Exposure (5 page)

An outboard motor rumbled to life out in the bay and the faint scent of gasoline drifted in to shore to mix pleasantly with the salty aroma of the waves lapping the rocky beach. Pebbles rattled gently with the tide's retreat, a sound that was momentarily drowned beneath the raucous, echoing cry of a seagull circling overhead. Gracie, her pockets bulging with the morning's finds, squatted on the beach to examine yet another potential treasure. The gull's noisy cry and its white-winged glide across an overcast sky caught her attention, and she looked up. Tracking the bird's progress as it circled and soared, she watched with such interest and enthusiasm in her expression that Emma's heart contracted. She squatted down next to her daughter.

She was enjoying Gracie's enthrallment with the delicate pink inner whorls of a broken shell when Clare hallooed them from a short distance down the beach. Gracie immediately abandoned her position, bobbing to her feet and racing to meet her newest acquaintance. Emma rose to her feet more slowly.

"Hi, Miss-us Mackey! Lookit I found." Gracie started pulling rocks and shells from her pockets, thrusting them forward with both hands.

"Hi, Clare," Emma added her greetings as she came forward. "Are you out in search of a little fresh air, too?"

Clare shook her head. "Actually, I was changing the store window when I saw you two head down to the beach, and I thought if you were still here when I took my break I'd come say hello." She handed Gracie a little yellow plastic sand pail and shovel. "This is for you, sweetheart," she said with a soft, wistful smile. "No child should be without a sand bucket if she lives near the shore."

Gracie's handful of treasures hit the plastic bottom with a hollow rattle. "A lellow one!" Her smile lit up the afternoon. "Look, Mommy, hoos bwought me a lellow bucket for my shells and my wocks." She immediately began transferring the remaining contents of her pockets into the sand pail.

Emma bent down to properly admire it. Once done, she prompted, "It was very kind of Mrs. Mackey to bring you a present, Gracie. What do you have to say?"

"Thank you! S'il vous plait." Gracie gave Clare a huge smile, then immediately forgot both women as she plopped down to stir the contents of the bucket with the tiny shovel.

Clare watched her for several moments before she lifted her gaze to Emma's. "I was sorry to hear you're leaving Thursday," she said quietly.

Emma blinked. "My goodness, chere, you heard about that already? Why, Ruby just asked me this mornin' if I'd be needin' the room for another week."

"Yeah, I know. Jenny Suzuki heard you tell Ruby you wouldn't, and she mentioned it to me when she came into the store."

"Now, which one is she?" Emma wanted to know. "Is she the one with that darlin' little baby?"

"Yes, Niko. She was disappointed to hear you were leaving, too, because she was going to ask you to tune up her car for her like you did for Ruby."

"She wants a tune-up?" Emma straightened. "Uh, we could maybe stay on an extra week." She rolled her shoulders and admitted sheepishly, "The truth is, I could use the extra money." She glanced at Gracie. "On the other hand, maybe it's not such a great idea. If you hadn't come around and diverted ma petite fille's attention last time, I'd probably be workin' on Ruby's car yet."

"I could do it again, if you want. I'd really like to, Emma."

"But . . . what about your job?"

"I work part-time." Clare shrugged. "And it's a family-owned business. I can take off a couple of hours if the need arises, and I really would enjoy doing it." She hesitated and then added, "Gracie reminds me of... someone." Distractedly pushing her hair back, she met Emma's eyes. "My son, actually," she confessed. "It just feels good to be around her."

"Why, I didn't know you had a child." Emma's eyes lit up with enthusiasm. Until this very moment she hadn't realized how much she'd missed talking with other young mothers these past few weeks. "What's his name? How old is he?"

Then she wished she had trod more carefully, for Clare's face was now pale and her eyes were filled with a deep sadness.

But her voice was even and quiet when she said, "His name was Evan Michael, Emma. And he was six years old last year when he died."

Sam walked into the kitchen and found Clare talking on the phone. Quietly, he poured himself a cup of coffee and leaned against the counter slowly sipping it while he watched her profile. He hadn't seen this kind of animation in her expression in a very long time. Not since Evan's death.

"Okay," she was saying, "so here's the schedule as it currently stands. Jenny is going to drop the car off at Ruby's at ten o'clock Friday morning. I never work Fridays so I don't have to do anything special to get the time off. How does that work into your time frame?" She listened a moment and then laughed at whatever the person on the other end of the line was saying. "Don't be silly, Emma; I enjoy doing it. Uh huh. Yeah, okay. I'll see you then. 'Bye now." A tiny smile ghosting her lips, she replaced the receiver and turned, starting visibly when she saw Sam. He pushed away from the counter.

"Hey," he said, his eyes tracking her face feature by feature. God, he hated seeing her vivacity drain away that way. Hated it that he didn't know how to reach her these days. That he hadn't known how for thirteen long months. Thirteen months, twenty-seven days and—he consulted his watch—six and a half hours, to be precise. "I heard you say Emma. Was that Emma Sands?"

