A small body worked its way through the long legs of the grown people.
“Hi, Daddy! Hi, Mommy,” Taylor said, and I gave him the same treatment Nick gave Ruth.
Nick released Ruth and wrapped his boy in a bear hug, rubbing his cheek against Taylor’s wavy hair. I saw him wipe his eyes, but I kept it our secret.
“Where are the babies?” I asked Ruth.
“I put the girls dem down to nap, just after they lunch. They still sleeping,” she said.
Julie’s car pulled up behind ours in the driveway, and the process of hug, twirl, and squeeze was repeated a few more times. Julie grabbed Nick and Kurt together and somehow managed to get her arms around both men, as small as she was. Then she hugged me tight and whispered, “Thank you for bringing him home, Katie.”
We all trundled bags into the house and congregated in a noisy throng in the kitchen. We made a big group, which immediately threw Julie into a frenzy of hostessing. She made drinks and passed them out to everyone: the DPNR team of Ava, Rashidi, Rob, Laura, and the attorney, Vince Robinson, and the Kate crew of Collin, Bill, Kurt, Nick, and me. Nick and I sprinted upstairs to look in on our sleeping girls for a few sweet moments, then rejoined the party.
“Boy, do we have a lot to tell you about our day,” Julie said.
“Boy, do we have a lot to tell you about ours,” I replied.
“You first,” she said.
“No, you,” I said.
“You.”
Nick put up his dukes. “Ladies. Are you going to fight for it?”
“OK. You win,” Julie said to me. “We go first.” She swept her hand toward Rashidi.
“First, to tell the story right, I got to introduce you to Rob and Laura,” he said.
Rob bowed, and Laura curtsied. He slipped his arm around her waist. I would have pegged Rob as gay had I not seen him with the wife for whom he had obvious physical affection. Laura, though not a beautiful woman, was twinkly, from her eyes, to her voice, to her mannerisms.
“So tell the people what you find,” Rashidi prompted.
Rob rubbed his chin and cleared his throat. “OK, I try to make this long story short and give proper credit. My brilliant wife and U.V.I. librarian, Laura, find a diary entry written by a young slave girl a hundred and fifty years or so ago, about a plantation owner who bury her mother on top of a hill overlooking the valley of the mangoes. The plantation, it turns out, named Estate Annalise. Good job, honey.”
He held both arms toward her as if she were on display. Laura walked around the kitchen like a model. These two were fun. We clapped. “Hear, hear,” Rashidi said.
Rob continued. “I look back through all the old maps of the area I could find through the museum. No graveyards, no cemeteries, no burial grounds. But I did notice something in one of them. The word ‘Uxolo’ printed on a hilltop, a hilltop overlooking the house we standing in now.”
I got goose bumps. I looked around and saw that he had the rapt attention of everyone in the room, even Taylor.
Rob kept going. “I flip back through the others, and I find another reference to Uxolo. No other detail. Same hilltop, though. About this time, Ava tell us that Tutein and the DPNR breathing down Julie’s neck, so Rashidi and Ava meet us up here.” He unfurled a weathered paper map and we all leaned in close.
He pointed to the word Uxolo on a hilltop to the northwest, with nothing but a smooth downward slope to where Annalise now stood. A collective “ah” escaped our mouths.
I stood closest to the map, and I touched the word. Uxolo. The feel of the slightly raised ink on grainy paper raised the hairs on my neck. But that wasn’t all that it raised.
I heard a hum growing around us within Annalise’s walls. The noise came on so gradually that it was hard to identify, but I knew it well. The attorney kept looking over his shoulder, his eyes wide and nervous. He’d heard it, too.
“She’s hanging on your every word, Rob,” I said.
“Who?” he asked.
I gestured all around me. “Annalise.”
Everyone in the kitchen fell silent. Without their background noise, Annalise’s hum vibrated the air around us. Nick slipped an arm around my shoulders.
Vince dropped his glass. The hard plastic bounced once, twice, three times on the kitchen floor before he moved to scoop it up. We all listened to the spirit of the house as she sang out her approval.
