Chapter 27
Six months later.
Haven was more than a little suspicious of her mother, who’d arrived from Nashville on Thursday. She landed with a rolling suitcase and a smile that was approximately forty percent wider than her normal smile and had been deployed at full wattage ever since.
Caroline Stone was not a woman who smiled for no reason.
“You seem happy,” Haven said at the airport.
“I'm always happy to see you,” Caroline said.
Haven did a double take. “Right, but you seem unusually happy to see me.”
Her mom’s smile didn’t diminish as she replied, “A mother can't be happy to see her daughter?”
Haven looked at her for a long moment. Caroline held the innocence of a woman who’d been a kindergarten teacher for thirty-one years and had therefore been lying convincingly to small people for three decades and had gotten very good at it.
Haven let it go. Maybe her mom had met someone. Haven didn’t think so; her mom would’ve said something on one of their many telephone conversations. Her Spidey sense was tingling, that was certain.
* * *
She had an apartment on the other side of Arlington that she paid rent on every month and visited occasionally to water the plant Marcus had given her as a housewarming gift.
He told her she could move in with him, and she did consider it.
But seriously, she was a woman who had lived alone for all of her adult years and had built an entire infrastructure of independence.
And the infrastructure didn't dismantle overnight just because she'd found someone she wanted to be around all the time.
Marcus understood this. He'd never once suggested she give up the apartment, even though she was never there and lived with him at his house.
This was one of approximately forty reasons she was in love with him.
They worked together. Their offices were next to each other.
Did they have the same cases? No, not exactly.
In the last six months, she’d worked with several people from different parts of the organization because she’d needed to learn the lay of the land.
It was good for her in the most basic sense and allowed her to form her own opinions about the organization and the people who worked for Guardian.
Six months in, if she were asked what she thought of Guardian, she would wax poetically and rave about the organization.
Realistically, she’d tell you it was a good, stable organization, but she could always dream of being that type of woman.
The one with the bubbly personality and all the right words at the right time. That wasn’t her. It never would be.
She pulled up to Marcus’s house with her mom at 6:30 p.m. Marcus had been there since 4 p.m., which she knew because he'd texted her at 4:15 p.m. to ask where the extra tablecloths were, which was a question that implied a level of domestic preparation she hadn't anticipated from a man who ate standing over a map. But she kind of liked it.
She'd told him they were in the hall closet on the second shelf.
He'd sent back a thumbs up.
* * *
Jared King opened the door.
Haven had met him twice before. Once at Christmas three months ago in Colorado, where she and Marcus had spent four days in a house full of extended family that had the organized chaos of a family that was large and close.
She liked Jared, Marcus’ dad. He was in his sixties and looked like an older version of Marcus.
Christian, poppa as Marcus called him, was behind him in the doorway.
Shorter than Jared, warm where Jared was measured, he had the easy energy of someone who’d spent twenty years in the social work infrastructure as a counselor.
He'd hugged her at Christmas without asking if that was okay, and it had been okay, and he'd known it would be.
“Caroline,” Jared said, extending his hand to Haven's mother.
“Jared,” Caroline said. She shook his hand and then looked at Christian. “You must be Christian.”
“I am,” Christian said and hugged her.
Caroline laughed. Haven watched this happen with the slightly unreal quality of watching two parts of her life occupy the same space for the first time. Parents meeting parents. Was it supposed to be awkward? Because it wasn’t.
“Come in,” Jared said. “Marcus is in the kitchen doing something with the roast that he seems very confident about.”
“Should we be worried? He hasn’t poisoned me yet … or me him. We take turns,” Haven said.
“Trying to poison each other?” Christian laughed as he was pouring a glass of wine for her mother.
“No, cooking.” Haven loved how relaxed she felt around Marcus’s parents. “Although we won’t talk about the drunken chicken. I’m not sure who was more intoxicated that night. Us or the chicken.”
Jared laughed. “Christian made the sides, and I made the dessert, so if the roast doesn’t work out, we’ll survive.”
* * *
The roast was excellent.
This was annoying because Haven had really been prepared to tease him about it, and the roast had given her nothing to work with.
She ate and listened to Christian ask Caroline about Nashville, and Jared asked Marcus something about a case.
Though they moved off that topic quickly because Christian had made a rule about no case talk at the dinner table.
One look from him and the subject was dropped.
Haven smiled to herself. She and Marcus had made that rule, too …
and sometimes it worked. Most times it didn’t.
Her mom was on her third glass of wine. Third.
She couldn’t remember a time when her mother had finished two glasses of wine.
Haven watched her mother across the table.
She’d spent ten years reading people for a living.
Her mom was animated, warm, and laughing at something Christian had said.
Three days in on her week-long visit and the smile was still forty percent wider than normal. What was up with that?
Something was going on.
Haven looked at Marcus.
She looked at her mother.
Caroline caught her looking and smiled wider, which should not have been physically possible, then she looked away.
Haven looked at Jared.
Jared was studying his plate.
Haven put her fork down.
“Okay,” she said. “What's going on?”
The table looked at her.
“What do you mean?” Marcus said.
“Something is happening,” Haven said. “My mother has been smiling like that since Thursday.
You're doing the neutral face, which you only do when you're not neutral. Your dad can now describe every detail of that plate, which means he knows something. And your Poppa …” She looked at Christian.
“You haven't said anything in forty-five seconds, which is a personal record.”
Christian pressed his lips together. “Actually, two minutes is my record.”
Jared coughed into his hand, and the muffled word didn’t need to be repeated. Marcus and Christian laughed at Jared’s comment.
“Nothing is happening,” Caroline said. Serenely. With the kindergarten voice.
Oh, no. She wasn’t buying it. Not for a second. “Mom.”
“Haven,” her mom said way too innocently.
