Destiny Bay

by Sarah Abbot

  Franklin grunted his agreement. “He was an odd bird. Paint up a storm for weeks, he would, then wind up crosseyed drunk and throw the better part of them into the sea! Can you imagine?” he asked, in a tone suggestive of a man who’d suffered through the blight of one-too-many artists.

  “Okay,” Abby said, “that’s…interesting. What was he like when my mother lived with him?”

  “Foolish,” Mavis spouted. “Tripping over himself, he was. What was it he called her, Franklin?” she asked him with a nudge.

  “His muse.”

  “Right. His muse.” She snorted derisively. “He was daft over your mother, rest her soul. Not that it would have been difficult, mind. She was easy on the eyes.” Mavis crossed herself, and Abby felt certain that if wishes were enough, her mother was indeed quite restful.

  “Okay, can you tell me what you remember about my mother…about Celeste?”

  Both O’Donnells hesitated. Abby searched faces that seemed suddenly guarded. She turned her attention to Franklin. “I expect you didn’t know her well, Franklin, but anything you could tell me about her would be appreciated.”

  Did Mavis’s grip on his hand tighten, or did she imagine that?

  “Well,” Franklin said cautiously, “I guess you could say that she was…out of her element here. She rallied well, mind, despite the hardships of living with Douglas and being scorned on every front.”

  “Scorned?” Abby said, sitting bolt upright. “What do you mean by that?”

  Again, the hesitation.

  Mavis braced herself as if preparing to jump into very cold water. “In the beginning, your mother was not exactly welcomed here, Abby.”

  The words hit her like a kick in the stomach. She felt her insides tighten. Abby looked from one to the other, searching their faces. She saw no reprieve. “Why?” she asked, the word coming through her teeth. “Why was my mother not welcomed? Why was she ‘scorned’?”

  Mavis shrugged, sighed as if held breath were being expelled. “Well, ’tis best you know the truth of it, I suppose.” She rose and topped off all three teacups and sat again with a sudden weariness. “She came to live with McAllister—that much you know. But what you may not know is that he was engaged to marry another woman when he brought your mother here. A woman who was dearly loved by the entire community. This woman also happened to be well advanced in a pregnancy of his making. I suppose it would be safe to say that your mother was looked upon as something of a—”

  Now it was Franklin’s turn to nudge—hard. “Watch yourself, Mavis.”

  “A home wrecker?” Abby finished, red-faced. She turned her attention to Franklin, emotions seething. “And what did you think of her, Franklin?”

  Franklin was quiet, now. The entire room was quiet.

  “Well?” she asked, mindful of the edge in her voice but helpless to temper it.

  “I resented her as much as we all did, I’m sorry to admit.”

  Abby closed her eyes, willing the stinging moisture away. She needed these people, as rotten luck would have it; needed them to help her piece together a lost segment of her mother’s life. To think, only moments ago she had thought them gracious to a fault.

  She steeled her resolve. To alienate the O’Donnells now would be to foil her own purposes. She swallowed the lump of defensiveness that swelled in her throat, promising herself a good cry when she got home.

  “Was no one kind to her?” Abby asked, feeling a catch in her throat that she hoped was not translated in her voice.

  “Well, we were civil,” Mavis said. “It’s only that we didn’t welcome her into the bosom of our society, so to speak. You must understand, Abby, that we all detested McAllister—being the source of such heartbreak to his fiancée. Looking back, I can see that we painted your mother with the same brush. I can also see that your mother never knew about the woman he left behind,” she added quietly.

  Abby straightened in her seat. “Where is the woman now?” She could have sworn Franklin’s eyesight returned— if only for long enough to shoot a warning glance at his wife.

  Mavis shifted uneasily. “Oh, she’s long gone, m’dear. Too many bad memories, I imagine. Douglas couldn’t have been easy to love, and then to be jilted by him with a babe on the way…oh, it rankles the very essence of decency, it does.”

  Why won’t Mavis meet my eyes?

