Falling Darkness--A Novel of Romantic Suspense

by Karen Harper

  Claire twisted around in her seat and whispered, “Let’s hear what Julia wants to say. She has some important and interesting things to tell us.”

  “Okay, listen up, team,” Julia told them with a serious look, as if to back Claire up. “I hope the rocking boat doesn’t bother you.”

  “It’s nothing after what we’ve been through lately,” Jace assured her.

  “Let me give you a little background about the island,” Julia went on.

  If she’d picked up on Jace’s special interest, it hadn’t seemed to faze her. She was probably in her late forties or early fifties, Nick figured, but she was in great shape and looked younger. Only worry lines on her forehead and around her mouth dated her at all. She was athletic-looking and really toned. Tanned too, like maybe she used a sunlamp. Her short, sleek hair was silver but even that didn’t seem to age her. Rob Patterson had said she’d been an FBI agent stationed in Washington, DC, but she’d come back to her home last year to care for her ailing father so her daughter here wouldn’t have that burden. It was a great setup too for Julia to help them, because her father, Hunter Logan, was their landlord.

  “If you could see the outline of the island from here through these patches of fog, you’d see it’s in the shape of a huge turtle,” Julia explained, gesturing at the bank of windows.

  Lexi piped up again. “I used to have a stuffed turtle, but it got lost. Now I just have Shark-Killer, and he’s a whale.”

  “I see he’s a whale,” Julia said with a smile at Lexi. “Hopefully, no sharks or whales around here. Anyway, the Indian tribes long ago like the Hurons, Chippewas and Ottawas believed their high god they called Gitche Manitou lived on the island, so they used to bury their dead there. Our tourists we call ‘fudgies,’ because they buy our great fudge, don’t realize this island was once a huge cemetery of hidden graves.”

  “Cheery, isn’t she, boss?” Heck said from behind. “Once FBI, always FBI.”

  “What’s FBI?” Lexi asked.

  “Later, shh!” Nita said.

  “But after the Indians, the French came next,” Julia said in a confident voice that would have made her an excellent courtroom expert witness, “then the British, then the Americans—and you know how that goes. War. There’s a War of 1812–era fort you can visit with a statue of Father Marquette, who had earlier Christianized the Indians.”

  Lexi again, this time leaning forward and making an attempt to whisper in Claire’s ear, “I like that statue that looked like you, Mommy, and that baby in your arms.”

  “Honey, please listen,” Claire whispered. She didn’t want to admit it, but the memory of that statue in the Havana cemetery of the woman who looked like her and the story of that dead baby haunted her. She’d even had a nightmare about it.

  Julia went on, “I mention the history of the island because, in a way, we’re still living it. No motor vehicles on the island, though we do have a fire engine and ambulance for emergencies. Mackinac is only a four-mile-by-two-mile-sized island, so we walk, ride bikes or horses—and even your supplies will be delivered to your house in a horse-drawn dray or wagon.”

  “Horses! I love horses,” Lexi cried, and Claire gave up on shushing her. “Lily and I would love to see all of them.”

  Julia came closer and smiled at Lexi. “Well, I don’t know who Lily is. The thing is, Meggie, of the about five hundred horses which work on the island in season, most of them are taken on ferries like this to the mainland because their food is hard to get here in the winter when the water ices over. But I have eight horses in my stable, and two of them are ponies. Maybe we can arrange to give you riding lessons.”

  “Oh, Mommy, can I?”

  “We’ll see. We have some things to settle first, get into our house and all, but we’ll see.”

  “You’ve made a friend for life,” Jace told Julia with a smile.

  “Daddy, can I do it?” Lexi blurted out to him.

  It was Julia who answered, her voice almost stern now. “Meggie, remember that we all need to pretend that this is a place where Jack Randal, your father, is coming to spend the winter to write a book and this man is his brother, your uncle, named Seth Randal. You need to remember that story and everyone’s new names in case anyone asks—and then we can talk about riding lessons.”

