“Answers,” she flung back, bold as brass.
His stomach clenched. Bailey was more than twice the age Beth had been when they’d laid her to rest in the churchyard, but he would have known her in a crowd of hundreds. Her hair was a different color, but looking at her, he knew what a beauty his little Beth would have been if death hadn’t claimed her too early.
She came toward him warily, eyes on the dogs. “I’m sorry if you think I’m rude,” she said. “We started wrong, and it’s gone wrong ever since. All I want is to get to know you and to learn something about my birth family . . . about Beth. You’re the only—”
“You don’t know what you’re asking.” He glared at her.
She glared back, and for an instant he had the sensation that he was looking at his sister, Elizabeth.
“Aren’t you afraid of me?” he asked.
“Yes, a little.”
Her eyes welled up with tears, and he felt a wave of compassion for her. “You don’t know what you’re getting into,” Will grumbled. “Didn’t anyone tell you that I was tried, convicted, and spent nine years in prison? That half the island believes I got Beth with child and murdered her rather than face the consequences of having her give birth to a babe conceived in incest?”
“No.” Her eyes widened and tears suddenly glistened in the corners. She shook her head in disbelief. “No. No one told me anything of the sort. No one . . .” She drew in a ragged breath, turned, and fled into the woods.
“I tried to warn you,” Will hollered after her as she tore through the underbrush, heedless of the wild grapevines that tore at her clothes. He stood there for a long time until the snapping of twigs and the sound of her distress faded. Then he signaled to the dogs and trudged slowly back to the boat to unload his catch.
Bailey was halfway to Elizabeth’s beach, and she could see the shore of the bay through the trees when she dropped to her knees and vomited the remains of the lunch she’d shared with Forest McCready. Coughing, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and waited until the sick feeling passed. Then she made her way to the water’s edge and washed her hands and face.
Everyone had warned her to stay away from Will Tawes, to leave the past buried, but she hadn’t listened. As stubborn as always, she’d kept prying, not realizing until now that the islanders might not be hiding the truth, but attempting to shelter her from an ugly possibility. And now that she’d learned the secret, she wished she hadn’t.
Daniel was coming around the corner of the farmhouse when she reached the edge of the lawn. “Bailey? What are you doing here? What’s happened?”
She didn’t want to see or talk to anyone, and most of all she didn’t want to come face-to-face with Daniel Catlin when her breath reeked, her eyes were swollen from crying, and her hair was tangled with leaves. “I’m fine,” she said, but Daniel was having none of it.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.” She rubbed at a scratch on her elbow. “I went back to Will’s and—”
Daniel’s features hardened. “Did he—”
“No.” She shook her head. “He didn’t lay a hand on me. It was what he said. I just panicked and ran away.”
“Come into the house. You’re as white as Emma’s sheets.”
When arguing with him didn’t work, Bailey allowed herself to be coerced inside into the bathroom. Surprisingly, someone had scrubbed it free of dust and mouse droppings and even laid out soap and fresh towels. She found toothpaste and a new toothbrush, still in its wrapper. When she came out, five minutes later, she felt much more in control.
Daniel was waiting for her with a thermos of hot tea. “Sit down,” he ordered.
“Who called in Merry Maids?” She motioned to the bathroom and then glanced around the kitchen. This room, too, had been cleaned until the glass shone and the floor was spotless. “You?”
Daniel poured her a cup of tea. “I can’t stand working in a mess, and I expect to be using these rooms while I’m working on the repairs.” He handed the cup to her. “Careful, it’s hot. Now, tell me exactly what happened at Will’s.”
She took the tea. It was strong and sweet, and she drank half the cup without answering. Then, having gathered what composure she had left, she was able to tell Daniel everything her uncle had said. “He didn’t admit to sexually abusing Beth,” she concluded, wiping back a stray tear,“or to beating her. But he didn’t deny it either.”
Daniel frowned. “I’ve heard the gossip, but that doesn’t make it true. Will didn’t go to jail for incest.”
“No?”
