Pearl of Great Price (13 page)

He slowed the boat and swiveled to face her. “Rennie, I—”

From out of nowhere a flash of metallic green roared past them. Startled, Micah leaned too hard on the throttle. The fishing boat scooted forward, pitching him off the seat. Still gripping the wheel, he yanked it to the left, and the boat flipped up and over. For endless, terrifying moments Micah’s stomach seemed higher than his head. Then something slammed against his temple and he sank underwater, struggling against the urge to inhale. Seconds later, his life vest carried him upward. When his face cleared the murky green surface, he sucked in several noisy breaths, then coughed violently, spitting out mossy-tasting lake water.

“Rennie! Rennie!” He paddled in circles, his vision clouded by a red haze. Finally he caught sight of the overturned boat, rough waves lapping at its sides. He tried to swim toward it, but the current thwarted him. His limbs felt limp and useless, his brain as mushy as cold oatmeal.

Fighting through his mental fog, he became aware of yelling, splashing, that noisy dog barking in the distance. Two boats arrived, their occupants shouting to him. “You all right, son? Anybody else with you?”

“My friend”—he coughed again and wiped blood and water out of his eyes—“and a little girl—can you see them?”

“Over here,” came a shout. “I found someone.”

“Rennie?” Micah kicked his rubbery legs and strained to see.

“Here, son, let me help you.” A pair of brawny arms reached over the side of a ski boat and hauled him in. He collapsed in a dripping heap. His face collided with yellow vinyl seat cushion before everything went black.

C
HAPTER 15

Present Day

My breath quickened as Micah described the boat accident and how he nearly drowned. All I could do was suck in quick, panicked gasps—like the water was closing over my own face and I was sinking down and down and down, into the suffocating green depths.

Micah abruptly broke off his story. “Julie? Are you okay?”

I pressed a hand to my chest and deliberately slowed my breathing. “It’s just—I’m terrified of drowning.”

He came around to my side of the table and straddled the bench. Absently he rubbed my back, as though his thoughts were still in the past.

“The baby. Jenny. She drowned, didn’t she?” I pictured once more the sad, lonely bedroom at the resort, those faded ducks and rabbits gazing on the emptiness.

He sighed, long and painfully. “I’ll never get over the guilt.”

He went on to describe the aftermath of the accident—shivering with Rennie under scratchy lake patrol blankets, watching as divers searched the depths for any signs of the toddler. They found her empty life jacket floating a couple hundred yards away and figured she’d slipped right out of it, her slight form sinking like a stone in water close to forty feet deep.

Then the endless interrogations, the terrible moment Micah had to face his parents . . . and then Rennie’s. The MacDonohoes had packed up and left for home in Fort Worth as soon as the authorities gave them permission. At his mother’s insistence Micah went straight into counseling with a child psychologist, but even years later the nightmares persisted.

“Mom and George did their best to help me get over it.” Micah’s shoulders heaved. “But knowing you’re responsible for the death of a child is something you never forget. In one way or another, it’s affected every aspect of my life.”

I brushed away a tear. “Is that why you bought Pearls Along the Lake?”

He looked at me squarely, his jaw muscles bunching. “When I learned the place was up for sale a few years ago, all I could think about at first was buying the property and setting the whole thing on fire so I could watch it burn to the ground. I wanted to wipe out every last reminder of what happened there.”

I swung my legs around so that my back leaned against the hard edge of the table. “But you changed your mind?”

“I realized nothing I do can ever erase the past. The most I could hope for would be to redeem the place. Level it. Rebuild. Change the name. Make it possible for happier memories to be created there.”

I laid my hand on his solid forearm and wished I wasn’t such a babbler, that I could ease Micah’s pain and convince him to forgive himself, convince him that, in God’s view, no situation, no matter how tragic, was irredeemable.

Do you believe this for yourself, Julie Pearl Stiles?

My thoughts got all tangled up then—my grandpa’s deception, my nameless father. What could possibly be the link between a desperate teenage girl, an innocent child drowning, and the man next to me floundering in a lake of guilt? My head throbbed with the effort to figure it all out. I bent forward and pressed my hands to my temples.

