Fortunate Harbor (2 page)

“I was just making sure that message wasn’t some hunky piece of beach trash you picked up on the shuffleboard court at the rec center.”

She jabbed him with her fist, but she was smiling. “Would you be jealous?”

He leaned over and nuzzled her nose. “In…sanely.”

Maybe it was the wine or Vanessa’s crooning. More likely it
was simply Marsh. She felt the desire seeping back, liquid honey sliding through her veins. “Do you know that next to love, jealousy is the emotion a woman most wants to inspire in a man?”

“More than lust?”

“On an equal par.”

“I’ve got lust down already.”

“Oh, I can tell.”

He brushed her hair back from her face. “You’ve grown on me, Tracy Deloche.”

“Like a barnacle?”

“Maybe at first. Something different now.” He leaned closer. “Definitely better.”

Just as their kiss deepened the timer went off.

“Ignore it,” he whispered against her lips.

She pulled away. “We’ll have Brie running out the oven door and all over the floor. Then I’d have to get Wanda’s dog to come over and clean it up, and Wanda would show up, too.”

“Hurry back.”

She planned to, and she thought maybe she would unbutton her dress when she did. Then she would stand in front of the sofa and hold out her hand for him. When he got to his feet, she would slip out of the dress and let it bloom like an exotic orchid on the floor. How they got to the bedroom—or
if
they did—would be up to him.

In the kitchen she turned off the oven and cracked the door. The Brie looked perfect.

She didn’t care.

She was just stepping out of the kitchen, hand on her top button, when she saw somebody walking down the road in front of her cottage. During the day she often saw fishermen passing in pickups on their way to the point, where they could
launch boats or find a spot on shore to settle in for the day. People on foot were rare, and by this time of evening, the only people who passed were neighbors from the four other cottages in her “development.” Happiness Key, as it was called, had few attractions after dark.

This man was no neighbor
.

“What are you looking at?” Marsh turned and gazed out the window behind the sofa.

Tracy’s heart sped up. She couldn’t answer. Her tongue felt as if it were glued to the roof of her mouth. She crossed the room slowly and peered through the glass. This was not possible. She had
not
seen the man she thought she’d seen. She pressed her nose against the window and stared into the deepening purple twilight.

“If there was anything out there, it’s gone and forgotten,” Marsh said.

The figure, if there had been one, had vanished into the deepest shadows. Tracy listened intently for the sound of a car starting somewhere out of sight. Unfortunately, on the counter behind her, Guns N’ Roses were introducing “November Rain” with thunderclaps that drowned out anything else.

Surely she was wrong. Surely she was imagining things.

Surely she hadn’t seen
CJ
strolling down the road as if he owned it. Which indeed he had, once upon a time.

“Tracy?”

She whirled. “Wow, sorry. I guess I was wrong. I don’t see anything, either.”

Marsh cocked his head. “I don’t want to put too fine a point on this, but you look like you’re going to jump out of your skin.”

“Oh, I’m not. It’s just…” Right. Was she really about to tell her soon-to-be lover that she’d just seen her ex-husband
walking down the road, even though they both knew perfectly well that CJ was doing time, lots and lots of time, in a medium-security prison on the other coast?

She wondered how many seconds it would take Marsh to clear out forever.

“Well, you can’t be too careful,” she finished lamely. “Ken’s always telling us to keep our eyes open at night. We’re so far from, you know, everything out here.” She turned up her hands. Not for the first time, she was glad Wanda was married to a cop, although she couldn’t recall using Ken in a lie before.

“That music supposed to be romantic?”

“Not so much, huh?” Tracy was thrilled to have an excuse to move away from the window. At the counter, she skipped to the next selection on her playlist, something country, performed by a cute guy in a cowboy hat. She was too addled to remember what or whom, but she knew Marsh would like this song better. “I’ll get the Brie.”

“Right. Exactly what I was thinking. Let’s eat some fancy-ass cheese. The night is young.”

She took the Brie out of the oven and set it on the platter she’d prepared. “Didn’t anybody tell you patience is a requirement for successful foreplay?” she called.

She was surprised when Marsh spoke from behind her, as he rested his hands on her shoulders.

“Don’t you think I’ve already been the grand master of patience? If patience is what you need, I guess I’m your man.”

“Well, you know, I’m not exactly used to it,” she babbled. “I never thought I could ask for anything like that when I was married to C—” She stopped, horrified.

His fingers began a slow massage. “That name just keeps coming up and coming up tonight.”

“Well, you were the one who played back the message.”

He turned her to face him. “Is that what’s going on here? It is, isn’t it? Your mother’s phone call got to you. She dragged up all that garbage from the past.”

“I don’t know what she did. I didn’t listen to the message. I was thinking about you.”

