Our mood grew increasingly somber and it spread to our friends, who packed up and began to take their leave. The goodbyes felt anticlimactic and mechanical, but I did my best.
Over the next few hours, Nick worked outside while I cleaned up the aftermath of the sale to the Dixie Chicks’ mournful album Home. I played it over and over like a dirge for our life on the island.
“I’m going to miss you, Annalise. I’m really, really sorry about this,” I said aloud.
The house remained still, silent, and morose, but I knew if she was going to mope, there was nothing I could do about it. I reminded myself for the zillionth time that I was doing the right thing.
Chapter Forty
Later that evening, while we had supper on the back patio, we watched the bats come out from under the eaves. Afterward, we threw away our paper plates and tidied up the kitchen for the last time. My pulse sounded in my ears and our feet echoed as we walked the long hall to the bedroom. I took a soak in the claw-footed tub, then put away everything but what I’d need in the morning. All our bags were packed and ready.
As we got into bed and turned out the lights, Nick brought up the cash from the sale.
“I’m a little concerned about the money. We did advertise in the paper, and we had a lot of people we didn’t know up here,” he said.
There were people on our quasi-third-world island who would go to great lengths for that kind of cash, and notice of an estate sale generally meant an untended house. Not only was the cash attractive, but the items left in the house would appeal to a certain class of person as well. And we weren’t parting as friends with some of our neighbors, including Junior and Pumpy, Bart, the many friends of the crooked investigator I sent off Baptiste’s Bluff in my old truck, and those of Jeffrey Bonds and Lisa Nesbitt, whom I’d helped land in jail for murder. Tonight was the last chance for some of them to bid us farewell in their own special ways.
“It hadn’t occurred to me. And it’s dark as pitch out there now.” I thought for a minute. “Well, we’ve got the dogs and the flare gun.” I wasn’t so sure Annalise was on our side right then, so I left her off the list. “The gate is shut. We’ll be fine, right?”
Nick nodded. “I’ll hide the money in my closet. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Right then, the quiet night vanished and a hot wind gusted through our open windows, whipping the curtains into a froth of seafoam-green gauze. I swallowed and looked at Nick in surprise. He gripped my hand and returned the expression.
We lay wide-eyed in the dark while the minute hand clicked forward as if through a vat of molasses. The wind grew stronger and built to a howl, but no rain came. Objects inside the house shifted, banged, and fell to the floor. We heard a thud in the living room and something crashed upstairs. I prayed the wind was the culprit. If it was anything else, the storm was blowing too loud for us to hear it.
The dogs howled, then barked, and finally started growling in a frenzy. Were they scared of the wind? Or was something out there? The night visits from the red Senepol cattle and the scrubby horses that roamed the hills didn’t bother them anymore.
The bed felt like it was about to go airborne and the edges of the cotton sheets floated like poltergeists. I clutched at Nick’s hand as if it would tether me down.
“Are you sure you locked up?” I asked for the sixth time.
“You know I am.”
“Let’s push the furniture against the door.”
Nick sprang up to move the armoire. I fell in beside him and pushed with all my might, reassuring myself that no one could get to us through the windows, since our room was on the second floor. On a calm night, a determined house-breaker might climb a ladder to the balcony, but not in this wind. We blockaded the door to the hallway with two chests of drawers in front of the armoire and got back in bed. That was all we could do.
We must have fallen asleep, because I woke up in the middle of the night with my back against the headboard and my left hand holding Nick’s right. Something was wrong. Nick woke, too.
“The lights,” I said to him. “We left them on in the bathroom and now they’re out. If we lost power, the generator should have come on.”
“Do you want me to go outside and check it?” he asked.
“No! Let’s stay here.” We huddled close.
Many uneasy hours later, we awoke to a peaceful tropical morning that belied the night before. It was late. Neither of our phone’s alarms had gone off, which I didn’t understand, but I didn’t have time to dwell on it. We had survived the night, we were relieved and exhausted, but if we were going to make our plane, we had to put it in high gear.