“Oh my God, I hear it,” Laura said. She clutched her throat with one hand.
“Go on, Rob,” I said. “Don’t be frightened. She just wants to hear your story.”
“Are things always this exciting around you guys?” Rob asked.
Everyone but Nick and I shouted, “Yes,” and laughed.
“I hope I get the story right, since it appear one of us might have been present for the real thing. This a new one for me.” Rob cleared his throat. “OK, where was I? We drive up to the spot marked Uxolo in a jeep, with machetes, very National Geographic, you know. Rashidi hack us through the forest, and let me tell you, that forest dense. We make it up to the hilltop, which really nothing more than one of those narrow ridges, but there a small flat area where we park. Laura pack us a lovely picnic lunch, chicken paninis with pesto and organic tomatoes, and the view fabulous.”
“Robbbbbb,” Laura said. “Tell the story.” She nudged his shoulder with hers.
“Oh, well, while we eat lunch, Rashidi whack down all the bush on the hilltop. One place already been cleared and freshly turned dirt all around it. Like an exhumed grave. That strike us as pretty strange. Then we do our best amateur imitation of an archaeological grid search. And we find this.”
Laura walked in front of us like Vanna White, holding over her head a battered wooden marker with the words “Uxolo Cemetery” carved into it. I sucked in my breath, my eyes wide. I wanted to hold Annalise’s hand; the air felt like it would cry at any second.
Rob continued. “So then we notice the rocks. Piles of rocks. Some fallen and scattered a bit, but the spacing look right. And there a few more old wooden markers, but none with carvings that clear enough to read. We know we hit the cemetery jackpot.” He grinned, so obviously enjoying this adventure outside his academic life. It was far less pleasant for us, but I didn’t begrudge him his excitement.
“We really careful not to mess anything up and cause more DPNR trouble. Because if we don’t cause any new trouble, Uxolo solve the old trouble.”
“I don’t completely understand,” I said. Partly because I didn’t, and partly because Rob seemed to hope for this question.
Rob said, “Because Uxolo on the edge of your property, far away from Annalise. And there definitely bodies there, in the marked graves, and also as explained in the diary.”
“But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a body under Annalise,” I said. “Or more than one. Couldn’t they have washed down from Uxolo?”
“Good point. That’s what we wonder, too. But stay with me. Rashidi walk the hilltop, and he say the natural slope create a drain, if you will, that lead down to Annalise. Which don’t sound good.”
“Except for one thing,” Ava said. She had restrained herself for quite some time, but she loved a good drama. “Look out the window.” We did. “There a cut in the land around Annalise. A deep, natural cut between Annalise and the base of the hill. It even on the old map.”
Rob pointed to the ravine indicated on the map.
Ava continued. “There no way anything wash down that hill and land up where we now stand. It would stop, down there.” She swept her arm toward the ravine. “So if, hypothetically speaking, some remains wash down the hill, they don’t come up this one.” She lapsed into thickened local dialect. “There ain’t no way the bodies dem under the ground where Annalise now standing.”
Now the attorney took over the story. “When I heard all this,” Vince said, “I advised taking it to the DPNR directly. The director is married to my second cousin’s husband’s mother. He’s a reasonable man.”
“Yah, he reas
onable after he make us wait in the lobby two hour,” Ava said. She was a hybrid; born on the island, but went to college in the states and sang in New York for a few years before returning to her roots.
The attorney was a stateside-educated local, too. “Well, yah, he do that.” He switched back to Yank. “But we just came from our meeting with him. He agrees it’s unlikely anyone that was buried in Uxolo ended up under Annalise, or that there’s another completely unrecorded burial site under her. He also agrees we’re talking about a report of old, old bones, and not some recent burial, so he thought our research on the maps that led us to Uxolo made sense. He just needs some kind of concession to make this go away.”
A concession. Of course. Because, after all, we were in the islands.
“What kind of concession?” I asked, hands on my hips.
“He made some hints, but in the end he asked us to come back with a proposal,” Vince said.
Julie spoke up for the first time. “We came up with a great idea we think will work.”
Ava said, “We think he agree to let this go for a permanent right of way up to the site, and a deed carving off the half acre on the hilltop.”
