She made it as far as Silver’s bedroom, then paused outside, still trying to process what had just happened.
How could her child have jeopardized everything like this? Didn’t she understand how precarious things were? If Dani didn’t do well in this internship, if they couldn’t carve a place for themselves here in Haven Point, she would have to once more pick up her girls and start all over somewhere else.
They had a nice home here in a nice community. Where would they go if Haven Point didn’t work out?
The worry that always seemed to lurk at the edges of her subconscious crept ever closer.
She took another deep breath, trying to beat it back again. She had to do her best to be calm and collected when she spoke with Silver. Raging at her daughter would accomplish nothing.
Was this some kind of cry for help, tangible proof of everything Silver hadn’t said? She wasn’t happy here. That truth was becoming unavoidable. She didn’t fit in because of her purple hair and her unique fashion sense and, most probably, because of her defensive attitude. She wanted to go back to Boston where she had friends, or even New York to live with Tommy’s family.
A parent’s job was to discern between a child’s wants and her needs. In this case, Dani knew in her gut that her family needed a community like Haven Point.
When she pushed the door open, she found Silver facedown on her bed, the blanket up around her ears. The only light came from Silver’s phone, which she was not supposed to have in her bedroom past 10:00 p.m. anyway.
She opened her mouth to yell about that but caught herself. She had other things to worry about right now.
Silver didn’t look up when Dani came inside and moved to the bed. She waited her out, standing for a long moment until her daughter finally rolled over and held out her phone.
“Here. I know I’m not supposed to have it. I wasn’t texting anyone. I was just looking at pictures of my friends back in Boston.”
Dani’s heart squeezed with sympathy, but she schooled her features so Silver didn’t see.
“Thanks,” she said calmly. “I’ll put it on the charger in my room.”
She said nothing else, just waited for Silver to speak first and explain herself. “Go ahead. Yell at me. I know you want to.”
She did want to yell—to scream and rant and ask Silver what the hell she was thinking. The pain on her daughter’s face held her back.
“I’m not going to yell.”
“You’re not?” Silver’s shock was evident in her wide eyes.
“What would that do? It would only make both of us feel worse and wouldn’t change what you’ve done.”
“O-okay.”
Dani turned on the bedside lamp then sat on the edge of the bed. “A deputy sheriff, though? Seriously? In what alternate reality would you ever think that was okay?”
Her daughter threw her forearm over her eyes, as protection from the light or to avoid her mother’s gaze, Dani wasn’t sure.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “It was a stupid thing to do, okay? I know it was dumb. We... I wasn’t thinking.”
Dani didn’t miss that telltale pronoun. She wanted to pounce on it and make Silver tell her who else had been involved, but somehow she sensed further interrogation would do nothing to move the conversation forward.
“Do you hate it here so much that you want to sabotage everything for all of us?”
A little tear leaked out of Silver’s eye and dripped into the hair she had dyed herself. “I miss my friends,” she said.
“You know the way to make the sort of friends you want to keep isn’t to engage in criminal activity with them, right?”
“I know.” She scratched a pattern into her quilt. “Nana says if I really hate it here, I can come live with her back in Queens.”
Dani’s insides twisted at the mention of her former mother-in-law. “When did you talk to your Grandma DeLuca?”
Silver looked more guilty about this than she had about showing up at the door with a deputy sheriff. “She messaged me and sent me her phone number a few months ago. After, you know. In case I wanted to talk to her about...about Dad and what happened. We’ve been texting on and off for a while now.”
“You know I check your texts. I haven’t seen anything like that.”
Silver looked away. “I always delete them. I know you don’t want me to talk to her. I can stop.”
Again, Dani wanted to yell, but did her best to keep control. Silver loved her namesake grandmother, who had been an active part of their lives for her first few years, even babysitting her when Dani had classes.
Dani never would have made it through her undergraduate degree without Silvia DeLuca’s help.
Their relationship had become strained after Dani filed for divorce six years ago, but even then she had allowed Silvia DeLuca to see her granddaughters, until the other woman started slyly undermining Dani to them. The final straw had come when Silvia dragged Silver to visit her father in prison without Dani’s permission.
