“No, no.” Caroline slipped her hand from his and reached up to hug him with both arms. Almost fiercely he hugged her back, lifting her feet a foot off the floor. “I’m just realizing everything is changing,” she said to the wall behind his back.
Tom let her go, and she felt her toes touch the floor again. “Change is good, Mom. You always say that.”
She nodded and scraped tears from her face for the second time that day. “I know. Sometimes it can be scary though.” She patted Tom’s cheek. “I seem to be getting involved with Max.”
A flush of embarrassment reddened Tom’s cheeks even as his jaw tightened. “I know.”
Caroline drew a breath. “And before it goes too far, he needs to know.”
Tom narrowed his eyes as full comprehension dawned. “You’re going to tell him? Mom!”
“Don’t ‘Mom’ me in that tone of voice, Tom.” She locked eyes with him until he dropped his gaze to the worn carpet.
“I’m sorry, Mom, but we promised we’d never tell anybody. Anybody,” he repeated defiantly.
“We told Dana,” Caroline observed quietly.
“That was different!” Tom burst out. “We—”
“Trusted her?” Caroline supplied gently.
He lifted his eyes, still narrowed and angry. “Yes.”
“Well, I trust Max.”
“I don’t,” Tom returned, deliberately.
“Why?”
He said nothing, just looked away and Caroline felt her temper simmer.
“Because he hurt my feelings?” she demanded. “Well, I can handle my own feelings, son.” Tom’s shoulders remained stubbornly set. “Because you’re afraid he’ll hurt me?”
A muscle twitched in Tom’s cheek. “He has a temper, Mom.”
“Yes, and he’s lost it. But never, not once has he laid his hands on me in a way that was anything but gentle. Even when he was at his most furious. Which,” she added, “I deliberately provoked.”
“You’ve only known him two weeks!”
“True, but sometimes you just know. Even in two weeks.”
“How long did you know him?” Tom challenged quietly, triumphantly.
Caroline winced. Low blow. “That’s not the same at all. I was fifteen years old at the time. About the same age you are now,” she finished with a meaningful tilt of her head.
Tom glared, clearly frustrated. “You’re saying I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
Her temper fizzled. “No, honey. I’m saying I have sixteen more years of experience than you. Tom, I know you don’t trust Max—yet. But, do you trust me?”
Tom hesitated, then met her eyes and nodded, his eyes still defiant.
“Then trust me to do the right thing.” She turned from her son’s intense stare and began straightening the trophies on the top of his chest of drawers. She picked up a trophy at random and turned it over, staring at the flat bottom as if it contained great wisdom. It didn’t.
She heard the creaking of the springs of Tom’s bed, then his heavy sigh.
“Do you love him, Mom?”
What a question from a fourteen-year-old. Yet it demanded an answer. She put the trophy down with care and turned to face the boy who had been forced by circumstances beyond his control to become a man too soon. She owed her son nothing less than complete honesty. “Yes.” His eyes lowered to the carpet and his hands clenched in his bedspread. “He says he loves me, too,” she added and watched his hands gradually relax.
Tom finally looked up. “Then I’m glad.”
Caroline let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “You are?”
He smiled. Not the cute, charming smile that he used to make her laugh or diffuse her temper, but a sober smile, not offsetting the worry that remained in his eyes. “Yes, I am. You deserve to be happy, Mom. You deserve to have someone love you that won’t make you afraid.”
Caroline tried to swallow, but the lump of emotion was far too large. “I don’t think I deserve you,” she whispered.
Tom raised one brow and his charming grin reappeared. “No, you don’t.”
Laughing through her tears, she grabbed one of his smaller trophies and hurled it harmlessly to his bed where it landed on his pillow with a muffled thump. “Go camping, young man. And if you end up getting a stomachache from eating hot dogs all weekend, don’t come complaining to me.”
Chicago
Friday, March 16
5 P.M.
Winters slid the faxed pages from the envelope that had been waiting at Mailboxes USA, well pleased with Randy Livermore. He’d keep that boy in mind if he ever needed a business partner. Livermore had been fast, complete and discreet.
