Riptide

Sam didn’t say anything, just suffered her touching his face. Slowly, she brought him against her even though his small body was stiff, resistant.

“I’ve missed you, Sam. I would have come sooner, but my father and Adam-you remember Adam, don’t you?-they were both hurt and I had to stay with them in the hospital. But now I’m here.”

“Adam.”

One word, but it was enough. “Yes,” she said, delighted, “Adam.”

She turned her head when she heard Tyler say something, but he shook his head at her. “Sam’s okay, Becca. I also brought some barbecue from Errol Fly

And so they drank champagne, Sam drank his lemonade, and everyone ate barbecue pork ribs, baked beans, and coleslaw in Jacob Marley’s kitchen. The carrot cake from Myrtle’s Sweet Tooth on Venus Flytrap Boulevard stood on the kitchen counter.

After she’d answered countless questions about Krimakov, she said, “What about the skeleton, Tyler? Have the DNA results come in yet? Is it Melissa Katzen?”

Tyler shrugged. “No word yet that I know of. Everyone believes it is. But that’s not important now. What’s important is us. When do you want to move up here, Becca?”

Becca was handing Sam another rib. Her hand stilled. “Move back here? No, Tyler. I’m here to see Sam and pack up my things.”

He nodded and tore meat off the rib he was holding. He chewed, then said, “Well, that’s all right. You’ve just reco

She set down her fork near the coleslaw. Something had gone terribly wrong. She didn’t want this, but there was no hiding from it now. She said it slowly, calmly, aware that Sam was now very still again, not eating, listening, but she had no choice. She said, “I’m truly sorry if you’ve misunderstood, Tyler. You and Sam are my very dear friends. I care about both of you quite a lot. I’ve appreciated all you’ve done for me, the support you’ve given me, the confidence you’ve had in me, but I can’t be your wife. I’m very sorry, but I just don’t feel about you the way you want me to.”

Sam continued to sit there on two thick phone books, still and silent, the half-chewed pork rib clutched in his small fingers.

She forced a smile. “We should probably have this talk after Sam’s gone to bed, don’t you think?”

“Why? It concerns him. He wants you for his mother, Becca. I told him that was why you were coming back. I told him you were going to fix everything and you’d be here for him forever.”

“We should speak of this later, Tyler. This is between us. Please.”

Sam looked down at his plate, his small face drawn, pale in the dim kitchen light.

“All right then,” Tyler said. “I’m going to put Sam down with a blanket in the living room, on that real comfortable sofa. What do you think, Sam?”

Sam didn’t tell them what he thought.

“I’ll be right back, Becca.”

He scooped Sam up off his phone books and carried him out of the kitchen. She shivered. The house felt uncomfortably cool. She hoped Sam would be warm enough with just one blanket. She hoped Sam had gotten enough to eat. She wished Tyler had wiped Sam’s fingers off better.

What was she going to do? Was she the one off base here? Had she given Tyler the wrong impression? She’d known he was jealous of Adam, and that’s when she had pulled back from him, even cooling her friendship toward him. But still he’d misunderstood, still he’d come to believe that she wanted to be his wife. How could it be possible? She’d said nothing, done nothing, to give him that idea. And he was using Sam, which was despicable of him.

Sam. What was she going to do? There was something very wrong, triggered, she supposed, by Krimakov’s kidnapping of him. She heard Tyler walking back toward the kitchen. She had to clear this up, quickly and cleanly. She had to think what she could do to help Sam.

She’d gotten the name of a really good child psychologist in Bangor from Sherlock. She would start there.

But she didn’t have a chance to start anything because Tyler said from the doorway, “I love you, Becca.”

32

“No, Tyler, no.”

Tyler just smiled at her, an intimate smile that chilled her to the bone. “I’ve loved you from that first time I saw you in Hadley’s freshman dorm at Dartmouth. You were looking lost, wondering where to find a bathroom.”

She smiled at that, no recollection at all of that meeting. “You didn’t love me, Tyler. You dated lots of girls in college. You married Sam’s mother, A

He came into the kitchen and sat down across from her. “Sure I loved her for a while, but she left me, Becca. She left me and she didn’t plan to come back. She was even going to take Sam, but I didn’t let her.”

What was he talking about? Of course things couldn’t have been smooth between them, since A

“Since you’re going to be his mother, of course you’ll see him grow up. You’ll make him well again, Becca. He’s been silent and withdrawn ever since his mother left.”

“Would you like some coffee?”

“Sure, if you’re going to make some.” He watched her measure the coffee into the machine, then pour in the water. He watched her press the switch, watched it turn red.

“Tell me about A

Tyler was still watching the coffeemaker. She watched him breathe in the aroma. Finally, he said, “She was beautiful. She’d been married to a guy who left her the minute he found out she was pregnant. We hooked up kind of by accident. She couldn’t get the gasoline cap off her car. I helped her. Then we went to Pollya

“What happened?”

He said nothing for a very long time. “The coffee’s ready.”

She poured each of them a cup.

He took a drink, then shrugged. “She was happy and then she wasn’t. She left. Nothing more, Becca. Listen, I swear I’ll make you happy. You won’t ever want to leave. We can have more kids, yours and mine. Sam was A

“I’m going to marry Adam.”

He threw the coffee at her. He roared to his feet, sending the wooden chair crashing against the wall, and shouted, “No, you’re not going to marry that goddamned bastard! You’re mine, do you hear me? You’re mine, you damned bitch!”

The coffee wasn’t scalding anymore, thank God, but it hurt, splashing on her neck, on the front of her shirt, soaking through to her skin.

He leapt toward her, his hands out.

“No, Tyler.” She ran, but he was blocking any escape out the back door. There was no place to go except down to the basement. But she’d be trapped down there. No, wait, there was another small entry on the far side of the basement where long-ago Marleys had had their winter cords of wood dumped. She saw it all in a flash, and ran to the basement door, jerked it open, then pulled it closed behind her. She locked it, flipped on the light, saw the naked bulb dangling from the ceiling by a thin wire, even as she heard him pulling on the knob on the other side, yelling, calling her horrible names, telling her that he would get her, that she wouldn’t leave him, not ever.