Chapter 13
The letter flutters down from my perch to where Koa is staring up at me with alarm. Forest and mountain spin into a blur of green and gray. I feel myself evaporating…
Then Koa scales the ladder as if it were level ground, reaching me in seconds and bracing me with a strong arm. “Goddamn it, hold on.”
Balanced on the rungs, he pins me to the trunk, his breath rough in my ear. Musk and a briny scent close around me, as undeniable as the press of his bicep against my breast.
“I—I’m fine,” I say, tongue-tied by his nearness. He is so close, I can see the gold flecking his irises.
“Can you make it down? I’ll go first, in case you fall.” His muscle flexes, and then he lowers himself away from me.
Of the million bits of information swooping around my head, one holds itself steady before me:
My father was a biologist. He was interested in the natural world—in sea wolves. Did he like to draw, too? Had he ever seen a palm tree? He had the same birthmark, even.
Sadness grips me, and even when my feet at last feel solid ground, my mind is far away, wondering if my father held his pencil between his second and third finger, like I do, or if he favored madrones, too.
What treasure did he and Mr. Sanders find on Parish Isle?
I gather myself and begin to dress. Koa feigns interest in the sturdiness of the ladder, acting as if we were not just pressed together with only my thin chemise between us.
“So… boss.”
I fumble my buttons, hearing the mockery in his tone. “Don’t call me that.”
“What kind of letter has you nearly falling out of a tree?” He brings my letter to me, though I’m not sure how he knows I am done dressing.
“In his will, Mr. Sanders referred to Nowhere as the ‘nest.’ I figured it was a clue, and I was right.” I don’t take the letter, nodding for him to open it.
“He was prepared for the possibility of a premature end.” If you want to know more, you will have to stay put a little while longer.
What important truth about my father’s death had he been on the verge of discovering?
Koa reads, emotions flitting across his brow. He looks up from the paper. “Son of a gun. Tang sounds Chinese. So you’re Chinese.” His gaze presses into me, as if seeing new parts on a face he has seen a thousand times.
“I guess so.”
Another piece of my identity seems to have slid into place, like a new book on a shelf.
Except that the book is written in a language I don’t understand, and instead of excitement, I feel a sense of loss.
All I know about the Chinese are the seasonal workers who bend tin for the salmon caught in Gotze’s giant fish traps on the west coast. My father must have worked at Gotze Cannery, perhaps even lived in the Chinese camp with the other laborers in Far West Bay.
“But clearly not your mother.” He drops his eyes from me and returns to the letter.
I touch my face, wishing for a mirror. The only Chinese woman I have ever seen was on a cigar box, with perfectly proportioned limbs, snowy skin, and a doll-like face.
Aside from my straight hair, I don’t think I look anything like the cigar model.
I have bigger eyes, a stronger nose, a fleshier mouth, a pointier chin.
Washington hadn’t prohibited miscegenation yet, but it was still frowned upon.
So how did my father meet my mother? I try to summon her face, but there is nothing. She had been left to bear me alone after such a grievous loss.
Koa returns the letter to me. “So your daddy was murdered eighteen years ago, you were told none of this until now, and he expects you to find the killer. That’s a hell of a nerve.”
I was lucky to experience a close view, I told Mr. Sanders after giving him my picture of Shadow and Scull. His eyes grew moist. We make a great team, he told me. Doubtless he was thinking about my father, and perhaps about their great plans to build this “window-boat” to study the sea wolves.
“You’re not going to listen to any of it, right?” Koa eyes my fingers, which are nervously rolling the letter closed.
“Whoever killed my father still walks free. Mr. Sanders and my father were both”—I wet my lips—“decapitated. If they were friends, their murders must be related.”
“Then it couldn’t be Shimmelfen. He isn’t old enough.”
I nod. Mr. Sanders and my father came to the island in their early twenties. “Whoever killed my father must be someone in their forties now at least.”
“Maybe Shimmelfen’s a copycat.”
“But why?” Shimmelfen is a no-good, but repeating a gruesome killing seems excessively devious. And it’s unlikely that he’s the seal killer, since the first seal was killed before his humiliation and ejection.
Given the connection between my father and Mr. Sanders, is the sheriff hunting the wrong man? And worse, is the murderer still on Orcas Island?
Whatever or whoever killed your father is still out there, Lucy.
“Maybe you should tell the sheriff about the letter.” Koa traps a grenade of a pine cone under his foot.
“But Mr. Sanders said not to.”
“That was before he got his head separated from his body.”
“Mr. Sanders’s killer could still be Shimmelfen,” I say stubbornly. “I can’t risk letting him get away in case he is.”
Koa sweeps away the pine cone, exploding it against the neighboring tree with deadly aim. “Mount up, let’s go.”
Goliath snorts, looking as put out as his rider as he leads us off, his muscled hindquarters bunching on the descent. We haven’t ridden but three minutes when Koa sharply halts.
He swings Goliath to the side, and I make out a heap of blackish-brown fur among the leaves.
Lying there on the forest floor, all spirit gone from it, the shot boar simply looks like a piece of the scenery—a pile of pine needles, or a dead fern.
Morsels from its last meal hang loosely from its fangs.
“It looks peaceful. Like it was in the middle of eating… asparagus. White asparagus.” Of course, asparagus doesn’t grow here—plus, the tips of this plant are smooth and contain none of the tiny scale leaves that adorn asparagus. Perhaps it is some kind of fungus, then.
“It didn’t seem peaceful when I saw it. It was running in circles.”
“Why would it do that?” I slide off Oh-Lolly, carefully step around the boar, and inspect the dark soil for more of the mystery plant.
