The Gift, page 15
part #1 of McKenna Mysteries Series
“Are you kidnapping me, too?”
“No, listen.” Grace put the car in park and fumbled with her hands. “I know that Mackenzie Waterford is guilty of harming Jenny Silva, the art teacher.” She paused, raised her gaze so her eyes were locked on his. “I can’t tell you how I know, but just trust me when I say that I know.”
For the first time in her life, Grace felt a strong pull to spill her secret, to tell Mark Connolly about the visions that have been crippling her since she was three years old. But she couldn’t risk it. After all, she still felt uneasy about the psychologist that she saw. She imagined him going home to his family sharing stories about his patient, the crazy girl who claimed to see visions of victims in the eyes of suspected murderers and criminals. She could hardly believe it herself, which is why she had never allowed herself to get close to a man. No way in hell would any man in his right mind believe her when she described the tortured eyes and fearful expressions that gripped her memories and thoughts.
“I trust you,” Mark said, as nonchalant as if he were responding to a simple confession. She told him about her plan of attack, and watched Mark’s reaction when he surveyed the photo that she had filched from the messy house.
“I don’t get it. Is this Jenny as a baby? Her mom?”
“No, Jenny is the mom in the picture. Look at the eyes.” Grace pulled out an image of Jenny that she had printed from online. “I don’t know about you, but I can’t say I’ve ever seen such giant blue eyes on a face before. No trace of the baby, though. Look at the date. She had the baby in March of 1999—that would make that baby seventeen years old.”
A revelation passed over Mark’s face. “You’re not thinking Mackenzie’s her kid, are you?”
“I’ve seen stranger things. But here’s the thing . . . Jenny Silva only moved to Bridgeton four years ago. She’s been a teacher at BHS for nearly three years. According to the records we have at the station, her past licenses hail from Florida and California.”
“I wonder what would bring her to Bridgeton.”
“My thoughts exactly. Now, if you truly want to help, I think the best thing to do would be to start out by finding anything you can online. Maybe pull up her old addresses. I can get them from Joe.”
“Assertive and good-looking. I’m starting to like you, McKenna.”
Grace rolled her eyes and laughed him off, but the butterflies in her stomach did a little dance to his words. “Now, shall I drop you off at home? I have to head back to the station to finish up some paperwork. Or do you plan on stalking me further tonight? Maybe I should just drop you off in front of my house so you can peek into my windows like the creeper that you are.” She had quickly learned that she could joke with him and her comfort level seemed to increase every time she was around him.
“Very funny. No, I’ll walk home from here,” he said before an awkward moment thickened the silence between them.
“Are you one of those people who walks everywhere?”
“Just trying to get my ten thousand daily steps in.” He held up his arm, showing off a sporty pedometer wrapped around his wrist, a few veins snaked their way down a tanned masculine hand.
“Oh boy, you really are obsessed with being fit.”
“Can’t deny that. I guess there could be worse addictions, right?” He opened the door and slid out of the car before placing one hand on the roof and leaning in. “I’ll report back to you when I find something on her.”
Mark pulled the hood of his gray ski jacket up, shielding him from the snowfall and making him appear mysterious and sexy. Grace knew that she was in trouble.
“Thanks. I’ll get those addresses from Joe.”
With that, Grace steered her Jeep out of the parking lot, crunching through the quickly accumulating snow and turning the volume up on her audiobook.
***
As soon as Grace walked through the front door of the station Barb looked up, clearly expecting someone else. Just as quickly, she looked away and gave Grace the cold shoulder that she thought she deserved.
“Hey, Barb,” Grace said as she walked past acting as if nothing happened between them. In exchange, Barb punched the keys on her computer with such force, taking her anger out of the keyboard. While Grace was sad to lose a friend, and even missed Barb’s boisterous personality always butting into her business, she knew that Barb couldn’t be quiet for too long.
