Woman in Blue Read online

  “What if something happens that I have no control over?” she fretted aloud.

  He smiled at her encouragingly. “You’ll be all right as long as you keep your eye on the ball.”

  But Kerrie Ann soon discovered that good intentions weren’t enough. Her résumé, which listed only a string of short-term jobs, was hardly an incentive for anyone to hire her. The part-time job at Toys ‘R’ Us was the best she could do until she got her GED or some kind of occupational training. And without full-time work, how could she afford “appropriate accommodations”? Life was a series of dominoes: Knock one down, and the rest followed suit. If she could just get her legs under her …

  Which was where her sister came in. Lindsay was the only card left to play. Lord, don’t let me fuck this one up, too, she prayed. So much was riding on it. Already Bella was adjusting to life with her foster parents. During their scheduled visits, she would chatter on about her friends in school, the projects she was doing in her first-grade class, and various fun excursions with the Bartholds. What would it be like six months from now, a year? Would her little girl stop asking when she could come home? However well meaning, the Bartholds didn’t know and love Bella the way Kerrie Ann did. Would they remember that she was allergic to bee stings? Did they cut the crusts off her sandwiches the way she liked? Tell her it was okay when she wet the bed, that it happened even to big girls? To anyone who knew Kerrie Ann’s history, she’d have sounded ridiculous airing such concerns. Yes, she’d fucked up. But she was still Bella’s mom. No one could take that away.

  Her thoughts returned to Lindsay. She still couldn’t get over the fact that she had a sister. Even weirder was that she had no memory of her. How was it possible for those years to be a blank slate?

  There was one recurring dream, though. In it she was a little girl again, snuggled on a woman’s lap, her head nestled against a bosom more supremely cushy than the softest of pillows. In the dream, she never saw the woman’s face. Nonetheless, Kerrie Ann knew that lap to be the safest place in the world. Each time she awoke from the dream, she would try to hold on to those feelings of warmth and comfort. At times, lying in bed with her eyes shut as she struggled to keep from surfacing, she could almost swear the woman was real, her presence was so strong. She’d even catch a faint whiff of her scent, a mixture of cigarette smoke and some flowery perfume. Kerrie Ann didn’t think the woman in her dream was her mother. Maybe her sister would know …

  Before she knew it, the plane was touching down at San Francisco International. Making her way through the terminal, she stopped for a hamburger and fries to quiet the growling in her belly—she’d skipped breakfast that morning—before heading for the rental-car center. She hated having to spend money on a car but didn’t have much choice. Her old Falcon wouldn’t have survived the trip to Blue Moon Bay, and if she’d taken a bus, she’d have been stuck overnight. And who knew what kind of reception she’d get?

  Half an hour later Kerrie Ann was crawling through traffic on the Bayshore freeway in her rented Hyundai, her window down, smoking a cigarette. When she reached the exit for 92, she took the ramp marked Blue Moon Bay/Santa Cruz and soon was cruising along a less traveled route that wound through grassy, oak-studded hills. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but along the horizon a line of fog crouched like a gray cat waiting to spring.

  She was approaching the outskirts of town when she found herself enveloped in a soft gray mist. Not the dense fog she’d known on previous trips up the coast but one that merely blurred the landscape, giving it the look of a storybook illustration. The tall eucalyptus trees lining the road rose like Jack’s magic beanstalk to disappear into the thicker fog overhead. Beyond stretched fields of cultivated flowers—roses, snapdragons, chrysanthemums, and dahlias with blossoms the size of teacups—where she could make out the indistinct shapes of toiling figures and several greenhouses that, from this distance, might have been glass castles. Directly ahead, a short distance from where the road merged with Highway 1, lay the sea. She could see it glinting where the sun had burned through the fog, a silvery sweep of ocean furrowed by long swells that sheared off into whitecaps as they drove in toward the cliffs.

