by Jen Blood
“It’s yours, Erin. It means that you belong with us.”
Isaac hands me my angel. The paint is still wet, and he’s made her with red hair like mine. We’re in the meeting room—just Isaac, Daddy, and me. I sit in Isaac’s lap and stare into my angel’s blue eyes. I’m four years old. Isaac smells like lemonade—we had some for lunch, and it’s sweet on his breath. Sometimes, he comes into our Sunday School class and tells stories or plays his guitar. He likes to sing foolish songs that he and Daddy make up together.
“You can trust Isaac,” Daddy tells me one day. “You can’t trust everybody in the world, there are fakers and fools out there, but Isaac will always take care of us.”
I saw the headlights when Diggs came down the road. I was shivering and numb and waterlogged and more than a little nauseous. I was still sitting under the spruce tree behind Diggs’ house. Einstein was shivering in my lap, both of us soaked to the bone.
My father had trusted Isaac. That’s why I hadn’t been afraid of him—not because he wasn’t a man to fear, but because my father wasn’t afraid. He didn’t send me off the island to keep me safe from the Paysons; I was sure of that now. I thought of that night again—the night Kat took me out to the island and begged my father to take me back.
“Get her as far away from me as you can.”
Why?
“Erin.”
I looked up to find Diggs standing above me. I was still crying—now that I’d started, I wasn’t sure I would ever stop. He crouched beside me and gently pried Einstein out of my arms.
“Kat’s all right,” he said.
I cried harder. “I know,” I managed to hiccup in between sobs.
“You’re exhausted, Sol—you just need to sleep.”
I nodded and kept crying, but I didn’t move. Diggs pushed a sopping, tangled mess of hair away from my eyes. Then, he pulled me into his arms like an overgrown, overwrought child, and carried me inside.
All the reasons I was there, all the stories I knew and all the questions I had, got twisted in my head as the living and the dead chased one another in an endless, indecipherable spiral. I cried into Diggs’ neck as he brought me inside. Poor Juarez stood awkwardly at the door looking like he’d rather be just about anywhere else on the planet.
“I started the bath,” he said. “Is there anything else I can do?”
Diggs shook his head. “I’ve got it.”
He carried me back to my room with my arms around his neck and my tears dampening his already-damp collar. He set me on the bed like I might shatter more than I already had.
“I’m okay,” I said. I sniffled. At least the tears had finally stopped. My teeth chattered and my fingers were frozen. Diggs smiled a little.
“I know, Sol,” he said. “You’re fine. Jack got a bath started for you—you need to get warmed up.”
I tried to undress myself but it turns out twelve hours in freezing rain is hell on your finer motor skills. Diggs pushed my hands away and rolled his clear blue eyes.
“I’ve got it. It’s not like I haven’t seen you before, you know.”
He gently peeled my clothes off, wet layer by wet layer. If I hadn’t been dangerously close to both catatonia and hypothermia, it might have been a little sexy. As it was, Diggs kept his eyes respectfully lowered until I was shivering and nude on the edge of my bed, then handed me my bathrobe and helped me into the tub.
He sat outside the bathroom doorway with the door open and waited silently while I soaked in the warm bath. I’d almost fallen asleep when he handed me a towel and insisted I get out.
“You’re getting pushy in your old age, Diggs,” I said. I was going for the old, tough-as-nails Solomon, but the words came out sounding broken.
“What can I say—you bring out the alpha in me, kid.”
I put on two layers of dry pajamas and a pair of thick socks and I still couldn’t stop shivering. Diggs closed the shades against the first glimmer of dawn while I got under the blankets. He kissed my forehead and pulled the blankets up to my chin, but I held onto his arm when he started to leave.
“Stay,” I said.
I expected him to argue, or hit me with more of that incontrovertible Diggs logic. Instead, he went around to the other side of the bed, took off his shoes, and climbed in beside me. He pulled me into his arms without hesitation, and we lay there wrapped up in one another until everything slowed to the safe, peaceful rhythm of Diggs’ heartbeat.
I slept.
Chapter Thirty-One
It was almost two o’clock in the afternoon when I woke the next day, alone in my bed. I tamed my hair into a reasonable facsimile of a ponytail, washed my face, and got dressed. When I emerged from my bedroom I found Diggs reading the paper at the kitchen table, Einstein’s muzzle resting on his thigh. Stein rolled his eyes in my general direction and his tail thumped idly once or twice, but otherwise he remained fixated on the cream cheese bagel in Diggs’ hand.
“Why aren’t you at work?” I asked.
“Took the day off,” he said casually, like this was a regular thing rather than the first time this millennium.
I made a face when he pushed the other half of his bagel toward me, but tore off a piece all the same.
“Kat’s awake,” he said. “No neurological damage, no internal bleeding, no permanent… anything. She’ll need physical therapy and it’ll be a while before she can operate again, though.”
“What’s she saying about the attack?” I asked immediately. It occurred to me too late that a better person would probably be more concerned about other things.
Diggs looked at me. I thought of crying into his neck last night, his arms around me. I’d done all manner of ungodly things with him over the years, but I’d never felt more naked.
“She says she doesn’t remember,” he said.
