Chapter 19 Phoenix
Phoenix
Tamsin closes her laptop and watches me the way she did that first hour—steady, curious, and not afraid of what I might say.
“We’ll keep meeting,” she says as she slips the tablet into her bag. “Twice a week on video. If you want me here in person, I can come back. And if you have a bad hour, text me your color and I’ll make room.”
“Green for go, yellow for slow, red for stop,” I say. “I remember.” Idly, I let my fingers resume the steady tap tap tap against my thigh that brings me comfort.
“I suspected you would.” She smiles, small and uncomplicated with one glance down at my fingers before she moves on. “You’re doing the hard parts. Feeling things while your body is still on alert is not easy. It is enough, though.”
I nod. “Thank you.”
She squeezes my forearm—a quick, human touch—and leaves me with a short list on a sticky note: water, food, walk on the deck, write three sentences that are only about the present. They’re such small things, it feels almost childish. It is also doable.
Tap.
Dr. Hale arrives as Tamsin goes and checks me the way she has every morning. Light in my eyes, pulse under her fingers, a quick sweep over the bandage at my nape.
“No fever. Site is clean. Bruising is fading,” she says. “You’re tired. That’s normal.”
Tap.
“I can do normal.”
“Good. I’m not going far,” she adds, packing up. “But you don’t need a doctor in your pocket anymore. You need sleep, quiet, and people who know how to sit with you.”
Tap.
“I appear to have a surplus of sitters,” I say.
She grins. “Use them.” A pause. “Use them to laugh, too. Laughter keeps pain from building a nest.”
“I’ll try.” I escort her to the hall and watch her exchange a low word with Atticus. The two of them talk in clean, practical sentences. It calms me in a way I used to be worried about.
By the time I’m back in the bedroom, the house has settled into a softer rhythm. The island sun is kind through the curtains. Zeus is a warm weight at my feet, his cast sticking out like an accusation against the world and a badge of honor. I scratch his chest and he sighs, satisfied.
The tablet sits on the nightstand where I left it. I power it on—habit—and stare at the blank home screen. I think about the face in my head. His clean shoes. Neat cuffs. A thin scar by the ear. Bored money voice.
I need to get his face out of my head.
I remember reading about a sketch artist in Savannah months ago when I stumbled across an article about a local court case that ended up garnering national popularity. Her illustrations were incredibly detailed, but despite her talent, the artist was almost hermetic in her discretion.
That’s what I need.
I can’t reach her from this tablet. I can’t make any calls or texts from this tablet.
The limitation is both a protection and an irritation.
I know why I can’t access the internet or email or scroll Pinterest or do any number of other things I want to do…
but it’s still annoying because right now all I want is my freedom and everything to go back to normal.
I find Atticus in the den, which we have turned into a planning room without losing the view of the marsh.
He sits with a mug near his elbow and a notepad open, his shoulders loose in a way they only get when we’ve indulged in each other.
He looks up and takes off his glasses, pushing back from the table.
“I just thought of something,” I say, stopping in the vee of his legs.
One hand comes to curl around the back of my thigh, squeezing gently.
“There’s a sketch artist in town I heard about before.
She’s independent—no police contracts, which is good if Danner wasn’t working alone.
She has a reputation for listening more than talking.
If we can get her here, I can put a face on paper. ”
Atticus is quiet for a beat. He doesn’t correct me or try to tell me that he has a dozen digital methods.
“What’s her name?” he asks.
“Junia Wolfe.”
Atticus nods once. “I’ll find her.”
“I don’t want her dragged into a mess,” I say. “I want her paid and safe and hopefully a picture of the man responsible for all this shit.”
“She will be,” he says. “And if she says no, we will respect it and not force her. But most people say yes when the problem is human and the solution is money.”
I let out a breath I did not know I was holding. “Thank you.”
Maverick appears in the doorway with a bowl of cut peaches and a stack of warm toast on a plate. “I heard the word peaches in the kitchen,” he lies cheerfully. “So I made them.”
“I didn’t say peaches,” I say. “Why are you always trying to feed me?”
“Your soul said peaches,” he says, and sets the plate in front of me like a prize. “Screamed it really. So… Eat. Then we take Zeus to the deck so he can impress the gulls with his cast.”
I pick up a slice of toast, add a peach, and take a bite.
