Heartbroken (25 page)

“What year was it?” asked Birdie

“Nineteen fifty.”

They were all silent, until John released a startling laugh. He lifted a glass. “Now, how’s that for a good ghost story?” he said. “You can see, I’m sure, why I
had
to have this island. I fancy myself a bit of an amateur sleuth, you know.”

Kate looked at him hard. He had an agenda. What was he trying to say? Did he somehow know about the journals? About her novel? The silence among the three of them deepened and grew.

“I know Sebastian has visited here,” said John. “Long before we bought the place.”

“Ah,” said Birdie faintly. “Fascinating.”

“Yes,” said Kate. There was something about John Cross. She didn’t like him at all. “So, John, how is it that you know my ex-husband?”

She had to ask; it was killing her now. John cleared his throat and looked down at his feet.

“Oh,” he said. “We’re friends on Facebook.”

“Oh,” said Kate, relieved. Facebook, or Fakebook, as Sebastian liked to call it, the place where you could be
friends
with people you’d never met or hadn’t seen in decades. The guy was a poseur. She should have known. “And you’re in publishing?”

“My wife and I are starting our own company. We’re going to reissue some classic crime novels to start, including some of the out-of-print Richard Cameron titles.”

“How interesting,” said Kate. Now she sounded like Birdie, and for once she didn’t mind. She wanted to keep her distance from John Cross.

“Well,” said Birdie. The firm, purposeful tone was back in her voice. Usually, Kate found it annoying. At the moment, she found it comforting. Birdie never stayed anywhere if she wanted to leave. Kate was forever stuck, enduring endless conversations, dinners, and personal encounters out of politeness. Like this one.

“I can see my daughter is worried about the girls, more so after all of this. And I’m worried about dinner being ruined.”

Sure, Mom, blame it on me
.

“So soon!” he said. Kate noticed that his face had gone noticeably redder, whether from the wine or something else, she didn’t know. But he didn’t move to stop them, trailed them out of the room, Kate leading the way, her mother right behind.

“You have a lovely home,” said Kate without turning around. Behind her, she heard a soft thud.

“Oh, my,” said John. His face pulled long with worry and surprise. Kate turned quickly to see that Birdie had collapsed on the floor.

“M
y mom said there are ghosts on this island,” said Chelsea.

Lulu was sitting on a bar stool near the counter. She was completely useless in the kitchen but had done a fairly decent job of setting the table. Now, in a caricature of herself, she was simultaneously filing her nails and relentlessly checking her cell phone for service.

“My mother told me there was a tooth fairy,” said Lulu. She didn’t bother to look up from her tasks. “Do we still believe the things they say? No.”

“There’s a lady who watches the mainland from Lookout Rock, the highest point on the island,” said Chelsea, undaunted. “A man who walks the perimeter. And someone else I can’t remember. It’s in the book she wrote.”

Chelsea checked the ham. It looked to be nearly done. She wondered if she should take it out. Mom and Birdie were ten minutes past when they said they’d be back. Which, in a way, was a little paralyzing. She’d never known either her mother or her grandmother to be late. And with no cell service, she couldn’t call. She decided to take the ham out, reached for the oven mitts. She hefted the sizzling roasting pan from the oven and set it with a heavy clang on the stovetop.

Lulu looked up from her nails with mild interest. “Oh, right,” she said. “The scathing tell-all.”

“No,” said Chelsea. “It’s fiction. Sort of.”

She wasn’t supposed to have read her mother’s book. Nobody had said that she
couldn’t
, precisely. But she had sneaked into her mother’s office and read it as it was being written. It was one thing for her father’s life to be a mystery, filled with dark places into which she wasn’t allowed to pry, passages that needed to be blacked out. But her mother had always been wide open. Chelsea wasn’t able to handle the idea that there might be things about Kate that she couldn’t know. She understood that some parts of the book were fiction and some were true. She wasn’t sure which was which. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to ask.

“Oh,” said Lulu, going back to her nails. She didn’t like to read or care about anything that had to do with books unless it was
Twilight
or
Harry Potter
—and really, she only liked the movies. Even though she had pretended not to be interested: “Have you ever actually seen anything? I mean, any ghosts?”

“No.” Chelsea wished she could have said yes.