“Past tense. I heard that.”

“No! Present. Really. But I’m jumpy tonight. I don’t know why,” she lied.

“Maybe because you decided this isn’t such a good idea after all.”

“That’s not it! I promise. Let’s just relax and talk a little. I’ll calm down.”

Outside, just beyond her house, a car door slammed. Tracy jumped. In fact, she thought if Marsh hadn’t been holding her shoulders, he would be peeling her off the ceiling right now.

“You know, I think this is going to take more than a wheel of Brie and a bottle of wine.” He smiled a little. “It’s going to take some rethinking. Like you alone in the house reconsidering whether you want to go to bed with me here. Or anywhere, anytime. Maybe I was pushing too fast.”

“No, no, Marsh, that’s really not it. I guess my mother’s call did have some kind of weird effect. I’m sorry, but I’ll get over—”

“I think you will,” he agreed. “And faster if I’m not here. So we’re going to do this another time. Some night when you’ve had the phone unplugged all day. Some night when your ex-husband’s out of your head and back behind bars where he belongs, and you’re all mine.”

Short of tackling him and dragging him into the bedroom, she didn’t know what to do. There was an instant’s hesitation, as if Marsh was hoping she would find some way to
convince him he was wrong. And in that moment, she heard a car start.

Her eyes widened, and she drew a sharp breath. It was all Marsh needed.

“You call me,” he said. “Bay’s friend will invite him over again. You come to my house next time. Not so many distractions.”

She didn’t know what to say. She was a mess. All she could do was nod.

“Didn’t anybody ever teach you how to say no?” he asked. “Because, you know, all you ever have to do when you’re with me is say it, and I’ll be listening.”

“I wasn’t thinking about no. I was thinking about yes.
I
invited
you
.”

“So you did.” He leaned over and kissed her lightly on the lips. “You lock up, in case somebody really was out there, but I don’t think you have to worry. I didn’t even see a palm frond rustling.”

He cleared out so fast, in a minute there was no sign he’d been there except for an excellent bottle of wine sitting on her counter and the tail end of a country love song.

Tracy turned off the iPod and listened intently. And when she heard Marsh’s pickup pull away, she headed straight for the door.

CJ Craimer had once held considerable real estate in her heart, but she had foreclosed more than a year ago. If she had to scour the island one grain of sand at a time to serve the final eviction notice, she would. But afterwards, she never wanted to think about CJ Craimer again.

“You have not yet produced a child for your husband.”

Janya Kapur lowered herself to the chair beside her telephone. Then she pulled the receiver away from her ear and gazed at it in amazement for a moment before she slipped it back in place.

“
Aai
,” she said softly to her mother. “It is good to hear your voice.”

“You have heard it many times before, and you know very well what it sounds like.”

Janya controlled a sigh. Her mother was calling from India, where Janya herself had lived until last year, when she’d moved to Florida and the little group of beach cottages called Happiness Key.

Following a serious disagreement, she and her mother had not spoken in…Janya counted the months on her fingers…seven months. Janya had left the door open for her mother to call when she was ready, but she had never really expected this
day to come. Inika Desai was opinionated from her toe rings to the silk
dupatta
that covered her head. In her eyes, her only daughter had disgraced her with a failed betrothal, even though the fault had not been Janya’s. Janya’s subsequent hastily arranged marriage to Rishi Kapur, a brilliant Indian-American software designer, had not lessened her mother’s humiliation.

“It is good to hear your voice anyway,” Janya said, “although your choice of subject surprises me. Rishi and I have only been married a little more than a year.”

“This is plenty of time to have a baby. Your father and I are not young. We expect to see grandchildren before we die.”

“And Yash is not cooperating?” Yash was Janya’s younger brother, who had resisted all attempts to be matched to a woman of his parents’ choosing.

“Your brother is, if such a thing can be possible, more stubborn, more difficult, than you. I know he telephones. Do not deny it. And I suppose he has told you he will soon come to your country to study history. I am aware you planted this idea in his head.”

At great cost, Janya had learned to stand up to her mother, but it was a lesson she had taken to heart. “No, I didn’t plant it, but I helped it grow. He has a right to be happy. We all do—including you,
Aai
. And he would not be happy as an accountant, even though he wanted very much to please you and
Baba
.”

“For people of our generation, making our parents happy was enough.”

“I think, perhaps, you raised us differently. We would like you to be happy, but we know that sometimes we cannot make that wish come true.”

Her mother was silent. For a moment Janya wondered if the line had gone dead—not that uncommon—or her mother had ended the call. As she waited, she gazed out the window and
saw a slender shape disappearing down the road in the deepening twilight.

Finally her mother spoke.

“I am sending something.”

