The Sweetest Summer: A Bayberry Island Novel (3 page)

“Good. Now, who am I?”

“You’re Aunt Cricket, silly.” Christina giggled with
delight as she stomped on the metal gangway, making a racket.

“And who are you?”

“I’m a little boy named Chris! I’m four and I’m a pirate boy! I’m Pirate Jellybean!” She stomped again, tugging on the bandanna she wore on top of her close-cropped hair.

“Yes, you are!”

Evelyn pasted on a smile, hoping she could stop the hot rush of fear spreading from her belly into her chest and throat. She reminded herself that she had a strategy, and following it would dramatically improve her chances. She would attack this ordeal the way she’d done with each of the thirty-seven marathons she’d completed, relying on her physical strength and mental clarity to reach the finish line. It was all about pacing. Focus. About taking one step and then another, one breath and then another. And just as in a race, she couldn’t afford to be distracted by what others were doing or obsess about how many miles she still had to go.

So what if the whole world thought she was a kidnapper?

“Can I have ice cream?”

“Sure, sweetie. Once we get settled in the motel.”

“No! I want it now!”

Evelyn scooped her niece into her arms, kissing her warm cheek just below her eye patch, ignoring the beginning of a temper tantrum. So far during this ordeal, Christina had been surprisingly low-key, taking all the confusion and surprises in stride. Evelyn was immensely grateful that the preschooler hadn’t drawn any extra attention to them by throwing a fit, since news of the “abduction” was probably already on TV.

In fact, her niece had sailed through all of it—the unplanned after-school pickup, a strange motel room by the interstate, the drastic change in Evelyn’s appearance and her own haircut. Christina was cheerful through much of the car ride from Maine to the Logan Airport parking lot, then slept on the train and bus to the Cape.
And she’d been happy and excited on the ferry to Bayberry. But as of right that moment, Christina had clearly hit the wall. She was heading into full meltdown mode, just minutes from safety.

Evelyn knew distraction was her only hope, and she nearly laughed with relief when a young woman in a sparkly mermaid costume met them at the end of the gangway, handing Christina a purple mermaid-shaped lollipop. “Are pirates allowed to have candy?” the girl asked.

“Of course!” Evelyn smiled. “That was very sweet. Thanks.”

“Sure. Have fun!”

Once they were on the dock, Evelyn took a minute to get organized. She lowered Christina to her feet and unwrapped the candy, gave it to her niece, and tossed the cellophane wrapper in a nearby trash can. Then she hoisted the large duffel over her shoulder and grabbed Christina’s hand. She began to walk. According to the map of Bayberry Island she’d printed out at the public library computer, the Sand Dollar Motel was four blocks from the dock. It was funny how it had seemed like miles when she’d been here as a kid. Now, if only she could keep Christina calm during the walk through town, then she could get her something to eat and put her to bed early. And then maybe Evelyn could breathe.

Please, please,
she thought to herself.
Whoever’s looking down on us—God, Amanda, Mama, the Mermaid, or anyone at all—please give us a lucky break.

Christina began to whine. Then, even with her lips tight around the lollipop, she began to cry, shoulders heaving and body trembling. It wasn’t long before Evelyn saw beet red splotches form on her niece’s cheeks and throat. It was going to be a bad one, and she couldn’t blame her. She felt like having a meltdown, too.

Evelyn scooped Christina into her arms once more and clasped her tight against her left hip. She kept walking.

Pure hell. That’s what this exhausted little girl had
been through in the last two months, beginning with the death of her mother. Any healing that had taken place since Amanda died was destroyed the day a Boston lawyer showed up at the farm with his client’s petition for paternity and full custody. Since then, life had been a blur of magistrate hearings, lawyers, stress, tears, and heated discussions, all of it baffling to Christina. The poor little kid was even dragged off to play paper dolls with a man she’d never met before.

That’s when temper tantrums became the norm.

“It’s OK, baby.” Evelyn glanced around the crowd to make sure no one looked at them with suspicion. Thank God, nobody seemed to notice them. It was just a stroke of luck—the Mermaid Festival on Bayberry Island was nothing but one long and wild costume party, and she and Christina could mask their appearance any way they wished and still blend right in.

It would buy them time. A week, to be exact. That’s how long Evelyn had to figure out their next move.

“I . . . I want . . .” Christina sobbed and hiccupped so hard that the lollipop had become a choking hazard. When Evelyn pulled it from her lips, the sobbing only worsened.

“Just a few more minutes, sweetie. I promise.” She pressed her nose into the crook of Christina’s warm neck, inhaling the scent of the little person she loved more than anyone or anything in the world. “Put your head on my shoulder. It’s going to be all right.”

That’s when Evelyn felt it. A prickly shock of alarm went through her body and she knew that someone had locked sights on her. As casually as possible, she glanced around, making sure she’d produced an all-purpose tourist smile as she searched for the source of her unease.