“Hell, no! What made you assume that?”
“I don’t know. He said . . . When he said . . .” She looked away. “I thought it sounded like a confession.”
The tall case clock in another part of the house rang the hour in a clear tone, and Bailey noticed how the rays of sunlight coming through the windows illuminated the pattern of the grain in the tabletop.
Daniel refilled her cup and poured a mug of tea for himself. “The jury found Will guilty of beating Beth so badly that she went into early labor and then died.”
“But Forest McCready said she died of blood loss the day after the baby was born. Surely she could have—”
“According to Aunt Birdy, Beth never regained consciousness after you were born. And her jaw had been broken. She might not have been able to talk, even if she was conscious.”
She sipped at the tea, trying to make sense of it all. “But why would the jury find Will guilty if there wasn’t proof?”
Daniel went to the sink and rinsed out the thermos and cap, then set them upside down to drain. “Let me start at the beginning. Back in the fifties, Beth’s mother, Anne, was seeing Will before she broke off the relationship and married his brother, Owen.”
“Forest told me that Owen Tawes was my grandfather. I didn’t ask my grandmother’s name. Anne. I like that,” she said thoughtfully.
“Will was the firstborn, but he was something of a disappointment to his family. He had a reputation for being wild, even then. People said it was the Tawes Indian blood coming out. He spent his time roaming the marsh and woods, hunting, trapping. He liked to fish well enough, according to my mother, but Will wasn’t a man for settling down to work from dawn to dusk on a crabbing boat or a farm.”
“And Owen, I suppose, followed tradition?”
Daniel nodded. “Exactly. Owen was as solid as the church cornerstone. A real go-getter. He would milk cows before dawn, take the boat out, and be back in the fields plowing by noon. And the two brothers didn’t get along too well either. According to custom, Will should have inherited the farm, but Owen was the man working it.”
“Cain and Abel?”
“Aunt Birdy said Will was more fey than lazy. He was always whittling birds or painting pictures of otters on the walls of his father’s barn when he should have been cutting hay or putting up fence. Will was the artistic type back when there was no such thing. I suppose the neighbors would have been hinting that he was gay if he hadn’t been so popular with all the girls. Emma said she can remember him when he was handsome as the devil and just as ornery.”
“So Beth’s mother was his girlfriend?”
“Crazy-mad for him, according to Aunt Birdy.”
Bailey drained her cup and set it on the table. “And did he seem to return her feelings?” She picked a twig out of her hair.
“Yes, but Anne’s parents were against the match. They’d forbidden her to see Will, but nobody could stop him when he made up his mind to do something. Once Will came to church during services, and the next thing my father knew, the two of them had climbed out the Sunday-school window and ran off together. Anne didn’t get home until almost dawn the following morning.”
“But she didn’t marry him. She chose his brother.”
“They’d had a fight, as Aunt Birdy tells it, but Will thought he could soft-talk Anne out of being angry, the way he always had. And the next thing anyone knew, Anne and Owen were standing in fr
ont of the congregation taking wedding vows.”
“What did Will think of it?”
Daniel returned to stand near her. “He didn’t say, and no one had nerve enough to ask him. But years later, when his brother and Anne drowned in a storm, he took Beth to raise.”
“And neither of the grandparents protested?”
“Will and Owen’s parents were dead by then, and Anne’s mother was an invalid. She and her husband had raised six daughters and didn’t want to fight Will over Beth’s custody.”
“But if he had strong feelings for Anne . . . he might have seen the same thing in his niece.” A chill passed through Bailey. “What if the gossip is true and the father I’ve been looking for was Beth’s uncle?” She shivered, glancing away. “Not much of an incentive for me to have children, is there? No telling what interesting genes I have floating around in my genetic soup.”
Daniel crouched down on his heels in front of her. “Look at me, Bailey. Please.” He touched her chin with two fingers, gently tilting her face up. “I don’t believe it. I’ve known Will all my life, and I think I’m a pretty good judge of people. I wouldn’t have lasted long in my last job if I weren’t.”
