Leaving Annalise (Katie & Annalise Book 2) (11 page)

My slow-moving island life sped up with Nick and Taylor around. Nick set up the USVI branch of Stingray Investigations next to the headquarters of Connell Construction in a bedroom on the third floor. Our new office had tongue-in-groove ceilings, a wall of windows, and a balcony that looked over the sugar mill ruins and mango forest. The builder had probably designed it to be an alternate master or guest suite, but now that we had commandeered it, I wondered why I hadn’t done so in the first place. It was the perfect place to work—Excel, QuickBooks, and TurboTax were a lot less painful with a view like that.

On a typically perfect late June morning, Nick was in the office tracking down a runaway polygamist wife who had left her fourth husband with a mountain of credit card debt and I was downstairs rehearsing with Ava for our upcoming re-gig for Trevor. Taylor was playing in his new high chair in the music room with us.

“So, how it going with your sexy man?” Ava asked. She was almost demure in a strapless black knit romper.

“It’s going great,” I said, then couldn’t help adding, “Although not like I’d envisioned.”

“What, he not perfect like you?”

I ignored her. “There’s just one more person living here than I’d planned for. It’s much harder to be spontaneous, if you know what I mean.”

“HUN-GEE,” announced Taylor.

“Just a minute, sweetie, and I’ll get you some fish sticks,” I said.

“You mean harder to go for six orgasms in a day with him around,” Ava said.

“HUN-GEE,” he insisted.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean,” I said, then turned to Taylor and gave him a crisp salute. “Yes, sir, right away, sir.”

“I go make a phone call, then,” Ava said. She walked out to the front porch and I went to the kitchen to broil some frozen fish sticks. When I took them to the music room ten minutes later, the high chair was empty. Taylor was gone. In a split second, everything changed.

I called out for him, but there was no answer, and I screamed for Ava and Nick.

“Help! I can’t find Taylor! Help!”

Nick’s feet hit the floor and I heard him running. My stomach lurched. I ran for the stairs to the ground floor that led out to the pool, and by the time I was halfway down, Nick had caught up with me. I heard Ava’s heavy footsteps above us.

Nick and I burst through the open sliding glass door onto the back patio and my heart choked off my breath. I saw the top of Taylor’s head in the deep end, a few feet from the ledge.

“No!” I screamed. “No!”

Nick jumped in feet first, but what I saw when I got to the edge of the pool didn’t make sense. Taylor’s head was out of the water and he was holding onto a ladder that was perched across the corner of the pool.

Ava came running out the back door onto the patio, yelling, “What going on?”

Nick crossed the pool in seconds and gathered Taylor in his arms. The boy didn’t make a sound, just looked up into Nick’s face as Nick swam the few yards to the shallow end on his back and climbed out. I wiped tears from my cheeks and held out my arms.

“There you are! I was so worried about you,” I said.

Nick handed him to me and I squeezed him so hard he kicked, but I didn’t let go. All I could think of was Rashidi telling me I’d figure out the kid thing when I needed to, like everybody else. But he was wrong. I hadn’t.

I started to cry again, and I handed Taylor back to Nick.

“I’m a failure at this, Nick, I’m so sorry.”

“Hush,” he said. “It’s OK. You’re not a failure. You’re great.”

But I knew I was. How could I have let this happen? What was wrong with me? If Taylor had died, it would have been my fault.

“How that ladder get there?” Ava asked.

Nick said, “I have absolutely no idea. It wasn’t there an hour ago when we were swimming.”

Ava cocked one hip and folded her arms across her chest. “There nobody even here working today. We the only ones.”

I tried to pull myself together. “The dogs knocked it over, maybe?”

Nick shook his head. “Couldn’t be. It was leaning up against the back of the house yesterday, over by where the workers were fixing the cistern catchment. Even if the dogs were out here, they couldn’t have moved it across the patio and put it over the edge of the pool.”

And that’s when I heard Annalise. She was singing, “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,” deep inside my head.

It felt like the patio was spinning around me, and I was the only thing anchored. I grabbed a chair to keep myself from falling. And then I felt her. A hand on my shoulder. I jumped and turned. The hand lifted and I saw nothing, but the singing didn’t stop.

Nick and Ava were staring at me. Ava’s eyebrows had stretched into high peaks. Yeah, it probably did look like I was having a psychotic break.

“She loves him,” I said, swallowing hard. “She’s singing to him.”

Nick nodded. His eyes never left mine.

It’s one thing to raise a dust cloud or make a booming noise. It’s another thing altogether to save the life of a child. And that’s what she had done, I was sure of it.

“Annalise saved him,” I said. I was as sure of that as I was that she’d saved me.