Silvia was one of those women who could never see her child as he was. Tommy could do no wrong in her book. As far as she believed, anytime Tommy found himself in trouble, it was always someone else’s fault.
She had been furious about the divorce and even more upset when Dani left for veterinary school in Boston. Their contact had dwindled to Christmas and birthday cards, which was exactly the way Dani preferred things.
“Are you mad that I’ve been texting Nana?”
“I’m mad that you’ve been hiding it. We can talk about that later, though. Right now, we need to focus on your actions tonight.”
“I made a mistake. It was stupid. It won’t happen again.”
The words sounded far too well practiced to be sincere.
“No. It won’t. You’re grounded until further notice. That means extra chores here and at the clinic, no video games, no YouTube and no phone except at school.”
Silver huffed but said nothing, obviously knowing she was on extremely thin ice. No doubt she could almost hear it cracking beneath her feet.
“Also, I need you to give me the names of the other girls involved so I can let their parents know and they can help you with the cleanup.”
“I told you. It was just me.”
They both knew that was a lie but Dani had no idea how to force the truth out of her.
“Fine. You can do the cleanup on your own.”
“Fine,” Silver said, her voice short. “Is that all?”
“For now.”
With a sigh, Dani rose and squeezed Silver’s arm. “You know I love you, Silverbell, right?”
Her daughter shrugged, not meeting her gaze.
“I brought you and Mia to Haven Point because we’ve been offered a chance to make a good life here, a place where you girls would be safe and healthy. A place with low crime, good schools and nice people.”
“There were good schools and nice people in Boston. And in Queens before that.”
“Agreed. We could have made a good life for ourselves somewhere else. This is the one that felt best. When I got this opportunity, you and Mia and I talked about it and we all agreed we wanted to give Haven Point a chance to become our home. I don’t think any of us has really done a good job in that department. I’d like to try harder. What about you?”
“I guess,” Silver said.
Dani reached down and hugged her daughter and after a moment, she felt small arms go around her.
Silver rested her head against Dani’s chest, just above the thick nest of emotions there. She loved this beautiful, smart, contrary creature beyond words.
“Get some rest. Everything seems better in the morning.”
She hoped, anyway. Because right now things seemed pretty bleak for Team Capelli.
“I get to be the candy cane in the school play. You should come see it! I get to sing a solo and everything. Can you come?”
“Wow. That’s exciting.” Ruben smiled down at Will Montgomery, his boss’s stepson and just about the most adorable kid he knew. “When is the play?”
“The Wednesday before Christmas at eleven.” Will’s mother, Andie Bailey—married to the sheriff and Ruben’s boss, Marshall Bailey—sat in the visitor chair at his desk, waiting for Marsh to get off the phone so the sheriff could take her and their children to lunch on his break.
“Are you sure you don’t want to join us for lunch?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Will said. “You could sit by me and I could tell you all about my part.”
“I hate to miss that kind invitation but I have some paperwork to finish.”
The sheriff’s department wasn’t always a good place for kids, but Andie and the children had brought some shortbread cookies they had made that day to hand out to the other deputies in the office. Ruben had quickly secreted his plate in a desk drawer where everybody else better keep their hands off, if they knew what was good for them.
He loved seeing Will, his sister, Chloe, and their mother, Andie, together with Marshall. The four of them, along with Marshall’s son Christopher made a solid, loving unit.
At the same time, his interactions with the family always left him a little...hollow. Not sad, precisely, only more aware than usual of his solitary state.
Ruben never thought he would be thirty-three and alone. He had always wanted a family, always imagined by this point in his life he would have a bunch of kids, a mortgage, a boat in the driveway and a kind, caring wife like Andie.
He had the boat and the mortgage, but not the rest.
“You might like my school program, too.” Chloe gave him her sweetest smile, that one that always stole his heart. She was a few years older than Will but considerably more mature. Some of that had to do with her personality, though some might have been from the tough circumstances of a few summers ago, before her mother married Marshall.
“Are you a candy cane, too?”
“Ruben,” she said in an exasperated voice. “We don’t have candy canes in the sixth grade program. That’s for the little kids. I’m in the choir.”
“Let me know when it is and I’ll see if I can arrange my schedule.”