“What do you mean—none of it? She doesn’t remember who attacked her?”
“Maya said it’s not uncommon—traumatic amnesia. She may get the memory back in time, she may not.”
I didn’t say anything. The sun was bright outside, most of the puddles already dried up. She didn’t remember. Bullshit. Katherine Everett remembered everything: every surgery she’d ever done, every fight we’d ever had, every patient she’d ever seen. Details that had blurred for me years ago were always fresh in her mind. Once again, all the answers I needed were wrapped up in my mother’s tightly clenched fist, and she refused to give an inch.
“What about Jack?” I finally asked.
“He’s back out there looking for Matt. No luck so far.”
I sat down beside him.
“You look better,” he said.
“Yeah, well… Sleep. Dry clothes. Fewer of the, uh, you know…” I gestured vaguely at my eyes. “Sorry about that. The—you know, crying thing. I don’t usually…”
“I’ve known you seventeen years, Sol. I know you ‘don’t usually…’ You don’t need to apologize. I’m glad I was here.”
I swallowed another bit of bagel. Matt was still out there. I thought of my revelations the night before: the fact that my father had sent me from the island; that he’d asked Kat to take me far away; that whoever he was afraid of, it wasn’t Isaac or the Paysons. My exile from Payson Isle happened long before Rebecca Ashmont was part of the church, so it couldn’t have been her he’d been afraid of. She’d known a secret about him…
I needed to find out that secret.
“What about Joe Ashmont? Any sign of him?”
“Nope,” Diggs said. “They found his boat—that’s how they found Kat, actually. The boat was adrift, she was on it. If Marine Patrol hadn’t spotted it…”
The statement hung there, unfinished. I pushed the bagel away, no longer hungry.
“I need to get out to the island,” I said.
Diggs didn’t look surprised. “I figured. There’s already a search party out on Payson Isle—we can join them whenever you’re ready.”
“We?”
“We, Sol. Sorry, but I�
��m not letting you out of my sight until we catch… Somebody. Matt Perkins, Joe Ashmont, or whoever else you may have pissed off enough to incite violence.”
“You don’t have to protect me,” I said. “I was a little overwrought last night, but that doesn’t mean I need you to go all white knight on me. I can take care of myself.”
He grinned outright. He was showered and shaved and he looked fresher than he had since I’d arrived. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who’d needed the rest.
“I’m not going all white knight, you freak,” he said. “But it makes me look bad when my house guests get beaten up and tossed around the harbor willy nilly—I’m just trying to protect my reputation.”
“Because you’re just that self-absorbed.”
“You know me so well. Now come on—eat your bagel and let’s go catch some bad guys. It’ll be fun.”
“You’re in an awfully good mood considering all the death and destruction going on around us.”
He gave Einstein the last piece of his half of the bagel and stood. “Stop trying to pick a fight. I’m in a good mood because I realized something last night, and if you’re nice I might tell you about it one day. For now, though, eat the damned bagel so we can get out of here.”
I decided to give him an easy win this once, and ate the damned bagel.
◊◊◊◊◊
When we got there, the island looked no different than it always did: battered shore, creepy vibe, not another soul to be seen. According to Marine Patrol, they’d found Kat beaten half to death and left to die on Joe Ashmont’s boat, which had been drifting about a mile off the southern tip of Payson Isle.
There was still no sign of Ashmont or Matt Perkins.
A couple of guys from Search and Rescue met us at the dock, along with a very pretty hound dog who wouldn’t give Einstein the time of day. We climbed up the ridge from there, where Juarez was waiting for us. It was four in the afternoon. Diggs and I may have been bright eyed and moderately bushy tailed, but Jack looked like he hadn’t seen a good night’s sleep or a full meal in days.
“No sign of Matt?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I’m sorry. We’ve gone over every square inch of this island. No one’s out here.”
One of the Search and Rescue guys nodded. “It’s true—if anyone was on this island, Annabelle here would’ve picked up the scent. We caught some cold trails, but nothing fresh.”
“And you checked all the buildings? The boarding house, the cabins…”
“Everywhere,” Juarez confirmed.
“I’d still like to go back to the house,” I said.
Jack hesitated. “We think…” He cleared his throat. I glanced at Diggs, who looked just as clueless as I was. “It looks like that’s where your mother was attacked. There’s some blood. Broken glass.”
So, she had been out here. Or she’d been taken out here—but why? If someone wanted to kick the crap out of her, couldn’t they have done it just as easily on the mainland? Unless whoever it was had been trying to get information from her… I thought again of the scrapbooks she’d stolen from my room. Of Hammond’s death. My father’s voice on the other end of the line, on a stranger’s telephone three thousand miles away.
What the hell was going on?
I struck out on the trail toward the boarding house, the rest of the search party in my wake. I might not find Matt Perkins or Joe Ashmont on the island, but I was damned sure going to find something to start making the pieces fit.
Despite my determination, we didn’t find anything new on Payson Isle. Eventually, our Search and Rescue duo let Annabelle the Hound off her lead and she and Einstein wrestled and raced while we went through the ruins of the meeting room. One of the windows was broken, blood mixed in with jagged edges of glass and one of my mother’s earrings. Upon closer examination, I realized that it had been torn from her ear, a chunk of earlobe still attached.
