With Every Breath (2 page)

"How about that? Colder than home, hmm?"

Josh didn’t answer.

She looked down at her six-year-old son. He watched the sea gather itself for another assault on the boat, and there was something rapt about his face. His eyes—a dark green tinged with light, almost the exact shade of the frothing water that surrounded them—were a little wider than usual. Or maybe, Maddie thought, that was just her desperately wishful thinking.

She took his hand and pulled him back from the railing. She kept talking to him. If she remembered only one thing about the silence of her childhood, it was that it had been in her throat, a horrible, strangling sensation in her throat, and nobody seemed to realize that her ears still worked just fine.

She squatted down beside Josh, bringing herself to his level. "We’re almost there. Do you want me to pick you up so you can see the land? Just for a minute, though. I don’t want you to get too wet and chilled. Then we’ll go back to the car and get warm."

She went on as though he had nodded or responded in some way, lifting him, pointing to the rocky shore in the distance. Beyond the rocks and the beach, she could just begin to make out buildings. A few were of angular, contemporary architecture, with lots of peaked roofs and glass. But most were little saltboxes and cottages.

The buildings went off to the right of the ferry landing, toward the east side of Candle Island. To the left there were piers.

"I read that that’s the only place on the whole island where the sea is sort of calm," she explained. "There’s a cove in there, and that’s where all the fishing boats are docked."

Aunt Susan had told her that her father had worked on one of those boats, but looking out at the little island, Maddie realized that none of it, not even the piers, looked at all familiar to her.

Not that it should, she reflected. Candle Island was an obscure, nasty part of her past, and she’d left it a long time ago. She put Josh down again.

"Come on, let’s go back. I’m freezing," she said suddenly. She hadn’t remembered either how cold the coast of Maine could be in September. Her blood had certainly thinned in the course of the last twenty-five years. She considered herself a true Floridian now, and she was cold to the bone.

Josh followed her obediently through the lines of parked cars behind them. When they reached their silver

Volvo, Maddie unlocked the passenger door and shepherded him inside. She went around to scoot behind the wheel.

Almost there, she realized, looking up. Candle Island seemed to rush at them, as though the boat was moving faster, homing in. Relief shivered inside her. It was a slow, pervasive feeling, one she was wary of and a little reluctant to embrace.

They’d made it. They’d gotten there unnoticed and unmolested. They’d be fine now, she thought. But, of course, she’d thought the same thing right after the divorce, too.

This time only one person knew where they had gone. Aunt Susan certainly wouldn’t say anything, and no one else would ever expect them to go to Candle Island. It had been twenty-five years since Aunt Susan had come north to collect her after her parents had run off and left her. It wasn’t a place that Maddie had ever spoken of, and certainly not to her ex-husband. She didn’t even remember it so much as she had been told that she had lived there, and that a piece of her had died there. And that brought a dark, deep-rooted anger. She had been rejected, abandoned. When her parents had left her, she’d been all of nine.

And now she was back, because what better place was there to hide Josh until his father was found? The island’s only access was this ferry. Rick could hardly grab Josh and run from Candle, not unless he planned to swim twelve long miles. And he didn’t know the place existed. It was the only thing that could ever have brought her back, and she thought it was a brilliant strategy.

She turned on the Volvo’s engine and fiddled with the heater. Josh leaned forward to put his hands in front of the vent. Maddie’s heart kicked. That was good. Not words, not quite, but good.

The sins of the fathers, she thought. History repeating itself, eerily, almost cunningly, but she had pulled herself out of her own silence, and she could pull Josh out of his, too.

"It’s still cold air, honey. Here, do this until it warms up." She stuck her hands beneath her thighs and sat on them. Josh followed her gesture.

The ferry chugged around into the cove and nosed its way up to the first dock. She still didn’t think anything looked familiar, but suddenly Maddie felt a little squeamish at the thought of getting off the ferry, of actually
being
on the island.

