Chapter 47
“Can you hurry up?” I ask Tabitha, who is taking off her shoes, rolling up her pant legs, tucking her hair into a ponytail, and basically doing everything possible to delay our departure.
The sun has set its fiery orb into the sea leaving behind a sky glowing with grape and tangerine brush strokes. The air is hot as if the day hasn’t cooled itself off yet.
Keston’s boat engine roars loudly, sending Trixie skittering from the wooden jetty back onto the porch where she was snoring her little heart out when we arrived half an hour ago.
Trixie brayed loudly when she first saw me. I brayed back. We had a hug and I gave her carrots to apologize for my absence.
“I’m not leaving you again,” I whispered in her ear.
Keston overheard and grinned. “She better not, right Trixie Starlight?”
I rolled my eyes at him.
Now, with Tabitha finally in the boat, Kelley unties the line for us and hops in next to me and Keston. Tabitha is seated on the bench near the bow.
“What’s our destination, captain?” Keston asks me.
“The lagoon. Where the bioluminescence lights up the water.”
“Is this a sightseeing cruise?” Tabitha scoffs.
I shake my head. Over the steady hum of the boat engine, I begin to tell them the tale of a long-ago love involving Kelley and Keston’s legendary forebear, Captain Kipson. And Tabitha’s irrepressible matriarch, Charlotte Campbell.
“Imagine being a pirate sailing this same sea on the way to meet your true love.”
I look at Tabitha. “A love who waited on the shore where the river meets the sea, and the water lights up with a bright blue light.”
“The lagoon was their meeting point?” Keston asks, surprise making his eyes round. “I go there all the time.”
I nod. “Where the freshwater meets the salty sea.”
“It’s amazing she could find her way out there by land,” says Tabitha. “It’s a difficult trek even in the daytime.”
“The things we do for love,” Kelley says.
We all turn to stare at him.
He smiles. “I know a little about love. It changes you.”
I wonder if he’s thinking of Mikah. I can’t see this cool, relaxed man in the hustle and bustle of a big city. But Mikah may convince him after all.
“Anyway,” I say, smiling at Kelley, “Charlotte and Captain Kipson met at their secret spot on the shore. They talked and shared their dreams. He adored her. He let his guard down and spoke freely about his rough and dangerous life. She told him about her strict and rigid one.
“Together they escaped their regular lives and were free. They became intimate, sharing a deep passion for each other. Charlotte was fierce about her love for him. She declared to her diary that he was her true love, despite being a feared outlaw.”
Tabitha shakes her head. “Poor Grams. In love with a bad boy.”
“The worst,” Keston says. “Bottom of the barrel in suitable husbands.”
“During one of those intimate encounters, Charlotte Campbell became pregnant with Captain Kipson’s child.”
Tabitha all but chokes on the water she was sipping. “No.” She wipes the drops away. “My fine upstanding Grams, a Governor’s wife, got knocked up before she met my Grands?”
“By a pirate,” says Keston.
“A Black pirate,” Kelley adds.
“Yes, Charlotte Campbell of the illustrious Campbell plantation, a princess with a
silver spoon in her mouth, was with child.”
“The scandal,” Tabitha murmurs.
“They kept it a secret. As far as I can tell, no one knew.”
Keston locks eyes with me. “You, okay?” He mouths silently.
I nod. My heart is full of love for this man. Every day will not be perfect or even close to perfect, but we will always have our shared love.
“Then in December of the same year, it was time for Charlotte to give birth. I don’t know how they arranged to meet at the right time. It appears Captain Kipson stayed in and around St. Nicholas’s waters risking his life to be near his beloved when she needed him most.”
Tabitha swoons, grasping her heart with both hands. “That is true love.”
I take a breath and a sip from my water bottle.
“You’re good at telling the story, CJ,” Keston remarks, eyes focused ahead, but a smile just for me. “Remember when you read your romance novels to me?”
“We were stranded. You were a captive audience.”
He laughs. “I loved it.”
“I found evidence in Captain Kipson’s ship log about the birth. It was written in a secret way, hidden in plain sight but invisible to most.”
“Except to you,” Kelley says. “I found a note in the journal that said:
If your heart has found a love that’s true,
If your souls are joined as one,
Then you may find the hidden treasure,
Of a love that can’t be measured.
“Wow! I exclaim. “It said that?”
Kelley nods. “I memorized it. That’s why I gave you the journal. I saw you at the
hospital the day you both were rescued from No Man’s Land. I heard you crying over Keston. Your words and emotions made everyone cry.”
“I don’t remember much of that day,” I murmur. “It was one of the worst days of my life.”
“I knew you and Keston had the kind of true love the journal talked about. I hoped you would figure out the secret. And you did.”
Keston turns around, one hand still on the steering wheel. “Why were you at the hospital?”
Kelley grows silent.
“They sent me to find him,” Tabitha speaks up.
Keston stares at one then the other. He slows down the engine. Turns it off.
“Are we here?” I ask.
“Yes, baby. It’s right over there.”
I look to the empty darkness looming ahead of us. “Scary.”
Keston turns to face Tabitha and Kelley. “Why’d you have to find him?”
I don’t understand the tension in the air. What’s the big deal with Kelley being at the hospital anyway?
A couple of beats go by.
Kelley looks up at the sky. “The doctors asked me to donate blood for your surgeries.”
Tabitha and I swivel our heads from one brother to the other as if watching a tennis match.
“Did you?” Keston asks in a hushed voice.
“Yes. I did. We have the same blood type. O-negative. We can only receive blood from each other or another O-negative donor. They were short on O-negative blood.”
“Was it just once?”
Kelley purses his lips. “Three times. One for every surgery you had.”
“I didn’t know.”
Kelley shrugs.
“I lost a lot of blood on No Man’s Land. I almost died. You saved my life, thank you.”
Kelley waves his thanks away.
I gulp. Keston literally has Kelley’s blood in him. It looks as if he realizes that because he walks over to Kelley and sticks out his hand to shake. “No, seriously, thank you.”
Kelley grips Keston’s hand. “You’re welcome.”
Tabitha and I exchange looks that don’t kill. We’re all making progress here under a starless sky.
Keston hugs me, kisses the top of my head. “I suppose since we’re all revealing truths, secrets, whatever you want to call them . . . I have one for CJ.”
I perk up as if I’m getting a present.
“It’s about what Tabitha and I have been doing together.”
My perkiness dies a swift death. “Do I want to know?”
The rocking boat gets smacked by a wave on her starboard side, almost tumbling me off my seat. Keston tucks an arm around me. “I got you.”
He then proceeds to tell me all about his and Tabitha’s special project. A book of rum cocktails he has been working on for years. But now he’s inspired to finish it because of me.
“Filled with new drinks, sexy names, lots of photos and information about the ingredients.”
“That sounds amazing,” I hug him hard. “I’m so proud of you.”
“Tabitha helped in organizing and getting it ready for the printer. We will have copies soon. I’ll sell it everywhere.”
“What are you doing with the money?” I ask quietly.
Keston bends over to peer into my eyes. “It’s for you, my love. To expand our house. Get a vehicle. Buy more carrots for Trixie. I want you to relax and stop worrying. Figure out what you love to do.”
“So, while I was trying to find pirate treasure for us, you created cocktails and set up an entire new source of income instead?”
He laughs. “Looks that way.”
“I think I already found my treasure,” I say, burying my face in his shirt.
“I know I found mine,” he whispers. “Although you’re a pain in my neck.”
“Nobody’s perfect,” I giggle.