Uncharted (13 page)

Owen

Six months later

I hold Calia’s left hand and she carries the flowers in her right. Daisies this time. It’s always different. She chooses whatever catches her eye. Three-year-old Adhra skips along ahead of us, singing softly to herself. Before Adhra came to the orphanage, she lived in the slums of Kenya, foraging for food after her parents died. She came home with us three months ago, and I can’t imagine her ever leaving our sides.

The cemetery is old and quaint, with cobblestone paths and crumbling tombstones, some of them dating back a hundred years or more. It’s where Calia’s mother, Eleanor, is buried, and we stop there first. Calia hands half of the flowers to Adhra and lets her put them in the little metal vase beside the headstone. This is Adhra’s job, and we would never think of taking it away from her. She gets immeasurable joy from such small things.

The next grave we visit is newer. The headstone reads
JAMES COLIN REED, BELOVED BROTHER AND SON
. Knowing her brother is home gives Calia immeasurable comfort. As for me, I can almost visit James’s grave without guilt and remorse. Almost, but not quite.

Once the flowers have been placed we linger for a few minutes.

“I’m ready now,” Calia says. She takes Adhra’s hand and we turn to go.

We’re going to be here for a while, in Farnham. We live in Calia’s childhood home because that’s what she wants and I would find it nearly impossible to deny her something that makes her so happy. Besides, it was my desire to finally put down roots, to stop going wherever it was that we were needed. Not because I wanted to stop helping, but because I have a family of my own to take care of. And right now Calia and I are working on trying to expand our family to give Adhra a brother or sister. I’d hardly call it work, though, considering what’s involved. We’ll raise our family, not on the arid plains of Kenya, but here. Where Calia grew up. This house can hold a family of four with ease, but if we ever grow out of it, maybe Calia will finally allow me to buy her a bigger one.

After I drive us home I park the car and then pick up Adhra and settle her on my shoulders for the short walk to our front door. She giggles and pulls my hair, but I don’t scold her. It’s a small price to pay to hear her laugh.

“Someone needs a haircut,” Calia says. “You’ve simply got too much. It’s hard for her to resist.”

I lean over and kiss her. “You know what? I think you’re hard to resist.”

“You’re very lucky then. Because I happen to find you irresistible as well.”

“I’m so glad we got that out of the way, Calia.”

She laughs and follows me into the house. “Me, too, Owen. Me, too.”

To my editor, Jill Schwartzman: Thank you for suggesting the Penguin Special. I always wondered what happened to the guy who built the shack. Now I know (and so will everyone else).

To my publicist, Amanda Walker: Thank you for everything you do to make my life easier. I couldn’t do this without you.

To Jane Dystal, Miriam Goderich, and Lauren Abramo: Thank you for being the best agents a writer could ever hope for.

To the entire team at Dutton and Plume: Thank you for being a publisher who goes above and beyond in everything you do. I couldn’t be in better hands.

Thank you to Kent Lewis for answering my many questions about airplanes and navigation. You’re one of the nicest men I know.

Thank you to Andrew McAllister for answering my questions about storing computer data and also for sharing my love of Stephen King’s
The Stand
.

Special thanks to Dallal BenRomdhane for being British and living in the Maldives. Two birds, one stone, my dear. You answered all my questions about the Maldives (and sent pictures!), and when I first heard Calia’s voice in my head she clearly had an English accent.

To my beta readers Laura Bradley Rede, Catherine McKenzie, and Peggy Hildebrandt: Thank you for your willingness to look at this manuscript on such short notice and also for your valuable feedback. I appreciate it so much.

A heartfelt shout-out to the bloggers who champion my books every single day: Autumn Hull, Andrea Pierce Thompson, April Haug, Asheley Tart, Jaime Arkin, Erin Arkin, Jenny Aspinall, Gitte Doherty, Wanda Morales, Denise Tung, Nicola Farrell, Natasha Tomic, Madison Seidler, Chandra Haun, Mandy Ireadindie, Neda Amini, Amy Lazarus Bromberg, Melissa Amster, Stephanie Elliot, Liz Clark Fenton and Lisa Steinke Dannenfeldt of
Chick Lit Is Not Dead
,
Tina’s Book Reviews
, Rosette Alcantara Doyle, Gina Halsted Brown,
Aestas Book Blog
, Christine Bezdenejnih Estevez, Jana Waterreus, Racquel at
The Book Barbies
, Amy at
Book Loving Mom
, and Yara Santos.

