Chapter 44
Nash stores the spotlights back in the floor cabinets, as if nothing is amiss, and pulls me out the hidden door at the back of the stage.
My body has gone numb, and his encouragements barely make it to my ear.
A half staircase leads to the business wing.
Once back in Mr. Sanders’s office, I wearily cross to the wall panel and press the button to the housekeeper’s desk.
“Yes, miss?” Mrs. Bonefat answers right away.
“The bosses are dead to the world,” I croak.
“I will take care of it,” she says simply.
It occurs to me that she could’ve taken my statement literally, and yet she didn’t ask questions.
I resolve not to dwell on it and to just be grateful for her ruthless efficiency.
Mrs. Bonefat represented everything I despised about Nowhere: its colorless pallor, its watchful eyes, its cold and unfeeling demeanor.
But I was wrong about her. Her hull may be steel, but inside beats a heart of gold.
After setting Mr. Sanders’s hat back on the rack, Nash joins me at the tall windows. “Mr. Tavernish can tell us more about what became of this Simon Says character. I imagine your mother had a good reason for shooting him. Maybe he’s the one who killed your father.”
“Maybe,” I say glumly, knowing that by the time Tavernish wakes up, it will be too late for me to ask him anything.
Below, Koa eases Goliath down the crowded sea path. My heart reaches for him. I will be hauled away soon, and I have not said my goodbyes. Or my thank-yous.
“Why are they all watching the Hure?” asks Nash.
Gilly’s weathered vessel has not ventured far, anchored at a spot about five hundred feet from the shore.
“Maybe because he’s the closest?” I bring my nose to the glass, only now realizing that my mark has begun to warm. A strange brew of emotions begins spinning inside me, tangling with my own.
Not a hundred feet from the boat’s starboard side, the water seems to be… pooling. I’ve seen that agitated movement before, a circling of bubbles around a flatter surface. It is a mirror to another world. One behind which wild things live.
A single blade pokes the surface, slowly cresting to a black sail six feet tall. The dorsal fin is almost… lanky. Then the rest of the massive head emerges with its telltale sea wolf’s eyepatch.
The sight of an unusual marking cuts me at the knees.
Nash catches me against him.
“White m-marks,” I babble. Above the great beast’s eye patch, three white streaks resemble a hen’s scratch.
A childhood accident with Jeddah’s father’s treble fishing hook left a permanent scar.
Nash sucks in his breath. “You don’t think…”
Folks laughed at me after I seen that woman throw herself from her canoe and turn into a sea wolf, Gilly said.
And hadn’t Doc told me that sea wolves took drowning victims to their underwater homes to become sea wolves themselves?
Still, even if the impossible were true, was Jeddah so troubled he would let the sea consume him?
Like my mother.
Before I can empty myself of my own raging emotions, the sea wolf vanishes. Gilly’s distinctive hulking frame leans over the railing, arms outstretched, as if calling the leviathan back. As if calling him home.
Perhaps the line between truth and legend is not so bright.
Maybe somewhere between the fickle air and the cold water lies a frothy in-between, a place where truth and legend blend for those who struggle to find a place in the world.
I hope Jeddah is not gone, and not just because that will leave me without an alibi.
We’re more alike than you think, he said the day Father Pinnyhorne gave us joint sentences on Chapel Hill.
Both of us marked, both of us stuck. A twist of fate spun our lives in two different directions.
But in the end, is he the one who has been set free?
Nash pulls my cold hands from the window. “There could be many explanations,” he ventures, in a voice laced with doubt. “Let’s not worry about Jeddah right now. I’m going to solve this like any reasonable man of wealth would do. I will go bribe the sheriff.”
“With what? Your father’s financial straits are well known.”
He lifts one of his cultured dark eyebrows. “If you are convicted, I shall have the Nowhere funds.”
I sag into my heels, not pointing out that I doubt Sheriff Orr is bribable.
But maybe the priest is. The clergy swears an absolute duty to keep the secrets of the penitent, but Father Pinnyhorne gave me up.
I asked him yesterday if Mr. Sanders ever told him about his friend Harry.
He said not in a secular context, which suggests that Mr. Sanders confided in him in the confession booth. Otherwise, why not simply say no?
The wall clock reads nearly eleven o’clock. Only an hour left of freedom. But the bell has not tolled yet.
I need a word with the man of God.
Nash takes me in his arms, frowning down at me.
He won’t be happy with me confronting the person whose word has sent me away.
He’ll probably stop me. Before he can begin to suspect my plans, I match my lips to his, knowing this might be our farewell.
Clutching me as close as two bodies pressed against a tennis court, he kisses me with the intensity of a stubborn evening sun that won’t let the day go.
I wish I could wrap myself fully in this last moment, but too soon he takes his warmth away.
“Sit tight. Stay away from the China blue.”
When his footsteps descending the staircase grow faint, I return to my room, exit through the hidden closet door into the servants’ hallway, and take the staircase to the east door for what may be the last time.
Three deputies watch the big house, likely one each at the front and back, leaving one for the east or west door.
I pray they have chosen the west door to watch.
The chick must fly or die trying.