Chapter Nineteen
“What happened?” Connor almost leapt over his desk in his hurry to get to her side. “Did someone hurt you?”
“It’s my parents.”
Connor frowned. “Someone threatened your parents?”
“I did. And then I locked them in a room in their house and told them to talk to each other.”
“That doesn’t sound like a crime to me.” Connor closed the door on his nosy staff and guided Marissa to the chair in front of his desk.
“My dad was threatening to call 911 because I took away his tech toys. His iPad and iPhone. I made sure there was no landline in the room and neither had their cell phones. It’s not like I plan to lock them up there for days.”
“How long do you plan on locking them up?”
“A couple of hours.”
“What if they need to use the bathroom?”
“There’s one attached. The bedroom used to be my sister’s. My parents put a lock on the outside of the door when she was thirteen and started sneaking out when she was grounded. The lock was still there and I used it.”
“Okay, just calm down and catch your breath.”
“I shouldn’t be bothering you with this,” she said. “I know you’re busy working on the vandalism case.”
“We solved it.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. It’s a long story. I’ll tell you later. Let’s get back to your parents. What made you…” He paused, searching for the right word.
“Go off the deep end?”
He nodded.
“It was them,” Marissa said. “They were driving me crazy. My mom called and demanded I drop everything and go over there. She said it was an emergency. So I get there and find the two of them bickering. I tried to reason with them but they didn’t want any part of it. They refused to listen to me. So I sort of conned them into going upstairs with me to my sister’s room. That’s where I confronted them.” She drew in a deep breath. “I’m telling you, you’re lucky your parents live in Chicago.”
He squatted in front of her and reached around her to rub her back reassuringly. “I know.”
“At first I thought maybe they were trying to con me into meeting you the way your mom and grandmother did. I called you to warn you but it went to voice mail.”
“I haven’t had time to check my messages,” Connor said.
“That’s okay. I shouldn’t be bothering you with this. It’s just going to increase the talk about us.”
“Who cares?” He looked over to glare at Ruby Mae, who was peeking through the open blinds on the glass partition window into his office.
“I don’t want you to get in trouble because of me,” Marissa said.
“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “What about your parents?”
“I’m tired of worrying about them,” she said. “I mean, I love them but they were driving me crazy.”
“How long ago did all this happen?”
She checked her watch. “About two hours ago. I went right home from their house but then I started thinking about it and panicked and came here. I wouldn’t put it past them to write out a sign reading CALL POLICE and hold it up to the window or something. The windows in the room have been painted shut for a few years now so I knew they couldn’t scream or anything. What if there’s a fire?” She grabbed hold of Connor’s arm. “It’s dangerous to leave them in there. I shouldn’t have done that. I’m a terrible daughter.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am. I’ve made a mess of things. Again.”
“What do you mean, again? You’ve locked up your parents before?”
“No. I meant with relationships.”
“I don’t know.” He smoothed her hair away from her face. “I think our relationship is pretty damn awesome.”
“Do we have a relationship?”
“Yeah, I think we do. And I want to be more than just your rebound guy.”
“You do?”
He nodded.
Marissa realized Connor was already more than her rebound guy. When in trouble, seek shelter. When she’d panicked about her parents, she’d sought him out. Connor, not Jess or Deb. He was the one she’d come to.
She didn’t even realize that she had her cell phone clutched in her hand until she felt it vibrate. The text message read:
urgent, call me now
“It’s my sister,” Marissa said.
“Go ahead.” Connor stood and took a few steps back to prop his hip on his desk.
Marissa called her.
“I just walked in on Mom and Dad locked in my old bedroom.” Jess sounded freaked out.
“Were they fighting?”
“No, they were half naked on my old bed and doing the nasty.”
“What?”
“I’m telling you, they were about to have S-E-X.”
“Why are you spelling it?” Marissa said. “You’re usually liberal about that subject.”
“Not when our parents are doing it. What did you say to them?”
“I locked them in the room and told them to be nice and talk to each other. I told Dad to pretend Mom was the Egyptian queen Nefertiti. I told Mom to pretend he was Jon Bon Jovi.”
“What did they say?”
“They both claimed they didn’t have that much imagination.”
