The Rhythm of the August Rain (10 page)

“You read sci-fi books.”

“Yes.” It wasn't a lie; it just took him a year to finish one.

She let her hand rest on the large sliced shell beside the books. “I know what kind of shell this is.” She stuck the other hand in her jeans pocket.

“Your mother gave it to me long ago.”

“It's a nautilus. We have a couple at home.” She ran one finger around the shell's circular chambers. “Do you know what they call this formation?” Another test for him, he knew, letting him know that she knew more than him, more than kangaroos now.

“The circles in the shell, you mean?”

She kept running her finger around the shell's delicate interior. “They call it a whorl.”

“A whirl of whorls, huh?” His light laugh received no response as she kept focused on the shell. Typical woman, Eric concluded, unable to shift moods quickly, but it was worth a try.

She walked through the open louver doors onto the verandah. Circling the two wooden armchairs, she walked to the edge of the verandah facing the ocean, her frizzy hair sparkling in the sun. “You don't have rails.”

“I like a clear view of the ocean.” He couldn't afford to enclose it—and he hadn't been expecting visits from children.

She looked over the bougainvillea bushes to the kitchen window, where Maisie was busy at the sink, and sat down in one of the chairs.

Eric lowered to the other, his mind racing ahead to what could come next. “It's hot out here in the day, so I don't—”

“Is that where your hotel was?” She pointed to the island.

“Yes, a long time ago.”

“And that's where the woman was living.”

“Who told you?”

“Miss Bertha.”

He sat back and crossed his arms. “Yes, that's where she lived. After she left, we named it after her, Simone Island.”

“How long was she there?” she said, shielding her eyes as she peered at the site.

“A little over two months.”

Her rose-pink nose was long and straight, the Keller nose, he noticed for the first time. “How did she get food?”

“We rowed it out to her.”

“And she was all alone?” The corners of Eve's lips twitched, as if she were thinking it would be cool to live in exile.

“Except for a little dog, she called him Cammy—after her brother Cameron.”

“Where is she now?”

“Back in Atlanta.”

“With the dog?”

“He ran away as soon as they came back to the village. Cute little thing. He barked and woke her up once when some men went out there to hurt her, probably saved her life.”

Eve looked at him hard with her blue Irish eyes with their black spokes. “Do you—are you and her, you know, having a thing?”

He swallowed. “We're good friends, if that's what you mean.”

“You like her, though.”

“Why'd you think so?”

“You look kind of weird when you talk about her.”

He swept his hair back over his ears and stood up. “I have to get back to the bar. Those folks might need lunch. Come on, let's meet Maisie and take some orders.”

T
here was nothing like mango juice dripping down your chin, especially the juice of the prized Julie mango. Jennifer had saved one from the clutches of Little Wayne and presented it to Shannon earlier. It was a beauty, with touches of pink and yellow on the skin.

“Go sit on the porch and eat it like a Jamaican,” her hostess had ordered her.

Five minutes later, Shannon had changed out of her work clothes and was sitting in one of the rocking chairs on the verandah, a plate on her lap to catch drips. She stripped off the mango's skin with her teeth, working her way around in a circle, and bit into the flesh. When Shad had taught her once how
a real Jamaican
ate a mango, he'd had to wipe her nose so she could breathe.

As she chewed, the journalist thought about Katlyn, and how she'd gotten deeply into the Jamaican countryside and culture. Surely she must have loved mangoes. She'd learned the folk dances, would have learned patois in Gordon Gap, probably enjoyed the island's food. Thoughts and questions about Katlyn had begun to sit with Shannon, along with a growing respect for the woman's values. The woman in the photograph she carried around in her bag had started to become three-dimensional, four, if you included her idealistic spirit, and Shannon was starting to feel a connection with her. Two Canadian women who had fallen for a man in Jamaica; they were both risk takers with a strong sense of adventure—adventure that had gone awry for both of them, worse for the younger woman.

