Morgan smirked at Blair. “Yes, that’s true, although I can’t imagine what difference it makes to you.”
“I’m just saying that she wouldn’t be walking around nine months pregnant and unmarried, if she’d really become a Christian in jail.”
Morgan sighed. “She says she backslid. But who am I to judge where she is in her faith?”
“Who are you to judge?” Blair asked. “Are you kidding me? For safety’s sake, you have to judge. Mama and Pop always judged. They wouldn’t let anyone in here unless they were sure they were committed. The whole purpose of having this place is to help them get on their feet and get a good foundation in their faith.”
Morgan stared at her sister and wondered if this defense of their work was the beginning of a softening in Blair’s heart toward Christianity. It wasn’t like her to talk about faith.
“I mean, I don’t care whether she’s a Christian or not,” Blair went on, “since all that seems like nothing more than illusion anyway, but the fact is that it does sometimes change people’s behavior. And the ones who come here and commit to changing usually do. I’m just saying that there may not be a commitment to changing her behavior if she’s walking around pregnant and unmarried.”
“I understand and agree with you, Blair. But the woman is in desperate need. She’s going to have that baby any day. I’m trying to get her into one of the unwed mother homes, but until I do, she has to stay here.”
Blair still didn’t like it, and that fact shone clearly on her face. “Morgan, what are you going to do when she has that baby?”
“Bring it home, I guess,” Morgan said.
“How in the world are you going to take care of two babies at once?”
“I won’t be taking care of two babies, Blair. She’ll be taking care of hers.”
“And what if she doesn’t? What if she just dumps him on you?”
“She won’t.” Putting an unmistakable period on the end of that sentence, Morgan went to the oven and pulled out the roast. Its scent wafted over the room.
“Smells good,” Sadie said. “Doesn’t it smell good, Caleb?”
Blair finally noticed the girl at the table. “Oh, hi, Sadie.”
“Hi, Blair.”
Blair touched Caleb’s head and bent over to kiss his forehead.
“Any news about Cade?” Sadie asked, as if trying to help change the subject.
“No.” Blair turned back to Morgan. “Look at you. You’re working yourself to death with all these people to feed. It’s a bed-and-breakfast, for heaven’s sake. You’re not obligated to cook supper for an army every night.”
“I like cooking supper for them,” Morgan said. “They’ve worked hard all day. Besides, it makes us feel more like a family.”
“But you’re not a family,” Blair said. “Except for Sadie and Caleb, these people are strangers living in your house.”
Morgan drew in a deep breath and stirred the pot of beans on the stove. “Come on, Blair. Give it a rest, will you? Mama and Pop did this for years and it never bothered you.”
“That’s because it’s who they were. But you don’t have to be Mama’s clone just because you feel the need to continue her work.”
“I’m not continuing her work. I’m continuing Christ’s work. End of story. Now will you please put ice in the glasses?”
Blair sighed and went to the cabinet. “Let’s see. I don’t think you have twenty-five glasses.”
Morgan groaned. “There aren’t twenty-five people, Blair. There’s you, Jonathan, Sadie, Karen, Felicia, Mrs. Hern, Gus, and me. Caleb has his cup. So that’s eight.”
“Eight,” Blair said, pulling the glasses out. “That’s almost a baseball team. An army. My twenty-eight-year-old sister is mother to an army.”
“I’m not their mother,” Morgan said. “What is wrong with you?”
Blair shook her head and jerked the ice drawer out of the freezer. “Nothing. I shouldn’t have come. I don’t feel like a party.”
“It’s not going to be a party,” Morgan said. “After we eat, we can talk.”
“Yeah, after we’ve spent a couple of hours doing KP.”
Sadie wiped Caleb’s face and got up from the table. “I’ll clean up after supper, Morgan.”
Her voice was soft, hurt, and Morgan shot Blair a scathing look. Then she moved to kiss Sadie’s cheek. “Thank you, sweetie. We’ll all help. Don’t mind her. She’s just worried about Cade.”
