CHAPTER 16
C HAPTER 16
C urtis emerged from the office building to find Dana standing on the top step, staring at where Rae’s limo idled at the curb. He stood to one side and slightly behind the older attorney, wanting to hide how he remained rocked by unseen winds. When the limo pulled away, Curtis managed to lift his arm in farewell.
When Dana remained standing there, staring at the sunlit vista, Curtis took that as his cue. “Thank you for the role you’ve played.”
The senior attorney did not speak. Nor did she look his way.
“I suspect you understand what is at stake here,” Curtis continued. When Dana remained silent, he went on, “My superiors will probably find it necessary to investigate your background as well.”
Dana started back inside. As if she had heard precisely what she required.
Curtis said to her departing back, “Glad we had this conversation.”
* * *
Curtis became caught in Raleigh’s rush-hour traffic and needed three-quarters of an hour to reach the city’s eastern perimeter. Soon as the highway opened up, he punched the accelerator. The two-hour drive should have made for a perfect opportunity to digest, reflect, plan. But that did not happen. As he passed the Garner exit, he became trapped by the unexpected. This was the real risk of looking back. Having other elements spring from his internal cage. Only, this time was different. His recollection carried the lilting melody of a woman’s true nature. Revealed at the most impossible of moments. Forming a new definition of who they were, and how things remained.
Friends.
In the early days after losing his family, Curtis had consumed empty hours, like he did the booze and antidepressants. Three weeks passed, his unpaid leave a gift from Kurien, who only called once, but texted or emailed every few days. Never more than a few words. Telling him to take what time he needed. Twice, Curtis submitted his resignation. Twice, the CEO simply insisted he come back when he was ready. Both times, the gift and the kindness almost broke him.
The realization grew in stages. It started as a feeble voice that cried softly before dawn, when his nightly doses had run out and the aftereffect dulled his sorrow. By the fourth week, however, it had grown into a dominating uncertainty.
If he did not change direction, and fast, he would soon follow mother and child to the grave. And nothing would have disappointed his late wife more.
He called Amiya.
Afterward, he felt ashamed it had taken him this long to reach out. Ever since Amiya’s marriage fell apart and she spent those five hard months in their guest room, she had referred to Curtis’s wife by one word only.
Sister.
Amiya had answered before the first ring, her voice almost instantly there. Like she had spent four weeks with her hand poised over the phone. “Where are you?”
The power contained in that connection wrenched him so hard, he could only manage one word. “Lost.”
In response, Amiya took over his life.
She moved him into a furnished apartment a block from their offices. Hired a temp to come in, cook a meal, add order and shape to his day. Ditto for the personal trainer. A dawn workout that Curtis still maintained. It was either give up on the booze and the drugs or endure a daily retching agony.
Curtis threw himself into work. From zero to redline in one desperate week. Kurien and his daughter responded with assignments that tested his limits, broke his boundaries, redefined what he could manage. A week in their temporary New York office, a week on the road. On and on. Six months of grueling challenges. His personal trainer phoning in, holding Curtis to the daily predawn routine. Forcing Curtis to treat the hours with the same steady discipline as he did his breathing.
He was vaguely aware that Amiya had cleared out his and Lorna’s home. Buying storage units for everything that had belonged to his late wife and their shared dreams. Lorna’s home office. Clothes. Personal items.
Crib. Baby clothes.
She had movers strip out every stick of furniture and box up all his personal belongings. Then she waited. Granting him the opportunity to return to their former home when he was ready. So he could enter the place and study the empty canvas. Decide on next steps.
He put their place up for sale the next day.
Eleven months passed.
Somehow his boss had known Curtis was ready before he could see it himself. Amiya had been standing in his office doorway when Kurien called on Curtis’s private line. For the first time since the funeral, his boss asked Curtis how he was faring. And then said it was time for the next step.
They sent him to France.
The wine regions of Bordeaux, to be precise.
The journey had been at the top of Lorna’s bucket list. Something they had been planning as their next vacation. Temporarily put on hold when she became pregnant after two years of trying.
Sixteen glorious days. Early June, France’s finest season. A cycling tour with guided chateau visits. Wine tastings. Five-star resorts. Michelin-star meals. The tour service took care of his luggage and all peripheral issues. Incredibly expensive. A pure unadulterated indulgence from start to finish.
Amiya must have talked about it with his late wife. There was no other way Kurien could have known. His boss had called that day to tell Curtis he needed to do this. Take the trip for both of them. Say farewell to his previous life in a way that would honor Lorna and his child. Speaking the words with such care and respect that Curtis wept for the first time since leaving the cemetery.
Of course, he went on the trip. How could he not?
* * *
New Bern Airport’s proper name was Coastal Carolina Regional. Not even the people who worked there used the title. The private air terminal was closed for refurbishment, so Curtis waited in the main arrivals hall surrounded by a sea of green. The U.S. Army Reserve’s main training camp was just outside town. Between New Bern and the coast were five other major bases: Marine Corps Air Station at Cherry Point, North Carolina National Guard, Coast Guard Sector Field Office and Station, Marine Corps Landing Field, and USMC Camp Lejeune. The main arrivals terminal was a loud, happy place, full of family reunions and military coming off leave.
