Leaving Annalise (Katie & Annalise Book 2) (15 page)

At nine o’clock the next morning, someone was knocking on our bedroom door. I could not imagine what they were thinking. I kept my eyes firmly closed.

Nick moaned, but his hand sneaked out and slipped down to a personal area of mine. I gasped. He pulled me to him and whispered, “Please ignore them.”

“Just a minute,” I called to whoever was behind the door.

“OK,” Nick’s mom called in her soft, lovely voice, “but Taylor has breakfast in bed for you two sleepyheads.”

This announcement, made on the other side of a thin door with a flimsy thumb lock, did not seem to get through to my new husband. It seemed that a minute really would be all we would both need. I sank my teeth into his shoulder as the spasms ripped through me. He panted and held me so tight that I knew I would have fingerprints amidst the freckles on my pale white skin. Intense and wonderful.

“Mom, can you stall Taylor long enough for us to get decent?” Nick pleaded.

“Make it fast, or he’ll probably feed it all to the dog,” she said.

Nick raised himself up and smiled at me. “Good morning, beautiful wife.”

“Good morning, my love.”

“We’ll have to save the rest of the indecency for St. John.”

Kurt and Julie were staying with Taylor so we could leave for our honeymoon down island that afternoon. I got up and put on pajama pants and a tank top.

Nick got dressed and went to the door. He looked at me and nodded as he called out, “We’re starving. I wonder if there’s any way to get some breakfast around here.”

Giggles pealed behind the door. Nick threw it open, and Julie guided Taylor into the room. He was carrying a basket as big as he was, and Oso was on crumb patrol. Julie lifted Taylor and the basket up onto the bed.

“Taylor, did you do this for us?” I asked.

He nodded proudly.

“Thank you. You are such a sweet boy.”

We pulled out a red-and-white-checked tablecloth, a thermos of fresh-squeezed orange juice and two cups, buttery biscuits, bacon, and two of Taylor’s plastic bowls with steamed-up snap-on tops that appeared to hold scrambled eggs. I smiled at Taylor, who pointed to his grandmother.

Julie handed us two steaming cups of coffee and said, “We’re all out having our breakfast by the pool. Kurt’s guarding my food from the dogs until I get back, so I’d better hurry. We need to drop you at the seaplane at one, right?”

“Right,” we said in unison.

She picked Taylor back up. “Time for you and Oso to come play out by the pool.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Nick said.

The next few hours rushed by as we enjoyed our guests, showered, packed, and took Kurt and Julie through the hurricane checklist Rashidi had helped us put together. Running the Annalise household presented a test anytime, but even more so during hurricane season. Nick taught Kurt how to operate the critical systems: the cisterns and pump, the generator, and the solar-powered gate. I took Julie through maps to the gas station, hospital, and grocery store.

It was soon time to leave. Our wedding party walked us to the truck and Collin slapped Nick on the shoulder. “If you ever need anything at all, call.”

Emily kissed us both. “I’m taking credit for this, you know. Without me, you guys wouldn’t be here. I would accept, as a token of your appreciation, lifetime vacation privileges up here at Annalise.”

LuLu chimed in, “Me, too.”

“Done!” Nick said. “Collin, can I talk to you a minute?”

“She’s already giving you trouble?” Collin asked. I didn’t bother to sock him, but I gave him my best eye roll.

The others wandered off, leaving Nick’s parents with us and Collin.

Nick leaned toward Collin and said, “Listen, it’s really unlikely, but there’s a possibility Taylor’s father is on island.”

“He’s on the no-no list,” I said.

“My parents are already on the lookout, but I wanted to let you know, since you’ll be staying here a few more hours, and my parents will be gone.” Nick described Derek to my brother.

“No problem. Might be fun if he does show up while I’m here.” Collin grinned. No one will ever accuse him of hiding his light under a bushel basket.

We piled into the truck approximately on time, Kurt behind the wheel to familiarize himself with the route and Nick riding shotgun to issue manly instructions. We pulled to a stop in the parking lot of the seaplane base twenty-five minutes later. After we checked in, Nick’s parents hung around to have a snack with us at the café on the dock.

“That’s weird,” Nick said as we stood in line for beef patties.

“What’s weird?” I asked.

He thumbed his phone screen. “I have two missed calls. No voice mails.”

“Who from?”

“It says unknown. Maybe a well-wisher. Or a client.”

Or maybe it was Derek. There had been time enough for him to fly back to the island after meeting with his parole officer. Could he be calling on his way up to Annalise
?
But he wouldn’t call. Would he?

“They’ll call back if it’s important,” I said.

