The older woman stopped with her fork halfway to her mouth and grinned at Zeke. “I’m sure I can scrounge up something.”
Zeke continued talking about his new puppy. “He’s a fast runner and I’m teaching him to shake hands. Mr. Cotter gave him to me,” he announced, pointing at Solo.
A trader from Good Springs who was sitting next to Solo gave him a thump on the shoulder. Both men watched Eva as she passed the table again to leave the room. If she acknowledged them, they would want to talk to her. Her stomach rumbled, begging for dinner. She hurried out of the dining room, through the short hallway, and into the kitchen.
Sybil had both of their plates waiting on the kitchen’s dinette table. She was sitting in her usual seat where she could see the door should anyone come from the dining hall needing anything.
Eva sat across from her sister and filled her water cup. “Did you hear what Father did?”
Sybil shook her head, too polite to speak with her mouth full.
“He gave Room Four to Solomon Cotter. A double. Father didn’t even ask me first. Didn’t even look at the reservation book. Thank the Lord no families arrived today.” She paused long enough to take a bite of roast. The delicious meat’s savory flavor briefly made her forget her troubles. As soon as she swallowed, she remembered them again. “And not just for the night. No, no. Father told him he could stay here for forty nights.”
She watched her younger sister, waiting for her to appear surprised.
Sybil simply nodded as she listened and ate, so Eva tried again. “Forty nights! Isn’t that ridiculous? Neither of them would tell me why so long. Father said Solo had saved up the nights and they had a deal. He shut me right up. I am the inn’s manager. Why did Father give me the office and title and responsibilities if he wasn’t going to give me the authority to make decisions?”
Eva stabbed her fork into the meat a little harder than intended and it screeched on the plate. Her mother would have slapped her hand for that. She flashed a mock grimace to Sybil, and her sister giggled like she did when they were children. But Sybil still hadn’t reacted to their father’s arrangement with Solo, so Eva asked, “Does it seem like Father is behaving oddly to you lately?”
Sybil dabbed her mouth with her napkin. “He’s just getting forgetful. In mother’s last letter, she said Grandma and Grandpa are that way too but much worse. That’s why she can’t come to visit us. She has to stay with them every moment. She says Grandpa wanders off if she doesn’t keep an eye on him.”
There was more to their mother’s decision to go live with her parents in Southpoint eight years ago than their health, but no one acknowledged it. Eva pinched off a corner of her bread roll and popped it into her mouth. “I wonder if that’s what is happening to Father. He’s so much older than Mother—almost the same age as Grandpa and Grandma. Lately, he can’t remember what he intended to do when he walks from one room to the next. Seems to me like Solo is taking advantage of Father’s forgetfulness.”
Sybil shook her head. “Mr. Cotter isn’t like that.”
“Maybe you’re right. But, Father is getting too old to—”
“Excuse me,” a man’s voice said from the doorway. Eva looked over her shoulder to see the trader from Good Springs.
Sybil stood and dropped her napkin on her chair. “What can I get for you?”
“Nothing, ma’am.” He motioned for her to sit back down. “The food is quite good. Can’t remember when I last had such a meal.” He slid his hand into his breast pocket and withdrew a creased envelope. “I have a letter for Eva.” He held the envelope out and inched into the kitchen as if it were forbidden territory.
Eva met him mid-way. “Thank you.”
“Sorry, I forgot to give it to you earlier. I felt it in my pocket just now and remembered.” He backed out of the room.
“Thank you all the same.” Eva sat and opened the envelope made of gray leaf paper. The letter was folded over several times, but she immediately recognized the sloppy pencil writing. “It’s from Revel.”
Sybil froze with her water cup at her lips. “What does it say?”
Eva read slowly, trying to decipher his scribbles. “He will be staying with the Colburns in Good Springs for a while longer. He is working with the outsider, Connor Bradshaw, on organizing the Land’s security force.”
Sybil lifted her thin brows. “Sounds exciting.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” She lowered the letter. “He probably will never come back.”
“Did he say that?”
“No.” She blew out a long breath. “When Revel was a kid, all he ever wanted to do was go with the traders all around the Land. As soon as he turned eighteen, he did just that. He’s been living as he pleases for a decade now. I doubt he will settle down just because Father’s arthritis is acting up.”
Sybil lowered her volume even though the chatter in the dining hall was so loud no one in the other room could have heard them. “Maybe if you wrote to Revel about Father’s forgetfulness and just how badly his knees pain him… maybe then he would know you are serious.”
“I did.”
Her sister raised a palm. “And?”
She held out the letter to Sybil. “Here. Read it yourself.”
Sybil didn’t take the paper. “What will you do?”
“I don’t know.” Eva leaned her tired back into the chair. “We need two more permanent workers—one for Father’s job and one for Leonard’s. Father doesn’t approve of anyone I suggest and says it’s not up to me to hire more men, but I must do something.”
“Will you hire someone without his approval?”
“How can I?” She refolded Revel’s letter, not wanting to see his handwriting for another minute. “If I did and Father told them to leave, they would obey him and not me. Besides, it’s not easy to find men willing to move away from the villages. And I would need to find married men, or at least one of them should be married so his wife can take on some of Claudia’s work. She won’t be able to manage the laundry and cleaning the rooms forever.”