The biggest questions about Katlyn were still haunting Shannon. Was the cause of her death natural or not? Who was responsible? And what happened to her after she died? Shannon shuddered to think that her body could have been thrown into the ocean or tossed into a ravine. It was only right that someone should investigate her death, give her some peace, as Shad had said.

“I'm going to find out everything I can about you, Katlyn,” she promised aloud. “Maybe I'll find myself in the process.”

Shannon took another bite of mango, her gaze sweeping over the sloping garden in front of her, over the mango trees laden with fruit and the poinciana trees with their spreads of bright blossoms. Below the garden squatted her former lover's bar. She'd been embarrassed for him when she'd first seen it, one of the dozens of crude island bars along the coast, a far cry from the hotel. It couldn't take in much money, she was sure. The few customers that had been there on a Saturday afternoon had told her as much. Yet—and she gave him a check mark at the thought—he'd sent her child support every month for the past thirteen years and never whined about his finances.

No longer the dashing lover with a charming hotel, he had fallen in her eyes and she was still coming to terms with the downward swoop of his life, karma she wouldn't have wished on anyone. She'd thought of compliments she could give him about the bar, but they wouldn't have been true. The only saving grace was the stunning view, but if she'd mentioned it, they would have looked over at the ruins of the hotel, and it would have brought back too many memories—for her if not for him. If not for the news that he was going to own a hotel again, she would have felt nothing but pity for him.

He'd aged since she'd last seen him. His hair had gone platinum white, the lines on his face were now trenches, and his skin looked as if it needed a ton of moisturizer. The paunch was new. He'd never been one to exercise, other than working a bit in the hotel garden, and it had caught up with him. He'd seemed almost cautious, withdrawn even, when he spoke to her, and she'd concluded that his eyesight must be failing because he'd narrowed his eyes whenever he looked at her.

Jennifer dropped to a chair beside her holding the large, yellow handbag Shannon had brought her as a gift.

“Going out?” Shannon asked.

“Nope.” Jennifer opened the handbag. “Mind if I smoke?”

“I thought you'd stopped a million years ago!”

“I started when I was taking care of my mom last spring, before she died.” Jennifer slid a menthol cigarette out of a pack. “The stress was so damn high, running back and forth to the hospital, dealing with doctors, screaming at nurses, meeting with lawyers, all kinds of stuff. My sister smokes and I gave in.” She lit the cigarette and, snapping the lighter closed, exhaled a cone of smoke to one side. “Don't tell Lam, though. He hates it.”

“Don't smoke around Eve and I won't tell Lambert.”

“Done.”

Shannon licked her lips. “You know what those things can do to you, right?”

“I'm cutting back.”

“Promise?”

“I swear. Now let's talk about you. How's the work going?”

“Good—I think. Carlton and I went off to the Ocho Rios craft market today. I got some great shots, learned a lot, too. I found out that Rastas don't like to be called Rastafarians, but
Rastafari
, which is closer to one of the Emperor Haile Selassie's names—Ras Tafari, you know. It means a chief who is respected or feared, I found out during my interview with this really sweet woman who makes jewelry. We talked about the male-female-equality thing with Rastas.”

“I thought the women were always subordinate to the men.”

“I think that's changing. At least, she seemed to think so. She's pretty active in her community, plans events and all that, and she adores Haile Selassie's wife, the former empress.”

“They see Selassie as a god, don't they?”

“As Jah, the one and only God.”

“What do they say now that he's dead?”

Shannon dropped the mango seed on the plate and wiped her mouth with the paper towel beside her. “They don't think of him as dead since God is not supposed to die. Some don't believe he's dead; they say he's in hiding. Others say he's transitioned to a place where he can't be seen, kind of like Jesus.”

“The whole culture exists under our middle-class noses, doesn't it?” Jennifer waved her cigarette. “We don't even know much about it. They're sort of mystical or something, in a different world. They don't give a damn about society, and they—they scare me a little, to tell you the truth.”

