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Or to answer questions.
“What is this?” Daisy asked. Dressed in ladybug pajamas, she ignored the rocker and crouched back on her heels, holding the drink in both hands.
“A milk shake.”
She jiggled it. “It doesn’t shake.”
“No, but it can make you shake. It’s cold.”
“What’s in it?”
“Milk, ice cream and a surprise. You have to taste it to find out.”
Hesitantly Daisy put her mouth to the straw and sucked until her jaw puckered. “I can’t get any.”
“It’s got to melt a little first. Use the spoon.” Sophy took a large bite of hers, savoring the richness of the ice cream and her mom’s incredible chocolate-chip cookies.
“Where’d you learn to make it?”
“My sister taught me.”
“Miss Reba?”
“That’s the one.” Sophy used one foot to keep her rocker moving. To Reba’s kids, Daisy and Dahlia had just been two more kids to play with after Sunday dinner. Their mother hadn’t been so accepting.
You brought Hooligan kids into your house? You’ll wake up one morning trussed like a hog with all your money and your car gone.
They’re five and six years old. Where do you think they’re going to go?
Reba had scowled. I see TV. I read the news. The little one works the pedals while the big one steers. Besides, my friend Linda is a foster parent, and she said they couldn’t pay her enough to take those kids again. Her friend Tara fosters, too, and she said they set her house on fire. They climb out windows, they jump off roofs, they run away, they steal. Neither one of them’s ever spent a day in school.
Sophy had given her a dry look. Then they’ll keep me alert and aware and on my toes.
Reba had sighed. Oh, Sophy.
Sophy knew what that meant: poor, childless, clueless Sophy. Overprotected, overoptimistic, all sunshine and rainbows. Reba had forgotten the Christmas when Sophy had been threatened by two armed killers in the back room of her shop. She wasn’t Mary Sunshine. She knew bad things happened in the world, and if she could keep a few from happening to Dahlia and Daisy, she would be happy.
“Miss Reba doesn’t like us.” Dahlia sat cross-legged in her chair, all skinny limbs, her usual scowl fading only when she took a bite of ice cream. “She called us Hooligans.”
Heat flooded through Sophy. She’d thought the kids were occupied in the family room with Reba’s kids and her father when her sister had started that conversation. She should have known better. Know-it-all mother-of-four parenting-expert Reba certainly should have.
“She shouldn’t have said that,” Sophy agreed. “It was rude, and it’s not true.”
Dahlia shrugged. “’Course it’s true. Mama says most people don’t like us, and that’s okay because we don’t like ’em back.”
Sophy didn’t know what to say to that, because sadly that was the case. Way back in middle school, when some kids had been giving Maggie a hard time, she’d overheard one teacher ruefully tell another, Everyone has to have someone to look down on. Maggie, it seemed, had gone out of her way to give people reasons to look down on her. Where someone else might have taken it as a challenge to prove them wrong, she’d been in their faces, flaunting every bad decision and behavior.
Granted, she’d never been taught anything different. Her brothers, her father, her uncles...Holigans had made an art of reveling in their reputations.
“I like you,” Sophy said. “And Mom and Dad, and Mr. Ty and Miss Nev and Miss Anamaria.” Lord, it was a short list. It made her heart ache.
Dahlia responded with a disbelieving snort before taking a huge bite of ice cream. On the floor, without lifting her gaze from an ant crawling across the boards, Daisy asked, “What’s a hooligan?”
“Remember, Mama told us. It’s someone who runs wild and breaks all the rules and misbehaves and acts like a heathen.”
“I like running wild and making people shake their heads and say, ‘You ain’t nothin’ but trouble, Daisy Holigan.’” Daisy grinned. “I like being a hooligan.”
Wondering which neighbor or irresponsible family member had told her that, Sophy forced a smile. “You like acting that way. But the secret is, you and Dahlia are clever and smart and capable little girls who can be anything you want to be.”
Another snort from Dahlia, and she’d lost Daisy’s attention completely. The girl had risen to her feet and was avidly staring at the sidewalk—rather, at the dog being walked there.
“Good evening,” the man at the other end of the leash called.
Sophy repeated his greeting as Daisy moved to the second step. “What’s your dog’s name?”
“Daisy! We don’t talk to strangers!” Dahlia whispered fiercely.
“But he’s got a dog.”
Sophy made a mental note to talk to the girls about strangers and ruses involving pets.
“Her name is Bitsy,” the man said. “You want to meet her? If it’s okay with your mom.”
The girls’ voices drowned each other out: “She’s not our mom,” from Dahlia and “Please, can I?” from Daisy.
“Sure.” Sophy followed Daisy into the yard as Bitsy pulled her owner through the gate. Wiggling from nose to tail, the dog sniffed the girl, making her giggle. The sound almost stopped Sophy’s heart. Was that the first time she’d heard Daisy laugh?
The man offered his hand. “Hi. I’m Zeke.”
