Compulsion

by Martina Boone

  “I’m so sorry.” Barrie retrieved the scone and wondered what to do with it.

  “Throw it away. I’ll get another one.” Mary’s lips thinned, and she looked Barrie up and down. “It’s ’bout time you got back. I heard you were runnin’ round with that Colesworth girl again. Nothin’ good is goin’ to come of that. And you’re makin’ your aunt crazy. She’s been holed up in the attic all afternoon.”

  Great. Guilt. Because Barrie didn’t have enough of that.

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I know I haven’t been here much. But I can’t stay to talk. I’ve got to go back out again.”

  She tossed the scone into the trash and hurried out of the kitchen toward the stairs. The corridor was brighter than normal, with a sharp beam of sunlight falling through the open library door and leaving a rectangular patch on the floorboards.

  The library. Lula’s letters. God, Barrie had forgotten about them again. Forgotten them all day.

  How could she have been so stupid? She stopped on the threshold with a twist of dread.

  The room smelled of rubbing alcohol and vinegar, and the windows were newly sparkling. And of course the top of the desk was empty.

  Barrie sagged against the doorframe. The distractions were no excuse. Pru must have been shocked to find and read the letters—and she would know Barrie had found them first and not given them to her. Not even mentioned them.

  Unless Mary had found them. But what were the odds she wouldn’t have given them to Pru? And Mary hadn’t seemed upset.

  On the off chance Mary might have put the letters away, Barrie searched the desk drawers anyway, and checked the floor in case they had fallen. Knowing it was hopeless, she fumbled inside the secret compartment. Then she startled Mary out of six years of her life by bursting back into the kitchen.

  “Did you go into the library today?” she demanded.

  Hand on her chest, Mary peered at her as if Barrie had lost her mind. “Now why would I be goin’ in there, child?”

  Crap. Poor Pru.

  Barrie took the stairs two at a time, without having a clue what she was going to say to her aunt.

  Really, what could she say? All she could do now was to listen, provide comfort, and let Pru vent. As awful as she felt, the damage was already done. Wouldn’t giving Pru a chance to talk about her feelings only stir them up again? Obviously that would have to happen at some point, but Barrie couldn’t leave with Eight if Pru was an emotional mess. And once Pru had read those first two letters, the chances of her ever letting Barrie go to Colesworth Place were slim to when-ice-cubes-froze-in-hell.

  Barrie slowed when she reached the second floor, and she continued up the next flight of stairs on tiptoes. She wasn’t sure what she expected to hear. Sobs? Tantrums? That would have made her decision easier—she couldn’t leave Pru alone like that. But listening at the attic door, she heard only silence.

  Deciding to let Pru be, she backed quietly away. Creeping to the second floor, she retreated to her room, wishing she could just lock the door and stay there. Forever. Because all of this? Dealing with history and secrets and the mess of moving into a brand-new life was like diving headfirst into a garbage disposal. Her emotions were being shredded.

  Crossing to the armoire, she threw down her bag and tugged the tank dress over her head. After digging out a top and shorts, she turned toward the bathroom. A purple-and-orange FedEx envelope stood propped against the pillow sham on the bed. The package Mark had been excited about. Another thing Barrie had completely forgotten.

  She threw on her clothes and yanked a brush through the snarls in her hair. The girl in the bathroom mirror stared back at her, unaccustomedly tanned and wild, dressed without an ounce of style. Barrie could practically hear Mark asking her what she was doing, what she was thinking. There was nothing about herself she recognized anymore. She stalked back to the desk, snapped Mark’s watch back onto her wrist, and pulled the necklace Lula had given her over her head.

  Screw Wyatt—or anyone—if they thought she was showing off. Wyatt’s jealousy had made her not wear the two things that were most important to her. She wasn’t going to change the way she acted for anyone anymore. And she was full-up on guilt. Jealousy, hers and Cassie’s, had made her hurt Pru today. From now on, she wasn’t letting herself get distracted from what was important.

