by Sandra Brown
As he turned away from the window, he checked his cell phone and saw that he had a signal, something that had been sporadic all morning. Knowing he should make the call while he could, he punched in the Headlys’ house number. Eva answered. When she heard his voice, her relief was obvious.
“Are you all right? Gary’s been trying to reach you.”
“Cell service is dicey.”
“In the city of Savannah?”
“Weather’s moved in. Can’t guarantee how long I’ll have a signal. Is your old man around?”
“Yes, and he’s as grumpy as you sound. I swear, the two of you…” She didn’t finish, leaving him to infer that they tested her patience in equal measure.
Headly came on the line and began with an accusatory, “I’ve called you three times.”
“Hello to you, too.”
“Why haven’t you answered your phone?”
“As I explained to Eva, cell service here comes and goes.”
“Where exactly is here?”
Dawson ran his hand around the back of his neck where tension had collected. “I wasn’t completely honest with you the last time we talked.”
“Oh really?” Headly said, ladling on the sarcasm.
The ornery son of a bitch wasn’t about to make this easy on him. “Everything I told you was the truth. I just omitted some things.”
“Like where you are. What’s that racket?”
“Rain. It’s pelting. I’m on Saint Nelda’s Island.”
“Nelda was a saint?”
“Somebody thought so. It’s a sea island off the coast of Georgia, slightly south of Savannah, reachable only by ferry, six miles long, two miles wide.”
“Thanks for the geography lesson. I’m ready for Jeopardy. Why there?”
“I rented the house next door to one owned by the late Congressman Nolan.”
A huff of surprise, followed by a short silence, then, “I don’t even have to ask, do I?”
“She’s here with her two sons and a nanny.”
“Does she know you’re there?”
“Yes.”
“Does she know why?”
He skimmed the surface, omitting details, but got the facts across to Headly. “She knows about NewsFront, knows that I came down to cover the trial and see if there’s a story worth writing, knows I followed her here to the island hoping for an interview. Nothing about you or the rest of it.”
“How’d she react to the idea of a story?”
“She sure as hell didn’t embrace it. She all but wears a sign around her neck warning off trespassers.”
“Can’t blame her. Most of her life has been lived in a fishbowl, first because of her father, now because of her husband.”
“Ex-husband. Late ex-husband.”
“Those qualifiers seem awfully important to you.”
Dawson ignored the implication. “What I’m trying to tell you is that the lady is on red alert. She’s particularly protective of her sons.”
“Have you seen them?”
“Of course.”
“Why ‘of course’?”
“Because the houses share the beach. The little boys play out there. Build sand castles, splash in the ocean. I went out there yesterday and horsed around with them for a while.” Dawson stopped and gnawed the inside of his cheek, refusing to say anything else until Headly supplied something more eloquent and intelligible than a grunted Huh.
After an extended silence, Headly asked, “Who do they look like?”
“Both have blue eyes like hers.” The second the words were out, Dawson wanted to kick himself. Crossly, he added, “I don’t know who they look like. They look like kids.”
“Okay, no need to bite my head off.”
“This is why I didn’t tell you up front. I knew you’d pester me with questions.”
“They could be Carl Wingert’s grandkids. You don’t expect me to be curious?”
Dawson didn’t respond to that.
“What’s she like?”
“She’s—” A dozen adjectives crowded into his mind, but none he wanted to share with Headly. “Intelligent. Articulate. Assertive. Self-controlled. Guarded. Modest.”
“You’ve just described my old-maid third-grade schoolteacher.”
“All right, she’s—” Desirable. Kissable. Fuckable.
“Fair of face,” Headly said. “I’ve seen pictures.”
“Then why ask me to describe her?”
“What’s her mental state?”
“She’s scared.”
“Of you?”
“That he’s alive.”
“Jeremy.”
“Yeah.” Now he had no choice except to explain how he knew that. “I led her into casual conversation, learned a little about their life together.” He gave Headly the gist of what had been said, and passed along what Amelia had told him about Jeremy’s parents. “What has your pal Knutz uncovered about them?”
“Haven’t heard back from him yet.” He gave a snuffle of skepticism. “But, come on, a house fire that killed them both and destroyed all the family memorabilia?”
“I figured you’d find that a little too pat. I did. Knutz needs to check it out. A house fire with two fatalities must’ve made local news. Maybe there was a photo of Mr. and Mrs. Wesson in the newspaper obit. If they were in fact Carl and Flora, that means they’ve been dead for years, I’m on a wild-goose chase, your search is over, end of story.”
“Not if their son faked his death and is still alive.”
Dawson swore under his breath.
“Don’t cuss at me,” Headly said. “It’s not a ‘voilà’ idea. His wife—ex-wife—advanced it herself.”
“No, I advanced it. She denied the possibility.”
“But you said—”
“She protested too much.”
“Huh. Indicating to you that the possibility has occurred to her.”
“Yeah,” he said around a sigh. “Under all her self-possession, I think she’s scared shitless.”
“Where’d you leave it?”
“With her afraid to think the unthinkable. But she’s thinking it anyway.”