“Sophy.” She shook his hand, his fingers long and strong, his palm uncallused. She still thought of Copper Lake as a small town, but he was one of the twenty thousand or so residents who weren’t a regular part of her life. He was fair skinned with auburn hair, blue eyes and a grin that had surely charmed more than his share of women. Though only a few inches taller than her, he was powerfully built—broad shoulders, hard muscles, not lean but solid. First impression: he was the sort of guy who could make a woman feel safe.
Though she knew better than to rely on first impressions.
“You picked a perfect evening for sitting on the porch with milk shakes.”
She glanced at the glass in her left hand. “The day’s not over until we’ve had ice cream.”
“A woman after our own hearts. Bitsy loves the ice-cream shop, but we’ve got to be careful. Her vet caught us there once and wasn’t happy.”
A glance at the short distance between the dog’s rounded belly and the ground made that easy to believe. “Cute name,” Sophy said while thinking the opposite. All of the dogs she knew had solid names—that they lived up to—Frank, Misha, Scooter, Elizabeth, Bear. Bitsy sounded so fussy for a grown man’s dog.
Zeke winced. “My daughter named her. Bitsy has a digging fixation, and my ex is a big-time gardener, so Bitsy came to live with me.”
So he was handsome, friendly, liked dogs and was single. Sophy was beginning to wonder how their paths hadn’t crossed before tonight. She thought she’d dated every friendly single guy in town.
Every one of whom had wound up married or engaged. To someone else.
Oh, Sophy. Reba’s sigh echoed in her head. It wasn’t a good time to meet anyone new, particularly anyone handsome with a quick grin. She’d taken on a huge responsibility when she’d volunteered to keep Daisy and Dahlia, and that meant putting her social life on hold.
“Your daughter and Bitsy are lucky you were able to take her.”
“There’s not much I wouldn’t do to make my kid happy...besides get back together with her mom. And I’ve kind of grown attached to the mutt, too.”
A car turned onto Oglethorpe at the nearest cross street, and they both glanced in that direction. The engine made a low growl, one that spoke of power tightly reined in. Sophy wasn’t much of a car person, but she could tell the vehicle was older than she was, was meticulously maintained and pretty much defined the phrase muscle car.
And it was painted a gorgeous deep metallic red. Her favorite color.
The air shimmered and the ground vibrated as the car slowly passed. Okay, maybe that was a little fanciful, but it felt that way. When it was gone and she turned back to Zeke, he was crouching on the ground beside Bitsy, head ducked, coaxing her to offer Daisy her paw for a handshake.
When the dog finally obeyed, he stood. “We’d better head home. She always wants a treat when she shakes, and I didn’t bring any. It’s been nice meeting you, Miss Daisy, Miss Dahlia...Miss Sophy.”
“Nice meeting you, too. Maybe we’ll see you again.”
Zeke grinned as he and the dog headed toward the gate. “You can bet on it.”
* * *
Monday was the kind of late-summer day that helped keep Sean in the South. The temperature was in the low eighties, the humidity down for a change, and occasionally when the wind blew across the Gullah River, he could smell the coming of fall, cooler weather, changing leaves, shorter days.
He’d driven around Copper Lake the night before, noticing how much things had changed and how much they’d stayed the same. New businesses and old ones, new people and old ones, familiar places, even a good memory or two. Charlie’s Custom Rods on Carolina Avenue looked as if the only turnover had been in merchandise. The front plate-glass window that Sean and his buddies had cracked late one Saturday night a lot of years ago was still there, the crack still covered with duct tape grown ragged.
The SnoCap Drive-In was still open, too, though it had had an update on its paint from neon turquoise to a subtler shade, and the same old guy who’d run it fourteen years ago was behind the counter.
The Heart of Copper Lake Motel still stood on Carolina, too, seriously renovated, but he would have recognized it. That was where he’d checked in, taking a parking space on the back side of the building even though his room was on the front.
After a restless night’s sleep, Sean knew the first thing he had to do today was talk to Maggie. He’d left the motel with that in mind but decided to have breakfast first. An hour had passed, and he still sat in the coffee shop on the downtown square, a couple blocks from the jail, nursing his third cup of regular sugar-and-cream coffee, reluctant to confront two blasts from the past at once: the sister he’d let down and the jail where he’d spent more than a few nights himself.
The bell above the door rang every few minutes with customers arriving and departing. Most of them were in a hurry to get to work and paid little attention to anyone besides the couple filling orders. They were named Joe and Liz, husband and wife, he’d picked up eavesdropping, and they were strangers to Sean. He’d seen a few older faces that were vaguely familiar—lawyers, maybe, or probation officers or social workers—but none that he could put a name to.
The knot in his gut knew his good luck wouldn’t last.
Liz was topping off his coffee when the doorbell sounded again. “Morning, Sophy,” she called, then asked him, “Can I get you anything else?”
“No, thanks.” Without glancing her way, Sean stirred sugar and cream into his cup. He’d been concentrating on the scene outside the window—square, gazebo, flowers, war memorials, traffic, pedestrians—for so long that he’d memorized it, but it was better than actually making eye contact with someone.
