Sunset Bridge (12 page)

“Sign right here,” she told Alice after the room had been approved and they were back at the reception desk. Gladys was temporarily absent, and Olivia was down at the pool watching swim team practice.

Alice signed one last time, and Tracy gave her copies of the contract. “No questions?” Tracy asked.

“I might come early some days.”

“I hope so. Why don’t we take you down to meet the shuffle board gang while you’re here. We can go out by the pool, then you can pick up Olivia on the way back in.”

Tracy accommodated her steps to Alice’s slower ones, and they started down the stairs. Tracy’s office was a cavernous space nicknamed the rec room, but today she and Alice only used it as a pass-through to the state-of-the-art shuffleboard courts, which were just outside. She slid open the glass door and they stepped out. Florida could be quite warm in October, and today was no exception. The sun was moving toward the horizon, but the heat would stay with them well into the evening.

“Our shuffleboard team likes to practice late afternoon,
early evening, to avoid the worst temperatures,” Tracy explained. “They practice a lot. They’re champions.”

“I played. A long time ago.”

“They love any and all newcomers, but they’ll make sure you’re at the peak of your game before they let you compete.” She lowered her voice. “Remember, I’ve, um, had a few little problems—” she held thumb and forefinger half an inch apart to demonstrate “—with the shuffle board, who run the program. They’re the ones who keep things going. We’re doing okay right now, but you could put in a good word for me. I just keep stepping on toes, even when I’m careful.”

“Not you, dear.”

“Believe it.” Now the sun was beating down on Tracy’s head, and although she’d felt halfway decent all morning, suddenly she was sure her oxygen supply had been cut in half. She took a deep breath and hoped she wasn’t wheezing. Her stomach was doing the wave.

“Well, it’s certainly…bright out here,” she said, trying to sound cheerful.

“When I was pregnant—” Alice paused and put her fingers on Tracy’s arm to slow her down “—with…my Karen, I couldn’t go out in the sun. Not for a long time. Made me…sick.” The older woman nodded.

Tracy knew that must have been more than forty years ago, but it was still fresh in Alice’s mind. She supposed pregnancy was like that. A life-altering event that stayed tucked in your memory no matter how long you lived. She’d assumed she could ignore it, at the very least push aside her awareness, but the baby had a way of asserting itself and making sure that never happened. She imagined this was just the start, too. Once born, the kid was going to control her life. She was being trained.

They stopped at the edge of the concrete shuffleboard court and watched four men at practice. Tracy waited until they had finished their turns before she stepped up and Alice followed.

“Roger, do you have a moment?” she asked.

Roger Goldsworthy turned as if to say “You!” She still thought of him as Mr. Moustache, since the first day she’d met him at a local park, she had noticed his hairline moustache and not the intelligence in his sharp eyes. That was before she realized Roger would figure prominently in her job at the center and forever keep his gaze fixed on her to be sure she behaved. He was thin and wiry, and needed a good ten pounds to keep his pants from sagging without a belt cinched tight. His gaze flicked to Alice, and he nodded.

She introduced them, and Alice extended her hand. They shook, and Roger almost smiled. Tracy wasn’t too surprised. He came from a generation when good manners had been taught at home. Here at the center she was constantly having to make up for that lack in the new generation, although Roger would probably laugh at the idea of Tracy Deloche as a role model.

“Alice is my neighbor,” Tracy said, “and she’s going to be teaching a class. I’m trying to talk her into hanging around the rec center a bit and taking advantage of some of our activities. I thought she might be interested in shuffleboard.”

“We can always use more players,” Roger said.

“Will you introduce her to the others for me?” She turned to Alice. “I can come back and get you in a little while.”

“I’ll be fine, dear. Will you tell Olivia where I am?”

Relieved she wouldn’t have to go back out in the sun, Tracy went to find Olivia.

She quickly found more than she had bargained for. Olivia
was waiting in the rec room, but so were Janya and the two Dutta children.