He had a nephew in her grade at Haven Point Elementary School, so would definitely try to make it.
“It’s right after Will’s class program.”
“Easy enough. I’ll add it to my schedule.” Maybe that was his destiny, to always be the kindly uncle and friend.
He pushed away that depressing thought as Marshall finished his phone call and came out.
“Did I hear talk that somebody brought cookies?”
Will giggled. “We did! We’ve got some for you, too, Dad.”
That was a new thing, the kids calling Marshall dad. Ruben had noticed it the last time he saw them all together. Their own father had been a police officer killed in the line of duty. Marshall had stepped up to take care of all of them and it was obvious the kids loved him.
He could tell Marshall was touched by the word. “Bring them in here before somebody else eats them,” he said gruffly.
Will and Chloe grabbed one of their remaining covered plates and charged into their stepfather’s office, leaving Ruben with Andie.
“Those two,” she said, shaking her head.
“They’re wonderful.”
“I can’t argue with that. I’m enjoying them at this age, but who knows what trouble they’ll bring me in about five years or so. Which reminds me, Marshall tells me you had some excitement at your place last night. Some vandalism on your beautiful new boat. How is The Wonder?”
He found himself reluctant to discuss Dani and her daughter with Andie, almost protectively so, which he knew was completely ridiculous.
“It was just kids messing around.”
“I understand you caught one of them in the act. The new veterinarian’s daughter, the one with the cool hair and the unusual name.”
“Yes. But please don’t spread that around.” He really hoped the identity of his vandal wasn’t common knowledge. He knew Andie would be discreet. She wasn’t going to talk, not even to her friends at the Haven Point Helping Hands, a service and social organization in town.
“I won’t,” she assured him.
“Silver wasn’t the only one involved, but she was the only one I caught. She won’t tell me who else was there.”
“Snitches get stitches,” Andie said.
“Funny. She said the same thing.”
“I understand her reticence to implicate others. She’s probably worried about retribution. She’s, what, thirteen? That’s a hard age to start at a new school.”
Andie could be a good source of information, he realized. The kids were busy helping Marshall shred some papers in his office so he decided now was as good a time as any to dig a little into his intriguing neighbors.
“What’s their story? Dani and her kids? Do you know her at all?”
“She seems very nice and she’s a good veterinarian. Right after she came to town, we went to her when Sadie got a bad bee sting in her eye.”
“Ouch.”
“Right? I would say Dani has a more abrupt bedside manner than your dad, but seemed very kind and caring.”
“What about socially? Have you interacted much outside the veterinary clinic?”
Andie shrugged, though she looked intrigued at his line of questioning. Maybe he shouldn’t have said anything. He didn’t need his friend’s wife matchmaking.
“Not really. She seems very...private is I guess the word I would use. She came to a few social events when they first moved to town. Again, she seemed nice enough but I’m afraid maybe we overwhelmed her. When McKenzie asked if she wanted to join the Helping Hands, she said no, that she was too busy with her girls and settling into a new town, starting a practice. Same thing when we asked her to join the book club.”
“That’s fair. Not everybody is a joiner.”
“I get it, believe me. The women of this town can be intimidating for even the toughest constitution.”
“There are so many of you and you always travel in packs.”
“Not always,” she protested with a laugh.
“Most of the time, then.”
Before she could answer, Marshall came out with the kids and Andie’s face completely lit up.
Ruben was aware of a little pinch of discontent again as the two of them kissed. He did his best to ignore it. Marsh had been Ruben’s friend long before he became his boss and Ruben was glad the sheriff and Andie seemed so happy together.
He was always aware when he was with them that if the two of them hadn’t found each other first, Ruben definitely would have made a move. Andie was the kind of woman he had always thought he wanted—someone soft, warm, compassionate.
Worlds away from a certain prickly, cool, reserved veterinarian.
Somebody should probably tell that to his subconscious, which had filled his dreams with all kinds of inappropriate situations involving the woman the night before.
Friday was a long, difficult day. She would have liked to take the day off since the girls were out of school but her time off was limited as a new veterinarian.
She was lucky enough to have a few good caregivers in her rotation and Gloria, the clinic receptionist and office manager, had a daughter home from college for the holidays who was looking for a little extra cash.