“I remember being afraid of them myself when I used to come out. They looked so fierce, you know. I'd speak to one or two if they were selling me something, coconut water or craft, but I pretty much kept away. I didn't want to get into an argument with any of them.”

“We see the dreadlocks, hear the language, and most of us keep a polite distance. You hear all kinds of things—”

“What kinds of things?”

“They're probably rumors, but I heard one woman was burned to death in a camp. Then there's all that marijuana smoking. They just think differently, kind of like a sect, you know. They have their beliefs and their rites and rituals, not Jim Jones or anything, but they're very set in their opinions, very sensitive—and suspicious of foreigners.” Jennifer tapped ash from her cigarette over the verandah rail. “I want you to be careful, Shan.”

“So far I haven't seen anything to make me worried. I still have a lot of work to do, though. I want to see this professor who's written some of the books I've been reading.”

“I know you have work to do, but don't forget you're in Jamaica, sweetie. Leave some time for the beach, too.”

Shannon laughed. “As long as I don't get as red as Eve.”

“Is she okay?” Jennifer's botoxed brow allowed the ghost of a wrinkle. “It's hard to read her. I offered to take her shopping in Kingston with Casey, but she didn't seem interested. She's kind of—detached.”

“She's fine. If she isn't slightly miserable, she's not happy.”

“Does she like the waitressing bit?”

“She pretended it was boring, but
loved
the four hundred Jamaican dollars in tips. When she heard how little it was in Canadian, she wasn't too happy.”

Jennifer chuckled as she put out the cigarette in a bottle extracted from the bag.

“You're pretty clever hiding your habit, aren't you?” Shannon teased.

“It's more trouble than it's worth.”

“Addictions can be hard to break.”

“You mean like Eric?” Jennifer dropped the bottle into her bag and clicked it shut. “I don't know who you're trying to fool. You're not through with him.”

“My neighbor back home thinks the same thing.”

Jennifer scrutinized Shannon through half-closed lids. “Did you ever end it, officially, I mean?”

“We never discussed it. Everything kind of faded to black, I suppose.”

“My God, Shan, all these years, fourteen years and you've never—”

“Whenever we talked, it was always about Eve, about money, about his visits.”

“There were only three.”

“Right, well, about the three visits. Sometimes you don't have to talk about things. Neither one of us likes to—has to go into things in detail.”

“Do you
want
it to be over?”

“If you're asking do I still have feelings for him, the answer is of course I—I care about him.” Shannon felt like a traitor speaking about it, but it was time for honesty. “He's wise, funny, makes love passionately, demands nothing from you, and lets you be yourself—not like the younger guys.” The Canadian swallowed hard as she took a couple of rocks in the chair. “He becomes your best friend, your lover, the brother you never had, everything wrapped into one—then you get pregnant.”

She rubbed a bite on her leg. “But he doesn't want the child and he doesn't ask you to marry him, and you spend your pregnancy defending your decision to keep the baby, rejecting your—your friends' and family's
concern
, but wondering if you've done the right thing. And every day after that you ask yourself if you should call him, if you should give him an ultimatum, if you should apologize, if
he
should apologize. Should you fly down and confront him or should you have a lawyer draw up a document?” Shannon turned to her friend. “And you end up having the baby and cashing his checks.”

“Hoping that one day—”

“I'm
not
hoping.”

“You expect me to believe that you came here to do an assignment and that's all? You could have stayed in Montego Bay to do the job. Not that I'm not glad—”

“I came because—because I wanted to come back to Largo. It was an important part of my life, and I wanted Eve to know her father.”

“And if it just happens that you and her father rekindle the old fire, you wouldn't mind, would you?”

“Times change, people change, Jen. I almost don't know him after all this time. There's a lot that's happened to me and to him since I was here last, from the hotel being ruined to—I feel like I barely know him anymore.” Beneath them, the bar's thatch roof lay dull in the sun. “Fourteen years is a long time, maybe too long. We'll have to see.”