  “Oh. Right. I won’t forget.” She ran around the bench, careful of Nick’s wounded leg propped up. “If I say everything right, can I learn to ride, Daddy?” she asked Nick.

  “Like your mother said, we’ll see. I think it will work out.”

  “Yay!” she cried, but Nick saw Jace was furious again. It must be tough for him to see his daughter call another man “Daddy.”

  “Okay, we’re turning into the harbor, and it will be a bit calmer now,” Julia announced and went back to peer out the front windows. “Look to the right as we go in, and you’ll see two lighthouses. Then when we get nearer to the pier, look up and you’ll see the row of buildings on Main Street where your house is. It’s a lovely old Victorian—there—that one with the green shingle roof and that fancy cupola. All our houses have names here and that one is Widow’s Watch because, they say, a captain’s wife used to walk on that railed path around the cupola to watch for her husband coming back from the Great Lakes.”

  With her hand on Nick’s shoulder, Claire stood to look out. He appreciated that she didn’t leave him. Several others went to the windows, Jace so close to Julia that he was peering over her shoulder.

  Julia ducked around him and went to Claire. “I hope you’ll be happy here,” she told her. “Rest up. I want to show all of you our famous Grand Hotel in the next few days, maybe when I come to visit so we can all go over possible temporary employments, financial issues, dos and don’ts.”

  “We’re grateful for all the help and support,” Nick told her. “But I know, when the time comes, you’ll expect the same from all of us.”

  * * *

  Claire loved the house Julia’s father owned. It was a large, square two-story with a small attached carriage house, all built in the 1880s—evidently not unusual around here—with plenty of room and sleeping space for the eight of them. They entered through a front porch that had two doors, one to a formal parlor with antique furniture and one to a modern living area with a big-screen TV on the wall, overhead recessed lighting and wraparound leather couches. Exhausted, Lexi planted herself and Shark-Killer in front of the TV and found a rerun of Dora the Explorer.

  There was a formal dining room with eight chairs, though they didn’t match, so Julia must have scouted for those. Still, Claire couldn’t quite envision all of them sitting down for meals like one happy family. The kitchen was blessedly modern with a dishwasher and microwave, but what had she expected, a pump over the sink and a wood-burning stove? It did have an antique-looking chest freezer.

  The house boasted two staircases, a wide, carpeted one with a banister at the front and a narrow wooden one, once servants’ stairs, at the back that led to a separate entrance with its own key. Julia passed out front door keys to everyone. But, mumbling something about losing a key, she gave Nick the only one for the back stair entrance.

  Upstairs a long hall led to four high-ceilinged, same-size bedrooms. A full bath sat partway back on one side of the hall with a shower and tub and a half bath across from that. All eight of them would share a shower and a tub?

  Standing in the hall after peeking in all the rooms, they decided that Claire and Nick would take the back bedroom with the four-poster bed; Nita and Gina would stay with Lexi right across from them with a single bed and bunk beds; Heck and Bronco would take one front room with twin beds; and Jace the other overlooking Main Street.

  They didn’t go up in the attic, which Julia said stretched the length of the house and could be reached from the servants’ stairs. She explained it was just for storage and was the place to access th
e circular walkway around the cupola, called a “widow’s watch” or a “widow’s walk.”

  Claire touched Julia’s arm to pull her back a bit from the others who were heading downstairs again. “You said the woman watched for her seafaring husband from up there,” she said to Julia. “So if she was a widow, he never came back?”

  Julia sighed and frowned. She looked away, so unlike her usual directness, and said, “Lydia Wharton’s captain husband did not come back the last time. Lost at sea with his ship in a huge storm. Yet they say she used to walk up there until the day she died, still looking for him, thinking he’d just been marooned someplace and would return.”

  Tears filled Julia’s bright blue eyes. Her sudden shift in mood made Claire wonder what had happened to Julia’s husband. Earlier, she’d said she had a daughter who lived here, in her early twenties. Julia had returned here so the girl didn’t have to care for her grandfather who had dementia. That way, she could not only oversee his concerns but his rental property on the island.

