Firefly Island

by Lisa Wingate

  “He just went to see if there’s any news. The text was only Al Beckenbauer, asking if we’d heard anything.”

  Chrissy blinked. “Why would she care? She and Jack West can’t stand each other.”

  “The man fell over a cliff, Chrissy,” I said sharply. Chrissy would grow up to be like Claire Anne Underhill one day, if she wasn’t careful.

  Tucking a shock of red curls behind her ear, Chrissy ducked her head. “Sorry. I’m just worried, you know? Tag and I need this job. If anything happens to Jack, Mason will get rid of the ranch in a heartbeat. The day Daniel went with Jack to pick up that new seeder in Fort Worth, Tag was counting cows on horseback up by the Twin Mountains, and he saw Mason driving around the pastures with some guy in a suit. They were pointing and talking and shaking hands, and stuff. Tag watched them for a long time. He said it looked like a business deal.” She cut a look my way, lashes narrowing. “And now, Jack has an accident, like two weeks later?”

  “Let’s just wait and ask questions when Jack wakes up, all right?” After seeing Jack so euphoric about his reunion with Mason these past few weeks, I couldn’t imagine what would happen if he heard the ranch hands making accusations like this.

  Chrissy looked down at her feet and scuffed a pink flip-flop along the ugly linoleum tile. “I just hope Jack gets back up out of that bed. I mean, I complain about the man, but I didn’t want something terrible to happen to him.” Moisture rimmed her eyes, and she swallowed hard. “It makes me think that you never can tell what’s gonna happen—when everything might change in a heartbeat, you know? I mean, Tag and me had a fight last night, and this morning when he left, we weren’t even talkin’. When I heard about Jack’s accident, I thought, What if that were Tag, and I never had the chance to take it all back?”

  I touched her arm, and suddenly she seemed like the bratty little sister I never had. “Something like this makes everyone take stock. So much of what seems to matter on a regular day wouldn’t even make a ripple the day after a car accident or a cancer diagnosis. The trick is to remember that on all the regular days, I guess. My grandmother gave me that advice years ago when she was diagnosed with cancer. I don’t always remember it as well as I should.”

  Chrissy sniffled, her chest shuddering. A tear traced the outline of her cheek when she looked up again. “I wish Tag and I were more like you and Daniel. You guys are so … nice to each other.”

  I wish Tag and I were more like you… . It had never occurred to me that anyone might be watching us, that we might be teaching lessons as we were learning lessons, and when we learned well, we might teach well. When we didn’t, we weren’t just hurting ourselves; we were polluting the world with bad examples. “It’s a process. My parents had their issues, and they drove us kids crazy with their expectations sometimes, but they were always kind to each other. I think that’s the best thing they did for us.”

  Chrissy batted away a tear, her lips twisting ruefully. “My parents fought like two cats in a tow sack. I never wanted McKenna to see stuff like that. I never thought about it too much until y’all came here. The other day when I put McKenna to bed, she said she wished Tag and I were nice like you.”

  Emotion squeezed my chest. All this time, I’d thought that Daniel and I were groping our way too clumsily through marriage. Maybe we weren’t doing so badly. “Oh, hey, we’re still in the design phase. Everyone’s family looks better from the outside.”

  A text buzzed on my cell phone, and I paused to look at the message from Daniel. Jack stable now. Back there in a minute.

  “It sounds like good news,” I breathed, showing Chrissy the text. She promptly shared the information with the rest of the room. Reverend Hay lifted his hands, and Mama B cried out, “Praise God!”

  “Mason must be so relieved,” Claire Anne observed, anxiously checking the hall again. “I wonder if there’s anything we can do for him. Maybe I could organize food to go to the ranch house. Family members shouldn’t be worrying about cooking at a time like this.”

  “They have a cook,” Chrissy pointed out blandly. “Besides, there is no family except Mason, and he’s staying out on Firefly Island. Good luck taking food out there.”

  Claire Anne gave Chrissy a sour look. “Well, it’s only proper to ask. What sort of a town would we be if we didn’t rally around a neighbor in a time of need? I’m sure there are some ways we can help. I wonder where Mason is now… .”