We settled at a table close to the water with our spicy beef patties and Nick’s phone rang again.

“Hello? Hello? Hello?” He shook his head. “The call dropped. Whoever it is, they’re persistent.”

Nick’s parents were talking about their own honeymoon sailing through the islands in Acadia National Park off the coast of Maine. Well, Julie was talking about it, anyway. Kurt mostly nodded, with an occasional “yup.” I kept one eye on Nick and his phone.

Our boarding call came over the loudspeaker and Nick’s phone rang again at the same time. I hugged and kissed his parents goodbye while he answered it. And then the hair stood up on the back of my neck and tiny prickles of shock raced up my scalp.

I turned to look at my husband. I couldn’t read his expression, but he put his hand over his free ear and walked away from us. His body was radiating anguish and channeling it straight to me.

“Katie? Are you all right?” Julie asked.

But I was moving toward Nick. I reached out to touch his back and my hand froze in midair, fearful of what it would receive when it closed our circuit. I laid my hand on him anyway.

He hung up, turned around, and slumped over into me. His face was pale.

“Derek? Taylor?”

“No,” he croaked.

“Your sister?”

He nodded into my shoulder.

“Two Marines are at Annalise,” Nick said hoarsely. “They asked us to come back up there and if I knew where to find my parents.” He raised his eyes to mine. “We’re listed as next of kin, Katie. This is very bad. Teresa told us anything short of death is handled with a phone call.”

“Oh my God,” I whispered. “I’m sorry, Nick, so sorry.”

“They said that they weren’t authorized to release information to me over the phone.”

I struggled to process the news. The timing was gruesome. It seemed to be hovering right outside the bounds of my reality, and if I didn’t let it be real, then it might not. But I knew it was.

“Your parents,” I said gently.

Kurt and Julie had moved in close to us, and they looked frightened. Nick started talking to them. I saw their lips moving, but I didn’t hear a word. It was like I’d tuned into a silent movie halfway through. I had just met Kurt and Julie and I didn’t know Teresa at all. I was sad for them, especially Nick, but I wasn’t part of their grief. They huddled together on the dock, holding each other as they sobbed. I gripped Nick’s hand.

It was a grim drive back to Annalise. When we got there, the Marines delivered the news officially to the Kovacs. Ruth took Taylor to her house and Rashidi shuttled Collin, Emily, and LuLu to the airport. Julie and Kurt retreated upstairs to lie down. I stuck close to Nick, trying to help. His pain was visceral to me. It carried me back to the loss of my parents. He didn’t say a word and I just kept holding tight to his hand.

That evening, I sat in the great room with Nick and his parents as they talked about what would happen next. We didn’t know much, only that Teresa had died after she stepped on a landmine on the night before our wedding. Obviously, there would be no honeymoon now.

Nick spoke. “One thing is for certain. We can’t let Derek get his hands on Taylor.”

Kurt responded in his broad Maine accent. “Can’t imagine he wants him.”

“It would sure cramp his lifestyle,” Nick said.

I wasn’t so sure they were right, but I stayed out of it. I was too new to the family to make waves.

Julie joined in. Her soft voice was weak, and grief had drawn her face in. “Don’t underestimate the influence of his parents. Taylor is their grandbaby.” She turned to me. “Katie, you’re a lawyer, what do you think?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I only learned enough about family law to pass the Texas bar exam. I have no idea, but I can look into it and research anything you guys need me to.” I was practically worthless in this. A total legal loser.

“Teresa named me Taylor’s godfather. That has to count for something,” Nick said.

This was news to me, and a game changer. Nick was Taylor’s godfather—not just his uncle, his
godfather.
In my mind, parents took care of children, so I had assumed until that very moment that Teresa’s parents would take Teresa’s child. But they wouldn’t. Nick would.
We would.
My mind whirled with the impact on our lives, on me. On forever.

I swallowed hard and tried to contribute, pulling from the little family law I knew. “Derek is Taylor’s father, so unless he signed away his parental rights, then his status as father may count more than Teresa’s wishes.”

Nick turned toward me. His eyes said, “Whose side are you on?” but his lips didn’t move.

I yanked my eyes away. My mind raced back to me, me, me. I hadn’t even had my time alone with Nick yet. When I married him, I hadn’t imagined myself driving Taylor to kindergarten and packing his car to send him off to college. I had pictured big family Christmas gatherings where I was the special Aunt Katie, and Teresa was grateful and looked up to me like the big sister she never had.

It was a lot to take in.

