Forever Grace (19 page)

But even so…

She tapped Sage’s nose with the tip of her finger and looked over at Lilliane in the other seat. “What say we skip the ice cream cones today, and we make hot cocoa at home instead? Just in case Mr. McKittrick needs rescuing from Annabelle.”

Both girls nodded agreement. Then Lilliane giggled.

“At least there’s no more tape to make casts for her animals.”

Grace laughed. “True, that. And a good thing, too.”

Still grinning, she withdrew from the minivan and slid the side door closed. Then she climbed into the driver’s seat, started the vehicle, and put it in gear.

Ridiculous
, her voice reminded her.

But she cast a last glance around the parking lot anyway.

Just in case.

Sean studied the Spiderman figure on his cast.

“Your sister is right,” he told Josh as the boy put the finishing touches to it. “You’re very good.”

Josh mumbled a thank you, the tips of his ears turning as red as Spiderman’s mask. Hiding a smile, Sean glanced at his watch. Grace and the girls should be back any minute from their grocery expedition into Perth, and Annabelle would likely be up soon, too. Grace had told him the toddler would sleep for two hours max, but they’d passed that time allotment a good half hour before. He’d considered waking her, but Josh assured him Grace would want her to sleep. It was weird, having a ten-year-old giving him instructions on how to handle a toddler, but Josh was far more competent than his age suggested. All the kids were.

In the three days Sean had been coming over to deliver the promised cooking lessons to Grace, he’d had ample opportunity to observe them in their daily activities. He’d seen the level of self-reliance each of them possessed, watched the way they came together to function as a unit. Grace hadn’t been kidding when she said they pretty much managed their own lessons. Lilliane appeared to be as proficient a reading teacher for Sage as she was a reader, and Josh had infinite patience when it came to their math lessons. And significant aptitude in that subject, too, from what Sean could see.

“Advanced algebra?” he’d asked Grace, holding up a text from the table on the first day. “Isn’t that high school stuff?”

“Grade eleven,” Grace had agreed, looking up from the eggs she whisked for a frittata. “Now you know why I let him teach the math around here. Science, too.”

“He must have a hard time of it in school.”

“Surprisingly not. Yet, anyway.” Her gaze had flashed to the living room, where the three kids were immersed in watching episodes of
Horrible Histories
on a laptop set up on the coffee table.

Mouth tightening, Sean had filed away the information with the other tidbits he’d gleaned. A level of maturity in the three older kids that went well beyond their years; their pronounced care not to step out of line; Josh’s hyper-developed sense of responsibility for his siblings; his knee-jerk over-apologizing if he thought he’d done something wrong.

Someone had seriously damaged these kids, and if it was who he thought…

Josh returned a black marker to its zippered pouch. Looking satisfied, he sat back in the chair he’d pulled up beside the casted leg Sean had propped up on the coffee table.

“I’m done.”

“Thank you. Annabelle will be thrilled when she sees it. Do you do a lot of artwork?”

“Cartoon stuff, mostly.” Josh shrugged one shoulder. “Superheroes.”

Sean leaned back against the couch cushions and locked his fingers behind his head.

“So if you could have a superpower, what would it be?”

“Strength,” Josh said without hesitation. “So I could protect people.”

Such as his mother? His sisters?

Sean kept a carefully neutral expression. “Good one. Good reason, too.”

Josh eyed him. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Do you like beating up on people?”

Sean’s eyebrows twitched together in surprise. So much for neutral. “Not particularly, no.”

“But you
have
beat up on them.”

“Because I’m a cop, you mean?”

Josh nodded.

Holy hell, this kid had a twisted perspective.

“I became a cop to help people, Josh, not to beat up on them. Sometimes force is necessary if I’m trying to stop something bad from happening, but cops don’t like when that happens. We try to avoid violence whenever we can.”

Josh stared at the hands he’d clenched in his lap. His voice dropped to a whisper that Sean had to strain to catch. “Some cops like it.”

Before Sean could respond—hell, before he could recover enough to
think
of a response—the crunch of tires on gravel came from the driveway. Josh bolted from the chair like a startled fawn, all legs and eyes. He stood in the middle of the living room, fists clenched, every line of his body rigid not just with tension, but with terror.