  Lie-dar her grandmother used to call it—a play on the word radar. When Abby was a troublesome teenager, Gran would use the term whenever she felt that Abby was lying to her, and she was almost always right.

  Abby decided then and there that she’d inherited Gran’s lie-dar, and that Mavis O’Donnell was definitely lying. But why lie about where this woman is now? What does it matter?

  A weighty silence settled around them. Abby placed her teacup upon its saucer. “She must have found it difficult,” she said, gritting her teeth at the admission. Had anyone wondered if her mother found life on this island difficult?

  “She did indeed,” Mavis said. “And I’m sure your mother did, as well, rest her soul. I’m sorry for it.”

  Their eyes met over the cluttered surface of the Formica table. Abby saw the apology clearly in the hazel eyes that stared back at her. “Thank you.”

  “Now, if memory serves me correctly,” Franklin said, seemingly eager to be on with the purpose of Abby’s visit, “your mother didn’t stay on longer than a year. Surprised us all by lastin’ that long, truth be told.”

  “Do you know why she left?”

  “There was some trouble, if I recall correctly. Seems to me she was harassed by some character—never did find out who.”

  “Harassed?” The more Abby learned about her mother’s experience, the more she, too, was surprised the “fragile” woman she’d been told about had lasted so long.

  “The proper term is ‘stalked,’ Franklin,” Mavis said. “It’s against the law now.”

  “Hmph,” he said. “Shoulda been then, too. The police weren’t much help, I’m afraid to say. Never had that sort of a thing ’round here before. Then when she was robbed, well—”

  “She was robbed? What was taken?”

  “Seems to me she lost some jewelry. I remember she posted reward signs. Shame, it was.”

  Jewelry. She remembered Ronnie’s suggestion that she had come to Destiny Bay in search of a family heirloom. Could the piece of jewelry be the heirloom in question? “Is there anything else you can tell me, Franklin?”

  “Well, I remember a few things. It’s likely a waste of breath to say she was a rare beauty. You know that already. But, I do remember a soft look she’d get in her eyes whenever she looked at old Douglas. She loved him, against all reason, mind, but love him she did. There could be no disputing that.”

  “You know, there’s something else,” said Mavis, the light of sudden remembrance illuminating her face. She sat up straighter, resting her chin on her hand. “Funny how I’m only just recallin’ this now. It seems to me that when your mother first arrived here, she was one way, and when she left, she was another.”

  Mavis had Abby’s full attention. “Can you elaborate on that, Mavis?”

  “Oh, to be sure. I remember your mother being a lovely-tempered girl, kind of soft, like. When she first got here, she was smitten with old Douglas—though I can’t imagine why—so she was a bit dreamy-like.” Mavis dropped a lump of sugar in Franklin’s teacup and stirred, handing it to her husband. “And even months after her difficulties in the community, the robbery, the business with the stalker, she was still sweet, still eager to be part of us. Gradually, we started lettin’ her in. We couldn’t blame the girl for Douglas’s indiscretion forever, now could we? It was awful difficult to, at any rate. She was a nice person, any way you cut it.”

  Abby felt her eyes well up, felt her heart surge with relief. “Go on,” she said, blinking away a threatening tear.

  Mavis leaned back in her chair, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. “Then, she changed.”

  “In what way?”
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  “She just changed. She was like a ghost of herself; like the sweetness drained away and left her hollow inside. Oh, Douglas was beside himself, he was.”

  “Yes, he was,” Franklin said, nodding at the memory that shadowed his face.

  “She drifted around so quiet, you wouldn’t even see her. Like I said, she was like a ghost.”

  Abby swallowed, almost sickened by the omen of her mother’s ghostlike transformation. Was that when it had happened? Was that when her mother had lost her way?

  “We all thought she’d seen through Douglas at last, but he was fair daft over it, as well, buying her gifts, painting her portrait…but now that I think on it, I’ve never seen a person just fade away over a lover’s spat before.”

  Just fade away… like the ghost on the rocks, her mother had faded away. A living ghost, fading and fading, surging once in a while with the brilliance of a shooting star, leaving every witness to her momentary brightness mourning its loss forever after.

