maybe he would understand he didn’t have to end up being another Gideon Larsen, minus the booze.
It was one way she could pay Shamus back for saving her life.
The story was sad, and she focused on the two children talking to the street Santa outside, hoping the happiness she saw there would get her through it.
She lowered her voice and leaned closer to him so he could hear. “I was eleven, and my older brother was fourteen. My parents both worked, so during the summer vacation, the two of us were responsible for watching our little sister, who was six.”
She wanted to stop there, to tell him how pretty and sassy Kelly had been, but if she did, she’d never finish. Just like always when she got to this part in the story, she wanted to cry. Watching the children outside wasn’t helping at all, so she transferred her gaze to her coffee cup.
“My brother, Ethan, had a ball game, and he told me to watch Kelly. We walked two blocks to the school playground so she could go on the swings, and then we walked back home and into the house, and I locked the back door. Before our parents got home, I was supposed to put clothes in the dryer and fold a couple of piles of clean laundry in the cellar, but Kelly was afraid of going down there, because sometimes there were mice. So I let her stay upstairs in the kitchen and went downstairs to turn on the dryer. When I finished the work, I went upstairs. The back door was open, and Kelly was gone.”
“They didn’t find a…her?” he asked quietly.
“No.” She met his gaze. His eyes had softened. She had reached him. But there was more. “My father blamed my brother and me both. I didn’t think my mother did, but she didn’t protect us from his yelling, so maybe subconsciously she did and wanted us to be punished. I don’t know. Anyway, Ethan was my best friend after that. Life was rough, and he kept promising me when he was eighteen, he would get an apartment and get me out of there as soon as he could. He said if need be, we’d move to another state.”
“It didn’t happen?”
“Oh, he got the apartment in another state, I guess. I don’t know for certain because he broke all ties with me and didn’t leave a forwarding address. Just a note saying he was very, very sorry, but he had to leave. That I would be all right. Haven’t heard from him since.”
“How long?” Shamus asked, frowning.
“About thirteen years, give or take.” She gave him a sad, closed-lipped smile. “It’s over and done, all of it. I just wanted to tell you this so you can see I know what misery is. I just choose to follow what the Bible says, that no matter what our circumstances are, we should be content.
“So if I’m happy and try to look at everything in a positive light, Shamus, it’s not because I’m stupid or naive. It’s because I don’t want to lose the life God wants for me.”
Like her father had. Like, maybe, Shamus would. She didn’t have to say that. Shamus understood. She could tell by the way his features changed to a pensive look.
“You know you weren’t responsible for whatever happened to your sister, don’t you?” he asked.
“I know it in my head, Shamus. But in here—” she tapped her finger against her chest “—I’m not so sure.”
“I know what you mean,” he admitted.
He was talking to her about something personal? Her eyes went big, but Shamus shook his head. “That’s all I’m saying on that, so don’t even try to get me to share.”
He was closing off to her again, so she had to get back to the reason why she’d come. “So what’s the latest on Tripp?”
“As of this morning,” he said, “he’s still just a person of interest in the bombing, and his daughter is still missing.”
Normally, with Tripp being involved in a felony, Mallory would need to revoke his probation. But in this case, where someone could be holding her probationer hostage by now, and his daughter’s life was threatened, it was a gray area, her boss had said. Tripp wasn’t supposed to be avoiding the law, but she didn’t know for certain that he was.
“Was the backpack they found at the scene the one we saw Tripp wearing, or a different one?”
“I wasn’t told,” Shamus said.
“But you asked.”
One side of his mouth quirked upward, but he didn’t reply. That meant he’d asked. Amazing how well she could read him. The very thought of that distracted her for a few seconds while she wondered if it meant anything about him and her. She decided it didn’t. She didn’t like him well enough for a “him and her” anyway. Her instincts were still sharp, that was all, despite the bomb blast knocking her silly.
“When was his daughter last seen?” she continued.
“Getting off her school bus at three-thirty Friday at the end of her street, by a neighbor. The man blackmailing Tripp—if there is such a man—may have been waiting for her at her house.” Shamus glanced at his watch and looked up at her with his eyebrow raised. “Any more questions?”
“Yep.” Sliding her chair away from him enough to give herself some elbow room, she opened her bag and took out the two cookies inside. “Want Santa or the reindeer?”
She expected him to be above the obvious bribe to keep him at their meeting, but he grabbed Santa right out of her fingertips. She hid her smile. “You have a weak spot for sweets.”
He stopped munching on the cookie abruptly, and swallowed, staring at her. “I guess you could say that.”
All of a sudden she felt like a warm sugar cookie.
“And you have brothers,” she added quickly to get her mind on where it should be—trying to figure out how best to pay him back. Because baring her soul earlier to make him see he needed to change wasn’t enough, she supposed. “Brothers, or a lot of friends.”
“Three brothers.” He bit Santa’s head off. That didn’t surprise her at all. “How did you know?” he asked a minute later.
“The way you grabbed Santa. Cookie survival. Before everything went south at home, my brother’s friends would come over at Christmas time, and if you weren’t fast when cookies came out of the oven, you were out of luck.”
A wave of emotion over the loss of her sister and her brother’s broken promises threatened her happiness for a few seconds until she shoved back the hurt. Grieving forever wouldn’t help a thing—her father had shown her that. She couldn’t bring Kelly back and win her father’s love or relieve her father’s grief. This was all God’s plan. Her only responsibility was to look to God and have joy in her heart, not misery.
She pulled out the reindeer with the green sprinkles, broke off a piece and ate, enjoying the taste of the butter and sugar flavors blended together and feeling her tense shoulders relax.
The pure delight in Mallory’s eyes teased Shamus’s weary heart, and he tried not to let himself warm to her. She’d lived through tragedy and hurt, and kept going. He admired that. Watching her happy was almost better than eating the cookie she’d bought for him. Definitely better than sitting in his house alone, waiting for the makeshift probation office to reopen tomorrow morning. Infinitely better than waiting for Christmas to pass so he could forget how bleak he felt inside.
He wished he knew how she did the happiness thing. It couldn’t only be God, because he’d turned to God over and over and gotten only silence, not joy.
Mallory polished off her cookie, wiped her fingertips and leaned over way too close to him again. He almost bolted away. He could handle Mallory being close. He could. He was just edgy because someone had tried to blow him up.
“Any more questions?” he asked her.
“Sure. Lots,” she said brightly. “Why do you suppose someone would force Tripp to bring a bomb into the probation building?”
“If