She knew to cover with tinfoil dishes just removed from the oven, so she did that, feeling somewhat proud of herself for taking
the initiative. Wasn’t that what her mother was always saying?
I shouldn’t have to ask you to clear the table, take out the garbage, empty the dishwasher
—whatever it was she was mad about.
At this age, you should be able to observe what needs to be done and do it. Take the initiative
.

After she had done that, Chelsea looked out the window and saw the red and green navigation lights and the white bimini light. The boat was coming across the channel.

“I’m going to go down to the dock so they can throw me the lines.”

“I have service,” Lulu said, excited. She drifted over to the couch, not offering to come, as Chelsea would have. Lulu’s thumbs were going furiously as Chelsea headed out.

It was that time of night when the sun hadn’t totally set but was low enough in the sky that the areas of the island under tree cover were darkening. She walked down the lighted path, and was glad for a minute to herself. She felt like the island had been waiting for her and was disappointed that she’d brought along someone who not only couldn’t appreciate it but also wanted to distract her from it.

When Chelsea was showing Lulu around, she could tell that her friend couldn’t see what was special about it. Chelsea tried to tell her about the butterflies and how sometimes, around this time of year, you might see thousands of them. Lulu didn’t seem to understand how beautiful, how magnificent, that was. All she wanted to talk about was Conner Lange and Chelsea’s cyber boyfriend, Adam McKee. Chelsea hadn’t heard from him since she’d told him she couldn’t meet him. She’d pretended not to care. Because she knew the minute Lulu sensed that she cared about something, she’d start to cut that thing down. Right now it was a game that they were playing, one that Lulu was directing. As soon as it seemed like something Lulu couldn’t control, she’d get sullen and slicing.

Down at the dock, Chelsea saw that her mother was at the helm
as the boat approached. At first she didn’t see her grandmother. Then she realized that Birdie was sitting slumped in the back, her head resting in her hand. It sent a shock through Chelsea. She wasn’t used to seeing Birdie any other way than perfectly erect and in motion.

Her mother managed to throw the lines to Chelsea while still at the helm. Kate cut the engine, and Chelsea pulled the boat in, tied off the lines on the cleats.

“What’s wrong?” Chelsea asked as she helped her mother get Birdie off the boat.

“Nothing,” said Birdie. “Everything’s fine.”

“Your grandmother is not feeling well,” said Kate. She had the brisk, officious tone she got when she was super-stressed and trying to hide it.

“Did you take out the ham?” Birdie asked. She sounded odd, like she was talking in her sleep. “It will get dry.”

“Oh, Mother,” said Kate, supporting Birdie’s weight up the dock.

“I did take it out,” said Chelsea. She was happy to be able to say so. “I wrapped it in tinfoil.”

Chelsea and Kate walked Birdie up to the house, an arm over each of their shoulders. On the stairs, they practically had to carry her like a drunk, her feet dragging behind them. “I’m fine,” she kept insisting. “Put me down.”

Lulu looked up as they entered. She stood and opened the door to Birdie’s bedroom at Kate’s direction. “What’s wrong?” she said. “What happened?”

“Chelsea,” her mother said at Birdie’s bedroom door. “Give us a minute.”

Kate helped Birdie down onto the bed, and Chelsea stood helpless in the doorway. She fought down the rise of worried tears. “Mom,” she said. “Is she all right? Should I call someone?”

Her mother didn’t answer as she lifted Birdie’s feet onto the bed and took off her shoes.

“Should we call a doctor?” asked Lulu. She’d come to stand behind Chelsea.

“I don’t know,” said Kate. She wiped a hand across her forehead. She seemed frazzled, not sure of herself. Another first. “Give us a second. Girls, go see to the boat.”

Chelsea and Lulu both stood there, watching. It was weird when the grown-ups didn’t seem to know what to do. Chelsea often felt that her father, Sebastian, had no idea how to handle things. She had never felt that way about her mother or grandmother. She didn’t like it. She wanted to call Sean, to tell him to forget about that open house and come now.

Birdie said, “It wasn’t a dream.”

“It’s okay, Mom,” said Kate. But confusion and worry were etched on her face. “Chelsea and Lulu,” she said. Her tone had an unfamiliar stern quality. “Go see to the boat.”

