Riptide (13 page)

M
aggie spent the rest of the day going through the paperwork that she and David shared on wills, wishes and insurance. She talked to the insurance company about making arrangements for David’s cremation, as per his wishes, declined to answer her cell phone, and politely refused to speak to those people who decided to try one of her parents instead.

She also hugged her children a great deal, called the fire department three times to see if they had any news on the cause of the explosion, and was left with nothing other than that they were working diligently. She knew little about fire or explosions, but she did know a bit more about boats, and she and her father sat on the deck and discussed possibilities at length. The trawler carried a lot of diesel, but diesel was slow to ignite. Propane was much more sensitive, but David only had a large enough tank down below to fuel the galley.
 

Neither of them could recall if they’d seen any fireworks after that first, muffled
whump
. That moment inserted itself into Maggie’s mind hundreds of times that day, and she tried to make herself notice the sky in retrospect. But all she saw was David’s smile, and his wave, and all she could think was
Jump!
No matter how many times she remembered it, he never did.

Late in the afternoon, Gray came out into the little dining area near the front door, where Maggie sat with an uneaten sandwich and a cold cup of tea. Georgia was in Sky’s room, helping the kids fold some laundry she’d found to do. Maggie looked up as Gray sat down across the cypress table his father had built.

“Sweetheart, the kids want to come back to the house with us,” he said quietly. “There’s just too much of David here right now. But they don’t want to leave you here.”

“I know I should go with them, Daddy,” she said. “It’s not fair to ask them to stay, and it’s selfish to be away from them. I’m just so afraid that I’m finally going to come apart, and I can’t stand for them to see it.”

Gray nodded. “Why don’t you call Wyatt, Maggie?”

Maggie shook her head. “No.” She blinked back a sudden heat in her eyes. “Being with Wyatt didn’t feel like cheating before, but it does now.”

Gray took a deep breath, then sighed and grabbed both of her hands up in his.

“Let me tell you something you’re not ready to believe right now,” he said. “But I want you to remember it for when you are ready to believe it. David loved you and he wanted you to be happy. If that meant you being with Wyatt, well, he might not have liked it, but he wanted it for you. You do him a disservice if you ignore that.”

Maggie blinked again and looked away, out the living room window.

“I know you’re in pain, Maggie,” he said firmly. “But I know you hear me, too.”

He stood up, then came around and placed a hand on her shoulder, kissed the top of her head. She squeezed his hand.

“We’ll get some things together for the kids,” Gray said. “Your Mama left a pot of soup on the stove for you.”

A short time after her parents and children left, Wyatt called Maggie’s phone for the third time in an hour. She felt horrible for ignoring it, but she did anyway. A moment later, he texted her.
 

Pulling in with David’s truck.
 

Her chest tightened as she set down the phone, and she had just slipped into her flip-flops by the door when Coco started whining and leaping. By the time she got the door open, Maggie could hear the familiar, slightly hollow hum of David’s old Toyota pickup.

Coco nearly fell down the deck stairs as the truck pulled into the parking area in front of the house, a Sheriff’s cruiser behind it.
 

“Coco!” Maggie called, thinking she could warn her poor dog somehow, but Coco was beyond hearing. Stoopid flew out from under the house, but Coco’s excitement was too much for his nerves, so he veered off into the flower garden.

Maggie was at the bottom of the stairs when Wyatt opened the door. It took a second for Coco to process that the wrong man had climbed from the truck, but she liked Wyatt, and tried to look happy, even though her body wagged much more slowly.

Wyatt reached down and rubbed Coco’s head, then walked around to the front of the truck, where Maggie stood.

“I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to talk to anybody right now. Or me.” Wyatt put his hands on his hips. “But I couldn’t just pull up in David’s truck without warning you.”

Maggie swallowed hard and nodded. She found it hard to look him in the eye. On the one hand, she wanted to run to him. On the other, she wanted to insist that he shouldn’t be here, where she and David had conceived their children.

She peered around the truck and saw Dwight at the wheel of the idling cruiser. She finally looked up at Wyatt. “I keep calling the fire department, but they keep telling me they don’t have any news. Do you know what happened yet?”

Wyatt looked down at Coco, who was sitting at Maggie’s feet.

“Not yet,” he answered. He took off his hat and ran a hand through his hair, the way he did, then he looked at her. “Do you want me to stay for a while? I can get a ride back later.”

She was going to just say no, but he looked so concerned, she felt he at least deserved some honesty. “I do, but I don’t,” she said, and tried not to let it be hurtful. “I just need to be alone for a bit.”

He nodded, looked beyond her at the yard for a minute before looking her in the eye. “You know that I care. And you know where I am. When you need me,” he added.

Maggie nodded and wrapped her arms around herself, like she could hold herself back from just walking into his chest and hiding there. He looked at her for another moment, then put his hat back on and walked to the cruiser and got in.

