Chapter 6 Carrie
CARRIE
Cheryl’s admission—Dick is my husband—hit like a stone tossed into shallow water.
The first splash of shock rose, then fell away almost immediately as the ripples spread.
It made a certain grim sense. It knitted together a dozen threads Carrie had been tugging without quite seeing the weave.
What refused to settle was everything that should have followed if this were true.
If Cheryl had been married to Dick all along, why hadn’t she come forward when Delia died?
Why let the land languish in probate? Why hide behind a planning business, a new name, and a carefully curated life?
Were they working together toward some endgame even now?
Or had Dick been running his own plays, leaving his wife to orchestrate damage control with a smile and a pen?
Questions spun so fast they blurred. Carrie steadied herself with the simplest one.
“We didn’t do anything to him,” Alisha said before Carrie could speak, her voice clear and controlled. “We found him.”
Cheryl’s mouth curved, not kindly. “Then why were you in his apartment?”
“How do you even know we were there?” Alisha countered, matching tone for tone.
“Why else would you be in his building?” Cheryl replied, almost bored with the obvious, “When I know you’re investigating him?
” Her gaze skimmed Alisha and landed on Carrie, dismissive and cutting.
“It doesn’t take a genius to see that neither you nor that handsome agent boyfriend of yours can afford to live there. ”
The insult slid across the table like a razor wrapped in silk. Carrie resisted the urge to bristle. So this is how Delia sounded when the mood took her, she thought—cool, superior, and practiced at grading people down to size. Apples, trees, and the distance between them.
Beside her, Alisha’s spine went taut for a heartbeat, then eased. She refused the bait as neatly as she had refused the champagne.
“Yes,” Alisha said evenly, “we went to Dick’s to investigate. But we didn’t know he was there.” She didn’t glance at Carrie, didn’t wait for a signal. She pivoted. “Did you know your husband was having an affair with Katy Marshall?”
Carrie’s eyebrows lifted before she could stop them. Good, she thought, an admiring spark catching. Shift the light. Take the ground while she’s unsettled. Cheryl had pulled them here to control the room. Alisha had just reached past her and turned the dimmer switch.
A beat passed. The chandelier’s reflection quivered in the water glasses.
“Yes,” Cheryl said at last, voice lower, eyes dipping.
“We… we’ve been separated for years.” She lifted her chin again, restoring the angle.
“But we were still very much entangled. Business partners.” Her focus drifted beyond them to the balcony, to the water laid out like hammered metal catching light.
“He was helping me with my mother’s estate.
I wanted nothing to do with it. I wanted it… gone.”
When she looked back, the hatred burning in her pupils startled Carrie with its heat.
Cheryl gave a breathy, almost delighted laugh, the sort that would have charmed at a fundraiser and chilled in a quiet room.
“Do you know the real version of the Lost Love Cove legend?” she asked.
“Not the resort brochure nonsense that’s been photocopied to death for tourists? ”
“Why don’t you tell us,” Carrie answered, getting there first when Alisha leaned in to press. If Cheryl was going to talk, you opened the door and let the words run.
“Once,” Cheryl began, settling into the cadence of someone who had nursed a story like a flame, “before there were houses and docks and the polite lies people tell each other at sunset, a fisherman loved a girl who didn’t belong to him.
She was promised to another, a man with money and a family name thick enough to block out the sun.
The fisherman had nothing but a skiff, the sea, and a heart that would not give up.
One night, a storm came out of nowhere—the kind you felt in your teeth before you saw it.
His skiff didn’t stand a chance. The whirlpool opened—yes, a real one; they used to happen here—and it took him.
Swallowed him whole.” Cheryl smiled without warmth.
“The girl he loved watched from the shore. She walked straight into the water up to her waist and told the sea that if it wanted blood, it could have hers in trade. Not to drown her—no, not that—but to leave the cove alone so others would not be taken as he was. The story says the sea listened. The waters calmed. She lived a very long time, tending the shore like a vow. And so long as the land passed to someone who had lost to the sea, the cove stayed gentle. If it didn’t—if the land changed hands for greed or power or convenience—then the waters reminded people who ruled. ”
Cheryl’s fingers toyed with the rim of a crystal glass as though it were a rosary.
“My mother loved that tale. Wore it like a shawl. Used it to keep men like my father, and later me, in line.” Her mouth curled.
