Persuasion (17 page)

“Have you completely lost your mind?” Pru stalked toward the car, her handbag clutched tightly to her side. “I asked you to promise me you weren’t going to have anything to do with Cassie, but here you are right back to trying to be her friend again.”

“Going after her had nothing to do with friendship.” Barrie had to hurry to keep pace as Pru skirted the cemetery back toward the parking lot. “I’m sorry I left you, Aunt Pru. I am, but I felt claustrophobic in the house with all those people arguing and all that furniture pressing in on me. Plus, didn’t you see Cassie at the funeral? She was completely freaked out and no one noticed. They didn’t even realize she wasn’t in the house.”

“She told Sydney to leave her alone,” Pru said, more sharply than she had ever spoken to Barrie before. “I defy anyone to
argue with Cassie, much less her poor sister who seems to want to do nothing except keep the peace in her family.”

“Fine, but Cassie was having some kind of a breakdown when I got to the cemetery.” Barrie was still convinced Cassie had been putting on an act, but the statement was true enough. Then she found herself adding another truth she hadn’t realized she’d accepted. “I don’t know what happened in jail, but it was something bad,” she said. “Cassie also mentioned that the drug cartel had kidnapped her to force Wyatt to keep working for them. They locked her in a basement, and being locked up in jail, I guess it brought it all back up.”

“That’s awful if it’s true. But I don’t believe it for a second. You see?” Pru stopped and spun to look at Barrie. “This is exactly what I told you. You’re falling right back into Cassie’s web. What’s she going to convince you to do for her next, hmm? I’m sure there’s something.” She peered at Barrie with spots of angry color high on both cheeks.

“What if it
is
true?” Barrie began, then held her palms up as Pru stepped forward. “No, hear me out. What if it really is the curse making the Colesworths do all these things? How do we know where something like that starts and where it ends? What’s magic and what’s the poison in the soul or the blood that warps the person and makes them change?”

“I don’t know where it begins,” Pru said. “What I do know is that plenty of other people are tempted to want what other
people have, without locking their relatives in tunnels or holding them at gunpoint with plans to kill them.” Not waiting for an answer, Pru marched to the car and threw herself inside.

Barrie got in more slowly. The heat from the scalding leather seats seeped into her skin, even through her somber clothes, and sweat ran in a rivulet down her temple as Pru turned the ignition over. Barrie rolled down the window and fanned herself with her hand while Pru backed out of the parking space.

“God, it’s sweltering in here,” Barrie said.

“Maybe we’ll finally get some rain tonight.” Pru rammed the gearshift forward and turned the wheel. “Now, don’t try to change the subject. Trying to distract me with weather, not to mention kidnappings and curses. I have every right to be upset about you running right back to Cassie.”

“I know you do.”

“Do you? I’m not so sure, or you’d have stayed away.” Pru lapsed into silence again. At the end of the drive, she turned the old Mercedes west onto the oak-shaded road that led along the river and back up toward the highway.

Barrie tried to catch a glimpse of Beaufort Hall as they passed the entrance a few minutes later, but there was only the wide white-iron double gate that rose in a graceful arch. Beyond it, another lane of stately oaks disappeared into the shimmer created by the heat and distance.

“Sugar, are you even thinking about what I said?” Pru’s tone was a little calmer, but not much, and she was still flushed an angry red as Barrie’s eyes met hers. “I honestly thought this was all over when Cassie went to jail, and here we are again. Today was a classic example of what that girl is like. She’s barely even out of the detention center, and she’s calling archaeologists to come and do what her father refused to let them do. Without telling her own mother. On the day of her father’s funeral.”

“I get that that was bad, but—”

“But nothing! She didn’t even bother to tell the archaeologists
why
she was calling them. Imagine how they felt when they read in the paper it wasn’t only a collapsed old tunnel but millions of dollars in missing Union gold.”

“Not that the paper is necessarily right.”

“In this instance, it happens to be exactly right. Checking historical records is the first part of any kind of an archaeological project. They checked the shipping manifests and the military records, all of it. Which you would know if you had stuck around instead of haring off the way you did.”

“Honestly, I
am
sorry, Aunt Pru. I wish I’d never heard of any of the Colesworths, all right?” Catching herself about to admit her own frustration, Barrie stared straight ahead through the windshield. “Can we please not talk about it anymore right now? I have an idea that I wanted to tell you about. Something good for a change.”

“I’m not sure my heart can take any more of your ideas.” Pru ran her thumb along the steering wheel, then shook her head. “You know what? I don’t want to argue with you today. Clearly I’m not going to convince you, and I have an idea, too.” She sent Barrie a smile that was as close to brewing with mischief as Pru was likely to ever get. “I hate to admit this, but I’ve been thinking about this ever since we walked into the old stable yesterday, and seeing the buildings all fixed up over at Colesworth Place cemented it. What would you say if we got a couple of horses? Alyssa Evans always has a few for sale, so we could go have a look tomorrow and see what we think. Might even keep you out of trouble for a while.”

“Horses? Really?” Barrie scarcely held back a squeal, but then she sobered. “Wait. Tomorrow? I’ve thought of a way to do the restaurant so we don’t have to wait for the fuss to die down. That’s what I was going to tell you. With that and the furniture coming, we wouldn’t have time right now—and horses would be a lot of work.”

Pru’s smile took on the pre-Christmas-gift-giving glow that was even better than getting presents. “
Life
is a lot of work, if you live it right. The point is, you said something yesterday about choosing how we live our lives. So far, all I’ve done the last twenty years is wait and mark time and give up the things I loved and wanted. I’ve played it safe. I’m tired of doing that. I’d rather feel the wind in my hair. Wouldn’t you?”

