Chapter 25 #13
Forrester used his flashlight to locate the path. Then he looked at her.
Nodding decisively, she followed him. She was armed, after all. Then again, he probably was too.
Grace pulled out her own flashlight so she wouldn’t be dependent on his. They walked in silence for a few minutes. Forrester seemed to be looking for something specific, since he consulted the paper a couple of times.
“Here.” Forrester stepped off the path and crossed a grassy area between the path and the large rocks that bordered the river.
The sky had lightened. Almost dawn.
After a moment’s hesitation, Grace joined him at the river’s edge and noticed how he scanned the river. “What are we looking for?”
Forrester pointed. “That.”
Grace looked where he pointed—and saw nothing. And then…
Faint at first, as if seeing something shrouded by fog. Except there was no fog on the river, no mist. Nothing to obscure vision. She didn’t hear a motor, but moment by moment the boat took shape, became solid. And she saw…
“Gracie!”
The voice. So loved. So familiar. But it couldn’t be. “Dad?” she whispered.
Patrick Russell waved his arms over his head to draw attention to himself, to the boat that couldn’t possibly exist.
“Gracie!” Patrick called again.
“Dad?” How…? “Dad!”
His smile lit up his face, lit up the sky. He grabbed the arm of the man standing next to him and pointed toward the shore with his other hand. “That’s my girl! That’s Gracie!”
“Dad!” He’d disappeared two years ago. She’d never thought she would see him again. And with everything the doctors had told her at the time, she never thought she would see more than his corpse—if it was ever found. But there he was, waving at her.
“I love you, Gracie! I love you!”
She swallowed a sob. Not sorrow. Maybe that would come. For now, the tears were from joy. “I love you, Dad!”
The boat came abreast of their position on the bank.
The man who seemed to be the captain touched two fingers to his cap in a salute.
The other men and women who stood around Patrick either took off their caps and held them over their hearts or raised a hand in greeting.
All of them were smiling—but none of them smiled more than Patrick Russell.
As the sky lightened and the boat passed their position on the bank, it began to fade. Then it was gone as if it had never been.
“They say the living can only see a ghost ship for a few moments at dawn and dusk,” Forrester said quietly. “You needed to be at this spot at this time to see your father. To say goodbye.”
Grace scrubbed the tears off her face. “Goodbye? But if it can be seen…”
“I was told this is a one-time deal. That’s why it was important to get you here.”
She looked at him. “Closure.”
Forrester nodded. “Several of the Arcana arranged for this to happen. For your father. For you.” He paused.
“You will owe them a favor.” Before she could protest, he added, “Like the favor I did this morning by making sure you were here.” He removed an envelope from his coat pocket. “I was asked to give you this.”
It was light enough now that she could see her father’s handwriting on the envelope.
She wanted to tear it open and read whatever message her father had written, but she wanted—needed—to be alone when she did that. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Forrester studied her. “Did it help?”
Grace thought about that for a moment, then nodded.
“He looks so happy. I remember…I remember the day before he disappeared. He’d been given weeks to live, and I’d brought him to the park to see the river.
He always loved the river, had always said sailing on a three-master was at the top of his bucket list.” She wiped away more tears.
“He saw one that day. Was so excited to see it sail past. I didn’t see it.
I thought his illness was affecting his mind. ”
“The dying can see the ghost ships,” Forrester said.
“That night, he slipped away from the care facility and disappeared. I guess he found…” What had her father found? Something.
“Well,” Forrester said. “I need to get back to Penwych. Will you be all right?”
Grace nodded. “I’ll walk you to the dock. My car is near there.”
Going back to the dock, they walked in a silence that was more companionable than the silence that had surrounded them on the way to her meeting.
“Has your team heard anything about Rachel Nightingale?” Grace asked.
“Nothing,” he replied. “My impression is that she chose to disappear.”
“It would be nice to know we’re not waiting for another body to wash ashore.
” She thought for a moment, then decided that what she was about to tell him was hardly private, given what the senior police officers in King’s Hill were calling the Hampton Three-Ring Circus.
“There’s a lot of infighting within the Hampton family and with the officers and boards of directors of the companies controlled by Reginald Hampton the Third.
