Helpless

“Where is Mitchell?” asked Tom.

Jill sighed in disgust. “I don’t know,” she said. “He probably took off when you scared everybody away.”

“Listen, from now on Mitchell Boyd is off-limits to you. His father’s dangerous, and I don’t want you anywhere near that family.”

“You can’t make that decision for me,” Jill said, shaking her head. “You can’t.”

“You have to trust me on this, Jill. It’s not safe for you to be with him.”

“Why should I trust you?” Jill said in a voice steeped with exasperation. “I don’t even know you. For all I know, you did have something to do with what happened to Mom. And you know what else? I think you are sleeping with Lindsey. I can’t trust you and won’t. Ever!”

Tom’s thoughts flashed on the whiteboard still in the Oak Street house living room—more specifically on the square around the word trust, which Jill had redrawn.

It was time, he decided. It was time.

The Spot was now completely deserted. A symphony of nighttime forest creatures buzzed in a cacophony of sound. Off in the distance, Tom could still hear the sound of kids swimming to get away. Sparks crackled and burst skyward from the fire.

“You’re right, Jill,” Tom said, nodding his head while biting on his lower lip. “I haven’t given you enough reason to trust me. But if you come with me right now, I’ll tell you why your mother hated me so much, why she tried to come between us.”

That got her attention. Jill looked as though she might burst into tears.

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“I need you to trust me,” Tom said, resting his hand on his daughter’s shoulder. This time, she didn’t shrug it away. “For your safety, you’ve got to believe me when I tell you to keep away from Mitchell Boyd. I have good reason.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“I’ve been keeping a secret from you, Jill. A secret your mother and I never wanted you to know. It will explain everything. Why Kip Lange was in the woods that night. Why your mother hated me so much. And probably why somebody is out to destroy my reputation.”

Chapter 38

Tom pulled the faded yellow armchair in front of the couch where Jill was seated. His stomach spun a few nerve-rattled cartwheels. He knew what had to be done, but that didn’t make it any easier. To keep Jill safe, she had to learn to trust him.

“What I’m about to tell you is going to shock you. I’m not proud of what I did. But I had my reasons. I’m not expecting you to understand completely. But I need you to listen with an open mind. Deal?”

“Deal,” Jill said.

His daughter’s eyes were owl-like, wide, and intently probing.

“Even though your mother and I never officially broke up after high school, I didn’t see or hear from her for ten years. I was focused on becoming a Navy SEAL, and that’s all that mattered to me. Then my unit was sent to Germany to conduct a series of training exercises. It was a few years before September eleventh, and our combat deployments were few and far between. Your mother was living on that base. We reconnected and fell back in love, or so I thought.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Jill asked.

“A shooting took place while I was living on that base. One of the lieutenants, a guy named Stan Greeley, was attacked in his home and shot several times. The military police found Kip Lange inside Greeley’s home. Lange had been shot twice in the leg and once in the shoulder and couldn’t walk or even crawl away. They arrested him on the spot. But the MPs never recovered his gun.”

“I don’t understand. What does this have to do with Mom?” Jill asked.

“Be patient. You need to know all this. Lange was deported back to the States, where he was going to face court-martial. Greeley had been gravely injured and was in a drug-induced coma. I had only a few days left before I was scheduled to fly home with my unit, so your mother and I tried to make the most of what little time we had left. On the day I was to leave, your mother showed up at the airport with a crate in the back of a truck she had borrowed. She asked me to bring the crate home for her.”

“Why?”

“She had a limit to how much stuff she could bring back, and I didn’t. With rank comes privilege. She opened the top of the crate and showed me a couple bottles of a German beer we both liked, and told me to call her when I got home so we could have a toast together. The rest of the crate was really densely packed, but I caught a glimpse of some of the other things inside—dishes and souvenirs and…”

Tom pointed to the cuckoo clock mounted on the living room wall.

“Ugh! I hate that clock,” Jill said.

“But that wasn’t all she had packed in that crate. Security and customs, even for military transport, weren’t like they are today. The guys working customs knew me. We joked around together. So when my team was getting the plane ready to fly home, they made only a cursory inspection of what we were bringing home with us. Like I said, with rank comes privilege.”

Jill’s eyes were unblinking, deeply focused on Tom.

“I had a few weeks of leave, so I drove to Shilo to stay with your grandparents. I remembered the beer bottles your mother had packed in the crate, and our plan to toast together. I got the bottles out and decided to unpack the rest of the crate to see what your mom had me bring home for her.

“That’s when I found it. Ten objects, wrapped in black plastic and shaped to look like the insoles of shoes. They were buried underneath several layers of shredded newspaper and packaging peanuts. There was also a gun.”

“What was wrapped in plastic?” Jill’s expression said she didn’t really want to know.

“Heroin,” Tom replied. “Seventeen pounds or thereabouts.”

“Is that a lot?”

“I’m glad you don’t know,” Tom said. “I didn’t know myself, but I later found out it was ninety percent pure, enough for over half a million doses. It had a street value of about ten million dollars.”

Jill’s hand went to her mouth. She gasped.

“That’s when I called your mom. I was incensed. I couldn’t believe what she had done. But she was crying hysterically. She told me she was in very big trouble. That men had threatened to kill her if she didn’t get me to smuggle the drugs out of the country and be their mule.”

“What’s a mule?”

“A drug smuggler,” Tom said. “Glad you didn’t know that, either.”

“Who was threatening her? Kip Lange?”

“She wouldn’t tell me. She just begged me to hide the drugs. I told her I didn’t think I could do that. This was a very serious crime that could destroy both our lives. I asked her whose gun she’d packed. She said she didn’t know, that the same men gave her the gun when they gave her the heroin. Then she told me something else.” Tom paused.

“She told you she was pregnant with me,” Jill said. “That’s what she said, isn’t it?”

“You’re a very smart girl,” Tom said. “So I made a choice. Until I had more information, until I knew what was really going on, I decided to hide the evidence. I didn’t know who gave your mom the gun and the drugs, but I took a lot of precautions to keep any trace evidence intact. I didn’t want to destroy any fingerprints or damage the weapon. The gun was army issued, and I already had my suspicions about Lange. I knew that the MPs hadn’t recovered his weapon.

“Your mother applied for a medical discharge from the army because she was pregnant. Lange was in a military prison, awaiting court-martial, and I had just committed a felony by hiding the drugs and the gun. At the time, I was thinking about you. My unborn baby girl. I was thinking about you being taken away from us, being raised by another family, never having a chance to be ours. I left the navy and bought this house in Shilo. Your mom