Tracy was stunned to see Vijay and Lily. She had stopped by on Saturday to see how everyone was faring, and found the house quiet and the exhausted children napping. Rishi had just run out for milk, but Janya had expected to hear from the children’s father any moment to return them.

Sunday had been a day of thunderstorms, and Tracy had used the weather as an excuse to rest and clean house. She had even made vegetable soup for those nights she came home from the center too tired to fix a healthy meal, although the effort had exhausted her, and she had slept the rest of the afternoon and evening.

Yesterday Janya’s car had been gone when Tracy drove past their house, and she’d figured her neighbor was making up for lost time, now that the children were back home with their parents.

Clearly she had been wrong.

“Janya?” Tracy looked down at Vijay, who was rolling a ball back and forth to Olivia, who was sitting cross-legged. Lily was snuggled sleepily into Janya’s arms, eyelids drooping.

Janya moved away from the little boy and kept her voice low. “Rishi left us here for a little while so the children could play on the playground, but it is too hot outside. He did not want to bring us to the barbershop when he inquired about Harit.”

“I thought the children were back at home. What does Harit say?”

“He says nothing we can hear. The last time I spoke to him, he was on my doorstep and you were in my living room.”

“Yikes.”

“We just went to the Duttas’ apartment. The manager let
us in so we could get more clothing. She recognized the children and believed our story.”

“Story?”

“More or less the truth. I said that we were watching them and just needed a few extra things to make our job easier until the Duttas came home. I did not tell her the parents are missing, and we wanted to see if there was anything in the apartment that might help us find them.”

“Missing?”

“I have no other word that fits. Harit left these little ones in our care, then he disappeared in search of his missing wife.”

“What are you going to do?”

Janya absentmindedly stroked Lily’s hair. The little girl was now sound asleep. “Perhaps Harit did not bring our phone number.”

“Your number’s in information, Janya. He could find you that way.”

“Or perhaps he has gone somewhere with no telephone service.”

“In Florida?”

“I think it is more likely he and Kanira are battling, and he has no idea what to tell us, so he tells us nothing. Or perhaps he’s afraid if he calls, we will insist he return, and he has yet to find her.”

“Would you insist?”

Janya shrugged. “They are good children, sweet children, and having them is no hardship. Worrying?
That
is the hardship.”

“You don’t really believe what you’ve said, do you?”

“I believe these are possible explanations. But I am afraid the real answer is worse.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.” Janya lowered her voice even more. “We are afraid if we notify the police, somebody in authority will take the children away, and Harit and Kanira will have problems regaining custody.”

Tracy could imagine that might happen. Once the courts got involved, the process of getting the children back could take months. But did the parents deserve custody after this?

“What about Ken? Won’t he run interference and make sure things go as well as they can? Does Wanda know?”

“I have yet to tell her we haven’t heard from Harit. Only that we are taking care of the children for a while.” She clutched the baby closer. “They cried at first, but now they are calmer. They have settled in. But what will happen if they are left with strangers again?”

“I don’t know, but, Janya, you can’t just sit back and wait forever.”

“We’ve set a deadline of three more days. If we haven’t heard from either Harit or Kanira by then, we will have no choice but to report them missing. We will go to Ken if we must.”

“How is Rishi handling this?”

“He is good to the children and good to me, but he is worried. Still…” She glanced down at the sleeping baby and smoothed her hair again. “Having children in the house is a good thing, but a good thing for bad reasons. And that is what worries us.”

“So Rishi’s at the barbershop?”

“He said he will pretend he thinks Harit is cutting hair today. He is hoping to pick up information. But the apartment had nothing of use we could find under the eye of the manager. And I am afraid the barbershop will turn up nothing, as well.”

“Would you like me to come over tonight and help?”

Janya looked sad. “The only help we need is finding Harit and Kanira. If you have an idea how to do this, please let me know.”

T
racy so rarely dressed up that when Marsh told her on Friday they were going to try a new restaurant getting rave reviews from his staff, she’d figured that like most of the places they went, at most this one deserved clean jeans and maybe the new smocked Henley she’d bought at a discount superstore because the fit was loose and long, and hid the fact her jeans no longer buttoned. She was glad that last week, when she and Marsh made love, the lights had been off in her bedroom. He’d seen her gain and lose weight.