Rashidi spoke next. “The plot it sit on can’t be used for anything else. It too narrow. That probably why the plantation master let the slaves use it for their graves back then anyway. And that ridge mark the edge of your property. It won’t even make a hole in the middle.”
Vince said, “Let the government decide what to do with it, whether to make it into a historical park, or nothing at all. They get to put a notice in the paper that you’ve conceded the land to them after they received the report of the bones. That’s really all they want.”
So simple. I liked it, especially now that Tutein was handcuffed to a chair in the Federal Building. I decided to leave it up to my house.
What do you think, Annalise?
The open kitchen door creaked as it slowly swung closed with a firm click. I looked at Nick, and he smiled. That sealed it for me.
I said, “Guys, this is just magnificent. You did so well, I don’t know what to say, except thank you.”
Nick had commandeered my cell phone earlier to warn Petro-Mex about the diversion from the real attack. It rang now. He pulled it out and read the number displayed. “Hold on, everyone, this is Ramirez at Petro-Mex.” He walked outside to take the call.
Kurt took the opportunity to tell everyone about our morning. The celebratory mood shifted to one of absolute shock. Jaws gaped.
“All that happen here on this island since we last talk to you? Here?” Laura said, her voice squeaking. “Actual terrorists from an honest-to-God Mexican drug cartel?”
“Yup, but we stopped them,” Kurt said. And gave one of his rare Kurt-beams.
Laura turned to me. “I don’t know how you do it. Your life so dangerous. Dead bodies and terrorists. How you stand it? I mean, no offense—I sure it great for you, it just not for me.”
“No, that’s fine,” I said, and realized she had spoken my recurring thought aloud.
My life was out of control.
That’s why I’d been mad at Nick before he disappeared. And look at all that had happened since.
A cry interrupted us, followed by another. Two little girls waking up from their afternoon nap. Ruth and I walked up the stairs together while Julie said, “Now who’s ready for some peace and quiet and a little lunch?”
I was ready for a large serving of the peace.
Chapter Thirty-two
Ruth and I worked side by side on wet diapers and new outfits. I crooned to my beautiful girls. I had lost four days with them and risked my life in the process. What would they do if they had to grow up without a mother? Like Taylor almost did? He shouldn’t have to lose another. My mind took off down a trail best left untraveled, and my ebullient spirits deserted me.
Ruth lifted Jess and asked, “You coming?” as she headed for the door.
“No, I think I’ll just stay here and rock Liv, keep her all to myself for a little while.” I felt an irrational, ugly mood swing coming on. Maybe rocking would help me.
“She gonna want the bottle in the mini-fridge, there,” she said.
“Yes, you’re right,” I said, and pulled a bottle of formula out. I sat down in the glider between my girls’ cribs and rocked my daughter, crooning “Hush little baby” to her as she looked at me with expressive green eyes and tugged down the formula like a newborn calf.
“I missed you,” I said, and touched her tiny nose with the tip of my finger. She released the nipple and smiled around it. It made a drawn-out noise and vibrated against her lips, then she went back to the business of sucking. I studied her sweet face. Bless this child’s heart. If I wasn’t mistaken, she had the makings of Nick’s nose. Distinctive. Strong. But hopefully in a feminine way.
“Here you are,” Nick said. He was standing in the doorway, one hand on the jamb. “Ooooh, baby girl.” He walked to me and held out his arms. “May I hold her?”
My irritation bubbled up inside me, but I just held her up to him and switched places. As I handed him the bottle, my motions felt jerky and uncoordinated.
“Ooooo, so sweet, I love you Livvy,” he said.
And then I recognized it, and I let it in. The unexpressed anger I’d been tamping down since Nick had disappeared. Covered up by fear, then elation, relief, and fear again. If he loved us so much, why had he taken these risks? Why did he lie and shut me out? Why did he disappear with no explanation?
I bit my tongue. If I could stall myself long enough, maybe this would go away. I didn’t want to spoil the harmony, the celebration. I did love him. I could light into him later, after everyone was gone.