“Clearly they do have that much imagination,” Jess said. “I may be traumatized for life by what I saw.”
“So they weren’t fighting? They were getting along okay?”
“Hello,” Jess said. “What part of they’re having sex did you not understand? Of course they were getting along. Enough about that. I need to talk to you.”
“You are talking to me.”
“No, I mean face to face. Are you home?”
“No, I’m at the police station.”
“What did you do?” Jess said. “Crash another town event?”
“No.”
“So the rumors about you and Hottie Sheriff are true. Are you with him right now?”
“Yes, but I’m leaving. He has work to do.”
Marissa saw Connor raise an eyebrow at her comment.
“Meet me at your place in fifteen minutes,” Jess said before disconnecting.
“Everything okay?” Connor said.
Marissa nodded. “My sister…uh…went to the house and unlocked the door so my parents are free now.”
“And they’re okay?”
Marissa nodded again.
“Good,” Connor said. “How about I stop at your place after work and fill you in about the vandalism case? I’ve still got a few things to tie up here yet.”
“Sure. That sounds fine.” She quickly stood. “I’ll see you later then.”
The second Marissa opened the door and stepped out of the office, the conversations stopped and all eyes turned to her. She wished she could think of some brilliant and sassy comment like the kind Jess would come up with, but her mind went blank. Instead she kept her head held high and walked out of the police station. Okay, so she may have walked at a fast-almost-jogging pace but she had to get to her apartment to meet her sister.
Jess arrived at the same time Marissa did. “What did you want to talk about?” Marissa asked as she let her in.
“You.” Jess opened the fridge and grabbed two Vitamin Waters. She opened one her for herself and handed the other to Marissa. “Ever since you told me about how you can’t dance, it’s been bugging me.”
“Bugging you?”
“Yeah. So I’ve been trying to figure it out. First off, let me say that it wasn’t my fault,” Jess said.
“What wasn’t?”
“You not being able to dance.”
“I never said it was your fault.” Marissa sat on the couch and Jess joined her there. Jess kicked off her sequined flip-flops and curled one leg beneath her in her customary pose. Marissa kicked off her own sandals and made herself comfortable. “I actually talked to my friend Deb about it a few weeks ago. She said my dancing phobia sounds like people who have the naked dream.”
“Like you dreaming about Connor being naked?” Jess said.
“No, like nightmares where you’re out in public and you suddenly realize you’re naked. But it’s not really about being naked. It’s about a fear of exposing your worst weakness—something you’re ashamed of. She thought my fear of dancing could be the same thing.”
“Hey, analyzing you is my job, not hers,” Jess said. “Is she a therapist or psychologist?”
“She’s a self-proclaimed self-help book junkie.”
“Yeah, well sometimes a penis is just a penis, you know?” Jess took a deep breath. “Okay, here’s what I think happened. I don’t remember any of this but apparently when I was three, Mom entered me in one of those beauty pageants for little kids. Like the kind you see in the cable TV show Toddlers and Tiaras. Anyway, she wanted to enter you, too, in the section for your age group of eight-year-olds. I was going to do a dance routine but you were so paranoid at the thought of dancing onstage in front of an audience that you freaked and threw a temper tantrum and refused to go.”
“That’s it? Why didn’t Mom remember this?”
“Are you kidding me?” Jess said. “Mom can’t even remember where she parked the car in the Kroger parking lot.”
“What about pictures?”
“Of you throwing your tantrum?”
“No, of you doing your toddler tiara thing,” Marissa said.
“Apparently they were ruined a few years later when the hot water heater broke and flooded the basement, where Mom stored extra photos.”
“If Mom didn’t remember and there are no photos then how do you know all this?”
“Daddy told me.”
“When you caught him and Mom today?” Marissa said.
“No. Yuck.” Jess made a face and hit Marissa with a small throw pillow that read “Chocolate Is a Vegetable.” “I talked to him last night about it.”
“Is he a reliable source?” Marissa had to ask.
“You mean, he may have made it all up to make you feel better?” Jess paused a moment to consider it. “I suppose he might have but that’s not really like him. He’d just say he doesn’t know and talk about how ancient Egyptians danced.”
