Deborah Crombie - Duncan Kincaid & Gemma James 11 - Water Like A Stone

implacable as he gazed out the window at the rolling Cheshire hills.

That morning, as Gemma had attempted a last-minute sort

through a week’s worth of neglected post, she’d come across a letter addressed to Kincaid and bearing Kit’s school insignia. She’d ripped it open absently, expecting a fund-raising request or an announcement of some school activity. Then she’d stood in the kitchen, frozen with shock as she scanned the contents. It was from Kit’s head teacher, informing Kincaid of her concern over the recent drop in Kit’s academic performance and requesting that he schedule a conference after the holiday. Previous notes sent home with Kit by his teachers, the head had added, had come back with signatures the staff suspected had been forged.

Gemma had waited with tight-lipped restraint until Kincaid got home, then they’d confronted Kit together.

Things had not gone well. Kincaid, his anger fueled as much by Kit’s duplicity as by concern over the boy’s school performance, had shouted at his son while Toby and the dogs had cowered in the background. Kit had gone white and balled into himself as defensively as a threatened hedgehog, and Gemma found herself the peacemaker.

“It’s too late to ring the head now,” she’d said. “We’ll have to wait until term takes up again after the holidays. Why don’t we all calm down and not let this spoil our trip.” Glancing at her watch, she added, “And if we don’t get off soon, we’ll never make it to your parents’ in time for tonight’s dinner.”

Kincaid had turned away with a shrug of disgust to load the last of the luggage, and Kit had retreated into the stony silence he’d maintained since. It was ironic, Gemma thought, that although it

was Kit who’d been called on the carpet, she felt that she and Duncan were the ones who had failed. They should have discussed how to handle things before they talked to Kit; perhaps they should even have spoken to the head teacher before tackling the boy.

Having recently come to at least a temporary resolution in the custody battle with Kit’s maternal grandparents that had con-sumed much of their last year, they’d allowed themselves to be lulled into a false sense of security. Kit had at last agreed to have his DNA tested, and when a match proved Duncan was his bio-logical father, the court had awarded him custody dependent on the continuing evaluation of the boy’s well- being and the stability of his home life.

They should have known better than to take that achievement for granted, Gemma thought. It was too easy, and with Kit, things were never going to be easy. A simple paternity test was not going to magically erase the damage he’d suffered from his mother’s death and his stepfather’s abandonment.

As she glanced at Kincaid sitting beside her, she guessed his un-characteristic display of anger stemmed from the fear that they might lose everything they had gained.

A rustle and a yawn came from the backseat. “Are we there yet?”

piped up Toby. “I’m hungry.”

“You’re always hungry, sport,” Kincaid answered. “And we’re

close. Just a bit longer.”

“Will Grandma Rosemary have mince pies for us?” Toby, as always, had jumped from a sound sleep to a high-energy state of alert-ness.

Gemma found it both amusing and touching that Toby, who had never met Duncan’s parents, had adopted them as comfortably as if they were his own family, while she, who had at least met Duncan’s mother once, felt as if she was facing a root canal. What if they didn’t like her? What if she didn’t live up to their expectations for their son? Kit’s mother, after all, had been an academic, a well-respected s

Cambridge don, while Gemma had gone straight from secondary school into the police academy, and no one in her family had ever graduated from university. Her parents were bakers, not intellectuals, and her mother’s most literary endeavor was an addiction to Coronation Street.

“Yes, lots and lots of mince pies,” answered Kincaid. “And turkey tomorrow for Christmas dinner.”

“What about tonight? I’m hungry tonight.” Toby leaned as far forward as his seat belt allowed, his eyes wide with interest.

“Your auntie Jules is cooking tonight’s dinner, I think, so you’ll just have to be patient. And polite,” Kincaid added, sounding a little uneasy. He didn’t often talk about his sister, and Gemma knew he hadn’t seen Juliet or his niece and nephew since the Christmas before last.

Toby drummed the toes of his shoes into the back of Gemma’s seat. “Why? Can’t she cook?”

“Um, she was always better at making things with her hands when she was a little girl,” Kincaid said diplomatically. “But, hey, if Gemma can learn to cook, anything is possible.”

Without taking her eyes off the road, Gemma smacked him on the arm. “Watch it, mate, or you’ll get worms in your food from now on.” Toby cackled, and to Gemma’s relief, she thought she heard a faint snicker from Kit.

“How is Father Christmas going to find me if I’m not at home?”

asked Toby. “Will I have a stocking?”

“Don’t be such a baby,” said Kit. “You know there’s—”

“Kit, that’s enough,” Kincaid said sharply, and the slight rapport of a moment ago vanished instantly.

Gemma swore under her breath and gripped the steering wheel a bit tighter, but before she could think how to mend the breach, Toby shouted, “Look, Mummy, it’s snowing. It’s going to be a white Christmas!”

The large fl akes drifted into the windscreen one by one, light as

feathers, then came more thickly, until the swirling mist of white filled Gemma’s vision.

“A white Christmas,” Kit repeated from the backseat, his voice flat with sarcasm. “Oh, joy.”

“Bloody Caspar.” Juliet Newcombe swung the pick hard into the three-foot swath of mortar in the wall of the old dairy barn. “Bloody Piers.” She swung again, with equal force, enlarging the hole left by her first blow.

The light was fading fast, and the bitterly cold wind blowing off the canal held the metallic scent that presaged snow. She’d sent her crew home hours earlier, to spend Christmas Eve with their families, and it was only her stubbornness and her fury that had kept her on at the building site long past knocking-off time.

Not that she didn’t have a good reason for working late. The conversion of the old dairy barn on the Shropshire Union Canal, between Nantwich and Barbridge, was the largest commission she’d landed since striking out on her own in the building business, and a spate of unseasonably bad weather earlier in the month had thrown the project weeks behind schedule. She leaned on her pick for a moment, surveying the progress they had made.

Set where the gentle sweep of pasture met the canal, the place would be a small gem when it was finished. The building was a single story, constructed of traditional Cheshire redbrick, and slate roofed. At some point in its history, outbuildings had been added to the original single-roomed barn so that the structure now formed a U, with the wings facing the pasture. The main building hugged the edge of the Cut, and the windows they’d set into the frontage gave a wide view of the water and of the arch of the old stone bridge that crossed it.

Of the half dozen narrowboats moored below the bridge, only one sported a welcoming light and a wisp of smoke from its chimney.

Perhaps its owners lived year round on the boat and were making preparations for a cozy Christmas Eve.

“A cozy Christmas Eve,” she repeated aloud, and gave a bitter laugh. Her eyes prickled as she thought of her children—Sam, with his ten-year-old’s innocence still intact, and Lally, fghting to maintain her wary, adolescent cool against the excitement of the holiday.

They were at her parents’, waiting to meet their cousin, her brother Duncan’s newfound child.

Cousins, she supposed she should say, recalling that the woman her brother lived with had a small son of her own. Why hadn’t they married? she wondered. Had they discovered that the secret of a happy relationship was not taking each other for granted? Or were they just cautious, not wanting to make a mistake that could bind them to years of misery? She could give them a bit of advice, if they asked her.

Then, guiltily, she remembered that she had no corner on misery.

They had lost a child this time last year, a baby born just a few weeks too early to be viable. Her face flushed with shame as she thought of her failure to call, or even to write. She had meant to, but somehow she could never manage to find the words to bridge the gap that stretched between her and the older brother she had once adored.

And now they would be here, tonight. They were all coming to her house for a festive Christmas Eve dinner