CHAPTER SEVENTEEN #2
“Hey, Dawn,” I said. “How’s it going?”
“Hey, Dawn-Dawn!” Spencer said.
“Am I on speakerphone?” Dawn asked, her voice with a hint of surprise.
“Yeah, I’m just at the distillery visiting Spencer.”
“Oh!” More surprise. “Hi, Spencer.”
“Hi, Dawn-Dawn. How’s my second favorite mom in the world?”
“Fine, dear. Just fine.”
She wasn’t fine. Not with that tone.
I debated taking it off speakerphone. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I, uh …”
“I can go,” Spencer said, hooking his thumb over his shoulder.
“Is it about …” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Spencer knows. Just tell us.” My nerves resembled a beehive without a queen. Pure buzzing chaos. My knee started to bounce, and I had to link my fingers together and cradle the back of my head just to open my chest so I could get a deep breath.
“She’s crossed state lines,” Dawn said on an exhale. “She requested a move to Alabama to live with her sister, and the judge granted it. She said she couldn’t get a job in Tallahassee, and her sister would hire her in her salon in Cedar Bluff.”
“Okay, so she’s getting a job and a new address in another state. She’s setting down some roots. That’s a good thing, right?” I appealed to Spencer with a look.
He shrugged and shook his head. “Seems like it to me?”
“I can’t keep tabs on her there though, honey,” Dawn said.
“At least in Tallahassee, I knew where she was. I had people I could call to keep track of her. I knew her parole officer. I asked if they’d give me her parole officer’s information in Cedar Bluff, and I couldn’t get a straight answer out of anybody. ”
Ah.
Now I better understood her fear.
And it was starting to ramp up fear inside of me too. Maybe Cedar Bluff, Alabama was just a cover, and Kyla was heading out West. Did she have any inkling as to where we might be? Who would tell her?
Spencer’s lips twisted, and I could tell he shared my frustration. “Do you have a restraining order against her?” he asked.
I nodded. “There’s been one in place since she went to prison.”
“She’s also a registered sex offender,” Dawn added.
“I just wanted to keep you updated, honey,” Dawn said.
“Her former PO just called me to tell me she’s moving to Cedar Bluff, so I wanted to tell you.
I don’t want to say everything will be okay, because we don’t know that.
I hope that it will. That she’ll stay in Cedar Bluff, start a new life, and leave you and Mabes alone. ”
“That’s the hope,” I murmured.
“Just stay vigilant. Stay off social media. No photos. You know the drill.”
“I know.”
“Nothing to link you or Mabel to the island, or Washington state.”
Spencer nodded.
I grabbed the honey-lemonade and finished it before exhaling dramatically. “Mabel knows internet safety. She preaches it to me.”
Dawn’s chuckle was slightly forced. “I’m sure she does.” Her sigh held a level of weariness to it that, as a parent myself, I felt deep down to my toes. “I miss you, kiddo. I miss both of you. How’s our girlie doing anyway? Is she adjusting?”
I told her about Mabel’s panic attack the other night, then how she found the osprey and has been spending a lot of time at Tom’s farm, which seemed to be helping. And finally, I mentioned her afternoon with Damon. By the end of it, Dawn was laughing, particularly at the bit about lichen.
“Oh, our girl is such a weird and wonderful, unique little thing. If she can’t find someone who matches her enthusiasm about lichen, then they are not her person.”
“We all need our kindred lichen weirdo,” Spencer said.
“That we do, dear.”
After another minute, we ended the call, with Dawn promising to keep me updated.
She also said she’d send me the information she had on Kyla’s sister in Cedar Bluff, as well as the parole officers there.
She suggested that if I reached out to them and explained the situation, they might be more inclined to keep me updated on her.
“You want another drink?” Spencer asked, glancing at my empty glass.
I shook my head and stood up, digging my wallet out of my pocket. “No thanks, man. I need to get going home.” I made to fish out some cash, but he waved me off.
“On the house. It’s just great to see you and Mabel so happy and thriving. And hey, if things between you and Naomi work out, all the better. They’re a real nice family, and I think you and Mabes would fit in well. You all deserve to find your happily ever after.”
“What about you?” I asked. “You seeing anybody?”
He shook his head. “No time. Kids and this place keep me busy. Besides,” he scratched at the back of his neck, “heart still has some pretty serious cracks in it. I’m not sure I want to saddle any woman with the job of fixing those. Need to mend them myself first.”
“That’s a real healthy way of looking at things.”
“Been listening to Maverick’s podcast.” His big smile lit up the room. “You ever heard it?”
