The Homecoming (5 page)

“I’m sorry.”
Damn
. She should’ve called once she arrived on the scene. Didn’t she know, better than most, how a cop’s often routine work could turn deadly? “I didn’t have any details when dispatch called. By the time I got out to the Douchett house, I didn’t want to risk waking you up to let you know what was happening. In case you had surgery in the morning.”

“Well, I don’t. And even if I had, I wouldn’t have been able to sleep.”

The tone was familiar. Kara couldn’t count how many times she’d heard it back in high school when she’d tried to sneak into the house after curfew.

“Besides,” Faith said, “I’ve been dying of curiosity about what that Douchett boy’s got himself into now.”

“He’s not a boy anymore, Mama.”

During his time away from Shelter Bay, Sax Douchett had definitely turned into a man. Since she hadn’t yet made a decision about whether or not to get personally involved with him by taking Trey over to play with the dog she’d yet to see, Kara decided not to share his invitation with her mother.

Nor did she want to even get into the possibility that the town’s former bad boy might actually have a date in mind. An idea that proved even more terrifying than facing off against a gang of drug dealers armed with automatic weapons.

She’d started falling in love with Jared when they’d met on the playground when she was eight years old. A childhood friendship had slipped into teenage love as easily as slipping into a warm bath, then deepened as they’d become lovers, then man and wife.

Thinking about it on the drive back from the coast, Kara realized the pitiful fact was, she didn’t possess a single dating skill.

“And Sax didn’t get himself into anything.” She picked up the conversation, ignoring the low hum of nerves. “His dog found a bone that, while it hasn’t been tested, definitely appears to be human.”

Unlike many women might have, Faith didn’t so much as flinch at that news as she poured the tea into the cups. She did, however, wince as Kara stirred in two spoonfuls of sugar. “Do you think someone could have been murdered? Here? In Shelter Bay?”

“It’s impossible to say. The bone looked old, though. My bet is that it’s probably from someone who drowned. Maybe on a boat that sank.”

Taking her cup with her, Kara went over to the counter and took a loaf of bread from the keeper. She’d learned long ago that making her son’s lunch before going to bed made for an easier morning.

“I ran into Sherry Archer at the salon this morning,” Faith said.

Sherry Archer had been head cheerleader Kara’s senior year. She remembered her as having a lot of hair and bonded teeth. After marrying, then divorcing a wealthy mill owner, she’d taken up selling real estate, and, according to her mother, was as generous with her favors now as she’d been when screwing her way through half the football team back in high school.

Which had Kara wondering if Sherry had been waving her pom-poms at Sax. Then she assured herself it was none of her business whom the former SEAL shared his bed with, since, while she was willing to consider some sort of casual friendship solely for Trey’s sake, she had no intention of tangling any sheets with the man.

“And?”

“And she pushed one of her fancy, gilt-edged business cards on me. To give to you.”

“To me? Why on earth would she do that?”

“So she can help you find a new home.”

Kara glanced around the kitchen she’d grown up in. “I have a home.”

“You’re an adult. Maybe you’d have an easier time getting on with your life if you weren’t living with your mother.”

“Is that you speaking? Or Sherry?”

Her mother frowned without furrowing her forehead, something she’d always somehow managed to do even before anyone had thought to invent Botox. Despite her being fifty-eight years old, her mother’s complexion, like everything else about the woman, neared a perfection Kara had years ago given up ever achieving.

“She might have a point,” Faith said, dodging the direct question as she lifted the cup to her lips. “Two women in one house isn’t always the easiest living environment.”

Which was true enough. Especially given that this immaculate house, with its antiques and crystal collection, definitely wasn’t kid- friendly. Just last week Kara had watched her mother physically cringe after witnessing a Hot Wheels demolition derby taking place on her waxed-to-a-mirror-sheen living room floor.

“I think the situation is working out well.” Again she wondered if this was her mother’s way of suggesting she and Trey move out. “At least for now. And I’d say that even if you weren’t proving a huge help with Trey.”

“I’m his grandmother. And if I weren’t here, you’d simply find someone else. Like that nanny you hired in California.”

