by Karen Harper
“More like to convince me to stay here and just sell online, but she doesn’t understand about fittings, sometimes several for one garment. I love the island, but I’ve got to go. She loved it here, but she left for a career. So,” she said, as if snapping out of another place with a faraway look, “you let me know if you’d like a custom-made corset at a very good price. Men love them too for their women, the newest thing in bedroom lingerie!”
Bedroom lingerie. Claire had asked Julia this morning in private if she could recommend an ob-gyn on the mainland, and she had a name. If she was pregnant, it was no time for a corset.
“So no childhood sweethearts to keep you here?” Gina asked the question that Claire had decided not to. She’d really like to ask about Wade.
“Would you believe I’ve been proposed to twice by islanders and turned them down both times?”
When Liz walked them downstairs to say goodbye, a handsome young man was just heading up the steps. He had slicked-back raven-dark hair and the touch of beard stubble that was supposed to be so sexy these days.
“Oh, Wade,” she said. “You promised to at least wait til Saturday.”
Perhaps realizing she had said too much, Liz told them. “This is a friend, Wade Buxton. I’m referring to a huge convention this weekend of that old romantic movie Somewhere in Time at Grand Hotel, and Wade has promised to help me hand out ads for corsets—the perfect captive audience for Victorian-era fans.
“So,” she rushed on before he could speak, “these ladies are Gina and Jenna, renters in Granddad’s Widow’s Watch house, and they’re just leaving.”
Liz practically dragged Wade past them up the stairs and called down another goodbye. So was this man one of Liz’s suitors she’d turned down and Julia didn’t like him? What Claire had overheard at the hotel had made her think he might actually be another WITSEC refugee. Julia had introduced Liz to them, but if Wade was also a witness in hiding and had got too close to Liz, Julia could be panicked over that.
Claire almost missed the bottom step when Wade called down to them, “Just thought of something, ladies. That old Widow’s Watch place is the one with the ghost that walks upstairs near the roof.”
“Really?” Claire said, turning back and looking up. Her pulse began to pound.
“Yeah, looking for her man lost at sea.” Wade had some sort of Eastern accent—Brooklyn?—but Claire stayed riveted on his words. “I guess she keeps crying. Some say they’ve seen her too.”
“Wade, never mind,” Liz scolded. “All superstitions.”
“Caramba!” Gina whispered.
“That’s all we need,” Claire muttered, but, with a wave back at Liz, steering Gina away, she kept on going.
15
Claire waited in Dr. Manning’s examination room, staring at a chart on the wall of a baby in utero. The test had been simple. Just a urine sample, then wait for the results to test for a particular hormone, which they did on-site. But why was it taking them so long to get Nick from the waiting room so he could hear the news with her? The nurse had gone out to bring him in, and the doctor had said he’d be right back with the results.
And could this really be happening? A baby when her marriage to Nick had just begun? So many things had happened to get them off to a difficult and dangerous start.
They’d taken a taxi to get from the ferry to this St. Ignace doctor Julia had recommended. All the islanders went to him, she’d said, and had their babies off island. At least, Claire thought, it was great to have someone people trusted. She’d been through so much trauma and upheaval, so maybe that was the cause of her missed period, her exhaustion, her strange stomachache.
The door opened and Nick entered.
“The nurse says he’ll be right in.”
“I heard him go into the next room. He’s very kind, says he’s delivered island babies for years.”
“Would you mind?” he asked, sitting in the chair next to her and leaning toward her to take her hands in his.
“You mean, being pregnant right now? With everything we still have to face?”
“And when we haven’t been married—or together—that long?”
“Is that what you’re thinking?”
“I’m thinking how much I love you, that I did hope we’d have a family someday and that I’m excited about the idea of a child, even when we’re hiding out and probably being hunted.”