From experience, Janya knew her mother liked to put bad news in writing, so she would not have to face the repercussions. Her mother’s tolerance for the emotions of others was limited. “If it is a letter, I hope the news is good.”

“It is not a letter. It is a gift.”

“Then I will look forward to it.”

There was another silence. Janya waited.

“You are well?” her mother asked at last. “Your husband is well?”

“We are.”

Before Janya could ask about her family in India, her mother added, “And happy? You speak of happiness for your brother. What of your own?”

For a moment Janya was not certain she had heard her correctly. This was not only a question her mother never asked, it was one she never considered.

She searched for the right words. “I am happy. Rishi is a good husband. Kind, funny, thoughtful. I am painting again, murals on the sides of buildings and in homes. People like my work, and Rishi is proud.”

“I have seen the newspaper article about you. Your brother made certain I could not avoid it.”

Janya waited to be chastised. The local newspaper had done a flattering piece on the mural she had painted at the main branch of the Palmetto Grove library. Allowing public attention to be drawn to herself, instead of her husband, was something her mother would not understand.

“If Rishi is proud, this is good,” her mother said. “If he is proud of you, then you are indeed lucky to be married to him.”

“I think I
am
lucky,” Janya agreed.

“You will remember that, then, when you receive my gift.”

“Of course, I wi—”

But the phone was dead. Her mother had stretched as far as she could across the miles to bridge the gap between them. Clearly she had reached her limit.

Janya put the telephone back in the cradle and smiled. She wondered what Rishi would say that night when she told him about the phone call. Because he would be interested. He was always interested. He was her defender, her admirer, and the man who would father her children.

If she could just get pregnant.

The smile died. She thought about the things she had not shared with her mother, and some of the joy in their odd telephone reunion died.

Wanda Gray had blisters over calluses that were most likely the result of earlier blisters. She sat in the living room of her little cottage and wiggled her toes in a pan of warm water, just to be sure she could still move them.

A person could never be too casual about blisters, what with blood poisoning and all. People lost their feet on account of a lack of cleanliness and inattention to pain. She wasn’t going to be one of them. She’d been standing on these feet more years than she wanted to count, slapping platters of hush puppies and shrimp on tables. She figured if she lined up all the tables she’d slapped something onto in her fifty-six years, they’d stretch to the moon and back.

“You look comfortable.” Her husband, Ken, passed on his way to the kitchen. “Need anything while I’m in there?”

“You’re going to eat that last piece of my strawberry pie, aren’t you?”

“Thinking about it.”

“We could split it.”

Ken didn’t say anything, but in a few minutes he came back and handed her a saucer with precisely half of that final slice of pie. She wasn’t sure which looked better, her husband, with his salt-and-pepper hair and trim build, or the pie, mounded with fresh whipped cream.

“You should have been a surgeon instead of a cop. I bet if we weighed these plates, they’d be exactly the same.”

“We had two children. I know how to split things right down the middle.”

“This is nice, being waited on and all. I get tired of being the one bringing people pie, not that anything at the Dancing Shrimp is this good.”

He sat across from her, the bright floral cushion of the rattan chair rippling under a backside that was still taut and shapely. She figured she was going to love Ken anyway when everything started to sag, but for now, she wasn’t sorry deterioration hadn’t gotten a head start.

“Those feet of yours have seen some hard times,” he said.

“It’s those pointy-toed shoes. Can’t figure out why the new owners are so determined to make everything twice as hard on us. Tight dresses, tight shoes, all so we can plop French fries and shrimp on wooden picnic tables out on the deck. Who do they think comes to the Dancing Shrimp, anyway? Today I had to lug high chairs to almost every single table. You think those little kids care if my shoes have
any
kind of toes?”

“They giving you any other trouble?”

“Oh, they don’t understand a thing. They keep fancying up the menu. Everything’s either
en brochette
or
étouffée
or
en croute
. People ask me what that means, and half the time I just have to make it up. And if they order something new, when it comes out of the kitchen, it’s just plain old shish kebabs or fish stew or some kind of silly-looking sandwich.”

“You know you don’t need to work anymore. We made good money when we sold the house in Miami, and we’re not spending much renting this one. You could quit. Stay home and rest those feet.”

She was touched. She and Ken had experienced their share of problems. For a while it had looked as if they weren’t going to survive them
together
, but somehow they had. And Ken, who had retreated into himself for so long she’d been afraid he would never find his way out again, was beginning to sound like the man she had married.

“I do appreciate that,” she said. “I really do, Kenny. But you want the truth? I don’t know what I’d do with all that time. Working kind of puts my day in order, you know? And even if we don’t need the money that bad, it’s nice to make some and know I’m contributing. You work awful hard yourself.”

“About work…” He took a bite of his pie. Fresh strawberry was one of her real masterpieces—she added toasted pecans to a shortbread crust—and she watched the pleasure spread over his face.