Winters now had a list, complete with addresses and phone numbers, of women who’d gone through Hanover House seven years ago, and who were, according to the Department of Motor Vehicles, less than five-five. By Monday he’d have FedEx’d pictures to go with the names. Randy was certainly thorough. For now Winters would hunt blind, scanning names, highlighting in yellow any variation on Mary or Grace. There were dozens. Mary Anne, Mary Beth, Mary Francis …
Winters stopped. A single name jumped off the page.
Surely Mary Grace wouldn’t …
Maybe she didn’t realize it. Maybe it was one of those Freudian things.
Most likely she was just stupid, like he’d known all along.
Winters ran his marker over the name and looked at it another minute more.
Mary Grace never set foot outside North Carolina for the first twenty-three years of her life …
It was possible.
Caroline Stewart.
It was possible.
He took out his map of Chicago. Miss Caroline Stewart didn’t live too far away.
Winters lit up a cigarette and took a deep drag, feeling his pulse leap as he closed in on his prey. Robbie could be just a short ride away. Winters would know by bedtime.
And who knew? Maybe bedtime would take on a more … intimate setting for the first time in seven years.
He looked at the highlighted name once more. Yeah, it was possible.
Chicago
Friday, March 16
6:30 P.M.
Caroline opened the door before Max even knocked. Tom’s acceptance seemed to lift a weight from her shoulders and she looked forward to this evening more than any other so far. “Hi,” she said, knowing she sounded inane and that her smile was too big and not caring a bit.
Max smiled back. “Hi, yourself.” He stepped in the apartment and stumbled when the orange cat ran under his cane, but caught himself before he fell. “Whoa. Your visitor is back.”
“Mrs. Polansky and her sister left for Daytona this morning. I’m the only person in the building that’ll feed him.” She shooed the cat into the kitchen and poured dry cat food in a dish.
Max mentally thanked ol’ Bubba-boy when he came into the kitchen to find Caroline’s rear in prominent view, bending over to feed the cat. She’d changed into a pair of jeans that fit her like a glove, making his mouth water and his fingers itch to grab. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Mrs. Polansky went to Daytona? What for?”
Caroline looked up, her blue eyes laughing. “It’s Harley weekend.”
Max’s lips twitched. “Don’t tell me those old ladies ride Harleys.”
“They do. It’s true,” she insisted. “I’ve seen them myself. They didn’t start until after they were fifty-five. Mrs. Polansky says they do it to stay young, but her sister says it’s to pick up men.”
Max snorted. “I believe the sister.”
Caroline grinned. “Me, too.” She stood up, wiped her palms on her jeans. “I’m ready.”
He looked her up and down, hoping his full admiration showed in his face. “You look beautiful.”
Three, two, one. Her cheeks bloomed pink. “Thank you.”
Max dropped a quick kiss on her lips. Simple acceptance of his praise. They continued to make progress. “You’re welcome and I’m starving
. Call Tom and we’ll all go to my house.”
Caroline slipped her purse on her shoulder. “He’s not here. Remember, he’s gone on that camping trip? He won’t be home till Wednesday or Thursday.”
Max felt every muscle in his body pull taut. “What?” The word sounded much harsher than he’d intended, but he couldn’t have controlled his voice that moment had his life depended on it.
She looked over her shoulder, surprise on her face. “He’s gone camping with his friends.” Her brows crinkled uneasily. “What’s wrong, Max?”
He tried to still his shaking hands as he reached out to caress the curve of her jaw. “We’re alone then,” he said quietly. “Really alone.”
Understanding lit her eyes and with it a charming shyness. “I suppose so.”
He tilted up her face and took possession of her lips, his kiss long and earthy and full of the promise of what the night held in store.
“Oh, my,” she whispered.
He softly touched her lower lip, now puffed and pouty.
“Oh my, oh my,” he teased, wringing a shy smile from her trembling lips. “Don’t forget to put out the cat.”