“Sure, if I thought it would be the wind and not the pile of manure I’m likely to fall into.”

“You’re still young enough that a few falls won’t hurt you much.” Pru gave the steering wheel a delighted little tap. “Good. That’s settled then.”

“At least wait until you hear my idea.” Barrie pressed her palms tight against the seat. “Please? We could let Mary get back to work. And the restaurant was something you wanted, too, wasn’t it?”

Pru turned onto the highway, guided the car onto the river bridge west of Watson Island, and then glanced over at Barrie. “All right. Tell me what you have in mind.”

“What if we have dinners by invitation or lottery, where people sign up and we pick who gets to come? It would be more like a private dinner party, and we could bring guests in by boat and keep them from wandering around and sneaking into the woods or getting in trouble.” Barrie turned in her seat, pushing away the seat belt that cut into her shoulder. “What do you think?”

“If they come by boat, the gate wouldn’t even have to be open. We could still have dinner in the garden, as long as we keep an eye on everyone.” Pru’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully on the road. “Mary does need to get back to work. She won’t take help, but I know she’s worried.”

Barrie grinned and flopped against the seat, letting her
head fall back. Then she sobered. “I’m sorry about the horses, Aunt Pru. I’d love to do that after the movers come and everything has settled down.”

“Oh, doing the restaurant doesn’t change what I want to do with the horses, sugar.”

The highway ran along the north bank of the Santisto before turning north toward Charleston. Pru slowed to let a Walmart truck go past before she merged into the right lane to turn off onto the bridge that would take them back onto Watson Island.

“Like I said, I’ve been waiting my whole life for the things I want. Some of them I can’t control,” Pru said, “but bringing horses back to Watson’s Landing is one I can manage. Don’t you worry about how we’ll find the time. Mary was looking forward to helping with the restaurant, and between all of us, we’ll work out the details.” Tipping her head, she raised her brows at Barrie. “The thing I don’t understand is how, considering you’re so damn dumb about Cassie, you can be so smart about other things.”

The downside to setting things in motion was how quickly they snowballed out of control. Pru was so excited about the restaurant that she insisted on calling Mary the moment she and Barrie got back to Watson’s Landing. The three of them spent forty minutes on the phone, Pru and Barrie taking turns shouting into Barrie’s cell phone while they made sheet after sheet of scribbled notes about tasks that needed to be done. Between that, a few tentative menus to be priced out, and their own dinner to prepare and eat, it was past ten o’clock before Pru retired to bed and Barrie finally managed to find some peace and quiet to call Obadiah.

Given how much the
yunwi
hated him, she hadn’t dared leave the disk where they could find it. Standing in the relative privacy of her own room, she pulled the disk from her
pocket and made herself ignore the way the
yunwi
immediately darted under the canopied bed and peered at her from beneath the bedskirt. A wordless screech vibrated in the air.

“I’m doing this to protect you,” Barrie said. “So don’t nag at me. What happens to you and Watson’s Landing if Obadiah takes away the gift?”

Turning her back to them, she studied the disk and half-expected the raven to cock its head at her again, or to fly out from the disk to peck her hand. It didn’t move, and after a wary moment, she flipped the coin over and felt both relief and dread on finding that the phone number hadn’t disappeared.

She dialed, and eerily, Obadiah picked up before the phone had even rung. “You were running out of time, pretty girl. ‘Soon’ means soon. I was afraid you needed a better demonstration of why it wouldn’t pay to cross me. You don’t need a demonstration, do you?”

“No, but ‘soon’ means when it’s
possible
.” Barrie felt her nerves slip away, to be replaced by a strange calm at the sound of his cold, crisp voice. Obadiah seemed more human now that she was speaking to him during the semblance of a phone call. More normal.

Too normal. It didn’t pay to forget he wasn’t.

“What are you?” she asked, lowering herself onto the edge of the bed and gripping the carved post until it dug into her fingers. The slight pain helped to lighten the mist that clouded
her mind, and she was able to think more clearly. “Are you a real person, or something else?”

“Once, a long time ago, I was as real as you are, the same as you are. Now? I’m not sure I know anymore. People do what they must to survive. We are forced to become things we never dreamed or asked to become. We live long enough to see things we never thought or wished to see.” His voice was subdued as he spoke, and then he took a breath that seemed to tremble over the phone line, so that Barrie would have sworn she felt it against her cheek. For an instant, she thought he was sitting beside her, but when she looked, he wasn’t there.

“What time do we go over tonight?” he asked.

“Not tonight.” Nervously, Barrie traced the carved pineapple on the mahogany bed frame with her finger. “Tomorrow at eleven thirty. That was the best I could do, and I hope you can manage to find a boat, because I’m not planning to dog-paddle across that river ever again.”

He was silent long enough that her heart gave a familiar panicked flutter, and then all he said was, “Fine. I’ll meet you on the dock.”

Barrie hadn’t realized her shoulders were clenched until they suddenly relaxed, and then partly because she had already scared herself and partly because the silence was unnerving, she dared to ask what she’d been wondering ever since Cassie had brought it up.

“When you mentioned that the Colesworths had a debt to pay, did you mean the Union gold?” she asked.

She waited, but he didn’t answer. There was no click and no dial tone, either, only silence on the phone and a pause long enough that she gradually became aware that Obadiah wasn’t there. She wondered if he ever had been, and she peered around the room, wondering if he was hidden somewhere, playing games. But the
yunwi
were watching her with their eyes burning steadily in their faces and their bodies unusually still. They would have been more agitated if Obadiah had actually been in the room.

“God, I wish I knew what was going on,” she said to no one in particular. She tossed the phone down onto the white embroidered quilt, and only when both her hands were empty did she realize that the green disk with the raven was gone again.