Safely Home (17 page)

“Such a shame about their mother, isn’t it?” she hissed as if the boys
wouldn’t hear her lower tone.

Except they were sitting right there, all ears,
intent.

Alex
stood. “She’s doing fine, actually. And so are the boys.”

Missy
was not to be deterred. She pointed Aiden’s way. “Really? I heard this little guy’s been getting all upset at school, every time Jacinda goes in to help in the class. Jacinda’s my daughter,” she explained to Cress, as if Cress cared. Right now all she wanted to do was usher the boys away from this creature, and step back forty-five seconds to Alex whispering in her ear.

Nope.

“Missy, that’s enough.” Alex didn’t raise his voice, but his tone commanded respect. He shook his head. “I used to get upset sometimes at school, too. It happens, right, Bud?”

Aiden looked troubled by the unexpected twist in conversation, his lower lip jutting, his brow furrowed. “I guess.”

Missy was either stellar at misreading social cues or bent on making them all suffer. “Like that’s a wonder with your father’s drinkin’ an’ all, carryin’ on behind your mother’s back, then causin’ trouble with the law left and right.”

Alex
’s face transformed. His shoulders rounded, rock-hard. His neck clenched. His gaze went hard and tight, as if spoiling for a fight.

Cress stood, grabbed Nick’s hand and pushed her way past
Missy, then turned and extended a quick hand to Aiden. “Dudes, come on, I can’t believe I forgot. I have to be home to help Gran right now. Let’s hit the road.”

Her choice of words encouraged
a tentative nod from Aiden. He slipped a hand into hers, obviously preferring her company to that of the Sea Witch.

Smart kid.

With her hands tied to little fingers, Cress broke the stand-off by leaning into Alex’s shoulder, her hair brushing his chin. “Alex. Gotta go.”

Her
strategy worked. Alex stepped back, breathed, then turned and walked to the door. He swung it open, face set, shoulders back, eyes shadowed, his expression hinting stark defeat. The urge to turn and duke it out with the older woman in a reality-show girl-to-girl smack-down swept Cress.

Luckily she hadn’t given into an urge like that since eighth grade, but the temptation bit hard, her need to defend
Alex and the cubs quite bearish.

Only they weren’t her cubs.

But since the nearest thing they had to a mother right now was tramping it up in mid-Florida, Cress was okay with stepping in to do the job. Temporarily, of course.

Alex
’s quick stride put him ahead of them by several paces. Finally he stopped, his gaze turned out, his breath slowing.

He turned. “Sorry.”

Cress bristled. “You have nothing to be sorry about, unlike the creature from the Black Lagoon in there.”

Alex
slanted a warning glance toward the boys.

Cress growled
inside while she worked to put a fresh smile in place. Biting her tongue around impressionable children did not come easy.

Nick squeezed her
hand. “Thank you for the ice cweam, Cwess.”

His look of trust melted her anger. So sweet. So innocent. So young.

Visions of the boy she’d seen in the grocery tweaked her. She’d call Felix when she got home, see if he’d turned up anything. She’d check with the sheriff’s too, see if they’d had any luck.

Her mind sorted various possibilities explaining the relationship between boy and
the ill-tempered old woman.

Her gut refused to buy into lame excuses, and Cress’s gut never steered her wrong. Not in police work, anyway.

Affairs of the heart?

Whole different matter.

But improving? Maybe?

Alex
stepped forward. “Thanks for what you did.”

She smiled, his praise warming her cheeks, her heart. “It was nothing, Counselor.”

He touched a hand to the curve of her face, a fingertip caress, warm. Light. Evocative. “Oh, it was something, Detective.” His smile helped erase the pain of old memories, old times, things best left forgotten. Or at least back-burnered. Cress was smart enough to understand people never forgot those things, not really. But she was tough enough to know you could learn to deal with them and move forward. Now if she could just grasp that lesson on a more personal level.