I went outside and breathed in fresh air until I could think about something other than throwing up. Juarez sat on the back step while Diggs conducted his own investigation of the grounds. By six, I was ready to concede the point: there was nothing here to find. I’d been over the house from top to bottom, we’d been out to the cabins, Annabelle had trekked through the forest and along the shoreline.
With Ashmont and Perkins still gone and Noel Hammond dead, I was back to square one: Kat was the key.
Once we were back on the mainland, I managed to convince Diggs I wouldn’t be in mortal danger between Littlehope and the hospital, so he graciously allowed me some breathing room while he caught up at the paper. Juarez went back to the house to shower and get some sleep, and I ditched Einstein to see if I’d have any better luck questioning Kat when she was on heavy meds and just back from a near-death experience.
Maya met me outside my mother’s hospital room at just past seven that night. She didn’t look nearly as put together as she had at three that morning, and I had a pretty good idea why.
“They say doctors make the worst patients,” I said in lieu of a greeting.
“They don’t know the half of it. She’s still fairly out of it right now—I don’t expect it to get any easier once the meds wear off.”
“That’s a safe bet.”
“She says she doesn’t remember anything about the attack.”
I caught the doubt in her voice. “But you don’t believe her.”
“She’s been through a lot.” She barred the way into the room, though something about her eyes told me she wasn’t completely without sympathy for my plight. “I know you two have your challenges, but the Payson fire took something from her, too.”
“She told you about it?”
“No,” she said. “She doesn’t talk about it—the church and your father are off limits, too. But I know something happened, and I don’t think she was ever the same afterward.”
“It would be easier to buy that if she actually came out and said any of it herself. And it’s gotten out of hand now—you can see that, right?” I nodded toward the door. “It’s pretty obvious at this point that we’re long past the point of no return. People are missing and she almost died, all because of these secrets she refuses to tell. I have to talk to her.”
Maya moved out of the way. “Just go easy on her, all right?”
I nodded, but went inside before I made any promises. The more I learned about the fire, the more clear it became that Kat wasn’t quite the master manipulator I’d made her out to be all these years—someone else had been pulling a few strings themselves. But if she was keeping a secret for my father, I was damned well going to find out what that secret was.
My resolve got a lot less resolute once I got a good look at Kat, however. Her head was shaved and bandaged, her face bruised almost beyond recognition. Maya hadn’t been kidding about her being out of it, either—she looked like she didn’t even know who she was, let alone who I might be or the answers to the burgeoning global conspiracy unraveling in our backyard. I sat at the edge of her bed.
“You should see the other guy,” she said, her words garbled from pain and medication and swelling. The only way I knew that was what she’d said was because I knew Kat. Of course that’s what she said.
“Who did this to you?” I asked. I took one of her bruised and broken hands in my own.
“Don’t remember.”
She didn’t look at me when she said it. She was on enough pain meds to knock out a village, and she was still sticking to her story. Whatever adjectives you might use to describe Kat, weak-willed isn’t one of them.
“You don’t have to lie to me anymore,” I said. I was trying to be gentle, but I wasn’t sure that came through. “I know Dad’s still alive. I know he was trying to protect me when he sent me away. He was afraid of something, but it wasn’t Isaac. It wasn’t the church.”
She swallowed hard. Pain flared in her eyes. “He’s dead. It’s over.” She closed her eyes before I could argue. “Let me sleep.”
Maya walked
in then, like she’d been sent some kind of psychic S.O.S. She took my arm.
“She needs her rest.”
“I just have one more question.”
Maya shook her head, intractable. “Give her a couple of days. She’s not going anywhere.”
I wasn’t so sure about that anymore. My leads were disappearing faster than I could track them down; that didn’t bode well for Kat. I thought of the Washington address Juarez had gotten, and the house where my father may or may not be at that very moment. I could book a flight out there, try to find something out that way. If the number had already been disconnected, though, chances were that my father was already back on the run.
But from whom? And why?
I got in my car and headed back toward Littlehope with no more answers than I’d had when I started the day.
I was just getting into town when my cell phone rang. It was dark out, but at least the rain hadn’t returned. The name on the caller ID gave me pause, to say the least. I pulled over to the side of the road on Littlehope’s main drag and answered.
“Joe?” I said.
Instead of Joe Ashmont, however, a woman’s voice answered—low and rough, the voice of a longtime smoker or a veteran phone sex operator.
“Erin Solomon?”
“Who is this?”
“You want to know about your father and the fire?”
My heart stuttered. “I do.”
“Bring Zion. Nobody else. Come to the greenhouse—get here quickly. There’s not much time.”
“Someone almost killed my mother out there last night—why in hell would I come out to the island alone after that? Who is this?”
“The greenhouse,” she repeated. “I’ll tell you what your father really was. Bring my son, and I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”
She hung up.
I sat there and stared at the phone like it might come to life and shed some light on whatever the hell had just happened. Sadly, it did not.
Rebecca Ashmont was alive. And calling me from her ex-husband’s phone. I went back to the house to get Juarez.