Blair didn’t seem to appreciate the comment and began firing the ice cubes into the glasses. The front storm door slammed, and Morgan glanced through the living room and saw Jonathan coming in, flanked by Gus. They both looked filthy from the day’s work.
Morgan crossed the house and kissed Jonathan. It didn’t matter how dirty he looked or the way he smelled after a hot day of salt-water fishing with a boatload of tourists, the sight of him always made her heart jolt. “Go on up and shower. Supper’s almost ready. Blair’s here.”
“Any news about Cade?”
“None yet.” She looked up at the Jamaican man standing behind her husband. “Hey, Gus. How was your day?”
“Okay, Miss Morgan. Hot like hades.”
Morgan noticed that Karen had suddenly turned the volume down on the television, and the Step by Step theme was now a distant melody rather than an amplified, heart-shaking aggravation.
Karen smiled up at Gus. He nodded at her. “You okay, Miss Karen?”
“I’m fine. How are you, Gus?”
“Dirty,” he said. “I’ll go take a shower now.”
He bolted up the stairs, and Karen watched him go.
Morgan got an uneasy feeling.
From Jonathan’s expression, she knew he was troubled too.
Jonathan pulled her through the kitchen, greeted Blair and Sadie, and kissed Caleb on the top of his head. “Morgan, I need to talk to you in the office,” he said in a low voice.
She followed him into the small room, and he dropped into the chair that used to be her father’s.
“Did you see that look Karen gave Gus?”
“Yeah, I thought I saw something there.”
“If Karen is interested in Gus,” he said, “then it isn’t good to have her staying in the house with him. Your parents were always very strict about dating among the tenants.”
“I know,” she said. Several times they had decided to make it an all male or all female house, but inevitably someone of the opposite sex came along who was desperate for help, and they hadn’t had the heart to turn him away.
The few times that there had been attraction between male and female tenants, her father had found another home for one of them immediately.
“So if there’s an attraction, we’ll make one of them leave. But which one?”
Jonathan began taking off his shoes. “Gus has been here for almost a year. I don’t think we should run him out.”
“But Karen’s in such need, and that poor baby . . .”
“Well, I doubt Gus would return the interest with her nine months’ pregnant. But after the baby, it could be a real problem.” He got up, hooking his dirty shoes with two fingers.
“I know,” she said. “But I had really hoped we could keep her until after the baby comes.”
He smiled down at her. “Tell the truth. You just really want a newborn baby in the house, don’t you?”
“No, that’s not it at all. Caleb has filled my yearning for a baby.”
“But a newborn.” He pressed a kiss on her lips. “I know you, Morgan.”
Something clanked in the kitchen. Morgan glanced out. Blair was almost slamming the glasses onto the table, and Sadie was putting the dishes out. “I have to finish supper,” she said. “We’ll talk about this later.”
Jonathan grabbed her hand. She looked up at him. “Honey, we’ll have a baby of our own. I know we will. It’s just a matter of time.”
How much more time? Morgan wanted to ask. They’d been trying for over a year. “I know,” she said, though
she didn’t know at all. “Go upstairs and get cleaned up now. Supper’s almost ready.”
Jonathan crossed the kitchen in his sock feet and went upstairs to shower. Morgan went back into the kitchen and found that the table was set.
Sadie had managed to get Blair’s mind off Karen and Cade and was chattering about Trevor Beal.
“. . . Morgan and Jonathan said no. I understand why and everything. I was just so amazed that he asked.”
Morgan tuned in to the conversation as she took the roast beef out of the oven. “You hear that, Blair?” she asked. “She was flattered. Like he’s the only guy who wants to ask her out.”
“Morgan’s right, much as I hate to admit it,” Blair said. “You’re the kind of girl whose pictures men hang on their gym lockers.”
Morgan shot her a look. “Blair!”
“I don’t want them hanging my picture up,” Sadie said. “I just want one to like me. And one does.”
Morgan looked back over her shoulder. “Honey, I know you’re disappointed. What did he say when you told him you couldn’t go?”
