John recognized the number on the screen of his cell and felt a spurt of irritation. Of course Tabitha Brighton’s parents chose this moment, of all times, to call him back.
But he supposed it was better than calling him ten minutes earlier, when his time had been even more pleasantly occupied.
“Hello,” he said. “This is Sheriff John Hartwell.”
“Sheriff?” The voice of the woman on the other end of the line sounded surprised. Surprised and agitated. “I didn’t realize . . . oh, dear. Not again. I’m so sorry, Officer. What’s Tabby done this time?”
He did not correct her use of the wrong title. “Well, that depends. To whom am I speaking?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m her mother, Beth, Beth Brighton. I’m sorry not to have called sooner, but my husband and I—Tabby’s father—we’ve been away, and cell phone service was a bit spotty, and . . . well, you know, we just receive so many complaints about Tabby—”
“What did she do now, Beth?” demanded a voice—male—in the background. “Whatever it is, I’m not paying for it.”
“Oh.” Beth Brighton sounded uncomfortable. “Sorry. That’s my husband, Tom. Like I was saying, Tabby’s been a bit . . . troublesome over the past few years, and we felt like we deserved to get away for a bit, so . . .”
“I see,” John said. “How long has it been since you last saw your daughter?”
“Oh, let me see. A year? I think it’s been a year or so since she ran off.”
“Ran off?”
“Yes. Well, for good this time. She’s done it before, but this time it’s seemed to stick. We had an argument about the SATs—her grades have never been the best, even though she’s a bright girl. Her IQ is at the genius level, according to one child psychiatrist we took her to. We’ve just never seemed to be able to make her understand that grades are important for getting into the right college. All her friends are going to lovely schools this year—Yale, Duke, Baylor. But last spring Tabby refused to sit for the SATs. She said they didn’t measure anything that’s actually important, only rote memorization, which isn’t real knowledge or intelligence—can you imagine?”
Remembering his own conversation with the Brightons’ daughter, John said, “Yes, I can.”
“Well, of course, we panicked. I mean, she’s our only child. What was her future going to look like if she didn’t go to college? How was she going to be financially successful?”
John wanted to point out that he knew quite a few successful people who hadn’t gone to college, and that there were many different ways to measure success other than financially, but instead he said nothing. He’d learned long ago that one of the most valuable tools in law enforcement was the skill of shutting up and listening.
“She’s always been this way, really—stubborn. Did you know she refused to get braces, too? Said she didn’t see why she had to conform to society’s standard of beauty.”
John wished that Katie had felt this way. It would have saved him thousands of dollars in orthodontia bills.
“But with the SATs, we really thought we got through to her,” Tabitha’s mother went on. “We took her to half a dozen life coaches and therapists, and thought she understood. And then the morning of the day of the test, I went to wake her up, and she was just . . . gone. She’d packed all the things she loved best—books, mostly—and disappeared. Without a word.”
“Except for my Platinum American Express card,” John heard Tom Brighton shout in the background. “I get the bill every month. I can see all the ridiculous things she’s been buying!”
“Oh,” Mrs. Brighton said. “Yes. The credit card. It’s in Tom’s name, but only his initial—T. Brighton. So we didn’t cancel it, because we thought it might help Tabby. She can still use it, even if someone asks for ID. The bills we get every month—and of course calls from people like you, in law enforcement—are the only way we know . . . that we know . . .” She sighed. “Well, that she’s all right.”
John said, “I see,” again. It was the only thing he could think to say. Truthfully, he was a little disappointed. Not about the credit card—although it had been missing from Tabitha’s wallet, so he presumed one of the Sunshine Kids had stolen it . . . most likely Beckwith.
No, he was disappointed that Tabitha’s relationship with her parents was so adversarial. That meant they were going to have no idea who the father of her baby was. Though Tabitha herself insisted it was Beckwith, and that Beckwith loved her and the baby, John was beginning to think this was doubtful. Why would Beckwith put his own offspring into a box and then leave her in a library restroom? He couldn’t imagine any father doing this. It was possible Tabitha was so crazy about the guy, she only wished the baby was his.
Then again, Beckwith was the worst. If anyone was going to abandon his own newborn, it would be him.
Why, though, had he abandoned the baby and its mother only to stick around town? In a decent boat, he could have crossed the Gulf and been in Mexico by now.
Not that any of it mattered. Regardless of whether or not the baby was his, John intended to spend the rest of his life making sure Beckwith paid for what he’d done.
“Where is she?” Mrs. Brighton had apparently put her husband on speaker phone, because John could now hear him barking very clearly into his ear, “Where is my daughter, and what has she done now? If you’ve got her locked up, you can tell her from me that I’m not bailing her out again. I’m sick of all her wacko views. All I want is a kid who’ll go to college and get a job and stop spending all my money on pizza and spray paint.”
