Heroes are My Weakness (39 page)

Her head spun. “Mariah never mentioned this.”

“She didn’t know. Apparently no one knew except the island trustees.”

The sound of a vehicle approaching interrupted them. He handed her the spatula. “Keep an eye on these.”

As he made his way to the front door, she tried to piece it all together, but her thoughts were interrupted by a strange male voice at the front door. Moments later, Theo stuck his head back in the kitchen. “I have to go. Another emergency. You shouldn’t have to worry about intruders now, but keep the doors locked anyway.”

After he left, she sat at the table with one of the sandwiches. He’d used good cheddar with a touch of her favorite coarse brown mustard, but she was too tired to eat or to think. She needed sleep.

The next morning found her as clearheaded as she’d ever been. She had Jaycie’s Suburban and drove into town. The collection of dirty pickup trucks in front of Barbara Rose’s house indicated that the Monday-morning knitting group was in session. Before Annie had been able to fall asleep last night, she’d had plenty of time to think, and she let herself in without ringing the bell.

Upholstered furniture and knickknacks stuffed the living room. Amateur oil paintings of boats and buoys hung on the walls, along with half a dozen floral china plates. Every tabletop held family photos: Lisa blowing out birthday candles, Lisa and her brother opening Christmas presents. Even more photos showed off the Rose grandchildren.

Barbara commanded the room from a brown and gold platform rocker. Judy and Louise Nelson sat on the couch. Naomi, who should have been on the water by now, had the love seat to herself. Marie, looking as sour as ever, occupied an easy chair across from Tildy, who’d exchanged her fashionable wardrobe for shapeless sweat pants. None of them were knitting.

Barbara jumped up so quickly that the platform rocker bumped against the wall, rattling a china plate featuring a pair of golden retriever puppies. “Annie! This is a surprise. I suppose you heard about Phyllis Bakely.”

“No, I haven’t heard anything.”

“She had a stroke last night,” Tildy said. “Her husband, Ben, took her to the mainland, and Theo went with them.”

That explained why Theo hadn’t returned to the cottage. But Annie hadn’t driven into town to find him. She stared at the women, taking her time, and finally posing the question she’d come here to ask. “Which one of you tried to shoot me?”

Chapter Twenty-two

A
COLLECTIVE GASP TRAVELED AROUND THE
knitting circle. Louise leaned forward, as if her elderly ears had missed something. Judy gave a moan of distress, Barbara went rigid, Naomi set her jaw, and Tildy twisted her hands in her lap. Marie recovered the quickest. Her lips pursed and her small eyes narrowed. “We have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Really?” Annie advanced into the room, not caring about tracking the carpet. “Why don’t I believe that?”

Barbara reached for the knitting bag by her chair and sat back down. “I think you’d better go. You’re obviously upset by everything that’s happened, but that’s no reason—”

Annie cut her off. “Upset doesn’t begin to describe it.”

“Really, Annie.” Tildy puffed up with indignation.

Annie spun toward Barbara, who’d begun riffling through her knitting bag. “You’re an island trustee. But there are six others. Do they know what you’ve done?”

“We haven’t done anything,” Naomi said in her sea captain’s voice.

Marie grabbed her own knitting bag. “You have no business barging in here and making these kinds of accusations. You need to leave.”

“That’s exactly what you’ve wanted from the beginning,” Annie said. “To make me leave. And you, Barbara. Pretending to befriend me when all you wanted was to get rid of me.”

Barbara’s needles moved faster. “I didn’t pretend anything. I like you very much.”

“Sure you do.” Annie stepped farther into the room, making sure they understood that she wasn’t leaving. She cast her eyes around the group, searching for the weak link and finding it. “What about your grandkids, Judy? Knowing what you’ve done, how will you ever look in the face of that little boy Theo delivered without remembering this?”

“Judy, don’t pay attention to her.” Tildy’s order held a tinge of desperation.

Annie focused on Judy Kester with her bright red hair, sunny disposition, and generous spirit. “What about your other grandkids? Do you really think they’ll never find out about this? You’ve set the example. They’re going to learn from you that it’s okay to do whatever it takes to get what you want, no matter whom you hurt on the way.”

Judy was designed for laughter, not confrontation. She dropped her face into her hands and began to cry, the silver crosses at her earlobes dropping against her cheek.

