“The heat won’t bother me.”
She looked pained, as if she didn’t know what to say. For both his parents, Ham was an unfulfilled promise, someone they didn’t quite know how to include. Explain. Accept.
“No,” she said finally, “I suppose it wouldn’t.”
Pretending not to hear her, Ham detoured past the library, avoiding his father, and went out the back door, onto a terraced patio they seldom used. He walked to the edge of the kidney-shaped pool, its perfect, clear water shimmering blue under the late afternoon sun.
What had Bobby Tatro wanted in New York?
Why go to Juliet Longstreet’s apartment? Ham knew all about her and Ethan from their earlier exploits. She was a marshal. What did Tatro consider worth the risk that she’d catch him?
Had he acted on his own?
The last was Ham’s central question. In the days since his release, as he regained his health and grew stronger, less fearful, he found it more and more difficult to believe that Bobby Tatro had thought up, planned and executed Ham’s kidnapping all on his own. That its only purpose was financial gain.
The emeralds.
Ham stared down into the shimmering water, wondering what his mother would do if he peeled off all his clothes and jumped naked into the pool. Maybe that was what his parents did when no one else was around—went skinny-dipping. He smiled at the thought. But it didn’t do anything for the overwhelming guilt and embarrassment that had gripped him since Ethan had burst into his hut and rescued him. Ethan didn’t deserve to get sucked into the mess that was Ham’s life.
Now, home safe, everything felt wrong to him.
To his father, winning was everything. Johnson Carhill would do whatever he had to do to limit the effect of his son’s ordeal on him, his wife, their reputation and their money. Correction; damage control wouldn’t be enough. He’d want to come out ahead.
And as Ham well knew, the repercussions wouldn’t matter. Only getting his way.
The five-hour trip from Juliet’s apartment on the Upper West Side to Vermont was too long for Wendy to go without eating, but she refused to touch even the rice cakes Joshua had brought with him that morning. They were organic and vegan, but she said she wasn’t hungry. That much he understood. He wasn’t hungry, either.
It was dark when they arrived back at Longstreet Landscaping, the house lit, Spaceshot drumming up just enough energy to waddle out to greet them. One of Wendy’s goals during her stay with her grandparents was to help their overweight dog slim down.
But she didn’t move to get out of the truck, the tin with Teddy’s ashes cradled in both arms as she stared out her window at the wooden trailer of pumpkins.
Joshua turned off the engine. “Wendy?”
“I’m remembering his knife,” she said in a barely audible whisper, her voice calm, almost toneless. “There was blood on it.”
“Wendy…honey, I’m sorry.”
“The blood was still wet. It—it was Juan’s blood. I’d just talked to him.”
Joshua tightened his fingers around his truck keys, hating that his daughter now had such an image in her mind, hating his inability to erase it. “I can hook you up with someone to talk to about what you experienced.”
She shot him a look. “Does that mean you don’t want to talk to me?”
“I’ll listen to you anytime, Wendy. I just mean that there are doctors who can help someone who’s experienced a trauma—”
“I didn’t experience a trauma.” She whipped back around to her window, her shoulders stiff. “Juan did. He’s the one who’s dead.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Why should you be sorry? You didn’t kill him. If I’d only said something about the man in the diner. He knew my name. It was weird—I knew it was weird. If I’d only told Juliet—if I’d warned Juan someone might be spying on him—”
“It might not have changed a thing.”
“That’s what she said.”
Wendy pushed open her door and jumped out, running for the house.
Joshua couldn’t remember ever feeling so exhausted and damn helpless. He followed her up the driveway. His legs ached. He patted Spaceshot on the head. “You don’t have any answers, either, do you, old boy?”
But he could hear how haunted he sounded. His daughter’s wide-eyed trip to New York to see her aunt—her little act of rebellion, filled with optimism and possibilities—had changed her life forever.
At least the Longstreets, all of them, would understand that much. They’d seen their share of violence, accidents, traumas—they’d all had that moment of abrupt change, of lost innocence.
After a crisis, his mother liked to make chicken and dumplings, but when Joshua entered the warm kitchen, he saw that she’d dished up a plate of pasta primavera.
But Wendy had run into the half bath to throw up.
“It’s vegan,” she said, setting the plate on the table.