That night, Nick and I sat up in bed discussing our domestic arrangements while Taylor ran his favorite plastic dump truck all over our legs.

“Taylor went to day care while I worked back in Dallas,” Nick said. “We need help. We’re understaffed.”

“I agree. And one of us is underskilled.”

Nick turned to me and shook his head. “No, one of us isn’t. It could have happened to anyone, Katie, and he is my responsibility.”

But I knew the truth. I would never, ever let anything happen to Taylor on my watch again, but I also recognized my limitations. “Well, at least we’re in agreement on the needing help part.” I kissed Nick. “I’m going to wash my face.”

Nick snatched up
Go, Dog. Go.
“We’re going to read our bedtime story.”

Ten minutes, one mud mask, and a Nair job to my legs later, I returned to the bedroom. Nick and Taylor were snuggled up, eyes closed.

I leaned in and whispered, “Are you taking him to his room?”

I got a snore in reply. Taylor’s soft snuffles echoed Nick’s snores in a way that did something funny to my heart. I lay down beside Nick and snuggled in close.

I knew just the person to ask for help, so the next day, Nick and I took Taylor to meet Crazy Grove. The old man sat wrapped in a white crocheted blanket in a threadbare recliner that had probably been red once upon a time. He pointed at Taylor and then at his knee, so I helped the little boy onto Crazy’s lap. The rambunctious toddler sat still, gazing into Crazy’s wise eyes like a charmed python. I was mesmerized. Why couldn’t I do that?

“We need help with Taylor,” I said. I explained what had happened the day before.

Crazy shook his head. “Lotta!” he called.

Lotta stuck her head around the kitchen door and I heard loud crackling noises. It smelled like the Wingroves would be eating “fry” chicken, as the Locals called it.

“Yes, Mr. Wingrove?” She wore a bright yellow apron that made her round middle look like a rising sun.

His words were slow and still slurred, but I could understand him. “Your sister need to help them with the boy.” He waved his left hand in a “make it so” gesture, then he fell back in his chair, spent.

Lotta nodded. “I send Ruth round tomorrow morning.”

Nick and I looked at each other. He grinned and shrugged. “Well, all right, then!” I said. “Thanks!”

A week later, I pulled the sheet over my head and tried to go back to sleep, but the echoes of little boy yells and the barking of my German shepherd begging for Cheerios kept me awake. Theoretically, Nick was letting me sleep in until Ms. Ruth arrived. How did real parents do it? Between the things Nick and I did that robbed us of sleep and the ungodly hour at which Taylor woke up, I’d started to look like a raccoon.

“Katie, quick, in the kitchen,” Nick yelled.

“Coming,” I mumbled. I dragged myself to a seated position and scrubbed my eyes against the bright sun streaming in through the windows. I searched for clothes. None on me, and none on the floor. They were probably buried under the covers at the foot of the bed. I stumbled to my chest of drawers and pulled a black-and-white striped sundress over my head, then used the potty, freshened up, and hauled my matted red mop into a high ponytail before I shuffled into the kitchen.

“That was quick?” Nick teased. “Happy July Fourth. There’s coffee.”

I nodded. I rubbed my eyes.

He poured me a cup of black coffee and placed it in my hands, wrapping my hand around it with his. Our overlapped fingers alternated stripes of white and golden tan.

“Ugh,” I said.

“You’re welcome.” He grinned. “I thought we could have breakfast before Ms. Ruth gets here.”

I smiled. “Or we could sleep.”

“Kay Kay,” Taylor yelled from his high chair. Nick had set him up at the breakfast bar.

I walked over and kissed the top of his head. “Good morning, Taylor.”

Oso sidled up to me and I scrunched his ears. I took a seat next to Taylor, who held a fistful of Cheerios out to me, the same ones he’d just been rubbing against his drool-covered mouth.

“Yum, yum.” I pretended to eat them and tried to prevent contact with the spit. Taylor kicked and squealed. Oso scooched closer to him, looking hopeful.

Nick clanked a plate down in front of me. When had his arm gotten so brown? “Homemade cinnamon rolls.”

I looked up and saw the Pillsbury can on the counter.

He saw my gaze. “Home made,” he insisted. “Try one.”

“Too tired to eat.”

Nick shook his head. He handed me a fork. “Eat.”

Oso gobbled Cheerios from Taylor’s hand. I pretended not to see it and started to cut into my roll with a fork.

“Stop!” Nick yelled.

I froze and glared at him, fork hovering. “Make up your mind, mister.”

“Do you notice anything special about it?” he pointed at the cinnamon roll.

I peered at it. It was iced. And not very well iced, at that. I squinted. The icing was squiggly and sparse. “They’re really well-done?”