“You didn’t know my uncle then. You couldn’t have been more than a kid yourself.”
“No, that’s true. I wasn’t born until three years after he went to prison.” He took her hands and gripped them. “But I’ve known him since I was six years old. He isn’t the kind of man who would molest a child or beat one to death because she became pregnant.”
“Then why did his sister believe it? She must have.”
“I asked Matthew that once. He said that Elizabeth came to our father for counseling after Will was arrested, and that he overheard them talking in the sanctuary. As I said, Elizabeth wanted to keep you herself, but our father convinced her that you couldn’t have a normal life here—that people would always whisper behind your back. I suppose she took his advice.”
“So that was it. She sent me away to protect me from the rumors, not because she didn’t want me.”
Daniel stood and pulled her to her feet. “It’s a nasty charge, but where’s the proof? They didn’t do DNA testing in those days.”
She swallowed. “So now what do I do with all this?”
“First thing you do is come up to the attic with me. I was inspecting the underside of the roof, looking for leaks, and I found an old trunk.” He offered his hand to her. “There are some things in it that you might want to see.”
She looked into his eyes. “What kind of things?”
“A sketchbook, for one. It has Beth’s name on it.”
Although the cover was unstained, the pages inside were slightly damp, as though moisture in the air had seeped into the trunk. Holding the sketchbook, Bailey experienced such a surge of emotion that she began to weep all over again. She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, crying like a baby, but when the storm passed she felt infinitely better.
Fortunately, she was alone in the attic. After Daniel had turned on the lights and led her upstairs to show her the location of the trunk, he’d made the excuse that he needed to get back to his repairs on an outside shutter. She’d guessed that it was his way of allowing her privacy as she went through her birth mother’s belongings, and she was glad he’d thought to be so considerate.
She laid the sketchbook on the dusty floor beside her and looked to see what else was in the trunk. She carefully lifted out worn copies of The Red Fairy Book, The Yellow Fairy Book, and The Blue Fairy Book, and wedged under that she discovered a photo album. After carefully replacing the storybooks, she carried the sketchbook and the photo album downstairs and out onto the porch, where the light was better.
Daniel, true to his word, was mending the shutter—within sight, but far enough away not to intrude.
Beth’s drawings were sketched and painted in the form of stylized cartoons. There were images of castles, kings and queens, unicorns and fairies. Beautiful costumes graced the pages, and she seemed to be developing a comic strip set in an imaginary kingdom, with a story line that gave evidence of a lively wit and a vivid imagination. The inscription in the front of the book showed that the sketchbook was a fourteenth-birthday gift from Elizabeth. From the dates beside the images, Beth had started her drawings soon afterward and continued on until a week before her death.
Bailey shed more tears as she looked through the pages. If her mother had lived, they would have found so much in common. The book was a tribute to a dreamy personality and a budding artist’s passion for her craft. But there was something disturbing about the pictures as well. Most of the book was filled with bright colors, flags snapping in the wind from the top of castle walls, and dashing knights and beautiful ladies, but the last quarter of the pages grew steadily darker, with twisted trees, threatening ogres, and monstrous eyes staring from the forest.
Uncertain as to what the changes in Beth’s style meant, Bailey set the sketchbook aside and began to thumb through the photo album. The black-and-white snapshots showed a laughing little girl who—except for the fifties clothing—looked strikingly similar to her own childhood pictures. There were images of Beth on a pony, Beth and an attractive young woman fishing off a dock, Beth dressed in what appeared to be a mermaid costume, and one photo of Beth and a much younger Will with a basket of puppies.
The pictures showed no trace of a strained relationship between Beth and her uncle, and they offered no obvious explanation for the dark drawings of stormy skies and twisted trees that filled the end of her sketchbook.
Puzzled, Bailey carried the album to Daniel. “Did you look at these?”
He shook his head. “No. As soon as I saw that there were pictures inside, I closed it. It belongs to you.”
