Storm Surge (17 page)

Liam lowered his arms to his sides. “I had a few things to take care of. They came up rather suddenly.”

“I understand.”

“Paige.”

She smiled. “Liam.”

He bent slightly from the waist so that his face hovered near hers. “I would kiss you now, but you’d probably melt like an ice cream cone all over the sidewalk.”

With a snort, Paige took a step away, fitting her fingers into his. “You hold yourself in pretty high esteem, do you?”

His laughter turned her insides to pudding. She wanted to throw him in her car and take him home, do things to him for which pudding was a very good consistency. Instead, she released his hand and hiked her purse back up on her shoulder.

“Do you have any interest in fireworks, Neighbor Gray?” she asked.

He twirled a skein of her hair around his finger and let it go. “Besides the kind you make?”

“Yes,” she said, suppressing an urge to kick him in the shins for the reference. “The kind that are generated for public display. Tonight. Here. Well, somewhere in this town.”

“So, this is like a date?”

“Exactly like a date.”

“Perfect. We’ll have dinner first?”

“Those were my plans, all by my lonesome. It will be so much nicer with you.”

Liam turned solemn. “Everything will be better, I promise you.”

She squeezed his fingers. “Don’t make promises like that. Blanket assurances in life don’t usually work out.”

“Okay. We’ll be better. How’s that?”

She heard the hitch in his voice and knew he had reservations. Fine. So did she. But this time, unlike any other, she was willing to take the chance.

A police unit pulled up in the street, followed by a second one. Paige dropped Liam’s hand and went to the nearest car to speak with Dan, Liam at her heels.

Dan leaned from the window, peering over his sunglasses. “Did you get a better look at him this time?”

Paige shook her head. “I only saw him from behind. But I recognized him. The way he moved. His body shape. The cut of his hair. You have to remember, I watched him walking away from me for quite a distance before I picked up the bookmark. Liam might have gotten a better look than I did today. He was in the drugstore when I went in. He saw the guy leave.”

Dan gave Liam the once over. The two men then nodded at each other like wary dogs.

“Stauffer,” said Liam by way of greeting. No handshake. None of the other civilities people normally engaged in. Their strained interaction was excessive. Teaching eighth grade kids should have educated her to the way of male tactics, but perhaps the kids needed to grow up a bit more to start behaving so immaturely.

“Gray. Did you see which way he went?”

“If I did,” Liam said, “I’d be on him already.”

The look Dan shot him was frankly disapproving. “Not your job.”

“Maybe not. But if the opportunity arises, I’m not letting him walk away.”

A muscle in Dan’s jaw twitched. “Did you get a look at him?”

“Just what he was wearing. Khaki pants, hole in the right rear pocket. A dark violet T-shirt with a logo across the shoulder blades. Said ‘Victory’ or something like that. I never saw his face.”

Paige’s eyes widened. She hadn’t even noticed the logo. “You’re observant,” she said.

“I’ve learned to pay attention.”

Dan surveyed the exchange. His eyes, barely visible to Paige behind his sunglasses, flicked back and forth between them to finally rest on Liam. “You saw all that, but you didn’t see which way he went once he got outside.”

Paige heard the swift intake of Liam’s breath at her shoulder. He didn’t bother to answer.

Dan picked up his radio, giving the description to the officer in the other vehicle, who began to cruise slowly down the street. “Did he look familiar to you?”

“No,” said Paige. “I told you that. I’ve never—”

“I was talking to your boyfriend, Paige.”

Paige shut up, too shocked to be offended. She turned to Liam. She could see Dan’s antagonistic behavior had affected him. Liam met Dan’s gaze in a steady, smoldering contest.

“Not at all,” he said.

Dan drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, shifting his focus to the crowd on the sidewalk. “I’d like you to come into the station, Gray, and talk to someone there. You might be able to add to Paige’s description so we could get a better overall sketch.”

To Paige’s surprise, Liam simply asked, “When?”

“The sooner the better.”

“I could be there in an hour or so.”

With a nod at both of them, Dan pulled away into the Fourth of July congestion. Liam took her hand and gave it a brief squeeze. “We’ll eat first? It’s a while until the fireworks start.”