“All I want is to sell the land and bury that superstition with her. One last dance on the grave of a woman who controlled everyone with a story. The ‘rule’ says the land can only be leased or passed to someone marked by loss to the sea. How convenient, yes?”
Carrie glanced at Alisha and found the same thought moving across both of their faces, a quiet, startled echo.
“Katy was found on the shoreline,” Alisha said softly.
Cheryl’s forehead creased. “Katy?” Confusion, not calculation.
“Your husband’s girlfriend,” Carrie said gently, the words heavier than she expected. It had been hours. It felt like weeks. “She was found on the shore of Lost Love Cove yesterday. In front of the Marshalls’ house.”
“No,” Cheryl breathed, real pain scoring the word. “No.” The grief flashed unguarded, and Carrie felt her doubt tip and rearrange. Whatever else this woman was, this particular knife cut deep. “Did… did Ian find her?”
“I did,” Carrie answered. “I was out running.”
“Oh, no.” Cheryl shut her eyes, one hand lifting to press knuckles against her mouth before it lowered, trembling.
“Poor Ian.” The malice slid back in, reflex and armor.
“Yes, I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to rip the ground out from under him—take what he wanted most the way my mother took what I wanted. But not this.” The hardness cracked again.
“Not a child. I would never wish that on anyone.”
Carrie believed her. Under all the sharp edges and curated venom, there was a seam of something that hadn’t been killed, however much Cheryl had tried to starve it.
She loved him once, Carrie thought, and perhaps had never stopped loving the first version of him—the boy who had married her in a defiant hour.
“Did you know Katy?” Carrie asked.
Cheryl nodded. “After my mother died, Dick put her on several of my properties to help untangle the paperwork.” Her mouth tightened. “And yes—I knew about the affair. He told me he wanted a divorce. Said he and Katy were in love.”
“And you?” Carrie asked carefully. “Do you have someone?”
A small, surprised smile tugged at Cheryl’s lips, the first expression that seemed unpracticed.
“Harry,” she said softly. “We’ve been together nearly four years.
He’s a good man. We were…” The words thinned.
She looked out at the water and steadied.
“Dick and I were trying to sort out the mess we made of my mother’s properties.
” The hatred returned like lightning, brief and blinding.
“Between that woman who birthed me and Dick’s family, it was a tangle that never stopped tightening.
We were trying to fix it.” Her mouth flattened.
“How do you fix anything when you’re fighting people like them—and a ghost story? ”
“A ghost?” Carrie repeated, momentarily lost in the switchback. “I don’t follow.”
Cheryl’s gaze snapped to her, desperation scrolling through the polish. “You’re law enforcement. May I call you Carrie?”
“Yes,” Carrie said, leaning in. “Of course.”
“I don’t want to go to jail,” Cheryl said frankly.
“Not for what I didn’t do. Especially now that I no longer have Dick.
Or…” The grief surged again and turned her voice rough.
“Katy. And my son—he’s disappeared.” She closed her eyes, the effort to master herself visible in the flutter of lashes.
“I pray I’m wrong, but I’m afraid his grandparents poisoned him against me.
I kept him away as much as I could, but they were the only grandparents he had.
He was the only grandson they had. He even talked about taking their name. ”
Carrie and Alisha traded a look. The story was starting to fray at the edges, threads catching on other threads.
“I’m a professional, so I shouldn’t say this,” Alisha murmured, not bothering to hide her mouth behind a hand, “but she’s about three exits past the cuckoo nest.”
Carrie bit back a smile that didn’t belong here and turned back to Cheryl. The woman was brittle with loss and fury. If there was anything usable in this, it would surface if you gave her the room and the structure.
“Start at the beginning,” Carrie suggested. “Give us the cliff notes version. We are going to be missed, and when we are, the cavalry won’t knock before it comes through the door.”
Cheryl nodded once, almost grateful for the order.
“When I was eighteen, I fell in love with Ian Marshall. He loved me too. Or I believed he did. Our parents didn’t approve—mine most of all.
We eloped. They found us, annulled the marriage, and shipped him off to the Navy before we could breathe.
” Her eyes darkened. “A few weeks later, I learned I was pregnant. I went to his parents to find him. I told them why. They told me Ian had said I would try something like that—that I had trapped him into marrying me.” Her chin lifted, daring them to defy the memory.