Chapter Sixteen

Mindy and Adaleigh talked for an hour more before they went their separate ways. She liked artistic activities, which Adaleigh did not. Mindy hadn’t read many books—in fact, she blushed to admit she actually struggled with reading. So while they were opposite in many ways, as they parted, seeds of a solid friendship had been sown, whether Adaleigh would be able to stay in Crow’s Nest or not.

Those good feelings evaporated faster than droplets on a summer day when Joe Spelding stopped directly in front of her as she reached the north end of the boardwalk. Dressed in a tan suit that made his dark hair stand out, he flashed her a smile that reminded her so much of one of her childhood neighbor boys, Adaleigh was momentarily taken aback.

“Swooning already?” Mr. Spelding closed the distance in two strides.

“You wish.” Adaleigh glanced around for a way out, but she had mistakenly kept on the path that led along the lake and found herself near the same bench where she had spoken with Buck Wilson. To her right, the cliff fell away to the shadowed water below. Gentle waves lapped at the rocks like an old lady absently petting her cat.

He laughed. “You’re a feisty one. I think we’d have a good time together.”

Adaleigh squared her shoulders and focused on the crude man. “I don’t know what island you’re on, but your charms don’t work on me.” She thought of Mindy. Sweet, uncomplicated Mindy. Mr. Spelding would have easily duped her, and it angered Adaleigh that he’d dented her new friend’s happy personality. What about Amy? She didn’t seem the same type. Was she playing him, or had she given into his charms like Mindy had?

“You’re sizing me up.” Mr. Spelding wagged his eyebrows. “Like what you see?”

“Oh, give it up.” Adaleigh rolled her eyes and pushed past him. “I’ve turned down much better-looking men with much larger bank accounts.”

“Is that what matters to you? Because I—”

“You don’t understand the word no, do you?”

“Is that why Buck is asking questions?” He grabbed her upper arm. “Because you’re trying to get back at me?”

“Let go.” Adaleigh tried to shake him off. “You’re not worth getting back at.”

He pulled her closer, his voice a deep growl. “I came here because I have something to offer.”

“Oh, shut it.” Her anger boiled. Adaleigh had grown up around so many entitled males, she had no respect left for them.

“No one is around to hear you scream, so let’s skip that part.” He tightened his grip on her arm until Adaleigh was sure he could snap it in two. She clenched her jaw to keep from showing her reaction. He hovered over her, his suit coat lapels hanging limp in the humidity.

“You mean no one is around to hear you scream.” Adaleigh stomped hard on his instep and he yelped. “Now let go.”

“Why, you little—”

Adaleigh slapped him across the face, which effectively freed her other arm. She took five steps away from him when she noticed a house up the way, with smoke rising from the chimney and the flutter of laundry on a clothesline. It infused her with courage to ask what she wanted to know so she never had to speak with Mr. Spelding again. “The night Amy died, is this what you did to her?”

“What are you talking about?” He pressed his hand to his cheek, his eyes darting over her shoulder. Good. He saw the house, too, and with the way he kept distance between them, he knew that whomever lived there would come to her aid, not his.

Adaleigh raised her eyebrows to encourage him to talk. “You were waiting for someone when David and I passed by.”

“Like I told Buck, I didn’t see Amy again after she went to meet up with her boyfriend. I don’t usually get taken for a fool.” A distant look overcame his usual suave expression. “Wasn’t expecting it in a town like this.” A door slammed and suddenly, his eyes sharpened to daggers, which he turned on Adaleigh. “You better watch yourself, little lady. Stop sticking your pretty nose where it doesn’t belong.” Or else.

She scrambled away, making haste up the path toward the home on the hill. Mr. Spelding didn’t follow, but she waited until he was out of sight before finding her way back to the Martins’s home. Her skin still crawled at his touch, but at least she wasn’t shaking any longer.

How had she so quickly become a walking testament to people who had the means, motive, and opportunity to kill Amy Littleburg? She usually stayed quiet, but this was different than with her sister. Adaleigh needed to speak up, to tell the authorities about the threat Joe Spelding and Mark Hitchens posed to herself and others.