Haven narrowed her eyes. “You're doing the thing.”
“I don't have a thing, dear.”
“You have a very specific thing. You've had it since Thursday, and it's getting worse.” Haven looked around the table. “Every single person at this table knows something I don't know. I'm a detective. This is not only embarrassing, but it is also becoming annoying.”
Marcus set his fork down.
He looked at her.
She looked back at him.
“Marcus,” she said.
He stood up.
He reached into his jacket pocket and circled the table. He went down on one knee.
She’d been a detective for ten years and had spent six weeks on admin leave building an investigative theory from a kitchen table with limited database access and a head injury. She’d put her finger on a photograph and named a killer with complete certainty. She did not see this coming.
Not even a little.
The ring box was small and black, and he held it in one hand as he looked up at her. The room was completely quiet.
“Haven Stone,” he said. “You are the most infuriating, brilliant, stubborn, precise, fearless person I have ever worked with or will ever work with.” He paused. “You've been right about most things since the moment I met you.”
Haven made a sound that was not entirely a laugh. Her heart was pounding so fast she was sure the entire room could hear it. This was real. It was happening. She gazed at the man who made her feel absolutely accepted, complete, and loved.
“I am in love with you,” Marcus said. “I have been since approximately the second late night at the whiteboard, which I did not say then because you would have found it unprofessional.”
She nodded. “Probably.”
He laughed and opened the ring box. “I asked your mother for permission because your father isn't here, and I wanted to do it right. I told my parents because they would never have forgiven me if I hadn't.” He looked at her. “Haven, will you marry me?”
The ring caught the light from the dining room chandelier.
She looked at it. Then at him.
She glanced at her mother, who was no longer playing innocent. But her hand was over her mouth, and her eyes were bright with unshed tears.
She looked at Jared, who was watching Marcus with the expression of a man watching his son do something he was proud of.
She looked at Christian. His smile was real, welcoming, and completely in line with his wonderful, caring personality.
She looked back at Marcus, who was on one knee in his dining room in a house that was warm and lit and full of people who loved him, with a ring box open in his hand.
“Yes, I’ll marry you,” she said. “You knew the apartment was the wrong choice the whole time, and you didn’t say a word.”
“Haven—”
“You let me pay rent for six months on an apartment I stayed in twice before my Mom came to visit.”
Marcus frowned. “I bought you a plant—”
“You bought me a plant. Marcus, that plant is four inches tall, and it lives alone. Or it did until Mom got here.”
“It has good light,” he said. “And water. We water it once a week.”
“It has good light and water. That’s true,” she repeated. “You bought me a four-inch plant and let me pay six months of Arlington rent, and you knew the whole time—”
“Of course, I knew. You did, too. You just had to admit it to yourself. That this, the way we live, was your decision and only yours. You are and always will be your own person. Now, Detective Stone, do you want the ring or not?”
She looked at the ring. She looked at him, still on one knee, looking up at her with the patient expression of a man who’d made peace with the fact that this was how this was going to go and had proposed anyway.
“Yes,” she said. “Of course, I want the ring.”
He put it on her finger.
She looked at it on her hand. Then at his hand around hers. It was beautiful. A diamond that was too big but anchored to a thick silver band.
She stared at him. The man who’d swept her off her feet in a pressure cooker that had threatened her existence. She blinked hard because she may have had tears in her eyes. Not that she’d ever admit it.
He leaned forward, and she put her hands on his face. She kissed him in the way that said the things she wasn't going to put into words in front of her mother and his fathers.
Caroline was already out of her chair. She waited until the kiss was over, but as soon as Haven stood up, she was enveloped in a hug.
“I knew,” Caroline said into her hair.
“I know you knew,” Haven said. “We're going to talk about that tomorrow.”
“We are not,” Caroline said.
Christian was hugging Marcus. Jared had his hand on Marcus's shoulder and was saying something quietly that Haven couldn't hear. Marcus was listening with the attention he'd inherited from thirty years of watching his father do it.
Haven looked at the ring on her finger.
She looked at the dining room. At the warm, lit house.
She looked at Marcus, and he was smiling at her.
“We can move the plant and anything you still have in the apartment tomorrow,” he said again. Quietly. Just for her.
“I'm canceling the lease,” she said.
He smiled. The real kind. “Yeah,” he said. “I think it’s time.”
Caroline appeared beside Haven with two refilled wine glasses. “I knew since that second phone call you made all those months ago. You talked for forty-five minutes about the case. Do you remember?”
Haven nodded. “Yeah, but …”
“But nothing. I asked you to tell me about Marcus King. You dismissed me with, ‘Oh, he’s the lead investigator.’”
“And you told me that wasn’t what you’d asked.” Haven smiled.
“It wasn’t. I knew. I knew by the way you talked about him. I’m so happy for you.”
Caroline handed her the wine glass.
“I told you,” Caroline said.
“You told me nothing.” Haven wouldn’t admit it and smiled at her mom.
“I told you everything,” Caroline said. “You just weren't listening.”
Haven looked at her mother.
At the ring on her finger.
At Marcus across the room.
She took the wine glass.
“I listened, Mom,” she said.
Caroline smiled. The full wattage one that she’d been wearing since Thursday.
Haven thought about the first time she'd seen her mom’s smile directed at Marcus, which was New Year’s in Nashville.
It had happened when he'd helped her Mom with the dishes without being asked. Again, when he’d asked her about the Vanderbilt imaging appointments and had listened to the answer the way he listened to everything, which was completely and without interrupting.
Haven had known then.
“Mom,” she said.
“Yes?”
Haven looked at the ring.
“Thank you for saying yes when he asked.”
Caroline caught her breath, and the smile softened into something special.
“Baby,” she said. “That was the easiest yes I've ever said.”