Sybil set down her fork. “I know. I had to help in the laundry house this morning. Of course…” She grinned a little and got a mischievous look as if hatching a secret plan.
“Of course what?”
“Well, if you hired single men, maybe…”
“Maybe what?”
“Maybe you could have a…”
“A what?”
“A companion. And Zeke could have a daddy.”
If an adorable smile hadn’t immediately followed Sybil’s remark, Eva would have become defensive. “Very funny, Syb.”
Her sister looked up at the ceiling. “Perhaps it’s time?”
“I beg your pardon.” Eva couldn’t entertain the idea of marrying again—wouldn’t let herself even imagine it—or she would get sick with guilt at the thought of betraying her late husband. “Zeke has his Grandpa and Leonard for father figures. I think he is doing just fine without a daddy.”
Sybil leaned forward. “What about you?”
“I already have one father to deal with and that’s plenty, thank you.”
“No.” Sybil chuckled. “I meant what about you getting married again? You know, someday?”
“I know what you meant, and no.”
“Ever?”
Eva stuffed Revel’s letter into her apron pocket and stood, her stomach uncomfortably full. She picked up her empty plate and Sybil’s to take them to the sink. “Never ever.”
* * *
Bailey Colburn gripped the yacht’s rusted railing as the sun sank below the horizon, taking with it all hope of finding the Land. For two weeks she’d spent every heartbeat trying to reach these exact coordinates on this exact day. All that work and worry for nothing. Maybe she would get another chance next year.
Yeah, right.
Bailey’s iron stomach stayed steady as the repurposed charter yacht bobbed up and down in the choppy waters of the South Atlantic Ocean. The wind whipped her cropped hair into h
er vision as she glanced over her shoulder at the windows behind her. Four men’s silhouettes moved inside the yacht’s bridge.
Professor Timothy Van Buskirk stepped close to the window. His fatherly eyes gazed out at Bailey from beneath the brim of his white bucket hat—his lucky hat he called it. He motioned for her to join him in the bridge. The corners of his gray mustache flattened in disappointment. She was grateful to Professor Tim for convincing his nephew, Micah, to bring them out here on one of his company’s yachts, but she had let them down.
Never again would Micah Van Buskirk agree to sail to the middle of nowhere hoping to see a peaceful and pristine land suddenly appear like Atlantis rising out of the mist. Maybe if the world were like it was before the war, Micah would brush off this massive failure and raise his glass to searching for the Land again next year. But nothing was like it was before the war.
Over the past several years, desperate nations had sent more bombs flying than a 2020 action movie. Between the battles, the water poisonings, and the plague, only a fraction of earth’s pre-war population was left. The fact that Bailey and her former professor made it to the middle of the South Atlantic to chase a fantasy was a miracle. And a waste.
Wasted resources, wasted connections, wasted time. Micah would probably give Bailey an earful at dinner tonight. He hadn’t wanted to take time away from his humanitarian work of using the yacht to run medical supplies to remote islands in the South Atlantic, but he’d obliged his uncle’s request.
At least, Professor Tim wouldn’t be upset with Bailey. He never was.
No matter how the guys reacted tonight, this trip had been worth the shot. Trying to find the Land had let Bailey imagine a life worth living—a life of plentiful food, unpolluted water, simple pleasures, and maybe even connecting with her long-lost relatives.
When she’d told Professor Tim about the Land’s existence, it had given him hope for his future too. And no matter how inconvenienced Micah acted by their request, he’d also been intrigued by the notion of a hidden land untouched by the third world war.
Now, she’d disappointed all of them. She never should have believed a word Justin Mercer said, especially about his time spent in a hidden land settled in the 1860s by a group of peaceful American families—one of which she was supposedly related to. Justin said Bailey had family somewhere and that was all it took to get her to work for him.
Turned out, Justin Mercer was a liar.
The last ray of sunlight slipped below the watery horizon, abruptly ending the day. Diamond-bright stars punctured the clear black sky. And just like that, the day was gone along with her dream of a safe and simple life with the cousins she’d never known.
As Bailey walked toward the ship’s bridge, Micah and his two South African crewmen stepped out to the deck. Both of the sun-bleached crewmen wore high-caliber handguns holstered to their sides. Bailey kept her gaze forward as she entered the bridge but watched the crewmen with her peripheral vision.
Inside the bridge Professor Tim stood near the helm, holding his eyeglasses in one hand and rubbing the length of his nose with the other. He put his glasses back on and looked at Bailey in the same way he did the day he told her all Eastern Shore University classes were canceled until the war was over. And like that day, he’d waited until the room was empty so he could speak to her privately—a kindness often extended to the less fortunate.
Well, she wasn’t a downtrodden foster kid anymore and hadn’t been for eight years. She could handle bad news. She could also take care of herself. She didn’t need pity, even from the only person left who cared about her.