She rubbed her arm. Letting the bruises show would open the conversation. However, she knew Chief Sebastian wouldn’t listen to her. No, she’d do better to wait until she could tell Detective O’Connor—and David, because David would get the truth out of her even if Adaleigh wanted to hide it.

“Sebastian is a bulldog, but I did not anticipate this.” Uncle Mike leaned back in his chair. David sat across the kitchen table from him and behind David, Grandma chopped celery at the kitchen island. Samson sat on his haunches, his nose just below the countertop.

“Why is he after our family?” Samantha, who sat at the opposite end of the table, raised her head from where it lay on her folded arms.

“Amy’s murder is somewhat high profile, as much as it can be in a town as small as Crow’s Nest,” Uncle Mike said. “‘Young woman found dead on the wharf’ is not a good headline for us. Frank is a convenient scapegoat that no one would complain about being put behind bars.”

“For a murder he didn’t do,” David broke in. Grandma’s chopping seemed to grow louder behind him.

“But it would silence the headlines.” Uncle Mike scratched his mustache. “The biggest problem is that there is no better lead than your father.”

David thought of Spelding, then thought better of speaking up. Not while Grandma and Samantha were in the room. Behind him, Grandma paused in her chopping, Samson scrambled for something, then the chopping resumed.

“Kyle is coming tomorrow,” Samantha said, resting her chin on her arms. “He’s Sean’s best friend. I tried to get Sean to come, too, but he’s being sullen.”

David’s ears perked, but Uncle Mike spoke. “How so?”

Samantha waved her free hand in a circle. “Like a toddler, kicking stuff around because he didn’t get his way.”

David and Uncle Mike exchanged glances.

“And Kyle is coming here tomorrow?” Uncle Mike asked.

“So Leigh can talk to him.”

Because David asked for her help.

Uncle Mike’s mustache worked overtime before he finally spoke slowly, carefully. “Kyle isn’t part of the investigation as far as I know. He’s your friend, correct, Samantha?”

She nodded.

“And inviting a friend over has nothing to do with the investigation.”

This time, Samantha and David exchanged glances. Sebastian wouldn’t like it, but after hearing the latest way the man mistreated Adaleigh, David liked the idea of pulling one over on him.

“Until then,” Grandma’s voice grabbed their attention. David turned in his chair as she scrapped a celery and carrot mixture into a large bowl, “no more talk of murder and suspects. I’m making vegetable soup for dinner.”

“Oh, Grandma,” David said. “I was planning to go fishing.”

Samantha gave a semi-discrete cough, but Uncle Mike merely asked, “Need my boat?”

“Soup travels well in a thermos.” Mrs. Martins poured the bowl of ingredients into a pot on the stove. “Take it with you.”

Contentment dispelled the turmoil that had been roiling around his belly most of the day. Then a new feeling descended, a giddy nervousness that had his ears tuned to Adaleigh’s return. This was no impromptu outing or a walk after coincidently running into her. No. This was a planned out, honest-to-goodness date with a very captivating woman. He couldn’t wait.

Not forty-five minutes after Adaleigh returned home from her lunch with Mindy, Mrs. Martins handed her a picnic basket filled with more goodies than they could want, including two thermoses of soup. David drove his family’s car down to the lakeshore, where a single dock jutted out into the water and a tiny boat bobbed beside it.

“That’s the boat we’re taking on the lake?” Adaleigh asked as they parked on the gravel, feet from the water. The boat itself was a weathered wood, with no wheelhouse or covering, only three benches spaced inside. Two oars were nestled within.

David looked over his shoulder as he slid out of the truck. “Yeah, why?”

“It’s so small!”

David laughed. “A twenty-footer is just fine for Michigan. We won’t go that far out, anyway. Don’t worry.”

A small pit in her stomach told her to worry, but Adaleigh knew she had no need with David at the helm. Worst case, they would have to swim to shore, and that she had no trouble doing. As long as the water wasn’t too cold …

The air was noticeably cooler by the lake, but still humid. A breeze blew by, ruffling the edges of her skirt, and she pulled her sweater closed. Lake Michigan stretched out like a wrinkled piece of deep-blue fabric. Adaleigh couldn’t ask for a more gorgeous early-summer evening, especially since the sun had no thought of setting.