  The damp sea air rushing in through the open window brought pleasant memories of days at the beach, warm sand scrunching beneath her bare soles. In the distance, she could hear the booming of surf. Seagulls circled lazily above the cliffs. Kerrie Ann felt her anxiety ease a bit. In a place as majestic as this, surely there was room for one small miracle?

  When she pulled into town, she parked in the first available spot and walked the rest of the way. After strolling for several blocks along a main drag lined with shops and eateries, she located her sister’s bookshop on one of the side streets. Unlike some of the storefronts she’d passed along the way, with their cutesy signs and windows full of kitschy seaside souvenirs, it didn’t appear to cater primarily to the tourist trade. It looked like a place that sold books to people who loved to read, as warm and inviting and a bit worn as a comfortable old sofa. The weathered sign over the gabled entrance advertised it as the Blue Moon Bay Book Café. There was a wooden bench out front, flanked by flower boxes from which bright pansies peeked like smiley faces. Peering in, she saw some customers browsing the aisles while others sat at café tables in back, sipping coffee and nibbling on baked goods. Displayed in the front window was an assortment of titles recommended for Mother’s Day. Her heart constricted. For her, the holiday would be just another day without her daughter.

  Hovering outside the door, Kerrie Ann felt as if she were about to step onstage to perform a part she hadn’t rehearsed. Her heart was in her throat, her palms sweaty. Would her sister welcome her or want nothing to do with her? Or something in between—Lindsay making polite noises while counting the minutes until she left?

  Only one way to find out. She paused just long enough to take in her reflection in the door’s glass pane—pink-haired and tattooed, wearing black low-rise jeans and a pair of high-heeled boots, a red leather jacket over a knockoff Juicy Couture midi-top—before she pushed her way inside.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The previous day

  “Do you think I’ll ever find her?” Lindsay mused aloud.

  “Who?” Grant replied without looking up.

  “My sister.”

  It was late afternoon, and they were seated on the balcony of his condo, overlooking the marina in Pacifica. While browsing through the Sunday paper, Lindsay had come across an article about a brother and a sister in Germany, separated as children during World War II, who’d been reunited after a span of sixty-eight years. It had given rise to the spark of hope in her own breast, never far below the surface.

  But when she’d remarked on it, Grant had only lifted his head from the sports section to murmur, “Mmm. Isn’t that something?” She might have been commenting on the weather. With a sigh of frustration, she bundled up the rest of the newspaper and tossed it aside. Why, whenever she mentioned her sister, usually in the context of some new lead—a former foster parent of Kerrie Ann’s whom she’d tracked down, or a response to a want ad she’d placed—did she get the feeling, even when he feigned interest, that Grant found the whole subject tiresome? As if she were someone in mourning who, in his view, should have moved on by now.

  She stewed a moment longer before her innate sense of fairness won out. Can I blame him? she thought. He was a lawyer; he dealt in facts. And what evidence was there to support the hope that she’d one day be reunited with Kerrie Ann? Only scraps of information that had proved useless.

  She leaned into him as they sat side-by-side on the chaise lounge. Between Grant’s busy schedule and hers, their days off didn’t often coincide, so she’d learned to savor each one as she did the all-too-rare sunny days in this part of the world. Today was a double bonus: a whole Sunday to themselves, with clear skies and temperatures that felt more like mid-June than May. Earlier in the day, they’d gone sailing with friends and were now enjoying a quiet moment alone befo
re supper. An open bottle of pinot grigio sat on the small glass table in front of them. The sun, low in the sky, skewered by the tall masts of the sailboats moored in the marina, spilled its pinkish-gold light over the water below, turning it iridescent. Lindsay reached for her wineglass, the light from the setting sun sparkling off its rim as she lifted it to her lips.

  It wasn’t just the article. These past few days, thoughts of her sister had been cropping up more than usual, as if a radio frequency on which Lindsay normally received only static were suddenly transmitting a clear, if intermittent, signal. Why now, after all these years? She had no answer.

  Grant finally abandoned the sports section when the light became too dim for him to read. “One of these days, I’d like a boat of my own,” he remarked, gazing out over the marina. “Nothing fancy, just a nice little sloop. Enough room below deck for the two of us.” He looped an arm around her shoulders.