Annie was dimly aware of the front door opening, but she didn’t stop. “You’re a religious woman, Judy. How do you reconcile your faith with what you’ve done to me?” She took in the whole group. “How do any of you?”

Tildy twisted her wedding ring. “I don’t know what you think we’ve done . . .” Her voice faltered. “But . . . you’re wrong.”

“We all know I’m not.” Annie felt Theo behind her. She couldn’t see him, but she knew he was the one who’d come in.

“You can’t prove anything.” Marie’s defiance didn’t ring true.

“Shut up, Marie,” Judy said with uncharacteristic vehemence. “This has gone on long enough. Too long.”

“Judy . . .” Naomi’s voice sounded a warning note. At the same time, she gripped her elbows across her chest, as if she were in pain.

Louise spoke for the first time. At eighty-three, her spine was bowed from osteoporosis, but she held her head high. “It was my idea. All mine. I did everything. They’re trying to protect me.”

“So noble,” Annie drawled.

Theo came to Annie’s side. He was scruffy and unshaven, but he carried himself with a tough kind of elegance that commanded everyone’s attention. “You didn’t trash the cottage by yourself, Mrs. Nelson,” he said. “And, forgive me, but you couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn.”

“We didn’t break anything,” Judy cried. “We were very careful.”

“Judy!”

“Well, we didn’t!” Judy said defensively.

They were defeated, and they knew it. Annie could see it in their expressions. They’d been done in by Judy’s conscience, and maybe their own. Naomi dropped her head, Barbara dropped her knitting, Louise sagged back into the couch, and Tildy pressed her palm to her lips. Only Marie looked defiant, for all the good it would do her.

“And the truth comes out,” Annie said. “Whose idea was it to put my puppet in a noose?” The image of Crumpet hanging from the ceiling still haunted her. Puppet or not, Crumpet was part of her.

Judy looked at Tildy, who rubbed her cheek. “I saw it in a movie,” Tildy said weakly. “Your puppet didn’t come to any harm.”

The side of Theo’s arm was solid against her own. “A more important question . . . Which one of you shot at me?”

When no one answered, Theo turned cold eyes toward the woman in the platform rocker. “Barbara, why don’t you answer that question?”

Barbara gripped the chair arms. “Of course it was me. Do you think I’d let anybody else take that chance?” She gazed at Annie, her expression pleading. “You were never in any danger. I’m one of the best marksmen in the Northeast. I’ve won medals.”

Theo’s response was scathing. “Too bad Annie didn’t have the comfort of knowing that.”

Judy fumbled in her pocket for a tissue. “We knew what we were doing wasn’t right. We knew that from the beginning.”

Marie sniffed, as if she didn’t think what they’d done was all that bad, but Tildy had come to the edge of her chair. “We can’t keep losing our families. Our children and grandchildren.”

“I can’t lose my son.” Louise’s gnarled hands gripped her cane. “He’s all I have left, and if Galeann makes him leave . . .”

“I know you can’t understand,” Naomi said, “but this is about more than our families. It’s about the future of Peregrine Island and whether we can keep surviving.”

Theo was unimpressed. “Spell it out for us. Explain exactly why stealing Annie’s cottage was important enough to turn decent women into criminals.”

“Because they need a new school,” Annie said.

Theo cursed softly under his breath.

Judy sobbed into a crumpled tissue, and Barbara looked away. The boat captain took over. “We don’t have the money to build a school from scratch. But without it, we’re going to lose the rest of our young families. We can’t let that happen.”

Barbara struggled to pull herself together. “The younger women weren’t so restless until the school burned down. That trailer is awful. All Lisa talks about is leaving.”

“And taking your grandchildren with her,” Annie said.

Marie’s bluster faded. “Someday you’ll know what that feels like.”

Barbara’s eyes begged for understanding. “We need the cottage. There’s no place else like it.”

“This wasn’t impulsive.” Tildy spoke with a desperate kind of enthusiasm she seemed to want Annie to share. “The cottage is special because of its view. And every summer, we can easily convert it back into a residential property.”

“There aren’t enough decent summer rentals to keep up with the demand,” Naomi said. “The rental money will give us income we’ve never had to support the school during the year.”

Louise nodded. “And keep up with the road repairs so it’s not so hard to get out there.”