She saw him. The cop was standing ramrod straight, his right thumb hooked into a leather belt that held his gun. His dark gaze homed in on her. Luckily, the crowd blocked his view for a second, enough time for her to
turn, duck, and keep walking. But she could feel him right behind her.

Dammit.

Christina continued to cry, then balled up one of her fists and hit Evelyn on her opposite shoulder.

Please
 . . . Evelyn’s mind began to spin. Was it already over? Was this cop going to arrest her? Had she already failed Amanda? Christina? Pop-Pop Charlie? Had she already disappointed everyone she had ever loved?

“Welcome to Bayberry Island.”

Evelyn turned toward the male voice, pretending she’d been caught off guard. Of course she did a piss-poor job of it. She was a sports therapist and fitness and nutrition blogger—not an actress. “Hello. Thank you.” She adjusted Christina’s weight on her hip. “It’s been a long day,” she said with an apologetic shrug.

The officer nodded.

“Is the fountain this way?” She pointed down Main Street, figuring he had to see right through her charade. If he was going to arrest her, she just wished he’d do it now and save everyone’s time. Why didn’t he just get it over with?

The police officer tipped his head and regarded her with a puzzled expression. But then his brow relaxed, and he unleashed a smile so warm it stole Evelyn’s breath.

The noise of the crowd faded away. The dock seemed to vaporize under Evelyn’s feet. Her heart did a back flip in her chest as the tingling shock wave of recognition hit her.

Those midnight blue eyes. That straight, white grin. The dark curly hair. She knew this man—well, once, briefly, a very long time ago she’d known him as a boy. Evelyn let her eyes roam to his name tag: C
HIEF
C
LANCY
F
LYNN
.

It took every bit of her remaining strength to stay standing.

“I
already told the sheriff everything I know.” The old man sighed, looking like he barely had enough energy to shake his head. “Evelyn left to pick up Christina from Montessori school yesterday like she always does, but they never came home. I have no idea where she is. I’m just as confused as everyone else.”

From where Richard Wahlman stood just outside the kitchen door, he could see Charlie McGuinness wipe his weathered face with a wide farmer’s hand. The old guy’s eyes were rimmed red and watery. Richard almost felt sorry that the FBI had to interrogate him in his own home like this. Almost.

If his four terms in the U.S. House had taught him anything, it was that no human being was one hundred percent honorable—not his fellow caucus members, not his devoted staff, and not his wife. That said, Richard had a hunch that old Charlie McGuinness was telling the truth. The shell-shocked look on his face revealed that his daughter hadn’t shared her kidnapping plans with him. Richard had to hand it to Amanda’s older sister, Evelyn. She’d been smart not to involve her father in a crime that would surely result in a lengthy federal prison sentence for everyone involved.

Richard smiled to himself, sliding his hands into the
pockets of his suit trousers. He knew the federal government didn’t look kindly upon a noncustodial family member taking a child across state lines. The FBI’s presence in Charlie McGuinness’s kitchen was proof of that. And things could get a lot worse for the McGuinness family if the case landed in the lap of one of the many federal judges Richard knew personally. Evelyn had made a boneheaded move. If she’d done it without involving her father, she’d done him a huge favor.

“Was Miss McGuinness in a relationship? Was she seeing anyone?”

Charlie didn’t bother to hide his disgust at the FBI agent’s question. “None of my business. She was with the same fella for six years, but they broke up last fall. I don’t stick my nose in my daughter’s personal life, as a rule.”

“His name?” Clearly, FBI Special Agent in Charge Teresa Apodaca wasn’t a warm-and-fuzzy kind of gal. “You know, Mr. McGuinness, we are here as a courtesy to Congressman Wahlman, but we can easily move this conversation to the Boston field office.”

The old guy’s face flushed with anger. “You’re some kind of hotshot federal investigator, aren’t ya? Since I already pay your salary with my tax dollars, I’m sure as hell not going to do your job for ya, too.”

Richard smiled at the old Mainer’s approach to being interrogated. He liked him, mostly because he was an anomaly. Richard didn’t spend much time with the likes of Charlie McGuinness, a guy who had no taste for bullshit. In fact, the opposite was true. Every waking second of Richard’s life was spent in the company of men and women who swam in an ocean of bullshit and sunned themselves on bullshit beach, all while ordering fruity bullshit cocktails from a waitstaff composed of the general public.

No wonder he’d had a fucking heart attack at the age of fifty-four! He was utterly sick of it. All of it.

He just wanted his kid.