  “I’m sure you’ll meet Liz,” Julia had told them en route here in a carriage from the pier. “She runs a shop just beyond the fort on Market Street. Like me once, she’s an islander who was anxious to leave, strike out on her own. I hoped to give her that chance, but now I don’t know. Children—maybe—especially daughters...” she’d said, looking at Claire. “We worry for them at any age, don’t we?”

  Strange, Claire thought. Then and just now, Julia had suddenly seemed unsure and shaken. Something with her daughter, no doubt, fear of her moving away? But Claire had also had the feeling that the woman was going to say more about the long-dead widow Lydia Wharton, watching for her lost husband, so perhaps Julia had lost hers tragically. Claire wondered where to draw the line between seeing Julia as just their WITSEC handler—a well-trained former FBI agent, for heaven’s sake—or a woman and possible friend in this alien place. Well, since Claire knew Jace shouldn’t cross a too-familiar line with Julia, perhaps she shouldn’t either.

  Downstairs again, while Julia oversaw the unloading of their goods when they arrived by horse-drawn dray from the ferry, Claire and Nick huddled in the formal parlor.

  “You should lie down,” he said. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Of course,” she said. He may be wondering if she was suffering from her narcolepsy, but thank goodness she’d got replacement meds in New Orleans on their way to Michigan, after losing hers in that sugarcane field. “It’s just we’ve been through so much, and I’m still nervous about everything working out. Later, when we’re alone, we can unwind a bit. Right now, we—”

  “Pizza’s here, everybody!” they heard Julia call. Claire heard bedroom doors upstairs open. Lexi had left the TV after Dora “solved her mystery” and now appeared with Jace, the two of them laughing.

  Great that someone could laugh, Claire thought. She had to tell Nick tonight what was unsettling her. Terrible timing for a pregnancy, unless she had something else wrong with her. What if her powerful narcolepsy meds had messed with her periods, or she had some dreadful disease? Nick didn’t even have a clue what she’d been hinting at when she’d told him she was glad they had a medical center on the island.

  “What is it?” he’d demanded on the flight earlier today from the New Orleans naval base where they had caught a flight to Cheboygan, Michigan, so they could be driven in a van to catch the ferry. “Claire, are you okay?”

  “Only lovesick over you.” She’d tried to pass that off. But then she’d added a bit of a lie so he wouldn’t make a scene on the small plane. “Your bullet wound may take more care, that’s all. I have worrying in my blood lately.”

  “And I have you in my blood,” Nick had whispered.

  Finally, they would be alone together tonight. Truth time, she’d thought, and they were waiting for pizza now, so her big revelation would still have to wait.

  They started across the hall to join the others in the dining room. A lanky teenage boy stood in the doorway balancing four big boxes of pizza that Heck stepped forward to take from him.

  “Everyone,” Julia said, obviously back to her handler-hostess self again, “this is Jeremy Archer, whose father is our police chief. Jeremy, these are our new renters, the Randals and their staff. The police here ride bikes, too, don’t they, Jeremy?”

  “Unless it snows. Can’t wait til it does because I can have my own snowmobile this winter, not share with my sister. Well, got other deliveries to make, and I have to make sure the pizzas stay hot. Welcome to our island!” he said and beat a fast retreat.

  “Don’t we pay him?” Jace asked Julia.

  “All covered, including the tip, as a welcome.” She grabbed her jacket from the china umbrella stand near the door. “I’ve got to run but I’ll be back tomorrow to continue orientation. Meggie, that means plans where we all cooperate, okay? See you all tomorrow,” she said and headed out.

  “’Bye,” Lexi called after her. “And thanks for the pizza. I don’t want to hurt Gina’s feelings, but it’s lots better than rice and beans and fish.”

  Even Gina laughed. Claire stepped out on the porch alone and called to Julia, who was at the bottom of the house sidewalk.

  “I agree that we can’t thank you enough. I’d love to meet your father and daughter.”

  “I love them, can’t lose them,” Julia said, half to herself with a little wave and a shake of her head. Hands thrust in her coat pockets, she strode off into the darkening, windy night.