Grace busied herself with putting together a folder of all her achievements at the station, along with certificates for additional courses she had taken in hopes of being of more use in her position. She wanted to submit herself for the promotion before Chief Welch clued in on the fact that she was technically running a private case. She imagined him lecturing her on the importance of communication within the station and how all cases had to be run through the chain of command with daily check-ins and middle of the night updates if necessary. Grace had the communications training to prove her capability.
She slid the cert into the folder and prayed that the chief wouldn’t get wind of this before the promotion was granted.
Chapter Seventeen
Jenny
It started as a simple search on the Internet four years ago, and then I became obsessed. I even started dating a guy for the sole purpose of obtaining information from the national adoption agency where he worked.
Since that day in the hospital on March 13, 1999, I have longed to see her and to hold her in my arms again. I was only sixteen when I got pregnant. My parents had convinced me that I would be of no use to society if I had a child at such a young, inexperienced age and they had tried to convince me to have an abortion. But there was something about seeing that heart beating inside me that told me it wasn’t my choice. Yes, my body was home to a growing baby and it was supporting it in all its efforts to come into this world, to leave its mark, but it wasn’t up to me to tell that little heartbeat that she couldn’t live just because of one stupid night of unprotected sex by two teens in love. If anything, maybe it was a chance for my line of DNA to take a turn for the better. So, as painful as it was, I gave her up for adoption. It was a good family, I was told. They had been trying to conceive for years with no luck. All they needed was this baby, my baby, and their world would be complete. They lived in a small town outside of Boston, where the father had planted some solid roots. I knew that they lived in a home that had been passed down generation after generation, its structure being altered to accommodate more modern rooms and additions to allow for the space that their new baby needed.
Like a ripped Band-Aid, I opted for a closed adoption, having the idea in my head that I would get over it. That with time, one day I would forget that I birthed a baby girl. And when the time came that I had moved on with my life, possibly even mothering a new child with a loving husband, I didn’t want to give that baby girl the opportunity to contact me and send my life on a rollercoaster of emotions once again. I wanted to forget. I wanted to forget the feeling I had when I held her in my arms and I was encompassed with a love so strong that it literally scared me. In the brief moments that I was able to hold her, I felt as if I would kill for this baby and I would have no qualms about it. In just minutes of embracing her perfect little body, I felt a rush of emotions that, much to my chagrin, would last a lifetime. The memory of those moments sat within my heart for years, never fading or growing absent of the intricate details. I could still smell her; I could still feel how she fit into the crook of my arm as if we were designed to be two pieces of a puzzle. I waited patiently for that longing to go away. I saw shrink after shrink. I dated, and even got married once. But nothing could fill the void of that piece of me that was missing.
When I finally tracked her down, when I had decided to pack up and move to the same town where she had grown up, it was too late to turn around and pretend that this obsession had never formed in my mind and heart. It started with me blending in with the crowd at her soccer games but it slowly drew me to switching careers. My life as a whirlwind artist was no longer meaningful as my biggest accomplishment; the best piece of art that I had a hand in creating was her. So, I went back to school and got my teaching certificate. Apparently you really don’t even have to be an artist to be an art teacher. You simply have to teach the basics in color and lines and a little bit of history about the famous artists before our time. I got lucky and got a job right away at Bridgeton High. While an artistic background hadn’t really been required to fill the position, the principal understood my past life as an artist to be more beneficial to the students.
Mackenzie had been starting out as a freshmen at the time and I was teaching an upper-level art class. I’ll never forget that first day of school that I saw her walking down the hallway. I had been standing outside my classroom greeting the students, like all the good teachers do, when she walked into the classroom next to mine for AP chemistry. At first I had been shocked that I could produce a child who was so smart that she was accepted in the advanced classes, and then I realized maybe it was the nature vs. nurture thing. Maybe her new family bathed her in the importance of good grades and finding a future. I couldn’t help but wonder if I had raised Mackenzie, would she have been more like me? Artistic and disorganized and unable to understand such subjects as chemistry. Or had all of her natural genes been shed like a snake ridding its skin the day I handed her over in the hospital?