Chelsea moved quickly toward the door and pushed outside. It was dark, and the air was cold. There was nothing to do with the boat. It was tied off. There was no sense in securing the cover if they might have to take Birdie to the mainland. Chelsea figured that Kate had just wanted them to go while she decided what to do.

Lulu followed close behind. “What’s happening?” she wanted to know.

“I have no idea,” said Chelsea.
I am breathing in
, she thought.
I am breathing out
. “I think my grandmother is sick.”

As they rounded the bend, Chelsea saw someone standing on the edge of the dock. He was a dark tower against the blue of the night sky. Chelsea stopped in her tracks, and Lulu crashed into her. She felt her throat go dry.

“What the frak, Chaz?” said Lulu.

Chelsea grabbed Lulu’s hand and took a step back. She turned around quickly and started pushing Lulu back up the path.

“What?” Lulu was searching her face, and Chelsea thought
how her friend looked pale and so young in the moonlight. “What’s wrong?”

Chelsea whispered, “There’s someone on the dock.” She didn’t dare look back. Who could it be on the island when there was no other boat at the dock but theirs?

Lulu looked past her, still holding her hand tightly. Then, “I don’t see anyone.”

“Right there,” Chelsea said, spinning around to point.

There was no one there; the dock was empty. Just then it started to rain.

chapter nineteen

T
he sight of the marina filled Emily with an irrational sense of relief. As soon as she heard the gravel crunch beneath their tires, she was overcome by the strong feeling that everything was going to be all right. She let herself sink into it.

Dean was sleeping, head lolled against the window, mouth hanging open. He was snoring softly. How he could sleep, she didn’t know. When he’d been driving, every time she closed her eyes, she was shocked awake by the sound of gunfire, or fighting off Brad, or staring down at Carol’s bleeding body. She wondered if she’d ever sleep again.

Maybe she should take what he was taking, whatever it was he’d given her last night. But one of them, at least, needed a clear head. She knew he had a stash of pills somewhere. He was surreptitiously popping them, thinking she didn’t see. She wasn’t going to say anything. What worried her was what would happen when he was stressed, on the run, and needing some kind of fix. She didn’t want to think about it.

She hadn’t checked the news in a couple of hours. As of the last broadcast she’d heard on the radio, there was no mention of their crimes or their flight. She’d listened for a whole hour while the announcer listed off news events—a plane was escorted by fighter jets, a terrorist plot was thwarted, two men were on trial for murdering a family, the Democrats lost the Senate in the midterm elections. She hadn’t heard a single thing about an armed robbery in New Jersey,
one man killed, a woman injured, the perpetrators on the run. When the newscast was over, she allowed herself to fantasize that none of it had happened. Or that, compared to other horrors in the world, it didn’t even rank.

You don’t want to do this
.

She thought again of the man as she pulled the SUV into a space at the far corner of the lot and killed the engine. The way he had looked at her, like he knew all about her. The way he’d run a hand along his own jaw, as though wondering about the bruising and swelling on hers. His expression had told her that he’d known a hundred sad and sorry girls who had laid waste to their lives, and she was just another face in the crowd.

He’d pulled to a stop in front of where she stood in the street, waving her arms. She couldn’t see him at first, because the lights from his vehicle were so high and blindingly bright. But when she came up to the driver’s-side window, she could see that he was a big man, broad through the shoulders and tall. He looked at her with a calm, interested gaze and then cast his eyes to the Mustang and beyond, scanning the side of the road. Smart.

He rolled down the window. “Car trouble?” he asked. He kept his hands on the wheel. The wedding ring on his right hand looked tight. There was a picture of a pretty woman and a young man taped onto the dash. The guy in the photo looked like a younger, leaner version of the man in the car. Emily found she couldn’t answer the question; she stared at him, the lines on his face, the gray in his light brown hair.

“Are you all right?” he said. She had forgotten about her jaw, that it was swollen from where Brad had hit her. “Is there something wrong?”

She watched Dean come up to the passenger window, gun drawn. He tapped on the glass with the barrel, and the man at the wheel turned slowly to look at him. He didn’t jump or start at
the sight of Dean. There was just a narrowing of his eyes when he turned back to her, a slight humorless upturning of the corners of his mouth.