by Ninie Hammon
She could handle it. She would point that jon boat out into the waters of Whispering Mountain Lake. It was dark and cold there now, not like the July day she and Brice had ridden out across the waves together, the first day after Oscar that she was glad to be alive. She shook her head — not now. Right now, she had a job to do. She had to crank that throttle full open and sail out through that burning water to safety.
They’d make it!
Or they wouldn’t and they’d burn to death.
She had already done that once, with María when she painted the portrait. Today, María’s death had happened in real life. Bailey didn’t know how to think about the fact that over and over again, she painted portraits of people and they died anyway. Or her desperate effort to save them ended up killing them.
She didn’t know how to think about any of it.
María, back in her life! And then gone for good.
And Brice.
There wasn’t anywhere in her head or heart where she could think about that right now, either. If she tried, something would break or come undone or fall apart and the whole of who she was would come loose. Loose pieces would fall off. Pieces that’d be gone forever.
All she could do was think about Bethany … who had lost her mommy today.
T.J. nodded.
Bailey nodded back, her eyes watering from the heat. She cranked the throttle and the two of them flew out into the flames like phoenixes who would somehow come out the other side alive.
Brice and María turned to look when somebody on the launch beside them pointed. At first he couldn’t tell what … then he could see. It was a metal jon boat roaring out over the flaming liquor on the water, hurling through it, bursting out of the flames and continuing on, full throttle away from the flames toward the handful of launches parked in the lake a safe distance from the disaster.
María saw her first.
She shrieked “Bailey!” and then started laughing and crying at the same time, yanking on Brice’s arm and pointing at the jon boat, where a black man …
Bailey. It was T.J. and Bailey.
Suddenly, the night was no longer cold. It was as warm as the July day he’d seen Bailey’s black hair shimmering in the sun. The day he’d fallen in love with her.
Bailey saw Brice and María on the launch. She gobbled up the sight of them with her eyes and her heart, and began to laugh. She didn’t throttle back the little Evinrude, though. She merely piloted the jon boat around and around the launch as the cold night air carried her laughter away to the stars.
Chapter Sixty-Six
It happened four days after the fire, when T.J. finally pitched such a fit that the doctors at the hospital threw up their hands and said fine, go home, if your concussion and punctured lung kill you, good riddance!
At least that’s what T.J. told Bailey they said.
It had taken the combined efforts of Bailey and Brice to get him into an ambulance at the marina in the first place.
He did not want to go to the hospital. But it was more than just that. He didn’t want to leave the others and Bailey understood that. None of them wanted to separate. Each of them had for a time believed they’d lost someone they loved. They all were reluctant to let the others out of their sight. Bailey couldn’t take her eyes off María. Or Brice.
Tonight, they’d ordered huge “kitchen-sink” pizzas — everything but anchovies — and T.J. was set up on the couch in Bailey’s new “den” with a pillow under the cast on his arm.
“If I’d knowed you was gonna fuss over me like I was a still-wet chick out of the egg you just laid, I’d a stayed in the hospital.” He looked at Sparky. The dog refused to get more than eighteen inches away from him. “And if that mutt don’t get out of my way, I’m gonna trip over him and break the other arm.”
It was amazing how T.J. could say one thing and mean exactly the opposite — and somehow communicate it so you understood.
Bethany was a bubbly, delightful, happy little girl, the world brightened by her presence, chasing Bundy — Sparky refused to play, wouldn’t leave T.J.’s side — and soaking up the warmth of having her Mommy back. And her new mother.
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Bailey had said when María corrected Bethany for calling her Mommy, said she was really Aunt María. “Of course you’re Mommy. And I’m … Mama or Mom — whatever Bethany decides. We’ve picked our own names our whole lives, and it’s worked out fine so far. The kid’s got two mothers. When she’s a teenager, she’ll wish she didn’t have any.”
Which prompted Brice to ask if the rest of them should start calling her Jessie. Bailey didn’t even have to consider it. “I’m Bailey — Bailey Cunningham, not Donahue — but Bailey. I was Jessie in another life.” Her voice grew quiet. “I’m not that person anymore. Jessica Cunningham died with Aaron.” She hadn’t meant to cast a pall over the evening, so she continued in a cheery voice. “Which means a new driver’s license — again. I’m thinking about wallpapering my bathroom with the old ones.”