“You’re right.” Marissa took a sip of her drink as she contemplated this info. “So I’ve been traumatized all this time because I didn’t want to dance in front of a crowd as a kid. I was eight. I should remember that.”
“You must have blocked it from your memory. I mean, it was over twenty years ago.”
“What a wimp,” Marissa said.
“Hey, I was only three,” Jess said.
“Not you, me. I was sure there was some kind of big trauma.”
“I’m sure you thought it was big at the time.”
“I’m surprised Mom didn’t refer to it over the years,” Marissa said.
“The way Daddy told it, it was right after Mom’s mother died suddenly and she had a hard time coping with that.”
“I wonder if I thought somehow that my refusing to dance had something to do with Nana’s death. I barely remember her.”
“It’s not always the trauma dramas that cause trouble,” Jess said. “Sometimes it’s just the everyday fears that do it.”
“You’re sure you’re not making this up?”
Jess frowned at her. “Paranoid much?”
“I’m sorry.”
“You should be. I’m your sister. I’ve got your back. I want you to dance. Not this second maybe, and not in front of me at first. But soon. Now that you know the reason, you should be able to figure out the rest. Think about it. I know I did. And it made me realize that I want to do my graduate work in psychology. I want to figure out why people do the things they do. I think I’d be good at it, don’t you?”
Seeing the way that Jess was looking at her for approval, Marissa felt a sudden lump in her throat. “Yes, I do. You’ve always been a people person.”
“Thanks, sis.” Jess gave her a full-blown gigantic hug, which Marissa returned. Stepping away, Jess reached into her bag and handed her a CD. “I burned this for you to practice your dancing. It’s just an idea. If other songs hit you more, then try those. I just don’t want your fear to hold you back from anything,” she said fiercely. “You’re so brave about so much stuff.”
“I am?” Marissa had no idea her sister felt that way about her.
“Sure. You didn’t go to college here despite the pressure from Mom and Dad. You followed your dream. Okay, so the marriage part didn’t work out as you’d planned. But you weren’t afraid to try. I stayed. I wasn’t as brave.”
“You’re brave in so many other ways,” Marissa said. “You’re willing to take risks and put yourself out there. You don’t apologize for being you.”
“Why should I?”
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Marissa said. “And there’s no reason you should apologize…except maybe for pulling my hair all those times when we were kids.”
Jess grinned and reached out to give Marissa’s shoulder-length hair a gentle tug. “Old habits are hard to break.”
After her sister left, Marissa inserted the CD in her player. So she’d been afraid to dance because of a beauty pageant? No wonder she didn’t want to participate in the Rhubarb Queen rigmarole.
The first song on the CD was Florence and the Machine’s “Dog Days Are Over.” The sound of harps at the opening had Marissa tentatively putting her hands up over her head in a mimic of a ballerina. Tears came to her eyes. But she didn’t give up. Next came applause on the song so Marissa started hesitantly clapping.
When the music picked up, Marissa cupped her face with her hands, and she started turning her head. The next thing she knew, she was stomping her feet. But she was pretty much stomping in place and not bouncing around the room.
The music slowed, allowing her to breathe and think. That’s when she heard a voice in her head. “You dance like a dork. You look stupid.” And the sound of kids laughing at her. Was it Jess? She squeezed her eyes shut and focused on the flashback. No…it had come from the kids next door. A bunch of kids.
Marissa remembered now. She’d been dancing on the front porch. She didn’t know anyone was watching her. Jess was still just a baby and Marissa felt left out and wanted to be a ballerina. A family with loads of kids had lived next door and they’d seen her and all laughed
at her.
Maybe both Deb and Jess were right. Maybe Marissa felt ashamed at being laughed at, at being so bad at something that she never wanted to do it again. She didn’t even remember having a momentary ballerina dream but tons of little girls did.
She certainly wouldn’t want to repeat that in front of an audience, which would explain her temper tantrum. It had probably been more like a full-blown panic attack since Marissa wasn’t really prone to temper tantrums.
So she was a failure at dancing and at marriage. But she was tired of always allowing her fear of failure to hold her back. She didn’t want what had happened in her past to have so much power over her present and her future. So she started the CD over again.