David helped her into the boat. It rocked beneath her feet, and Adaleigh quickly sat on the bench closest to shore. David sat on the middle bench, tucked the food basket under Adaleigh’s seat, and took up the oars. The boat slid away from the dock and into the sparkling, open water.

A certain thrill crested within her as they bobbed through the waves, the shore growing in distance. She’d been on motorboats on a couple different lakes over the years, but never something like this. In front of them was nothing but water.

“How are we?” David paused his rowing to ask. He didn’t appear winded, though he had to be working hard. His muscles bulged with every stroke.

“Great.” Adaleigh smiled as the wind blew spray into her face. She nudged the picnic basket further under her seat, then settled to take in everything. Gulls swept down from the sky. Ducks floated in the water. If she wasn’t mistaken, a pelican sat on a dock up the coast. But no, she must be seeing things since she’d never seen one outside of a book.

Farther from shore, Adaleigh gained a new perspective of Crow’s Nest. Two large steeples on either side of town stood tall, as if marking the boundary limits. The lighthouse at the opening of the harbor flashed its light in a continual blinking pattern. Trees that made up the western boundary line appeared to surround the town in a protective hug.

The opposite horizon loomed before them, as if the water rose before it fell over the edge of the world. Although that edge always seemed about the same distance away, Adaleigh had a nagging concern that they might be getting too close. A large ship seemed to teeter on the brink, shrouded in shadow. She could understand how people in the olden days believed the world was flat.

Finally, David slowed his rowing. The waves made them rise and fall in a firm but gentle way. “What do you think so far?”

“It’s breathtaking.”

He grinned. “This is the life, isn’t it?”

She nodded. “Now what?”

“We fish.” He reached behind him to gather two rods.

A strange flutter filled her stomach. “Um … I’ve never …”

“I’ll talk you through what I do. This is a steel rod.” He handed it to her. It was a thin pole attached to a sturdy wooden handle, which also had a large metal bobbin with a crank. He tapped the bobbin. “This is a reel. When the fish bite, we use this to reel them in.”

Adaleigh fingered the thread that went from the bobbin—reel—to the tip of the rod. “What’s the line made of?”

“Silk. Sometimes it’s cotton or linen, but this one is silk.”

She nodded, acutely aware of his closeness as they both leaned over the rod.

David cast a glance at her, then reached behind him for a metal box. “In here are a few of our prized possessions. Uncle Mike and I share them since they’re expensive.” He pulled out a wooden object with eyes and two three-pronged hooks that resembled a fish.

“Why not use a worm?” Adaleigh asked. “Isn’t that what most fishermen use?”

David smiled, making talk of worms and lures a rather romantic topic. “Fish in the Great Lakes eat other fish—I know, kind of gross—so in order to catch them, we use lures that mimic smaller fish.”

That actually made sense.

“This particular one is called a Bass Oreno.” He tied the lure onto the line, then raised the rod over his shoulder so that the lure swung behind him. With a flick of the wrist, the lure flew out over the water and splashed ten feet away. Then he set the rod in a round tube that rose up from the bottom of the boat. “You want to try?”

Adaleigh nodded. David secured another lure, this one with a red head and a white body, to the second pole. She took the wooden handle in her hands and raised it behind her.

“Easy, now.” David knelt beside her. “There’s an art to it.”

Adaleigh swung it forward, and the lure clunked against the inside of the boat.

David chuckled. “You want to flick it, like you’re throwing a ball.” He took her hands and gently moved her wrists in the motion he described. She tried again, and this time the line sailed out into the water.

“I got it!” Adaleigh turned to grin at him, only to find him closer than she expected. It did funny things to her insides, and based on his slow swallow, it must be doing the same to him.

“I’ll secure it.” He set the rod in a holder on the opposite side of the boat.