Alistair Hampton is trying to take control of at least some of his brother’s assets, but he’s being challenged by Reginald’s ex-wives—there are two—as well as numerous cousins who probably aren’t even a footnote in Hampton’s will.
No one can make use of the Hampton wealth that had been under Reginald’s control until we find him, one way or another.
“Alistair Hampton can’t afford his current lifestyle. I’d heard he attempted to grab control of Rachel Nightingale’s literary assets, claiming they were his now because he and Nightingale had been engaged. The publisher refused to cooperate.”
“Go figure,” Forrester said dryly.
Grace almost asked him if the Arcana were the ones who had control, but it was better not to have an answer.
Markus Seibert, her senior detective, checked in with Alistair Hampton every few days, more to find out how much emotional gasoline the man was throwing on the family bonfire than to tell Hampton anything.
She watched Forrester board the Penwych patrol boat before returning to her car, getting in, and locking the doors. Then she carefully opened the envelope that contained her father’s last message to her.
Gracie,
So much to say and not much time if this letter is going to reach you.
The last time we were at the park together?
I saw that sailing ship and wanted the chance to sail on it.
And I did, Gracie. I went down to the river the morning after, and the ship was anchored, as if waiting for me, and two of the crew rowed a dinghy to the shore and asked if I wanted to sail with them.
I had two wonderful years on the Bonnie Lass. Two years of adventures. Dangerous, sometimes. But I was a dead man walking, so danger doesn’t have much hold on someone like me. Doesn’t have much hold on any of us, really.
I know how much time the doctors had given me. I had more, and I lived and enjoyed every day I was on the water.
But the end is coming, and my one regret is I never said a proper goodbye to you, my darling girl.
Captain Flint says there might be a way if someone called the Sorcerer King agrees to help.
If I had the chance to see you, then help was given.
If not, Captain Flint promised to get this letter to you.
No tears, Gracie. Not for me. I hope you have a long and wonderful life. I hope you know I’ll always love you.
Dad
P.S. A man named Alan Naylor was a member of the crew.
He started fretting about going home, but he hadn’t fulfilled all of the bargain he’d made with the Arcana, and the captain of the Bonnie Lass wouldn’t let him go.
He took a dinghy and escaped last September, and the captain released him from his bargain because he saved a boy from drowning in the river. I hope Alan managed to make it home.
Grace folded the letter and put it back in the envelope.
Senior officers in the six towns on the Fate River knew about the man who had rescued the teenage boy and was then found dead, an old man who had been touched by the weight of his years.
He hadn’t quite made it home, but his reappearance had given his family closure.
Tucking her father’s letter into her purse, Grace started her car and drove to the King’s Hill precinct where she worked.
21
When he heard the beep beep of a horn, Colin Forrester set aside the broom he was using to sweep the trading post floor and went outside. Tia had said there weren’t any cars in this Wyrd neighborhood, and it wasn’t the day for the mobile library to show up.
A bus like the one that had dropped him off in Llamalidia pulled up to the trading post. The door opened, and the driver said, “I’ve got a delivery here for someone named Colin Forrester.”
“For me?” Colin approached the bus but hesitated to step on board to pick up the delivery.
He kept his bus ticket tucked into the back pocket of his jeans as a kind of talisman—an unspoken promise that he would, somehow, be able to get home someday.
But Tia had mentioned a couple of times that if you weren’t focused on where you wanted to go, you could end up somewhere that would be forever—and the forever places often had a nightmarish quality to them. Or so she’d heard.
The driver looked past Colin to Tia, who also approached the bus.
She studied Colin for a moment, then looked at the driver and shook her head as if conveying a message, adult to adult.
Nodding, the driver swung out of his seat and pulled a big suitcase from the cargo racks.
He tipped it onto its side and set it on the middle step.
Tia reached for the suitcase while keeping her feet firmly on the ground of Llamalidia. She swung it off the bus and told the driver, “We’re good here. Thanks for the delivery.”
The driver looked pointedly at the suitcase. “Someone has a connection with Destiny Park.” Retreating to his seat, he closed the door, and the bus continued to its next destination.