This time, she deliberately focused on “Dog Days Are Over” as a healing song. Fear wasn’t going to be the boss of her. She clapped and stomped her feet so hard the power vibrated clear up her leg. She circled, she was a whirlwind, and she made herself dizzy. There was no one here to laugh at her. The only laughter came from her before she sang, “The dog days are over…”
She belatedly realized that some of the bass beat was actually someone knocking on her door. She flung it open and found Connor on the other side.
“Are you okay?”
“I will be.” For the first time since returning to Hopeful she truly believed it. “I definitely will be.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said. She turned the music off.
“I don’t recognize that song.”
“It’s by Florence and the Machine. Jess burned a CD of songs for me.” She curled up on the couch and patted the space beside her. “Tell me about the case. Can I get you something to drink?”
He shook his head and sat beside her. She was close enough to see the lines at the edges of those special eyes of his.
“Despite what you see on TV, most cases aren’t solved this quickly,” Connor said.
“I’m glad this one was, for Jose’s sake. Who did it?”
“The mayor’s granddaughter’s boyfriend. She’s a senior in high school and he’s a nineteen-year-old. He got drunk and wanted to impress her by trying to get Jose in trouble for getting the poetry award she thought should have been hers.”
“He’s nineteen, huh? That’s the age you were when I was a senior in high school,” she said.
“That’s right.”
She wanted to say more but didn’t know how to express what she was feeling. Just that morning she’d been thinking that she wasn’t foolish enough to believe that Connor was the One yet here she was at the end of the same day thinking otherwise. Was she brave enough to admit Connor was the One and had been all along?
Not yet. She had to work her way up to that. “I’m glad that it all worked out. About Jose, I mean.”
“I told you to trust me.”
She found the courage to ask a question she’d been wondering about for some time now. “You talk to me about trusting you but when are you going to trust me enough to tell me what really happened back in Chicago?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s brutal.”
“It involves a child, doesn’t it?” she said. “A child and a lot of blood. I saw your face at the festival yesterday when that kid was injured.”
“As a cop, you do your work and feel later.”
“What happens when you eventually do feel?”
“I may have some trouble in that department,” he reluctantly admitted.
“So you don’t allow yourself to ever feel?”
“It’s a slippery slope.”
“Not feeling? Being immune? I would think so.”
“No. Feeling. You can’t allow yourself to go down that slippery slope or you’d fall apart every time a gang- banger on a power trip decides to kill a kid on a drive-by as a thrill kill or an initiation. I’d seen it happen so many times I should have been immune. Hosea was a good kid. He didn’t deserve that. None of them did.” His words were clipped, his expression closed. “Maybe it was the cumulative effect or something. But Hosea’s murder hit me hard. The blood. So much damn blood.” Connor paused and shook his head. She saw the flash of despair in his expressive eyes. “A week later, another eight-year-old was killed as retaliation.”
Eight years old. The age Marissa had been when she’d refused to dance at the pageant. So young. She couldn’t imagine having to deal with what Connor had.
“I should have stayed,” he said. “I should have done more. Instead I walked away and came here.”
“Maybe fate brought you back here to Hopeful because you’d done all you could in Chicago. If it hadn’t been for you, then Jose would be in juvie right now.”
“Spider and Nadine are the ones who helped break the case.”
“But you listened to them. Another cop wouldn’t have. You’ve taken the time to build the relationships with these teens. And I know you probably did the same thing in Chicago. I bet there are plenty of kids that you saved.”
“Not enough.”
“It would never be enough for you. Not in Chicago. There are other great cops carrying on your work there. But you…you were meant to come back to Hopeful. Just as I was meant to come back to Hopeful. This is where we’re supposed to be. Right here.”
“Right here on your couch?”
She shifted and in doing so inadvertently hit the remote control on the CD player. The classic song “Have a Little Faith in Me” started playing. “Sorry. My sister did a playlist of dance songs,” she said. “I’ll turn it off.”
“Don’t.” Connor stood and held his hand out to her. “Dance with me.”
She slowly put her hand in his. “I’m not good at this. I’ll probably step on your toes,” she warned him.
“That’s okay.”
“I’ll probably mess up.”
“That’s okay, too.”
“I’ll never be a ballerina,” she said.
“Me neither.”