Brice advised her to wait a day or two before she went to the Department of Motor Vehicles in the courthouse. The dust hadn’t completely settled there after what’d happened at the Nautilus, a disaster everyone agreed could have been a whole lot worse.
Bailey’s decision to “create chaos” by pulling the fire alarm had cleared the restaurant before Mikhailov detonated his devices. Otherwise, 150 people would have been trapped by the flames. Mikhailov didn’t care how many innocents he had to butcher to get what he wanted.
The marble walls and marble flooring had slowed the spread of the fire beyond the restaurant and most of the crowd had raced down the gangplank to safety in the parking lot.
A single launch captain named Hoppelmeijer had waited, loaded up the stragglers — which included Brice and María — before pulling out into the middle of the lake to join the little armada already there. The death toll could have been staggering. As it stood, three people had still been in the building and were killed when the alcohol bomb went off, six died from smoke inhalation in the hotel and another two dozen people were injured. Bailey, Brice and María all had burns and poor T.J. looked like he’d been dragged through a forest fire behind a team of Clydesdales and the Budweiser beer wagon.
Of course, none of what had happened was the fault of W. Maxwell Crenshaw III, “Billy” to his friends if he’d had any. As usual, he’d skated. If he’d admitted to Brice that Mikhailov was at the hotel, Brice could have summoned an army of law enforcement officers to take him down — though, in truth, María would not likely have survived his arrest. But Brice had no proof that Crenshaw had knowingly harbored a fugitive or was complicit in a kidnapping. The casino employees who’d seen the two of them together earlier in the day had developed a severe case of group amnesia. Meanwhile, Crenshaw was preening in front of the media, professing his absolute innocence — not my monkeys, not my circus — and playing the heartbroken victim. He’d lost his whole business, after all. There was nothing left of the floating casino and hotel complex but a pile of charred rubble.
“I’d bet T.J.’s pension the place was insured for two or three times what it was worth,” Brice had said, goading T.J. into his predictable “why’s-everybody-always-bettin’-my-pension?” response.
Mikhailov’s flunkies — the ones Brice didn’t kill — had slipped away into the crowd. Local, state and federal authorities were searching for them. María could identify them and would gladly testify but Brice and T.J. both believed that once the roaches had crawled back under the baseboard, nobody would ever see them again.
Bailey had explained to María about the painting, and all the other paintings, and what kinds of situations they’d found themselves in because of them. It had taken hours — days. The look on María’s face must have mirrored the one on Bailey’s the day T.J. and Dobbs had told her the fantastic story of their childhoods. She’d thought it’d be easier for María to swallow since Bailey, Brice, T.J. and Dobbs could contribute to the story.
Riiiiight. Easy to swallow that Bailey could paint the future and because she could, the four of them had almost been washed away when a dam exploded. Had almost been killed by a human spider. Had almost drowned in a flood in a coal mine.
That story would win the gold medal in the Couldn’t Possibly Be True Olympics.
María was still reeling from the psychological blow. She hadn’t seen the painting of her yet, said she wasn’t ready. But she didn’t want it destroyed until she did.
Then Bailey noticed a splotch of paint on Bethany’s shoe.
“Where did she get that?” she asked nobody in particular.
“I can tell you when she got it,” Dobbs said. “That child almost scared me into the middle of next week. I was pacing the floor, worrying about all of you. She was chasing Sparky and Bundy. And then she wasn’t. She was just gone.”
“Hard to lose a child big as she is,” T.J. said. “Did you try looking where you left her?”
“You want the other arm in a cast?”
“Ain’t no need to get your panties in a wad.”
“I did find her, thank you very much. Actually, she found me, running around from room to room calling for her.”
“Where was she?” María asked.
“I guess in the studio. She must have been there because she had that paint on her shoe.”
Bethany perked up at those words.
“It drip-ted,” she said, and held out her shoe to display the mostly scuffed off paint on the tip of it. Green paint. An odd shade of lime green.
“You painted a picture?” María asked. “You know I have to spread out newspapers so you—”
“Wasn’t my picture. It was already painted.”
The adults looked at each other. For some reason, Bailey got a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.
“Can you show me the picture?”
“Uh huh.”
Bethany hopped off the couch and ran into the studio. The glorious north light was not in evidence on this overcast December day. But the overheads granted plenty of light to see. By the time the adults got to the room, Bethany was standing beside a canvas resting against the wall.