“Damn, this is good.” He looked up and grinned. “You’d be worth keeping just for your pies, Wanda.”

“Course, you got lots of other reasons, don’t you?”

“That’s like asking a man to count all the stars in the sky.”

She smiled despite herself. “I’m not going to snatch the plate
away from you, you say the wrong thing. You don’t have to go on and on.”

“Found out today they’re sending me up to Georgia to do some training with Homeland Security. I’m going to be gone a lot in the next couple of months, on and off. You’ll be okay out here by yourself?”

Truth was that at one time, she wouldn’t have been. She would have been fearsome, lonely and probably gotten herself into some kind of trouble. But not anymore. The women who lived in the other cottages were as different from her as they could possibly be, but somehow, they’d all learned to get along.

“I’ll be fine,” she told him. “I get too lonely, I’ll go visit Junior and the grandkids.”

“I’ll come back between sessions. I won’t be gone too many days at a time. But the training’s good, and it looks like they want to promote me after it’s done. So I had to say yes.”

“You want to be promoted? You still okay with not being on the streets?”

“I like having a say in things. And let’s face it, I’m getting up there. Can’t be running through alleys and crashing through buildings too much longer. I don’t like paperwork, but I do like seeing things come together.”

“Whatever you do, Palmetto Grove’s lucky to have you.”

“I guess they think so, too.” He finished his pie, got up to take her plate and kissed her on top of her lacquered copper curls. “Gotta go in for a while tonight. Just to finish off some stuff, but I’ll be back in time to watch a movie. I can stop and pick up a DVD.”

“I want to see that Chihuahua movie, you know, the talking kind of Chihuahuas. Chase does, too.”

Chase, their rescued greyhound, came wandering in at the
sound of his name. He proceeded to Wanda’s feet and lapped water out of the pan. She shooed him away, but not vigorously. She’d been a lot harder on their kids.

“I’ll see what I can find,” Ken promised.

She knew he preferred to come home with a movie of the
Lethal Weapon
variety, but she was hoping he’d compromise on something in between. That had been her aim, and she’d given it her best shot.

After he left, she dried and bandaged her feet and slipped into flip-flops. She and Dr. Scholl’s would have some date tomorrow. She might just go into work in sandals and let the chips fall where they may. Right now, though, she was more interested in going somewhere else.

Outside.

Through the window, in the beams of Ken’s headlights, she’d seen her landlady, Tracy Deloche, prowling around on the road beyond the house. She didn’t know what Tracy was doing. The houses in Happiness Key were set fairly far apart, on account of the ones in between having been bulldozed some time in the past. Tracy had no good reason to be over here poking around.

Wanda’s instincts for gossip were finely tuned.

She decided the soak and the soft rubber flip-flop soles were helping. She could make it outside, if Tracy didn’t disappear before she got there.

“You just hold on now, Ms. Deloche,” she said. “You just hold on, and don’t you go running off.” She hoped the real entertainment of the evening was right outside and waiting for her to join in.

Okay, she was imagining things. Tracy had walked up and down the road twice after Marsh’s departure. No car had
passed—although possibly she hadn’t gotten outside in time—and there were no signs anybody had been recently parked along the road beyond her house, no tire tracks, no crushed vegetation.

Of course, she lived on sand, and they hadn’t had rain in the past few days. And, admittedly, she was not a detective by trade. Stalking up and down the road looking for CJ, who was probably in California trying to dig his way out of Victorville with a plastic spoon, was the act of a madwoman.

So what was up with that?

“Hey, you!”

Tracy jumped and slapped a hand over her chest. A word she rarely uttered slipped out at high volume.

“Well, cover my ears. I’m just
so
happy to see you, too,” Wanda said.

“I’m sorry! You scared me to death.”

“A little jumpy, are we? What do you think you’re doing strutting back and forth in the dark? You lose something? See something that frightened you? Ken’s gone, but I can get him back.” Wanda whipped out her cell phone.

Tracy tried to imagine how she would explain this particular vision to Ken Gray, one of the most logical men she’d ever met. “No. No! I just thought I saw somebody prowling around, that’s all.”

“I see. And so, unarmed and unprotected, in stiletto heels, you came outside and started prowling around on your own?”

“Okay, it makes no sense. I get that.”

“Want me to help you look?”

“No, whoever it was, they’ve gone.”

Another voice came out of the darkness as Janya joined them. “If there is a party, somebody forgot to invite me.”

Sometimes Tracy forgot that nothing was private in Happiness Key. She rolled her eyes as Wanda explained.

“Tracy’s just losing her mind, that’s all. Looking for somebody who was never here, and doing it alone in the dark, just in case she was right and he wants to snatch her and throw her in the trunk of his car.”