Chapter 19
“Open your eyes. You’re okay. Gabby, open your eyes.”
Something was wrong with Gabby. She was bucking up and down on Tamara’s ancient horsehair couch. Was it a seizure? Should he call a doctor? Or Luke? If he called the constable’s number, would they put him through to Tamara in the lockup? She might know what to do.
Finally, just when he was about to panic, Gabby’s eyes snapped open. She sat up with a long hoarse gasp for breath, as if she’d been underwater instead of asleep. “Where? What…” She looked around wildly, eyes unfocused, confused.
“You’re at Tamara’s cottage. You fell asleep on the couch. You must have been dreaming.”
She grabbed a throw pillow and clutched it to her stomach. “I was on a sailboat.”
“Was it crashing against some rocks?” he asked, bemused. “You looked like you were going through a shipwreck.”
“No no, the boat was fine. I was another person. A woman. I was Marianne.”
“Who’s Marianne?”
Her eyes finally focused on him squatting next to the couch. His damn knees were starting to ache. “Oh Barnaby. Hey.”
“Hey,” he said, mirroring her casual tone. “Whassup?”
She snorted and shook her head, still trying to clear it. One of her earrings was tangled in her hair, some of which had come loose from its twists. “I just had the most incredibly vivid dream. I think it came from Marianne’s journal.”
He raised one eyebrow, not wanting to repeat the question.
“Marianne is Tamara’s ancestor, the pirate’s mistress that he left on this island in the early seventeen hundreds. Your ancestor too, I suppose. You’ve never heard of her?”
“No. Why have you?” He narrowed his eyes suspiciously, and saw the instant that she realized she’d slipped.
“Fuck.” Then she covered her mouth with her hand.
“Don’t tell my mother I said that. Not that you’re likely to meet my mother, but she really doesn’t like it when I use that word because I’m always supposed to be representing the family, and maybe even the entire Black community, so I usually avoid—”
“Gabby. How do you know about this Marianne?” He could recognize someone babbling for the sake of distraction.
She sighed and pushed him aside so she could swing her legs over the edge of the couch. Long, slender, smooth brown legs. He kept his gaze firmly focused on her face, but he could still see those legs. Damn his peripheral vision.
“Haven’t you listened to our podcast?”
“Been a little busy,” he said dryly.
“Sasha Mackey found a journal in Denton’s safe.
It was really old, like vellum-and-ink era, and some of it is illegible.
But we pieced together enough to figure out who wrote it.
Her name was Marianne Thatcher and she lived here on this land.
Not this cottage, but a previous one that her pirate crew helped build.
That’s what brought us to Tamara in the first place.
We wanted to invite her on the podcast to talk about her heritage. ”
He felt a slow anger burn inside him. “So that’s why you befriended her? For the podcast?”
The goddamn freaking podcast.
“No.” She pushed herself to her feet and brushed off her shorts—plaid and preppy, but still somehow sexy. “That’s not why I befriended her, you jackass. But it is why I first wanted to meet her. Is that a fucking crime?”
“I’m telling your mama,” he murmured.
“Oh, fuck off.”
Okay then. The guardrails were all the way down. He kind of liked it when she was glaring at him like that. “You should really swear more. It suits you.”
“What are you even doing here?” She set her hand on her hips. “I’m the one taking care of the place for her.”
“I know. I don’t get it, but I know. I came to get some things for Tamara for tomorrow morning.”
“Oh.” Her expression softened. “That’s kind of you.”
He groaned at that undeserved compliment. “It’s the least I could do. I should have kept her out of jail in the first place. She seems all right, though. Thanks for taking care of her last night.”
“We took care of each other.” She paused in the midst of fixing her hair.
Her eyes went out of focus again. “We talked about the journal and she told me stories she’d heard from her mother and her grandmother, and her great-aunt.
I think that dream was inspired by one of her stories.
I was Marianne on the pirate ship about to arrive at the island. My…Joshua was there.”
“Your Joshua?”
“That was the pirate’s name. I looked him up, you know, when I first read the journal. He never made it back after he left Marianne and his unborn baby on Sea Smoke Island.”
“Unborn baby? The plot thickens. Were you pregnant in the dream?”
“Oh yes. Big old belly. I knew it was twins, but I was keeping it a secret…” She drew in a slow breath. “In the dream I knew that I’d never see Joshua again. But I could have dreamed it that way because in real life, I know he died soon afterwards. The subconscious works in weird ways.”
“Yes, but this sounds more like a movie than a dream. Dreams don’t usually make much sense. They’re surreal. They follow their own logic.”
“Are you saying you don’t think it was a dream?” She shook her head with a frown. “What else could it be?”
“Toxic plant?” Although he meant it as a joke, he winced as soon as he said the words. He didn’t mean to add fuel to the toxic-plant fire.
Gabby crossed her arms over her chest. “Are you saying your grandmother poisoned me too?”
“No. Jesus. She didn’t poison anyone, and I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. But Tamara can have a strange effect on people.” He said that last bit reluctantly, since he hated saying anything that might reflect badly on his adorable grandmother. “She didn’t make you any tea, did she?”
“No! We had no tea in jail.” Gabby flopped down in the chair opposite him, a wingback, needlepoint-covered, bombproof piece of furniture. “But she did give me a snack,” she admitted. “Some weird pemmican kind of thing, dried berries and nuts.”
“And rendered animal fat. Tamara makes her own, she says it’s an old family recipe from a Wabanaki relative.”
She shuddered slightly. “Can’t say I loved it. Never been a jerky kind of girl. Anyway, it was the only food either of us had with us, so she very generously shared it with me.”
“They don’t feed the prisoners in lockup?”
“They did. This was a midnight snack kind of thing. I remember it took forever to eat it, and I might have fallen asleep mid-chew.”