Sean reached for his crutches, biting back the multitude of questions he still had. And the many more that had just been raised.

“Sounds like your aunt is back,” he said easily. “Why don’t you give her a hand with the groceries?”

“But what if it’s not—” Josh broke off. He sidled closer to the uncovered window overlooking the driveway and peered out at its edge. His fists uncurled. “Never mind. You’re right. It is her.”

He turned and headed through the kitchen to open the side door. From outside came the high-pitched voices of Sage and Lilliane, the lower pitch of their aunt. A vehicle door slammed. Sean stayed where he was, listening, thinking, weighing his choices. The decision he was going to have to make.

Josh’s reaction just now had been the last piece of the puzzle Sean knew now he’d been trying to avoid putting together. A completed picture he couldn’t ignore—and one he didn’t need his cell phone to confirm. Grace had taken her sister’s kids from their father. They were hiding from him. And no matter how well intentioned her motives might have been after her sister’s accident, her actions put
her
in the wrong. They made her a fugitive.

And they made Lucien Tremaine—who as a lawyer should have known better—an accomplice.

And they put Sean in the most difficult position he’d ever occupied in his life.

Hell.

“Grace, can I ask you a question?”

Grace looked up from stirring the thick, fragrant soup on the stove.

“Um…I suppose,” she said. She took the bowl of chopped kale Sean handed to her.

“Stir that in, then turn the heat off and just let it sit until you’re ready to eat,” he said. “The kale cooks fast.”

She did as instructed, then slanted him a glance. “You had a question?”

“Why are you here?”

“Because I’m cooking…wait.” Her gaze narrowed suspiciously. “Did you take too many painkillers again?”

A tiny smile tugged at the corner of Sean’s mouth. He pulled it straight. “I didn’t mean why are you here in the kitchen. I meant why are you here at this cottage? In the middle of nowhere with four kids, three of whom should be in school?”

Grace swallowed the flutter in her throat. “I told you—”

Sean shook his head, cutting her off. “No more half-truths. When you and the girls pulled into the driveway, Josh damn near died on the spot until he realized it was you. Who else was he expecting?”

The ever-present knot in Grace’s chest grew three sizes, squeezing out her voice. Shit. She dropped her gaze to the pot of soup again.

“Tell me, Grace.” Sean prodded, his voice gentle but insistent.

The flutter of panic spread, coating her palms in sweat. She set the wooden spoon on the counter and wiped her hands against her denim-clad legs. He wasn’t going to give up until she told him, was he? But if she did, if she started talking, started telling him about Julianne and Barry, about the door hanging off its hinges when she returned home with the kids, about the battered form she’d found on her kitchen floor…

If the rigid control she maintained began to unravel…

Her gaze went to the sliding glass doors off the dining area, to the kids seated around the picnic table on the deck beyond. Three of them there, another sleeping peacefully in her cot; all depending on her to keep it together, to look after them, to be their anchor in a world that had turned upside down and inside out for them. She drew a shaky breath.

She couldn’t. Didn’t dare. Because if she couldn’t put herself back together again—

“I can help you, but only if you tell me everything. Has a warrant been issued for you?”

Her startled gaze shot back to his. “A what? Of course not! Why would there be—” She stopped short as understanding dawned. “You think I took them. The kids. You think I
kidnapped
them?”

Sean’s lips drew even tighter. “I think you meant well,” he said. “I’ve seen how Josh and the girls are, and I know you’re trying to protect them. To do the right thing. But Grace, there are laws. Channels. You can’t just up and circumvent those—and I can’t ignore the fact that you have.”

Grace’s mouth flapped wordlessly.
That
was the problem?

“Look,” Sean said. “Let me help you. I’ll walk you through turning yourself in, make sure the kids get the help they need from Children’s Aid so they’re safe until their mother recovers. I’ll even testify on your behalf, but—”

“Stop,” she whispered. She scraped her fingers through her hair, squeezing them against her head so her brain wouldn’t explode. “Just stop. It’s not what you think.”