But pregnancy? A different story.

Not until she mentioned her dinner plans to Gladys on her way out of the center did she discover that the Baithouse Bistro was not just another of Marsh’s endless seafood dives.

“Baithouse Bistro?” Gladys fanned her face with a hand. “Did our Marsh come into a fortune?”

Tracy had been examining her nail polish and wondering if repairing it was worth the time, since inevitably she would
be cracking crabs or shelling barbecued shrimp she had no stomach to eat.

She looked up. “What?”

“That’s the kind of place where you have to save for months just to walk through the front door.”

“Baithouse? Come on.”

“It’s a redo of a historic building that used to be a tackle shop, baithouse and charter fishing service until some time in the eighties. They renovated it last summer and turned it into the best restaurant within fifty miles of the city. It’s a good twenty-minute drive from town, right on the water. I’m trying to convince Woody to take me there on our wedding anniversary.”

On her way out to the car, Tracy punched in Marsh’s number. “Did you actually say the Baithouse Bistro?” she asked without preamble.

“That’s the place.”

“You do realize you probably have to wear a tie.”

“I think I have one somewhere, me being a lawyer and all.”

“I’m thinking this place doesn’t have a kids’ menu.”

“I have a babysitter.”

For a moment that word struck terror in Tracy’s heart. Babysitter, the expensive and infrequently budgeted alternative to twenty-four-hour parenting. She hadn’t thought about babysitters. There was so much she hadn’t thought about.

Like not getting pregnant in the first place!

For a moment she couldn’t remember why she’d called Marsh. For a moment she was afraid all this mommy stuff was beyond her, outside her emotional repertoire, too difficult to figure out.

“Trace, are you there?”

She looked down to be sure. She thought her knees were knocking.

“Are you going to propose?” she asked. “I mean, this is the kind of place where men propose. You probably proposed to Sylvia in a restaurant like this one.”

“I proposed to Sylvia on the subway between Columbus Circle and Rockefeller Center. The tax benefits swayed us.”

“So I’m safe? No subways in Florida, unless you count the Walt Disney World monorail.”

“I just thought you deserved a night out someplace a little fancier. Sometimes I forget where you come from, or at least I try to. It’s hard to compete.”

Panic ebbed, replaced with a warm glow. “You don’t have to compete,” she said. “Nobody in my past was ever in your league, Marsh.”

She snapped her phone closed and jogged to her Bimmer, covering the miles home in record time.

By the time Marsh arrived, she was wearing a filmy flowered Tory Burch dress that she’d brought with her from California. Never formfitting enough to excite her, now it flowed gently over her expanding breasts and not-so-flat tummy. Somehow she’d found the energy to wash and dry her hair, even throw a few hot rollers on the wisps she didn’t pin up with the rest of it. She’d managed real makeup and Miu Miu pumps that put her eye to eye with Marsh. For insurance against an evening chill, she carried Alice’s lovely crocheted shawl.

“You look fabulous,” he said. Marsh himself was wearing a sport coat she couldn’t remember and a designer tie. So, okay, it was a swamp scene, clearly not from London or Milan, but a tasteful swamp scene. Just one alligator, and impeccably tied.

“So do you. Love the tie. So Florida.” She leaned forward
and kissed him. He put his arms around her and pulled her close, and for a moment they just stood like that in the open doorway, their unannounced baby between them.

Marsh usually fetched her in his pickup, since they rarely went very far, but tonight he was driving his hybrid. In the car they chatted about the past week, bringing each other up to date. She told him she was still mulling over the developer’s offer, although not with enthusiasm. He told her about the latest Wild Florida fundraising appeal.

Just before the bridge she was surprised when he pulled off the road and into a parking lot at the boat launch. He turned off the engine, and before she could ask why, he came around and opened her door. “Now I’ve got you, I want to take full advantage.”

“I thought you took full advantage last time we were together.”