Amiya’s appearance caused a major stir, but a polite one. Curtis liked how old-style courtesy was still a point of this region’s life. People stared, whispered, moved on. Curtis liked that a lot.
At first glance, Amiya was the same as always. She was dressed in a tailored silk-and-cotton business outfit colored in multiple shades of dark silver-gray. Her coppery raven hair was pulled back to show off diamond-stud earrings. Long legs and pianist’s hands. Low-slung heels. Fashionable, functional. Her statement of choice. She had a dozen nearly identical outfits.
But Curtis knew at first glance it was all a thin veneer. Inside, the woman was barely holding it together. Her cheeks held the stains of exhaustion, stress, poor sleep, tears. Her smile of greeting was tilted, her dark eyes glazed.
He pecked the proffered cheek, took hold of her carry-on, and said, “You look fabulous.”
“I’m hot and I’m wrinkled and I smell like somebody who’s been at her desk since four-thirty this morning.”
“You smell like a French perfume ad.” He pretended to start for the exit, then stopped and asked, “This is all your luggage, right?”
“You know perfectly well I have never—in my entire life—traveled light.” She pointed to a uniformed pilot who emerged from the luggage portal pulling two oversized cases. “You are a terrible person and tomorrow Daddy will fire you. I will watch and I will be very happy.”
Amiya paused when they emerged from the terminal. She looked around, then up at the dusk-tinted sky, and breathed deep.
Curtis watched her, smiling. “A little different from Manhattan.”
“Another universe.”
Once they were settled in the car and underway, Amiya said, “I don’t want to talk about what we need to discuss. Not now. I’m exhausted.”
He nodded agreement. “It’s been a long day for me as well.”
“Tomorrow it is.” She pried off her shoes and settled her feet on the dash. Long hair spilled over the seatback. Her eyes gleamed as she glanced his way. “How has it been for you, coming back?”
He had always enjoyed the lady’s delicate, almost musical accent. Even when she pried where no one else was allowed entry.
“Smooth. I’ve been so busy, there wasn’t much time for memories.”
“So it sounds. Still, it didn’t worry you, this return?” When he was slow responding, she pressed, “This must have been different from your one-day visits during the hotel’s acquisition. Facing a crisis situation at the resort, pulling you back into the orbit of people you knew before Lorna. Not to mention that woman from your past.”
“How do you know about Rae?”
“Lorna told me. Don’t look like that. We talked about everything.” She poked his shoulder with a pianist’s finger. “How you were lucky to escape that woman’s clutches.”
“It wasn’t like that at all.”
“This ‘Down East vixen.’ That was how Lorna referred to her. She was jealous of this Rae woman.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say,” Curtis replied.
“And now she’s an attorney. Who happens to be handling a property you say we simply must acquire.”
“Because we must.”
Amiya settled back, catlike. “So, when do I view this perfect property?”
“Tomorrow.” This was how it was between them. How it had been since the very first day he had emerged from that dark cave. Amiya insisted on keeping his late wife part of their conversations. Their lives. Curtis went on, “The estate fills a gap I didn’t even recognize until I was standing there.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I’ve told you twice already.”
“Not about the land and the damaged home. You said it held memories, yes? Tell me about those.”
He looked over, took in the wide-open gaze, the liquid flow of her hair, the finely sculpted features, the skin that glowed like sourwood honey in the dusk. And there in that moment, separated from the crushing flow of so much, he recalled, “It was where I fell in love.”
She sighed with pure womanly pleasure. “Oh, I do so relish a good story. Did you tell Lorna?”
“Let me think.” Curtis felt the smile stretch his features into unaccustomed angles. “Did I tell my wife how I fell head over heels in love with another woman in a particular spot she’d never seen? Hmmm. No, I don’t think the matter ever came up.”
“And here I thought this would be just another boring drive through Carolina flatland.” She faced the sunset highway. “Tell me your secret tale, Curtis.”
A series of long-dormant memories became overlaid upon the drive. “Rae and I were snorkeling the waters off Cape Fortune, looking for pirate gold.”
“You’re making this up.”
“It’s true. Every word.”
She glanced over, studying him. Amiya must have found what she wanted, for all she said was, “So. Pirates.”
“Rae was crazy keen on the Carolina pirates. She was born and raised in Beaufort. The town was founded in 1700. About twenty years later, so the legends go, pirates hunting the Spanish galleons started using the Outer Banks as their way station. The place they’d go between expeditions, far from the battles, a safe haven where they could lay low and store their booty. The legends Rae chased were about a lot of them, we’re talking at least a dozen. The only two I remember were Stede Bonnet and Edward Teach.”