  “You could afford one now,” she told him.

  “Oh, so you think I’m made of money, do you?” He turned to her, his mouth slanted in a smile that, with the freckles spattered over his nose, made him look like a mischievous schoolboy. “Saving the environment has its compensations, I’ll admit, but I’m afraid a fat salary isn’t one of them.”

  “I was talking about my sister, and you’re talking boats. Do you think there’s a connection there?” Her lighthearted tone contained a gentle reprimand. Grant was the ideal boyfriend in many ways. He made few demands and loved her just as she was, so much so that he preferred the present, unvarnished Lindsay—jeans and sweatshirt, no makeup, her straight brown hair pulled back in a ponytail—to the stylishly dressed and made-up one who would stroll into the restaurant on his arm an hour from now. So why did she sometimes get the feeling that her concerns were fourth or fifth on his priority list? Was it simply that they’d been together so long that he no longer hung on her every word?

  “We could always name the boat after your sister,” he offered.

  She frowned. “Be serious.”

  “I am. What better tribute?”

  “She’s not dead.” Lindsay added on a fretful note, “At least, I hope not.”

  Grant reached for the wine bottle and refilled their glasses. Her mind traveled back to when they’d first met, three years ago at an Earth First! fund-raiser at which he’d been the keynote speaker. She recalled how captivated she’d been by the sight of him standing at the podium. He wasn’t, in the strictest sense, what she’d call handsome—more Sam Shepard than George Clooney—but he was so tall and poised and confident that he’d gleamed up there like a brandished sword, with his shock of blond hair and impossibly white teeth. Displaying just enough boyish enthusiasm to soften his heroic contours, he spoke urgently of the need for each individual to take measures in combating pollution: a modern-day Jason out to slay the Gorgons of corporate greed.

  “I hope I didn’t bore you with my speech,” he said to her later on, after they were introduced. “Nothing sets the cause back like a preacher on his soap box.” She assured him that she’d found his speech interesting, if a bit too long, to which he replied with a laugh, “You’re the first honest person I’ve spoken to tonight. Lindsay, is it? Lindsay, will you sit and have a drink with me? I promise, no more preaching. I want to hear all about you.”

  On that night she had the feeling that if another woman at the function stripped off all her clothes and went streaking through the crowd, Grant wouldn’t even have noticed, he was so focused on her. In the days and weeks that followed, too, he listened with rapt attention to her stories, laughed at her jokes, made a point of reading books she recommended; he even pretended to enjoy himself when dragged along to the local farmers’ market, which he only later confessed he found about as fun as flossing his teeth (having grown up on a farm, he didn’t see the appeal).

  Now she wondered how she’d managed to drift away from the center of that focus. Was it simply inevitable when a couple had been together as long as Grant and she?

  He handed her glass back to her. “Who knows? You may get lucky yet. Just like the brother and sister in the article.” So he had been listening. If not for his patronizing tone, she might even have thought he was sincere.

  “You make it sound like I’d have as much chance of spotting the Loch Ness monster.”

  At her sharp remark, he eyed her in puzzlement. The breeze picked up just then, lifting a lock of blond hair off his forehead. His blue eyes shone in a last burst of sunlight. “Did I say something wrong?”

  “No,” she conceded. “It’s just that I get the feeling you don’t think I’ll ever find her.”

  He hesitated before saying gently, “Did it ever occur to you that maybe she doesn’t want to be found?”

  She felt herself tense. “Why would I think that?”

  “It just seems to me that otherwise she’d have surfaced by now. Maybe there’s a reason she’s remained underground,” he went on in the same maddeningly reasonable tone.

  “Such as?”

  “She could be in trouble with the law.”

  Lindsay responded quickly, “I wouldn’t care if she was in trouble.”

  “Yes, but she doesn’t know that.” At the dark look she shot him, Grant shook his head, wearing a bewildered look. “I don’t understand. You’ve been looking for your sister for God knows how long. Certainly as long as I’ve known you. So why are you getting so worked up all of a sudden?”