“Well, Mr. Brighton,” John said in his calmest tone, “I don’t know about any of that. All I can tell you for sure is that your daughter is currently in the maternity ward in the hospital on Little Bridge Island, Florida.”
“Florida?” Mr. Brighton repeated with as much horror as if John had said Hell.
His wife was a little more on the ball. “Maternity ward? Is—is she all right, Officer?”
“My understanding is that she will be. Congratulations. You’re grandparents. Your daughter’s given birth to a healthy baby girl.”
“What?”
Both parents were stunned into silence. As he waited for them to catch their breath, John listened to the sound of the waterfall by the side of the pool splashing in the courtyard below, along with the rumble of jets in the hot tub and the loud croaking of the frogs that lived in the bushes behind it. He decided to take the opportunity while the Brightons were still too shaken up to think better of revealing such personal information to ask, “Would you happen to know who the father is?”
“The father?” Mrs. Brighton murmured vaguely. She was still in shock at the news that she, an attractive and relatively young woman in her early forties—John had looked her and her husband up, and seen that they were wealthy suburbanites—was a grandmother. “No. No, how would I know that? I didn’t even know she was pregnant. We haven’t heard from her in months.
“Oh, my little girl,” Mrs. Brighton cried. “I just can’t believe it. My baby—has a baby!”
“Where is my granddaughter?” Tabitha’s father demanded. “When can I see her? And my daughter?”
“Well, just as soon as you can board a plane and get down to Little Bridge Island,” John said, hoping that neither Tabitha Brighton nor Molly Montgomery would be too displeased with what he’d done. Obviously Tabitha had the right to keep her whereabouts and the birth of her daughter a secret from her parents, with whom she’d apparently been feuding for some time.
But she had nearly died. And so had her child. These were things John felt her parents had a right to know, too.
“Fine,” said Mr. Brighton. “We’ll be there tomorrow. . . . Wait, where is this Little Bridge, exactly?”
It took John some time to straighten out the logistics of travel to Little Bridge Island with the Brightons, since there were no direct flights, unless they chartered a private jet. This irked Mr. Brighton, but his wife seemed eager to take the trip to see her daughter and granddaughter, no matter how many hours it took or how inconvenient it seemed.
John considered this a good sign.
What was decidedly not a good sign was when he ended the call, put his phone away, and turned to see Molly Montgomery standing in the open doorway to her room, glaring at him with her arms folded across her chest.
“What?” he asked. It was hard to tell with the light streaming from behind her, but her body language indicated that she was mad. He had a feeling that he knew why, but surely after the extraordinary sex they’d just had, she couldn’t be that mad.
Unless it hadn’t been as extraordinary for her as it had been for him. But she had certainly seemed to enjoy it. She’d been the one Mrs. Filmore had heard shouting, not him. He’d only knocked over a few piles of books . . . and of course, in the moment, nearly told her that he loved her, because—in the moment—he was sure he did.
Now he was glad he’d kept those words to himself.
“Did you honestly call Tabitha Brighton’s parents?” Molly demanded in a cold voice.
Okay. So she was mad.
“Yes, I did.” He stepped forward into the light so that he could see her face. Yes, she was definitely mad. Behind the lenses of her glasses, her dark eyes were pools of flames. Her lips were set into a firm line of disapproval, as well. “She nearly died. I felt they had a right to be informed.”
“She’s eighteen!” Molly cried. “She’s an adult!”
“She’s a runaway,” he shot back, “who swiped her parents’ credit card, fell in with a cult, got pregnant, trespassed, vandalized your library, and nearly died giving birth. If she were my daughter and someone found her in the condition that you did, I would want to know about it. So yes, I found her parents and called them.”
Molly had unfolded her arms and was now pacing up and down the length of the outdoor hallway, still sputtering. It was clear that Mrs. Filmore had gone back down to her room, but Fluffy the Cat had stayed behind and was now sitting in the doorway to Molly’s room, calmly licking a front paw and regarding them both with wide amber eyes that seemed to say, Wow, buddy. You sure screwed the pooch on this one.
John couldn’t have agreed more.
“You do realize that legally, she has a right to her privacy?” Molly demanded.
“Of course. But she isn’t one of your library patrons, Molly. She’s involved in a criminal investigation.”
This stopped Molly cold. She swung an incredulous look at him. “Are you going to press charges against her?”
“Maybe, if that seems like the best way to get her to give up Beckwith. I think she knows where he’s hiding.”
“John, she’s been traumatized!”
“All the more reason for her to give up the person who traumatized her. I know you think because she’s eighteen, she’s an adult, but she isn’t acting like one.”
“Well, maybe her parents are partly to blame for why she acts the way she does,” Molly said. “Maybe her parents are awful, and that’s why she ran away from them.”
John had to admit that Molly had a point. Tabitha’s parents had seemed pretty awful—at least the father.
He wasn’t going to say this out loud, however. He was pretty sure she wouldn’t like it.
“Don’t tell me you’ve never called the parents of a child,” he said instead.