“What’s the atmosphere like between the two of you?”
“I won’t count on a birthday card.”
After a moment of thought, Headly said, “I’ll check out the victims of that house fire myself. But it’s Sunday of a holiday weekend. I don’t know how far I’ll get until everybody goes back to work on Tuesday. What are you going to do in the meantime?”
“Wait until court reconvenes. I’ll stay and see the trial through to the verdict, I guess. After that, I don’t know. Harriet keeps calling, but I don’t answer. I may already be fired.”
“May not be a bad thing.”
“May not.”
“How are you doing otherwise?”
“I got a lot of sun yesterday.”
“Sleeping better?”
“The sound of the ocean has a lulling effect. Look, I’m down to one bar. If my phone cuts out…”
Headly gave another grunt that said he knew Dawson was skirting the issue, but he wasn’t going to waste limited cell phone service beating a dead horse.
“Don’t get mad if you can’t reach me,” Dawson said. “On my way from the mainland, the ferry captain told me that cell service on the island is unreliable on good days. When a storm blows in, forget it.”
* * *
Shortly after eight o’clock that evening a lightning bolt knocked out the power in Amelia’s house, plunging it into darkness.
“Mommy?” Grant said tremulously.
“It’s okay.” Her reassurance was drowned out by the booming thunder.
Fortunately they were all gathered around the kitchen table playing Chutes and Ladders. Had she and Stef not been within reach, the boys would have been even more frightened than they were. Grant left his chair and climbed onto her lap. Stef reached across the corner of the table and took Hunter’s hand.
Amelia had thoug
ht the afternoon would never end. She’d managed to rinse the sand from Hunter’s eye, but he’d squalled through the process. To soothe him afterward, she’d made him and Grant cups of cocoa and marshmallows.
Paintboxes and pads of paper were brought out, and those had kept them entertained for a while. Hunter painted a seascape featuring her, himself, his brother, Stef, and a tall, shirtless figure with shoulder-length yellow hair sticking out from a baseball cap.
“That’s Dawson,” he told her proudly. “I’m gonna paint a battleship and give it to him, too.”
Not wanting to incite another trauma, she didn’t tell him it was unlikely he would ever see his hero again.
She and Stef stretched dinner out for as long as possible, killing time until they could put the boys to bed. They had agreed to play one more round of the board game before taking them upstairs.
And now the lights had gone out.
“Everything’s fine,” she said brightly. “There’s a flashlight in that big bottom drawer.” She tried to get up, but Grant clung to her. “No, Mommy, hold me.” She carried him with her and got the flashlight from the drawer. She clicked it on. “See? This is an adventure. Grant, you can help me check the fuse box. Maybe the lightning just tripped the breaker switch.”
But after she flipped every switch with no success, Grant said dolefully, “The ’lectricity isn’t working.”
“No it’s not, but we have flashlights.”
She went through the house collecting them. But they had to use them continually in order to keep the boys’ fear of the storm at bay. Soon the flashlights began to weaken and then to go out one by one.
“I’ve just used our last two batteries,” she confided to Stef. “We’ll need more before morning.”
“Maybe Bernie has some to spare.”
Amelia went to the window above the sink and looked out. “His house is completely dark. He’s probably sleeping.”
Hesitantly, Stef said, “We have another neighbor.”
Amelia looked toward Dawson’s house. “His piece-of-crap car isn’t there,” she muttered. With unreasonable annoyance, she asked, “Where could he be on a night like tonight?”
Stef offered to start gathering up candles.
She had to take their only remaining working flashlight with her, leaving Amelia and the boys huddled around the kitchen table in the dark. She suggested they see how many rounds of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” they could sing before Stef returned, but their voices faltered each time the kitchen was filled with a silvery flash of lightning and a cannon blast of thunder.
After several minutes, Stef returned to the kitchen with four tapers and three votives. Putting a match to a vanilla-scented candle, she said cheerfully, “It’ll start to smell good in here.”
With the candle lit, Amelia switched off the flashlight. Grant whimpered. “Turn it back on.”
“We need to save the batteries, sweetheart.”
He lay his cheek against her chest.
Hunter said, “He’s such a baby.”
“Hunter.”
“I’m not a baby!”
Amelia ran her hand over his hair. “Well, it’s bedtime anyway. After you close your eyes and go to sleep, you won’t even realize it’s dark. And when you wake up—”
“No!” he wailed. “I don’t want to go to bed without a light on.”
Amelia had hoped in vain for a miracle, but apparently she wasn’t going to get one. “I have to go to the village for batteries.”
But when she tried to get up, Grant began to cry and cling to her. “No, Mommy! Don’t leave.”
“It only makes sense that I go,” Stef said.
“It makes no sense at all. I’ve been driving on this island in storms for years. It can be tricky if you don’t know the road well. Sometimes it floods.”
“I’ve driven it enough times to become familiar. Besides, I don’t think our two boys here would let you out of their sight.” Amelia acknowledged the rationality of Stef’s going. Reluctantly she agreed.
