When Ghosts Come Home(52)

“It’s okay,” Colleen said. She sniffed, wiped at her eyes again.

“I wasn’t thinking at all,” her mother said. “I just saw Myra and didn’t think a thing about holding her baby. I just forgot.”

“Forgot what?” Colleen asked. They had come to a stop at a red light before leaving the parking lot and turning onto Beach Road. “Forgot that I was with you? Forgot that I lost my son? Forgot that you lost your grandson?”

“I don’t know, Colleen,” she said. “Maybe, for a minute, I forgot to be sad.” Her face broke and she closed her eyes. Colleen knew she was fighting tears. She had rarely seen her mother cry, and seeing it now surprised her.

Colleen reached out and closed her hand over her mother’s. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m not mad. I’m definitely not mad at you. I’m just sad, and I know you are too. It just is what it is.”

The light turned green, and Colleen eased onto the gas and turned out of the parking lot. They rode in silence for a moment.

“I shouldn’t have held that stupid baby,” her mother finally said.

Colleen smiled a little, looked over at her. “It did look stupid, didn’t it?” she said.

Her mother smiled too. “Yes, it did. It looked pretty stupid.”

Colleen laughed. She reached for the radio. “Stupid baby,” she said.



They left the radio on once they crossed the bridge and returned to the island, and Prince’s song “When Doves Cry” played while they drove up and down the gridded streets, leaving campaign leaflets in people’s mailboxes, the cold and frozen groceries almost forgotten in the trunk. And they talked, really talked. About Scott’s new job and how much he was gone. About her mother’s uncertainty over whether or not she wanted Colleen’s father to take on another term as sheriff. About the airplane and what it could mean for her father’s reelection, for the investigation into Rodney’s death that would now take so much of his time.

Colleen wanted to stay in the car with her mother, their windows rolled down, the radio on, their conversation moving freely and loosely among topics that were connected by memory and shared history and kinship. But they had the groceries to unload, and Marie had a round of medicine due with her lunch, and so Colleen was forced to point her mother’s car toward home.

The phone was ringing when they walked into the house, and Colleen, carrying a bag of groceries in each arm, walked into the kitchen and set them down on the counter. She answered the phone, immediately recognizing the man’s voice on the other end.

“Hey, girl,” he said. It was Danny Price, her first best friend, and also the first boy she’d ever slept in a bed with. The first boy she’d ever danced with until she was certain she’d drop from exhaustion or exhilaration. The first boy she’d ever seen stare at himself in a rearview mirror while applying mascara outside the Pterodactyl Club in Charlotte, strobe lights flashing on the other side of the building’s nearly blacked-out windows, the music pulsing through the walls and into their chests. They had just turned eighteen, and as Colleen had watched Danny swipe the makeup wand across his eyelashes, she realized that she had never felt freer or more certain about her freedom at any other time in her life.

Now, all these years later, Colleen smiled, turned, and leaned her waist against the counter.

“I was wondering when you’d call,” she said. She twirled the cord around her finger.

“I’m calling to check on you. Myra Page says you threw up at the Food Lion.”

Colleen laughed out loud now, the first real laugh that had escaped her body in what felt like years.

“Word travels fast,” she said.

“It does on this island,” Danny said. “You want to go out tonight, make some bad decisions? Give Myra and them something else to talk about?”

“I do,” Colleen said. “I do.”





Chapter 9




After getting off the phone with Sheriff Petty, Winston called Glenn and then Agent Rollins and told them what he’d learned. Both were happy with the news, but Winston could tell that neither one of them had high hopes that anything at the scene down in Horry County would prove to be connected to their own investigation. Sure, the cocaine from Petty’s bust might have been flown in on the airplane that now sat on the runway here in Brunswick County, but without fingerprints or ballistic evidence connecting the two scenes there was just no way to know. So, they’d have to wait until all the samples were turned in and tested and then tested against one another.

“We’ll know something sooner or later,” Rollins had said, but Winston didn’t have any use for later. He didn’t want to acknowledge the ticking clock of next week’s election, especially not to Rollins, but the ticking was there, even if he was the only who could hear it.

After hanging up with Rollins, Winston heard Vicki raise her voice out in the lobby, speaking loudly as if trying to get someone’s attention. “Sir,” she said. “Sir!”

Winston leaned forward as if being closer to Vicki’s voice would give him a better idea of what was going on on the other side of his closed door.

“Sir!” Vicki said. “You can’t go in there!”

Footsteps rounded the corner and pounded down the hallway toward Winston’s office. As if commanded by instinct, Winston stood and braced his body for whatever was about to come through his door, understanding that his gun hung just out of reach. Without thinking, he moved from behind his desk and readied himself to face the person that Vicki had been unable to stop.