  “He’s probably got bigger things on his mind than casseroles, Claire Anne,” Mama B interjected. “Just leave him be. Don’t sound like there’s a lot we can do right now.”

  Claire Anne’s thin, perfect fingers kneaded her pink leather clutch bag. “Well, we could at least …” She paused hopefully as Daniel entered the room, then registered disappointment when she realized he wasn’t Mason.

  Daniel shared the report on Jack’s condition: broken ribs, cuts, bruises, no internal bleeding. “The thing they’re most concerned about is swelling in the brain from the head injury. They’re keeping him in an induced coma and giving him meds to try to relieve the pressure on the brain. If they can’t control the swelling with meds, they’ll have to relieve it with surgery. They’re optimistic going forward, but they won’t know the extent of the brain injury until he regains consciousness, and they’re not sure when that will be.”

  Claire Anne stood up. “Well, where is Mason? Is he all ri-ight? I should tell him we’re prayin’ for his daddy. It wouldn’t do for him to think that no one even came by. I mean, especially considerin’ the amount of business that West Ranch does in this county.”

  “Mason is with Jack in ICU. They’re not letting anyone else in.” There was something Daniel wasn’t telling the group. I could see it in his face. “It’s just as well for everyone to go home. They don’t expect anything more to happen tonight. Best-case scenario is that they’re able to relieve the swelling on the brain with meds, and they won’t have to do surgery.”

  The room cleared slowly as people retrieved their belongings and left. I sent Al a text with the news about Jack, then stood with Daniel until everyone was gone.

  “You should go on home to Nick,” he said as I slid the phone into my purse. “There’s nothing more to do tonight.” Outside the windows, the day was dimming, golden sunlight slanting through the glass in angular streams.

  “But you’re staying …” I looked at Daniel, his shirt still spattered with dirt and Jack’s blood, and I knew he wasn’t planning on going anywhere.

  “I feel like I should.”

  “Because …” What wasn’t he saying?

  “I’m not sure.” He rubbed the back of his neck, stretched it side to side. “I just feel like I should. I can’t really explain it. This whole thing still bothers me, and I guess it will until Jack wakes up and can tell me what happened. I’m going to hang out by the ICU. There’s a table and a couple chairs in the hall there. Someone needs to be here … besides Mason.”

  Trepidation walked up my spine again, looping and tightening the muscles like my mother’s quick crochet stitches. “Did the sheriff’s deputies leave?”

  Daniel’s cheek twitched the way it always did when he was irritated. “Apparently. When I went up there to see about Jack, Mason was sitting outside the ICU by himself.”

  “How did he seem?”

  “Upset. Nervous. Kind of like a cat on hot tar, to borrow a phrase from the Docksiders at the Waterbird. When I asked him what the sheriff wanted, he said it was just routine—they needed the details to fill out the accident report.” Daniel caught my hand in his, lifted it, and kissed my fingers. “I’m just going to spend the night in the chair up there. Don’t worry about it, okay? You shouldn’t be worrying right now.”

  I pointed a finger at him. “Daniel Everson, don’t you go babying me because I’m—” It still felt so strange to say the words. “In a family way.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it.” He caught my other hand, kissed those fingers, too. “Have Tag or one of the guys bring some clean c
lothes up here for me, okay? In fact, could you send a couple sets? I asked Mason if he wanted me to have one of the ranch hands go pick something up from Firefly, but he didn’t take me up on it. He said he’d go himself when he could.”

  Daniel kissed me tenderly, and I left the hospital feeling off-center. The remains of the day were strangely beautiful as I crossed the parking lot to Al’s truck. Opening the door, I turned to look over my shoulder one more time. Something fluttered in the corner of my vision—a piece of paper trapped partially under the truck tire, the wind teasing it, threatening to carry it away. I retrieved it, looked up and down the parking lot, then turned the paper over in my hand. It was a check stub from a literary and entertainment agency in LA. It had Al’s address on it, but the name was different. Alex Beck.