“He mentioned something about it the other day, but I haven’t listened to it yet. Now I think I’ll give it a whirl.”
Mabel came in with an empty plate and glass.
“Ready to go, kiddo?” I asked her.
She set the empty dishes on the bar.
“How were the nachos?” Spencer asked her.
“They were good. I liked the salsa.”
“Owen makes that himself with produce from his garden. Guys a real green thumb farmer type.”
I held out my hand. “Thanks again, man. Next time, you definitely have to let me pay.”
Spencer shook my hand. “We’ll see about that. Just make sure my kids always get straight A’s and we’re good.”
“That’s not ethical,” Mabel said.
I rolled my eyes. “He’s kidding, Mabes.”
Chuckling, Spencer and I hugged quickly, then Mabel and I headed to the truck. We were just pulling out onto the road when a familiar champagne-colored sedan slowed down, coming at us from the opposite direction.
I recognized the salt-and-pepper hair and bright, curious copper eyes of The Island Mouth.
“Duck!” I told my kid.
She didn’t even question it and instantly folded over in the front seat.
I sped away, my tires kicking up gravel at the top of the driveway. Maybe a few rocks even pinged off Jolene’s car. I didn’t care.
Only once her car, still in the same spot where I’d left her, was nothing more than a speck in my rearview mirror, did I ease my foot off the accelerator. “You can sit up now.”
Mabel lifted her head and glanced at me. “It was her, wasn’t it?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
Growling, my daughter glanced out her window. “I want to meet her. Deal with her. Tell her to leave me—leave us—alone.”
“I’m handling it, honey. This isn’t your battle.”
She rounded on me. “No. It’s not. It’s our battle. Because we’re a team. You’ve tried to reason with her. Now let me try. Maybe after meeting me, she’ll let it go.”
“And if she doesn’t? If she presses the issue? If she pushes to understand why we’re only thirteen years apart?”
“We’ll tackle that when it happens. But I want to try, Dad.”
“Do you want me to turn around?”
“No. I need time to come up with what I want to say. Tomorrow. She’ll be at the farmers market. Because it’s the first of the year, and everyone goes—that’s what Damon said. Everyone but their family, because they are opening the winery and tasting room. So let’s go there and find her.”
Pride filled my chest at just how damn strong my kid was. I nodded. “Okay. Tomorrow we’ll go find The Island Mouth.”
Determination coasted across her young features. “And hopefully shut it for good.”
“You’re sure you want to do this?” I asked Mabel, miraculously finding a parking space on the side of the road not too far from the market in the big open meadow across from the grocery store.
“Yes,” she said without any inflection.
“You hate crowds.”
“Yes. But I hate letting bad people win more.” She opened her door and hopped out.
I’d never questioned my daughter’s bravery before, but this was next level.
I climbed out from behind the steering wheel, checked for oncoming cars, and met her in front of the grill. The roadside was lined with vehicles and people, so much so that traffic had to slow down to a crawl just to make it through the now-single lane.
We carefully crossed the road, then dipped down into the dry ditch and back up the other side, following the throng into the circle of tents and booths that made up the market.
A few people waved at me, most of them kids from the school, and I gave them a friendly hello and wave back, making sure to address them by name to show them that I remembered them.
“Just use our code word if you need me to get us out of here,” I said to her quietly.
“Why is our code word ‘Spinosaurus’?” she asked, giving me some serious, annoyed teenage side-eye.
“Because it’s a word that we’ll probably never use in regular conversation. If we’d chosen something like ‘pineapple’ or ‘huckleberry jam,’ we could end up using those in conversation.” I snorted with amusement and elbowed her ribs playfully.
All she did was roll her eyes.
“Come on, kiddo. Let’s check out some … stuff.”
We wandered around the enormous space, which was full of people and vendors.
A Caribbean band, complete with a steel drum, played in the center on a raised stage, but the music wasn’t so loud that you had to yell at each other to be heard.
Various smells from some of the food vendors wafted toward us, making my belly rumble.
Savory sausages, cinnamon buns, fries and gravy, and even though I couldn’t smell it, I zeroed in almost instantly on the snow cones.
I was a sucker for a snow cone, always had been.
“That’s a lot of spoons,” Mabel murmured, deviating from our path to step closer to one of the vendor tables.
Yeah, that was a lot of spoons.
An older Indian man stood behind a table, his hands clasped at his back, and a small smile on his wrinkled face as he watched Mabel approach his table covered in hand-carved spoons.
“That’s a lot of spoons,” Mabel said again, directly to the man this time.
“Yes,” he replied.