“Read it,” Nick said, his tone wry, but also something else. Excited.

“I can make out an M. M, something something something, something something. I can’t read the next word at all. Then there’s a short word, kind of melted. Starts with an N.”

“No, it starts with an M.”

I contemplated my breakfast again. I bit my lip.

Nick came over to my side of the breakfast bar, saying, “Taylor, she’s making this awfully hard.” He rubbed the boy’s head, then took my hand in one of his.

“Katie, you complicated, difficult creature, I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and we’ve wasted too much of it apart already. I’m trying to ask you to marry me.”

I studied the cinnamon roll again, looking for it, dazed, stunned. “But what does it say?” I asked.

“Oh, Jesus, Joseph, and the sainted Virgin. It says ‘Marry Me.’”

Marry him. Marry him. Marry him. So fast. Yet so not fast. We’d known each other for nearly two years. I’d loved him from the moment I met him. I’d given up on him to protect myself. I had quit hoping. And now . . .

I’d given up on him.

Oh, shit.

I jumped up, knocking the barstool over behind me. “Oh no, Nick, oh no, what have I done?” I wailed.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, looking stunned. Stricken, even. A frisson of guilt ripped through me as I realized I’d made a terrible mistake. So I ran.

I flew down the stairs and out the back patio door. I stopped and grabbed a piece of broken tile as Nick ran out the door with Taylor on one hip and Oso on his heels, calling, “What’s the matter?”

I didn’t answer. Down the sloping side yard I ran, slipping barefoot on the baby grass. When I was about a hundred yards from the house, I stopped and twirled in a slow circle, scanning the ground below me for a flat gray rock.

Nick stood back about ten yards, watching me. Taylor was holding a hand down for Oso’s tongue. I saw the rock to Nick’s right and fell to my knees beside it. I pushed it aside and dug the edge of the tile into the soil, but it didn’t do much of a job, so I dropped it and started digging with my hands. When I’d uncovered two inches of dirt, I shoved my fingers in, probing. Nothing. I dug another inch of dirt out, then probed again. My fingers hit something solid.

I looked up at Nick, who was watching me, bemused.

“I had given up on you,” I said.

He came and stood beside me. “Honey, is there some kind of medication you take at a moment like this?”

“I’m serious, Nick. I had given up. And I needed something to make myself let go.”

He lowered himself and Taylor to the ground and sat cross-legged, setting Taylor free to play with Oso. “OK, I’m listening.”

I took a deep breath. I plunged my hands back into the dirt and walked them along the surface until I found a small square of plastic and smiled. It had only been eight months since I’d buried it, so it was still in pretty good shape. Or maybe old SIM cards never die. I pulled it out and handed it to him.

“What’s this?”

“A SIM card.”

He pursed his lips. “I give up. Why a SIM card?”

“So I wouldn’t wait around for you to call me anymore.”

His mouth opened. “Ah. You changed your phone number. Yes. That’s why I had to get your number from Emily.” He reached out and touched my cheek.

I nodded and started digging again, carefully uncovering the plastic Cruzan Rum bottle on which the SIM card had rested. I pulled it out and held it by its neck.

Nick nodded in appreciation. “A rum bottle.” Barks and squeals and dog fur and little boy face flashed by in the background.

“Yes.”

I closed my eyes and put my hands back in the hole. Carefully I lifted out handfuls of dirt and sifted them onto the grass between Nick and me. Handful by handful, I excavated the hole as Nick sat like a stone.

And then I found what I was looking for, and tears welled up in my eyes. I grabbed Nick’s right hand with my left and pulled a handful of dirt out. I sifted again, and I dropped a ring into his hand. He worked it between his thumb and forefinger until he could see it was a dirty gold band.

“It was my mother’s. And her mom gave it to her when she married my dad. She’d always told me that she would give it to me when my time came.” A sob welled up in my throat, but I swallowed it. “It never did. And then she was gone. And you were never going to happen. So,” I gestured over the hole, “I buried my past so I could move forward.”

Nick pulled me to him, into his lap, dirt, wild hair, and all. He hugged me and rocked me. He kissed my forehead. Then he slipped me back to the ground and got down on one knee with my mother’s ring clasped between his thumb and forefinger. “Katie Connell, will you please marry me?”

Now it was right. “Yes, of course,” I said. “Yes, yes, yes.”

Nick put my mother’s ring on the third finger of my left hand and leaned his forehead against mine. A cold wet nose poked between our faces, and then a grubby little hand smacked Nick on the cheek.

I started to laugh. Once I started, so did Nick. He grabbed Taylor around the middle and held him against his side. I slipped my hand through his arm and we walked in lockstep back toward the house, the valley echoing behind us.