Maggie watched them go, then stood and stared at the truck that David had bought while they were still married. She slowly, almost fearfully, walked to the driver’s side and looked through the open window. A photo keychain hung from the rear view mirror, the kids in it three years younger.
 

She jumped when she heard a trilling, then reached into her back pocket and answered the phone.
 

“Hello?”

“Maggie, it’s Larry,” said the old medical examiner.

Maggie swallowed hard. “Hello, Larry.”

“I wanted you to know, because I know you,” he started. “David died from severe concussive trauma to the brain. There was no water in his lungs. I hoped that this would bring you some comfort.”

Maggie closed her eyes.

“You couldn’t have saved him, even if you’d found him as soon as he hit the water. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Maggie said, and didn’t recognize the small voice. “Thank you.”

“I’m so very sorry, my friend. I truly am.”

Maggie blinked several times before speaking. “Do you know when—when he’ll be released?”

“I have most of what I need. Whatever arrangements you’ve made, he can be picked up as early as tomorrow afternoon.”

“Thank you. Larry.”

She hung up the phone and closed her eyes again. Coco jumped up and laid her paws on the door, could just get her snout to the window. Maggie saw her nose twitch, and she knew Coco picked up much more than she did; which was the faint scent of Jovan musk.
 

Maggie’s chest clenched, and she turned away from the window, slid down the door and sat in the dirt. Coco dropped to all fours and whined, nuzzled Maggie’s hand. Maggie put her arms around the dog’s shoulders and buried her face in Coco’s neck.

“Oh, Coco,” she said into her fur. “Daddy went away.”

L
ess than an hour later, Wyatt’s cruiser pulled into the driveway next to David’s truck.

Maggie was sitting on the deck. Beside her was David’s old guitar, the one he’d given to Sky and Kyle when Maggie had bought him a new one a few years back. Maggie had dragged it out of the corner of the living room and held it on her lap for a long time. She had heard
Waterbound
playing from it, heard David’s soft voice singing the words, as he had hundreds of times, at her request. It had always been her favorite. She’d heard it in her head, and wished that she had recorded him just once. She was suddenly afraid that she would forget how it had sounded.

Coco barreled down the stairs, and Maggie walked to the front deck. She watched Wyatt get out and walk to the bottom of the stairs.

“I’m sorry. I lied to you,” he said.

“About what?”

“Can I come up?”

“Yes,” she said, and she noticed that her hands were trembling on the rail. “Do you want some coffee?” she asked when he got there.

“If you have it made.”

“Yeah. Do you want to come in?”

“Okay.”

Coco followed the two of them into the kitchen, which suddenly seemed very small with Wyatt in it. He leaned up against the small butcher block island while Maggie got two cups down from the cupboard. By some kind of unspoken agreement, neither of them spoke until she had poured the coffee, added milk and two sugars to hers, milk and three sugars to his, and set it in front of him.

“Thank you,” he said without looking at her. She watched him take a sip, then put the mug down.
 

He finally looked at her, and she tried not to breathe too noticeably. “The fire department found a piece of a device in David’s bilge.”

Maggie felt something that had been warm and vulnerable inside her suddenly frost over. “What kind of a device?” she asked quietly.

“Some kind of a battery, hooked up to a cell phone. I’m not really sure. ATF has it right now.”

Maggie wrapped her hands around her mug to keep them from shaking. She stared at them as she took a deep breath.

 
“Do you know who he was working for before he quit?” Wyatt asked her.

“No,” she said to her mug. “We had a…we had an understanding. I didn’t ask, he didn’t tell, and I didn’t have to withhold.”

“Who do I start asking?”

Maggie thought, then shook her head slightly. “I don’t know. None of his friends were involved and he didn’t hang out with people who were. He kept it…he kept it separate.”

“What about his cousin?” Wyatt asked. Maggie looked up quickly. “I know about his cousin. Would he know?”

Maggie blew out a breath. “I don’t know. But let me go out there and ask him.”

“You can’t.”

“I can help, I know—”

“You can’t, dammit,” Wyatt snapped.

“Why not?’ she snapped back.

Wyatt held up a palm. “I need you to stop thinking like a grieving widow for a moment—”

“Is that a dig?” Maggie asked, incredulous, and hurt.

“Of course not! You’re in
pain
, Maggie! But I need you to think like Maggie the cop. Aside from it being a bad idea on several different levels, anything you learned would be problematic when it comes to evidence. Anything you touched or did would be tainted. Think about it. If we arrest somebody, do you want to see them walk out of court smiling when their case is dismissed?”

Maggie chewed on the corner of her lip for a moment. “No.”

“Even if it was okay, I wouldn’t let you anywhere near this case.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not stupid.”