MARY CLARK: Piece of My Heart

The biggest challenge so far had been telling the girls apart. Kara was grateful that the parents hadn’t dressed them in matching swimming suits. Emily in yellow, Chloe in blue, she reminded herself. No problem.

To top it off, one of Kara’s high school friends, Ashley Carter, was at the beach with her family and had joined the fun.

At the twins’ request, they had just finished playing a practice round of “Alex and Laurie’s Wedding.” All of the children were included in the ceremony. While Alex’s brother Andrew would serve as the traditional best man to the groom, Timmy would serve as “best man” to the bride. Johnny would be the ring bearer, and Chloe and Emily were flower girls.

In the twins’ pretend rendition on the beach, Kara was the bride, Ashley the groom, and Ramon stood in for best man, while the kids all practiced their ceremony responsibilities. Emily had even retrieved plastic rings from the family’s hotel room for Johnny to practice carrying down the aisle and for Timmy and Ramon to hand to the “bride” and “groom.”

“Let’s try it again,” Emily pleaded. “Chloe walked too fast, and Johnny almost dropped the rings.”

Her brother and sister protesting, Emily marched through the sand, back to the starting point of the imaginary “aisle” they had lined off with seashells for the procession.

“I’m sorry to break up the fun,” Ramon said, “but Timothy and I need to make a trip into town to get your uncle Alex a birthday present.”

“We got him a fancy briefcase,” Johnny announced. His sisters shushed him. “What?! Ramon and Timothy can keep a secret better than you two.”

Ramon looked to the babysitters with sympathy. “Do you two have this, Miss Kara?”

“I don’t know, guys. Do you mind hanging out with Ashley and me for a little while longer?”

The three Buckley children all clapped and cheered. “Can we play wedding again?” Emily asked. “Pleeeeaaase!”

“If they’re leaving, then I want to be one of the best men this time!” Johnny exclaimed.

“You always want to do everything Timmy does,” Chloe said. “We’re going to call you Timmy all day long now.”

“His name is Timothy ,” Johnny insisted.

Kara smiled at Ramon. “I’d say we’ve got it all under control here.”

Johnny, now pretending to be Timmy the best man, indulged his sisters in three additional dry runs of the wedding procession before declaring himself finished. “I want to ride the skim board again. I’m getting good at it.”

“I’m hot.” Emily’s complaint was quiet but plaintive. Kara placed a hand on the top of her dark hair. The little girl’s head was roasting. Chloe tilted forward, and Kara confirmed she was warm, too.

“Dark hair absorbs all the heat. Let me go see if you have hats in your room.”

“Can we go inside, too?” Chloe asked.

Now that the thrill of the pretend wedding was over, the girls looked tired and overheated. “I think it’s time for all of us to go catch our breath inside with the air-conditioning.”

Johnny clutched the turquoise-striped skim board against his body, eagerly studying the wave patterns. It was one of the many beach toys the hotel had available for guests. He was obviously disappointed by having to go inside.

“I can stay with Johnny for a little while if you want to take them back to the room,” Ashley offered.

Kara had no concerns about Ashley’s dependability. Ashley was a year older than Kara and had been trusted to watch her considerably younger siblings since middle school. But this was Kara’s job, and neither Marcy nor Laurie had ever met Ashley.

“I’ll give him three runs on the board,” Ashley vowed. “It’ll be ten minutes—max. Besides, I even know the lifeguard on duty. Jack! ” she cried out.

A good-looking guy perched on top of the lifeguard stand turned his head and then waved.

“It’s really hot out here,” Emily added.

“Okay, let’s go in. You get three tries,” Kara said to Johnny, “but that’s it.”

From a sand dune to the east, a stranger continued to watch— just a little boy and a teenage girl now, all alone. It’s almost time.

Once Emily and Chloe were back in their hotel suite, they ran to the terrace adjacent to their parents’ bedroom, marveling that they could wash the sand off of their legs with a private outdoor shower. Kara had to keep them from running around in circles when they came inside, so their wet feet didn’t slip on the tile floors. Instead, they tried jumping on the sofa, to which she also put a halt. So this was what Laurie meant by “spirited,” she thought.

The suite had two bedrooms. The kids would be sharing the room with two queen beds. Kara watched as the girls pulled the blankets back from both of them and began rolling around, trying them out.

In unison, they both pronounced that the bed closest to the window was where they’d sleep.

“I don’t know,” Kara said hopefully. “You might want to lie there for a few seconds and pretend to sleep… just to be sure.”

After a few minutes their slow, calm breaths fell into sync. Kara wondered if all twins were so connected, as she walked out of the room, leaving the bedroom door ajar behind her.

She checked the time on her cell phone. It had been thirteen minutes since she’d left the beach. She pulled up Ashley’s number and hit call.

“Hey girl.”

“Did Johnny master his skim board?” Kara asked.

“Nope. He tumbled his very first try. He made it out of the waves unscathed, but I figured it was safest to keep him out of the water. We’re with Jack getting ice cream at the beach shack.”

Kara detected an unusual bubbliness in Ashley’s voice. She suspected it was related to Jack the handsome lifeguard.

“The twins fell asleep, so would you mind bringing him back to the room as soon as he’s done with his ice cream?”

“No problem. Johnny, it’s about time to head— Johnny? Where’d he go?”

Kara heard shuffling sounds on the phone as if Ashley were walking.

“You are with him, right?” The other end of the phone was silent. “Ashley, are you there? Say something. Is Johnny with you or not?”

“He was literally just here. I don’t know where he went.”

Chapter 4

Laurie could not believe her eyes as her golf ball flew in a perfect arc off the head of her seven-iron, dropping only two feet from the pin.

Andrew let out a whistle. “Alex, you didn’t tell me you were marrying a ringer!”

As Laurie hopped into the passenger seat of the golf cart, Alex gave her a satisfied smile. “You’re a natural. We should play more often.”

She had made some lucky shots around the green, but for her long game, she had taken to placing her errant fairway shots next to Alex’s lest she back up the entire course trying to move her ball along.

As they were hopping out of the cart to putt, her cell phone rang. It was Leo.

“Hey Dad.” She did her best to keep her voice down.

“Am I missing all the fun?” Leo asked.

“You’re missing all the golf.”

“Sorry, I thought I was calling my daughter. Laurie Moran, about five-six, light brown hair, hazel eyes?”

Laurie smiled. “How was your meeting?”

In addition to being Laurie’s father, Leo Farley was also a former first deputy commissioner of the NYPD. Though he had accepted an invitation last year to return to the department’s anti-terrorism task force on a part-time basis, his meeting in the city today was not part of a current investigation.

It was about an old murder conviction against Darren Gunther, a then twenty-one-year-old Vassar College student who stabbed a beloved bar owner who tried to break up a fight between Gunther and another bar patron. Gunther confessed the crime to Leo, but then claimed at trial that Leo fabricated the entire conversation. According to Gunther’s new version, a third party had intervened in the bar fight and ended up stabbing the owner. The jury didn’t buy it, and the judge handed Gunther a life sentence.