“I don’t know what to think. She looks like a happy child . . . a child who went to bed knowing she was safe and loved, not a little girl haunted by a real monster. It makes no sense, unless the abuse didn’t start until she was much older.”
Daniel gave the screw a final turn, tucked the screwdriver into his tool belt, and moved the shutter experimentally back and forth. “There. That should hold for a few years.”
“You do good work.”
“No sense doing it if you don’t do it right.” He looked at her. “There’s more stuff up there, toys and clothing that must have belonged to Beth. Elizabeth went to some trouble to preserve them. I’d say Beth was certainly a much-loved child.”
“I want to see them, but not now,” she confided. “I need to decide whether I want to pursue questioning my uncle or not.” Another tear spilled down her cheek, and she wiped it away. “I’m sorry. I’m not usually a basket case. It’s just that—”
“Shhh, it’s all right.” He put his arms around her, gently pulled her against him, and squeezed her. She clung to him for long seconds, not wanting to let him go, but he kissed her gently on the forehead and stepped back. “I should have told you what to expect, but I didn’t think you’d be so damned persistent.”
“I thought I was prepared for anything,” she whispered, “but not incest.” She could still feel the heat of his body. It was a good feeling, and for an instant he made her feel that everything would be all right.
Daniel smiled at her. “Hey, don’t take this to heart. If I learned anything from government service, it was never to take things at face value. I don’t believe Will Tawes is the kind of man who would use violence against a child in his care, and neither does Forest. Just the opposite. Forest represented Will at his trial without charge, and no amount of money could have persuaded him to do that if he didn’t think his client was innocent. Will Tawes wouldn’t be the first man convicted unjustly.”
“If that’s true, if he is innocent, then why is everyone on this island afraid of him? They know him. Why aren’t they convinced that he didn’t do it?”
Daniel arched a dark eyebrow. “It’s complicated.”
She waited.
“Matt said that Will pleaded not-guilty to
all the charges. They held the trial over in Easton, because the prosecutor couldn’t find enough people on Tawes who weren’t related to Will to make up a jury. To make a long story short, the Eastern Shore jurors found him guilty. Later, the jury foreman said he wasn’t a hundred percent convinced, but there were no other suspects, and if there was all that smoke, there had to be fire.”
“Circumstantial.”
“Yes, something like that. But the charges were for beating Beth, not for getting her pregnant. The prosecutor kept repeating that Beth’s pregnancy shamed Will and he’d lost his temper and started hitting her.”
“But he never admitted it.”
“No. Apparently when Will was sentenced he lost it, shouting that he was innocent, that whoever had fathered her child had attacked her. He threatened to find out who he was, hunt him down like a dog, and put a bullet through his head. He swore he wouldn’t stop searching, not if it took the rest of his life.”
Bailey sank down on the grass and cradled the sketchbook against her chest. “But that was so long ago, thirty-five years. It’s not reasonable that he’d carry a grudge that long.”
Daniel laughed. “You don’t know Tawes as well as you think you do. The Chesapeake used to be a wild place. Blood feuds between families rivaled those of the Hatfields and the McCoys.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Hardly. Just after the Civil War, three Catlin boys shot it out with two Tawes brothers. Only one Catlin survived, and he didn’t live out the year. Folks claimed that it was one of the Tawes widows who did him in.”
“Unbelievable.”
“I can show you the headstones in the cemetery. You can still read their names.” Daniel’s expression hardened. “Call it vigilante justice if you want, but if the man who caused Beth’s pregnancy and death is still alive, he has every reason to fear Will.”
“You believe that?”
“I know it.”
She sighed. “Okay.”
“What do you intend to do?”
“I don’t know yet.”
He nodded.
Taking both the sketchbook and the photo album, Bailey went out to Elizabeth’s dock and sat there for a long time, watching the tide and the birds and letting the peace of the early evening seep over her. Seeing Beth’s artwork and the pictures of her as a child made Bailey all the more determined to discover who had wronged her. She knew what she had to do, but she wasn’t certain she could summon the courage to do it.
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