Seeing Carl on Friday would help.
Alex was right. She needed to do this. Facing Carl was the first big step.

She had no desire to see James.
One hurdle at a time. Better all around.

Once the boys were safely tucked in with
Mac’s mother, Alex headed back across town, toward Gran’s. Gone was the teasing banter they’d enjoyed earlier, dulled by Missy’s thoughtless words. As Alex pulled into Gran’s drive, the front porch light clicked on.

Motion detector-activated?
Or was Gran watching and waiting, not wanting to waste one amp of electricity?

More likely.

Probably just as well. Thoughts of cuddling on the front porch swing had dimmed with the ice cream store encounter. Cress found herself wishing there was some way to soften Alex’s angst, to soothe the anger of old reminders and past wrongs. Cozy up by a warm fire and just hold him, let him know it didn’t matter. None of it mattered, not anymore.

*

“Can we talk a minute? Here?” Alex motioned to the front seat of the car once he’d parked in Gran’s driveway. He didn’t want to have this conversation on Gran’s front porch. Even with the cooling night temps, someone could overhear and he had no desire to feed old fires.

“Of course.” Cress turned his way, but waited quietly, a move he appreciated.

“Missy’s father was one of the cops implicated in my father’s death.”

Cress drew a deep breath and reached for his hand. “I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.” His shrug said that should be the end of it, old news. His shadowed gaze said something else.

“All the more reason she should shut her big mouth and leave it in the past.”

Quick amusement lightened Alex’s look. “Down, girl.”

Her scowl said she was ready
to leap to his defense, a nice turnaround from a month ago. Which made it a good time to mention he’d done some avenging of his own. “I hated them for a long time, Cress. And yet, I had no love lost for my father, so it made little sense to hate them. But I did. My father wasn’t a good person, he was a mean drunk, and he made trouble in the town. In spite of that, he didn’t deserve to be dropped off over the county line with life-threatening injuries.”

“
No one was ever convicted of wrongdoing, were they?”

“No.
Evidence disappeared or was tainted and inadmissible. But I knew who was involved and my first major buy-and-sell was Missy’s childhood home. And then I did the same to one of the other cops when they fell on hard times. Left them scrambling to begin again, my own version of civil justice.”

“That had to feel good.”

He’d thought so too, at the time, but he was mistaken. It hadn’t felt good at all. It felt— wrong. Because it was wrong. “If I had it to do all over again, I’d have let it go. I wasn’t a big enough man to see that eight years ago. I am, now.”

“
You took care of things legally.” Cress offered the protest in a no-nonsense cop-like voice. “You broke no laws, and you taught a much-needed lesson to guys who dishonored the badge. How can that be wrong?” Her expression said she was behind his actions, one-hundred percent.

“To err is human…” He dropped the
partial quote into the cool night air. “I realized I wanted to be a better person than that. And that my mother raised me to be a better person than that, a guy with a vengeance, on a mission.”

“That’s all well and good on your end, but then people like Missy come along to dredge everything up and you’re right back in the middle of something better left behind.”

“Is that why you opted out and didn’t come back? Escaping the past?”

Her quick change of expression said he hit a nerve. “There’s no escaping it here,” she replied. She shifted her gaze to the street behind them. “Everybody dies famous. Everyone knows everyone and shares everything. I left that on purpose, Alex. A part of me loved the anonymity of the city. Being one of the crowd. I hated that everyone saw our family dissolve before their eyes. My mother’s death. My father’s descent into the bottle. How that left us scrambling, trying to raise ourselves. I tried to hide what was happening at first.”

“That’s the first line of defense, Cress.
And you were just a kid. You did what you could.”

“I hid his bottles. I tried to take care of the girls and Eric. I made food, I packed lunches, I cleaned.”

“You tried to take your mother’s place.”