“I didn’t ask it. Let’s go.”
“I’ve never seen this species.” I crouch by three fingers of the mystery plant poking out of the ground. “I want to take a sample.”
Koa swings down too and shoos me off. Pulling on leather gloves, he works a pocketknife through the stalks, then wraps them in a bandanna. When I reach for the bundle, he jerks it away. “You’re not planning to eat these, are you?”
“You think I’m a fool?” Before he can make a sarcastic remark, I add, “I’m just going to draw them.”
We remount, silence stretching between hoofbeats until the horses’ feet make solid clacks against the gravel.
“One of Mr. Sanders’s friends offered me a position making airplanes near Seattle,” he says.
“Hats off,” I breathe, the elation I should feel for him tempered by worry. “It’s what you’ve always wanted.” Koa has wanted to fly ever since his cousin took him for a ride in his biplane back in the Hawaiian Islands. Still, I don’t want him to go, especially right now.
He keeps his eyes on the road, hat hanging off his back.
The damp hair beneath his ponytail has coiled.
“I’ve already saved enough to put a fence around my own dirt.
” He slides around his saddle, looking uncomfortable.
A thin beam of sunlight kisses his face.
He reminds me of a horse proudly carrying its load but always in danger of breaking free. “You could attend the university.”
I laugh. “Are you proposing to me?”
Swiping his damp forehead, he meets my eyes. My seat feels suddenly unsteady.
Men and women don’t just travel and start a new life together, even those who grew up plucking splinters out of each other’s unmentionables.
Koa snatches his gaze away. “We make sense together. Like socks and shoes. It’s not how I would’ve wanted to do it, but sometimes the road chooses you instead of the other way around.”
“Am I your dirty socks or your smelly boots?” I say with indignation.
“What?” He tugs at his collar. “That didn’t come out right.”
An awkwardness wedges between us. It would be easy having Koa as a partner. He makes me feel safe, and until recently I could talk to him about anything. Plus, well, he is not hard on the eyes, with his naturally bronzed skin and a physicality that leaves me short of breath.
I could leave like I wanted, study the natural world, see palm trees and real sand beaches, not rocky ones that stub your toes. The university withdrawal letter that I drafted last night still sits on my desk, unsigned.
But suddenly I have the resources to get answers to the questions that plague me every day.
I have power to see justice served, after all these years.
I could hire detectives. Of course, if it were that easy, Mr. Sanders would have done so already.
But I know in my heart that university is not where I belong at this moment.
Not to mention, Koa’s never shown me more than brotherly interest before.
Just because something makes sense doesn’t mean it makes good sense. “I can’t just run away.”
He shakes his head at a shaggy hemlock, gold nugget gleaming at his collar. “Sanders was murdered, and seems to me, you’ve just inherited a hurricane. We should leave all this craziness behind.”
“It’s different for you,” I protest. “You know who your family is.”
Koa’s mother still lives in the Hawaiian Islands, and he writes to her every other week. He scowls. “We’re talking about your life.”
“What kind of life is it to always be wondering?” Learning about my father may uncover who my mother was. Who I am.
“If you’re not wondering, you’re dead,” he snaps. “I’m sorry about your folks. But they wanted a better life for you, even if it meant not having all the answers. Head of cast iron.”
His eyes scold me—those golden crescents that have seen me cry in school with a blank family tree. He once rescued a pine cone I’d thrown into a fire because I’d had no father to give it to. Koa has been like a canoe, watertight and strong, keeping me afloat.
“Can’t you see the possibilities here? I can buy you your own airplane.”
His cheeks darken and he makes a choking sound. “You’re right. It is different for me.” He screws his hat onto his head. “Just stay away from Parish Isle.”
I reach for him, but he smoothly maneuvers away.
When I return to my room, Flossie is waiting with a cool towel. The surfaces have been dusted, and the scent of lavender hangs in the room. I remove my samples of mystery plant and carefully place them in an empty glass, which I set on a windowsill to dry.
“Witch’s fingers?” she says with distaste.
“I hope not.” While I wipe my hands on her towel, she undresses me as efficiently as she shucks corn.
Soon I am stuffed into a too-long gray dress with black velvet buttons up the front.
I begin to see the necessity of a lady’s maid, especially when she settles me on a tufted cushion and begins gently brushing my sweaty hair.
A magazine called The Cat’s Meow lies atop the vanity with the headline “How Not to Look Like a Brazen Hussy.”
How I wish that were my biggest problem.
“I’m learning the ‘flying spindle,’ ” Flossie says, mistaking my interest for another headline farther down the cover: “Fetching Hairstyles for Summer.”
“Whatever you can manage is fine. I’m meeting with Mr. Cosmos in the library shortly. What’s the talk around here this morning?”
She nods, her mouth a tight square. “Everyone’s stirred up, miss. The washerwomen are still refusing to wash. The Kiowyn sisters have left with their husbands—just turned in their aprons and took their motorboat.”
I try to straighten my back. The estate is a delicate system.
Other workers can compensate for a missing employee until a new one is found.
But a murdered patriarch will deter all but the most desperate workers, especially with a walking scandal like me in charge.
Eventually, the house will crumble. To say nothing of the business.
My breathing comes harder. I sneak a look at myself in the mirror.
My eyes look startled, as if I’ve spotted a predator.
My hair, which Flossie has tied atop my head with ribbons, feels like a jug of water I am trying to balance.
Before she attacks me with a powder puff, I wave her away and tie on my kerchief. “Good enough.”
Ribbons and powder are not going to help me keep the wolves at bay.