It is simple and sweet and warm. I almost cry for no reason that makes sense.
Maverick sees it happen and does not say a word.
He leans on the table and steals a peach from the bowl with two fingers as if he has done it every day of his life.
“Junia Wolfe,” he repeats, like tasting a name. “That’s a good name.”
“It fits,” I say.
Atticus writes the name in neat block letters at the top of the pad.
“Where’s Con?” I ask, glancing toward the hall. He has hovered near me all morning without hovering too close, but he’s been absent for a while now.
“He’s outside,” Atticus says. “On the back stairs.”
The back stairs are narrow and always a little cool.
They lead down to the sandy path that belongs more to marsh grass than to people.
I step out and find him sitting on the top step, head bowed, hands linked loosely between his knees.
The sun catches on the short hair at the back of his neck.
He looks up when the door clicks, and for once I do not see strain first. I see relief that I came to find him.
“I told Atticus about a sketch artist,” I say, easing down beside him. “Junia Wolfe.”
“I heard,” he answers, telling me he’s never far. “We’ll bring her to you.”
“We can do it later,” I say. “Tomorrow. Or next week. I just wanted to tell someone her name before I forgot it so that we can make a plan.”
“We’ll do it whenever you’re ready,” he says. “No pressure. ”
We sit without speaking for a while and watch a gull bully another gull for a shell it can’t even eat.
Somewhere below, Zeus sniffs his way around the lower deck.
Spencer walks beside him, hands in his pockets, patient with Zeus’s slow pace and careful on the step down.
He is not going anywhere today. He told Storm he would stay as long as we wanted him to.
It is a simple sentence that rearranged the house.
“It is strange,” I say quietly. “Really strange.”
“What is?” Conrad asks.
“Having a father around who cares,” I say. “One who doesn’t break things or get drunk or…sell you. He reads a paper. He complains about property taxes in that mild voice that makes it sound like he’s talking about the weather. And then he asks if I want tea and he brings me treats.”
Conrad turns his face toward mine. “Does it make you feel safer or angry?”
“Both,” I admit. “I don’t know what to do with something that looks like safety and doesn’t ask me to pay for it. It’s hard to trust it.”
“You do what you just did,” he says. “You tell the truth. We can handle both.”
Spencer looks up and catches us watching him. He gives me a short nod and a warm, tired smile. I nod back and feel something in my chest loosen.
We go inside when the heat edges up. The afternoon settles into a soft, domesticity I would have called impossible a month ago. Storm takes the chair at the bend in the hall and reads on his phone, one ear always tuned for a change in sound.
Maverick cooks and narrates the weather, the neighbors’ brightly painted kayaks, a pelican that can never land on the same post twice on the first try. He pulls me to the stove to taste sauce and brushes a light kiss over my temple. The ordinary touch makes my throat tighten.
“Walk with me after dinner,” he says. “Just to the end of the deck. We can count the porch lights two houses over.”
It’s so incredibly ordinary. Nothing about this life suggests these men are billionaire hoteliers, that I was abducted and held on a cargo ship a couple of weeks ago, or that there is still someone out there seeking to do me harm.
If I tried really hard, I could almost convince myself none of it was true.
I smile at Maverick.
“That I can do,” I say.
We eat at the big table by the windows with the glass doors open to the sound of water and the far-off noise of someone else’s evening. Spencer joins us and tells a short story about a stubborn heron that used to visit this deck years ago. He calls it the old man.
We laugh. Storm smiles with his eyes. Atticus asks a question about boat names and whether captains are sentimental. Conrad serves me more pasta when I am not paying attention and pretends he is just rearranging plates.
After, I write Tamsin’s three present-tense sentences in a small notebook Maverick left by my pillow.
The house smells like garlic and salt.
The dog is asleep with his bad leg stretched out and his good leg twitching.
Conrad is checking the locks even though he knows they are fine.
They look almost silly on the page. They work the way they’re supposed to anyway. They make room in my head for the chaos to settle and the truth to thrive.
When the dishes are done, Maverick offers his arm like a ridiculous gentleman and escorts me to the back deck.
The sky is a deepening blue that makes everything wood and white look softer.
We count porch lights and we count breaths and we count steps to the far railing.
I stay behind the fence line. I do not press against it.
I am careful with my body because it has carried me through worse than a line of boards.