Blood of Cain

25

Two hours after I left The Villages, I was pulling in the Ponce Marina parking lot. I shut off the Jeep’s engine and could smell the coming of rain in the humid air. The entire drive I’d thought about what Andrea Logan told me. A daughter.

My daughter, maybe.

Now a grown woman. My gut was churning. After the deaths of my parents, there was no biological family left. Period. My wife, Sherri, and I had talked about children. When she began her long fight with ovarian cancer, it was never discussed again. And now … and now what? How could I miss someone I never knew existed? Maybe it was the absolute knowledge of a daughter’s physical being — her life, the absence of shared experiences, the total emptiness of a cancelled twenty-year flight to the moon and back with a little girl who I never knew lived in the same universe. How could I sit here in my Jeep, listening to the ticking of the cooling engine, and feel a coldness in my heart for circumstances that were truly beyond my control?

Fat raindrops began to flatten across the Jeep’s window, and then a hard rain fell. I watched the water sluice from the leaves of banana plants growing near the Tiki Bar, puddles rising in low spots across the parking lot. How did the void of an unknown father-daughter relationship cause me to feel pain from a wound that was never self-inflicted? Until now. It wasn’t physical. Purely a wound of the heart, a mourning for the lost years, the hugs, butterfly kisses, ball games, school plays, the unconditional bond between a father and daughter that has no expiration date.

As a homicide detective, I learned to look closely at patterns, patterns of human behavior, and patterns of physical and forensic evidence. Very few things in the nature of crime were coincidental. Human influence always creates spin on the cue ball of fate. Was it a coincidence that Courtney Burke popped into my life? Was it a coincidence that I found out about Andrea’s pregnancy?

Was Courtney Burke my daughter?

I didn’t know. But I did know that come hell or high water, I’d find out. And then what would I do in view of the circumstances of late? I had no idea. Slay one dragon at a time, unless they come in pairs.

There was a tap against the Jeep’s side window. Kim Davis stood there under a large black umbrella. I opened the door and she said, “Hi, Sean. Thought I’d come rescue you. Saw your Jeep pull up a while ago.”

I got out and ducked under the umbrella. “Thank you. Looks like the storm is sitting right on top of us.”

She smiled, the mist from the blowing rain wetting her chestnut hair. She pulled a dark strand behind her right ear and looked up at me as I wrapped my hand around hers to steady the umbrella in the wind and rain. “C’mon, Sean, let’s go jump in the puddles.” She put her left hand in the small of my back and playfully nudged me toward a large puddle, the thump of rain hard against the umbrella.

I stopped a moment. “Tell you what, let’s jump over the puddle instead of jumping into it.”

Kim grinned and said, “Okay, on your mark … get set … go!” We ran and jumped over the puddle like two school kids caught in the rain. She laughed. “If I didn’t have any customers, we could play in the rain.”

We huddled under the umbrella and walked inside the Tiki Bar. A retired charter boat captain who resembled Willie Nelson, perched on a stool with his back to the bar, watching us and grinning through salt and pepper whiskers. He said, “Ya’ll don’t have ‘nough sense to come outta the pouring rain.” He chuckled and shook his head, reaching for a can of Miller, draining the last few sips. “Ya’ll look like look like dizzy ducks out there. When I was a young man, I did that stuff. One more for the road, Miss Kimberly.” He turned around and stared at his reflection in the smoked-glass mirror behind the bar, his thoughts in the lost-and-found box of his youth.

Kim walked behind the bar and reached for two white towels, tossing one to me. She dried her arms and face, her skin looking fresh-scrubbed, hair damp, smile radiant. “Sean, you want something to eat or drink?”

I started to answer when the retired captain asked, “Kim, where’s your remote control for the TV? The news has a story on about Senator Logan’s visit to Florida.” Kim lifted the remote from the center of the bar and turned up the sound.

A reporter stood in The Villages town square and said, “Republican front-runner, Senator Lloyd Logan seemed to make quite an impression on the crowd here today. He spoke of reigning in government spending and his five-point plan to balance the federal budget in three years.” The video cut to a sound bite with Senator Logan emphasizing his approach to fiscal spending, and then cut back to the reporter. “Senator Logan, of course, came to The Villages seeking support and a large campaign contribution. It’s believed that he received both. However, the Senator got something he wasn’t expecting. Apparently, almost the entire time Logan spoke and worked the crowd, his wife, Andrea Logan, was inside a nearby coffee shop working out something with an unidentified man. Video shot by a customer on his iPhone, video that’s going viral on the Internet, shows Andrea Logan crying as she’s talking with the man at a table. She reaches out and holds his hand for about thirty seconds, and then upon leaving, she is seen touching his cheek, kissing him on the cheek, and embracing him in a long hug just before her husband enters the coffee shop.”

As the reporter talked, the story cut to video of Andrea and me at the table. Innocent as it was, the visuals, with no narration, looked suspicious at best, and at worst, it was like former lovers meeting and returning to a place and time where it all went away.

The reporter concluded by saying, “No one in the Logan camp is saying what the coffee shop incident was all about. The mysterious tall man, with what one spectator called ‘movie star good looks,’ remains unidentified, something Logan’s Republican opponents for the nomination would, no doubt, like to know. From The Villages, this is Chris Bellum, Channel Three News.”

Kim turned to me, eyes wide, face confused, disbelieving. “Sean, what was that? You’re in a Starbucks with the wife of Senator Logan bawling her eyes out and hanging onto you like you were her old boyfriend.”

“I was.”

“What?”

“It’s a long story, Kim.” I glanced toward the captain at the bar, his mouth partially open, a can of Miller dripping condensation from his large, weather-scarred hand. “And it’s a private story.”

“Private? Sean, it’s all over the news. The reporter said the video is going viral. You just got yourself in the middle of a nasty political campaign. For what? Senator Logan’s wife was your old girlfriend… wow.”

I said nothing, the sound of rain beating against the palm fronds outside.

She said, “Look, I’m sorry. It’s none of my business. It’s just so weird, so unexpected.”

“I’d better go find Max.” I started for the door leading to the docks.

“Sean …”

I didn’t turn around. As I opened the door, I heard the old captain say, “Bet you don’t dance with him in the puddles again.”

I stepped out into a soft rain, the marina drenched in a subdued bluish-gray world, the tops of sailboat masts lost in the mist. I turned my collar up and walked down the dock, watching the raindrops splatter off the creosote-stained wooden planks. The bowlines on the boats moaned, protesting the slow lift on the shoulders of a rising tide. I stepped through the cold rain toward Jupiter, which now felt a hundred miles away.