On Lavender Lane (45 page)

Marine notification officers stayed with families for as long as was needed, which meant visiting the woman at the hospital after she’d given birth. While showing off the baby boy who’d never know his father, she’d confessed that her dead husband sometimes still visited her at night and they’d make love.

When he’d been ten years old, his family had taken a vacation road trip that had included a visit to Little Big Horn Battlefield National Monument. Having felt the lingering warrior spirits, J.T. wasn’t about to discount her story of the ghostly visits. In fact, as he accepted the white bag with the blue wave and store name on it, he wondered if perhaps he was turning into a ghost himself. If the bookstore owner reached out to touch him, would her hand go right through his body?

Since that memory made him thirsty, on the way back to Bon Temps, his brother Sax’s Cajun restaurant, where he’d been staying in the office, J.T. dropped into the VFW hall. The heads of various game animals still hung on knotty pine walls while a snarling grizzly continued to stand over a jukebox that offered up mostly country.

While Trace Adkin’s rumbling baritone sang about a soldier who’d died and met up with his grandfather, who was also buried at Arlington National Cemetery, J.T. put the bookstore bag on the peanut shell–covered floor and took a stool. “I’ll have a Bud.”

The bartender, who’d shot the bear during R & R after participating in Operation Just Cause in Panama, lifted a brow. “Little early, isn’t it?”

“Since when did Navy frogmen become the beer police?”

“Just saying…” The former SEAL twisted off the cap and put the bottle on the ancient bar, which had been carved with initials and symbols of various units going back to World War II.

“Well, don’t.”

The ice-cold beer went down smooth and took the edge off the hangover that had continued to linger during his run. After polishing it off, he tossed some bills on the counter, picked up the book, and left. He did not say good-bye. Neither did the SEAL.

Maybe he’d turned as invisible as he felt.

Or maybe not.

“Where the hell have you been?” his brother Sax demanded when J.T. walked in the door at Bon Temps and found both his brothers waiting for him.

He tossed the bag onto a table. “And that’s any of your business why?”

“Because you’re our baby brother,” Cole, the eldest, said.

“I haven’t been a
baby
for a helluva long time. And where I go and what I do isn’t any of your damn business.” He went behind the bar and pulled a bottle of Full Sail IPA out of the cooler.

“That’s what you think.” Sax snatched the bottle away before he could open it. “Everyone’s been walking on eggshells around you, waiting for you to settle back in. But it’s
been six weeks of your drinking up my profits, and you’re still spooking everyone in town—”

“Not to mention worrying Mom and Dad sick,” Cole broke in.

J.T. thrust out his jaw when he wanted to lower his head in shame at that unwelcome news. “Low blow, bro.” He rubbed his stubbled face, trying to remember how long it had been since he’d shaved.

Sax heaved a long, weary sigh. Raked his hands through his hair. “Look, we both know it’s not easy.”

“I had nightmares,” Cole volunteered. “Once I even grabbed Kelli by the throat while we were sleeping. Scared her nearly to death.”

“And I had ghosts,” Sax said. “Not just memories, but real ones who talked to me and followed me around for a while. Which, by the way, no one but Kara, Cole, and now you know about, and I’d like to keep it that way. But, like I said, we understand. So if you’ve got PTSD issues, we’re here to help you get help. Before things get worse.”

“Thanks. But I don’t have PTSD.” He’d read all the symptoms and none of them had said anything about becoming a ghost himself. “And I don’t need any stupid intervention.”

He was just exhausted. And weighted down with a deep-to-the-bone sadness he couldn’t shake off.

When he tried to snatch the bottle back, Sax moved it out of reach.

Frustrated by this entire situation, J.T. lunged.

Sax dodged, threw down the beer and connected with a strong left hook to the chin that caused bells to ring inside J.T.’s throbbing head. Which didn’t stop him from jumping on Sax.

“Trust a damn SEAL frogman not to fight fair,” he said as he took another blow that had him staggering. As his knees buckled, he dragged Sax down to the floor, where they rolled, fists flying, elbows swinging.

Cursing like the Marine he was, Cole grabbed J.T. by the shirt and jerked him to his feet. “That’s enough.”

