by Amy Durham
“If you don’t mind me asking, how did you come to own the house?” Luke asked. “Layla and I have each been there several times and we think it’s a really interesting place.”
My heart beat so hard I thought surely Lucas and Patsy could hear it. Could we be about to discover the reality of who we once were? Could this chance meeting – if it even was by chance – really bring us closer to the truth?
“It came down to us from William’s father, Walter. Before that it had belonged to William’s grandfather, Arthur, who inherited it from his father George.”
Which fit with what we’d learned at the courthouse about Arthur and George Emerson.
“Do you happen to know how George acquired the house?”
George Emerson was where we’d stopped looking. After seeing Amelia’s name in the will, we’d headed home to look at Gwen’s records.
“It seems I remember George inherited the house from his brother, though I’m not sure which one. According to what William told me, his great-grandfather – that would be George – had two brothers, Leo and John. I’m not sure which one of them was the original owner of the house.”
Leo and John Emerson. Another fact to file away for later. Along with what I needed to tell Lucas about my adoption.
“I hope you have all this recorded somewhere. My mom started a notebook with names and places and stories her grandparents told her about.” Luke reached for my hand, steadying me as if he knew how shaken I was by this latest bit of information. “It’s where I first saw Amelia’s name.”
“My daughter has compiled some records. She keeps them on her computer, along with old family tales. There’s one that tells of Leo becoming psychotic and some great tragedy befalling he and his wife.”
Had Lucas not been holding my hand, I might’ve fallen over. “Some great tragedy” was likely just what we were looking for.
“What kind of tragedy?” Luke pulled me closer to him.
“I’m not sure really. But Leo and his young wife left Sky Cove never to be heard from again. George, William’s great-grandfather, apparently forbade discussion of it. William said his father told him it was all malarkey that had been drummed up to make small town life seem more interesting.”
“That could be,” Lucas replied. “Small town life can get a bit redundant.” He stepped toward the door, my hand still firmly in his. “Thank you for the information, Mrs. Emerson. I’ll be sure to add it to my records.”
We were almost to the door when Patsy stopped us.
“I just remembered,” she began.
We turned back toward the counter.
“Amelia has a great-granddaughter. Brooke McKenna is her name. She was in Camden until just a few years ago, when she took a job in Boston.”
“Really?” Luke looked down at me, then back and Mrs. Emerson. “Do you know where we could find her? If I could, I’d love to talk to her and find out what I can about Amelia and her descendants.”
“She’s a nurse. I believe she worked in the maternity ward at Penobscot Bay Medical. Now I hear she’s down in Boston at Massachusetts General. Still helping deliver babies.”
My knees knocked so hard I feared I couldn’t walk, but as Lucas led me out of the store after thanking Mrs. Emerson one last time, somehow I found enough stability to put one foot in front of the other.
“Quite a coincidence, huh?” he said, as we made our way back toward his Bronco.
“More than you know.” We reached the car, and rather than get in as soon as he opened my door, I turned toward him. “Luke, I have to tell you – ”
He stopped me with a quick kiss on my lips. “Not now, Layla. Let’s just save all this for tomorrow and enjoy the rest of tonight.”
“But – ”
Another kiss silenced me again. “I wanted this to be a normal night, just two regular kids on a date together. Not that I’m not glad we ran into Mrs. Emerson. It gives us more information and hopefully an idea where to look next. But we still have tonight, and I want it to be as normal as possible. We have a great movie to watch. Let’s just head back to my house.”
And just how could I argue with that?
“Okay.” I smiled, feeling my heart latch onto him with an even firmer grasp.
CHAPTER 30
The rain began before we made it back to Sky Cove. The thunder and lightening started sometime in the middle of the movie. Odd as a thunderstorm in October seemed, in the beginning it appeared to be nothing but a typical storm.
The rain was pelting down in sheets and the sky a constant flash by the time Nickie’s voice came from the television saying “What makes life so difficult?”
“People,” Terry replied. Luke’s arm tightened around my shoulders, and I knew that Terry’s words echoed what was swirling inside each of us.
Whatever difficulty had tortured the people we’d been, it was brought on by the actions of other people. Which was monumentally unfair. But I supposed that was just part of life.
“Rain keeps on like this, the water will be over White Bridge.”
I sat up straighter, thinking about the fifteen-minute drive back to my house. Even if the water didn’t rise over the bridge, there was still ponding and hydroplaning to consider.
“Don’t worry about it,” he added. “There’s always a lot of water on this road when it rains like this. I’m used to it.”
Yes, he would be, having lived here all his life. In Nashville, my experience driving in the rain mostly included traffic lights that had been knocked out due to lightning.
The storm raged on, more and more violent as the movie finished and we stood up from the sofa. Peering out the window, worry settled in my chest about the drive back to my house. There was so much water, and the wind howled and swirled with a vengeance.
I thought of myself as independent, but I was really glad Luke would be the one doing the driving.
He stepped up behind me, keys jingling in his hands, when a strike of lightening broke the sky and lit it up like it was the middle of the afternoon. The thunder that accompanied it was instant and deafening.