“Sure,” she agreed, a little taken aback by his agreement to meet Dan at the station. She assumed he wanted her to go with him when the time came. “I’ve got a chair and a blanket in my car. Wasn’t sure which I was going to use.”

“You were really going alone?”

“Who do you think I would have gone with? Dan?”

He appeared to contemplate that for a moment, a mocking comment playing on his lips, but his expression changed, sobered. “No. I’m not worried about him. It’s the alone part that concerns me. You need to be careful.”

He kissed her then, as he’d promised, and she did nearly melt like frozen confection in the hot sun.

Paige sat in an uncomfortable blue plastic chair in the police station lobby. Her folded hands rested on her thighs, left thumb stuck inside the fist of the right. Dan had promised to keep Liam no more than a quarter hour. The minute hand had long ago passed the half hour mark and was moving up the left side of the clock face on the wall. Photos flanked the utilitarian timepiece on either side, community events at which the police had played a part. She recognized Dan in one and the dedication of the stone circle at Alcina Cove Nature Preserve in another. As the photo was filled with people and held a caption beneath, Paige rose and crossed the small foyer to see if any of those pictured might be Felicia Woodward.

Left from center, beside Alcina Cove’s mayor, stood the woman identified by the legend beneath as Felicia Woodward. The teenage girl of the yearbook photo remained evident in this older version, smiling as she shook hands with the professor who had discovered the standing stones beneath the encroaching forest. Paige could tell by the shot that Felicia had said something humorous because everyone but the three of them faced the photographer’s lens, both the mayor and Columbus gazing at Felicia with open laughter.

What had the woman’s son said? That she was wicked funny. Knowing her mother had possessed such a friend, a companion who had provided her joy and alliance, made Paige’s lips curl in a fondness as dear as if she already knew the woman. She would definitely return to the nature center to speak with Felicia Woodward—avoiding the stone circle, of course.

Remembering, Paige’s gaze strayed to the stones rising in eerie formation from the earth behind them. The photographer had captured a cool air mist circling around the rocks, floating low to the ground, drifting up and around the upright boulders here and there in a foggy caress. Paige reflected on the mythology of Alcina’s lovers transformed to stone by her once she’d finished with them. Paige had been a little like that. Not turning them to stone, of course, but turning them away, pushing them from her life, often without plausible explanation.

Paige, I worry about you.

I know, Mom. I worry about me, too.

Paige blinked to clear her vision of a memory overlapping the photo before her. She blinked again, slowly, deliberately, and stepped closer to the framed image. Coiled by fog and pressed against one of the stones, a dark figure stood, nearly blended into the myriad shadows of trees and undergrowth beyond the circle.

Footsteps sounded on the linoleum behind her. “Paige?”

Paige lifted her hand and tapped the glass with her fingernail. Liam stepped up to her shoulder, leaning close.

“Holy shit,” he whispered. “Is that—”

“Not a ghost,” said Paige. “It’s my dad.”

* * * *

Liam watched Paige pick at her nails in the front seat of his Jeep. An uneven color splotched her cheek like a hand slap. “I guess that was a shock,” he said. “You’ve probably been carrying him around in your head a certain way, and then to see him in everyday context threw you for a loop.” He waited. She didn’t speak. Liam turned the key in the ignition.

“Where are we going?” Paige asked.

“Over to the ball field. Or don’t you feel like staying for the display now?”

“No, I do. Sorry.” She straightened, turning to look out the side window and then ahead. “It’ll be fun.”

“You don’t quite sound like you believe that.”

She surprised him with a bolt of laughter. “Don’t mind me. I’ll snap out of it soon enough. Soon as those boomers start going off for sure. What do you think he was doing there?”

Liam steered around a man pulling a folded stroller out of the open door of a car. “I’m assuming you don’t mean the creep in the drugstore right now.”

“You assume correctly.”

“I don’t know. Came for the ceremony?”

“He looked like he was hiding.”

“Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. That photo is a snapshot of an instant in time. He could have been checking out the circle and something the mayor said caught his attention and he came closer to listen. Paige, you can’t judge anything about your father’s character through that one photograph.”

