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They studied the menu for a few minutes, both of them selecting the shrimp and scallops. The waitress took their order, and once she had walked away, Rick returned his gaze to Lacey.
“So,” he said, lowering the cloth napkin to his lap. “Do you want to tell me about your breakup?”
For a moment, she thought he had said “breakdown” and was startled by the question. She would not have described what she went through after learning about her mother’s infidelities as a breakdown, and how could he know about that, anyhow? With relief, she realized what he had actually said.
“What breakup?” she asked.
“You know, the breakup that’s made you take a breather from dating.”
“Oh, it’s not that.” She suddenly wished she were a more dishonest person. She could simply say, “Yes, it was painful, but I’m getting over it.” Even as a kid, though, she’d been a lousy liar. “I’ve just sworn off men for a while,” she said.
“Because you were hurt?”
“Only by myself.” She offered a rueful smile. “By my choices. My actions. I have a tendency to move too fast. To not look out for myself. To pick the wrong kind of guy.” That was enough. She didn’t need to go into any more detail with him.
The waitress poured wine into their glasses and neither of them spoke until she had walked away again.
“What’s the wrong kind of guy?” he asked.
“Oh, well.” She squirmed uncomfortably, wanting to change the direction of the conversation. “Not a guy like you.”
He raised his eyebrows, and she realized she might be giving him hope with that statement.
“All I mean is that you seem very safe to me,” she said.
He laughed, his wineglass halfway to his lips. “Why does that feel like an insult?” he asked.
“It’s not,” she said. “At least I didn’t mean it that way.”
He took a sip of his wine and set the glass on the table again, then leaned forward. “You don’t need to worry about me, Lacey,” he said. “You’ve made it clear you don’t want a romance. I’ll honor that.”
“Thank you,” she said, grateful for that clear communication. He really had a lot of charm. She could think of a couple of friends she could fix him up with who would appreciate him far more than she would.
“So, now,” he said. “Tell me everything there is to know about you.”
“Everything?”
“You grew up on the sound, you said. A child of the sand and the sea.”
She nodded. “Exactly.”
“Is your family still in the area?”
“My father and stepmother live nearby, in Sanderling. My brother and his wife and their little girl live with me in the keeper’s house at the Kiss River light station.”
“You’re kidding. You live in a keeper’s house?”
She nodded.
“How did you manage that?”
“I got very lucky. My brother and I helped with the restoration of the house. It’s going to be turned into a museum next year, though, and we’ll have to leave then, unfortunately.”
“Amazing.” He sipped his wine again. “You didn’t mention your mother,” he said. “That beautiful woman in the photograph at your studio. You have her dimples. Does she live nearby, too?”
“No,” Lacey said. “She died when I was thirteen.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” He looked a bit embarrassed and she wished she could say something to put him at ease.
“It was a long time ago,” she said.
“It must be so hard to lose a mother, especially as a girl that age. Had she been sick long?”
“She wasn’t sick. She was murdered.”
“God, no. What happened?” He raised a hand to prevent her from answering him. “I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about this. I mean, I’d understand if you don’t want to.”
“Actually, I’d like to tell you about it since you’re a lawyer. I’d like to pick your brain a little, if you don’t mind.”
“What about?” He leaned back as the waitress set their plates of shrimp and scallops in front of them, and Lacey waited until the woman had walked away again.
She picked up a slice of bread from the basket on the table. “Well,” she said, spreading butter on the bread, “my family and I just learned that her murderer may be getting out on parole and we want to prevent that from happening. My dad’s getting in touch with an attorney, but I wondered if you might know what we should do to fight it.” She took a bite from the bread and watched him absorb the information.
He sighed. “That’s not my area of expertise, I’m afraid,” he said. “Not by a long shot. I’m a tax attorney. I could run it by some of my friends, though, if that would help.”
“Oh, no, you don’t have to do that.” She suddenly felt guilty for asking.
“How did it happen exactly?” he asked. “Your mother.”
Between bites of seafood, she told him about the battered women’s shelter and how her mother had saved the life of Zachary Pointer’s wife. Rick listened with rare attentiveness for a man, barely touching his food as she spoke.
“It’s heartbreaking,” he said. “She sounded very special. I’m so sorry.” He reached across the table for her hand, and she let him hold it. His touch felt friendly, brotherly. She thought he actually had tears in his eyes, but she wasn’t sure. One thing she was certain of was that she really was safe with this guy. Maybe he could be a friend. But she let her hand rest in his only a moment before gently withdrawing it.
“What’s your goal?” he asked. “I mean, with the legal system. Do you want to punish him longer or do you want to keep him off the streets because you think he might hurt someone else?”
“Well, we—my father and brother and I and all the people around here who loved my mother—we just feel that twelve years is not long enough. He’d be out, alive and healthy and free and getting on with his life, while my mother can never come back.”
“I’m going to look into this for you,” he said with sudden determination. “I can check with people who know that part of the law better than I do.”
“That’s so nice of you.”