"We’ll have to get some groceries," she rushed on, her teeth chattering. "I already sent money to the realtor. She has a house all ready and waiting for us. We’ve just got to go to her office and pick up the key." The ferry engine died. An incomplete silence fell, the hum of the other automobile engines sounding muted beyond the window glass of the Volvo. She noticed that Josh was leaning forward in his seat again, this time to peer out the windshield. She wondered if his throat felt as strangled, as unnaturally tight, as hers once had.

The cars began rolling off the boat, and Maddie fell into line behind them. They drove onto a paved road that curved around to the north. She realized that the island was only three blocks wide. She could see water at either end of each side street. She knew from looking at a map that it really was shaped like a candle, with the boat cove at the handle, complete with a spit of land at the top that looked almost like a flame. But a flat image on paper hadn’t really given her a clear perspective. She hadn’t expected the land to be so narrow. It wasn’t long, either. Before she could blink, they came up on a small business district.

She slid the Volvo into the first available parking space she came to. They had passed a diner a little way back, just at the point where the road had turned. It was a place out of middle-American history, with plenty of shiny aluminum, and red-and-white-striped awnings. She saw a school on a side street to her left, small and square, white with a blue roof. A post office and the city hall sat directly in front of it. There was a Methodist church next to them, and a spattering of retail stores to her right.

"Come on," she said to Josh. "Let’s bundle up and take a look around."

He got out after her, taking her warning literally. Though his coat was already zipped, he clutched the front of it as though the cold, buffeting wind might wrench it open again.

Maddie bit her lip and smiled. She loved him so much. Sometimes it was stunning, overpowering, at least for her. A grin from him, a childish reflex, or one of his old bursts of delighted laughter, and its full force would slam into her out of nowhere, almost robbing her of breath.

She took his hand, and they started up the street side by side. They came to a liquor store first, then a drugstore, then a market. Farther up on the next block she saw a sidewalk cafe, its outdoor patio already barren of tables and abandoned for the winter. There was an art gallery beside that.

They hurried into the market. She piled their cart with enough staples and necessities to last them weeks, and when she was aiming it back toward the cash register, she realized that Josh was no longer beside her.

A new feeling of pressure hit her chest, and it was agony. Maddie whipped around. Her palms had gone damp, and her hands felt like ice. There was an elderly woman behind her.

"Have you seen—" Maddie gasped and got her breath under control. "A small boy in a bright blue parka?"

"He’s in the next aisle," the woman snapped. "You should keep a better eye on him. Parents have responsibilities."

Maddie’s heart lurched and plunged. She looked at the woman wildly for a split second, then she ran around into the next aisle. Josh was in front of a shelf that was laden with cereal bars and instant breakfast mixes.

Maddie took a deep breath and made herself approach him calmly. "Made for a k-kid on the go?" she teased.

Josh looked up at her and held out a box of Pop-Tarts.

"Oh ... I g-got some already. But not grape. Sure, we can g-get them, too."
Breathe,
she instructed herself,
slowly, evenly, get calm.

She led Josh back to their cart, her knees still wobbling.
Not your fault. Not then, not now,
she reminded herself. He was a boy, still a perfectly normal boy in so many ways, inclined to wander off occasionally.

Inclined to trust his father.

Four weeks of counseling hadn’t gotten Josh to speak again, but it had taught her that. Intellectually. The deep, irrational guilt over what had happened to him was something else again.

They finally made it to the cashier, and Maddie began unloading their cart. "Can you tell me where Welcome Realty is?" she asked, keeping one comer of one eye on Josh. He was studying the magazine rack. The sourfaced, elderly woman was right behind him.

"Four blocks north, take a right," the cashier told her. "It’s up on the Beach Road."

Maddie paid for the groceries and only when they

were outside again did she remember that their car was a good block away.

Once, a lifetime ago it seemed now, she would have left Josh standing guard over the groceries. She would have jogged the short distance and brought the car back to him. Now she swerved the cart and they walked to the next block together.