  She picked up the FedEx envelope from the bed and tore off the pull strip to find a sketchbook inside. Not one of her own sketchbooks. This one was old and yellowed, filled with drawings of Watson’s Landing executed in a bold, intensely emotional style. Drawings of the house from the long oak lane, drawings of the lane itself and the reflective strip of river flanked by marsh grass, drawings of Beaufort Hall perched like a crown on the hill, and the Watson woods lit by fire and moonlight. The sketches were so alive. They made Barrie feel the sway of the dock and the spray of the fountain. She could almost smell the shrimp and grits cooking in the kitchen, and imagine trailing her fingers over the architectural details in the carved wood paneling, fleurs-de-lis and roses, leaves and the faces of strange bearded gods.

  There were studies of Pru as well. Many of them. A different Pru, younger and carefree, racing up from the dock with a Seven who looked more like Eight. Pru and Seven holding hands, looking at each other instead of where they were going. Looking at each other as if they would never stop looking. Despite the fact that Emmett had hated the Beauforts. Despite the fact that they could never be together.

  Pru and Seven had missed out on a life together because of Lula. Because of Emmett.

  Barrie pressed her knuckles against her eyes. More than ever she wanted to run upstairs to Pru, to hold her. For them to hold each other. It had to be getting late, though. She stopped at the balcony doors and looked across the river. Eight was already starting down the slope of the Beaufort hill toward the Away.

  Throwing the sketchbook into a drawer in the desk, she dislodged a bloom of bougainvillea and ruffled the tag that hung from the handle of the sweetgrass basket. The same label Pru used on all the gifts she sold in the tearoom. The sketch of Watson’s Landing on it was almost identical to one of Lula’s drawings in the sketchbook. Same view, same style, same artist.

  Barrie dialed Mark’s number as she left the room. “How could Lula not tell me she could draw like this?” she demanded before he could say hello. “She never commented on a single piece of artwork I did.”

  “She didn’t tell me, either, baby girl. Trust me. I’d strangle the woman, if she weren’t already dead. I knew you’d be hurt, and I wasn’t sure if I should send it to you. But I know you. Ten minutes from now you’re going to be studying every line of her sketches and figuring how she got so much passion in there. It looked to me like she hated the place as much as she loved it.”

  Barrie thought back to the drawings. Yes, there had been both love and hate in all of them. Light and darkness. It seemed to be a theme with Lula.

  “Does the place still look like that?” Mark asked.

  “Yes.” Barrie pushed down the sick sense of outrage and started down the stairs. “How are you feeling?”

  “Not dead yet.” Mark did his usual Monty Python impression, but he sounded tired. And weaker. “Hold on,” he continued. “We’re still on you. Are you going to be okay? You know Lula not telling you about her art wasn’t personal, don’t you?”

  “How is it not personal?” Barrie shoved through the swinging door into the kitchen. “Whatever talent I have came from her. When I think about all the sketchbooks I left lying around accidentally on purpose, hoping for her approval—”

  “You had her approval, baby girl. She was proud when you won those prizes.”

  “She never said so.”

  “Lula was never good with words.”

  “I just wish she’d told me.” Barrie let herself out onto the terrace and turned to wave at Mary in the tearoom before heading down the stairs. “Or shown me. Anyway, how could she stop drawing? Some of those sketches are good enough to go i
n museums.”

  “Artists need to go places,” Mark said gently. “See new things. She probably got tired of drawing the same view from different windows.”

  Barrie hurried past the fountain, shivering as it misted her skin. She started down the slope to the river, where Eight and the Away were approaching the Watson dock.

  “So,” she said to change the subject, “you remember the hottie?”

  “Your hottie?”

  “Well, he might be mine. You’d love him. Except he plays baseball and he’s bossy. Bossier than Lula. But he kisses very nicely, thank you.”

  Mark sputtered into a laugh that turned into a deep, guttural fit of coughing that went on too long.

  “What’s with the hacking?” Barrie asked when he finally stopped. “Aren’t you taking care of yourself at all?”

  “Don’t you nag me too. One of the nearly-deads gave me a cigar, that’s all. I figure I may as well enjoy new vices while I can. Now tell me, are we talking literal baseball or second base, third base kind of stuff?”