Kara resisted pointing out that while she had been growing up, her own mother had spent more time at the hospital than at home, leaving Kara to the care of their live-in housekeeper.

“But Marguerite wasn’t family.” Trey’s nanny had been a warmhearted, caring immigrant forced to leave her own three children back home in Honduras with relatives while she took care of Kara’s son for nine hours a day. Which had always left Kara feeling a little guilty. “And anyone I hired here wouldn’t be, either.”

Kara spread a thick layer of peanut butter on the bread. If left to her son, the entire food pyramid would consist totally of PB and J. He’d begun eating it every day for lunch, since, unlike in his former school, peanut products weren’t banned at Shelter Bay elementary. “Sherry suggested you needed space.”

“Sherry’s wrong.” Grape jelly, which was the only kind Trey would eat these days, went on the other piece of bread. “Besides, this place isn’t exactly a cottage.” It was, with the exception of the stone- fronted Tudor McMansion Sherry had won in her divorce, the largest house in Shelter Bay. “We’ve tons of space.”

“She also said, in front of half my book club, who were all there getting their roots done for Sax Douchett’s welcome-home parade, that you and I are acting as codependents, keeping each other from moving on with our lives.”

“She’s not only wrong—she’s an idiot. What the hell does that mean, anyway?” Kara slapped the pieces of bread together with more force than necessary, leaving fingerprint dents in the surface. “I hate it when people, especially people who have no earthly idea what they’re talking about, say that.”

“It’s not as if I’ve spent the past six months wearing black crepe and hiding away in my home,” Faith agreed briskly as she began brushing bread crumbs off the shiny black granite counter into her palm. “I was back at the hospital the day after your father’s funeral. And haven’t missed a day of work since then.”

Nor shed a tear, from what Kara had been able to tell. And couldn’t she identify with that?

“You’ve always been a pillar of strength,” she said now, shaking off the memories of those dark, depressing days when she’d struggled to be strong for the precious son she and her husband had made together. “Which is only one of the things I admire about you.”

After dumping the bread crumbs into the garbage disposal and sending them down the drain, Faith glanced back over her shoulder. “You admire me?”

“Of course. Who wouldn’t? You’re a remarkable woman.”

“You were always your daddy’s girl.” Kara detected what sounded like a surprising hint of hurt in those words. “After all, you
did
choose to follow him into law enforcement. Even taking over his job as sheriff after the accident.”

Which was definitely not something that Kara had ever considered doing. But she’d also never foreseen having her husband murdered. Or, twelve months to the day after Jared’s death, being nearly killed herself during what should have been a routine traffic stop.

Nor had she expected, when returning to Oregon for her father’s funeral, to feel a tug of emotional cords to this place she’d thought she’d broken once she’d become a military wife only weeks after her high school graduation.

Which was why, when the mayor had approached her at the funeral supper and asked her to temporarily fill in until they could find someone to take big Ben Blanchard’s job, she’d accepted.

That had been six months ago. And so far, from what she’d seen, no one was out beating the bushes searching for anyone else to take her badge.

“I never planned to go into police work. But with Jared deployed so much, I needed a job, and in the beginning, getting a job as a police dispatcher was not only something I knew how to do, but I could work while Trey was asleep.”

Then it had just sort of escalated from there when she’d gotten an opportunity to go to the police academy and graduate to patrol duty.

“And my following in Dad’s footsteps doesn’t mean I don’t admire all you’ve achieved. But even if I hadn’t gotten pregnant with Trey I never would’ve had the patience to go through college back when I was younger. Let alone med school like you did.”

Despite her graduating with honors, all she’d really wanted to do was become Mrs. Jared Conway. During Jared’s final deployment, she’d managed, by cobbling together credits from community college, online courses, plus night school, to earn a degree in criminal justice.

“Besides, I think there’s sometimes an easier bond between fathers and daughters and mothers and sons because they’re different genders. Jared was always Trey’s hero, but in many ways Trey was closer to me.”