She leaned closer to him and they kissed, quickly, then slowly, then parted when they heard the doctor’s voice in the hall. “Despite the distractions,” she told him, “I’m starting to feel safe on the island. It will be even better when the water ices over, though Jace said they still fly into the airport in the winter, weather willing.”
A quick rap sounded on the door and the doctor came in. He had a clipboard in his hands.
“Congratulations!” he told them with a smile lighting his weathered face. “It’s early, so not much more to say because this hormone test will be positive even ten days after conception. But you said your prediction is probably less than a month along, Mrs. Randal? I’d have to say you two know more than I do about that right now.”
Nick squeezed her hands, and she pressed his back. A baby, a brother or sister for Lexi! But also, someone else precious to fear for and protect.
* * *
Claire and Nick ate that night at the nearby Island House restaurant, telling the others they just needed to get away for a bit. Walking with a cane, Nick managed the distance by himself.
They had decided not to tell anyone about the pregnancy for now. Over dinner, they made plans, happy ones about safety and a future home. They talked of the day that Ames would be indicted and judged guilty and rot in some American prison that had no luxury suites, flesh-eating goldfish or poison garden flowers, and no kingdom of spies at his beck and call.
“One other thing,” Claire said as they went out and strolled slowly home along Main Street. “Something else I don’t want to share with everyone, at least yet. I told you we met that Wade guy—Wade Buxton—that Julia wants to steer clear of Liz. Well, when Liz mentioned where we were living, he said something like, ‘Oh, the place with the ghost, the woman who lost her husband.’”
“Ghost! Oh, great, just great, not that I believe in ghosts, only in human hauntings. But I can see why that superstition got started since the wind shrieks up there. Claire, you’re not letting that get to you, are you? You don’t believe there’s a ghost up there wailing, right?”
“I never believed in ghosts until that time I nearly drowned. And then—I know it sounds insane—but I saw something. Two people helping to save me then, two dead people from the past.”
“You were delusional. Lack of oxygen, and the brain can do weird things in that circumstance. Plus you’d been off your meds.”
She gripped his arm and they stopped walking. “Nick, Wade Buxton said some people have seen our ghost widow.”
“Baloney! But Julia should have mentioned it. Hope there’s nothing else she didn’t tell us.”
* * *
When they got back to Widow’s Watch, Claire decided to wait for Nick downstairs in the parlor while he huddled with Heck in the dining room. Happy to have a laptop, he had been writing up statements Nick had made about Ames’s past, including Nick’s insistence that Ames, once a family friend, had actually killed his father and staged it to look like a suicide.
That shattering event was what had inspired Nick to form South Shores years later. Through it, often privately and without fees, he helped families whose loved one had suffered an apparent suicide to prove it actually had been murder or even an accident. Insurance companies often had clauses that refused payment of life insurance death benefits if the person killed himself or herself, so a lot of money could be involved. Nick’s support could be legal once he’d disproved suicide, and that was why he’d
first hired Claire. Interviewing the family, friends—and psyching out the dead person’s state of mind—was the realm of a forensic psychologist.
To Claire’s surprise as she entered the dim, silent parlor and snapped on a lamp, Jace unwound his tall frame from being slumped on the sofa.
“Oh, sorry if you were sleeping,” she said. “Something wrong with your bed upstairs?”
“Should I say something lovelorn, like I’m lonely, especially there? Everybody else is more or less paired off.”
“How did your first day at the airport go?” she asked, taking the coward’s way out by not pursuing that. She instantly felt guilty for not saying she understood. After all, she’d reached out to Gina and the others, but this was different—delicate.
“The airport was all right,” he said with a shrug. “Boring but better than hanging around here. I hear Julia was here for a while today, so it’s a good thing I was elsewhere, right?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Maybe I made a Freudian slip, Ms. Psychologist.”
“Jace, that’s not a Freudian slip but you’ve obviously realized it’s bad judgment to flirt with her.”
“Flirt? Sounds like we’re back in middle school. She’s an interesting, important woman to us.”