Rental money was income Annie could never have had because the agreement Mariah had signed had forbidden it. No surprise that Elliott had been more lenient with the islanders than with her mother.

A note of pleading had replaced Naomi’s air of command. “We had to do it. It was for the greater good.”

“It sure as hell wasn’t for Annie’s good,” Theo said. Pushing his jacket back, he rested his hand on his hip. “You know she’s going to the police with this.”

Judy blew her nose. “I told you this would happen. All along I said we’d end up in jail.”

“We’ll deny it,” Marie declared. “There’s no proof.”

“Don’t turn us in, Annie,” Tildy begged. “It’ll ruin us. I could lose my shop.”

“You should have thought about that a long time ago,” Theo said.

“If this gets out . . .” Louise said.

“
When
this gets out,” Theo retorted. “You’re trapped. You all understand that, right?”

Marie sat as straight as ever, but tears leaked over her bottom lids. They sagged back into their chairs, reached for one another’s hands, pressed their faces into tissues. They knew they were defeated.

Barbara was aging right in front of her. “We’ll make it right. Please, Annie. Don’t tell anybody. We’ll fix it. We’ll fix everything so you keep the cottage. Promise us you won’t say anything.”

“She’s not promising anything,” Theo said.

The door burst open, and two red-haired little girls raced in. Dashing across the room, they hurled themselves into their grandmother’s arms. “Grammie, Mr. Miller got sick, and he barfed. It was so gross!”

“He couldn’t get a substitute teacher!” the younger chimed in. “So we all got to go home, but Mom went to see Jaycie, so we came here.”

As Barbara gathered the girls in her arms, Annie saw the tears running down her powdery cheeks. Theo noticed, too. He shot Annie a frown and closed his hand around her arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

T
HEO
’
S CAR BLOCKED THE
S
UBURBAN
in the driveway. “How did you figure it out?” he said as they came down the front steps.

“A woman’s perspective. Once you told me about the lease, I knew it could only be them.”

“You understand that you have them over a barrel, right? You’re going to get the cottage back.”

She sighed. “Looks that way.”

He heard her lack of enthusiasm. “Annie, don’t do this.”

“Do what?”

“What you’re thinking about.”

“How do you know what I’m thinking about?”

“I know you. You’re thinking about giving up.”

“Not giving up exactly.” She zipped her coat. “More like moving on. The island . . . It isn’t good for me.”
You aren’t good for me. I want it all
—
everything you’re not prepared to give.

“The island is great for you,” he said. “You haven’t just survived this winter. You’ve thrived here.”

In a way, that was true. She thought about her Dreambook and how, when she’d arrived here, so sick and broken, she’d seen it as a symbol of failure—a tangible reminder of everything she hadn’t accomplished. But her perspective had been shifting without her recognizing it. Maybe the theatrical career she’d imagined had never materialized, but because of her, a mute little girl had found her voice, and that was something.

“Drive out to the farm with me,” he said, “I want to check on the new roof.”

She remembered what had happened the last time they’d visited his farm, and it wasn’t the puppets she heard in her head, but her own survival instinct. “The sun’s out,” she said. “Let’s take a walk instead.”

He didn’t protest. They descended the rutted drive to the road. The boats in the harbor had been out at sea since dawn, and the empty buoys bobbed in the harbor like bath toys. She stalled for time. “How is the woman you helped?”

“We got her to the mainland in time. She has some rehab ahead, but she should recover.” The gravel crunched beneath their feet as he steered her across the road by her elbow. “Before I leave, I’m going to make sure some of the islanders start getting their EMT certification. It’s dangerous not having medical help here.”

“They should already have done it.”

“Nobody wanted the responsibility, but with a group of them training together, they’ll have each other’s backs.” He took her hand to guide her around a pothole. She drew away as soon as they reached the other side. As she pretended to fix her glove, he stopped walking and gazed down at her, his expression troubled. “I don’t get it. I can’t believe you’re thinking about giving up the cottage and leaving.”

How could he understand her so well? No one else ever had. She would start up her dog-walking business again; work at Coffee, Coffee; and book more puppet shows. The thing she wouldn’t do was go on any more auditions. Thanks to Livia, she had a new direction, one that had been taking shape inside her so gradually that she’d barely known it was happening. “There’s no reason for me to stay,” she said.