She pushed the shaggy ends of her sable hair out of her eyes and marched forward, speaking before Professor Tim had the chance. “Look, I know this is the correct location. I saw the Land on the satellite image on Justin Mercer’s computer. And he had evidence—the gray leaf tree saplings. You said yourself the saplings were unlike anything on the planet. You know the Land is out here.” Tim raised a halting hand, but she ignored it. “We just need to give it one more day. The Land will appear. I know it will.”
“How do you know?”
“I can feel it.”
“You’re a scientist.” Tim lowered his chin to look at her over the rim of his glasses. “If you can’t see it or measure it or detect it, forget it.”
“This is different. We’re exploring the unknown. The satellite image Justin showed me, the gray leaf tree, everything about the Land… it’s different from lab experiments.” She looked past Tim and out the bridge windows. Micah and the crewmen were working on the lighted deck. Everything beyond the yacht’s railing was black, but the ocean and sky were out there, and somewhere not too far away, was a hidden land.
Or so she hoped.
Reality’s despair wrestled with her heart’s desire. “The Land’s existence goes against our modern knowledge and believing Justin Mercer went against my better judgment, but the gray leaf tree saplings changed everything for me. The gray leaf is unclassifiable, miraculous if what Justin said about its medicinal property is true. I can’t give up on finding the Land. Not yet.”
Tim tapped one of the computer screens embedded in the yacht’s instrument panel. Navigational readings appeared on the screen. “Even if it’s true and the Land is out there, the exact moment of the equinox has passed. The Land won’t be accessible again for another year, according to Mr. Mercer.” He looked up at her with kind but tired eyes. “We gave it our best shot. Micah knows these waters. He says we are in more danger of being pirated every hour we drift out here.”
“Yes, and he also said the instruments were going berserk this afternoon.”
“We must sail back to Tristan de Cunah before we run into trouble. I don’t want you kids getting hurt.”
Bailey jabbed a thumb toward the window as the two crewmen walked across the yacht’s deck. “We will be fine as long as we have Armed and Dangerous with us.” She smiled playfully.
The draw cord hanging from Tim’s lucky hat swung beneath his chin as he shook his head. Their inside jokes about the trigger-happy crewmen were over, as was their adventure. “Look Bailey, I’m sorry this didn’t work out. I wanted this for you as much—more maybe—than you wanted it for yourself. You deserve a better life… and to meet your relatives.” He tilted his head. “But hey, can’t a person make a family out of friends?”
She nodded, acknowledging the end of their effort more than his question. “Thanks for trying.”
He grinned slightly. “Thank you for trusting me with the secret of the Land.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously. This was the most fun I’ve had in years.” His grin faded. “The only fun I’ve had in years. It was worth it.”
The bridge door opened. As Micah stepped inside, a blast of thunder cracked the sky above him, shaking the boat. The jolt threw him to the floor. Lightning burst across the clear night sky in every direction. The two crewmen hurried below deck, cursing the sudden electrical storm.
As bolts of virescent light ignited the sky, an eerie hum vibrated the yacht. The ship’s power went out, and the skin along Bailey’s neck prickled. The tight space in the bridge shrank even more in the dark. Suddenly, she felt like her five-year-old self locked in the closet again. Her fists lifted instinctively as if she were about to spar an unseen opponent. After a few seconds of darkness, a caged backup light flickered to life on the wall above the door, but she still wanted out of the shrinking space.
Bailey lowered her guarding hands. “What’s going on?”
…
Uncharted Journey is available in the Kindle store.
More Books by Keely Brooke Keith
The Land Uncharted
Book One in the Uncharted series
A hidden land settled by peaceful people
The first outsider in 160 years
Lydia Colburn is a young physician dedicated to serving her village in the Land, an undetectable island in the South Atlantic Ocean. When Lt. Connor Brads
haw’s parachute carries him from the world war to Lydia's hidden land, his mission could expose her simple society.
As Connor searches for a way to return to his squadron, his fascination with life in the Land makes him protective of Lydia and her peaceful homeland, and Lydia’s attraction to Connor stirs desires she never anticipated. But will they be able to keep the Land hidden?
Uncharted Redemption
Book Two in the Uncharted series
Mandy Foster spends her days building musical instruments and her nights avoiding the discontent that plagues her after sundown. She’s learned how to guard her heart with skillfully played songs and flirtatious smiles.
Levi Colburn is building his house outside the village—across the road from Mandy to be exact. Though he’s been in love with Mandy since childhood, she rejected him once and has been unattainable to every man in the village ever since.
When Mandy’s life is in danger, it’s up to Levi to rescue her.
But will she accept the tender care of the one man who truly loves her?
If she does, her secret would be exposed.
Uncharted Inheritance
Book Three in the Uncharted series
As Bethany Colburn completes her apprenticeship and dodges unwanted suitors, a mysterious man arrives in her village. He brings charm Bethany has never encountered and illness the Land has never known. She will need more than her heightened intuition to uncover the truth about life in the Land.
Just when Everett Foster finds the courage to confess his love for Bethany, a stranger threatens his future with her—and their whole society. Everett must protect the Land, run a farm, and win back Bethany’s heart.
Uncharted Hope (The Uncharted Series Book 5) Page 18