IT WASN’T THE young cop, she realized, groggily coming to, but the phone ringing.
Grabbing it, Brooke glanced at the bedside clock. Who but that idiot Donald would call at ten past three?
Still reeling from the haunting images of her recurring nightmare, she hauled herself out of bed and clicked Talk as she headed downstairs.
“Are you aware what time it is?” she whispered into the handset, determined not to wake her sleeping nephew.
There was a pause, and then an unfamiliar voice said, “I, uh... Sorry to disturb you, ma’am.”
So it wasn’t Donald after all. Now she wished she’d taken a second to put on her slippers, because the tiles felt like ice beneath her bare feet. Wished it had been Donald, because no one called at this hour with good news. Her thoughts went to her grandmother. Day before yesterday Deidre had been down on all fours giving Connor a piggyback ride, but at seventy-five—
“I’m trying to reach Brooke O’Toole?”
“That’s...me.”
“Right.” He cleared his throat and then identified himself as a deputy sheriff of Monroe County. Before she had a chance to visualize the dot that marked Monroe County on a map of Florida, he explained how a Miami-bound charter flight had gone down in the Atlantic, just off Key West. There had been no survivors, he was sorry to say, and, as next of kin, she needed to give him her okay before he could release the bodies.
Brooke didn’t hear much after no survivors. Her sister and brother-in-law had decided to end their island-hopping trip with visits to Ernest Hemingway’s favorite haunts, including Sloppy Joe’s saloon.
On Key West.
Heart pounding, Brooke squeezed her eyes shut. Before turning in for the night, she’d been online, checking her email. Wouldn’t a story like that have popped up on her search engine’s opening page?
Any minute now the deputy would realize his error and apologize for contacting the wrong Brooke O’Toole. Or she’d wake from this ghastly dream and eighteen-month-old Connor would still have his mom and dad, and she would still have her little sister, and Beth and Kent would come home tomorrow, exactly as planned.
“Ma’am? You still there?”
“Yes. Still here.”
The deputy listed all the agencies that had participated in the search—FAA, Florida Fish and Wildlife, the sheriff’s department—and had cooperated to keep their findings from the media until after next-of-kin notifications had been made.
During her years as a nurse in Virginia Commonwealth University’s shock-trauma unit, Brooke had learned that state troopers were normally assigned the sensitive task of informing relatives about tragedies. She was about to ask why the deputy had made this call instead of passing the information to the Maryland State Police when he told her that a Coast Guard diver had pulled a Ziploc bag out of the water. In it, he said, the authorities found passports, boarding passes and baggage claim tickets, a computer-generated itinerary that confirmed the Sheridans’ names on the passenger manifest...and the photograph of a young boy.
In the silence that followed, Brooke realized she’d been holding her breath. She exhaled. Swallowed, hard.
“It says ‘Connor, 14 months’ on the back of the picture,” the deputy added. “And it was paper-clipped to a list of people to contact in the event that...”
“In the event that something awful happened to Beth and Kent.”
“I, uh... Well, yes, ma’am. In that event.”
Brooke blinked back tears. She hadn’t realized she’d said that out loud.
“I know it isn’t much comfort,” the man said, “but we can be reasonably certain no one suffered.”
She shut her eyes. In other words, the impact had been such that they’d died instantly. Brooke leaned on a kitchen chair for support.
His voice cracked slightly as he asked for her email address. Was that because he was new at this “inform the families” job, or because of the grim nature of the task itself? “Is there anyone I can call for you, ma’am?”
“There’s only my grandmother. But I’d like to break the news to her myself.”
“Well...then...do you have a pen handy?”
Of course she had a pen handy, because her oh-so-organized sister—who’d gone to all the trouble of tucking important documents into a waterproof bag—had tied a dry-erase marker to a string and taped it to the whiteboard beside the phone. Hands trembling, Brooke uncapped it.
He rattled off his home, office and cell phone numbers. “If you have any questions...”
It seemed ludicrous to keep him on the line, but she couldn’t hang up. Not yet. Things just can’t end this way.
Brooke thought back to when she had helped Beth and Kent unload their suitcases at the terminal. Kent had reminded her where she could find Connor’s pediatrician’s number...in the polka-dot address book beside the phone. Their favorite plumber and electrician were there, as well as...Hunter’s number.
Hunter Stone was one of their emergency contacts. She would never understand how that man had become close to Beth and Kent. For years it had been a wedge between the two sisters, and now Beth was gone, along with any chance to apologize.
“If you have any questions,” the deputy repeated, “call me. Anytime.”
And though it seemed ridiculous to thank him for calling, that was exactly what she did.
Connor’s sleepy sigh whispered over the baby monitor as she hung up. The kitchen clock counted the seconds, and the muted chimes of the family room mantel clock signaled the quarter hour.
She noticed the notes she’d taken on the whiteboard as the deputy had explained everything she needed to do to bring Beth and Kent home. The black scrawl didn’t look anything like her handwriting. Brooke turned off the overhead light.
A shaft of moonlight slanted through the windows, painting a silvery stripe across the room and illuminating the whiteboard.
Eyes burning, she slumped to the hardwood floor and drew her knees to her chest. She hid her face in the crook of one arm and let the tears fall.
When a stiff neck roused her, the kitchen clock read 4:05. Brooke stood at the kitchen sink and splashed cold water on her face. As she reached for a paper towel, she glanced out the window, where, in a tidy brick-lined flowerbed, the blue-gray light of dawn picked up the purple shoots of Beth’s roses.
Farther out in the yard, she could just make out the yellow bucket swing Kent had hung for Connor.
Beyond that, the trio of birch trees Brooke had bought the couple as a housewarming gift had already begun to bud. She couldn’t see them now, but she’d noticed yesterday.
Yesterday.
She swallowed past the lump in her throat, remembering that when her mother was killed during a convenience store holdup, staying busy had helped.
Brooke started a pot of coffee. Threw a load of towels into the washing machine. Made her bed.
“Gram is right,” she muttered, emptying the wastebaskets. “A trained monkey could perform monotonous household chores.” It was still dark when she backed out the front door, fumbling with the garbage bag’s red drawstrings.
“You’re up and at ’em early....”
The voice—deep and vaguely familiar—startled her. She turned to find herself face-to-face with Hunter Stone.
Hunter Stone, who’d been asleep in his squad car when he should have been in the store, stopping the gunman who killed her mother. Hunter Stone,