“That name—”
“Stede Bonnet was the Gentleman Pirate, and Edward Teach was known as Blackbeard. There’s a house six blocks from where Rae lived, one of the oldest in the state. The official name is Hammock House. But all the locals call it Blackbeard’s Home.” Curtis pointed through the windshield, out beyond the empty road. “Blackbeard’s ship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge, was sunk off the coast in 1718. The inlet used to be called Topsail, because for years you could still see the masts and highest sails from there.”
Her response was a silent gift. This exhausted and semi-shattered woman curled onto her seat. Leaning against the side door. Shifting so she could watch him full on. Becoming comfortable in a manner that Curtis suspected had not been hers to claim for a long, hard time.
He went on, “No one knows when Cape Fortune got its name. But the legends, man, Rae could make them live.” Another genuine smile. “My family had a miniature spread west of Morehead, what used to be called a truck farm. It was my granddad’s place; my folks built their home on scrubland at the land’s farthest boundary.”
“Why there?”
“I’ve told you this before. A misguided sense of loyalty to a family who hated my dad becoming a cop.”
“Correction. You’ve mentioned something and then changed the subject. So another day I will ask and you will tell me the whole sordid story, yes? But for now, back to your first true love.”
“Rae and I met in grammar school. Early on, we made what we called a secret camp in the woodlands separating our home from our grandparents—”
“What kind of trees?”
He glanced over, relishing the chance to free her at least momentarily from all the burdens she brought along. “In case you were wondering why I don’t tell you stories? It’s because you’re always interrupting.”
She reached over and poked him in the ribs. “The trees.”
“Loblolly pine, mostly. Some cyprus and hickory. And dogwoods.”
“So this became your childhood haven. Yours and Rae’s.”
“Right. There was this tiny clearing deep in the woodland, where you could pretend the outside world didn’t exist. Or at least didn’t matter. We’d build a campfire and Rae would tell these stories, making the legends real. I couldn’t get enough of them.”
Suddenly the recollections were so vivid, Curtis could smell the woodsmoke. He was back there again.
His smile was a constant thing.
Amiya said softly, “Tell me.”
“Rae called this time of year the lightning bug season. I’d stretch out by the fire and watch sparks rise and dance with the bugs. The past and those pirate crews weren’t some distant tale. They were alive. There with us. Dancing in the fire’s shadows.”
When he went quiet again, caught by all the bygone eras, Amiya said, “Cape Fortune.”
“If the pirates used any haven near the Bogue Cut, it would have been Cape Fortune.” He glanced over. The woman’s gold-black gaze only made the memories more intense. “The property surrounds a small bay shaped like the business end of a giant spoon. Entering from the inland waterway meant passing between two sharpish points. The bay itself was sheltered from all but the strongest winds, and the deep water goes almost up to the shoreline. A couple of places, we never actually touched bottom. The water is fairly clear for a brackish cove that close to the Atlantic. We used to go every couple of weeks. The family was gone by then, holding on to their share of the property, but never doing much with it. The original homestead was a jumble of old pilings and broken glass and weeds. Rae asked for a metal detector for her twelfth birthday, can you imagine?”
“I’m trying,” Amiya said. She was smiling now. Despite everything.
“That day, we were in her daddy’s boat, the tide charts spread across the gunnel. She had talked to some of the old fishermen, trying to figure out the currents that might have been the same three hundred years ago. I basically didn’t care how crazy it all seemed. I was just having the time of my life. We were free diving in maybe thirty feet of water, using garden rakes to push through the bottom silt. By the third dive, there was so much gunk in the water I couldn’t see my hands, much less something that might have been worth bringing up. Then, all of a sudden, there was this clink.”
Amiya leaned forward, so intent it didn’t matter she was perched across the central well. Her seat belt’s shoulder strap was in the way; so with an impatient gesture, she slipped it off. Curtis wanted to tell her it wasn’t safe, but just then, the memories were all consuming. For both of them.
“I shifted the sand with my fingers and came up with something. No idea what it was, only it was round and big. About half my palm in size. I couldn’t find Rae, the muck was too thick. I yelled loud as I could, got a mouthful of silty water, and rose to the surface, choking.”
“You found it,” Amiya said, so close her breath was a heated rush. “Pirate booty.”
“I didn’t know at the time. But yeah. A Spanish gold doubloon. Gold doesn’t lose its luster underwater, and that thing, man, in the sunlight, it was bright as a mirror. Then Rae popped up, her eyes big as the doubloon, shrieking with so much joy and excitement. After years of searching, there it was. The proof she probably thought she’d never find.”
“Despite everything,” Amiya said. “She was right. And you made it so. For her.”
“The look she gave me, the way she held me there in the water . . .”
“The kiss,” Amiya said. “Tell me she kissed you.”
He just smiled all the harder. “Suddenly I was fearless and invulnerable. Holding that coin . . .”
“Holding her.”
“It felt like my entire world just opened up to a new reality.”
“And suddenly you were in love.” She watched him a long moment, then swung back around, slipped the seat belt into place, fit herself into the seat, and realized, “Amazing. We’re already there.”