  Abby cleared her throat. “And then?” she asked hoarsely.

  Mavis shrugged, returned to the present with a quick tilt of the head. “And then, one day we all woke up and she was gone.”

  Yes, she thought silently. That happened to my family, too.

  “After she left, McAllister drank himself into a yearlong stupor. Couldn’t even drag himself out of his self-centered misery long enough to introduce himself to his wee son. A fine man, he was,” Franklin said bitterly.

  “I thought you said the woman who had his baby left the island?”

  “Oh, she did,” said Mavis quickly, her cheeks coloring. “Eventually. But she hadn’t left yet.”

  Lie-dar. What was this woman hiding?

  “I see.” Abby felt a swell of sadness so acute that she wanted nothing more than to be alone in the place her mother had lived, had loved, had breathed.

  She looked at the O’Donnells. Their faces seemed tempered by a similar sadness.

  Age often brings reason, and looking at them, she had no doubt they regretted their part in closing the ranks of Destiny Bay.

  And as beautiful as this island was, Abby had no doubt whatsoever that it could sometimes grow very, very cold.

  Chapter Nine

  Flowers. A true gentleman began a courtship with flowers— no exceptions. His mother had taught him that. Yes, she had raised him to be a gentleman, and he would do her proud.

  He could hardly wait for Abrielle to come home and find his floral offering. What would her facial expression reveal? Joy? Excitement? What? Oh, the very thought made him weak.

  The Lover smiled gently at Amore as she danced around in her cage. His impatient little one. She wanted to be petted, stroked, but he was preoccupied.

  He looked down at the pink silk panties he had taken from Abby’s clothesline. The soapy fragrance that unfurled as he rubbed them made him dizzy, made him drunk. He clasped the scrap of fabric in his hand and stroked his cheek, let it slide over the stubble that felt vibrantly, painfully alive.

  He placed the underwear back in his secret box, reached for a bra. It was mauve, lacy, and hinted at small, lovely breasts. This much he knew. He had watched her last night as she bathed in the small, metal tub that mercifully left nothing to his imagination. He’d watched her slick a bar of soap over one breast, then the other. Had stared at them as they glistened with suds, then with the stream of water she wrung from a cloth.

  Lovely.

  Yes, the courtship had begun.

  With due ceremony, he had opened this new chapter of his life, going to the secret place—the sacred place—and unearthing one of his treasures: a tiny box of Celeste’s hair, silently gathered from a brush one night as she slept, unknowing, in her bed, not six feet away from where he had stood.

  It had thrilled him—to be so close, and yet still not to touch. It hadn’t been time.

  He smiled in remembrance. Of course, the time had come eventually. Ah, yes…good things come to those who wait.

  He had taken the hairs, those precious, few strands, and braided them together with care. He had placed Celeste’s hair in the box beside a lock of his mother’s hair, which he had snipped from her lifeless body as she lay in her casket so many years ago.

  It had been easy to linger at the funeral parlor after his relatives had meandered into the foyer, heads bowed and voices hushed. It had been easy to lift the lid of her closed casket.

  It had not been easy, however, to look at her once beautiful face. They had done their best to cover the bruising, the collapsed facial bones, the deep gashes above her eyes, but there was no disguising the ugly facts of her death.

  Foolish woman. Dear, beautiful foolish woman.

  He thought of his mother’s folly and how closely it paralleled Celeste’s. Both women had spurned his offering of love. Both women had wantonly followed the lure of a man far beneath themselves. Both women had ended tragically.

  But it would not be so for his Abrielle, oh no. He would see to that. He would end this cycle of needless loss, and he would make her his. This he vowed as he wove the strands of Celeste’s hair around an offering for his Abrielle: a bouquet of rosemary for remembrance, forget-me-nots and honeysuckle.

  Ah, honeysuckle. He remembered how the artist had sprinkled petals of honeysuckle over Celeste’s body as he painted her there on the rocks, how she had smiled as they landed on her flesh.