  Alex … Beck …

  The name stirred the dusty corners of my mind and left behind a vague agitation, as if those words should mean something to me, but I couldn’t quite put a finger on it.

  Why did Al have another name, and why did that name seem so familiar … ?

  The question shadowed me as I drove the rural highway home from Gnadenfeld, the river basin and cream-colored limestone cliffs peeking through yawning trees, playing a magician’s trick. There one minute, gone the next. Hiding secrets.

  Here, everyone seemed to have secrets.

  When I reached the ranch, Al was gone. She’d left to take care of the evening feeding at her place, and Keren had taken over watching Nick. They were at the table, coloring in one of Nick’s coloring books. Nick was freshly bathed and already in his pajamas.

  Keren offered to take Al’s truck back to her, and I agreed. My body was weary, and my emotions were tangled like a kite string after a crash. I just wanted to eat something, then melt into bed—to sleep and not think about the day.

  “Have you ever heard of Alex Beck?” I asked as I walked Keren to the door.

  She paused before stepping out, pale brows gathered over blue eyes. “I don’t think so. Why?”

  “No reason. I was just trying to figure out why it seemed familiar.”

  She shrugged, then gave me a hug. “Well, it’s kind of similar to Al’s name—maybe that’s why it’s ringing a bell.”

  “Maybe,” I said, the name scratching back and forth across my mind, sanding off a layer of old lacquer as I watched Keren walk away.

  No harm befalls the righteous,

  but the wicked have their fill of trouble.

  —Proverbs 12:21

  (Left by Rotten and Emma Lou, rescue dogs who’ve learned a thing or two)

  Chapter 21

  That night I dreamed of secrets—deep, terrible secrets. In my dream, I saw a man in a hooded trench coat. He was digging in the thick, loamy soil along the water’s edge. Slowly, I moved closer, trying to discern his identity. Lightning flashed overhead, and the air crackled against my skin. I slid a hand across my stomach, swollen, late in pregnancy, heavy. I felt the baby’s heartbeat beneath my fingers, a fragile flutter like the doppler stethoscope at the doctor’s office.

  Thunder eclipsed the sound.

  The man by the shore stretched upright, then looked over his shoulder. Breath caught in my throat, and I hid behind the cedars, the branches catching my hair. I couldn’t see the face inside the hood, but I could feel him searching for me, scanning the brush cover before returning to his task. My arms rounded my stomach protectively, and I crept closer after the man’s back was turned, my bare feet falling silently in the moss.

  The hole was large, rectangular … a grave, but shallow. Lightning crackled horizontally across the sky, illuminated the ground. I froze, stared into the hole, saw something white. A shroud, the outline of a body.

  Who? Who was buried there, in this shallow grave so near the water?

  The man continued his work, not burying the body, but digging the dirt away, finally bending and lifting the shrouded form as if it were weightless, then carrying it to the shore and setting it on the water. A gust of wind blew over the lake, stirred the surface, moaned through the oaks and cedars. Rain fell, soaking the shroud over the body, revealing the outline of a face.

  Who? Whose face lay under the cloth?

  I took a step closer, then another and another, and watched the body float farther and farther away.

  Then I was on a cliff, looking down.

  The body neared a small brown boat that was bobbing wildly in the storm. In the boat, children were playing, unaware of the danger—Chrissy and Tag’s daughter, little Sergio from the summer class, Sierra, Birdie, and Nick. They were planting a garden in the bottom of the boat, laughing with each other, oblivious to the body floating near them, unaware of the hooded man on the shore.

  “Watch out!” The wind whipped my voice into the air, sending it over the cliffs and away. “Watch out! Get off the water!”

  The children couldn’t hear me, and even if they had, there were no oars in the boat, no way to bring it to shore.

  The man turned, his head swiveling. I drew back, wrapped my arms protectively over my stomach again, and then I was falling, the ground crumbling beneath me, sending me sliding toward the water. I was falling, and falling, and falling, the roundness in me gone. The baby, gone …

  I woke with an outcry, gasping for breath, and slipped a hand under my T-shirt and felt the skin, searching for the thickening still so faint that I could hide it beneath my clothes. My own heart thrummed within my chest. I tried to sense the baby’s heartbeat, as well.