“I’m sorry, Julie.” Micah rested a palm on the small of my back. “I don’t suppose I’ve helped much with your problems, just burdened you with my own.”

~~~

The next few days passed in an oppressive blur. The weather turned cloudy and humid, with thunderstorms rolling in each afternoon as the day heated up. The gloomy skies suited my mood. I kept to myself mostly, conducting my flea market duties with a pasted-on smile for the customers and reassuring Grandpa (without much conviction, I’m afraid) that I forgave him and would eventually get over my shock and disillusionment.

But I began to have nightmares of my own. I dreamed about drowning and woke up drenched in sweat, a silent scream in my throat. More than once, Brynna jumped up from her box, leaving the puppies whimpering and surprised, and planted her paws on the side of the mattress while she licked my face and gazed at me with worry in her sweet, soft eyes.

Her presence was such a comfort. I’d entwine my fingers in her curly black fur, press my nose into the warm spot behind her ear, and inhale the musky-orangey smells of dog fur and flea shampoo.

I didn’t hear from Micah again until Saturday afternoon. I was concentrating extra-hard on ringing up a customer’s sizable purchase and making sure to correctly record items from several different vendors, so it was Grandpa who answered the phone.

“Swap & Shop. . . . Yes, she’s here, Mr. Hobart, but . . .”

My fingers got all knotted, and I managed to ring up a $3.95 volume of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books at $395.95. “I’m so sorry,” I muttered to the frowning school teacher–type standing across the counter from me. It took three tries to void the entry, and all the while I strained one ear to catch Grandpa’s side of the conversation.

“No, I won’t,” Grandpa barked into the phone. “I don’t think—” He glanced over his shoulder at me and lowered his voice. “I don’t think it’s a good idea at all. Leave Julie Pearl alone.
Please
.” He slammed down the receiver and swung his broom with vicious strokes in the area behind the counter.

I couldn’t finish with my customer soon enough. “Thank you, come again,” I muttered as I shoved the cash drawer shut and dropped the receipt into one of her bags. The gray-haired lady glared from beneath raised brows and marched out, setting the brass bells clanging.

“What was that all about?” I stepped in front of Grandpa. “Aren’t I an adult? Can’t I decide for myself who I talk to?”

He froze and looked up at me with sad, rheumy eyes. “Of course you can, Julie Pearl. I’m sorry. Sorry for you, sorry for poor Angie, sorry for . . .” His whole frame drooped. “Shoulda known I couldn’t hide the truth from you forever. Shoulda never let her convince me to try.”

Steeped in such emotional chaos all week, I’d been avoiding the one question Grandpa still hadn’t given me a satisfactory answer to—why he so vehemently opposed my spending time with Micah. And I was more convinced than ever that it had something to do with that little girl’s drowning.

Across the way, I spotted Katy Harcourt running a feather duster across a rack of her slower-moving merchandise. “Katy, can you watch the front for a bit?”

“Sure thing, sugar-pie.”

While she moseyed up to the counter, I took Grandpa by the hand and tugged him toward the workroom at the back of the shop. Amidst racks of cleaning supplies, soft drink cases, and giant cans of nacho cheese, I pried open a folding chair and sat Grandpa down in it.

“Okay, then.” I planted myself in front of him. “Tell me everything. Tell me exactly what you have against Micah, and what all this has to do with the Pearl family and the old resort and the drowning twenty-five years ago.”

He rubbed the side of his hand across his dry lips. “Ain’t nothing I know for certain, Julie Pearl. Just . . . suspicions. Suspicions I never, ever want to confirm, because . . . because I might lose you forever.” He stood and started for the door, then turned. His eyes sought mine, and they were filled with the worst kind of desperation. “So please, honey-girl, if you love me at all, stay away from that ol’ resort. Stay away from Renata Pearl Channing. And for the love of God Almighty,
stay away from Micah Hobart
.”

He marched out of the workroom, his words still ringing in my ears.

What was it he didn’t want me to know? Didn’t he realize the
not knowing
was sending my imagination down pathways I wished I’d never set foot on?

On the other hand, if knowing meant losing my Grandpa and everything I held dear . . .