Sadie turned back to Caleb and wiped his face again, even though it didn’t need it. “He tried to talk me into going anyway.”
Morgan sighed. “I’m so sorry, Sadie. But another guy will come along soon. You’ll see.”
Sadie fell into silence as she folded the napkins and set them beside each plate.
After the prayer to bless the meal, it seemed as if the group gathered around the big round table erupted into football-stadium chatter with everyone talking at once—everyone, that is, except Blair, who brooded as she picked at her food.
Karen sat on one side of her, and Gus on the other, and they talked over her as if she wasn’t there.
“When is the baby supposed to come?” the Jamaican asked Karen.
Blair leaned back so they could see across her. “I’m due Thursday,” Karen said.
“You don’t look that big.”
“Well, thank you, Gus. I feel like the Goodyear blimp.”
Blair tried to tune out their conversation and fixed on the one across the table between Morgan and Mrs. Hern.
“Mama called me today and told me she’d painted her house,” the old woman said.
Blair knew her mother was dead, but she often relived past days. The house-painting story was one of her favorites. She’d probably repeat it five times before Blair left here tonight.
She glanced at Felicia, the big woman who practically inhaled her food. She ate like a linebacker. Blair hoped the donations this month were enough to cover her meals.
Caleb chomped string beans and mashed potatoes and made an occasional squeal, but Sadie ate quietly, as if lost in her own little world.
The whole situation gave Blair a searing anger. Cade was suffering somewhere, maybe even dead, and life was going on just as it had before he left. She resented it and fought the urge to scream out that they needed to do something, that a friend could be dying, and no one cared.
“I was in there for three years, worked out on the road crew,” Karen was saying to Gus. “Ate slop most days. Spent all the money I earned on commissary. Snickers and Milky Ways, potato chips and such. Gained about fifty pounds in there. I lost thirty of it when I got out, but then I had to go and get pregnant and gain it all back.”
“You look fine to me,” Gus said, and Blair shot him a look of pure disgust.
“Would you like to trade places with me?” she asked him loudly.
Silence fell over the table, and Morgan and Jonathan looked up at her.
“Uh, no, Miss Blair. I’m fine right here.”
Karen seized the opportunity, though. “I’ll trade.”
Morgan stiffened. “No, everybody stay where they are, please.”
Blair rolled her eyes and wondered when and if the conversation was going to come around to Cade.
“You’ll never guess who came to see me at the dock this morning,” Jonathan said, taking advantage of the lull in the conversation.
“Who?” Morgan asked.
“Morris Ambrose, Jerry Ann Shepp, Matt Pearl, and Gerald Madison.”
Blair looked up. That was the same group who had urged her to run for mayor. “Don’t tell me. They want you to run for mayor.”
He smiled. “That’s right.”
Morgan put her hands over her mouth and started to laugh. “Really?”
Blair’s eyes glowed. “Are you going to?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s kind of crazy, don’t you think?”
Morgan grabbed his arm. “I don’t think it’s crazy at all. We need someone with integrity in that seat. Why not you?”
“Well, Sam Sullivan and Ben Jackson are both running, for one thing. I’m not the politician type. And it would cost money. Signs and whatnot. I’m just a fisherman.”
“You are not just a fisherman,” Morgan said. “You’re a businessman. You own your fishing tour business and Hanover House. You’re a part-time preacher too. You’re more qualified than Sullivan or Jackson, and you’re sure more honest than our former mayor.”
He shrugged and cut a piece of roast. “I’ll think about it,” he said. “I’m not sure yet.”
Blair set her fork down. “I think you should do it. Too bad we don’t have a newspaper on the island anymore. You could get some free publicity through that.”
Sadie laughed suddenly, and everyone looked at her. “If Jonathan was mayor, he would be Blair’s boss, wouldn’t he?”
Blair gave a half-grin. “Something like that.”
“And Cade’s boss too,” Sadie added.
Blair’s grin crashed, and Jonathan’s faded. They all looked down at their food.