Dani had hoped to be done by two, her usual schedule on Friday, but a bichon frise with an abdominal obstruction came in right as she was wrapping up for the day and the dog required emergency surgery.
The surgery had been much more complicated than she had expected and she had ended up calling on Frank to help. She found it demoralizing that she had needed his expertise, yet more evidence she wasn’t up to the challenge of her new vocation, but Frank wouldn’t let her beat herself up.
“Don’t ever be embarrassed to ask for help.” His eyes—so like his son’s—were warm and kind. “I’ve been in the vet business for more than forty years. Just when I think I’ve seen everything under the sun, something new walks through the door to prove me wrong. You should never hesitate to call me, even after the practice is officially yours.”
She wasn’t sure that day would ever come—or ever should come. Who was she kidding, to think she had what it took to be a veterinarian? She was a failure. A nothing. Hadn’t she heard that enough when she was growing up?
As usual when that negative self-talk intruded, she did her best to focus on how fiercely she had worked to get where she was. All the sleepless nights of studying, the hand cramps from propping a textbook in one hand while rocking a crying baby in the other, the many creative ways she had found to stretch a dollar.
We can do hard things. That was the message she tried to reinforce to her girls. She couldn’t help wondering when it would be her turn to do the easy things.
By the time she finally made it home just after five, three hours later than she’d planned, she was exhausted.
“Thank you for staying extra with them,” she told Heidi, Gloria’s youngest daughter.
“Not a problem. I need the extra cash. I’m saving up to get my belly button pierced.”
Since the girl had four rows of pierced earrings and a ring in her lip, what was one more puncture wound? “Glad I could add to the pot, then. Have a good evening.”
“Thanks, Dr. C. Silver’s been in her room most of the afternoon doing homework and Mia is in the family room.”
“Thanks.”
After Dani let the babysitter out, she headed to find the easier of her children and found Mia playing quietly with her dolls.
“Hey, sweetie pie. How did your day go?”
Mia shrugged, without looking up at her.
“What’s wrong, honey?”
“You said we should never lie but you lied.”
Dani scanned over her day, trying to figure out where she had gone wrong this time.
“About what?”
“You said you would be home right after lunch and we could put our Christmas tree up today. Lunch was a long time ago and now it’s almost dark and I bet you’re going to say you’re too tired to put up a Christmas tree.”
Going through the hassle of putting up a tree was the absolute last thing she wanted to do right now. After the difficult day, her brain was mush and she wanted to collapse on the sofa and sleep for the rest of the evening.
She had made a promise, though, something she took very seriously.
She sat on the floor beside her daughter. “I’m sorry, Mia. I did tell you I would be home after lunch but then I had a dog emergency. Sometimes that happens when you’re a veterinarian. We’ve talked about it before, remember? This time the emergency was a little bichon frise who had something stuck in her stomach. She was throwing up and couldn’t eat or poop.”
Her compassionate youngest child looked distressed at that. “Is she okay?”
“She is now. Dr. Morales came in and helped me fix things. It will take a day or two, but Princess Snowbear will be back to herself in a few days.”
Apparently saving a dog’s life warranted a few points in her book, at least where her youngest was concerned. Mia cuddled up to her. “I like Dr. Morales. He’s nice.”
“He is, indeed.” She would have been in trouble without him during the surgery. What would she do when he finally retired?
She put that worry away for another day. “How’s your sister been?”
Mia looked down the hall toward the bedrooms. “I don’t know. She stayed in her room almost all day. Earlier, I asked if she wanted to play with my Shopkins and she told me they’re stupid and I am, too.”
Apparently at least one of her children had no problem being a snitch. “She shouldn’t have said either of those things. You’re not stupid and neither are your toys, honey.”
The two girls were separated by seven years, which sometimes seemed such a vast chasm in their relationship. Sometimes Silver could be the sweetest thing to her sister and sometimes she barely tolerated Mia.
“What did you have for lunch?” Dani asked.
“Grilled cheese sandwiches, only Heidi left the crusts on and I had to cut them off myself.”
“That’s a hard day all around. Let’s see what we can do to make the afternoon and evening better. What do you think about calzones for dinner?”