Richard took several slow and deep breaths in an
attempt to keep his pulse steady and his blood pressure down. He needed to think of something else. Relax. Since this was the first time he’d been allowed inside the McGuinness place, he decided to take advantage of the opportunity, and look around a bit. It certainly wasn’t chic, but the only home his daughter had ever known was sturdy and comfortable. The floors were worn wide-plank pine. Its thick plaster walls were covered with faded wallpaper and its kitchen was right out of
Leave It to Beaver
.

As Richard had recently learned, the farm had been passed down the generations to Charlie, and both McGuinness girls had been raised here. When Amanda left DC, she came back to her childhood home. And when Evelyn discovered her sister was pregnant, she sold her Augusta condo and moved in again, too. So that’s how the place became the headquarters of the multigenerational McGuinness family.

Richard remembered when his driver had brought him here for the first time a month earlier. It had been a gloomy summer day, the sky heavy with impending rain, but the two-hundred-year-old farmhouse and its surroundings were picture-postcard perfection. The farm lane cut through rolling acres of fields and was framed in a low stone wall. Far off to the right, Richard had been able to see where the land curled up against a large mirror-calm lake.

His driver had parked directly in front of the house. Richard had stepped out of the backseat and evaluated the sprawling yellow clapboard saltbox with dormer windows and white trim. A cedar shake barn was attached directly to the side of the house for easy access during what he knew could be brutal winters here.

He’d decided that if Christina had received half as much attention as this old farm had, then his daughter had been lovingly cared for.

But on that first visit and every visit since, the McGuinnesses refused to open the front door to him. Any contact he’d had with Christina had taken place in a
sterile playroom within the offices of the county’s Child Protective Services. The only reason Richard stood inside today was because the FBI had granted him access.

“Excuse me.” He pushed aside the cluster of agents in the farmhouse kitchen, and moved into the light. He pulled out a chair and took a seat across the table from Charlie McGuinness, studying the man in the diffuse glow of the old ceiling light fixture. After a moment of quiet thought, Richard said, “Well, this is a helluvah situation, isn’t it, Charlie?”

The man said nothing.

“You know I have the child’s interests at heart, correct? I only want what’s best for her.”

The old farmer lowered his chin and glared at Richard, his upper lip twitching just a bit. “Funny thing is, Mr. Wahlberg—”

“It’s Wahlman. Richard Wahlman.”

He ignored the correction. “You see, we don’t refer to Christina as ‘the child’ in this house. We call her Chris or Chrissy and sometimes we call her Jellybean. But nobody calls her ‘the child.’ Do ya know why that is, Mr. Wahlberg?”

Richard felt himself smile. This guy didn’t give a damn who was seated across the kitchen table from him, which was admirable. Irritating, but admirable. He decided to humor him.

“I had no idea Christina existed until one of my aides showed me Amanda’s obituary. You are well aware of that. It breaks my heart that my daughter is nearly four years old and I’m just now getting to know her.”

Charlie tipped his head to the side. “She’s not your anything. Neither was her mother.”

Richard blinked reflexively, but he let the jab go. He had no idea how much Amanda had shared with her family about her years on the Hill, though it was now obvious to everyone that her contributions had gone far beyond scheduling.

“That’s where you’re wrong, Mr. McGuinness.”
Richard leveled his gaze at Amanda’s father but kept his voice kind. “Christina is my flesh and blood. She’s my daughter. The DNA evidence is irrefutable. That doesn’t make her any less your grandchild, certainly, and I am amenable to you having visitation privileges, but the court has already decided this matter. I am her biological father. I have sole custody. Your eldest daughter may have stolen her from me, but rest assured I will stop at nothing to find her.”

The old farmer tapped his fingertips on the scrubbed oak tabletop and shook his head. “See, nobody knows how ya did it, but ya cheated us in that court, pure and simple. I don’t know how you can live with yourself.”

Richard felt his pulse race, which did worry him, but he could handle Charlie. “You missed the custody hearing, Mr. McGuinness. Court records show you received notice of the date and time, yet you and Evelyn didn’t bother to show up. Of course, the judge saw that as an indication that the girl wasn’t particularly important to you, and granted me custody by default. Only you know the reasons why you failed to—”

“You and ya people can go to hell.” Charlie shot an angry glare toward Richard’s chief of staff and attorney, who stood off in the dining room. “Ayuh, you’re nothing but a bunch of liars and thieves perfectly happy to stomp all over a little girl’s heart. Ya people have no shame.”

“Where are Evelyn and Christina?” That came from Apodaca. “This is your last opportunity. If you don’t answer, you could face obstruction charges.”

Charlie shook his head at her. “I don’t know where the hell they are. But if I did”—he glanced up into the light, blinking back tears—“I wouldn’t tell ya. Sorry, now, but that’s the God’s truth. Go ahead and arrest me.”

Richard was weighing his response when everyone’s attention turned to the front staircase. Half a dozen FBI evidence techs tromped down the stairs with their search warrant bounty—several boxes of books and documents and what was obviously Evelyn’s laptop and printer.