It beat the hell out of making eye contact with someone who might recognize him.
A young and unhappy voice came from the vicinity of the door. “I. Want. To. Go. To. School.”
“I know you do. You’ve made that perfectly clear. But you’re not old enough,” a woman, presumably her mother, replied. She sounded tired, as if they’d been having this conversation for a while.
“That’s not fair! I’m not a baby!”
“I didn’t say you were. You’ll start next year.”
“I want to go this year!”
Sean had never had conversations like that when he was a kid. For starters, his mother had left them when he was about five, and they’d all been born knowing not to tempt their father with tantrums. Patrick Holigan hadn’t been a talkative lad to start with, but he’d had loads of things to say about what happened to children who disrespected their dear old pop.
“You want your usual for here or to go, Soph?” Liz asked, and Sean detected hopefulness for the second option in her voice. The coffee shop was too peaceful a place for a small child who excelled at whining.
“We’ll take them to go,” Sophy said. Hopefulness in her voice, too, as if the kid might suddenly become sweet and sunny when they walked back outside.
Good luck with that, lady.
He shifted his head enough to see Sophy, her back to him, wearing a red dress that clung to a sleek body—muscular arms, narrow waist, well-toned butt, great legs. She wore her blond hair in a ponytail falling halfway down her back and shoes that seemed a compromise between looking good and feeling good. It was a great backside. Did the front side live up to its hype?
Standing beside her, also with her back to Sean, was the girl with the voice pitched to cut glass. Her red shorts skimmed her knees, her top was red with purple stripes, and on her feet were yellow flip-flops decorated with fuzzy, sparkly blue-and-green butterflies. Too much color for this early in the morning.
Her hair was straight, too, pulled into a ponytail that was falling loose, but unlike her mother, hers was jet-black. Her arms were folded mutinously across her middle, and she was tapping one foot as if planning how to break into school and stay there.
Pushing them out of his mind, he rubbed one hand over his jaw, two days’ worth of beard scratching even over the calluses years of mechanic work had built on both his hands. He’d called the jail when he got in last night and found out that they were generous in their visiting hours, taking breaks only for meals. In double the time it would take him to drive over and find a parking space, he could be sitting in a room with Maggie.
Telling her Don’t talk to anybody. Don’t cooperate. This is worth going to jail for.
Most of Craig’s employees in his other businesses knew that from the start. Don’t snitch; don’t inform; take the heat and the time from any trouble they got into, and they’d get along just fine with the boss.
Maggie hadn’t known, probably hadn’t cared. Hell, she’d gotten herself and her kids on Craig’s radar without the benefit of even one paycheck.
If there’s a bit of trouble around, you kids will find it, Grandpa Holigan used to say. Apparently it was still true.
Sophy and the girl left, taking drinks in paper cups with them. He waited a minute to give them time to walk away, left a decent tip for table rental, and walked out to find Sophy standing at one of the outdoor tables and chairs that had been in his blind spot, talking to an older woman, and the girl stealthily making her way to the corner of the building.
Sean passed her, turned the corner and, totally surprising himself, stopped, waiting for the little girl to slide around the corner to freedom. It came in about five seconds, ending in a sudden halt as she realized she wasn’t alone. Her gaze traveled up from his work boots, over his legs, on up across his black shirt and finally reaching his face.
If his shaggy hair and unshaven face scared her, it didn’t show. She still looked as bold as could be. But the sight of her put fear into him. The dark skin and black hair he’d seen in the shop, but the delicate features of her face: the shape of her nose, the deep dark eyes with long lashes, the mouth, the jaw, the fragile, vulnerable, tough air about her...
This was his niece. Maggie’s baby. The threat Craig was using over both him and Maggie.
“Who are you?” She had the sense to whisper so her voice wouldn’t draw Sophy’s attention.
“The one who’s gonna drag your butt back to your foster mother if you don’t go on your own.”
A scowl transformed her pretty little face into a pretty little unhappy face, and she folded her arms over her chest. “You’re not my boss.”
Matching the scowl was easy. He’d perfected it sometime between crawling and learning to walk. No five-year-old could do it better.
After a stare-off, she backed up a few steps, curving around the corner until she was out of sight. Her voice whispered back, though. “I don’t like you.”
“Good for you.”
A moment later, Sophy called, “Come on, Daisy. It’s time to get to work.”
Leaning one shoulder against the warm brick wall, Sean imagined just being with Daisy all day was work in itself, especially for a pretty blonde who hadn’t been raised in the Holigan ways. Apparently, it was too hard for Maggie when she had been raised in the family.
He watched Daisy dance away as Sophy tried to claim her hand to cross the street. Sophy won that round. The kid dragged her feet, but Sophy kept her moving. Daisy deliberately walked on the wrong side of the light pole at the next intersection, forcing Sophy to release, then quickly reclaim her hand. His gaze followed them all the way to their destination, an old house with a shop on the first floor and living quarters upstairs, just down the street, then he spun around and headed for his car.
He’d seen the younger of his nieces. Now it was time to see Maggie.