Stef got her purse and Amelia’s car keys.
“While you’re there, get some nonperishable food items, too. We may not have a fridge and stove for a while. If lines are down, it takes a while to get repairmen out here. They restore service on the mainland first.”
“If you think of anything else, call me.” Then, checking her cell phone, Stef said. “If you can. Right now, I’m not getting a signal.”
* * *
A half hour passed, during which Amelia told every silly “Knock-Knock” joke she knew, and which the boys had already heard dozens of times. She told them the story of “The Three Little Pigs” and then devised a contest to see who could huff and puff the best. Neither of the boys got into the game.
After another thirty minutes, she called Stef’s phone. It went straight to voice mail.
The storm continued to rage without any sign of letting up. The boys grew increasingly anxious, in part because they sensed her own mounting nervousness. She was near her wit’s end by the time she heard the utility-room door burst open, bringing a gust of wind in with it.
“Thank God,” she breathed. “Stef?”
But it wasn’t her nanny who stepped into the kitchen, dripping water, his hair plastered to his head.
“Dawson!”
Her boys, who’d been competing for space on her lap, abandoned her and ran to him, wrapping their arms around his legs and impeding his progress. He looked at Amelia through the wavering candlelight. “I was on my way home and noticed that your house is dark.”
Hunter tugged on the hem of his shirt to get his attention. “The lights went out, and Grant was afraid, but I wasn’t. I got sand in my eye, but it’s out now. I painted you a battleship.”
Grant, not to be outdone, informed him that candles make things look wavy. He added a hand gesture to demonstrate.
Hunter spoke over his brother. “Mom said if we’d go to bed and close our eyes, we wouldn’t know it was dark, but I think we would.”
“And she told us today that if we didn’t stop whining, she was going to pull her hair out, but she didn’t.”
Dawson smiled. “Well, that’s good. She’s got such pretty hair.” He brought his gaze back to Amelia, who had stood up to face him, rebuking herself for being relieved and glad to see him.
“Thank you for stopping. We’re okay. Just waiting on Stef to get back from the village. She went for supplies.”
“I just came from there. I doubt she’ll get back anytime soon, if at all. The power is off everywhere. Only the store and Mickey’s have generators. People are hunkering down in one or the other. I hope she does. The road is virtually impassable.”
“I’ve tried calling her, but—”
“No cell service.”
“You said the road was impassable?”
“That tidal pool halfway between here and—”
“It usually overflows during heavy rains.”
“It has. All the way to the road.”
“Then how’d you get here?”
He hesitated before saying, “Determination.”
The gravelly tone behind the word made her tummy flutter. “I appreciate your checking on us. We’re fine, but I could use some batteries if you have extras.”
“Better than that, my house has a generator. It’s listed as an amenity on the fact sheet I picked up at the rental office along with the key. If the power goes off, it comes on automatically, keeps the fridge, stove, and a few circuits working.”
He glanced at the flickering candle on the table as well as at her scant reserves. “Those aren’t going to last long. It’s unlikely Stef will get back tonight, and it would be dangerous for her even to attempt it.”
Amelia shifted from one foot to the other. “What are you saying?”
“I think you know.”
She did know, and she shook her head. “I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because. Because I wouldn’t think of putting
you to the trouble.”
“No trouble. It’s a big house with lots of bedrooms, already made up for occupancy.”
They looked at each other for several moments. Finally she said, “You know that’s not the reason.”
“Yeah. I know the reason. Last night. Just before I left.”
She bobbed her head once.
“You don’t have to worry about that.”
“Of course I do.”
“Okay, maybe you do. But you’ve got bigger worries than me, and I don’t have to spell them out. Do you really want to be here alone in a dark house?”
“Mom, what are y’all talking about?”
She looked down at her eldest, who, she kept forgetting, was perceptive beyond his years. He sensed the tension between her and Dawson, but was unable to understand it. Seeing his young brow wrinkled with anxiety subverted Amelia’s resolve.
When she looked again at Dawson, he extended his arms away from his sides, palms toward her. It was a subtle gesture, but meaningful, communicating that he didn’t pose a threat.
“Dawson has asked us to spend the night at his house because he has lights.”
Her last few words went unheard because of their whoops of glee. “Can we, Mom?”
“Can we go now?”
“Can I take some of my cars?”
“Let’s save the cars for another time,” Dawson told Grant. “I suggest you come right now, as you are, before the storm gets any worse.”
“Can we, Mom?”
“I suppose that’s—” Needing to hear no more, they left the kitchen at a run and pounded through the utility room. “Don’t open the door till I get there!” She scribbled a note to Stef on a paper napkin, telling her where they were, and anchored it to the table with the salt shaker, then blew out the single candle, pitching the room into total darkness.
“Here, take my hand.”
She was entrusting much more than her hand to the man who reached for her.
Chapter 10
Although the boys were clamoring to leave, Amelia took time to grab each of them a change of clothing from the stacks of folded laundry on the utility-room table. Dawson had parked as close as possible to the back door, but it would still be impossible to reach his car without getting soaked.