“Perhaps because your husband chose to spend so many years in the military, playing soldier all over the world instead of stepping up to the plate as the child’s father,” Faith snapped uncharacteristically.

Then immediately she held up a slender hand that looked as if it belonged more at home on the keys of the ebony grand piano she liked to play in the evenings after work than wielding a scalpel with such skillful precision as a neurosurgeon.

“I’m sorry. That was thoughtless.”

“But true. To a point.” Kara slipped the sandwich into a Baggie, which she put into Trey’s Spider- Man lunch box. “I loved Jared from third grade and never had a single doubt he loved me back. But I also realized, during our first year of marriage, that I’d never be the center of his universe. That the Marines would always be his mistress.”

“I don’t believe I could have accepted that,” Faith surprised her by admitting. Her mother had always appeared to be the most independent woman Kara had ever met. “At least your father was already a Vietnam vet when we met, so I wasn’t forced to make that decision.”

Kara shrugged. “Every marriage is different. Military marriages are a world unto themselves, but as the saying goes, the only thing tougher than a U.S. Marine is his wife.”

It still hurt. Even worse was the all-too-familiar guilt as she recalled their argument the day her husband, who’d survived tours in both Afghanistan and Iraq, died. How could she have foreseen that those angry words she’d thrown at him as he’d left for the police station would be the last he’d ever hear from her?

They’d had their problems. Serious problems Jared had brought back home with him from the war that had escalated, endangering their marriage. The same skills that had made him a warrior—the ability to lock emotions away—had eroded away any sense of intimacy in their marriage.

But, just when Kara had thought she’d reached the end of her rope, he’d left her a voice mail message before going out on patrol that day to assure her that she and their son were the most important, valuable people in his life. And, because he honestly wanted to save their marriage, he said, as soon as his shift was over he was going to call the VA and make an appointment to get some help for the PTSD that had been keeping him from sleeping and making him too edgy.

Unable to believe that they wouldn’t have worked things out together, as they’d always done in the past, Kara forced her mind back to happier memories.

“Besides, there’s nothing sexier than a guy in uniform,” she said. Or out of it, with that ripped warrior’s body. “And watching Jared run up and down the beach in those red PT shorts was definitely a perk.”

“The first time I saw your father sitting on top of that police horse in his blue uniform during Portland’s Waterfront Blues Festival, I fell like the proverbial ton of bricks.”

Faith sighed at the memory. Then she turned away, but not before Kara saw her pressing her fingers against her eyes.

How strange that the first thing that she and her mother might have ever had in common would turn out to be widowhood. Especially since the former socialite who’d been born into a family of Philadelphians whose roots harked back to the original Quakers had seemed determined to get through the grieving process in her own stoic Main Line way.

Kara imagined that there must be women somewhere out there who had uncomplicated, easy relationships with their mothers. She was not one of them.

Faith Hart Blanchard had never been one to indulge in mother-daughter confidences. She’d always kept her thoughts to herself and had encouraged Kara to do the same.

“When Jared was killed, I was afraid that if I allowed myself to cry, I’d never be able to stop. Like one of those widows in the tragic myths whose tears filled entire seas.” It was something Kara had never admitted to anyone. She decided it was only the lateness of the hour and this odd, unaccustomed near intimacy with her mother that had her saying it out loud now.

“When Jason accidentally slew Cyzicus, after the ruler had welcomed the Argonauts with a banquet, Cyzicus’s wife’s tears flowed all year round,” Faith murmured.

Rather than major in the sciences as an undergraduate, like so many neurosurgeons, her mother had gravitated toward liberal arts. With an emphasis on the classics. Proving herself to be a true Renaissance woman, along with being a practicing surgeon she was also administrator of Shelter Bay Memorial Hospital.

She turned around and met Kara’s eyes. “But Cyzicus’s widow killed herself from grief.”

“That was fiction.” Kara wondered if her mother could possibly be considering suicide. She certainly had the medical means, if she were so inclined. But the idea, so alien to the other woman’s suck-it-up Yankee nature, was impossible to wrap her mind around. “Real life is more complicated. Besides, we’re made of tougher stock, you and I.”