Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Luke
“We're gonna go help a good guy, right?” Harriet loved riding in his work car. Loved it a little too much, eyes eager and a bit too excited. Luke saw that look in the journalists who did ride-alongs, or the high school kids in Civil Air Patrol who were on their way to the military.
They were ready to fight evil and win. But evil was a little more nuanced than that.
“Right.”
“What if a bad guy comes along?”
Luke didn't like this turn of conversation.
“No bad guys out there on Thanksgiving, honey.”
“But a bad guy killed Mommy.”
No matter how many times he tried to explain that the man driving the car that hit Amber while she was out for a walk wasn’t a bad man–he was a wonderful, kind man who had a heart attack at the wheel and lost control–Harriet still called him “the bad guy.”
Which, in a six-year-old’s mind, made perfect sense.
“He wasn’t a bad guy, sweetie. Something bad happened to him, too.”
“He died, like Mommy.”
“Yes.”
“Are they together?” This was always Harriet’s question whenever the subject came up, and Luke never had an answer.
Who knew? Was the afterlife like one big summer festival on the town common, where people mingled and chattered and bought hand-crafted goat’s milk soap while eating pink kettle corn and watching a local cover band play Beatles songs as kids wandered around holding heart-shaped red balloons and grew stickier by the minute munching on candied apples?
Harriet informed him one night, about a year ago, that Mommy’s angel wings were really itchy. He’d just nodded and kissed her forehead.
Then gone into the hallway and banged his own forehead against the wallboard, softly and with meaning.
“I don’t know if they’re together, Harriet.”
“Yes, you do.”
This was a first.
“What did you say, honey?”
“You do know.” The pout that greeted him in the rearview mirror told him this wasn’t going to be like the other conversations on this topic.
His little girl was leveling up.
“I do?”
“You know everything, Daddy. And I know why you won’t tell me.”
“Why not?”
“Because Mommy isn’t in heaven.”
His stomach clenched. “Who told you that?”
“Jace Morgenstern.” A classmate. Kindergarteners were way more advanced–and meaner–than he remembered from his time at Luview Elementary.
Nothing like living in a town your ancestors founded. Not only were half the buildings and streets named after your family, most of your cousins filled the town. The dating pool had been slim pickings.
Speaking of dating–he wondered how cold Kylie was right now.
And his foot pressed the gas pedal a little harder.
Icy drops began to bounce on the windshield, and he backed off again on the accelerator. He could only imagine what it sounded like in that steel box she was trapped in.
Calypso music took over the background of his mind.
“Where does Jace think your mommy is?”
“He thinks she’s a spy! A secret spy who had to run away to go get bad guys. Jace says Mommy isn’t in heaven because she’s alive, Daddy!” Harriet squinted at him in the rearview mirror. “And I think you know it.”
Speechless.
His own daughter rendered him speechless.
“Harriet, honey,” he started, unsure what to say next.
“Jace thinks you’re a spy, too.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because spies are really good with guns and I told him you have a gun.”
“Jace thinks he knows a lot about me and Mommy,” he said slowly.
“Jace wants a daddy who is a cop.”
Luke knew that Jace’s dad was a line cook at Mario’s Diner, two towns over. Lyle Morgenstern had a hair-trigger temper and, unfortunately, a strong dislike for following the law.
“Why?”
“Because he thinks cops are cool.”
“Sounds like Jace has a big imagination.”
“Are you really a spy?”
“No.”
“What about Mommy?” From the way Harriet asked, Luke knew she was overly attached to this easy idea. Easy because, for a six-year-old kid, it was easy. Made more sense than the messy truth.
“Mommy was a bookkeeper, sweetie. For the hospital.”
“Not a spy?”
“No. Not a spy. She liked numbers and she was good with them.”
“Like me! I get hundreds on my math worksheets.”
“You inherited her math ability.”
“Hair it?” Harriet played with one of her long curls.
“Inherit. It means you got it from her.”
“What did I get from you?”
Your interrogation skills, he thought but didn’t say aloud.
“The shape of my eyes.”
“Round?”
He couldn’t help but laugh.
“No, honey. The way my eyes turn down a little at the outer corners.”
“Like a sad puppy dog?”
This was a first.
“Where did you hear that?”
“Gamma. She says when Mommy died, you looked like a sad puppy dog all the time. Do I look like a sad dog with my eyes?” She reached up to touch them with the pads of her fingers.
“No, no. You look like a happy puppy.”
“Arf! Arf!” she barked. Half of raising kids was just rolling with the punches and entering their made-up world.
“Woof! Woof!” he countered, deep like a German Shepherd.
Pressing a button on the dash, the Disney princess movie soundtrack came on, practically forcing Harriet to start humming and singing along, dropping the very uncomfortable subject that Luke would do anything to avoid.
Including listening to “Let It Go” ten thousand times in a row.
What the hell was Jace Morgenstern filling Harriet’s head with? Kids could come up with crazy ideas, but he suspected Jace’s father had been the source of some of that.
Because Lyle Morgenstern hated Luke.
Occupational hazard: People don’t like it when you arrest and jail them.
Who knew?
Oh, right.
Luke.
Luke knew.
Working in law enforcement in rural Maine was more about community policing and roadside support than arrests, convictions, and violence. Sure, there was some of that, but it was mostly just plain helping people.
Serve and protect, not chase and subdue.
And right now, he was serving and protecting Kylie Hood.
The thought made his pulse step up the beat a bit, worry flooding him. Luckily, the sleet had stopped quickly, but he worried a little about road conditions. He needed to get to Kylie as fast as possible, but without sliding into a ditch on the way.
“Daddy! Are we going too fast?”
“No, sweetie. I’m a very careful driver.”
“Because going too fast is against the law!”
“We’re not. We’re going to help someone.”
“Who?”
“A…”
“Look! A deer!”
The glow of eyes in headlights made Luke reflexively slow down, though the doe was at least a hundred feet away and motionless. In Maine, you learned really early as a driver not to take chances with wildlife big enough to shatter your windshield if you hit it.
The only consolation for motorists hitting and killing deer was that they got to keep the venison.
“I see her.”
“She’s so pretty–oh! Another one!”
Crisis averted. Harriet loved nature, just like her mom and dad. Luke wouldn’t live anywhere else. He’d seen enough of the world, getting a study-abroad scholarship in Italy in college, Amber joining him. They’d spent six months in Rome, using their weekends and breaks to travel everywhere.
And he liked being a tourist.
But had no desire to live anywhere but here in Luview, Maine.
“Why do their eyes glow like that?”
“Because the headlights shine on them.”
“But the headlights shine on trees and they don’t glow.”
Luke blinked a few times, dredging through his rudimentary understanding of science, reflective surfaces, and eye biology.
“I don’t know why.”
“You do!”
“Uh, Harriet, I–”
“Maybe they’re part fairy.”
“Sure. Let’s go with that.” He’d learned not to argue or correct when he didn’t know the actual facts.
“If deers are part fairy, what else is? Are unicorns a kind of fairy?”
“They could be.”
Five minutes away. He could talk about fairies for five more minutes before using the bolt cutters to release Kylie.
And then what?
“What else could be? If light shines on things and they glow, is that a clue?”
“Mmmm,” he said, noncommittal.
“Daddy!”
“I guess, sweetheart.”
“I wish I glowed in the light.”
His eyes caught her gaze in the rearview mirror, top right tooth missing, rosebud lips stretched in a trusting, joyful grin.
“You do,” he assured her, heart swelling. “If anyone glows in the light, it’s you.”