Gwen’s bedroom door opened, her footsteps bringing her closer until she appeared in the living room.
“Can you believe this?” she said. “A thunderstorm this bad in October.”
Somewhere in the house her cell phone rang. She disappeared down the hall, reemerging in the living room with the device pressed tight to her ear.
It was almost midnight, my curfew, so for anyone to be calling this late seemed odd. Something must be wrong.
“I see,” she said. “And the road is impassable?”
I cut my eyes toward Luke and he shrugged.
Gwen ended the call and looked at us. “That was Mr. Geary who lives up the road, just past the bridge. White Bridge is flooded and one of the trees from his yard has fallen across the road.”
“So we’re stuck?” Luke asked.
“It seems so,” she replied. “Even if there was another way back into town, I wouldn’t want the two of you out in this. I’m just so thankful you weren’t already out there driving. I’ll call your mom, Layla.”
Luke and I sat on the sofa as Gwen talked with my mother and assured her I was taken care of and that as soon as the road was cleared she or Lucas would drive me back home.
Before I knew it, pillows and blankets had been retrieved and an inviting bed had been made for me on the sofa.
Luke brought me a tee shirt and a pair of sweatpants that had to be his given how long the legs were. “They’re probably way too big, but there’s a drawstring.”
“Thanks,” I said, smiling. I liked the thought of sleeping in his clothes.
After changing in the downstairs bathroom, I made my way back to the living room, where I said a quick goodnight to Gwen and Luke. He kissed my cheek and winked before heading upstairs to his room.
Settling in under the covers on the couch, I replayed the events of the evening.
My talk with my mother and the discovery that I was born in Bos
ton.
Running into Patsy Emerson in Camden and hearing the old family tale of a possibly psychotic Leo Emerson.
Discovering Amelia Cutler Light’s great-granddaughter was a maternity nurse at a Boston Hospital.
The oddity of a thunderstorm in October and the road from Luke’s house becoming impassable.
I wondered if the universe was aligning in an attempt to help us, or if opposing forces were conspiring to stand in our way.
Probably a little of both.
I decided sleep was a must, because in the morning there was sure to be a dissection of tonight’s events. Plus, I still had to tell him what I’d learned about my adoption.
And from the looks of the books on the kitchen table, Gwen had been doing more reading.
I closed my eyes, forcing my mind away from the questions, and eventually, sleep came.
***
The beach was silent, save for the drizzling rain and light wind. It appeared a calm October rain, but I knew different. I knew the brutality that had so recently filled this place. The rock outcropping stood tall and motionless, a mocking tribute to the violent act that had taken his life.
I knew I wasn’t really here. In my mind I knew they’d already taken me from the beach where I’d fallen after they killed him. But somehow, I was here, and my consciousness was taking me to the opposite side of the rocks, where I’d never been before.
With startling clarity, even though I knew I was dreaming, I realized I was going to see what happened.
I was going to see him die.
The moment the flat ground beyond the outcropping came into view, my dream dropped into deafening silence. The waves that lapped at the shore were soundless. And though I still felt the cold rain and the chilly wind, the only thing that registered in my ears was stillness.
The branches they beat him with were huge, as big around as tree trunks it seemed. Over and over again they hit him, and with each blow I felt a corresponding jolt in my own body, a ripping and tearing through my heart. His face was bloody. His clothes torn. His body battered by their assault.
And when they were done, when he lay there lifeless and broken, they tossed his body into the tide, where it would soon wash away.
The leader of the mob turned toward me, but my eyes refused to focus. His features blurred to the point that he was hardly recognizable as a human being. I tried to move closer, but my dream held me immobile. The desire to discover the man responsible for the death of my beloved burned inside me like a furnace, and I cursed the dream that would not let me see him.
Anguish and misery washed over me, immense and powerful. The part of my mind that remembered I was sleeping on Lucas’s couch and that he was safe upstairs in his own bed slipped further back in my awareness. I was lost in a sea of grief, the will to go on ebbing from my being with each breath.
And then I was not on the beach anymore, but rather inside a dark, damp shack. The floor was dirt. The walls some manner of stone that dripped with moisture from the humidity in the summer air.
Summer? When had it become summer?
Someone cried.
When had the sound returned to my dream?
She was alone. The woman who had my face and whose memories I had. Alone, writhing on an old wooden cot in the corner of the tiny room. She sobbed softly one moment, and moaned as if in pain the next.
My eyes narrowed, and my vision zoomed in on her face, the fear obvious and palpable. Whatever was happening to her was painful and frightening.
But worse than the pain and the fear was the loneliness. No one was there with her.
The smell of wet earth invaded my nostrils, coupled with the sweat from her skin. The light straining through the cracks between the stones in the wall was weak, as if the last vestiges of sunlight could not penetrate the darkness of the room.
Her dress hung halfway off one shoulder and a pitiful blanket draped her from the waist down. Her legs never stilled, with knees pulled toward her body, then laid flat on the cot.
The scream that ripped from her body seemed to reach inside me and shred my guts into minuscule pieces. The pain I felt for her... from her... was both emotional and physical. My abdomen burned and heaved and I wondered if either of us would survive this terrible ordeal.