“The hell it is.” At least he wasn’t feeling dead anymore. Every atom in J.T.’s body was in battle alert mode. “He never would’ve gotten that first hit in if he hadn’t cheated and if I’d been totally sober.”

“Oh, we can take care of that problem,” Cole said. He grabbed J.T. under the arms. “You take the kid’s legs,” he told Sax. “A swim should sober him up quick enough.”

He’d definitely lost his edge. There’d been a time when it would’ve taken a helluva lot more than two guys to pick him off his feet.

J.T. cursed and kicked as they carried him out the door and unceremoniously threw him into the bay, which was cold enough to have his balls going up into his throat.

He had just sputtered to the surface, determined to take them both on, when he saw Sax’s fiancée standing on the dock.

“I thought you boys would’ve outgrown this stupidity by now,” she said.

“He started it,” both Sax and J.T. said at the same time.

She looked up at the drizzling sky as if seeking patience.

“Pitiful,” she muttered. “You’d think three grown men, one of whom is about to become a father”—she shot a hard look at Sax—“would have better things to do than get into brawls. Want to give me one reason why I shouldn’t run you all in for disturbing the peace?”

“We were only trying to sober the kid up,” Sax said, sounding, J.T. thought, uncharacteristically chastened.

“That’s another thing.” She turned to J.T. “You’ve been drunk for six weeks.”

“Not drunk…merely not entirely sober,” he said, amending his statement when she gave the cop stare he imagined she used on perps when trying to get them to confess. Which, in this town, where nothing exciting ever happened, probably involved teenagers bashing mailboxes or
spraying grafitti on the water tower. He boosted himself out of the water and onto the dock. “And I haven’t been driving.”

“I know. I’ve received reports. You’re starting to scare tourists, the way you’re constantly running around in those combat boots.”

“I couldn’t run if I were that drunk.” Though standing upright on the floating, bobbing dock wasn’t as easy as it should have been.

She shook her head. “You know the trouble with you, J. T. Douchett?”

“No.” But he had no doubt the former Shelter Bay High School valedictorian was about to tell him.

“You need something worthwhile to do with your time.” Her tone suggested she didn’t consider running and drinking worthwhile pursuits. “And fortunately for all of us, the solution just came to me.”

“What?”

“You may not have read the flyers tacked up all around town, but Shelter Bay’s holding its first film festival. And none other than Mary Joyce is going to be the guest of honor.”

“Good for Shelter Bay. And who’s Mary Joyce?”

“Jeez,” Sax said. “What planet did the Marines assign you to for the past three years?”

“I’ve been a bit occupied.”

“She’s only the hottest actress in Hollywood,” Cole said.

“She’s an Irish movie star who plays the queen of the selkies in a blockbuster series,” Kara added.

“And a selkie is?”

“A seal woman,” Sax said, his tone thick with disgust at having such an apparently boneheaded brother. “You know, like a mermaid.”

“But hotter,” Cole said.

“I’ll refrain from telling your wife that you keep coming back to that,” Kara said dryly. “Anyway,” she said to J.T.,
“she’s also acquired a crazy following of fans who dress up like selkies and reenact scenes. I’m assured they’re harmless, but since my department doesn’t have the manpower to handle additional security, I’m deputizing you to act as her bodyguard and keep them at bay with that hard, mean stare they teach all you Marines in basic training.”

“No way.”

“Way.” She folded her arms across the front of her starched khaki shirt. “Trust me, J.T.—you may have been a big bad Marine, but do you really want to mess with a hormonal, pregnant sheriff who’s armed and carries her own handcuffs?”

“Plus, there’s the fact that if you upset my woman,
I’ll
have to shoot you,” Sax warned on something close to a growl. Although J.T. didn’t believe for a minute his brother would follow through on the threat, he thought back again on that pregnant woman he’d bought the sheets for and felt his resolve crumbling.

“Well,” she asked. “Do I hear a volunteer?”

Damn. He’d had drill instructors who weren’t as tough as Sheriff Kara Conway. Knowing when he was outnumbered, J.T. managed, just barely, to stand at attention. Then snapped a salute. “Aye, aye, ma’am.”