“I’m afraid of storms. And relationships.”
“Me, too. About the relationship stuff.”
“I’ve got baggage.”
“So do I.”
His arms encircled her, giving her strength and courage. She moved with him, her arms looped around his neck, her fingers brushing the silky dark hair on his nape. They were never going to be contestants on Dancing with the Stars but that was fine with Marissa. She felt as if she’d won that disco-glitzy glitter-ball award by doing exactly what she was doing—having faith in Connor.
“One day at a time?” she asked.
“Then a week at a time and then a month at a time.” He twirled her in his arms. “Then a year and a decade at a time. Have a little faith in me.”
“You’re asking me to have a lot of faith in you.”
“Because I’m putting a lot of faith in you.”
Her first love could end up being her forever love. This was her chance to find out providing she was brave enough to take it, to take Connor into her heart.
Who was she kidding? He was there all along. He always had been. She’d had to come home to Hopeful to discover that. When in trouble, seek shelter…the shelter of her true love’s arms.
* * *
One year later….
“Another Corn Festival bites the dust,” Connor said as he slid into the booth across from Marissa at Angelo’s Pizzeria. “Without incident this year.”
“I can’t believe it’s been a year already.” She fingered her favorite moonstone earrings. “The time has gone by so fast.”
He grinned at her. “And they said we wouldn’t last.”
She frowned at him. “Who said that?”
“Nobody. I was teasing you.”
“You’ve been hanging out with Red Fred too much.”
“Who knew the kid had such a great sense of humor?”
“You did.” Marissa reached across the table to link her fingers with his. “You knew.”
“I am pretty brilliant,” he noted.
“One of the many reasons I love you. What?” she asked as his eyes widened.
“That’s the first time you said that.”
“It is not.”
“I’m a police officer. It’s my job to take note of details like that. This is the first time you’ve said it in public. It’s a huge red-letter day.”
“Yes, it is. Because of what’s going on with the teens. Can you believe that Nadine and Spider have created over thirty apps now? And how about Molly and Tasmyn creating the steampunk jewelry using old watches? They can’t keep up with the demand. And what about Jose’s artwork? The professor at Midwest College is so impressed with him and Jose loves being involved in the art program there. I love the cool book logo he put on my formerly-lame-lime-now-shiny-red VW.”
“No more rust buckets for you. Amazing what a body shop can do. It’s a win-win situation all around. But that’s not why this is a red-letter day.”
“It’s not?”
He shook his head and nodded to the pizzeria owner. “Hit it, Angelo.”
Suddenly “Have a Little Faith in Me” played over the sound system.
“They’re playing our song,” she said.
“I know. I planned it that way.” Connor slid out of the booth and took her hand in his before dropping to one knee. “I already asked your dad for your hand in marriage. He told me that in ancient Egypt, a woman could actually make up her own mind about marriage. So now I’m asking you at the place where we first met all those year ago, where we first fell in love. I love you so much more now. So Marissa, aka Rissa the Rebel, will you marry me?” Reaching into his shirt pocket, he removed a ring. The diamond sparkled in the classy gold setting. “What do you say?”
This was her moment. She hadn’t known it would be coming tonight. But she knew that this was the man for her. She’d known as a teenager and she knew it even more deeply now. Past mistakes were washed away by the love she saw in those blue-gray-green eyes of his. Her reply was confident and without hesitation. “I say yes.”
He slid the ring on her finger and stood to pull her into his arms. Lights flashed around them as the crowd eating dinner burst into applause.
“Your mom made me promise to e-mail her photos,” Angelo told Marissa as he took another picture with his iPhone. “She’ll send them to your mom too, Connor.”
“One big happy family,” Connor said as he slowly danced with her. “We’ve come a long way for two people who weren’t fans of marriage, but the best is yet to come.”
“I know. And I can’t wait,” she murmured against his lips.
“Hey Angelo, make that pizza to go,” Connor said.
“You got it.”
Marissa and Connor ran out of Angelo’s Pizzeria with the cardboard box of pizza in hand and the sound of the cheers from the people who called Hopeful home.
Twenty minutes later, Marissa was in bed with the man she planned on loving for the rest of her life. There was no place else she’d rather be.