He raised his eyebrows at her and she sighed. “Okay, maybe you’re right and Tamara’s weird snack gave me that vivid dream. My mother is really going to love this. I went to jail and then I ingested hallucinogens. I’m definitely on the road to ruin now.”
He let out a booming laugh, the kind he didn’t usually unleash with people he didn’t know very well.
But it brought a wide smile to her lips, and a moment later she was laughing too.
They both carried on like that for a while, each one’s laughter spurring on the other, until finally she clutched at her stomach.
“Please make it stop,” she gasped. She lay limp and quivering in the chair, her slim brown hands on her belly.
As if she were cuddling a baby bump.
He shook off the weird flash, only to be struck by another thought. Did Tamara really need her toothbrush, when Marigold had provided her with one? Did she really need her extra socks? Or had she sent him here so he’d cross paths with Gabby? And if so, why?
Maybe Tamara wanted him to find out what Gabby was up to.
“Why are you so interested in this Marianne character?” he asked slowly.
“It’s for the podcast, I told you. We’re focusing on Sasha’s story as a way to personalize the stories of the eviction victims. It’s easier to connect with one person than with a nameless, faceless group that you don’t know.
Sasha is the perfect person to spotlight.
Sasha is related to Tamara, and Marianne, and, I guess, you. ”
“I’m not appearing on any podcast.”
“Well, that works out well, since you’re not invited.”
Looking at her more closely, he saw that his automatic response had wounded her. “Sorry.”
“For what?”
A gust of wind flung a spatter of rain against the windows on the east side of the house. A thunderstorm was in the forecast, he remembered. Here on the southwest point of the island, they were usually sheltered from the brunt of the summer storms, but they would no doubt hear the thunder.
He got to his feet and went about the room closing windows. “For speaking that way about your podcast. That’s your work and I should show more respect for it.”
She snorted. “How far back does that apology go? You’ve been talking that way from the beginning. And then you chased Sasha away and forced us to change direction.”
“It goes all the way back. I’m sorry about Sasha. I’m sorry I’ve been rude about your podcast. I’ve had bad experiences with the press. I got talked about like some idiot globetrotting playboy. But I shouldn’t blame you for that. I was out of line. Why is your jaw dropping like that?”
She snapped her mouth shut. “I just never took you for an apology kind of guy.”
“Maybe you don’t know me well enough to think that.”
“You’re right. Now it’s my turn. Sorry for jumping to the conclusion that you were too full of yourself to apologize.”
Full of himself? He swung around in shock. It wasn’t a characteristic he would ever want to have. “You think I’m full of myself?”
She blinked, but didn’t back down. “Sure. You were very arrogant when we first talked at the hotel.”
Arrogant. She’d used that word before, in the lilac bushes. Had he really behaved arrogantly? Maybe he had. That whole time was a blur.
“I was in shock. My sister and brother and mother-in-law were under arrest. My father was possibly diagnosed with dementia and doing things he’d never talked about before.
Everything was exploding all over the place and I was the one who had to hold it together.
And that’s after I spent my whole adult life putting distance between myself and the Carmichaels.
Really, I seemed arrogant and full of myself? ”
She tilted her head at him, considering. At least she was choosing her words with care and not slinging them just to insult him. “Yes, you did. But I’m willing to say it was just how you came off, and that maybe you aren’t either of those things.”
“Well, thanks,” he said dryly. “That’s big of you.” He rubbed at the back of his neck, where tension throbbed.
A crack of lightning was followed by a low rumble of thunder, closer than he would have liked.
“If you have any electronics charging, you might want to unplug them,” he said as he looked around for anything Tamara might have left plugged in.
She wasn’t much for electronics, but she did have an ancient desktop computer that she used on occasion for research.
“Barnaby,” Gabby said softly, coming to her feet.
“Yeah?”
“Did I hurt your feelings?”
“God no. I’m used to people taking one look at me and running the other way. I mean…” He gestured at his own face. “I look like Blackbeard the pirate. And that was before I knew I was related to a real-life pirate.” He grinned, suddenly delighted by that fact. “Now it all makes sense.”
He found another open window in the kitchen and closed it. The rain was slanting hard against the old cedar siding. This house had been through many storms over the years, and had weathered them all. But for some reason, he was prowling around like a nervous cat.
Maybe it was because he felt like a fool. Gabby had been in his thoughts to an uncomfortable degree, and the whole time, she’d been thinking he was full of himself. In other words, a jackass.
“Okay, but I didn’t run the other way. Just want to point that out,” she said.
He turned to find Gabby in the kitchen with him, just a few feet away. Heat flushed through him.
“I didn’t take into account what you were going through at that time,” she went on. “Now I know you better. That’s how it works, right?”
“How what works?” The shift of expression in her eyes mesmerized him. He almost forgot what they were talking about.
“Getting to know someone. Building a friendship. Or any relationship. First impressions only go so far.”
“Want to know my first impression of you?”
She made a funny face. “I don’t know. Do I?”
“I thought you were fascinating and out of my reach.”
That seemed to surprise her. “Out of your reach? How do you mean?”
“You’re a person with a lot going for you. You have drive and ambition. You have the talent and smarts to go as far as you can. I’m not even bringing up how stunningly beautiful you are, because that’s beside the point, although obviously I noticed that too.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it again. He’d left her speechless. That had to be a first.
“You have purpose. I know I’ve made fun of your podcast, but I see what you’re doing with it, and it’s good.
We need people like you exposing corruption and all the evil shit people do.
But me—I’ve been chasing something my whole life, trying to do good things when and where I can.
But sometimes, in the middle of the night in some foreign country that I’ll leave in a few weeks when the project’s done, I wonder if I’m really just still running. ”