And last, but certainly not least, thank you once again to my devoted readers. None of this would be possible without you.

Tracey Garvis Graves is the
New York Times
bestselling author of
On the Island
,
which has been optioned by MGM for a feature film;
Uncharted
: An
On the Island
Novella;
and
Covet
, which will be published in September 2013. She lives in a suburb of Des Moines, Iowa, with her husband, two children, and hyper dog, Chloe. She loves to interact with her fans and can be found on Twitter, Facebook, and www.traceygarvisgraves.com.

Covet

Tracey Garvis Graves returns with a captivating new novel about three people who must choose between temptation, honor, and love.

claire

I’m on my way home from dropping off the kids at school when he pulls me over. I see the lights in my rearview mirror seconds before he hits the siren, giving it two short bursts. I’m not speeding, or in violation of any traffic laws that I know of, but I pull to the shoulder and the police car slows to a stop behind my bumper. When the officer walks up to the driver’s-side window, I hit the button to lower it.

“Did you know you have a taillight out, ma’am?” he asks.

“Really?” I crane my neck to look behind me—as if I could possibly see it from inside the car—and immediately feel foolish.

“Yes,” he says. “Passenger side. Can I see your license and registration and proof of insurance?”

I nod. “Sure.”

He doesn’t look like any cop I’ve ever seen. He looks like a model pretending to be a police officer for a photo shoot. Or maybe one of those cops who shows up at a bachelorette party and then strips down to his underwear.

Suddenly, I can’t remember where anything is.

He waits patiently while I locate the necessary documents in the console and pry my license out of my wallet. I hand everything to him and he takes it to his car, and when he returns he leans down by my window and hands it all back.

Up close, I notice that his eyes are green, the exact shade of a piece of sea glass I found on the shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico two years ago when Chris and I took the kids to South Padre Island. He must be six two or three, and he’s lean but broad shouldered. He doesn’t look older than mid to late thirties, but there are a few flecks of gray in his dark hair, which only enhance his good looks. So unfair. He rips a piece of paper off the pad he’s holding, glances down at the name he’s written on it, and looks back up. “Claire?”

“Yes.”

He hands me the ticket. “It’s just a warning,” he says, reading my expression and smiling to dispel my worry that I’m about to get slapped with a fine. His teeth are white and perfectly straight. “Have it taken care of as soon as possible, okay? It isn’t safe.”

“I will,” I say, looking down at the ticket. It’s been signed by Officer Daniel Rush. “Thank you.”

He nods. “Have a nice day.”

When I return home, my husband, Chris, is standing in the kitchen, a cup of coffee in his hand. He’s wearing jeans and a polo shirt in accordance with casual Friday, and he smells like the cologne I gave him for his birthday.

“Have you seen my watch?” he asks, in lieu of a proper greeting. I unearth it under a stack of mail on the counter, and he straps it on. “Did you drive the kids to school?”

“Yes,” I say, setting down my purse on the island. “Last day,” I add, because even though I mentioned it, there’s a fairly good chance Chris forgot; he’s got other things, important things, to focus on right now.

I wanted to hand deliver the gifts for their teachers. I wasn’t sure they’d arrive in one piece if they took them on the bus.”

The kids are a safe topic, and politely exchanging information regarding their whereabouts and well-being has become our fallback method of communication. Neither of us raises our voice. I once read an article in a women’s magazine that said it’s a really bad sign when you and your spouse stop arguing. It means that you’ve given up and no longer care about saving your marriage. I hope that’s not true, but I worry that it probably is. I walk to the dishwasher and start unloading it, not bothering to tell Chris about the taillight; I’ll take care of it myself.

He opens the cupboard, grabs the pill bottle, and shakes a capsule into his hand, swallowing it with water. He’s probably wondering if I’ll say something about the pills, but I won’t. I never do. He’s whistling and seems eager to head out the door this morning; I should just be grateful he has a job to go to, because the twelve months we spent at home together when he was out of work were almost our undoing. Still might be. He grabs his laptop and car keys, says good-bye, and walks out the door without kissing me.

I finish unloading the dishwasher. Tucker scratches and whines at the sliding glass door, and I open it. “Go, Tuck,” I say, watching as he takes off in hot pursuit of a squirrel. He never catches one because the squirrel will scamper to safety on top of our fence long before he reaches it, but that seldom stops him from trying.

It’s quiet now. I pour a cup of coffee and gaze out the window as summer beckons.