"Yes," Clare replied. Her chin elevated slightly as if anticipating an argument. "She's tuning up Jenny Suzuki's car on Friday, and I'm going to keep an eye on her little girl for her while she does. Her daughter's name is Gracie."

"Yeah, I know." Sam watched her carefully. Elvis had told him she'd done that once before when the Sands woman had tuned up Ruby Kelly's car. Gracie Sands was the first child he'd known Clare to show an interest in since Evan's death. Up until now she'd tended to shy away from other people's children, and the God's honest truth was he found her interest promising and was marginally heartened. Maybe there was hope after all that he'd someday get his old Clare back again. "I saw her at Bill's Garage the first day they were in town," he said. "She's a cute little girl."

"She reminds me of Evan, Sam," Clare said. "There's something about her."

God! It was the first time since Evan's death that she'd willingly spoken their son's name to him. He ached for every single thing he had once taken for granted—the instinctive understanding they'd once shared, the unquestioning closeness. Taking a chance, he walked up to his wife and wrapped her in his arms for the first time in months.

Clare stiffened and Sam's arms dropped away. She immediately wished them back, but he'd already moved away. In any case she probably wouldn't have reached out for him even if he'd remained standing right in front of her. She'd lost the old self-confidence that used to allow her to grab what she wanted, and she sure as hell no longer knew how to ask for it. She did, however, stay in the kitchen with him.

She also attempted to share something of herself with him, and that was an effort she hadn't bothered to make in ... oh, a very long time.

"I handled all the arrangements between Emma and Jenny," she informed him. She hesitated, and then confessed, "And I purposely set everything up for Friday morning because I knew that way Emma would have to stay another week." She still couldn't believe she'd done that. And yet ... "Maybe I'll ask her to do my car next Friday. That would keep her here for still another week." Biting her bottom lip, she gazed into Sam's face, looking for a reaction.

One corner of his mouth went up around the cigarette he'd just lighted. "You can have her do mine the Friday after." Then he smiled.

She wanted to throw herself into his arms. This was the Sam she'd married. The don't-tell-me-who-I-can-be-friends-with-i'm-gonna-do-what-matters-to-me-not-whats-important-to-this-town-Sam. She'd fallen in love with him when she was fifteen years old and he was eighteen. She'd watched him run around town with Elvis Donnelly, thumbing his nose at all the small-town strictures—but ever-so-politely and always with that big, beautiful smile—and she'd thought, This is the guy for me. I'm gonna marry this boy.

And she had. He'd been everything to her, too, for over ten years. She didn't know how things had gotten so out of control.

Sam opened the window over the sink and flicked his cigarette butt out into the yard. He looked at her over his shoulder. "So, what's the story?" he asked. "Clare, do you wanna keep Emma in town for herself, or because of Gracie?" Pulling the window closed, he turned and hiked himself up onto the counter. Ankles crossed, bare feet swinging, he sat observing her through level eyes.

"I suppose it's a little of both," she admitted. "There's something about that little girl that's so ... healing. But there's something about Emma, too. She's a fighter and she speaks her mind. Yet, she's warm and friendly—I mean, my God, Sam, she even calls Elvis cher!" She still marveled over that little piece of gutsiness. Most of the people in this town called him Sheriff if they couldn't avoid addressing him entirely.

Sam laughed. "Yeah, I know. I don't think he knows quite what to make of her."

"I told her about Evan this afternoon," Clare told him. "I wanted to do it myself before she heard about him from someone else. And, you know what, Sam? She just reached out and rubbed my arm and said, 'Ah, cherie, I am so sorry. I can only imagine how you must feel.' " Hugging herself, she stared up at her husband. "I didn't get that poor-Clare-we'd-better-walk-on-eggshells-around-her look, or the 'There, there, I know just how you feel' speech, or the burst of whispers after I've walked away. I mean, I'm an adult, I know not everybody acts like that. But sometimes it feels like it. She's so refreshing, Sam. I like it that she doesn't know everything there is to know about me. I like it that she hasn't already heard my entire life history through the ever-efficient, ever-biased grapevine."

She arose and crossed to the stove to pour herself some coffee. Holding the mug in both hands, she turned to face her silent husband. "Most of the time I really love Port Flannery, and I do realize that small towns like this have a lot of positive things to say for themselves," she said. "But the lack of privacy is a drawback, Sam. It's a definite drawback."

The lack of privacy on this island is a pain in the ass. Elvis dwelled on the thought more than once as he went about his business. It seemed to him that everybody and his brother had heard about Emma Sands and just had to know more. What did they think he was, her personal chamber of commerce?

In the morning he pulled Evert Dowdy over for speeding. Evert sat in his pickup truck working a plug of chewing tobacco between his cheek and gum while Elvis wrote up the ticket.