Charlie tilted up his chin defiantly. “Won’t find much in that thing but her sports therapy appointments up in Augusta and the recipes and running diary and whatever she calls those stories she writes on the computer.”

“Blogs,” Apodaca snapped.

“Ayuh, that’s right. Blogs. Cricket gets on her high horse sometimes about healthy eating and training for marathons. ‘Feed the speed,’ she likes to say. Even though some of it is strange stuff, she has lots of followers, apparently. I remember this one time, she made a dish for Jellybean that—” Charlie stopped himself. His chin trembled. He was clearly on the verge of tears. When he’d regained his composure, Charlie slapped his palms on the table and pushed himself to a stand, hiking up his worn blue jeans.

He spoke evenly. “Now, if you don’t mind, I need a hot shower and a hot meal and unless you ladies and gentlemen would like to join me for both those things, I need to ask you to kindly leave.”

The Special Agent in Charge placed her card on the worn wood table. “We expect that you’ll remain in town.”

Charlie McGuinness let go with a belly laugh. “I expect I will, too, miss. I was born in this town sixty-nine years ago, and they’ll bury me next to the beautiful Ginny Dickinson McGuinness one day, not a mile down the road.”

“You know what I mean,” the agent said. “We’ll be in touch.”

Richard remained seated as the federal agents filed through the hall and out the front door. Once the crowd dispersed, he could see that his attorney and chief of staff remained in the dining room. Richard motioned for them to leave as well. “I’ll catch up with you,” he said, producing a reassuring nod.

M.J. Krawecki and Walt Henson produced twin scowls. Richard knew they were being extra cautious about the physical demands of his schedule these days.
It had been only ten weeks since his bypass surgery, and news of Amanda’s death—and that she left behind a four-year-old child—had been a shock. The existence of one tiny little dark-eyed girl had been like a bomb going off in the middle of his recovery, his marriage, and his reelection campaign.

Walt did as Richard asked and reluctantly headed for the door, but M.J. stood in place, propping a fist on her hip and widening her stance like a gunslinger in a spaghetti Western. It almost made Richard laugh.

M.J. possessed a set of balls ten times bigger than his own. That’s why he hired her when he was minority leader in the Massachusetts Senate and brought her along when elected to the U.S. House. But recently, there had been an unpleasant rift in their partnership. She wanted to make this paternity mess disappear—she’d do anything to avoid a scandal that would jeopardize his political future. Richard wanted only his daughter, and he was willing to risk everything to get her.

M.J. didn’t understand, of course. How could she? She was in her late thirties. Married to her job. Ambitious. No kids. And in perfect health. Someone like that couldn’t grasp how precarious life really was, or how a child could change a mortal man’s priorities.

“Go on ahead, M.J. I’ll be there shortly.”

She wasn’t happy about it, but she stepped outside, closing the heavy wooden door behind her. Richard knew he’d have to give the M.J. situation some thought once he and Christina were settled into their new routine as a family. The truth was that his chief of staff had defied him. He asked her to rig the custody ruling and she refused. He hadn’t dared involve the squeaky-clean Walt in this sort of thing; the man would never condone it. This meant Richard had to take care of the matter himself.

M.J.’s snub put Richard in an uncomfortable position. Plausible deniability was always trickier when there was no middleman to take the fall, so there he was, his ass swinging in the breeze.

Richard had offered the local clerk a higher-paying post at the federal court of appeals down the road in Portland. In exchange, the clerk had changed the custody hearing date and didn’t notify the McGuinnesses, though computer records showed she had. It had worked. All the judge had seen was that the grandfather and aunt never showed up to challenge Richard’s petition for custody. He had won by default.

Richard now looked down at his hands folded on the McGuinnesses’ kitchen table. Those hands had been dirty a long while now. A man couldn’t hold elected office for more than twenty-five years without finessing the rules now and again. But that didn’t prevent him from feeling a sickened twinge in his gut every time he thought about what he’d done up here in Maine. He’d won his daughter under false pretense. What did that say about the kind of man he was, the kind of father he would be?

The house had gone quiet. Charlie hadn’t moved, but Richard could tell he was itching to speak. He turned his attention to the old farmer.

“Leave.”

Richard smiled kindly. “I was hoping I might take you up on that offer of a hot meal. It would give us a chance to talk in private.”

Charlie laughed again, and though the laugh was laced with bitterness, something about the sound reminded Richard of Amanda. There was once a time when he’d felt a sense of accomplishment every time he made the pretty, smart, and dangerously young Amanda McGuinness laugh.

“You know, Charlie, this heart attack and surgery thing has really made me take a hard look at my life, and I’ve got to say, I wish things had been different with Amanda. I wish she’d told me she was pregnant.”