“Interesting and important, all right. So cozying up to her is against policy and not a good idea. If someone’s onto her, they could find us. That’s why she wants to keep that Wade Buxton character away from her daughter, I think. What if he’s a WITSEC refugee here too?”
He shrugged again and shook his head, frowning. “I’ve seen you’re very friendly with Julia, so why not me?”
“That’s different, and you know it.”
“Mrs. Jack Randal, what I know is that you’re sounding as if you’re jealous of my finding her very attractive.”
“Disaster on the horizon, brother-in-law Seth Randal.”
“Hey, no man’s an island, even on an island. I resent your thinking I’d do something to risk our safety. Julia’s obviously safe, whereas who knows about someone else I might meet here? Now, I’m going upstairs to read Meggie a story tonight instead of you. Or better yet, since we haven’t seen any kids’ books here, I’ll make up a story about a family who lived safely on an island. No divorce, no lies, no jealousy—no hard times.”
He walked past her so fast she felt a breeze. Or actually, a cold wind blowing between her and the man she’d once loved and had a child with. The one who had kindly, courageously saved her husband just last week. The one she still cared for more than she ever wanted him—or anyone—to know.
* * *
Once they got down from the carriage Julia had sent for them the next morning, Lexi skipped along at Claire’s side, so excited to be going to see horses and ponies. Bronco had come along with the two of them, planning to meet Julia’s father, Hunter Logan, with whom he’d spend some time to free up Julia and Liz from keeping an eye on the old man. Liz had said he was sinking deeper into the dark pit of dementia, living in the past, obsessed with his Western collection, but not unhappy.
The stable was across a treed lawn from the large home, on a back road above the harbor and the fort. Julia had been reared here, evidently soaking up good guy vs. bad guy Western movies that, in a way, had sent her toward a career in law enforcement in the FBI. Claire’s mother always used to say, “What goes around comes around,” and maybe that was true. Now Liz wanted to leave just as her mother had.
It was a brisk but sunny day, and Julia was washing down a pinto pony with a hose and brush, just inside the stable door while soapy water from her hose spun into a floor drain.
“Oh, good, you’re here!” she greeted them. “Meggie, I’d like you to meet Scout.”
“That’s a funny name,” Lexi said, barely able to stand still in her excitement. “What does it mean?”
“It’s named for a horse that used to be on a TV Western, but not the Gene Autry show like you’d guess, once you step inside the house. It was the name of a faithful Indian companion’s horse on a show called The Lone Ranger.
“Here,” she went on, “I’m almost done and I’ll show you around the stable, if your mom and Cody want to go inside. Dad’s physical therapist that visits from the med center is just about to leave, so he could use some company.”
“We’ll go right in,” Claire said.
“Just introduce yourselves, though he won’t remember later,” she said, sluicing the soap off the pony. “If you’d just let him talk and show you around his part of the house—upstairs—I’d really appreciate the time. Meggie and I will be right in after I show her around. Then we can talk about Cody spending some time with Dad for a salary. Meanwhile, just pretend you’ve stepped into some old Western movie.”
“You do everything Julia says, now, Meggie,” Claire said, giving her a swift side hug. But the child was so wrapped up in the horse, she paid about as much attention to Claire as the horse did. Good, she thought. Something to occupy her mind other than Lily, who was supposedly on her way to Florida, just like they all would love to be.
* * *
Claire glanced back at Lexi as Julia gave her the hose to wash the pony. What a blessing, a positive reinforcement, something to look forward to. Claire decided to go to the island’s public library and get some girl-and-horse books they could share. Strange, but of all the people Claire had not only counseled but tried to psych out, she realized Lexi was the hardest to deal with because she loved her so much. And now there would be a second child.
As they went in the back door Julia had indicated, strains of a man singing greeted them. A mellow tenor voice with tinny musical background crooning, “Back in the saddle again.”
“Gotta be Gene Autry,” Bronco said. “I was too young and missed his heyday.”