“I have one important question for you first,” he said.
She set her fork on the edge of her plate, waiting for him to continue.
“I may be … I apologize, because this might not be fair of me to ask, but … have you thought about what pursuing this will cost you?”
She opened her mouth to reply, but he stopped her.
“I don’t mean financially,” he said. “I mean emotionally. It could be long and drawn out. You and your family need to really think this through. You need to be sure you’re up for going through the whole thing again.”
“I think we have to do it,” she said.
He moved a scallop around on his plate. “I’m just playing devil’s advocate here, all right?” he asked. “I can’t possibly know how this feels to you, how it feels to lose your mother … but have you thought of … just letting it go? Putting it behind you? Maybe even taking it one step further by forgiving the guy who did it?”
He must have seen her stiffen, because he continued quickly.
“Maybe not forgive him, exactly, although I have to tell you, I believe strongly in the power of forgiveness,” he said. “It brings peace to the person doing the forgiving. I understand that’s probably too much to ask. But you might consider not fighting his release. Not wasting your energy on him. As long as the parole board decides he’s not a danger to anyone else, as long as he’s truly been rehabilitated, can you just let it go?”
She shook her head. “No,” she said.
“Lacey, I’m not talking about letting it go for his sake, but for yours,” he said, his dark eyes searching her face. “If you fight this, you’ll have to relive everything that happened.”
“I’ll never stop reliving it,” she said, but she was frankly touched by what he had said. He was a kind man, and she knew there was wisdom in his words. “You sound like you’ve been through something like this.”
He shook his head. “No,” he said. “Not really.” He pressed his napkin to his lips, then smiled at her again. “I haven’t known you long,” he said, his voice soft, “but just seeing you with customers at the studio, seeing the sweet and gentle way you are with me, I can tell that you’re a compassionate person. I bet you usually forgive people very easily.”
“Well.” She sighed, lifting her fork from the edge of her plate. “The irony is that my mother would have been the first to forgive him,” she said, spearing a scallop. “Unfortunately, though, I’m nothing like her.”
6
LACEY STOOD NEXT TO THE EXAMINING TABLE at the animal hospital, her hands buried in the thick, black shoulder fur of a Bernese mountain dog, while her father snipped the stitches from several shaved areas on the dog’s side.
“You’re being such a good boy,” Lacey cooed to the dog. He was huge, a hundred and ten pounds, and panting up a storm. His heavy coat was not designed for a North Carolina summer.
“He’s healing very well,” her father said.
From where she stood, she could see how the gray was rapidly invading her father’s once dark hair, and for some reason, that distressed her.
“Don’t you try to escape again,” Lacey said to the dog, who appeared to be ignoring her. He stared straight ahead at the wall, stoically tolerating the procedure until he could return to the waiting room and his beloved owner. The dog belonged to a family staying in a beachfront house, and he’d run straight through a flimsy wooden fence on the day of their arrival, anxious to cool off in the ocean.
Suzy, the receptionist, suddenly opened the door to the examining room and poked her head inside.
“There’s a gorgeous vase full of yellow roses out here for you, Lacey,” she said. “They were just delivered.”
“You’re kidding.” Lacey looked at Suzy. “Who are they from?” She knew there could only be one answer to that question.
Suzy held up a small envelope. “You’ve got your hands full,” she said. “Want me to open it for you?”
Lacey nodded, and Suzy pulled out the card and held it toward her. One hand still deep in the dog’s fur, Lacey took the card and read the handwritten message to herself. You are the best thing about this summer. With affection, Rick.
“Well?” Suzy asked with a grin, her curiosity clearly piqued.
“A friend.” Lacey slipped the card into the pocket of her lab coat. “Thanks for letting me know.”
Suzy left the room, and Lacey did not need to look at her father to know his eyes were on her.
“Roses, huh?” he asked. Two little words, but she knew all that was behind them. What are you doing, Lacey? Are you being careful? Are you falling into your old ways?
“Not from anyone special, Dad,” she said.
He returned his attention to the stitches without another word, but she knew he wasn’t finished. He wouldn’t be able to help himself. She wasn’t surprised when he spoke again. “None of them were ever special to you, though,” he said. “That was the problem, wasn’t it? That you were indiscriminate? That caring about a person wasn’t really what mattered to—”
“Dad,” she said. She loved him immensely, but he could be such a pain in the neck. “I don’t want to talk about this, okay? The roses are from a nice guy I’ve been seeing recently. Platonically. They’re yellow roses, not red. Please have a little faith in me.” She was quiet a moment, then added, “Gina and Clay have met him, and they like him.”
She and Rick had been out three times so far, and she’d finally allowed him to pick her up at the keeper’s house the night before. She’d been nervous about introducing him to her brother and sister-in-law, but they’d instantly been able to tell that Rick was different from the other men she’d dated. The house had been full of people when he arrived, and she’d worried that Rick would be overwhelmed. Henry, the grandfather of Clay’s first wife, and Walter, Gina’s grandfather, were both there. The two elderly men were frequent visitors to the house, especially now that Rani had arrived. The men had lost their dear, longtime friend, Brian Cass, over the winter and some of the joy had gone out of them. Rani, though, had brought it back.
