It was a prophecy he really wished he could avert.
As he left the room, he heard Moira saying something to his brother. Clay began to laugh in response.
It was going to be a long week.
Chapter Three
If he had any intention of dwelling on the scene he’d just left, or on the woman who was going to be disrupting his life for the next week, Shaw found he had no time. His cell phone was ringing before he reached his car in the lot.
Digging it out of his pocket, he flipped open the lid. “Cavanaugh.”
“Shaw, I need you to come home.”
Twilight began to whisper along the fringes of the tree-lined parking lot. Shaw stopped walking, stopped thinking about how much Moira McCormick was going to impede his current investigation. His father was on the other end of the call and there was definitely something wrong. His father rarely, if ever, called during working hours.
Shaw couldn’t begin to fathom his tone. He could usually read his father like a well-loved book. Concern nudged at the edges of his mind. “Dad, is there something wrong?”
There was a pause, but no explanation followed. “Just come home. Now.”
Shaw didn’t waste time asking any more questions. He knew his father wasn’t given to drama. Whatever was going on, it was important.
“I’ll be right there,” he promised. Shutting his cell, Shaw was in his car and on the open road in less time than it took to think through the process.
He wouldn’t allow his mind to explore possibilities. The closest his father had ever come to sounding so urgent was when Uncle Mike had been fatally shot.
But no one at the precinct had said anything. If there was an officer down, much less a member of his own family, word would have gotten to him by now. Uncle Brian would have called him into his office immediately.
The more Shaw thought, the more he realized that the only other time his father had sounded so somber was when he’d gathered the family together to tell them that their mother’s car had been found at the bottom of the river. His father had gone on to say that there was every hope in the world that she had somehow managed to survive the accident.
That was his father, an optimist to the end even though he wasn’t usually vocal about it.
Even as the years went by and no clue of Rose Cavanaugh’s survival came to light, his father had never, ever given up hope that someday she would come walking through the front door to take back her place in their lives.
Waiting at a stoplight, Shaw scrubbed his hand over his face. Hell of a man, his father. Shaw didn’t know how he would have handled losing his wife that way and being left to raise five kids to boot. Shaw smiled to himself. He had to hand it to the old man—they didn’t make ’em like that anymore.
He wondered if Andrew Cavanaugh knew that he was his kids’ hero. Probably not.
As he approached his father’s house, Shaw saw that other cars were ahead of him. A quick scan told him that Callie, Rayne and Teri had gotten there ahead of him. One glance in his rearview mirror indicated Clay’s vehicle was right behind him.
Ordinarily, that wouldn’t have disturbed him. His father used any excuse to get them all together beyond the call to breakfast that he issued every day. Like as not, most mornings would find him making a pit stop at the family house, not so much for the food, which was always good, as for the company. Granted, he and his siblings all went their separate ways—his father encouraged that. But something always pulled them together no matter how independent they were.
His father had taught them that roots were by far the most important things in life. If you had deep enough roots, you could withstand any kind of storm that came your way.
Shaw couldn’t help wondering if there was a storm coming, or if it had already arrived.
After parking beside the mailbox, just behind Callie’s vehicle, Shaw got out of his car just as Clay pulled up behind him.
His brother was quick to climb out, slamming the door in his wake. One look at his brother’s face told him that Clay was as puzzled as he was for this sudden summons to return home.
“You have any idea what this is all about?” Clay asked.
Shaw shook his head. “Only that Dad said to come home.”
“Not like him to be so dramatic,” Clay speculated, frowning and falling into place beside him.
Because he was the oldest and the others looked to him to set the tone, Shaw remained deliberately low-keyed. “Maybe Teri’s changed her mind about Hawk,” he deadpanned, then nodded toward the door. “Only one way to find out.”
Neither one of them bothered to knock. They all had their keys, something their father insisted on. This had been their first home and it would remain their home no matter how far away they went. For Andrew, it was as simple as that.
“Okay, Dad, what’s the big mystery?” Clay called out, following Shaw into the living room.
Clay stopped dead right behind his brother.
His sisters were already in the room along with their father. They all sat on the sofa, smiling but looking far more subdued than Shaw ever remembered seeing them. The reason was seated rigidly on the recliner their father favored.
A ghost from the past.
The polite but strained conversation stopped the moment he and Clay entered the room.
For a single second, Shaw’s heart stopped beating as he was thrown back in time, then pushed forward to the present again. Hardly daring to breathe, he looked from the woman to his father, who nodded.
He wasn’t a police detective anymore, he was a son. A son whose missing mother had turned up in his living room.
They were already aware that Rose Cavanaugh was alive. His father had told them of Rayne’s discovery, of going up and seeing for himself the woman who answered to the name of Claire. He had wanted to persuade her to come home with him. Shaw also knew that the woman claimed not to have any memory of them.
Shaw could see a great deal of unresolved emotion in his father’s eyes. He could also see that while she was looking straight ahead at them, trying to smile, the woman who didn’t appear to know she was his mother was digging her fingertips into the leather armrests.
“And these are your sons, Shaw and Clay,” Andrew told her.
The woman inclined her head, rising slightly from her seat, and succeeded in smiling at them. At him. Smiling at him with his mother’s smile.
Shaw had no idea what to feel, what to think.
And then she shook her head, sorrow in her eyes as she turned them toward his father. Her apology throbbed with emotion, with unshed tears. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember them, either.”
Andrew nodded, resigned but ever hopeful. “You will,” he promised. “It’ll take time but you will.” He didn’t
