and a shell path leading to small, boxy cottages similar to the one in which he stood. There was a bowl filled with dried cranberries on the coffee table, and as he watched, she switched on additional lights.
“Thank you.” She hesitated. “It was my husband’s family home for four generations.”
“Your husband the harbormaster.”
“Yes.” She sounded faintly defensive. “Would you like something to drink?”
“No.” He flopped down into a comfortably overstuffed chair without invitation. “I’d like an explanation.”
Two
Celia took a deep, nervous breath, trying to calm the fluttering muscles of her stomach. What on earth had possessed her to involve Reese in this mess? She’d reacted instinctively, knowing she’d had no time to waste. And knowing Reese was safe. The one thing she did know was that he couldn’t possibly be involved. That would have required him to be in the area in the last few years.
“I was looking for drug smuggling activity.”
“Drug smugglers?” He sounded incredulous. The faint air of hostility she’d sensed from him disappeared as he sat up straight and stared at her.
She perched on the edge of the couch and clasped her hands together. “It’s imperative that none of the clients along the dock learn about it.”
“Why?”
“It’s possible that someone moored here could be a part of a drug operation.”
“So when I came along and blew the whistle, you decided to use me as a cover?” Reese’s eyes were intent, unsmiling.
She shrugged. “I didn’t know what else to do. You were shouting loud enough to wake folks on the other side of town.”
The side of his mouth twitched, as if he were struggling not to smile. “Sorry.” He leaned back against the rough fabric of the chair, stretched out his long legs, then looked at her skeptically. “Drug smuggling?”
She popped up off the couch, uncomfortable with his questions and annoyed at the derisive tone. “I’m not crazy,” she said defensively. “You’d be amazed at the amount of illegal stuff that goes on around here.”
He laughed aloud, but she had the sense that he was laughing at her rather than with her. “I’ve been in dozens of harbors along dozens of shorelines and, believe me, I’ve seen more kinds of ‘illegal stuff’ than you could imagine. I’m just wondering what you think you can do about it.”
“Maybe nothing.” She carefully looked past him, hoping her face wasn’t too transparent.
“Celia.” He waited until she reluctantly dragged her gaze back to mesh with his. “You could be putting yourself in serious danger. Drug runners are criminals. They wouldn’t think twice about hurting you if they caught you spying on them. Leave the investigation to the law enforcement guys who get paid to do it.”
She wanted to laugh, an entirely inappropriate reaction, and she bit the inside of her lip hard. If he only knew! “I’ll be careful,” she said.
“Careful isn’t good enough.” His tone was harsh. “Do you think I’m kidding about getting hurt? This isn’t a game—”
“I know it’s not!” Her voice overrode his. “They killed my husband and my son.” Dear God, help me. She couldn’t believe she’d blurted that out.
The words hung in the air, still stunning her after two years. She collapsed again on the couch like a balloon that had lost its helium, putting her face in her hands. An instant later she realized that Reese’s weight was settling onto the cushions beside her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. A large, warm hand settled on her back and rubbed gentle circles as if she were a baby in need of soothing. “I am so sorry, Celia. I didn’t know.”
“I didn’t expect you would.” She pressed the heels of her palms hard against her eyes, pushing back the tears. She wasn’t a crier; tears accomplished nothing but making you feel like you needed a nap to recharge the batteries you drained bawling. “It was just local news.” Except to me.
There was a small silence. “Tell me what happened.”
She hadn’t spoken of it in a long time. Not even to Roma, who she knew worried over her silence. But for some reason, she felt compelled to talk tonight. Maybe it was because she had a certain degree of familiarity with Reese due to their shared past. Maybe it was because he hadn’t known her family and therefore could be less emotionally involved. Most likely it was because she knew he wouldn’t be around long and it wouldn’t matter.
Drawing in a deep breath, she sighed heavily and shifted back against the couch, her hands falling limp in her lap. Reese sat close, his arm now draped along the back of the couch behind her shoulders. It should have bothered her, but the numbness that had been so familiar in that first horrible year of her bereavement was with her again, and she couldn’t work up the energy to mind.
“We only had been married for two years when Milo’s dad passed away and Milo was asked to take over as harbormaster. He’d been raised on the pier and he knew the work already.” She smiled briefly, looking into the past. “He was good at it. Everybody liked Milo.”
Reese didn’t speak, although she saw him nod encouragingly in her peripheral vision.
“Our son was born three years later. We named him Emilios, like his father and grandfather. Leo was his nickname. I had worked at the marina but I stayed home with him after he was born.” The numbness was fading and she concentrated on breathing deeply and evenly, forming the words with care. Anything to keep from letting the words shred her heart again.
“When Leo was two, Milo mentioned to me that he thought there was something funny going on down toward Monomoy Island. One night in September he came home and told me he’d called the FBI, that he was pretty certain some kind of illegal contraband was being brought ashore.”
“That was smart.” Reese’s voice was quiet.
“He didn’t know what else to do,” she said. “After he showed them where he thought the action was happening, he stayed away. The federal agents got a lot of information from him and that was it. Almost a year passed and nothing happened that we knew of. We figured they probably were proceeding cautiously, starting some kind of undercover operation. And then one day Milo took Leo with him on an errand over to Nantucket. Halfway across the sound, their boat exploded.”
Reese swore vividly. “What happened?”
She took another deep, careful breath. “At first I assumed it was an accident. Just a horrible, awful accident. And then federal agents came around one day and told me there had been an explosive device attached to the bottom of the boat. It had been detonated by someone close enough to see them go out on the water.”
She stopped speaking and there was silence in the room, broken only by the steady tick-tock of the old captain’s clock Milo’s father had restored. She wound it every morning when she came downstairs.
“How old was your—Leo?”
Her heart shrank from the question. She could deal with this if she just didn’t think too much about it. But she couldn’t talk about Leo. She just couldn’t. “Two and a half. He would have started kindergarten next year.” Her voice quavered. Shut up, shut up. Stop talking. “He was very blond, like I was as a child, and he had big velvety-brown eyes. He adored his daddy and there was nothing he loved better than going out on the…the boat w-with Milo.” Her voice was beginning to hitch as sobs forced their way out.
She felt Reese’s arms come hard around her, pulling her to his chest as the floodgates of long-suppressed grief opened. “Shh.” His voice came dimly through the storm of agony that swept over her.
“I wish—I w-wish I’d died, too.” She stuffed a fist