“I love calzones! Can I help you make them?”
“You got it, kid. Maybe we can talk Silver into helping us, too.”
Mia looked doubtful but followed her down the hall. The doorbell rang before they reached Silver’s bedroom door.
“Who’s that?” Mia asked, looking nervous.
“I don’t know. We’ll have to answer it to see.”
She looked through the peephole and saw a big, solid chest dressed in a brown sheriff’s uniform. As she opened the door for Ruben Morales, she told herself it was only her exhaustion that had her feeling a little light-headed.
“Deputy Morales. Hello.”
He smiled, looking big and dark and absolutely delicious—something she was furious with herself for noticing.
“Afternoon. I was on my way home but thought I should stop here first to let Silver know about the conversation I had with the graffiti specialist for the county and what it’s going to take to clean up her artwork from last night.”
Just once, couldn’t she see the man when she wasn’t exhausted and rumpled and feeling as if she’d been dragged behind his big boat for an hour?
“Come in,” she said, holding the door for him. “I’ve only been home from the clinic for a few moments myself and haven’t had a chance to talk to her yet. I’ll grab her.”
“Thanks. Hi there, Mia.”
He smiled at her suddenly shy six-year-old, who somehow managed to give him a nervous smile in return. Dani stood there awkwardly for a long moment, then finally gave herself a mental head-slap and hurried down the hall. She expected Mia to follow her, but instead the girl opted to remain behind with Ruben.
“I told you I’m doing homework, Mia. What do you want?” Silver called out when Dani knocked on her door.
She could feel her shoulders tighten in response. If thirteen was this tough, how on earth was she going to survive the rest of the teenage years? she wondered for the bazillionth time.
“It’s not Mia. It’s me,” Dani said, pushing open the door.
She found Silver on her bed, a notebook propped on pillows in front of her. No doubt she was writing in her journal, detailing how miserable her life was. Silver closed it quickly and while she didn’t hide it under her bed, she looked as if she wanted to.
Dani released a breath. “Deputy Morales is here to speak with you.”
For just an instant, Silver’s mouth trembled with nerves. She looked down at the closed notebook in front of her and fiddled with her pen.
“I’m, um, in the middle of something here. I don’t want to lose my train of thought. Can you just find out what he wants?”
“What he wants is to speak with you. Come on, honey. Might as well get it over with, right?”
“I guess.” Silver sighed and climbed off her bed. She slipped the notebook into the drawer of her bedside table, wiped her hands down her jeans as if they were as sweaty as Dani’s, then moved to the doorway.
When they returned to the living room, she found Ruben on the sofa with their dog, Winky, on his lap. Mia was showing him her vast collection of dolls and their wardrobe that Dani could swear was more fashionable than her own.
“What’s this one’s name?”
“That’s Pia. She’s my favorite. See, her hair is curly just like mine and her eyes are brown like mine. You have brown eyes, too.”
“Yes I do.”
“I named her Pia because it rhymes with Mia.”
“Perfect. So if I had a doll, maybe I would have to name him Gruben.”
Mia giggled, her shyness apparently all but gone, and Dani felt something hard and tight around her heart begin to crack apart a little.
No. She wouldn’t let herself be drawn to him. She made disastrous decisions in the men department and right now she couldn’t afford another mistake.
“I have three outfits for her but this green dress is my favorite. You can get clothes to match your dolls if you want. I asked Santa for a green dress, too, but I don’t know if I’ll get it. Silver says it’s too expensive and my mom has stupid loans.”
“Does she?”
“I did not. I said she has student loans,” Silver corrected.
“Though they’re certainly stupid, too,” Dani admitted.
Ruben looked up and flashed them both a smile that made her feel light-headed again.
“I’m sure they are. It can’t be easy.”
At the understanding in his voice, Dani was appalled to feel tears well up. She couldn’t count the sleepless nights she’d had over the last thirteen years, worrying whether she would be able to provide for her daughters.
“It can be an adventure,” she admitted. “It helps that your dad has kindly let us have this place rent-free.”
“Dad’s good about things like that,” he said, then looked around her to where Silver was lurking.
“Hey, Silver. How’s it going?”