Suddenly she was silent.
And the fire that had burned inside me cooled, the fear that had gripped my heart quieted.
Her face was blank, eyes opened wide, staring toward the ceiling. Frozen.
Blood poured on the floor beneath the cot in an increasing pool.
She was dead.
CHAPTER 31
I bolted up from the sofa. My breath came in gasping gulps. I could not pull it into my body fast enough. Clammy sweat covered my forehead and my neck, and my pulse throbbed with frenzied speed in my temples.
My mind reeled, a tumult of feelings too raw and immediate to name. I tried to take note of my surroundings. The clock on the DVD player read 2:30 a.m. I reminded myself it had only been a dream, but the emotions coursing through me were so strong it was difficult to focus on reality.
Then he was there.
Lucas strode into the room with purpose, dropping to his knees on the floor in front of me. He took my face in his hands, forced my eyes to his.
“It was a dream.” His eyes moved over my face, rapid and anxious. “It was a dream.”
I knew he’d repeated it for his own sake, as well as mine.
“I saw it, Luke. I saw it all.” My hands went to his face, gently touching him from forehead to cheeks to chin, reassuring myself he was alive. His skin was hot and flushed. “I saw him die. I saw her die. I saw both of us die.”
Tears escaped my eyes and I dropped my head to his shoulder. He cradled me there, arms encircling me and running along my back.
“I know,” he whispered. “I saw it too.”
I burrowed my face against his neck, sliding my hands up the length of his back. My arms tightened around him, and his around me, as we tried to get close enough to each other to rid ourselves of the misery of our dream.
For a long moment we clung to each other there, in the dark of his living room, me on the sofa and him kneeling on the floor. And then I lifted my head and looked at him.
His mouth found mine, urgent and hot. He practically fused our lips together, as he climbed onto the couch with me. Careful not to make any noise, he leaned me back until I lay against the cushions.
One of his hands cradled my face, thumb stroking across my cheek. His other arm snaked around my waist, hand planted on the small of my back, pulling me closer still as he lowered his body on top of mine.
His mouth never left mine.
My arms went around him, inherent, as if they’d done it a thousand times before. The muscles in his shoulders rippled and bulged as he worked to keep the bulk of his weight off me.
Everything else in the world ceased to exist. The dream in which I’d watched him die faded, and I wanted nothing more than to be in this moment with him. Breath mingling, skin to skin, heartbeat to heartbeat.
I’d never been this close to a boy before. The few kisses I’d experienced before Lucas were clumsy and bland, the typical teenage attempt to be more grown up than we actually were. None of them actually showed affection.
Nothing close to this.
In my mind I knew I should feel nervous, tentative, but those feelings were nowhere to be found. I had no conscious memories from my past life of the two of us together in this way, but I supposed our souls must remember, because kissing Luke, holding him, being this close to him was easy and instinctive.
I was elated, and yet conflicted. I loved Lucas, of that I was certain. An expression of my love for him felt natural and perfect. A part of me wanted that so badly. But I knew going further would change things between us irrevocably. Going to the level of physical intimacy, no matter how right it felt, would somehow alter the course we were on. And our current course was difficult enough as it was.
And it
was just too soon. Not to mention the doubts that still plagued me about the legitimacy of Luke’s feelings for me. Teenage sex was an obstacle course fraught with dangers and baggage and was best left alone.
Luke slowed the kiss, but didn’t pull away. All at once it changed from an urgent, blinding need to a sweet, tender show of love.
Surely it wouldn’t hurt to enjoy it just a moment longer before I put the brakes on. Told him sex was just not in the equation at this point.
Part of me wondered how he’d react to that, even as he lifted his head to look at me, then pressed his lips to my forehead. I’d heard guys could be pretty upset when denied, especially when a girl seemed to be headed in that direction.
I hadn’t meant to be a tease.
Abruptly, he pulled back and sat up.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Huh?” I blinked a few times, pushing up on my elbows, cringing at my stellar response.
“We can’t let things get out of hand.” He shoved his hands through his hair and whispered, “Physically, I mean.”
Of course he would be sensible. I shouldn’t have worried. Although a tiny part of me would’ve liked it if he didn’t want to stop.
Just like that, fear punched me in the stomach. What if that was it? What if he stopped because he didn’t want to be with me that way? What if this was the first step in my ultimate rejection?
And why did I care when I knew very well sex was not something I was ready for?
Because I wanted him to want me, to love me, to feel for me what I felt for him. And the thought that maybe he didn’t just killed me.
“We were just reacting to the dream,” he said. “To how scared we were.”
He might well have a point, but why couldn’t it also be a reaction to what we felt for each other? The stupid, insecure girl inside me – who argued a guy like Luke could never really be interested in me – knew exactly why.
“It wasn’t just about being scared,” I said softly. At least it hadn’t been for me.
“Considering the timing, what just exploded between us was more about the fear than our feelings for each other. A weird sort of assurance that neither one of us was dead, like what we saw in the dream.”