“Not sex, romance.” He helped her out, an old-fashioned gesture that was romantic in itself. “The sun’s going to set in a few minutes.”

She thought she was probably a little overdressed, considering that most of the men in the lot—fishermen and shrimpers coming back for the night—were in shorts. If they wore shirts at all, the fronts sported beer advertisements or raunchy slogans. Still, she didn’t want to object. This was thoughtful. Thoughtful was good. Not perfect, but good.

They held hands as they strolled toward the pedestrian walkway on the east side of the span. “My father used to bring me here when I was a kid,” Marsh said. “He said Sunset Bridge was the best place in the world to see the sun go down. That’s an exaggeration, but not for him. He was in Vietnam during the war, and after he came home, he never left this part of Florida again. He’d had his fill of travel.”

Tracy knew that Marsh’s parents had both died in the years just after he completed law school. Like his father, Marsh had tried living elsewhere—Manhattan, in fact—but now he, too, saw no reason to leave the state he loved so well.

“I like the way it smells up here,” he said as they walked up the stairway to the bridge. “Gulf air, sulphur from the mangroves, sunshine beating down on salt-crusted lumber.”

“Fish. Dead fish.”

“Yeah, that, too. Even that.”

A breeze ruffled her dress and wrapped the skirt around her legs. She untangled it and leaned over the railing when they stopped. They weren’t alone. Others had come out to watch the sun go down, too, and the moment was nearly at hand.

“I like living in a place where dawn and sunset are a ritual,” Tracy said. “Most of the time in California I didn’t even realize they were happening. I’d be inside the house, or hurrying to get home and annoyed I might not get there before dark.”

“The sun rises and sets everywhere.”

“It’s all about seeing what’s right in front of you.”

They both fell silent. The sun was a fiery ball hanging over the water and turning it a hundred different shades of pink and orange. Clouds feathered above it, and the sky slowly turned a milky gray. Then, as they watched, the sun slipped lower until, between one blink and next, it was gone.

Tracy was sorry to see it go. “That’s always kind of sad.”

“I’ve heard a rumor there’ll be another tomorrow. That’s the thing about sunsets.”

“Will they have a walkway on the new bridge? Because if Blake and his gang aren’t planning one, a lot of people are going to be unhappy.”

“They know better. I’ve seen the drawings. Simple, sleek, safe and pedestrian friendly.”

Tracy hoped she and Marsh didn’t wait until the new bridge was built to enjoy another sunset.

Back in Marsh’s car, she closed her eyes. Almost immediately the purring engine lulled her to sleep. She woke up with a start when they came to a stop, and was immediately embarrassed.

“Long, exhausting week,” he said, as if reading her mind. “Besides, I like watching you sleep.”

“I was probably drooling.”

“I’m partial to drooling women.”

She wondered if he was partial to pregnant ones. How would Marsh behave when she needed a back rub or a late-night pickle run, or as a partner for childbirth classes where she would learn to pant and blow and look altogether ridiculous?

And what about labor? Florida country boy, for sure, but how would he do when the offspring emerging wasn’t feathered or scaled but uniquely human? She was acquainted with Marsh’s ex, and without inquiring, she was absolutely sure that Marsh had not been invited to attend his son’s birth. Hotshot attorney Sylvia had probably had an epidural so she could continue working on her current brief.

“I think we ought to go in.” Marsh touched her cheek, as if to bring her back from wherever she’d wandered off. “I had to use more lines than a deep-sea fishing guide to get us this reservation.”

Tracy had been to Baithouse Bistro hundreds of times, only the name of the restaurant had been different, along with the city, and the man at her side had been different, too. Menus with entrées priced at a week’s worth of groceries. Tablecloths so heavily starched that if she held one up to the wind, she would sail away. Serving staff in pearl-gray vests and pleated
tuxedo shirts, crystal and china as fine as any she’d possessed in her former life.

She let Marsh seat her, an unusual event in itself, and dreaded the moment the menu arrived. Her appetite had picked up a little, and most of this week she’d managed to eat and retain three small meals a day. But she wasn’t yet out of the woods, and she didn’t want to get lost when the ladies’ room was all the way on the other side of the restaurant.