  “Literal, of course. Who do you think I am? I’ve known him about five whole minutes!”

  Which was crazy. Certifiably insane.

  Eight waved at her. Barrie raised her hand and felt herself smiling.

  The silence on the other end of the phone was the ominous kind. The kind that suggested Mark was trying to find a way to “save” her, the way he had used to try to “save” her, back when she’d been small enough and stupid enough to tell him about every stolen lunch, hurtful whisper, and so-called friend she’d lost. Except Mark’s “saves” usually involved him rushing off to call the principal, a teacher, a parent, because he needed to do something. His “saves” usually made things ten times worse, but also a hundred times better because he loved her.

  “Earth to Mark?” Barrie said. “I told you I kissed a boy. Aren’t you going to say anything?”

  “I warned you about falling in love with him, didn’t I? I told you to have a good time. Have a fling, I said. Why don’t you ever listen?”

  Barrie’s lungs deflated. “Who said a thing about love?”

  “You don’t need to say it. But so we’re clear here: I told you not to fall for him.”

  “And I told you orange was not your color, but you still ordered that Isaac Mizrahi dress. Don’t give me I-told-you-sos.”

  “The dress had bows that tied at the elbows. How was I gonna pass that up?”

  “Easy. You could have moved on to something better.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying—”

  “This is a boy, not a dress!”

  “Which only makes him harder to return!” Mark took a deep, long breath that ended in another cough. “All right. Clearly you’ve already fallen for your number boy. So you might as well figure the pain is coming and make sure the crash is worth it.”

  “What do you mean?” Barrie stopped where the path ended and the dock began and turned away so Eight couldn’t see her face.

  “The things I regret right at the end of my life aren’t the ones that left me hurt. I regret all the things I never had the courage to do.”

  “You have more courage than anyone I know.”

  “Overcompensating for being scared isn’t the same as being brave, baby girl.” Mark sounded so tired that Barrie wanted to crawl through the telephone line and wrap her arms around him. “I was scared of being myself, so I put on a show. And I kicked ass, but it wasn’t real. When they put you in my arms at the hospital and you looked up at me . . . that was my one true act of courage. I told myself I had to choose between you and the show. I told myself I was being brave because I fought to stay with you through all of Lula’s bullshit—and don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade a second with you. But I was still cheating. Deep down I knew no audience was ever going to love me the way you did. I should have tried harder to give you a better life.”

  “You gave me a great life.”

  “I never taught you not to be afraid. Maybe too, if I had ever left the house for more than a few hours, Lula would have been forced to step up and be your mother. That’s what I’m realizing now. It doesn’t matter how great your shoes are if you don’t accomplish anything in them.”

  Barrie glanced back at Eight. If leaving Watson’s Landing meant living in the kind of pain she’d experienced today, she wasn’t sure she had the courage to go too far. In her heart she didn’t want to try. Mark was her core. Without him, bound or not, all she had left was here at Watson’s Landing.

  Which raised the question: What was she going to do about Eight and Cassie? Because one way or another, her happiness here was tangled up with them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Sneakers squelching in the mud, Barrie followed Cassie from the Colesworth dock uphill toward the columns and shattered chimneys of the old plantation house. Although Cassie’s family maintained the upper portion of the property for the tourists, they didn’t bother with the area by the river.

  “Careful.” Eight steadied Barrie when she stumbled for the second time on what had once been a gravel path. Where thick trestles dug into the hillside formed steps on the steepest portions, the wood was splintering and rotten. Weeds, mud, and stagnant puddles of water colonized the rest.

  Barrie paused to get her breath and her bearings. The Colesworth property was only a few acres across, with thick woods bordering the Beaufort land on one side and the subdivision on the other side. The foundation of the old mansion was far enough away that the sense of loss Barrie had felt after the play hadn’t reached her yet. From under the creeping green vines of ivy and wisteria that blanketed entire trees and buildings near the restored slave cabins, though, she felt an ache and something ugly pulsing at her temples.