All the rest of the afternoon, on through an even busier Sunday and a halfway decent Monday, it felt like something big and powerful had me by the scruff of the neck, the way Brynna grabbed hold of her pups to line them up in a neat little row for nursing or cleaning. And I needed a good cleaning, because the thoughts I’d been having had been anything but virtuous.

Like wishing Renata Pearl Channing had never set her designer-sandaled foot inside the Swap & Shop. Contriving ways I might persuade Sandy to quit her cushy new job as the dubious Micah Hobart’s administrative assistant. I’d even thought about packing all my worldly goods into the back seat of my Beetle and heading off for parts unknown in search of the useless, no-good father who’d abandoned my mother and me—a man who I prayed with all my heart was
not
Micah Hobart’s stepfather.

Long about Tuesday morning, while I restocked the napkin dispensers on the snack bar tables, Grandpa came over and pulled out one of the filigreed chairs. He sat backwards on it and rested his wrinkly, spotted arms across the curved metal back. “Don’t you think you’ve moped around here long enough, Julie Pearl?”

“Long enough for what?” The words flew from my mouth with the force of a bazooka. I pressed my lips together in a hopeless attempt to stifle a sob. I’d been doing way too much crying lately, and that just wasn’t like me.

“Ain’t there no way I can have my own sweet Julie Pearl back?” Grandpa made a funny choking sound. “Oh, Lordy, what I wouldn’t give to turn back the hands of time and make you smile again.”

I sank into the chair opposite him and stared at the faded knees of my vintage Guess overalls. “I don’t even know who I am anymore, Grandpa. Ever since
she
showed up two weeks ago, nothing’s been the same. It’s like Renata Pearl Channing laid a curse on my soul, and now—”

Grandpa shuddered. “Don’t say such things, Julie Pearl.”

“But it’s true, isn’t it? Admit it. The day she walked into the shop is the day my life started falling apart.”

Grandpa removed his bifocals and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I been thinking, Julie Pearl. You need to get away, go find whatever it’ll take to bring you peace.”

I sat back, surprised to hear him suggest the very thing I’d been contemplating. The very thing I simply could not do. “Leave you by yourself? But you need me here, Grandpa. Who’ll man the cash register? What about the bookkeeping? Who’ll fix your supper and do the laundry and—”

“I’ll be fine.” He tipped his head toward Katy Harcourt’s Classic Shoes and Bags. “Katy will look after me. She knows all that fancy computer stuff too. She won’t mind at all helping me take care of things for a while.”

Though I resisted, the idea of getting away rolled around in my mind and slowly gathered steam. It’d been years since Grandpa and I had taken a real vacation. Other than the occasional jaunt with Sandy to Eureka Springs or Memphis or Tulsa, I’d never traveled by myself. A road trip to think and ponder and seek out whatever answers might be waiting for me? Could I do this?
Should I?

I began a mental list of the preparations I’d have to make, starting with giving Katy the password to my accounting software and explaining my bookkeeping system. I could stretch my cash by packing several days’ worth of food in a cooler and camping out at state parks. Maybe I could even phone a couple of old friends who actually made it out of Caddo Pines.

Rising, I paced the small area between our chairs. “But if I did take off for a while, I don’t even know what I’d expect to find. Maybe nothing at all.” I didn’t have to say aloud what we both knew, that unless he could give me my father’s real name, that search would be futile.

“You’re a smart girl. You’ll figure it out.” He slid off the chair and wrapped me in his arms. “Go, Julie Pearl. Find your truth. For both of us.”

~~~

Truth.
The word struck a crazy kind of terror in my heart. I sat in my Beetle, parked next to the gas pump outside Doakes Automotive, while Jimmy Weber, possibly the last of the true-blue full-service station attendants, filled my tank with regular. He shuffled behind the car to check under the hood, then hunched next to each tire to check the air pressure.

“Lookin’ fine,” he drawled. “Clifton’s done you good with this ol’ thing.”

“Thanks, Jimmy.” I leaned my elbow on the hot metal lip of the door and handed him two tens and a five. “Keep the change.”

He gave me a two-finger salute and a toothless grin. “Where you headed, Miss Julie? Long trip? This buggy’s in good shape, but it sure ain’t up to no cross-country drivin’.”

“Don’t know for sure.” I gazed through the windshield. From here I could see Caddo Pines’s central intersection and the mileage signs pointing one way to Little Rock, the other to Hot Springs. Would I find my truth in either of those places? Were there even answers to be found?