I went to turn on the bathroom light and nothing happened. Still no power. Great.
“Do you want me to see if I can fix it?” Nick asked.
“No time, I’ll be fine,” I said.
We threw on our clothes, grabbed our bags, and ran for the garage with Oso trotting behind us. I yanked open the door to the truck and cried out.
“What is it?” Nick called.
I scooped up a thorny pile of black roses and threw them to the floor behind me. One of the thorns dug into my thumb and a bright red drop of blood welled up. “Damn Bart left me a present and I cut my thumb on it. I’m OK.” I stared at the blood for a second.
“It’s a good thing we’re leaving, Katie, because I swear to God I’d kill him, and you’d have to visit me in prison for the rest of our lives.”
“I’d help you,” I said.
I shoved Oso into the cab and went to say goodbye to the other dogs.
“I’m going to miss you guys.”
They barely acknowledged me. They had worked hard all night long.
I climbed in the passenger side and Nick backed the truck down the driveway toward our lane, but then slammed on the brakes. All the construction scaffolding that had been carefully stacked against the house lay across the driveway, blocking our path.
We jumped out and Nick called me over to his side of the truck. He hefted a corner of the scaffolding platform and pointed at a machete, a patched Rasta cap, and a drying pool of what looked like blood on the ground.
“Holy Moses,” I breathed.
“Annalise may not want us to go, but it looks like she isn’t going to let anyone hurt us, either.”
“The cap,” I said. “It looks like Junior’s.”
“Maybe, although I’ve seen a lot that look just like that.”
“Yeah, but not on the heads of people that hated me.”
“Look,” Nick said, holding up a severed electrical line that ran to the house.
I was pretty sure we’d find sabotage at the generator, too, but we were out of time. I ran back to the house and put my head against the cool yellow plaster like I had so many times before.
“I am so sorry, Annalise. I will find a good family to come live here with you. I promise.”
Silence from the jumbie house. I couldn’t wait for an answer. Nick and I dragged the scaffolding out of the way and got back in the truck. An ice pick of pain stabbed my heart as we went through the gate for the last time. It was done. We were leaving. Oso turned back toward the house and began barking madly, jangling my seriously frayed nerves.
“Wait!” I yelled. Nick slammed on the brakes and Oso yelped. I jumped out of the car and ran back toward the gate, snapping pictures as fast as my iPhone would let me: the lane, the gate, and the house standing serene amidst the ruins of the natural beauty that had been stripped off the island around her. Two wild horses had come up out of the bush and into the yard. I committed it all to memory, knowing I would probably not get another chance to soak in the house that I had brought back to life over the last year, and who had brought me back with her.
“Are you going to be all right?” Nick asked when I climbed back into the truck.
I nodded. “Drive.”
He jammed the truck into gear and stomped on the accelerator, and we lurched forward. I scrolled through the pictures, squinting in
the bright morning sunlight to drink them in, one by one. As I clicked to the last picture, something about the one just before it tugged at me, and I went back. A mare and foal were standing in front of Annalise, looking just as I’d seen them moments before, but there was something else. I held the phone farther from me, trying to bring it into focus. And then I saw her.
My hand opened and the iPhone clattered to the floor. Oso whined and shoved his nose under my elbow and my hand flew to my mouth. I turned to look back again at my house, to see what my eyes told me was true but my mind could not believe. Even stripped of leaves, the forest blocked my view.
“What’s the matter?” Nick asked, his eyes on the road as he whipped around a narrow curve.
I picked up my phone again. On the front steps of my house stood a tall black woman in a white blouse and a loose, calf-length plaid skirt. A matching scarf was knotted over her hair. She was looking straight into the camera with somber eyes. One of the dogs was nuzzling her leg. In her right hand, she held Junior’s cap and machete, and in her left, his severed, bloody head by his dreadlocked hair.
I bit my lip and shook my head. My heart ached for the terrifying warrior goddess I had left behind. “Goodbye, Annalise,” I whispered. Then I rolled down the passenger window and threw up.