  “Can y’all please hurry up?” Cassie stopped above them on the path. “What are you looking for? Did you see a boat?” Shielding her eyes, she turned to scan the river.

  “Expecting someone?” Eight didn’t bother disguising the contempt in his voice.

  Barrie dug her elbow into his ribs. “Hey. Be nice. You agreed to this.”

  “Yeah, but why is she so jumpy,” Eight asked quietly, “if Wyatt isn’t coming back until tonight?”

  Cassie did look anxious. Her face had taken on a gray cast that had little to do with the dappled shadows from the overhanging cypress branches. She stood with her hands on her hips, and her usual languid grace was missing.

  “I’m sure it’s fine,” Barrie said with an inward sigh. “Your friend said he would call if Wyatt’s boat came in.” She wished it were all over with so she could get back to Pru and Watson’s Landing. Blood or no blood, if she never saw Colesworth Place or her uncle again, it would be too soon.

  Eight made a show of crooking his elbow and holding it out to her in invitation. “Well, shall we?”

  With a mock curtsy, Barrie linked her arm with his. He bumped her with his shoulder playfully and set off, keeping her close, the warmth of his skin on hers both distracting and reassuring. Barrie freed herself as they reached a steeper section of the path.

  “You go ahead,” Eight said, moving aside as the steps narrowed.

  Barrie concentrated on where she set her feet, until a slither of brown serpentined across the path a couple feet ahead and vanished into the reeds. Startled, she jumped back and landed on the edge of a rotting trestle. The wood crumbled out from under her. Arms windmilling, she clipped Eight’s jaw and knocked herself sideways. She landed on her knee with a heavy thud, her foot twisted underneath her.

  “Bear!” He lunged too late to catch her. “Are you all right?”

  She shook her head, caught in the blinding pain of a twisted ankle. She hoped it was only twisted. After edging around to sit, she braced the ankle with her hands and tried straightening her leg.

  Eight crouched beside her. “What can I do? Tell me what hurts.”

  Everything. Her pride mostly. “There was a snake,” she said. “It looked poisonous.”

  “Sure it did.” His
lips twitched. “But never mind that. Did you break anything?”

  “Give me a sec.” Barrie winced as she tried to move her foot.

  Behind her the sound of footsteps from up the path announced that Cassie, too, was coming to be amused at her expense. And in case sitting on her ass in the mud wasn’t humiliating enough, her ankle was already swelling around the top of her sneaker. Didn’t it just figure she would break her leg the one time she actually wore “sensible” shoes?

  The path up the slope suddenly looked daunting. They had to have steepened it on purpose somehow. This was ridiculous. Why had she ever agreed to come?

  “I told you it was a stupid idea.” Eight pushed his hair back and let his arm drop with an endearingly helpless motion that almost kept Barrie from wanting to strangle him. Almost. “You don’t owe the Colesworths anything,” he said, glaring at Cassie over Barrie’s head. “And you aren’t going to fix the feud no matter what you do.”

  “I never said she owed us,” Cassie said.

  “Both of you stop it. It’s only a twisted ankle. Eight, help me up, and I’ll be all right.”

  Eight slipped his arm around her waist and supported her as she straightened. “Careful,” he said. “There’s a difference between brave and pointless, and I think you’ve crossed the line.”

  “Drop dead, would you?” Barrie bit her cheek. She took a quick inventory: ankle, throbbing; knee, skinned and aching; seat of her shorts, covered in mud. Pain shot up her leg when she tried to put weight on it, and her elbow still twinged from falling down the stairs the night before. But that was nothing compared to the shock wave of finding pressure that hit her as she took a step. Her head felt like it was filled with shards of glass pressing on her brain.

  “That’s it,” Eight said, watching her. “You’re done. We’re out of here.” He bent and, one arm beneath her knees and the other on her back, swung her off her feet.

  “Hey, hold on,” Cassie said. “Where are you going? You don’t have to leave. Just take her up to the house. I’ll get her some ice, and she’ll be fine in a minute. It always hurts like hell when you first twist your ankle.”