Out of the Shadows (Nick Barrett Charleston series) by Brouwer Sigmund

Author:Brouwer, Sigmund [Brouwer, Sigmund]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-01-18T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

Just before noon, I returned to the bed-and-breakfast.

 What I had discovered in the cool quiet of the church profoundly changed what

I understood about my mother and added heavily to the burden of guilt I had carried since the day she stepped out of my life.

I was on the porch of the bed-and-breakfast, waiting for Amelia to meet me as we’d agreed upon the day before, lost in those sad, dark thoughts, when Claire’s daughter, Michelle, walked up the brick path from the sidewalk. I watched her approach, thinking that she, too, was lost in sad, dark thoughts.

I gave her a small smile that I’m sure reflected the sad emptiness inside me.

Michelle was in retro fashion—platform shoes, bell-bottom jeans, and a tie-dyed T-shirt—and it made her look like a little woman. Once again, I was struck at how little childishness she allowed the world to see.

“Helen said I could find you here,” Michelle said. “I need to talk to you.”

Such directness was disconcerting for someone so young. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“I call in sick whenever I want. Mother signs whatever note I ask her to write.”

“Oh.”

“I need to talk to you,” she reminded me with no sign of impatience.

“I’ll listen.” I looked out through the tress of the park toward the harbor. It seemed everybody I saw strolling past were couples, holding hands.

Michelle sat on a nearby bench. She handed me a photo that she pulled from her back pocket. “I knew I had seen you before. This was in Helen’s photo album.”

Claire, with me, on the beach. During our honeymoon. We’d asked an old man in swimming trunks to take the photo. I handed it back to Michelle.

“Who are you?” she asked. “Really, who are you?”

I turned my eyes back on her and finally saw signs of the ten-year-old in her. She was hunched forward with worry lines on her crinkled forehead.

“Ask your mother,” I said, not unkindly. “If she wants you to know, she’ll tell you.”

“She won’t. That’s why I’m here.”

“I wouldn’t feel good about breaking her trust, then.”

“And you’ll feel good about getting her beaten?”

My turn to lurch forward in surprise.

“Pendleton showed up at the carriage house sometime this morning. I was in the bathroom, getting ready to go out. He didn’t know I was in the house. He began shouting at Mother, demanding to know what you had told her.”

I held up a hand, stopping her quick bursts of words. “He knew I’d visited?”

Michelle took a deep breath. “From me. Last night. After you left. He called to see how I was doing and I asked if he knew someone named Nick. I told him about your visit. I didn’t know he’d go ballistic on Mother.”

She hugged herself and shivered. “He slapped her in the face. Two or three times. I heard it from the bathroom. That’s when I came out. He didn’t apologize. Not to me. Not to her.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Very sorry.”

“Your fault my father hits my mother?”

“I’m sorry I put you and your mother into the situation.

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