She stood there, looking deep into his eyes as if making a decision of monumental importance. “I’d better put his dish outside,” she murmured. “In case I get home late and he gets hungry.”
Max opened the door for her. Or early, as the case might be. “Then we’re off.”
When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Sy Adelman was in his usual place, sitting on the step. He gave Max a curious glance before greeting Caroline with a smile. “Good night, Caroline.”
“Good night, Mr. Adelman,” she returned with a smile of her own.
The old man caught Max’s eye. “Have a good time. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Caroline laughed. “What wouldn’t you do, Sy?”
Mr. Adelman chuckled. “Not a whole hell of a lot.”
Caroline patted his balding head. “You’re a bad old man, Sy.”
“I know. Keeps me young.”
The door closed behind them and the two walked out to a silver Mercedes parked on the curb. Winters frowned, keeping well into the shadows behind the stairwell. He’d slipped in the back of the apartment house through a utility door and had been waiting for the old man to leave so he could get up to Apartment 3A. Instead, the woman in 3A had come out on her own, hand in hand with an extraordinarily tall man, taller than he himself. But lame. A gimp with a cane.
The woman was Mary Grace. He was sure of it.
A little older. Hair dyed brown.
And no limp.
Winters clenched his jaw. She’d deceived him. She wasn’t crippled at all.
That’s why they’d found her walker in the car. She hadn’t really needed it. She’d never been lame. A slow rage began to burn. She’d lied to him. Every nurse and doctor in the hospital had lied to him. They all pretended she was hurt. Poor, poor little Mary Grace. She’d been normal the whole time. She’d lied.
And she’d stolen his son.
The tall man with the cane opened the car door for her and she got in, laughing at something he said. She had a sugar daddy. Mary Grace was kept. A whore. No better than that slut Angie. The rage burned higher. His hands clenched into fists. Mary Grace and that man were probably going off to do it right now. When he got through with her, she’d rue the day she’d laid eyes on that man. When he was done, she’d rue the day she’d ever been born.
With an effort, Winters brought his rage under control and his consideration back to the matter at hand.
Robbie. His son was upstairs in Apartment 3A. Alone. Right now.
He slipped out the utility door and made his way back to his rental car he’d left parked in an alleyway, opened the trunk and found the coveralls he had stored there. People ignored a man in coveralls. The old man on the front step would assume he was the television repairman. A small toolbox and a nondescript brown wig completed his ensemble.
He entered again through the front door and nodded to the old man.
“A little late for a house call, isn’t it?” the old man asked, looking up at him.
Winters regarded him from behind lowered eyelids. “I’m running behind. This is my last service call today.”
The old man squinted up at him. “What company are you with, young man?”
Winters bit down on his temper. Meddling old fart. He thought fast. “Three A Contractors.” He nodded briefly to the old man and made his way up the steps, ignoring the way the old fart turned to look over his shoulder with a frown.
Winters jimmied Mary Grace’s door lock with surprising ease. Trusting little soul she’d become.
That would soon change.
His heart pounding in anticipation, he pushed the door open and looked inside.
It was quiet. Like a tomb. Disappointment crashed around his ears.
Robbie wasn’t here. But he had been. Slowly Winters crossed the small living room, his eyes locked on a group of pictures arranged on a little wood shelf.
Robbie. His son. Winters picked up the picture closest to the end of the shelf. His son had grown into a man. Tall, blond, athletic good looks—Robbie was a handsome young man. Pride swelled even as his heart grieved for the lost years. He picked up a second picture—Robbie in a basketball uniform, the ball nonchalantly held under his arm. His son played basketball. Winters scowled. It should have been football. It was always supposed to have been football.
Like me.
But it wasn’t so. Still pride swelled. His son was MVP once … twice, three times; he counted the trophies. He took a step closer and quickly quelled the roar that threatened to erupt.
“Tom Stewart,” he read aloud, his voice now icy. She’d changed her name and his son’s. Denied his son his heritage, even his own name. “She’ll pay for that,” he muttered.
