Snowfall on Haven Point(97)

Without giving himself time to reconsider, he hobbled back into the kitchen and found the envelope he had prepared months ago, right after he found out Nikki had died.

The snow had been falling steadily, but it wasn’t heavy. Still, he had to take care as he maneuvered the crutches through the few inches that covered the sidewalk.

He rang their doorbell and waited, impatient now to get everything out in the open finally. Louise Jacobs answered, her eyes red and upset, her face blotchy. It looked as if she had been crying and he was about to make things worse.

“Sheriff Bailey! Come in! Are you all right? Is Andrea all right?”

“Yes. Fine. I needed to talk to you about something. About Christopher, actually. But it can wait. This looks like a bad time. I’ll come back.”

“What has he done now?” she asked, her voice defeated and her eyes welling with tears.

“Nothing. I—” He couldn’t think how to begin, the words all tangling together in his head.

He shouldn’t have come. He should have just waited until after the holidays.

Herm Jacobs came into the room then, round and bald with an expression that had always seemed kind to Marshall.

“What’s going on?”

“The sheriff needs to talk to us about Christopher,” Louise said, her voice hitching with emotion. “It’s bad enough he’s been suspended until the week after school starts in January. Now he’s in trouble with the law, too!”

Marshall straightened. “He’s been suspended? Why?”

“Fighting with another student,” Herm said. “A younger boy, too. One of those Laird kids from Sulfur Hollow.”

He knew the family, as several members had come through his jail. They were all rough and rowdy, quick to fight and mean. The week before he broke his leg, he’d caught one young Laird stealing beer at the convenience store, bold enough to do it even with the county sheriff in full uniform just one aisle over.

“He claims the other kid stole a girl’s cell phone and he was just trying to get it back for her,” Herm went on. “Meanwhile, the other kid said Christopher is the one who took it. The principal said either way they shouldn’t have been fighting, so they were both suspended for a week.”

“If it’s any consolation, those Lairds are trouble,” Marshall said.

“I appreciate you saying that, but this is just about the last straw. We’re at our wit’s end with that boy. Fighting, failing his classes, always in trouble.” Herm sighed. “But that’s not your worry, Sheriff.”

He gripped the envelope that contained proof, as far as he was concerned, that it was his worry.

“If the law’s not after him, what did you want to talk about? If he’s not doing the job you want on the shoveling, tell me and I’ll set him straight. We’ll go out and practice together.”

“He’s doing a fine job.” He gripped the envelope more tightly again, not sure where the hell to start.

The beginning was as good a place as any. “I came to tell you something. Show you, actually. You, uh, might want to sit down.”

Apprehension flickered over both their expressions, but they sank onto the sofa together. Herm reached beside him for his wife’s hand, a tender, protective gesture that moved Marshall.

He sat down across from them. After opening the envelope, he extracted the contents and passed over the first form.

Louise took it from him and she and her husband read it together. As he waited for them to finish, Marshall thought this just might be the most excruciating moment of his life.

“What is this?” Herm exclaimed a moment later. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s a legally binding document your daughter’s attorney prepared, where I relinquished—from the date on the document into perpetuity—all paternal rights to any child the two of us may have conceived together.”

Twin blank stares met this awkward explanation. “I don’t understand,” Louise said. “Why would you have this? I had no idea you even knew Nicole.”

He closed his eyes, wishing he could go back and change that single weekend that had impacted so many lives. “It’s a long story, but we bumped into each other when I was just about ready to ship out to Iraq and...we spent some time together.”

How awkward was it to talk about this? Nikki was dead now and it felt terribly wrong to tell her parents about a brief hookup that hadn’t meant anything to either of them. He had been absolutely right to dread this.

“It was a mistake and I take full responsibility for everything. Neither of us expected a child to come out of it, of course. I don’t think she wanted to believe it had, but then she found out she was pregnant with Christopher.”