Exposure (31 page)

"When's Maman comin'?" Gracie asked for the twentieth time. Her head rested on Clare's breast as she sat quietly in the woman's lap, but Clare knew better than to trust in the duration of this current quiescence. Gracie's moods had been fluctuating, going from one end of the spectrum to the other at about thirty-second intervals.

Clare stroked the child's soft hair. "Soon, Grace Melina," she replied soothingly, and pressed a kiss into the child's baby-fragrant curls. "She and your daddy-to-be are gonna be here real soon." Oh, please, God, if You're listening, don't let me be lying to this child.

"Mommy and Elbis gon' be here weal soon," Gracie agreed. She tipped her head back in order to see into Clare's face. "When, you think?"

"Soon."

The other department Suburban pulled up behind them then, and Clare turned off the engine she'd been running in order to use the air conditioner. Watching Ben climb out, she glanced down at Gracie before opening the car door, wondering if the necessary explanations were going to upset her all over again.

Well, there was no help for it if they did; hiking Gracie into her arms, she got out of the car and went to greet the deputy.

They met by the bumper of her car, but before two words were exchanged, Gracie had started bouncing in Clare's arms. "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!" she screamed, straining to the right with her arms extended. Clare's head whipped around and she sagged at the knees to see Emma and Elvis emerging out of the shaded drive.

Emma broke into an awkward trot at the sound of her daughter's voice. Moments later, dirty, disheveled, scraped and bruised, she had Gracie in her arms, holding her tightly and being squeezed in return by sturdy little arms and legs. She looked at Clare and laughed, a tremulous sound that verged on tears. Freeing an arm, she wrapped it around her friend and pulled her into the embrace. "Thank you," she whispered. "Ah, mon ami, merci beaucoup."

"Oh God, Emma, I'm so grateful you're safe!" Relief, like fine wine, sang in Clare's veins. She wiped her cheeks free of the tears that kept falling. "So grateful." Then the two women and the child simply stood for some moments in a three-way hug, each temporarily content not to move or speak.

Elvis observed the blissful expressions on the faces of his woman and his child and smiled to himself. Stroking Gracie's head from crown to nape, he pressed a kiss on her brow and then walked over to talk to his deputy. He needed to begin the process that would recover Grant Woodard's body and put this mess behind them once and for all.

He talked to Ben and issued orders to Sandy via the car radio for quite a while. He behaved with consummate professionalism, but he could not prevent his eyes from frequently seeking out Emma and Gracie. He'd come too damn close to losing Emma this afternoon, and he needed constant affirmation that she was all right. Discussing the events of the past twenty minutes with his deputy, he watched as Emma bent her head to whisper in Gracie's ear. Then he saw his daughter-to-be's head snap up, a smile like dawn breaking over the horizon spreading across her face. She craned around, obviously searching for him.

"Elbis, Elbis, guess what?" she squealed when she spotted him. "Maman says I getta stawt goin' to sunny school!"

"Don't get mad at me," Elvis ordered Emma as he came through the kitchen door after work on Tuesday night. "But I invited Ben and George and Sandy to the wedding." Gracie, who had run to greet him in the yard, was hanging from his neck piggyback style, and her grip, where she'd locked one small hand over the opposite wrist, was centered right on top of his Adam's apple. He paused, boosted her up his back until he could swallow freely again, and then confessed, "And ... uh ... their families, too." Emma turned from the stove to stare at him, and he gave her a sheepish look. "They really seemed to want to come, Em."

Emma suspected it had probably amazed the heck out of him, too. He'd spent too much time believing he was at best only tolerated on this island. "What's a few more people?" she demanded with a good-natured shrug. "Gracie invited her new best friend, too."

"Sawah!" Gracie contributed, specifying the little girl she'd met on Sunday at the Seaside Baptist Church for all the world as if she hadn't been talking about Sarah nearly nonstop for four days straight.

