Scorcher

Chapter 37

Carver wanted to attend Elana Kave’s funeral, but he found out too late that she’d been cremated. There’d been only a brief, private memorial service. Adam Kave had wanted it that way.

Three months later Carver read in the Orlando Sentinel that Adam’s Inns had been sold to a conglomerate that owned a series of chain restaurants. Adam would no longer be connected with the company he’d built with his life at the cost of his son. Nadine, Carver heard, had gone to Hawaii to finish college and do postgraduate work in anthropology. He thought that was exactly the field for her.

Lieutenant McGregor was now Captain McGregor and in charge of Internal Affairs, investigating reports of corruption within the Fort Lauderdale Police Department. Justice was blind, all right.

Carver spent his days at Edwina’s, rising early and limping down to a flat stretch of beach. He’d leave his cane on the warm sand, slither awkwardly into the surf until he was floating free and graceful, and take long, therapeutic swims.

Occasionally Paul Kave would drive up A1A from Hillsboro and join him. They both loved the sea and liked to test themselves against it.

They’d roam far enough out from shore to worry Edwina. One man of maimed body and the other of maimed mind, struggling against the incoming waves.

Strong swimmers.

During unlikely moments, Carver would find himself wondering whether Adam Kave had suspected all along that there’d been something between Elana and Emmett, and had held his silence to protect the possession he’d most treasured. But not even Adam could answer that one with certainty, Carver decided.

And it was something he never asked Paul.

Some things you left alone.