Chapter Forty-one
Nick drove across the island like Mario Andretti in the Monaco Grand Prix, throwing caution and fears about flat tires and side-view mirrors to the wind. Ava was picking up our truck from the parking lot, and as late as we were, she might beat us there.
When we got to the airport, we went to the ticket counter to deal with Oso’s departure. I raised my eyebrows when Nick put two twenty-dollar bills on top of the kennel. Oso’s tail thumped against the inside of the kennel.
“Trust me,” Nick whispered. And sure enough, Oso’s kennel lost a few pounds in the transaction and we sailed through to baggage. But there, we had a problem.
“No way, mon, this kennel way too big,” the baggage handler shouted. “This not me job to lift he.”
Nick begged, pleaded, explained, and bribed. Cash changed hands, but the baggage handler still didn’t budge.
“What’s the problem over here?” a familiar voice inquired.
Nick turned and looked into the face of our favorite contractor.
“Hey, Egg,” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
“Working for the mon,” he said, clasping hands with Nick.
“Can you help us get Oso on the plane?”
Egg grinned. “No problem.” He turned to me and bowed. “Hate to see you go, miss.”
I curtsied back. “I’ll miss you, Egg.”
Oso stuck his nose partway out the breathing slits and I stuck mine against it. Cold. I rubbed his nose with one finger. His eyes sparkled as Egg hauled his kennel away to the makeshift cargo bay. We could see his kennel from the temporary post-hurricane terminal, which was more like a cattle pen by the runway, and heard him barking at the chickens. They squawked and flapped their wings in their wooden crates, and feathers flew everywhere. It was hard to say whether the dog or the chickens would have the worst of it on the flight, but the passengers were bearing the worst of it at the gate between the racket and the smell of chickens and jet fuel.
Nick and I sat pressed together on a bench, our heads back against the wall, our fingers entwined. Almost on time, we got on our plane. As we taxied away, I looked out the window to soak in one more view of the island. The last thing I saw was my yellow house with her red roof, standing alone in a sea of brown.
Chapter Forty-two
And so the Nurturing Empress life foretold by my Jump Up psychic commenced. Sort of.
Nick and I crammed ourselves, Taylor, and Oso into a furnished apartment in Corpus Christi that reminded me of my first apartment in Dallas. Boxy and functional, but not much else to brag about, like Corpus itself. It was a far cry from the lifestyle I’d grown accustomed to. We weren’t close enough to the ocean to smell it or hear it, much less see it. The walls were so thin we could hear the neighbors watching Jersey Shore and smell their garlicky spaghetti.
I wondered if they could hear me, too, each night at three a.m. when I started screaming. Nick sure could. The first time it had happened, I shot bolt upright in bed. It felt as if two giant hands had struck me hard in the chest. My hands flew to my chest and my heart beat so hard it felt it would break my ribs. I panted for breath.
“No!” I thought I heard Annalise say. But there was no one there.
Nick sat up and grabbed me by the arms and shook me once. “What is it? What’s the matter?”
“Annalise is very upset with me.”
He pulled me into him. The air vibrated as I whispered to Annalise.
“You love Taylor, too. You know I have to be here with him. We don’t have a choice. You’re upset now, but in the end, everything will be all right. Be mad at Derek, not at me. I love you.” Eventually, Annalise released me and I fell back to sleep. But it happened almost every night at the same time from then on.
So, we had noisy neighbors, and vice versa. We missed Annalise. But on the other hand, we didn’t have to deal with centipedes, hardly-working workers, or Bart anymore. I focused on the positives. Nick was steadily bringing in new clients and I picked up some contract legal work, which wasn’t bad at all.
Oh, hell, who was I kidding? I hated writing discovery responses like an overpaid paralegal, and my sexy husband had attention deficit issues—mainly that he focused on the situation with Derek more than I wished. Money was tight and our problems were real, so I tried to keep a sock in it. I distracted myself by teaching classes to senior citizens at the neighborhood dojo while Taylor was at Mother’s Day Out, the single greatest invention of all time. I could deliver vicious kicks and chops and no one had to know why.