"Right," Emma acknowledged. "And, Elvis, you're the one who insisted on a three-tiered wedding cake, so it's not as if we won't have enough to go around. You might want to pick up another bottle of champagne and maybe a few bottles of sparkling cider for the kids, though. Oh, and reserve more chairs from the Rent-It shop."

He leaned over to kiss her neck, then reached around her and lifted the lid off the pot to see what she was cooking. Jambalaya. No wonder it smelled wonderful. "I'll go after dinner," he agreed. "Come on, kid," he said over his shoulder to Gracie, "let's go get washed up."

"Okeydokey."

Heading for the doorway with Gracie still riding his back, Elvis paused to look back at Emma. "I promise, Em," he vowed. "I'll take care of every thing first thing after we've eaten. I'm not going to leave this for you to arrange, too."

Emma laughed softly. She wasn't worried.

It was two days before their wedding, and she felt as if she'd never worry about anything ever again.

The logical part of Emma tried to tell her it wasn't possible to be free of all anxiety. One simply wasn't allowed to get through life without worries, be they large or small. But her emotional side merely shrugged. Sure, matters were bound to crop up in her life that would give her some sleepless nights. But she certainly wasn't going to waste any of her precious time sweatin' the small stuff. Not anymore.

It wasn't that long ago she'd been unable to envision a future for herself and Gracie, no matter how much effort she'd put into trying to find something workable. She hadn't been able to foresee a time for them, pure and simple, that didn't include constantly moving from one place to the next, of living their lives in the shadows. Now they had everything.

Never, never, never, get smug, she decided caustically forty-five minutes later. Just look where it gets you. She was now the proud owner of an additional something, a situation she hadn't foreseen and sure as heck didn't want.

She was replacing the telephone receiver just as Elvis and Gracie came through the kitchen door. "Em?" Elvis called out, and Gracie raced ahead of him into the living room, where her mother was sitting in the overstuffed chair with its new green- and white-striped slipcover.

"Dawk in here," Gracie observed and climbed up on the couch to turn on the lamp. "There!" she declared in satisfaction when a pool of light illuminated the area, including her mother's pale face. "Tha's bettoo!" She slid down the couch back, bounced on the cushion, and then climbed down and trotted off to her room.

Elvis stood in the doorway, staring at Emma's white face. "What is it?" he demanded, crossing the room to her. He scooped her out of the chair, dropped into it himself, and rearranged her on his lap. Unease crawled through his stomach. "Jesus, what's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost."

"Do you think I'm unnatural for not feeling remorse over Grant's death?" she asked him. "I mean, it is kind of abnormal, isn't it? I lived with him for several years, after all, and up until a few months ago I thought he'd been so good to me. Hell, sugar, I thought I loved him." She clutched his shirt and stared up at him. "But in the end I hated him, and I'm not sorry he's dead, Elvis—I'm relieved."

Elvis chewed it over for a few moments. "I'd say, under the circumstances, there's nothing abnormal about it," he finally replied and his tone was businesslike, flat. "He constituted a genuine threat, sweetheart—to you and to Gracie. It's not like you're blowing off his death because he denied you some small favor after years of doting on you. There were unnatural aspects to this situation, all right, but they sure as hell weren't yours." And though she might not be consumed with remorse, neither was she as unaffected as she'd like him to believe. He had seen her startle at unexpected noises and assume a defensive position before she recollected that there was no need for it. All because of the violent turn Grant Woodard's unnatural affections had taken.

She pressed her cheek against his shoulder and said softly, "He left me everything he owned."

"What?" Elvis tipped down his chin in order to see Emma's face.

"That was his lawyer on the phone just now. He read the will this mornin', and except for a few minor bequests I was Grant's sole beneficiary." She shuddered. "Oh, God, Elvis. It never even occurred to me. What am I goin' to do, cher? I don't want his filthy money."

Elvis propped his chin on the top of her head and tucked her in a little closer on his lap. He thought about it for a few moments. "Has anything occurred to you that you'd like to do with it?"

"No. My mind is just one great big blank. This whole thing just sorta hit me on my blind side, Elvis."