“I’ve threatened to, lots of times,” Molly said. “But I’ve never done it. Kids have a right to their own privacy—and their own autonomy.”
“I agree—until they start hurting themselves, or others. And it isn’t true that you’ve never called the parents of a child. You came to me today with compromising photos of my daughter taken by one of your young patrons.”
Molly stiffened. “That was different.”
“How is it different?”
“Because that was part of your investigation. That was to help solve it.”
“So was calling Tabitha’s parents. I have to work my cases the way I see fit. Sometimes my methods may not be pretty, but they tend to work.” Except when they didn’t . . . case in point, Larry Beckwith III.
“But Tabitha’s parents are probably who she was running away from in the first place, John! And now you’ve told them exactly where to find her.”
“You don’t know anything about her.” John thought it was possible that he was going insane. She was making him insane. “You sat with her while she was bleeding to death and drifting in and out of consciousness, but that’s not the same as having a conversation with her, because believe me, if you had, you’d call her parents, and a social worker, and a shrink, and all the help you could get for her, because whatever has happened to that girl, it’s made her bananas.”
Molly blinked, hard. “John,” she said, in what sounded to him like a tearful voice, “I think you should go now.”
“What?”
“You heard me. It’s late, and I have to be at the library in the morning for a staff meeting. I think you should go.”
Belatedly, he realized that she was genuinely angry. And also about to cry.
“Molly, you’re not actually going to let this come between us, are you? Because I thought we had a very nice time this evening—”
“We did,” Molly said. “Physically. But I’m not sure we connect on more basic levels.”
“What’s more basic than what we did in there?” he asked, jabbing a thumb toward her room. “Where, I’d like to point out again, I think we more than connected.”
“I’m talking about empathy.”
If she’d struck him, he could not have been more surprised. “You think I lack empathy?”
“I don’t know how much empathy you can have when you refer to a woman who’s been through what Tabitha has as bananas.”
He shouldn’t have been surprised, he knew. She’d already called him amoral and unconscionable. Why not add lacking in empathy to the list?
But he still stood there feeling as if he’d been gut-punched, while the cat slowly began to lick its other paw. Don’t look at me, buddy, the cat seemed to be saying. I don’t know what’s going on here, either.
“I think if you’d actually had a conversation with her,” John said, desperately trying to salvage the situation, “you’d agree with me that Larry Beckwith has brainwashed Tabitha Brighton to the point that she is bananas.”
It didn’t work. Molly had gone back into her room to fetch his gun belt. “I don’t think so,” she said, when she returned.
He knew he should apologize, but . . . why? He hadn’t done anything wrong! At least, not technically. He was the sheriff. It was his case!
“You can’t have it both ways, Molly,” he insisted. “You can’t demand that I publish my daughter’s photo in the paper and then also tell me not to contact Tabitha’s parents. I was right to call her parents, because she needs them. She does, desperately. And when you see that I’m right, you’ll . . . well, you’ll be the one bringing me pie. Banana cream pie.”
He smiled, proud of himself for the witticism. A little levity might help the situation. It had always helped with Katie, and even Marguerite, when they got emotional.
But he soon saw that it had definitely not helped now. He knew this the minute his gun belt came sailing at him.
Fortunately, he caught it before it hit the wooden floor. She’d practically thrown it at him, which wasn’t good. It was never a good thing to throw firearms, even when they were holstered, with the safety on.
“Not going to happen,” Molly said. She didn’t sound tearful now. She only sounded angry. “I’m going to bed. I think you should, too. Good night.”
“Good night,” he said, and watched as she ducked into her room, slamming the door behind her, leaving him and the cat outside in the suddenly still, all-consuming darkness.
The cat, unperturbed, yawned and sauntered toward him. John took a quick step backward, knowing what the cat intended to do—rub up against him and once again get its orange fur all over his uniform trousers.
“No,” he said. “No way, cat.”
He hurried down the steps to the hotel’s courtyard, fastening his belt as he went. The cat sat at the top of the stairs and watched him go with wide, unblinking eyes. John couldn’t help but think that the cat was judging him, much in the way he was judging himself. The evening that had started out as one of the best he’d had in as long as he could remember had ended in disaster.
But how? He couldn’t understand it. What had he done? Violated HIPAA by calling a victim’s parents?
What was so wrong with that? When it was during the course of an investigation, that was his job.
And yes, maybe he had mentioned that Tabitha was a little bit off her rocker. But he wasn’t going to lie about the facts in a case. Facts were facts. That didn’t mean he was lacking in empathy. He had plenty of empathy!
Just not for nitwits who went around breaking the law, putting the lives and property of innocent citizens at risk.
If Molly Montgomery couldn’t see this, then maybe she was right, and they couldn’t connect on a basic level.
Except . . .
Except.
Everything felt so right when they were together. So right and so good and so true.
Only now that they were fighting, everything felt terrible.
What was he going to do?