  Lindsay’s shoulders slumped. “I don’t know.” She sat for a moment chewing on her lip, watching a sailboat far out at sea gracefully tacking its way toward the marina, its sails bellying out as it leaned away from the wind. “Her birthday’s coming up. It got me thinking, is all.”

  “I’ll tell you what. When the day comes, why don’t I take you out to dinner, and we’ll celebrate—raise a glass to your sister in absentia. How about that?”

  She brought her gaze back to Grant to find him beaming at her as if to say, Problem solved.

  You don’t get it. You don’t get it at all. She bit back the caustic words. She wasn’t normally given to displays of temper and rarely lashed out in anger. Logic, reason, carefully constructed arguments—those were her weapons of choice. Only, who was being unreasonable here? Kerrie Ann had been missing for more than a quarter of a century. Was it Grant’s fault that he saw her search as futile? That he was unable to comprehend the deep ache she still felt (though he rarely saw his own sister, who lived in his hometown of Grantsburg, Wisconsin, she was still very much a part of his life) that defied the passage of time and seeming absence of hope?

  She sighed once more, raising her glass to her lips. “I guess it’s easier to dwell on the past than face what’s happening in the present.” She was referring to the current thorn in her side: the Heywood Group. Men in suits whose skulduggery was cloaked in corporate jargon but who were no better than a band of pirates.

  “What’s the latest from Dwight?” Grant asked.

  Dwight Tibbet was her lawyer. When she’d gone to Grant for help in fending off the Heywood Group, he’d referred her to an old friend from law school who specialized in land disputes and who, Grant assured her, was more qualified than he to handle the matter.

  “There’s talk of their invoking eminent domain.” She spoke in a low, controlled tone, determined not to spoil the day’s mood any more than she already had.

  Grant frowned. “They don’t have the authority.”

  “No, but the county does, and I have it from a reliable source that at least half the commissioners are in bed with those slimeballs.”

  “It’s just a scare tactic.”

  “Guess what? It’s working.” She felt sick just thinking about what would happen should the Heywood Group and their cronies prevail. Her only recourse would be to battle it out in court. And what chance would she, a mere property owner, have against the united front of a government body and a hotel group with virtually bottomless pockets?

  “So have you changed your mind about accepting thei
r offer?”

  She shot him an indignant glance. Didn’t he know her better than that? “I’m not that scared.” The latest offer from the Heywood Group was more money than she’d see in a lifetime. Certainly more than her property would fetch on the open market. But what price could be placed on the joy of waking up each morning to the view out her window, or being lulled to sleep at night by the sound of the surf? On a more practical level, where would she go if she were to sell out? The house she’d inherited from her adoptive parents, set on twenty acres of oceanfront property, was the only real home she had ever known.

  No; if those pirates seized control, it would be over her dead body.

  “Well, I’m sure Dwight knows what he’s doing. He’ll shut it down.” Grant put an arm around her shoulders as she began to shiver. “Cold? Do you want me to get your sweater?”

  She shook her head, resolutely swallowing against the bitter pill that refused to go down. No sense boring her boyfriend to tears with her problems. Today was supposed to be a respite from all that. “No, I’m fine. It’s nice out here.” With the setting of the sun had come the cool air of evening, but she didn’t feel like budging. How often did she get to just sit and relax?

  “Shall I call the restaurant and tell them we’ll be late?” he asked.

  “No.” She forced a smile. “Let’s go eat.” She wasn’t hungry, but she supposed she would have an appetite once they got to the restaurant—they were dining at the Landing, her favorite waterfront eatery. “By the way, do you mind if I bring Miss Honi to the party tomorrow?” Grant was having some people over for dinner, a few of his clients and their spouses, and she thought her resident fairy godmother, as she’d dubbed Miss Honi, would enjoy an evening out. At an age when many of her contemporaries were content to stay home, the old woman never missed an opportunity to step out in a fancy dress and high heels.