"But we're agreed that you don't want to keep any of it, am I right?"

"Absolutely. I thought for about thirty seconds of putting some in a college fund for Gracie, but the idea made my blood run cold. He would have discarded her like an old Kleenex, cher. We'll save our own education fund, thank you very much." She felt his nod against the crown of her head.

"What kind of money are we talking about anyway, Emma?" he inquired, and then whistled long and low when she told him. They sat quietly for a few more moments, the only sounds to disturb the stillness those of the refrigerator's motor as it kicked in and Gracie's occasional thumping in her bedroom.

"You know," Elvis finally said, "it occurs to me that there must be hundreds of ways you could put this money to good use." Feeling her stiffen slightly, he gave her a comforting squeeze. "Not for your own personal gain, doll. I'm talking about ways of spreading the money around so it would benefit a lot of people—and be kind of fun to disburse."

Emma pulled herself up to sit on the arm of the overstuffed chair. She pressed the arches of her feet into Elvis' hard thigh, wrapped her arms around her shins, and studied his face. "Give me a for instance."

"Well, hell, right here on the island we've got a food bank that's always in need of cash," he said. "And we could seriously use a community center that stayed open late." He smiled crookedly. "Okay, the truth is, we could use any kind of community center. If we gave the island kids something to do Friday and Saturday nights they probably wouldn't spend so much time racing at breakneck speeds up and down country roads, knocking back half-racks of beer and snortin' their allowances up their noses."

She considered him with interest. "The Edward Robescheaux Community Center," she said slowly, savoring the sound. Her eyes came alight at the idea. "Oh! Big Eddy would've liked that."

"Hell, yeah. And with the kind of money you're talking about, you could afford to buy the land, build the building, and pay staffing costs for the next thirty years."

"Or buy it, build it, and deed it over to the community with the stipulation that they make the center self-sufficient within, say, five years."

"Yeah. Better, yet. The point is, Em, there's always a lot of needy causes out there, and you can have fun with 'em if you take your time deciding who gets what. What you don't have to do is resolve everything right this minute."

She rocked his thigh with her feet. "You're so smart."

"Hell, yeah," he agreed smugly. "Smart enough to get you to marry me."

Emma made a rude noise. "That was a no-brainer, Donnelly." They grinned at each other, and then she sobered. "What about Gracie, cher?" she asked. "You think she's as well adjusted as she appears?"

"Yes." Elvis tugged her back down onto his lap, looked her in the eye, and stated uncategorically, "I do."

"I don't want to see her on some talk show twenty years down the road with a caption on her chest that reads Early Trauma Ignored by Mother."

Elvis snorted. "Em, she had one nightmare. And it seems to me you talked her through that one pretty easily."

"I didn't tell her the complete truth, though."

"Hell, no, and a damn good thing, too, if you ask me. A three-year-old's not gonna understand a grandfather who takes a walk off a cliff and tries to take her momma along with him. All she knows is a man who used to dote on her suddenly turned up and started scaring the shit out of her. You told her that her grandpapa did some bad things, and he's gone away forever. You promised he's never going to come back to be mean to her again. You did good, doll. Give it a rest."

"Oui; I suppose." Then, more firmly, "No, I know you're right." Cupping his cheeks in her hands, she pulled his head down to touch foreheads. "I'll tell her the whole story when she's old enough to understand." She sighed, content to simply appreciate for a moment the warmth of his skin beneath her palms, the cool thickness of his hair between her fingers.

Then she said, "It's sure nice to have someone to share these problems with. It's a luxury I've never had before. Heck," she confessed, "I'd given up believing in happily-ever-after, period."

He made a funny sound in his throat. "Yeah, me, too." He'd never believed in it in the first place.

"But, you know, cher—"

"When it comes to you, me, and Beans," he interrupted.

"—I think it just may be possible, after all," she concluded.

"Damn straight," he agreed.

"Oui." She looped her arms over his shoulders, rolled her forehead back and forth against his, and smiled. She loved this man. His strength, his honesty, his good sense.

"Damn straight."