  12

  “With all eight of us, it’s kind of like living in a frat house or a dorm again, isn’t it?” Nick asked Claire as he toweled his hair dry after coming back from his turn in the shower. He sat on the edge of the bed, removing the plastic he’d had taped on his wounded leg to keep it dry. Claire thought they’d shared a bed so little in their forced, short marriage that they had never really declared a his-side or her-side.

  Despite how nervous she was, she smiled at the dorm comment. Though she really liked her new “sorority sisters” Nita and Gina, she still missed her own sister and her family desperately. Yes, when she started to comfort and counsel Lexi tomorrow, she’d talk to her some about how they would never lose their first family and how—someday soon perhaps—they’d all be back together. That made her think of Julia again. In a way, she had already lost her father. And, as a single mother, if her daughter moved away, how sad.

  Claire had already bathed Lexi and sat with her until she fell asleep while Nita spent some time with Bronco downstairs. After Claire had taken her own shower, she’d been unpacking clothes for herself, Nick and Lexi and putting hers and Nick’s in a tall chest of drawers that smelled of cedar. Strange to be looking at and wearing clothes someone else had picked out. This was like living someone else’s life, and she desperately wanted her own back. What she planned now to tell Nick—that seemed so unreal too. Everything had happened so fast in their lives together.

  Nick leaned back against the pile of pillows and pulled the covers up over his legs, ever careful of the bandaged one that could shoot pain at him if he hit it wrong.

  “There’s just one thing I want more than sleep—and safety,” he told her as she turned from the dresser and walked slowly toward the four-poster bed.

  “Me, I hope,” she said, gripping the post because her legs were trembling.

  “Exactly. Peace, quiet and you. By the way, I locked our door with that old skeleton key. We don’t need Shark-Killer and its owner coming in here right now. What is it? Come here and let me hold you, or at least you hold me.”

  He leaned forward before she could answer and went on, “What is it? Claire-Jenna, my sweetheart, whatever your name, what’s the matter? It’s more than just the turns our lives have taken, isn’t it? You’ve been so strong and brave. Do you still feel ill? Dizzy?”

  She walked to his side of the bed and sat, careful to a
void his hurt leg. “Dizzy in love with you,” she said, her voice breaking. “But there is something—another complication—I have to tell you about. I know it hasn’t been long and things are a big blur, but you know that night on the yacht where you, Jace and I made a deal to trust WITSEC?”

  “Sure. And don’t you now? I don’t believe the plane crash had anything to do with Rob Patterson, even though he arranged the plane. I think it was Ames’s lackeys again. And I think we lucked out with Julia Collister. She’ll ease us into island life and, hopefully, give us a horse bargaining chip with Lexi, our Meggie.”

  She had to tell him. She had to tell him now. How could a man be so dense when she was obsessed with this? She wanted to fall into his arms, but once she did that, she always lost control. So, like some coward, she sat where she was and merely nodded.

  Frowning, he asked—in his lawyer voice, as if grilling a hostile witness, “Did Jace say something to upset you, more than his behavior toward Julia?”

  “No. I mean, he does upset me because he’s so unhappy and trapped, but aren’t we all? And now, it’s plain that he sees Julia as some sort of diversion, and that’s all we need to mess things up even more.”

  She burst into tears. “Oh, Nick, I’m sorry. I’m just strung out, so—”

  He scooted closer and did just what she was afraid of, because she had to be rational about this. He pulled her close and held her against his strong body, his good leg and hip. Just then the wind outside began again, whining, moaning overhead like there really was some woman on the widow’s walk, keening while she waited for her husband to come home.

  “Nick,” she got out, seizing control of herself again, “I’m not sure but kind of sure. That night we didn’t use anything and made love—I think I may be pregnant. I swear that only happens on soap operas, one night, then a baby, and—I know it hasn’t been long though it seems like ages with all we’ve been through but—Nick?” she said and lifted her head from his shoulder, uncertain what she’d see or hear.