“Me too, but I bet we’re about to make up for that right now. I’m impressed Julia had befriended us the way she has, trusting us to meet her family.”
As soon as they walked in through the kitchen, they saw a sign with an arrow, HUNTER LOGAN’S WILD WEST UPSTAIRS. They followed the arrow and the music. When they entered a large room on the second floor, a young man, evidently the physical therapist, jumped up, greeted them and made for the door. Claire realized he must have had orders to stay with Mr. Logan until someone else came.
They introduced themselves, but there was no chatter after. “This is really Gene’s theme song, you know,” Mr. Logan told them, humming, then singing along with the words. “It’s the essence of him—love of the West, closeness to his horse, friendship. But, of course, unlike the so-called heroes of today, that man knew right from wrong. You know, the good guys vs. the bad guys and the good guys win.”
“Sure,” Bronco said. “I like that too. It’s the gray guys, the ones that hide the truth and are phonies, I can’t stand.”
“Let me show you my things,” Mr. Logan said, gesturing. He was dressed in jeans, a turquoise-studded silver belt, a fringed plaid shirt and Western boots. A tall, handsome man, he looked tan and fit, though he walked with a limp. He gestured toward the wall behind them on which at least twenty still photos of scenes from Western movies hung.
“That one’s from Rim of the Canyon, my favorite,” he told them, pointing. “That frame shows an old prospector warning Gene that killers are in the area.”
Claire’s gaze snagged with Bronco’s. They’d seen enough of something like that, she thought.
“There’s a spooky building in that movie, too, see,” Mr. Logan said, tapping the black frame of the next photo. “And this third one’s from Goldtown Ghost Riders. You won’t believe it, but at the end of that film, ghosts might have been the ones to knock off the villains and save the day.”
“Oh, look at all this!” Claire cried as she got a glimpse into the next room where six-shooters and old rifles were mounted on the wall in l
abeled glass cases, then lower, in glassed-in shelves with a guitar, boots, ten-gallon hats and autographed copies of letters, contracts and pictures of the singing cowboy. The old man was so knowledgeable, so sharp about every little detail—and he had dementia?
“This here’s my favorite gun on display,” he said, pointing to one in the glass-and-wood case mounted on the wall. “It’s one Gene actually owned for a while, the old, trusty six-shooter. When he sings ‘Back in the Saddle Again,’ you just listen for that line about ‘my old .44,’ ’cause that may be this very gun,” he said with a sigh.
Julia soon joined them with Lexi in tow. “Mom, I fed Scout an apple! And—oh, look at these pictures of a real big horse!”
“That’s Champion, little girl, but I won’t let Julia name any other horses that, because there is only one.”
“One favorite horse?”
“No, one favorite cowboy. But did you say your name was Cody, young man?” Mr. Logan said, turning to Bronco. “Julia and I don’t see eye to eye on horses, that’s for sure. She fusses if I want to go off riding on my own—back in the saddle again,” he said with a frown in his daughter’s direction.
Well, he remembered Cody’s name and that was good, Claire thought. People with dementia often didn’t recall what happened a few minutes ago. But still she’d picked up on bad vibes from Mr. Logan toward Julia.
“Yes, sir, I’m Cody Carson,” Bronco said. “I hope we can be friends.”
“You’ll have to explain which you are, of course, and get back to looking like you should,” Mr. Logan said, going now into lecture mode with a bobbing, pointed index finger, but at least not glaring at Julia anymore. “And you cannot be two people at once, even if I am. So are you Buffalo Bill Cody or Kit Carson? You look more like Kit. There is no room for your photos or guns here, but I’d like to ride out to visit wherever you keep all that.”
For a second, silence reigned. Bronco looked, to use the best word, buffaloed. Claire, psych major that she was, was taken aback that the old man could slide from apparent rationality to these delusions. Julia looked more than embarrassed—dismayed. And Lexi was quiet for once.