She shrugged. “Fine. My mom said you wanted to talk to me. I’ve got a ton of homework, so...”
In other words, get on with it. Silver didn’t say the words but she might as well have. Dani tried not to cringe at her rudeness.
“Right. Good for you, doing your homework on a Friday afternoon.”
“Like I have a choice. I’m grounded from just about everything else.”
“Look on the bright side. With all the studying you’ll get, your next report card will be great.”
“And if she keeps it up, maybe she’ll get a scholarship when she’s ready to go to college and won’t need those stupid student loans,” Dani said.
“Excellent point.”
“Did you say you spoke with a graffiti cleanup specialist?”
“Yes.” He rose and it seemed to Dani that all the oxygen in the room seemed to seep away. “There’s a guy in the road department who takes care of that kind of trouble whenever any Lake Haven County property is vandalized. He’s considered our expert. I took the spray can of paint to him and told him what kind of things you’d tagged with it and he’s given me a couple of solvents that should work on my boat. For the other places, as I suspected, he says a new coat of paint will be cheaper and easier.”
“Okay.”
To Dani’s relief, Silver seemed to lose a little of her attitude at the sharp reminder of her own actions and mistakes.
“I’m not scheduled for a shift tomorrow, so I figured it would be a good time to get started, especially since we’re supposed to have unusually warm weather. Bob, the expert at the county, said we’re better off jumping quickly on some of this cleanup. It will be easier now than if you wait a week or so, when the weather is colder.”
“I don’t know,” Silver said. “Like I said, I have a lot of homework.”
“She’ll be there,” Dani said firmly. “What time?”
“Why don’t we say ten? We can start at my place and work our way to the neighbors after that. Oh, and bring a sack lunch.”
“Seriously? This is going to take all day?”
“Maybe even longer. That’s the problem with some poor choices. Cleaning up after yourself takes about ten times longer than the act itself.”
Silver looked discouraged, as if she were scouting in her mind for some way out of the hole she had dug for herself.
“She’ll be there,” Dani repeated.
“Great. We’re supposed to have a good day. Dress in layers. It might be chilly in the morning, then warm enough for shirtsleeves by the afternoon. With any luck, you can be done by dinnertime.”
Silver’s sigh was heavy. “Fine. I’ll be there. Can I go now?”
Dani made a shooing motion with her hand and Silver escaped quickly.
“Thank you.” Dani had to say it. “You’ve been much more understanding than I think I would have been in your shoes.”
“I was thirteen myself once. I told you, I made plenty of my own stupid choices.”
“You said that, but I still have a hard time believing it. You don’t strike me as the troublemaker type.”
When it came to graffiti, anyway. She could imagine him making all kinds of other trouble for the women of Haven Point.
“You might be surprised.”
Mia was tugging on her jacket and it took Dani a moment to register it. “What is it, honey?” she asked.
“I can help Silver clean up,” Mia said. Her features were so earnest, Dani felt that suspicious burning behind her eyes again.
“That is a very kind offer.” Ruben smiled down at her girl with such sweetness it made Dani’s heart ache, for reasons she didn’t quite understand.
“Families stick together, no matter what,” Mia informed him. “We help each other. That’s what Mama says.”
He glanced at Dani with that same warmth, which she knew she didn’t deserve.
“I couldn’t agree more, Miss Mia.”
Dani did, too. While she wanted Silver to learn hard lessons about the consequences to her actions, she had thought all along that she would do what she could to help Silver clean up the graffiti, for her neighbors’ sakes as much as her daughter’s.
“That’s a very good idea, sweetie. Yes. Mia and I can help with the cleanup. We’ll come with you and Silver tomorrow, as the clinic is closed. We can meet you next door at ten with our work clothes on.”
“Great. We’ll make a party of it.”
“Not too much of a party. Silver doesn’t need fun, she needs consequences for her actions.”
“A subdued party, then. It will be fun for us, but not nearly as fun for her.”
He winked at Mia, who giggled with no trace of the shyness she had showed fifteen minutes earlier when he rang the doorbell.
How did he do it, win her over so easily?
Dani supposed it didn’t matter. The only important thing, she thought as she let him out of the house, was to constantly be on guard and try her best to make sure he didn’t win her over.