The room was spinning around me. I tried to nod, but it came out as a jerk. I knew that I should put my arms around Nick and promise him I would love and support him no matter what, that I would gladly raise Taylor as my own. I felt peevish and small. I opened my mouth like a fish out of water, and a silent distance stretched between Nick and me. It grew wider with every second, and when I looked into the gap between us, the water was roiling with wide-mouthed sharks, their teeth gnashing. Wider, wider, wider it stretched. I braved looking up again and Nick’s eyes bore into me.

And then the moment passed. The fish closed its mouth. My hands felt icy cold in my lap. Nick looked out the dark window at nothing.

I would tell him what he needed to hear soon. I would. But I couldn’t do it now.

The trip to Port Aransas, Texas, was an ordeal in a situation that was already difficult. Nick and Taylor, Kurt and Julie and I took one plane to San Juan, another to Dallas, another to Corpus Christi, then a ferry from the Texas mainland over to the island of Port A. It was a good warm-up for the next two difficult days of preparation, visitors, and Teresa’s funeral itself. Not to mention the trip to D.C. we would make almost immediately afterwards for the burial in Arlington National Cemetery.

People poured into Nick’s childhood home after the funeral to honor Teresa and her family. I was working in the kitchen, which overflowed with tuna casseroles, homemade breads, and jello-mold desserts we likely would never eat. I lifted a platter of deviled eggs off the yellowish-gold Formica counter and headed for the dining room.

On the way to the dining room, I stopped in the doorway to Julie’s conservatory. It probably would have been a parlor in another home, but here she taught her students and displayed her instruments, from the piccolo to the trombone. Biographies of famous musicians and stacks of sheet music were scattered about. I wondered if anyone would miss me if I hid behind her timpani.

I turned into the navy and red dining room and squeezed the tray of eggs into a small open space between a plate of cold cuts and a plastic grocery-store tray of wilted broccoli. On the other side of the table were an ice bucket, liters of soft drinks and fruit juices, and an array of liquor bottles. The organist from the church was perusing the selection. She straightened her pillbox hat and looked around. No one but me. She grabbed a plastic cup and the ice tongs and fished for cubes. Her hands were shaking.

Mine started to shake, too. I could help her. “I think I’ll have one of whatever you’re having, ma’am,” I would say, just to make her feel better. And then I would take only one tiny no-thank-you sip and pour the rest down the sink.

I turned away and closed my eyes. “No, Katie. No.”

I started counting, my lips moving as I went through the numbers. One, two, three, four. I kept counting. I became aware of classical music playing over a sound system, a dour classical piece I didn’t recognize. Slowly, the feverish yearning seeped out of my body. I counted higher. When I opened my eyes at fifty-seven, I was facing the china cabinet and its display of gold-rimmed plates with anchors in the centers. I had set my phone down on that cabinet earlier, and I reached around an enormous spray of lilies someone had brought from the funeral to grab it. Behind the lilies was a bouquet of roses in the darkest red I had ever seen. The name in block capitals on the card knocked the wind out of me: BART.

I yanked the card from its holder and ripped it into pieces. Why couldn’t he just leave me alone? My phone was sitting on the sheet music for “That’s All I Ask of You” from
Phantom of the Opera.
I picked it up and read my one message.

Ava: “Finish up your business and be back in time for Jump Up. Big things happening.” Ava was referring to the monthly street festival, although I had no idea what she meant. I thumbed through the
Phantom
music while I tried to think of how to answer her. I decided it could wait and returned to the kitchen.

Nick was blocking the doorway. He was holding on to Taylor with one hand as he leaned in, deep in conversation with a gray-haired man a head shorter than him. He’d introduced him to me earlier as his junior high football coach. I touched him on the shoulder and he moved aside so I could get through.

I caught Taylor by the other hand and said, “I’ll take him.”

Nick smiled at me, a smile I didn’t recognize and couldn’t read. It made me feel sad. “Thanks.”

I mustered a smile back, then swung Taylor in the air and caught a whiff. “Someone needs a new diaper.”

I went back to Nick’s old room to change Taylor on the bed. He looked up at Nick’s old surfboard hanging on the ceiling as I pulled his elastic-waist pants off and tickled his belly. He laughed, so I did it again.

“Gonnagetcherbellybutton,” I said.

Suddenly, I heard loud voices from the front of the house. I strained to listen and worked faster. Off with the old diaper. Wet wipes. Lots of them. My eyes watered as I bagged the mess and put on the new diaper. Taylor wriggled and chattered the entire time.

“Shhh, Taylor, let Katie hear.”

