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The sky all around was a brilliant blue. There wasn’t a cloud to be seen. With her forehead resting against the window, Brigid gazed down at a city neatly tucked into a space between mountains. A rusty patch of dirt stretched out beside it, a small slate-gray lake at its center.
“Would you mind if I borrow this seat for a moment? I can’t see anything from my side of the plane.” A man slid into the empty seat beside her. “It’s a shame, isn’t it?”
Brigid squirmed with discomfort. She’d been staring out the window to avoid chitchat with the other passengers in first class.
It was moments like these that made her question her resolve to fly commercial.
But every time she considered chartering a plane, she always heard Aunt Ivy’s voice in her head.
We must be the solution, not the problem, she’d told the girls.
Brigid usually nipped in-flight conversations in the bud, but this time her curiosity was piqued. When she turned to the man, she found his handsome face felt familiar. Then again, she was sure hers rang a bell for him as well.
“What’s a shame?” she asked.
“That little gray smear down there used to be the Great Salt Lake.”
Brigid swiveled back toward the window. “No shit,” she marveled. “Not so great anymore, is it?” It looked like a puddle.
“And there’s the city beside it.” He was leaning over her for a better look. At such a somber moment, it seemed highly inappropriate for Brigid to notice how good he smelled. Like soil and straw and freshly mown grass, with just a hint of animal beneath.
“How many people are still living there?” she asked, stealthily pulling in another deep breath. Flora always said scent was the Old One’s matchmaker. That might have explained Flora’s terrible taste in men.
“Around ten thousand.” He eased back into the seat. “That’s down from over a million. Only the crazies are left. Most probably won’t last very long. They say the dust from the lake bed has made the air toxic.”
It was only the first in a long line of losses that were predicted to follow. The Great Barrier Reef. The redwoods. Miami and other coastal cities. Polar bears, elephants, and so many other species that just a snippet of David Attenborough narration was enough to bring Brigid to tears.
“I was there five years ago for Sundance,” she remarked. “It was right before shit really started to hit the fan. I don’t remember a single person mentioning that the water was drying up or that there was arsenic and mercury in the lake bed underneath.”
“The city was too busy expanding,” the handsome stranger explained. “None of the big shots wanted to get in the way of progress, so they kept it a secret.”
“From what I’ve heard most people didn’t even realize it was happening until it was too late,” Brigid said.
“My guess is the truth never reached them because they all watched AMN. America’s Media Network, my ass.
If you ask me, the motherfucker who owned AMN did more damage to this country than anyone in history.
Even when the news about Salt Lake started to come out, the AMN anchors kept insisting it was all a conspiracy.
I hope Calum Geddes rots in hell for helping destroy our planet. ”
“Whether or not Geddes rots in hell, I assure you the planet will be fine,” the man said.
Brigid couldn’t believe that there were still deniers. These days they usually fell into one of two camps: those who were certain their God would swoop in and save them—and those determined to plunder every resource that was left.
“The Great Salt Lake is literally a puddle of poison and you think our planet is okay?” she asked coldly.
“Oh, absolutely. It’s humanity that’s fucked. We keep doing things like draining the Colorado River to irrigate farms in the desert, and the earth’s gonna shake us off like a bunch of fleas.”
Brigid’s brow softened. She’d been too quick to judge.
“My aunt Ivy used to say the same thing. She knew what was coming long before anyone else did. As a matter of fact, she predicted half the things that are happening now. Hurricanes destroying the coastal cities. Heat waves taking out the cattle ranching industry. She saw it all decades ago.”
“Ivy must have been a brilliant woman.”
“She was.” Brigid made a point to never speak publicly about her family or Wild Hill. Suddenly, she felt exposed. She’d said far too much.
“So, if you could send Calum motherfucking Geddes a message in hell, what would it be?”
Brigid snorted. “If I thought sending a message to Calum would do any good, I’d have done it a long time ago.” She could hear how pompous that sounded. “I knew him back in the day,” she explained, realizing a split second later that she’d spilled another bean.