On that first day of school four years ago, I had been staring at her, but she didn’t notice. She was so focused on finding her classroom and probably getting a front seat. She is that type of girl, so very different from me. It didn’t take me long to butter up to her chemistry teacher, Mr. Davis. He was a little older than me but as luck would have it, he was single and happened to have a thing for girls like me: tattooed, heavy makeup, and utterly disorganized. Mike Davis was that classic nerdy chemistry teacher, the type who got so wrapped up in an experiment that he didn’t realize his hair was in disarray and sticking up in the air from behind his massive goggles. But, maybe that’s how we meshed for that brief moment in time; we were both passionate about something in life. Originally I had befriended Mike so it wouldn’t look so odd when I snuck through the door of our adjoining classrooms to get a peek at Mackenzie. I wanted to watch her learn and absorb, even something as foreign to me as Chemistry. I missed out on teaching her the alphabet and counting her numbers, so I longed to see that focus in her eyes and that sparkle when she realized something in her brain clicked.
I wanted to know what her favorite food was, how she took her coffee—if kids her age even drank coffee. Was she a morning person, or a night owl like me? Was she lefty or righty? I wanted to know if she had a favorite stuffed animal or blanket as a toy. I wanted to know if she truly liked all those sports and activities that she did so well, or if she was just trying to please her parents. I wanted to know all those little details that you find out about a person when you truly get to know them and build a relationship. After all those years of staring at the hospital photo, it was surreal to see her in person. I would watch her as she talked to friends in the hallway and try to pick up on any gestures that she had similar to mine. Naturally, I saw myself in every move she made.
One night after all the faculty and staff left for the evening, I found a lonely custodian wandering the halls, sweeping up random balls of dust. I knew his type and I’d caught him staring at me on several occasions. It wasn’t hard to miss the way he nervously pushed his long greasy hair out of his eyes when I walked by. I knew he had been a criminal in the past. Maybe it was in his shaky gestures or maybe it was the way that he always dropped his head when a student walked by, afraid that he’d get in trouble for looking at a minor, or made fun of by the athletic teenage boys who roamed the halls in gangs. I was one of the only ones who gave him the time of day. I never knew who would come in handy on my mission to getting closer to Mackenzie, so I was kind to everyone. He was a bit taken aback that first time I smiled at him, and he actually looked over his shoulder, assuming the sincere grin was meant for someone else. As a custodian, I knew he had access to the tools that could bust open locks and pry open doors. So, I did what I had to do to learn more about my daughter. I asked him if he could break open her locker and make it appear like some hoodlum had been on the prowl. All it took was a politely asked question and a smile. I threw in a couple of flirtatious gestures as a bonus.
Unfortunately there wasn’t much to see in the locker, as Mackenzie was a compulsive neat freak. But there were a couple of hooded school sweatshirts hung up. I ran my finger over the neckline, feeling the part that was closest to my daughter’s face. I tugged the material gently, like it was an invaluable article of clothing. I read the size on the tag. She was a size small, just like me. I couldn’t help but be proud of the simplest little things that marked our similarities. The closer I got to things as mundane as her clothing, the more I longed to hold her in my arms.
It was an addiction, and she was my drug.
Chapter Eighteen
Christmas was three days away, and Grace had a lot to do before she and her mother celebrated the holiday together. It was typically just the two of them, but this year Ellen was on a mission to make the world a better place, so she had invited a few acquaintances who had no place to go. Grace hosted, as she preferred. Her mother had always opted to live in a tiny apartment that she could barely afford instead of moving into Grace’s small but spacious-enough home. Ellen McKenna liked her own space and she didn’t want to intrude on her daughter; besides that, she clearly had very high hopes that one day her daughter would have a husband and children to fill the home.