Running footsteps approached and Julie burst in, her face pale. She whispered, “Katie, bring him into my bathroom and shut the door. Keep him quiet. Come on now—follow me quickly.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

She put her finger over her lips.

I grabbed Taylor and hurried down the hall behind her. I moved him farther down my body so my shoulder muffled his giggles. We slipped into the master bathroom and Julie closed the door behind us.

“Derek is here. He’s demanding we give him the baby. Nick said he wasn’t here, so we have to keep him quiet.”

Fear wrapped icy fingers around my throat. “I’ve got it.”

I remembered Derek’s face, his scary voice and his knife, and I thought, Please, God, don’t let him hurt Nick.

Julie squeezed my hand and left. I wanted to be out there with my husband. WWMD, WWMD, WWMD. I looked around for a quiet way to entertain the boy. I found a stack of magazines and fanned them out in front of him. He grabbed a worn copy of
Plane and Pilot
circa 2004 and used his whole hand to flip and mangle the pages. It would hold him for about two minutes, if I was lucky.

The bathroom door burst open and I jumped to my feet. It was Nick, looking like he was one small ignition source short of a big explosion. His pupils were dilated and his irises dark brown. His olive skin leaned toward the green end of the scale. The scent of his anger nearly overwhelmed me, like sweat but sharper, like a cornered alley cat. But he was my alley cat. I dove at him, and he wrapped his arms around me.

His voice was strained. “He’s threatening to take Taylor. I want to kill him. I’ve never, ever hated anyone like I hate that
son of a bitch.
” He spat out the last word forcefully and his whole body convulsed against me. He stepped back and handed me a card. “His so-called attorney.”

“What did you say to him?” Taylor escaped the bathroom and ran back down the hall toward the sounds of people. I started to go after him until I heard Julie talking in her high-pitched grandma voice. He would be fine with her.

“I told him Teresa had appointed me as Taylor’s guardian and godfather, and that I wouldn’t hand Taylor over to him, now or ever. I don’t get it, though. He doesn’t even want a kid.”

But I remembered the man I’d met outside Annalise, the one who was concerned about his son sleeping in a girly bed. “We have to get you a lawyer,” I said. “I can help.”

So for the next hour, I made calls. Teresa’s burial in D.C. wasn’t for three more days, so we scheduled an appointment for the next morning with an attorney in Corpus Christi. Game on, for better or worse.

The offices of Attorney Mary Posey were nice, but not as plush as those of my old Dallas firm, Hailey & Hart. That meant we wouldn’t be paying for her image by the hour, which I appreciated. Her assistant, a squarish woman of indeterminate age, ushered us in with coffees, an air of competence, and a coloring book and crayons for Taylor.

Mary Posey said, “Derek’s attorney, Albert Garcia, already called and said Derek wants the boy. But what I think he really wants is the money.”

“What money?” Nick asked. “Teresa didn’t have any.”

“Teresa died while on active duty overseas for the Marines, so Taylor has a nice sum of money coming to him. At least the hundred thousand dollar death payment that Albert told me about. And there may be more.”

“Oh my gosh,” Julie whispered. Her hands gripped the purse on her knees.

Kurt pulled his lower lip.

“Let’s make a few calls and see,” Mary suggested.

Ten minutes later, Mary hung up the phone. “Taylor is the beneficiary of her SGLI policy. That’s a Servicemembers Group Life Insurance policy, and he gets another four hundred thousand under that. That raises the stakes a bit.”

Kurt spoke for the first time. “Derek’s family has money, but they cut him off a few years ago.”

Julie nodded. “Teresa said that was why he started selling drugs.”

Nick snorted through his nose. “I think he could have found a few other ways to get by.”

This was horrible. “His attorney could take his case on some kind of contingency fee basis,” I said. “They both would have plenty of financial incentive to fight.”

“While we pay by the hour until we run out of money,” Nick said.

“Well, yes,” Mary agreed. She ticked points off on her fingers. “When we talked on the phone yesterday, you said Derek’s name was not on the birth certificate. He never filed for any type of parental rights, so Teresa never gave him any. He had no relationship with Taylor. He did time for a drug-related offense.”

Nick growled, “He doesn’t deserve to be a father.”

Mary put both hands up and said, “I hear you, but he has points in his favor, too. We have to assume Derek truly is the father. The court will probably let him have visitation. I think they’ll give him time to show he can be a good father and develop a relationship with Taylor.”

Nick jumped up. “Visitation? That’s bullshit.”

“Maybe. But even if that’s the direction the court goes, the good news is that you don’t need to hand Taylor over to Derek unless and until a court orders you to do so.”

My mind spun like the end of a spool of film.