“Is that right?” The man sounded skeptical. “What day was that?”
“Mid-nineties. He dated my mother for a minute when I was a teenager.” What the fuck.
Brigid was glad this wasn’t a formal interview.
She couldn’t seem to stop talking. There was something about her companion that loosened her tongue and let down her guard.
She felt comfortable in his presence, like she’d known him before in some other life.
“How did his wife and family feel about that?”
The question pulled her back to earth. Brigid couldn’t tell from his pleasant tone or neutral expression if he’d been joking.
“Excuse me?” One thing was certain—it was a strange thing to ask someone you’d just met on a plane.
“For your information, he was in the process of getting divorced at the time.” Brigid shifted her attention to the window and hoped her guest got the message.
Thankfully, the man seemed to sense that the conversation was over. “I’m going to go back to my seat now, but it’s been a pleasure chatting with you. I’m Liam, by the way.” He held out a hand.
“Brigid.” She shook his hand out of politeness.
Liam. The name rattled around in her head for the rest of the flight.
That was the problem with all these damn gifts, Brigid thought.
The past, present, and future could get mixed up.
The name meant something, but whether he was someone she’d once known or someone she was meant to meet—that, she couldn’t determine.
When the plane landed at JFK, Brigid made a point of catching up with him on the jet bridge.
“Hey,” she called out.
Liam turned to see her coming and paused. “Hey,” he responded as if he’d been waiting all along for her to come up behind him.
“I apologize if I was bitchy back there,” she said when she reached him. “I’m here in New York to tend to some unpleasant business. Also, my house in California burned down.” She wasn’t above whipping out that particular get-out-of-jail-free card.
“I’m sorry to hear that. For the record, I wasn’t offended at all, Ms. Laguerre,” he replied. “In fact, I was flattered you’d talk to me in the first place.”
“So you know who I am.”
A smile at that moment could have come off as patronizing, but Liam’s felt oddly indulgent.
“Everyone on the plane knew who you were,” he said.
“Don’t worry, though. I made sure nobody snapped any pictures while you weren’t looking.
Dunno if anyone’s ever mentioned it, but you drool just a little when you sleep. ”
Brigid laughed. “Then I guess I owe you one, Mr. . . .” She raised her eyebrow as if expecting him to fill in the blank.
“Geddes,” he said. “My name is Liam Geddes.”
Brigid could only recall a few moments in her life when she’d been caught completely off guard. This was one of them. “Calum’s son.” She could see it now. The charm, easy wit, and broad smile—all things his father had possessed as a younger man. Liam gave a nod to confirm.
Brigid stopped in the middle of the jet bridge, forcing passengers to stream around her.
“I’d stay here and keep talking, but I suspect you’re going to need a little time to get used to that information,” Liam said.
“Fuck,” she responded.
“It’s all good,” Liam assured her. Then he walked away, pausing only for a moment to glance over his shoulder. “I’ll be on the Island this week to bury my father. I have a sneaking suspicion I’ll be seeing you soon.”
Brigid watched as Liam Geddes vanished into the crowd.
A young man scrolling through his texts rammed into her from behind.
He seemed prepared to make a scene until he met Brigid’s famous eyes.
Then the anger slid off his face as his tongue tied itself in a knot.
It was an odd kind of power, Brigid thought.
The incident would be erased from her memory by the end of the day.
But this man would be telling the story of bumping into Brigid Laguerre for the rest of his life.
Might as well make it a good one, she figured.
“My fault, handsome,” she told him and planted a peck on his cheek.
brIGID HAD KNOWN LIAM’S NAME for well over thirty years.
When she and Phoebe first met Calum, he’d shown them pictures of his son, who was only a few years older than they were.
He’d promised to introduce them all at some point.
It wasn’t something teenage Brigid ever took seriously.
The men who fell for Flora promised all sorts of things—as if that were all it took to win women over.
The sisters expected nothing and were never disappointed.
Still, Calum had been different from the others.
For reasons she’d never been able to fathom, he was the only man her mother had loved.