“I think it is. At first I wanted to believe it was just the trauma of their mother’s accident, but over the last few days—“He broke off and rubbed the back of his neck. “Damn it, I know what the symptoms of bullying look like, Grace, and those kids have all the signs.”

The bile of panic rose in Grace’s chest, pooled in her throat. She was going to have to explain. To tell him everything. Talk about finding Julianne, about hiding from Barry, about everything. The edges of her heart frayed and began to unravel. Her toes curled against the floor.

“You were concerned for them,” Sean persisted. “I get that, but you still can’t just up and take them away from their father like that. Not without the authority to do so.”

Breathe
, she told herself.
You can do this. You’ll be okay, because you have to be
.

“Aunt Grace? Is everything all right?”

Josh stood on the other side of the counter, his face pale, eyes wide behind his glasses, and hands bunched into fists.
How much did he hear?
Grace fought back the roll of her stomach. She made herself smile a reassurance. But it took three tries to unglue her tongue from the roof of her mouth and find enough voice to lie to him.

“Everything is fine, Josh. Mr. McKittrick and I are just talking.”

“You look upset.”

“I think I’m a little stressed by this whole cooking thing. It’s harder than it looks, but I think I’m getting the hang of it. How are you and the girls doing? Are you ready for a snack?”

Josh hesitated, his gaze flicking from her to Sean and back again, clearly undecided as to whether he should accept her explanation, but at last he nodded. A grim-faced Sean moved out of the way, his impatience palpable. He leaned against the counter as Grace took a plate of cut-up vegetables and a container of hummus from the fridge. She set them on a tray along with a handful of napkins, feeling the burn of Sean’s gaze between her shoulder blades the entire time. Silence sat thick over the kitchen.

She knew she should speak, if only to reassure Josh that all was well, but she couldn’t find the words, never mind the voice. The best she could manage was a smile as she slid the tray across the counter. With a last, lingering glance between her and Sean, Josh carried the tray to the sliding door and tapped with his foot to summoned Lilliane to open it. When the door closed again, Grace took a deep breath, steeling herself to face Sean, to meet the sympathy warring with accusation in the green gaze.

“It’s not what you think,” she said. “I have papers. Custody papers. I’m their legal guardian.”

Sean’s jaw dropped. “You—what?”

“You’re right about the abuse. It wasn’t physical,” she added hastily as Sean’s hands curled into fists, “at least it hadn’t been that I know of. Not at first. And not with the kids.”

“Go on.”

She shivered. So that was how a voice like ice sounded. She looked away from Sean, unable to meet his gaze. The anger, the horror, the pity she knew she would find there when he heard. The pity would be the hardest. It would be her undoing, and she couldn’t come undone. That was why she hadn’t told the story since that awful, awful night when she’d given her statement to the police and then called Luc for help, desperate to protect Julianne’s kids. Why she was terrified to retell it now.

But she had no choice, not if Sean thought what he did, and so she dredged up the words she needed—and the memories that came with them.

“Julianne left her husband in July. She and the kids moved in with me, and she started divorce proceedings. He’d been having anger issues at work, and things had been escalating to the point where he’d been suspended. Based on his history, the court awarded her temporary custody. It was enough to tip him over the edge.” Grace’s voice cracked, and she paused to swallow. Breathe. Wrap her arms once again across her middle.

Sean remained silent, waiting. After a moment, she continued.

“Barry started turning up at the house in the middle of the night and calling at all hours. Julianne finally took out a restraining order against him. The decision was hell on her. She wasn’t eating, she wasn’t sleeping—and the kids were just as much of a mess. One day, just before school started, I took the day off work to give Julianne a break. She needed some time alone, so she stayed home, and I took the kids to a museum. We were out for the whole day and didn’t get home until dinnertime. When we pulled into the driveway, the front door was hanging off its hinges.”

“Christ,” said Sean softly. “Did the kids see?”

Her fingers dug into her ribs, distracting her from the memories. The all-too vivid images. The blood. The bruises. So many bruises, black and purple and livid against her sister’s unnatural pallor. She looked past Sean’s shoulder to the trees beyond the window. She shook her head.