A few minutes later they found the realty office. It was in a beautifully restored Cape Cod on the beach.

"Something tells me," she said to Josh, parking out front, "that our rental house isn’t going to be quite this grand." She had learned quickly that real estate on the island was dear. She had thought that housing cost a lot in Fort Lauderdale until she had begun corresponding with Cassie Diehl of Welcome Realty. Fort Lauderdale was still more expensive, but Fort Lauderdale was
Florida.
Candle Island was just a jumble of rocks and sand off the coast of a very cold place.

They went inside. The office was clean, modem, with teal blue carpet and a gray velour sofa against one wall of the reception area. The sofa virtually whispered at Maddie to sink down into its lush cushions and make herself at home. She did, sighing at the warmth, patting the space beside her. Josh sat and pushed himself close to her side.

A bell jingled over the door. Maddie looked up too quickly, too sharply, out of habit.

The man who came in spared them only a glance. He walked past the desk and glanced down a hallway. Maddie noticed that he moved with an almost-imperceptible limp.

"Cassie around?" he asked.

"I. . . no. No one was here when we c-came in. Just a second ago."

Her breath, borderline uncooperative since she’d lost

Josh in the store, threatened to tangle yet again. Against all reason, the man intimidated her. Not, she thought, that it was hard to do that to a woman who’d once been so traumatized that she had stopped speaking for fourteen months, and who still, in stressful circumstances, could work up one hell of a stutter if she wasn’t careful.

The man went back to the door. He looked out through the narrow pane at the top, and Maddie watched him. His jaw tightened as though putting weight on that right leg hurt him but he was damned and determined that he wasn’t going to favor it.

Josh tugged on her sleeve.

"What, baby?" She looked down at him quickly. He pointed to the magazines on the polished, cherry coffee table.

Maddie picked one for him that seemed to contain lots of pictures, then she heard a drawer or door slam somewhere down the hallway. Footsteps followed the sound. She breathed a little easier. Someone was coming, putting an end to their time alone with the man at the door.

She looked at him again out of the comer of her eye. He had one shoulder tucked against the doorjamb, and his hands were shoved into his jeans pockets. This time she figured out what it was about him that bothered her. It wasn’t familiarity, at least not in any conventional sense. It was more than that. She recognized something
in
him, something deep, prohibitive, even angry.

He was not a good-looking man, she thought, impressions still tumbling in on her. He was dark, and his face was too hard. But something about him made a person look twice, almost as though to make absolutely certain that he
wasn’t
strikingly handsome.

A woman finally cruised into the waiting room.

Maddie turned her attention to her and disliked her on sight. She was inordinately thin. She had flame red hair that couldn’t possibly be her natural color. Her fingernails were artificial daggers. She seemed surprised to see the man.

"Hey, Joe, what’s up?"

Joe, Maddie thought. She watched him look around at the woman, moving nothing more than his head, then he made a short, thumb-jabbing motion at Maddie. "I can wait."

The woman’s eyes followed his gesture. "Can I help you?"

Maddie got to her feet. Josh lunged up along with her, pressing in close to her leg. Too many strangers, she thought, too new a place.

"I’m Madeline Brogan. I . . . wrote, and called. I spoke to someone—"

"You spoke to me," the woman answered peremptorily. "I’m Cassie Diehl. I’ve got you all set up."

She moved behind the desk and pulled open a drawer. She extracted a file and plucked a lease out, sliding it across the desk toward her.

Maddie wanted to read it, to be sure that everything was as it should be. But Cassie was pushing a pen toward her, as though urging her to hurry. Maddie glanced back at the sofa.

"I . . . I’ll just sit down over there with it for a moment, and then you can take care of this . . . gentleman." She forced herself to enunciate carefully. Please, I can’t get rattled now, not now.
There was no real reason for it, and Josh would notice, would get even more nervous himself.

"I said I can wait," the man answered in a deep growl.

Josh’s hand stiffened in hers. Maddie nodded and