As Grace pushed her cart down the grocery aisle searching for ingredients for some new dish her mom wanted to try, she couldn’t help but see Jenny Silva’s image in the back of her head. When she picked up a bottle of shampoo in the beauty aisle, she saw Jenny’s haunting big blue eyes on the model. Jenny Silva was everywhere, but nowhere at the same time. Grace had so badly wanted to corner Mackenzie and beg for answers, but knowing what little she knew of the girl, she wasn’t someone who would back down or be easily bribed or threatened for answers.
Grace found herself in the cat food aisle. Having always preferred dogs over cats, she never had to make the decision between all the different canned cat food options. She selected a tuna-based mix and a bag of Friskies dried food that were in the shapes of little fish. Grace heard a gaggle of teenage girls in the next aisle over and before she knew it, her cart was pulled up right beside them, back in the hygiene aisle. She picked up a box of ultra-absorbent pads. If she wanted to get to know teenage girls, she had to learn them. Although, she didn’t think Mackenzie Waterford was an average teenage girl.
“Personally I prefer the ones that fit into your wallet. I mean, do you really want to carry some big bulky tampon around? And pads are soooo gross.” A girl with shoulder-length brown hair and excessive eye makeup had been counseling a younger, meek girl with strawberry blonde hair and small eyes that made her look like she was struggling to see. Grace certainly couldn’t imagine Mackenzie getting counseled on something like this. No, the Mackenzie that she knew would march right into the store and purchase what she wanted, without a question in the world.
“Detective McKenna?” Grace heard the familiar voice and dropped the box of pads. The girls looked over and giggled as Grace bent over to pick up the box. She stood, and found herself face to face with Anthony Waterford. “I didn’t know you shopped here.”
“Mr. Waterford—Anthony. Hi.” Grace rested the box back on the shelf. After all these years and she still got embarrassed when she was caught with a box of sanitary napkins in her hand. “Well, I just had to pick up a few things on my way home and I have to admit, the produce is way better here than where I live, in Cabotville. How are you?”
“Good, good,” Anthony said. He looked a lot less angry than two days ago, on the day of Mackenzie’s false alarm. His gestures were relaxed and calm, unlike the temper Grace had seen escape when he accidentally broke his phone “And you? I’m sorry, it seems my daughter has found a new friend. He peered over Grace’s shoulder at his younger daughter, who appeared to be using her entire body to tell a story to a grocery clerk. “Penny! Penny, come back here, honey!”
“She’s such an animated little girl, isn’t she?” Grace said, her eyes fixed on Penny. It wasn’t often that Grace dreamed about having a child, but if she did, she’d want her to be like Penny. Such a curious little girl, fearless and filled with personality. Grace imagined the entertainment value alone in having a child like that.
“Oh she certainly is, aren’t you, Penny?” Anthony said as Penny sidled up to her.
“Hey you’re that pretty girl police officer that came to our house!” Penny said, recognizing Grace.
“Why, thank you,” Grace said.
“You’re very welcome.” Penny accompanied her polite words with a little curtsy. “Hey, guess what?” She tilted her head toward Grace as her two eyes widened, eager for her to answer.
“What?”
“My birthday is in two days!”
“No way! But isn’t it Christmas Eve in two days?”
“Yes, but daddy says that I’m extra special because I was born on the day that Santa and his elves make all the presents.” She pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. “Maybe I’m one of the presents that Santa made for mommy and daddy?” Penny looked at Grace, searching for an answer.
“Well, you are definitely a treat, Penny, so I don’t doubt that.”
“Yes, that was certainly a memorable night in the hospital.” Anthony winked at Grace and ran a hand down Penny’s blonde hair.
“And do you know when your mommy and daddy’s birthdays are?” Grace couldn’t pass up an opportunity to find out when Mackenzie was born.
“Ummm . . . daddy’s birthday is in the summer. I know because I always get to pick out his ice cream cake. I think it’s August.”