Carefully he set the trophy back in its spot, ensuring the thin layer of dust on the shelf went undisturbed. He wanted one of those pictures of his son for himself. He picked one up from the back row on the shelf, one that had obviously been sitting for quite a while. A ten-year-old boy looked up at him, smileless and sober. Robbie was obviously unhappy living here without him. He could see it in his son’s eyes. The dust that lay across the top of the picture frame in a thicker layer than on the rest of the shelf told him two things. First, Mary Grace had become a lousy housekeeper. Second, she apparently had not picked this picture up in a long time. She wouldn’t miss just one. He slipped it into his pocket as if it were pure gold.
Cautiously, he made his way to the back of her apartment and opened a door. A bathroom. Shampoo bottles littered the edges of the tub. Pigsty. He frowned at the razor on the sink. Robbie was shaving already. Who’d taught him to shave? That tall guy with the limp? One of Mary Grace’s other men? He felt anger rise again. He’d missed so many of the little things while some stranger, some sugar daddy to his whore wife, got to see his son grow up.
He closed the bathroom door to the same way he’d found it, then opened the door to Robbie’s bedroom. Plain blankets covered the twin bed; posters of Michael Jordan covered the walls. A computer sat in one corner, schoolbooks stacked on the desk. Winters opened the closet, taking in the single dark suit and shiny black shoes. Big shoes. His boy was almost grown.
A photo was stuck in the upper corner of an old mirror. An old man held Robbie on his lap while Robbie held a balloon and wore an enormous grin, showing off missing teeth. The picture hadn’t been taken long after Mary Grace stole him away. He yanked the picture from the mirror and turned it over, read the words written in Mary Grace’s even hand. Eli and Tom at the circus. Winters gritted his teeth. A stranger had taken his boy to the circus. He’d never gotten the chance.
His eye roved over the top of a chest of drawers, more trophies cluttering the top. An inch of dust covered the furniture. Mary Grace was a lousy housekeeper, he thought again. He’d have to ensure her … improvement. He’d turned to his door when his eye cau
ght a glint of silver on the bed. It was a small trophy lying on the pillow, clearly out of place. Winters picked it up with an angry jerk and put it back on the chest of drawers where it belonged.
The boy had developed some bad habits. There would be some work to be done when they were together again.
The door to Robbie’s room was closed with as much care as the bathroom door. Winters wasn’t ready to let them know he was around.
But soon they’d know. Soon.
Winters opened the door to Mary Grace’s bedroom and stopped dead in the doorway.
His heart jolted in his chest as if he’d seen a ghost.
There it was.
There was that damn statue again, next to her bed. With a fierce frown he crossed the floor to her nightstand and picked it up.
It wasn’t the same statue, he realized as he inspected it. It was a man this time. Still Catholic, though. He turned it over. St. Joseph, read a little engraved brass plaque glued to its base. Not the same Catholic saint at all, but its meaning to Mary Grace would be completely the same. The anger he’d felt at standing in the Sevier County Police Garage, when he’d realized she’d kept that damned, cracked St. Rita for two years before she’d run away came back. It no longer simmered. His anger was now very cold. Anger was better cold, he knew. It made him even smarter, even more able to plot what was quickly becoming a very sweet revenge.
The statue meant independence to Mary Grace. It meant escape from him. It meant cutting him off from his son. Winters hefted it, tossing it from one hand to the other. It was made from the same pottery as the other statue. Likely as breakable.
He let the statue drop to the floor, but the carpet broke its fall. Intact, the clay saint lay on the floor, looking up at him reverently, its hands still folded in pious prayer. Goddammit. The thing wouldn’t break. With one hand, Winters picked up the statue and knocked it against the corner of her nightstand. With a shattering crash the new idol lay in pieces on the floor.
Good enough, he thought savagely. Let her wonder and worry about how it got broken.
Let her be afraid. Let her be very afraid.
He left her bedroom door wide open and made his way down the narrow hallway towards the front door, not caring anymore if she suspected anything or not. He’d put his hand on the doorknob when a little knock came from the other side.