“It’s lovely,” she told Marsh after their server had presented the wine list with commentary, then offered to send the sommelier to the table for more advice. Marsh had tactfully sent him away, and the list was lying unopened beside him.

“Somebody told me they pay attention to the local Seafood Watch List. You can order anything off this menu without guilt.”

She smiled a little. “And I was so worried.”

“Don’t give me that. I’ve seen you pass over Chilean sea bass and monkfish. You’re a better environmentalist than you claim.” He took her hand and squeezed it. “If we order a bottle of wine and depend on me to finish it, I’ll drink too much, and I’m driving. What do you think?”

Tracy was relieved, because she hadn’t yet come up with a satisfactory excuse for turning down alcohol. “Like you said, it’s been a long week. I’ll just go with a glass of that New Zealand chardonnay he mentioned.”

Marsh signaled and ordered two glasses and, after a brief consultation, a plate of steamed seafood in a simple lemon butter sauce to share. The wine arrived as they decided on their entrées, and they toasted each other. Tracy took one tiny sip, then put down the wine and picked up her water glass in its place.

“Somebody at work said the broiled mahi is amazing,” he said. “Very simply prepared.”

She looked up, surprised. This was a man who couldn’t broil anything without using half the condiments and herbs in his amply stocked kitchen. “Sounds great.”

“What else looks good to you?”

They debated the menu, but in the end she was hopeful that most of what they’d ordered would pass the baby’s personal taste test. He hadn’t asked if her “virus” had finally abated, but the selections had been, by his standards, plain, bland, ordinary. She felt a return of the warm glow she had experienced on the telephone. First a romantic sunset and now concern for her comfort. What more could any woman ask from a man?

Well, okay, a lot of things, but paying attention to her was high on the list.

“We have to do more of this,” he said.

“This really isn’t your kind of place, is it?” She played with the wineglass, as if she were heavily engaged with the contents.

“I like being with you almost anywhere.”

“What made you think of this for tonight?”

“Because you’re a good sport, Trace. And I’ve taken advantage of you.”

She was fascinated. “Have you?”

“We don’t have to do everything my way. It was a tough summer for both of us, but you hung in there, and I wasn’t much help. I just appreciate you, that’s all, and I wanted you to know it.”

Being appreciated? Good. Great, maybe. Just not as great, say, as being loved. She kept the smile on her face and nodded, as if she was with him every step of the way, but she imagined
herself in, oh, eighteen years at her baby’s high school graduation. Would she hear the same speech from this man?
Sorry I wasn’t much help during the kid’s childhood, but I’m glad you hung in there. Oh, and by the way, I appreciate you.

“Well, you must appreciate me a lot to bring me here,” she said when it was clear he had finished.

The steamed seafood arrived, and Tracy busied herself pushing around bits of it on her plate so it looked as if she was eating more than she was. She dipped and nibbled, and was happy to discover that the baby was something of a seafood fan. Of course “baby” was a technical misnomer. The creature inside her was actually a fetus recently upgraded from an embryo, according to the pregnancy guide her college roommate, Sherrie, had sent her the moment she heard about Tracy’s condition. Sherrie, who lived in Arizona, had been safe to share her news with, since she’d never even met Marsh and was unlikely to blab.

She wished she could tell Marsh how ridiculous all the scientific nomenclature sounded to her, but like almost everything that really mattered to her—the baby, her own future and whether the two of them were going to spend it with the oh-so-grateful Marsh—this was definitely off-limits.

“What’s happening with Janya and Rishi?” he asked, after the waiter removed the shells and sauce.

She debated, then decided she could tell him about the Duttas, since tomorrow was their deadline for talking to Ken. Janya and Rishi had made every inquiry they could think of, but there had been no sign of the missing Indian couple. Now the authorities had to be notified and the fate of the children decided. Tracy had warned her friends that sometimes bystanders got swept into a legal tangle just for helping out. In
her opinion, for their own protection, it was past time for that phone call.