But I was pissed off, deep inside where I held on to the dark stuff, like my husband not telling me he was flying to Punta Cana.
Stop.
Nick was singing to Liv now. “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.”
I turned to go.
“Wait, Katie, stay with us,” Nick said. “Liv, say, ‘Mommy, don’t go.’”
I stopped in the doorway, a copy of his pose a few moments ago. I didn’t trust myself to speak. I tried to hide the ugliness inside me.
Nick said, “That call from Ramirez was very good news.”
I waited for him to go on; he waited for me to respond. I won.
He continued. “Did I ever tell you about the reward Petro-Mex gives for information leading to the apprehension of terrorists?”
I nodded. He didn’t see me. I gave in. “Yes, you did.”
“Petro-Mex wants to present Stingray with a check for a hundred thousand dollars. Plus our fees for the investigation work.” He looked up and grinned. “That’s more than enough money to pay for the delta between the insurance payout and a replacement airplane.”
His joke, if it was a joke, fell flat. And that’s when I lost it.
“God forbid you wouldn’t have the means to run out of the country without telling me. Hurry—buy that airplane, Nick, hurry! I just hope you have enough money left to ship me off to a fat farm, too, so you don’t have to look at your fat wife anymore.”
And then I ran.
Not just out of the room. I ran down the stairs and out the door, past the noisy party full of happy people in the kitchen. I ran down our driveway like a madwoman with all five dogs behind me. I ran until I found the fresh-crushed bush where Rashidi had driven a jeep up to the hilltop overlooking the valley of the mangoes. I ran until I was out of breath, wishing I was in shape, wishing I would learn to wear sensible shoes, trying not to think about that squishy feeling between the toes on my left foot, and then I trotted, and finally I gave up and walked, but fast, fast up the trail Rashidi had cut.
Paradise. I was run-walking up a trail in the middle of flippin’ paradise, or at least that’s what it looked like from the outside. “Oh, Katie lives in the Virgin Islands with her perfect husband and their three beautiful children. Their house is a mansion in the rainforest. Ooooooooh.”
Bullshit. It was paradise until you threw in dead people and a husband who says he loves you more than anything, but who loves his freedom more. I stopped, huffing. Nick loved me. I knew he loved me. But he sure did love being able to lie to me, to omit the truth, to go where he wanted and be accountable to no one. And if he loved me more, why did he choose those other things over me? Ipso facto.
I ran again, slower this time, thinking about the fallacy of paradise. For God’s sake, I was running to a graveyard on my property. Because of this place, this Uxolo Cemetery, I’d had a crazy man show up on my doorstep telling me about skeletons, and a crooked police officer drag me into the bush to make threats against my kids and me. And the house was nuts, anyway. What kinds of families lived in houses that threw pictures and knocked down tackle boxes? That hummed to the guests in the kitchen? Nuts! All of it was nuts, not paradise. Nothing was what it seemed.
I reached the hilltop. I crossed Rashidi’s rough and tumble clearing job with ease and saw a pile of fresh dirt and the rocks Rob had described, the plot of graves that was discernible if you closed your eyes and imagined it a hundred and fifty years ago. I saw a large rock on the edge of the clearing, and I perched on it, holding my knees up to my chest. Sitting where a young girl may well have mourned her mother and written in her diary. I looked out to the view she would have seen from this spot.
The Caribbean Sea rolled out in intoxicating blue waves. Three miles below me, where the sea met the land, was my favorite spot in the world, the Baths, my peaceful place. It was filled with millions of small rocks through which the ocean rushed in and out, creating a visceral sound that washed my soul clean. She had probably visited that place, too. I listened for it now.
I heard something. It may have been the wind in and out of the trees between that place and me, but it served the same purpose. I let it fill me up; I let it empty me out.
I heard another sound. A vehicle. Of course.
I waited until I heard feet crushing the cuttings on the forest floor. No words were spoken, but as my husband entered my sensory range, I smelled his unique and wonderful scent, and I felt him. I always felt him. The cosmic energy between us wouldn’t allow otherwise.
Finding Harmony (Katie & Annalise Book 3) Page 25