“Mama called me today to tell me she’d painted her house.” Mrs. Hern’s sweet voice rose out of the silence. “Lemon yellow. She said the shutters are white. I’m going to see it this weekend, I reckon.”
Blair closed her eyes and fought the urge to scream at Mrs. Hern that her mother was dead, and there wasn’t a house, lemon yellow or any other color.
But suddenly Karen yelped out and grabbed Blair’s arm. “Whoa. This is some contraction!”
Morgan froze. “Is there anything I can do?”
Karen stared down at her food, her hand over her stomach, concentrating on the birth pang.
Blair stiffened. This was all they needed. Cade in trouble, and everyone’s attention focused on this woman and her labor. And Karen clutching her like she had something to do with it.
Karen came out of the contraction and let go of Blair’s arm. “Man, I didn’t expect that. I thought it would come easier at first. My back’s been hurting today, but I didn’t think anything of it.”
Morgan looked flustered. “Do you think it’s labor?”
“I don’t know,” Karen said. “Guess we’ll see.”
Blair had had enough of the drama of this household. She scraped back her chair and got up. “I have to go.” She took her plate to the sink, rinsed it out, then clattered it into the dishwasher. “Thanks for dinner.”
Morgan looked distraught. “Don’t go, Blair. We were going to talk afterward.”
“You won’t have time to talk,” Blair said. “Let me know if it’s a boy or a girl.”
With that, she hurried out of the house and back to her car on the gravel driveway, wondering why the woman’s contraction had revived the rage in her heart. It was because of Cade, she thought. He was somewhere in trouble, waiting for rescue, certain that of all the friends he had on Cape Refuge, someone would be able to help him.
But no one was giving it much thought because of crazy old ladies and pregnant ex-cons and the mayor’s race and Sadie’s love life . . .
She should be ashamed of herself for letting those things make her so angry, she thought. Where was her compassion? Her sense of decorum? Her mother would have given her a good tongue-lashing for having so little feeling for the people her sister loved.
But her mother wasn’t here, and neither was Cade. S
o really, there was no one to be her best for. No one who cared whether she was a good, loving person or a bitter spinster. Morgan didn’t have time to care.
Her heart swelled with missing Cade, and she remembered not so long ago how they’d sat in the church warehouse after her parents died, and she’d opened her heart to him about what the burn scars had done to her life. . . .
He had touched her scars with gentle fingertips and told her that she was the best looking woman on the island of Cape Refuge, and he didn’t even see those scars anymore.
She had fallen apart at that and run out like a scared kid. But she’d never forgotten it.
Where are you, Cade?
The question ached through her heart as she made her way home.
CHAPTER 22
Joe McCormick had never applied for the job of police chief, and he didn’t much want it. At twenty-eight, he was just settling into the job of detective. But since cops didn’t seem to stay long in Cape Refuge before moving to Savannah to work for a larger force, he was the one with the most seniority and the greatest amount of training.
Even so, he’d never expected to have to step into Cade’s shoes at a moment’s notice.
He creaked back in Cade’s chair and ran his hand over his bald head. It needed shaving, but he hadn’t had a minute to put a razor to his face—or his head. The smooth top of his head, where he was naturally bald, contrasted against the dark stubble of the rest of his hair, making him look much older than his age.
Today he felt even older than that.
He clutched the phone to his ear, mentally rehearsing what he wished he could say to the person who’d put him on hold. You wouldn’t think it would take an act of Congress for an investigating officer to get forensics information. The medical examiner who’d examined Clark’s body had sent the gunshot residue analysis to the crime lab on Sunday, and he still hadn’t gotten the results. Until they knew if Clark had fired the gun on himself, it was difficult to proceed.
Finally, the music that Joe was sure had been designed to drive people insane stopped, and someone answered the phone. “Craig Haughton.”
Joe sat up and leaned on the desk. “Yes, Craig, this is Joe McCormick of the Cape Refuge Police Department. I’ve been waiting almost a week for the results of the GSR test on William Clark. I need that information ASAP.”