I open the door to seven-year-old Jordan’s room, my arms full of clean laundry. She’s made her bed without being asked, and her stuffed

animals are lined up neatly on her pillow. There’s nothing on the floor, not a stray sock, not her pajamas, not one of the hundreds of crayons and markers she’s always drawing with. Nothing. It used to bother me until my mom pointed out that I did the same thing when I was her age. “Don’t go looking for trouble where there is none, Claire. She relishes order the same way you do.” I never did grow out of it either, this need to have everything organized, my life segmented neatly into tidy little boxes. How karma must have had a field day with me last year.

I open nine-year-old Josh’s door next and immediately trip over a pile of Matchbox cars; it appears there’s been a pileup. Josh likes to crash things. He does not, however, share his sister’s fondness for neatness and order. I step around the cars and navigate my way across the room, dodging piles of clothes, sports equipment, shoes, and his guitar. His navy blue comforter hangs halfway off the bed, but the sheets are pulled up and both pillows are in the right spot. I’ll give him an A for effort. After I put away the clean clothes I pick up the dirty ones and reverse my steps.

In our bedroom only one side of the bed has been slept in. When he’s home, which from now on will be rare, Chris often sleeps on the couch in the family room, a habit he started when his insomnia was at its worst and he didn’t want to disturb me with his tossing and turning. In hindsight, I should have insisted that he stay because now I doubt he’ll ever return.

I scoop up his boxer shorts and damp towel from the bathroom floor and add them to the pile in my arms, wondering if there will ever be more to life than laundry and sleeping alone in a king-size bed.

My neighbor Elisa walks into my kitchen later that morning, her yoga mat in one hand and a giant bottle of water in the other. Her light brown hair is in a perfect ballerina bun, not a messy one like mine, and her gray yoga pants coordinate nicely with her pink tank top. “I almost got run over crossing the street,” she says. “What the
hell
is wrong with people? Do they not realize how many kids are in this neighborhood?” Elisa is a born and bred Texas girl whose husband, Skip, brought her back to his home state of Kansas after college, and when she’s riled up you can really hear the twang in her speech.

Elisa and I live in Rockland Hills, an exclusive neighborhood in a suburb of Kansas City. We’re on the Kansas side, and the single-family homes are large and stately, with a median price of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The architecture is a mix of styles, designed to lend a unique feel and keep the houses from looking too similar. Chris and I purchased our Tuscany-inspired four-bedroom home five years ago after we fell in love with the warm, earthy hues, expansive terra-cotta tile floors, and wrought-iron sconces. Our furniture is soft and oversize, chosen solely for comfort. We’ve been happy with this neighborhood except for the fact that the winding, tree-lined streets aren’t heavily patrolled and not everyone watches their speed the way they should; the most frequent offenders are the newly licensed offspring of the affluent residents.

I grab my own bottle of water from the fridge. “Maybe we can check into getting one of those speed limit signs. You know, the ones that blink?” I ask.

“We need something. I can’t believe how fast that car was going.”

I drive us to yoga. When we walk in the front door I feel instantly calmer, the way I always do when I hear the New Age music and smell the lingering scent of incense. A potted aloe vera plant sits on a low table and paintings from local artists adorn the sage-green walls. It’s all very soothing.

After we stow our gear in the locker room we stake out a spot in the back row of the studio, sitting cross-legged on our mats while we wait for the class to start. “I’ve got a taillight out. Can you pick me up after I drop off my car?” I ask.

“Sure,” she says, stretching her arms over her head. “When?”

I take a sip from my water bottle. “I don’t know. I’ll call and make an appointment when I get home. I need to take care of it as soon as possible.”

“Did you get pulled over?” she asks.

“Yes, this morning. By the most ridiculously good-looking cop I’ve ever seen.”

She raises an eyebrow and grins. “Do tell.”

“There’s not much to it,” I say, chuckling. “I was so flustered I couldn’t remember where I kept my registration. It was like my brain left the building. He was nice, though.” I don’t tell Elisa that my mind keeps flashing back to this morning. I don’t tell her that I keep thinking about the officer’s smile. Maybe it’s some kind of latent cop fantasy I didn’t know I had. Maybe it’s because it’s been so long since my husband paid any attention to me at all. Maybe it’s because I’m so damn lonely. It’s not like it matters, anyway. There are approximately twenty-two thousand residents in this town, and the odds of running into him again are not that great.