Bailey stifled a gasp when Bethany leaned it away from the wall to show the front.
“See, I painted,” Bethany said.
There was silence then, everyone taking in what they saw and processing it in their own way. It was the portrait Bailey had painted of María — watching the flames come at her before she burned to death. The one María hadn’t wanted to see yet.
At least that’s what the portrait had been before Bethany took a brush to it. Now, the portrait showed María with the fire coming at her. But a great glob of lime green paint was smeared on the canvas between her and the flames.
“How did …?” somebody asked. Didn’t matter who. They all wanted to know how did …?
María was the only one of the group who wasn’t feeling the full impact of what she was seeing. It was shocking to see herself there, like that, of course. But she hadn’t seen the other portraits and wasn’t connecting the dots.
“Bethy, where did you get the paint?” she asked the little girl.
The child pointed to a pallet that lay on the floor between the portrait and the wall. It was covered in dry paint — yellow, blue, burnt umber and some other colors, all mixed together to form lime green.
“Bethany …?” Bailey heard her own voice and paused, started over with less tension in it. “Honey, how did you know what colors to mix together to get …?”
She shrugged.
“I gotted the paint and the brushes … and then it was just there.”
All the air was sucked out of the room, but Bailey found enough to say, “Brush-es?”
“Uh huh.” Bethany pointed to two brushes with dried paint lying on the floor where the pallet had been. “Dose brushes. Boff two of ‘em.”
“She bumped her head in the kitchen.” There was no emotion in Bailey’s voice because she was feeling every emotion in her whole being at the same time and they cancelled each other out.
“What?” María asked, looking from one person to the next. “What am I missing here?”
“The day before … you weren’t here. She was running with the dogs and took her shoes off. When she hit the hardwood floor in sock feet she slipped and fell.”
T.J.’s voice was emotionless, too, maybe because he was too stunned to feel anything at all.
“I got Sparky to sit for her, so she wouldn’t cry.”
“So she fell in the kitchen and bumped her head …” María was totally confounded. “What does that have to do with the Grinch-green paint on this picture?”
Bailey didn’t know where in the world to start to explain it to her.
Dobbs wasn’t trying to explain it. He was trying to understand it.
“Did Bethany paint that Grinch on the picture because she somehow knew it fell and saved her mommy?” Profound silence rushed in to fill the void left by Dobbs’s made-for-radio voice, a voice tight with a kind of fear Bailey’d never heard there before. “Or did that Grinch fall and save her mommy because Bethany painted the picture?”
Not a person in the room had an answer.
THE END
A Special Request
Thank you for reading Blue Tears.
If you enjoyed this book. would you please consider writing a review of it on your favorite bookseller’s website so other readers might enjoy it too. Just a couple of sentences. That would mean a lot to me.
Thank you!
Ninie Hammon
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From award-winning journalist and bestselling author Ninie Hammon comes a sprawling tale with sleep-with-the-lights-on suspense coupled with characters so lifelike they'll feel like family.
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Also By Ninie Hammon
Through The Canvas Series
Black Water
Red Web
Gold Promise
The Unexplainable Collection
Five Days in May
Black Sunshine
The Based on True Stories Collection
Home Grown
Sudan
When Butterflies Cry
The Knowing Series
The Knowing
The Deceiving
The Reckoning
Stand-alone Psychological Thrillers
The Memory Closet
The Last Safe Place
Nonfiction/Memoir
Typin’ ‘Bout My Generation
About the Author
Ninie Hammon (rhymes with shiny, not skinny) grew up in Muleshoe, Texas, got a BA in English and theatre from Texas Tech University and snagged a job as a newspaper reporter. She didn't know a thing about journalism, but her editor said if she could write he could teach her the rest of it and if she couldn't write the rest of it didn't matter. She hung in there for a 25-year career as a journalist. As soon as she figured out that making up the facts was a whole lot more fun than reporting them, she turned to fiction and never looked back.
Ninie now writes suspense--every flavor except pistachio: psychological suspense, inspirational suspense, suspense thrillers, paranormal suspense, suspense mysteries.
In every book she keeps this promise to her Loyal Reader: "I will tell you a story in a distinctive voice you'll always recognize, about people as ordinary as you are--people who have been slammed by something they didn’t sign on for, and now they must fight for their lives. Then smack in the middle of their everyday worlds, those people encounter the unexplainable--and it's always the game-changer."
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