“I’m not.”

She spoke with particular emphasis. He wondered how much she remembered about her father from when she was young. Enough, he supposed. But sometimes people weren’t quite what you thought they were. Memories could be colored by misperception, by interpretation, by the influence of others.

“We can avoid the crowds if you’d rather. There’s a place we used to go… People will be there, but not like at the ball field. We could even watch from the comfort of the Jeep. What do you think?”

She agreed, reaching into the small cooler she’d transferred over from her car. With a smile, she handed him a bottle of water, twisting the cap off before she did so. Once she’d grabbed her own, she drank thirstily for several seconds before speaking. “So, were you any help to Dan with his sketch?”

Liam set his water in the pocket on his door. “I suppose.”

She shot him a sideways glance. “Does he have ideas he’s not telling me about?”

“He has ideas not worth telling you about.”

Paige snickered. “Suspicious of everything, that guy.”

“That he is. Nature of the job, I guess.”

“Diligence.”

“Whatever.”

Paige squeezed his arm. “He suspects you of something, I’m guessing.”

“What makes you think that?”

“He told me I should talk to you about all of this.”

Liam’s hands tightened on the wheel. “That makes no sense. Did he think I broke into the cottage?”

“No,” Paige answered. “He thought you were less than truthful, though. I, however, trust you implicitly.”

Liam experienced a sudden tug of tension at the base of his skull. “Do you really, Paige? Even with all my secrets?”

She shrugged. “Let’s say I’m starting to. And we all have secrets.”

He wasn’t ready for that degree of trust. Didn’t deserve it or want it. Because he knew how much more she would hurt if he failed her. If? When.

“Liam?”

He said nothing, swinging the Jeep left and off the road up a dirt track. Sentinel Hill was more like a wide knoll rising unexpectedly out of the surrounding landscape and providing an unassailable ocean and town view from its peak. The crown had weathered over millennia to a plateau, making a perfect spot for camping or parking a vehicle to stargaze or indulge in the types of things one did in the dark with another person. Although not exactly around the corner from his hometown, he’d driven up for parties with his buddies on weekends as a teenager and with high school dates. Those times had been on his mind when he suggested the spot to Paige. Driving at a snail’s pace up the worn lane, he thought of Alice.

Not a place for intimacies with another woman. He hadn’t been expecting Paige to leap into the backseat with him as if they were sixteen, but there’d been a passing fantasy. It was gone now.

As they drove onto the hilltop, Paige looked around. “What is this place? I don’t think I ever knew it existed.”

Liam lowered his eyes as he pulled up the brake on the Jeep, studying her hand still lying on his arm. Somehow, with that statement, he felt infinitely better. The idea she might have been here engaging in the same type of activities he’d once enjoyed had, ridiculously, made him jealous.

* * * *

The first rocket went up about half past nine, shooting brilliant white stars across the sky. Paige forgot she’d been about to pass the bag of chips back to Liam and clutched the crinkling paper sack to her chest.

“You were really going to eat all this stuff you brought by yourself?”

“Yep,” she said, “I really was.”

In the dark, she heard her own
oohs
and
aahs
echoed by the watchers gathered on the hilltop. She settled back against the angled seat with the intent of not looking away from the sky until the finale. When the second, screaming whistle rent the night, Liam leaned across and kissed her on the mouth, pulling away with the bag of chips in his fist.

“You taste like barbecue,” he said, “and salt.”

“So do you. Funny how that works. No surprises later, then.” She grinned at him.

He left her to her enjoyment after that, the fingers of one hand entwined around her own, the other firmly engaged in finishing off the barbecue potato chips with the occasional pause to fish the water from the door. Every boom reverberated in her chest. The sky above the small ballpark rained color and transformation in dazzling pyrotechnic skill. Paige didn’t anticipate the grin leaving her face before morning, especially when Liam’s hand tightened around hers. She glanced over at him for a second. His focus was not on the display or on her, but caught by something outside the Jeep’s passenger side. With a catch in her throat, Paige swung around to her open window.