officers are very busy,” Weston said, shuffling through the paperwork on his desk. “Just today, six officers have answered sixty-three calls. How many is that apiece, Edward?”
Eddie sat forward. “Um…ten,” he replied, “and three left over.”
The chief suppressed a smile. “That’s right. One was a robbery of a couple of cars at the beach, one was a tourist stranded on the rocks, two were traffic accidents, one was a man having a heart attack, one was a domestic…” The chief stopped, realizing the boy wouldn’t know what that meant. “I realize you don’t understand that, but they all take a lot of—”
“I know what a domestic is,” Eddie interrupted. His worried expression deepened. “It’s when a dad beats up a mom. It happened to us a couple of times.” Then he turned to Sophie with sudden concern, as though afraid he’d said the wrong thing.
The pink in her cheeks vanished, but she drew a breath and put a hand on Eddie’s shoulder. “That’s all right. I’m sure Chief Weston wants you to tell him the truth. And he wants you to understand that it’s bad to waste the time of his police officers, because they have important things to do.”
As Sawyer dealt with equal parts of rage and sadness, he saw the chief’s jaw drop for an instant.
Eddie nodded. “I didn’t think about that when I saw Sawyer in the market. I just thought about how you need to have a husband that’s nice to you instead of mean, and how cool it’d be to have a dad who likes us. So me and Emma gave him the test.”
Sophie’s eyes brimmed with tears, and Sawyer was very grateful that Chloe had drummed into all her sons the old-fashioned notion that gentlemen carried handkerchiefs, if not for themselves, for the ladies they took to sad movies or sandy benches at the beach.
He handed her a white square of linen with a gray monogram. As she turned to accept it, a tear spilled over.
“The test?” the chief asked Eddie.
“Yeah. Our dad yelled a lot. And when my bike broke, Mom fixed it. When Emma got lost, Mom went to find her. When Gracie got in trouble at school—”
Sophie put a hand on his knee. “He understands, Eddie.”
“Who’s Gracie?” the chief enquired.
“She’s our big sister,” Eddie said. “She’s ten. She’s grumpy ’cause she doesn’t have any boobs yet. She stayed to watch a Jennifer Lopez special with Kayla Spoonby across the road.” Apparently thinking her whereabouts required explanation, he added, “We don’t have cable.”
The chief nodded gravely. “I see. So, telling Sawyer…Mr. Abbott…that you were kidnapped was part of the test?”
“Yeah. ’Cause one time I heard Mom talking to Grandma Berry and she said she never wanted to get married again unless she could find someone who’d rescue the children. That’s me and Emma and Gracie. And rescue means save, right? So we had to see if he thought we were in trouble he’d save us.”
The chief opened his mouth to respond, and obviously had no idea what to say. The boy had clearly misinterpreted what he’d heard, but cleverly created his own solution to what he perceived to be the problem.
Sophie groaned and put Sawyer’s handkerchief to her eyes for a moment. Then she lowered it and took Eddie’s hand.
“I meant…rescue you from not having a dad. From having to go to ball games with me instead of a dad. From Emma having no one to carry her on his shoulders, and from Gracie having no one to tell her she’s pretty.”
Eddie obviously didn’t get that, either. “But, she’s ugly,” he said seriously.
Sophie laughed, which was a good thing. Even the chief seemed relieved. Sawyer wanted to take Sophie and her children away to Shepherd’s Knoll, wrap them in fleece and shut out the world.
Of course, he knew that wasn’t healthy. But he had to do something.
“Okay.” The chief cleared his throat, then did it again. “Well. Now I understand what you were thinking when you scared your mother that way, but the next time you get an idea like that, I want you to promise me you’ll think twice. You know what that means?”
“Think twice,” Eddie repeated, considering. “Think about it two times so…so if there’re bad parts in the idea, you’ll see them.”
“Exactly,” the chief praised. “’Cause I’m sure your mom worries about you all the time. Moms usually do. And there’s enough real stuff to worry about without making things up that just scare people. Understand?”
“Yeah,” Eddie said.
Weston focused on Emma. “Do you understand, Emmaline?”
She nodded. “We don’t want to scare Mommy.”
“That’s right. Okay.” The chief stood and shook hands all around. “I’ll get an officer to take you back to your car.”
“We had walked to the market,” she said. “But if someone could take us home…”
“I’ll do that.” Sawyer shook the chief’s hand.
“Mr. Abbott, maybe it’d be better…” She began to object to his plan, but the children skipped after him as he’d thought they might as he walked out of the chief’s office, through the police station and down the steps to the parking lot. Sophie had little choice but to follow them.
He opened the back door of his deep-plum-colored PT Cruiser for Eddie and Emma and then scrambled in. They pulled on seat belts as he held the passenger door for Sophie.
“What if we all go out for pizza or burgers?” Sawyer suggested as he pulled out of the lot. “It’s after seven. Kind of late for you to start cooking.”
The children began a chorus of, “Please, Mommy! Can we? Please?” which he’d have caved to had he been in charge. But she was obviously made of stronger stuff.
“Thank you, but we have to go home,” she said firmly. “Gracie’s at the neighbor’s, and—”
“Can’t we just pick her up and take her along?”
Sophie shook her head. “No, but thank you.”
Eddie and Emma whined a little louder. “We never get to do anything fun! We never get to go out to eat! We never—”
“You know the rule about whining,” she interrupted.
Sophie was determined to get out of this without a further commitment or connection of any kind to Sawyer Abbott. As sweet and charming as he was, she wanted never to see him again. Ever.
“Which way home?” he asked as they reached the road that ran through Losthampton.
Funny, she thought. She’d been asking herself that question for years. When everything had gone bad with Bill, she’d sort of run in place for a long time, trying to find the road back to the way things had been before he’d fallen in with bad cops and become someone different from the man she’d married.
