“Some, yes.”
“She didn’t flinch when I told her I tumbled out of a helicopter once on purpose, so why does she think this was going to bother me?”
“She’s a woman. We tend to let such things bother us.”
Will laughed at the way Ann said it. “I’ll set her mind at rest on this topic, you can be sure of that. Gabe, I want a photo of Tom Lander, along with his bio. It needs to be spread around town that I’m looking for the guy and paying a nice reward to anybody who calls me with a sighting. I’ve got a few favors to call in. He won’t be showing up without me hearing about it.”
“I’ll get you the photo,” Gabriel promised. “We’ll be talking more, Will.”
“I expect so. I’m going to stop by the café for a late breakfast and a Karen coffee break. Anything you want me tell her, Ann? Not tell her?”
“Tell her to enjoy the day and not to worry about the past, present, or future.”
He smiled. “I can do that. For both of us.”
Gabriel Thane
Gabriel looked over at Ann as he pulled out of Will’s driveway. “That did not go as I expected. You caved, Ann, like two minutes into the discussion. I thought we were going to head him off-”
“I forgot who Will is,” Ann cut in with a shake of her head. “And wisely, I think, changed my mind.” She turned reflective. “Seriously, Gabe, are you worried about Will meeting up with Tom Lander?”
Gabriel thought about it. “Not really, no. That guy has been terrorizing civilians who don’t know how to fight back. He’d get the shock of his life if he tried to threaten Will or someone he cares about. You don’t take the soldier out of a man once you’ve trained it into him. You might temper it a bit, but it’s still there.”
“He’s a good, capable man,” Ann agreed.
“If it didn’t sound like Karen was headed toward marrying Will, shifting to a life out here, it would worry me a bit more,” Gabriel said. “Being in town on her own makes her much more vulnerable. She’s a lot safer once she’s married and her life is in the middle of us Thanes. We’ve a tradition of moving in and out of each other’s lives. We’d all naturally be able to keep an eye out for her safety.”
“Exactly,” Ann said. “I’m thinking the best place for Karen is where she can have a good life and good future, and I couldn’t draw up a better solution than the one she has here. We make it work. Whatever it takes, we adapt, draw the line here, and make Carin work for Karen.” She smiled at the rhyme of her words.
“Suits me fine,” Gabriel said with a smile. “But if Tom Lander steps one foot outside Chicago, I need to be the second call.”
“I’ll make that happen,” Ann said. She shifted her seat back, closed her eyes against the morning sun.
Gabriel thought about his conversation with Evie the night before, his own thoughts on the drive home, and shifted the subject. “Grace had a hard night.”
Ann murmured her agreement.
“I know you’re keeping her confidences, Ann. I’m not looking to trespass there, but anything Josh can do-the rest of us in the family can do-to help Grace, you’re the bridge. We’re floundering right now.”
She was quiet for a long moment before she said, “You already know what to do, Gabe. Don’t treat Grace differently from others. If you can smile without sadness, hug without a hesitation, joke about Josh’s crush on her in grade school without thinking twice about the remark, you’ll do more toward helping her heal than anything else you could do or say.”
She turned her head toward him. “I don’t know how you do that, but you all need to figure it out and give her that. Be yourself. Treat her as if she can and will be normal again. Give her the gift of seeing past this and treat her accordingly. She can’t imagine that for herself yet. It has to be friends who paint that picture for her, give her permission and space to recover, to reaffirm she will heal, that the past doesn’t have to come forward into the future a day further than it has. She’s going to be beyond these crying waves when she’s done the unpacking of the memories, but it’s a three- or four-year process, and she’s pretty much in the middle of it now.”
“This is nearly as hard on you as it is on her.”
“Being friends of a victim is its own particular kind of weight. I wouldn’t ever want to be left in the dark, not know, not be that friend. I know we’ll survive, Grace and I, because I’ve done this journey before. But sometimes that knowledge just makes the days heavier. I can anticipate the coming terrain and the mountains and valleys ahead, which sometimes only makes it worse.”
“I can understand that, Ann.”
“Do you? You need to know something else. Grace really hasn’t let me in that far. I know she’s in great pain, processing unimaginable grief. I know she’s facing some first memories, her mind bringing up fresh ones like toxic bubbles rising in a hot spring. I know she’s getting struck by painful emotions striking her in unexpected ways. The smell of an aftershave making her vomit is the latest one. But I know that only because I’ve seen the signs rather than her telling me.” She shifted in the seat with a sigh.
“After the abuse ended,” Ann said, “Grace got seven years of a surface kind of peace, and then the past washed up like a tidal wave. She’s getting badly buffeted right now. She’ll survive it, she’ll get back to an authentic rest, but it’s going to be years of work. She’s dealing with the past the hard way, pushing way too fast through it. I ache watching her make the attempt. As I’ve said, this isn’t how I would have had this unfold. And if we find the Dayton girl’s remains on that land, I honestly don’t know how Grace will keep breathing through it.”
“If you can’t ease her away, you help hold her together. You help her crumble in a controlled and safe way.”
Ann nodded. “Yes. Mostly. I just don’t know what day and time Josh plants that flag, one of you turns over that dirt, and we see what we fear is there.”
“Do you want the Dayton girl to be found?”
Ann shook her head. “No. And that’s sad, because as an officer of the law, it’s the thing I should most want-closure for the Dayton family. But for Grace… if she could walk the farmland with Josh, they discover nothing, she sells the land and moves on, that’s probably a better outcome. She needs hours of sharing trivial things with him, sharing memories from childhood, talking about life in the decade since they last saw each other. The interaction with Josh about their shared past will maybe give Grace a new layer of memories that can be useful. When she thinks of Carin, it isn’t just the devastation of life with her uncle.”
“I see what you mean, Ann. The memories have to be made more manageable, and Josh providing other memories from their childhood might help with that.”
“I think it will.” Ann looked his way again. “How’s Josh doing? He’s bearing the brunt of this. I should have called him last night.”
“He’s shaken but determined. He wants, needs, to help her. Like the rest of us, only more for him, I think. It’s eating him alive that he didn’t see the signs of trouble.”
Ann nodded. “If there were any to be seen-that’s what you should tell each other. You need to caution Josh about something. She has to be willing to risk talking with a guy about this. So far she’s only told women. She has to risk a small comment, get a reply, and find out a man can get through it without viewing her as damaged beyond repair. I don’t know if she’ll choose Josh to be that guy, or she may first turn to Paul, but she’ll eventually decide on someone.
“I can’t coach Josh on what those words should be, because I don’t know them,” she said after a moment. “It’s a guy’s reaction she needs. It may be anger over what happened, or kindness towards her, or a hand touching her arm when she tells him something awful. I don’t know what she needs. I just know it’s something she can’t get from the women in her life. When it’s the authentic reply of a male who cares about her, it’s going to matter. Warn Josh so that if she ever does say something about it, his best move is not a nod and then silence.”