  It was only a dream. Just a dream.

  Everything’s okay.

  I wanted to call the doctor, rush to the hospital, have a test, hear the baby’s heartbeat just to be sure.

  It’s okay. We’re all right. It was only a dream.

  Or a message. Did God still speak to people in dreams? Terrible, unthinkable dreams?

  Something threaded through my mind, something Keren had told me when I’d interviewed her about the supper gardens. She’d dreamed of the gardens first. God talks to people in dreams in the Bible, she’d said. Daniel, Ezekiel, Paul, Solomon … Why couldn’t He talk to me, tell me something I’m supposed to do, something that’s meant to happen? Job 33:15 says it right out—He speaks in dreams …

  But this dream, my dream, wasn’t a pleasant vision of kids and gardens. It was terrible, ominous. Like a warning, a threat.

  The kids in the boat, the storm, the baby … our baby. Gone.

  The body floating on the water. It was a warning. A death warning.

  Drawing my legs to my chest, I squeezed the covers hard around me like a barrier, tried to push the visions away, but I couldn’t.

  Finally I threw the covers aside, crossed the room in the moonlight, my footsteps silent on the cool wood floor, like the footsteps in my dream. The closet door creaked loudly as I opened it. Down the hall, Nick stirred in his bed, and I paused, listening as he settled in again, then I turned on the closet light and sifted through a container of wedding gifts that had yet to be sorted and used.

  My fingers circled a shoebox with scraps of lacy wedding wrap still clinging to the corners. A sense of calmness fell over me, quieting my heart as I opened the box. Inside lay Grandma Louisa’s bridal Bible with the pearlescent Lucite cover. The scent of my grandmother’s Charleston house wafted up, teased my senses with salt air, Spanish moss, dust, must, and the long history of Ellery brides. This Bible always goes to the last bride in the family, Mother’s voice was in my ear now. Each bride carries it, and the last one keeps it for the next generation. It’s from Grandma Louisa to you. I have to say, you made it wait a while… .

  The light cascaded over my skin, the Bible reflecting the moonlight through the window and seeming to glow with life as I slid my fingers across the cover. I parted the pages, searched the table of contents, and found the book of Job, the chapter and verse Keren had quoted when I interviewed her about the supper gardens.

  For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not. In a dream, in a vision of the night,
when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed; Then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction, that he may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide pride from man. He keepeth back his soul from the pit, and his life from perishing by the sword.

  A warning … was this nightmare a warning?

  And of what?

  Somehow, I had to find the truth, to sort through the secrets hidden beneath the surface of Moses Lake. I knew it in a way I’d never known anything in my life. This was the reason I was here.

  Something terrible waited if I failed.

  The sensation lingered as the night passed, sleep whisking over my mind, a ragged and featherlight veil. When I woke in the morning, I was tired and sore. Nick was standing beside the bed, cuddling his favorite stuffed Dalmatian under his chin, the plastic eyes watching me along with Nick’s.

  “Where’s Daddy?” His voice was barely a whisper, as if he were afraid to disturb the stillness in the house.

  “Daddy stayed at the hospital last night. Remember I told you that Mr. West had an accident and the doctors have to take care of him for a while? Tag came last night and got clothes to take to Daddy at the hospital, and he fixed the battery cable on our Jeep while he was here. Remember that?”

  Nick blinked at me with huge eyes, a little pout lip jutting out. “I wanna my daddy,” he whimpered, as if he sensed my uneasiness, as if he felt the undercurrent of fear that had floated with me through sleep.

  Pushing against the bed, I sat up, my back in a twisted coil and my shoulders aching. I felt like I’d been run over by a bus. “Oh, honey, Daddy’s okay. He’ll probably come home in a little while. We could call him on his phone and see how Mr. West is doing, how about that?” The previous day swirled through my mind, the details growing crisp as the haze of sleep faded.

  “Do you and puppy want to find my purse and get my phone for me?” I needed a moment to myself, just to think.