"Goddam cops," he grumbled. "Why don'tcha spend your time arrestin' real criminals? Go bust a couple a dope-heads. Wouldn't that make a nice change of pace from costin' law-abidin' citizens their hard-earned wages?"

Elvis refused to respond, but he did raise his head to pin the older man in place with a level look. Evert shifted uncomfortably. Deciding a change of subject would perhaps be prudent, he said in a slightly friendlier tone, "Heard tell there's a new woman in town name of Sands."

"Uh-huh." Elvis handed the ticket book through the window. "Sign here, sir."

Evert signed but didn't immediately pass the book back out. "So's it true what I heard, that she's some kinda ace mechanic?"

"Yeah. She knows her stuff all right."

"And she backed ol' Bill down over a piece of carbon on the piston?"

"Yep."

"If that don't beat all." Evert let fly with a stream of tobacco juice, expertly aimed out the window for the most distance with the least amount of fuss. He handed back the ticket book. "So," he demanded.

"Ya reckon she's a dyke?"

Elvis snorted. Tearing out Dowdy's copy of the ticket, he passed it to the man. "You haven't met Mrs. Sands yet, I take it."

"Nah."

"Trust me. A lesbian she's not."

"Humph." Evert worked his chaw. "I guess I did hear she's got herself a kid."

In the afternoon Elvis knocked on the door of a neatly tended but run-down house out in his old neck of the woods. The woman who answered his summons was probably in her mid forties. She looked older.

"Afternoon, ma'am," he said. "I'm Sheriff Donnelly. You're Mrs. Steadman, aren't you?"

"Oh, dear God." Color drained from her face and she grasped the doorframe with white knuckled hands. "Is it one of my boys?"

"No, ma'am, it's okay," he hastily assured her. "As far as I know your kids are just fine." Watching her sag against the doorframe, Elvis added contritely, "I'm sorry, Mrs. Steadman, it wasn't my intention to frighten you." Relieved to see the color return to her cheeks, lie gently informed her, "I'm here about the trash I found tossed over a bank. Off Emerson Road out by the old Bailey place."

The look she directed at him suggested he'd lost his wits. "What on earth has that got to do with me?"

Elvis handed her the old issue of Good Housekeeping he'd found among the garbage. "I found this smack-dab in the middle of it, ma'am."

She pulled her gaze away from the scar on his cheek and looked down at the magazine in her hand. On the front cover, faded but clearly marked, was an address label bearing her name. "What on earth . . . ?" Then she snapped upright. "Damn those boys!" She looked up at him. "Sheriff, I swear," she earnestly tried to assure him, "I gave my sons a ten-dollar bill yesterday to take a truck-load of stuff to the dump."

"An old bed frame, newspapers, Styrofoam, some furnace filters?"

Her lips grew tighter with each new item he listed. "I'll kill 'em! I will hang those two up by their thumbs and skin them alive."

"They're teenagers, ma'am. If this is the worst thing you ever have the law come knocking on your door for, you've done a pretty good job. Have them clean up the mess first thing Saturday morning. Then send them to me. I'll put 'em to work picking up litter around town for the rest of the afternoon."

"Yes . . . okay; I'll do that." She noticed he had real pretty eyes. "Thanks, Sheriff. I know you could have slapped me with a fine or something, and I'm tellin' ya, I honest to God don't know where I would have found the money to pay it."

Yeah, he remembered those times very well. Elvis nodded politely and turned to go.

"Uh . . . Sheriff?"

He turned back. "Ma'am?"

"Is that new lady still in town? That Emma Sands?'"

"Yes, she is."

"Is her little girl as adorable as they say?"

A crooked smile tugged at Elvis' lips. "Yeah, she's a cutie."

"Where are they from?"

"New Orleans, I think."

Mrs. Steadman stepped out into the yard, closer to him. "Is it true she really calls everyone that French word—that sher-ree?"

"Pretty much."

"And does she actually know how to work on cars?"

"Yep. She gave Ruby Kelly's car a tune-up. When I left the boarding house this morning she was doing Jenny Suzuki's."

"My." Mrs. Steadman couldn't have looked more enthralled if he'd said Emma Sands performed brain surgery.

"Imagine that." After looking at him consideringly for a moment, she said, "Wait here."

She disappeared into the house, but was back within moments to extend a piece of paper to Elvis. He looked down and saw it contained her name and phone number. "Will you give this to her and ask her to give me a call?" she asked shyly. "There's something the matter with my Chevy that maybe she can fix."

What was he, her messenger boy? Elvis almost shoved the paper back into her hands, but then stopped himself. Just an hour ago she probably would have crossed the street to avoid having to talk to him at all. He shrugged and pocketed the slip of paper. "Yeah, sure."

"And tell her I could watch her little girl while she looks at it. It'd be fun having a female to fuss over for a change."