Rick had handled all the introductions easily, and this morning at breakfast, Clay and Gina had given him their stamp of approval.
Her father snipped the final stitch and straightened up. “I’m sorry, hon,” he said, reaching for a dog treat from the bowl on the counter.
“I feel like a kid who gets an A-minus on a test and you yell at her for not getting an A,” Lacey said, still wounded.
He smiled at that. “I know you’ve tried hard to change, Lace,” he said. “I’ve admired that. And I do trust you. I just flipped out there for a sec.”
He was backpedaling so fast she felt sorry for him. “It’s okay,” she said. She helped him lift the dog from the table and set him on the floor. The dog instantly ran to the door of the room, pawing to be let out. She reattached his leash to his collar.
“I’ll take him out,” Alec said, taking the leash from her hand. “Your shift’s nearly over.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The roses, resting in a glass vase on the reception counter, were beautiful and just about to open fully. Ordinarily, she would stop at a restaurant, usually Sam and Omie’s, for lunch between her morning at the animal hospital and her afternoon in her studio, but she wanted to take the roses home with her and they would bake in the car while she was eating. So, instead, she bought a sandwich from the Subway around the corner and settled into the small kitchen at the animal hospital to eat and read.
The book she was reading was titled Making Good Choices: A Woman’s Guide to Relationships, and was one of a half dozen her therapist had recommended to her. Most of the books, filled with psychobabble, had not spoken to her, but this one did. She could see herself in the anecdotes the author used to illustrate her points. And this author was forward-looking rather than focusing on the past. Lacey appreciated that. She did not want to be analyzed. She didn’t want to look at how, in some bizarre way, she had followed her mother’s promiscuous footsteps without even knowing about them. She just wanted to stop. This author made sense. It’s so much easier to stop an old behavior when you have a new behavior to take its place, she suggested. The author was big on relationships that started as friendships, that did not rush toward physical intimacy, that involved deep and open communication. The person selected for that relationship should be someone different from the type of person the reader was ordinarily drawn to, the author advised. Someone who would not trigger those old behaviors. Someone, Lacey knew, like Rick.
He had kissed her for the first time last night. She doubted she had ever been on three dates before without kissing. In truth, she had not been on three dates before without going to bed with the guy. Last night’s kiss had been chaste, closed-mouthed, and that had been fine with her. She’d wanted nothing more than that. She was a bit worried she had permanently frightened the libido out of herself, but maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. She knew she should be thrilled that Rick had come along at this point in her life. Someone decent, who listened to her when she said she needed to move slowly, who made no demands on her. It felt like a gift, like some greater power was telling her, “You’ve been a good girl for a whole year, Lacey. Now you have earned this truly decent man.” And yet, something was missing.
She was now reading a chapter she desperately needed: Discovering Attraction Where There Is None. “Often,” the author wrote, “women are attracted to ‘bad boys,’ those men who are a challenge or who are in need of ‘fixing.’ The ‘good boys’ are uninteresting and unattractive to these women. But feelings follow behavior. If the man seems right, but the chemistry is lacking, stop focusing on that point. Instead, talk to yourself about his good qualities. I promise, if it was meant to be, loving feelings will follow.”
This was perfect timing, Lacey thought. She had the man. The good boy. And he was even attractive. Feelings follow behavior. Standing up from the table, she reached for the phone on the wall. She would call to thank him for the roses.
7
EVEN AS HE PULLED INTO THE PARKING LOT IN front of Lacey’s studio, Rick could see the roses through the broad front windows. She had brought them with her from the animal hospital. They meant something to her, and that could either be good or bad.
He was not exactly sure how to proceed with Lacey. All he knew was that he needed to move carefully. It was unusual for a woman not to fawn all over him. He was undeniably handsome. He was an attorney. He drove a BMW. But it was clear that superficial trappings didn’t matter to Lacey, and that frankly intrigued him. She couldn’t handle too much of him at once, though. Of that he was certain.
He turned off the ignition and picked up a book from the passenger seat, resting it on his lap. He wondered if stopping in to see her after sending her roses and after speaking to her on the phone only an hour before—and now bringing her yet another gift—would qualify as too much. He was willing to take the risk, though. The roses in the window gave him courage.
He’d learned to time his visits to the studio when Tom Nestor wasn’t present. He’d actually been relieved to learn that Tom was Lacey’s biological father, because it explained the extreme interest the man seemed to take in her affairs. Still, he would just as soon visit with her alone.
He walked into the studio, the book in his hand, and was surprised when Lacey stood up, walked over to him, and gave him a quick hug.
“It’s good to see you,” she said.
“You, too.”
This was a rare welcome from Lacey. He must have turned a corner with her with those flowers. The vase rested on the table next to the kaleidoscopes, and the afternoon light shone through the fragile petals.