When I wasn’t quasi-lawyering or bludgeoning my issues into submission, Taylor, Oso, and I spent as much of the cooling fall days outside as we could. We enjoyed walking the boardwalk on top of the stone seawall. It had the best view in the city, not just of the water, but also of the beachside motels and the tallish buildings downtown. Being outside eased the pain of missing Annalise a little.
Colorless Corpus Christi was like the reverse image of shiny St. Marcos. But if I closed my eyes, breathed in salt air, and listened to the whoosh of the waves, I could almost see myself back in the beautiful blues, greens, pinks, oranges, and reds of the pre-hurricane islands. Almost. At least once Annalise sold, we could upgrade our living situation, maybe to a rental house with a big back yard and some trees.
I had a strong nibble on Annalise less than a week after we left. The St. Marcos realtor I had signed with showed her to a group of businessmen who wanted to share a house on the island. None of them planned to live on St. Marcos full time. None of them had kids. None of their spouses indicated any interest in spending time there. I had promised Annalise I would find her a family, and these guys seemed the furthest thing from it. Ava told me the men were arrogant and greasy when I called to see how the house-sitting was going.
“What do you mean, greasy?” I pictured them in need of a good shampoo, lank clumps of hair hanging over their pimply foreheads, smudgy spots on their glasses.
“They wheeler-dealers, and they slippery. I not the only one take a dislike to them. They opening cabinets and checking things out, and one of them look under the sink. The pipe bust and spray him good. I cheer Annalise on, let me tell you. Betsy all horrified, teetering around in heels, afraid she get water on her white skirt. White. Why she wear something like that up at Annalise, nobody know.”
The realtor definitely lacked island sense, but I was looking for a Continental buyer. “You and Annalise be nice, now. We need a sale.”
“We need to book our tickets to New York.”
I still hadn’t told her I wasn’t going. I knew I owed it to her, but I couldn’t muster enough courage. Ava could get righteously pissed, but I feared her sadness more than her anger. “S
oon,” I said, and changed the subject. “Anything new on Jacoby?”
“No. Should there be? People die in hurricanes. It sad, but it a fact. I do got news, though. Junior Nesbitt missing.”
My hands turned icy. I had convinced myself I’d either dreamed up the picture on my iPhone or Annalise had conjured it to hurt me for leaving her. An image popped into my mind of a pool of blood on my driveway.
“Katie, you there?”
“Yes, sorry. What do you mean, he’s missing?”
“Vanish. He s’posed to work and not show up.”
“That’s pretty normal for him.”
“He not show up for a week. Even on the day he pay his men.”
No contractor could stiff his workers and stay in business long. He really was missing. “Taylor is calling. So sorry. I have to run. Thanks, Ava.” I hung up.
Nick was beside me on the sofa. He stared at me like my nose was growing. “What?” he prompted.
My mind scrambled for a plausible story without stopping to figure out why I felt the need to cover up for Annalise. “Junior disappeared. Ava thinks he ran off because he crossed the wrong person.”
Nick’s brow furrowed. He left the question of why that should bother me so much unspoken.
“Bad memories,” I said into the silence, then quickly, “When is Taylor’s next visit with Derek?”
Nick’s eyes told me he wasn’t buying it, but I could always count on Derek to take the spotlight off me. After the paternity tests had proven Derek was Taylor’s dear old dad, their visits had become routine. And the routine was that Taylor went bananas every time he had to go, sometimes starting a couple days early.
“Monday,” Nick answered. “We get the weekend off from Satan.”
The weekend came and went, and Monday arrived.
“No go,” Taylor informed me at breakfast.
I hadn’t mentioned the visit with Derek yet. “No go where? The park? Don’t you want to go to the park and go down the slide?”
Leaving Annalise (Katie & Annalise Book 2) Page 22