They’re not horrible, though.

I realize that these are not the thoughts of a happily married woman, but at the moment I am not very happily married.

After we return from yoga I take a shower and work on my laptop for a few hours, then cross the street to take a plate of cookies and a bowl of fruit salad over to Elisa’s. Her and Skip’s contemporary two-story is the polar opposite of mine: It boasts sleek, modern furniture and clean lines, and the color palette features icy blues and soft grays.

Elisa’s the consummate entertainer, and her end-of-the-school-year party has become a tradition on our street with the adults looking forward to it almost as much as the kids do. I help her set up a long table on her covered patio, and we stack paper plates and sort plastic utensils. Elisa fans out a pile of brightly colored napkins.

It’s barely June, but a fluke heat wave has stalled over the Midwest, and the record-breaking temperature hovers near eighty-seven. The heat and humidity make it feel as if my neighborhood has been relocated to a tropical island.

“What time are you coming over?” Elisa asks.

“Five thirty. Chris said he’d be home on time.”

My guess is that Chris will still be the last one to leave the office today. If past behavior is any indication, it won’t take long for Chris’s workaholic tendencies to kick in, weekends and holidays be damned.

We stand back and survey our work. “I think I’m all set,” Elisa says. “Thanks for helping.”

“Sure. See you in a little while.”

She waves. “Bye, Claire.”

I’m waiting on the sidewalk an hour later when the school bus pulls up. Jordan is the first child off, and she flies down the steps and into my arms, her backpack bulging with all the treasures that used to live in her desk. She cradles a figurine in her hands; it looks like a turtle. Or maybe it’s a swan. I don’t dare ask. “I made you a peacock, Mommy,” she says, proudly handing it over. Her expression turns somber. “Please don’t break this one.”

I examine the peacock and kiss her on the forehead. “It’s beautiful, honey. I’ll be more careful. I promise.”

Jordan looks like me, except her hair is a mass of short, sunshiny-blonde ringlets. My hair is longer, the curls stretching into waves that reach my shoulder blades, and at thirty-four I need a boost from quarterly highlights to help brighten the shade. My daughter and I share the same small nose and full lips, but she has dimples and a smattering of freckles across her cheeks. She takes my breath away.

Josh, who follows sedately behind his sister, takes after Chris. He has the same golden-boy good looks that attracted me to his father twelve years ago when we were twenty-two and fresh out of college, the ink barely dry on our degrees, Chris’s in business and marketing and mine in graphic design. They’re the kind of features—distinct, symmetrical, strong—that make people listen to what you have to say, buy what you’re selling. When Mindy, my best friend from college, received our Christmas card and family photo a few years ago, she jokingly asked, “Has anyone ever mentioned you all look a little Stepfordish?”

I suppose we do. I’m the anomaly, though. We all have blond hair, but only Chris and the kids have blue eyes. Mine are brown.

“How was the last day of school?” I ask, taking Jordan’s hand and reaching over to ruffle Josh’s hair.

“Awesome!” they answer in unison. We sing a few lines of Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” at the top of our lungs and walk into the house. “Who wants a snack?” I ask.

While they’re eating peanut butter crackers and sipping juice I go through their backpacks, sorting the contents into piles. “Find a place in your rooms for everything you want to keep, okay?” I put Jordan’s peacock on the counter.

Chris walks in the door at 5:29 and sets down his laptop and cell phone. “Daddy!” The kids barrel toward him, and he gathers them in his arms. “Do I have time to change?” he asks.

“Sure,” I say. “We can wait.”

He runs upstairs and returns two minutes later wearing a faded T-shirt and cargo shorts. “All right,” he says, scooping up Jordan and placing her on his shoulders. She beams, liking this happy Daddy. “Let’s go.”

We cross the street and walk around to the back of the house. “Greetings, Canton family,” Skip says as we enter his yard and approach the patio. He scoops me up in a bear hug and kisses me on the cheek. Josh and Jordan scatter, off to join the kids jumping on the trampoline.

Elisa’s husband is one of my favorite people. He played football at Baylor, and he’s a big strapping guy with broad shoulders and a belly that’s just beginning to show the effects of too much beer and barbecue, but he’s a teddy bear. I once watched him dodge traffic to rescue a turtle so it wouldn’t get run over, and I saw him wipe away tears when ten-year-old Travis— his and Elisa’s only child—accepted an award for collecting donations for a family who lost all their possessions in a house fire. And boy does he love his wife.