The lines stretched out in the water, waiting for a fish to bite. He checked the fishing rods one last time before settling on his bench. He took the oars and gave them two tugs before letting them hang in the water again. David turned to stare at the horizon with the look of an experienced sailor. He seemed neither hurried nor uptight. It was as if this was his world and he was home. Some of the worry slipped off Adaleigh’s shoulders. She felt incredibly safe with David Martins, a feeling she hadn’t had for a long time.

Tears pricked her eyes. David deserved a friend who would stay. She couldn’t. Her past left her no other option. Not once it caught up to her. Even if she could figure out how to stay out of Mark Hitchens’s way. Keep her nose out of Joe Spelding’s business. Follow Chief Sebastian’s rules. Sure, then maybe she could see a relationship with David. But with the reporter set on announcing her identity to the world, how could she continue to hide from her sister while staying in Crow’s Nest?

“Everything okay?” David’s callused hand on her arm, more than his voice, brought her back.

Adaleigh swiped at the tears that escaped her eyes. “Just fine,” she said and tried to smile as she ran her hand along the top edge of the boat. “We should see what goodies your grandma gave us.”

David waited a beat, then mercifully pulled out the picnic basket and dug through it.

Adaleigh stared toward the northeast, where the boat was generally headed, trying to collect herself. The pain in her heart, the longing for the care David continued to show her, it turned into a prayer so desperate. Didn’t she deserve to be happy, too? Couldn’t God grant her that? She’d settle for even a sliver of peace.

“You sure you’re okay?” David stilled her hand, having left the opened picnic basket on the bench beside him. The boat rocked gently over tiny waves. “You keep telling me you’re fine, and I believe it less and less each time.”

He crouched so close, Adaleigh could feel the heat of his body beside her. “Have you ever wanted something so much you fought for it with everything you had?”

“What do you mean?”

“I haven’t done it often.” She stared at her hand nestled in his. “First time was when I joined the women’s swim team. I was determined to prove girls could swim just as well as boys.”

David’s lips twitched as if he tried not to smile.

“I did it again when I stood up to my dad about going to university. I wanted to prove a woman could achieve academic success—whether other women already had or not. My dad said I couldn’t make it work, but I did. He was so proud of me, he …” Her voice cracked, but she refused to let it break. “You know what I’ve never stood up for?”

David shook his head.

“Me.”

“How so?” His voice was so terribly gentle.

“I’ve stood up for others. For the greater good. Girls to play a boy’s sport, women to achieve success, but never have I stood up for just myself.”

“You mean your sister.”

“For as long as I can remember, I’ve come up with every story in the book to cover for her. Now I’ve done the ultimate in not standing up for myself: I ran away. Literally left everything behind and tried to disappear.”

“Sometimes that’s what’s better, safer.” He swiped a knuckle over her cheek to wipe away a tear.

“But I’m not better or safer, am I? I’m still looking over my shoulder.” Adaleigh massaged her arm where Mr. Spelding had grabbed her but thought of Mr. Hitchens’s threat.

“Aw, Adaleigh, you’ve been a champion of others for so long. It’s okay to let someone else stand up for you. To stand still and let God fight for you.”

“When will that happen? When will someone actually stand up for me? When will God fight for me? No one, not a person, not God, has ever done that for me. I’m weary, David, and my heart is hurting.”

David frowned but said nothing.

The churning in her stomach warned her she had said too much. “I’m sorry. You didn’t invite me along to complain about—”

“Stop.” David pulled her to her feet, somehow keeping the boat from rocking as they stood in its center. Her heart jumped out of her chest. Attraction washed over her at his closeness, yet he sounded so stern, so serious. She couldn’t manage another man speaking harshly to her after the day she had. Sweat gathered on her forehead. Her surroundings dimmed.

Then David’s arms wrapped around her. His warmth chased away the chilly wind. His sturdiness grounded them as the boat rode over a wave. She rested her head against his chest, feeling the strength of his heart beating against her ear. In that moment, it was as if the shelter of God’s wings enfolded her. Her breathing slowed. And there, in the middle of a humongous lake, she felt perfectly safe.