  McAllister, the artist, had stood knee-deep in the frigid water, ogling her, caressing her whenever he could, not even imagining that it was The Lover for whom she lay naked and inviting. The Lover for whom she posed.

  And now, at long last, Celeste had come back to him in the form of her child, Abrielle Lancaster.

  Of course, Abrielle did not recognize him yet.

  That would take time, courtship. Her remembrance would come during the slow dance of seduction that The Lover would choreograph—indeed, had been choreographing.

  And Abrielle’s conscious entrance into the dance would begin the instant her eyes fell upon the offering. Forget-me-nots, honeysuckle, rosemary, hair the color of fire.

  Oh, how he hoped she would love the flowers!

  He smiled at the thought of her, his lovely girl. Abrielle, he was forced to concede, lacked the natural grace of Celeste, but there was time. Under his patient tutelage, he knew she would blossom as had her mother.

  Yes, he thought, a new sort of satisfaction purling through him. He would mold her—would train her—in so many things.

  In the art of grace, the art of love…oh, yes, the art of love indeed. He would drink the delicacy of her into his soul, and there she would live.

  This, he thought silently, is my calling. To save her from the folly of the women who went before her.

  I am The Lover. The courtship has begun.

  Abby had spent an hour sitting on the beach below Abandon Bluff, just thinking. What had happened to her mother here? She was no closer to finding the answer than when she’d first arrived.

  Was it possible the mystery had something to do with Ryan Brannigan’s hostility toward her? First chance she got, she was going to confront the man. She had enough to deal with on this island without adding an enemy to the list. Finding out the simplest fact about her mother was proving to be far more difficult than she’d imagined, and she needed all her concentration and energy focused on her reason for coming here.

  The sun was sinking now, and she was exhausted as she returned to Artist’s Cottage. What she needed before she confronted anyone was a good night’s sleep.

  Abby paused on the deck, startled by the realization that she had just thought of this place as home. She thought of the house she had been raised in—all of its sprawl and elegance—and realized, with another surprise, that she’d never really thought of it as home.

  But here, now, standing so close to the sea, Abby felt the possibility of home more strongly than ever.

  She gazed in awed appreciation at the play of color and light that lay before her eyes. In spite of i
ts lack of creature comforts, this place almost felt like it could be home. There was something of her mother here. She felt it, as surely as she felt the breeze against her flesh. Something of Celeste Rutherford had imprinted itself upon the stones, the sand, the twisted pine.

  She’d been told that bagpipes had played at her mother’s funeral, had serenaded her coffin’s slow descent into the earth.

  Ever since, when she heard bagpipes, she imagined the music finding her mother’s wandering spirit, taking her to the clouds, taking her to a magical place where her soul could finally be at rest.

  Now, seeing the sea glow translucent beneath frothy curls of surf, the setting sun catching every undulation in gold, Abby had the unmistakable feeling that the music had brought her mother here. That this was the home she had found, at long last.

  She stared at the scene, for once not wondering why her mother had originally come to Destiny Bay, had secreted away the painting that reminded her of this glorious place.

  A subtle smile played on her lips. What if I actually stayed here?

  Of course, it was impossible. She had too many ties back home…

  But, what if her life could be just this simple? This elemental? What if she could leave her empty life behind and find a real purpose here?

  She grinned at her own whimsy, digging in her purse for her key.

  “What on earth…”

  Abby placed her purse on the bench, crouched and reached for the small bundle that was hanging from the doorknob: a posy of forget-me-nots, rosemary and a delicate blossom of honeysuckle. She lifted the bouquet and sniffed, twirling it in her fingers as she looked for a note.

  Something about the small token bothered her.

  Abby looked more closely, moving her fingers to examine the knot that enclosed the posy. It was tied in something braided, something reddish gold. She drew her fingertips over it and a feeling of revulsion swept through her.

  The flowers were tied in braided strands of long, red hair; human hair. In fact, it looked exactly like the color of her mother’s hair.