup stopped just shy of his mouth. “What girlfriend?”

“Maggie Redmond, sweetheart. It was just on the radio.”

“What was on the radio?’ he asked, a light, fluttering sensation starting in his chest.

“She was shot,” Lily said, the corners of her mouth turned up just a bit. “They released her from the hospital late last night.”

“Released her.”

“Yes, apparently she’ll live.” She started tapping back across the kitchen. “I guess she has enemies. Either that or someone just got tired of her.”

She left the room, and Boudreaux set down his cup very carefully, stared into it.

“I tol’ you not to marry that fruit bat lookin’ woman,” Miss Evangeline said. “Her and ’em no good boys a hers. Nothin’ but thirty-five years of misery.”

“If it’s any consolation, I think her mouth is becoming too tight for her to speak properly,” Boudreaux said distractedly.
 

“Juju.”

“And I thank you for it.”

Maggie stood in the driveway of her parents’ home, cell phone in hand, and watched her mother’s car pull in. Coco sat beside her, doing one of her sit-down wiggles. She obviously wanted to run to the car, but she hadn’t left Maggie’s side since she’d come back from the ER.

She waited, as her children jumped out of each back door.
 

“Mom!” Kyle yelled, and ran up to hug her, then stopped and leaned in gently, avoiding the sling holding her right arm.

Maggie hugged him with one arm, buried her nose in his hair, and breathed deeply of her child. Then she smiled at Sky, who had come to stand beside them.

Sky wrapped an arm around her mother and tucked her face into her good shoulder. “We were so scared,” she said quietly.

“It’s all okay,” Maggie said, and kissed the side of her head. “We’re okay.”

Gray came up, took Maggie’s head in his hands, and bent it forward so he could kiss her forehead. “It’s good to see you, Sunshine.” When he let her go, he was blinking away tears.

“It’s good to see you guys,” Maggie said. She accepted a hug from her mother, who didn’t bother blinking away anything. “It’s just really good to see you.”

“Where’s Wyatt?” Georgia asked. “I thought he was taking care of you.”

“He’ll be back,” Maggie said. “He had to go to work.”

They started walking toward the front door. Gray put a hand on her good shoulder, like it wasn’t okay yet to break contact.
 

“Poor Wyatt,” Georgia said. “He was just a mess when he called us last night.”

“Please, Mom,” Maggie said. “Wyatt’s never a mess.”

Gray gently patted her shoulder. “Honey, sometimes you’re just so smart. And other times, you have nothing going on up there at all.”

Maggie spent the rest of the day resting, being plied with collard greens and chicken soup, and hanging onto her kids. It occurred to her several times during the day, as it had several times in the emergency room, that it wasn’t fair for her kids to come so close to losing both parents, and in such a short span of time. For the first time, she began to question whether she should continue in her line of work.

Wyatt joined them for dinner that night, and then the kids, both of them exhausted, turned in early. The adults had a glass of wine, and talked about the events of the last several days. They talked about adjustments, and peace and a certainty of healing. It was, eventually, more than Maggie had the energy to bear, and she asked Wyatt to come get some air with her.

They crossed the long, narrow back yard, went through the gate in the chain link fence, and sat down on the end of Gray’s dock. There was an unseasonably pleasant breeze, and the palms all sounded content as they rustled their fronds, like they were stretching after a too hot afternoon.

Maggie and Wyatt sat for a few minutes without speaking, watching as the lights of a few shrimp boats crossed the dark bay.
 

“So who was this guy Harper?” Maggie asked of the skinny dead man.

“I don’t know that much,” Wyatt answered. “He did fourteen years at Stark for second-degree murder. Lived in Eastpoint. Has two arrests for beating his wife, charges dropped. Has one outstanding charge of aggravated assault, was supposed to go to trial next month.”

“How did he even make bail?”

“Paid it. $20,000.”

Maggie looked over at Wyatt. “Any connection to Fain?”

“Not that I know of. Yet.”

Maggie hadn’t told Wyatt what the skinny man had said about cleaning up Boudreaux’s messes. She wasn’t even sure yet why. She knew that withholding things from Wyatt, as she had been doing, was no way to start a relationship. But Boudreaux was messy and convoluted, and she wanted some time to work it out in her mind, and then work out how to be honest.

She looked back out to the bay for a few minutes. “Will you come with us tomorrow night?” she finally asked.

It took Wyatt a moment to answer. “If you want me to.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“I do,” he said.

M
aggie walked down to the end of the dock behind Sea-Fair, and stopped at the beautiful wooden 1947 Chris Craft that Boudreaux had restored to perfection. Boudreaux had his back to Maggie, was polishing the trim on the helm.

There was a moderate wind, and the promise of rain, but it would be light if it came. It was close to sunset, and the air had cooled enough to be bearable.
 

“Hello, Mr. Boudreaux,” Maggie said.

Boudreaux turned around, and he looked a little taken aback, just for a moment. Whether it was from seeing her splinted and bandaged, or seeing her alive at all, she didn’t know.

“Hello, Maggie,” he said quietly.
 

They looked at each other a moment, Maggie with her good hand resting atop her sling, Boudreaux with his rag in his hands.

“I heard what happened. Are you all right?”

“Yes, thank you,” Maggie said. The breeze whipped her long hair into her face. She pulled it back with her good hand, held it there. I was just down the docks and saw you over here.”

She shook her hair out of her face and took a breath.

“Mr. Boudreaux, do you remember that night at Boss Oyster? The night that Grace Carpenter jumped from the bridge?”

He seemed a little surprised by the question, as though he expected a different one entirely. “Yes.”

“You shared your scotch with me. You were very kind,” she said.

“You needed kindness.”

Maggie nodded slightly. “It was a few days after your nephew’s funeral.” It had also been a couple of days after Wilmette had visited the Sea-Fair office.

“Yes.”

“You said you were going night fishing. With a friend,” she said. “How was it?”

Boudreaux looked down at the rag in his hands, folded it, and set it down. “I wasn’t going out to fish,” he said. “I was with a woman friend, Maggie.”

“Ah,” Maggie said, nodding.
 

“Why do you ask?”

“It’s not important,” she said. “Have a good night.”

Boudreaux looked at her with those incredible blue eyes, the wind blowing his thick hair over his brow. He ignored it. “Good night, Maggie.”