She huffed, then shrugged. “Just enough to try to keep things moving along. I kept praying, asking God for help. But no help came, it was just day after day of making excuses for my father. Answering the phone when creditors called. Pretending he wasn’t there. Only it made me so mad because he was there, standing right there, making sure I lied for him. Eventually it all got to me. Dirty clothes, dirty house, the lies, the cover up. And I’d escape to Grandpa’s house. I’d help on everything I could, I let him teach me anything he wanted, as long as I didn’t have to go back home. But in doing that, I left Kiera and Audra and Eric to muddle through on their own.”

“Cress, you were fourteen. You can’t—”

“I was a selfish teenager thinking only of myself. And no matter how you sugarcoat it now, I know what I did was wrong. I could have been there for them more. I could have made a bigger difference in their lives, Alex.”

“Aren’t they doing okay?” He leaned closer and grazed her chin with his palm. “Audra loves her B&B, Kiera’s an incredible success and Eric’s doing all right as a PA in Rochester. That success says your family’s resilience is strong.”

“Audra surrounds herself with needy animals because it’s safe, Kiera is most likely fighting an eating disorder and Eric stays away from the family drama as much as possible. I’m grateful for
Stacey’s presence in our lives because it brought a token of normalcy back. I’m glad Dad finally got sober, that he found someone to be happy with, that’s made a huge difference. But you know what I really wanted? And didn’t have?” She turned his way more directly and the anguish in her face broke his heart. “I wanted him to be strong for us. His kids. His family. We lost our mother, then we lost him, too. And I don’t know how to forgive him for making us feel like we weren’t important enough to stay sober for. Four little kids who lost so much. A mother to cancer, a father to the bottle. It wasn’t right and I can’t reason it out enough to make it right, even in retrospect.”

“Because you lived it,” he said softly. “W
hen we’re the ones involved, all the happy platitudes about forgiveness grow thin and hard.”

“But you did it.” She turned his way and held his gaze. “You’ve moved on. You’ve ditched the bitterness and anger you used to carry around like dead weight. And you actually feel bad for buying those dirty cops’ houses.”

“Because that’s not the legacy I want to leave behind.”

“Well, it’s tough to
buy into that when you’re willing to sweet-talk old women out of their family farm, Alex.”

Her words stung more than anything Missy had said. He wanted Cress to see beyond the developed farm-land, to see the man he’d become, but he’d seen Gran’s face-off with her
sister the previous week. She’d done the unthinkable, the unforgiveable, not giving family first choice of the land. Only Norma and Alex knew that their purchase price wouldn’t have been enough to pay off Horst’s debts, and that was a secret he’d carry to the grave if necessary. Gran had suffered enough by the actions of a weak husband. No reason the whole town needed to know her business.

“
And I probably wouldn’t be half so mad at the two of you for that whole deal,” she waved a hand toward what used to be cropland and grazing meadows, “if Gran showed any sign of letting herself relax and enjoy the money she made. She doesn’t. She’s probably got it squirreled away in some stupid nest egg fund so she’ll never get to enjoy the fruits of her labors, a time to relax.”

There was no nest egg fund.
Alex knew that and couldn’t say a word. It wasn’t his place, his right. To have Horst’s malfeasance revealed wouldn’t just mean Norma’s embarrassment. The entire Johansson family would be up in arms over her choices. She’d gone outside the family to sell valuable farmland, making her choice unacceptable in the established Wisconsin family farm network. Family first. Then other farmers. And then, only then, were you allowed to sell farmland for other purposes. It was a code-of-honor, long established and respected. Norma broke the code to pay off Horst’s indiscretions. After giving up that money to save face, and the comfort of an old-age legacy, no way could he risk ‘outing’ her now. Her family had never liked Horst, and they’d resented his high-handed farm practices. The fact that they were right all along was a bitter pill for Gran to swallow. And when Cress’s father plunged into similar habits after losing his wife, Norma had been the family centurion, the rock of ages. She’d held everything together for the girls, especially Cress. “Gran doesn’t do ‘fun’.”