“Excuse me, gentlemen.” I smiled at all of them and acted as though I didn’t know what the discussion would be about after I’d left the room. I just didn’t want to hear them discuss it—“Dae won’t mind, will you, honey? She’d be glad to help.” Or, “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard, Horace. We need real facts.”
And I didn’t want to feel pushed into making a decision right away, which I might be if I stayed in the kitchen.
“I’m turning in for the night,” I told them with a calm demeanor I was far from feeling. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Gramps.”
Chapter 39
I wished I hadn’t argued with Kevin. He was the one person I could turn to—the one person whose advice I trusted about these things.
But I couldn’t call him and tell him I wasn’t angry anymore—Oh and by the way I have a problem I need to discuss.
I went up to the widow’s walk and sat there looking out at the perfect night sky. When I was young, I would’ve gone to Gramps and we could’ve talked about this. But not anymore.
Not that my innocent gift of helping people find things ever had such serious consequences when I was young. I used to help Miss Elizabeth Simpson find her car keys, which she managed to misplace every week. Or I helped Cailey Fargo find her missing earrings. People in Duck loved my gift and enjoyed using it as much as I did. It was one of the perks of living here, I thought.
But now life was more complicated. The adult me understood that though Gramps loved me, he’d expect me to use my gift for the betterment of the community—even if there were personal costs. People sacrificed for the greater good sometimes—like his suggestion that I should give up my relationship with Kevin to be mayor again.
I understood his point of view, although I didn’t necessarily agree with it. Every police officer was willing to sacrifice for the greater good. Many times those sacrifices included their families, marriages, even their lives. Why would Gramps even hesitate to volunteer my services, when it might only make me uncomfortable?
I knew I couldn’t talk to Shayla or Trudy about this either. Shayla would balance my chakras and tell me to make my own choices. And though Trudy had been my friend since childhood, she’d never been comfortable with my gift. I couldn’t ask her to help me with this.
“Feels like standing on the bow of my ship,” Rafe said, appearing on the cast-iron rails that surrounded the widow’s walk on the roof. “Aye, you could look out and see forever. That was true freedom—true happiness.”
“That you lost when the British destroyed your ship.” I was glad to be diverted from worrying about Gramps asking me in the morning to hold the gun.
“Damn fools!” he yelled, causing some bats to change course. “They thought they’d killed me. They thought they could find my treasure. But I was too smart for them.”
“So the story I dreamed about you was true. You buried your treasure, killed your sailors and sent that poor cabin boy to swim away from the island. No wonder they called you a scourge.”
“That was me,” he admitted. “But allow that a man may change. Death and destruction—even plunder—gets old as the bones ache in the night and the body wears. I made my peace with what I’d done. God blessed me with a woman who loved me, despite my sins, and two fine sons. I was happy for a time—at least until the magistrate hanged me.”
“Rafe—I’m so sorry about Mary and your sons.” I hoped he wasn’t going to break down again as he had during the day. I didn’t think I could hold it together if he did.
He frowned and took out his cutlass, making some stabs at the night sky. “ ’Twas what I deserved, no doubt. But she deserved better.”
We didn’t speak for a few long minutes as he walked along the edge of the metal rail around me. Then he said, “You know, you remind me of her.”
“Me?”
“Aye. Pluck to the backbone. She never took nothing off of me. Told me what she thought, she did. But with a loving heart and a beautiful smile.”
“Thank you.” I thought again about the beautiful, sad woman in the mirror who’d tolerated the magistrate’s hand at her breast for the sake of her husband and sons. I didn’t mind the comparison.
“Don’t let them make you do anything ye don’t want to do,” he spat out. “They need you, my girl. You don’t need them. Make them pay—or tell them to go away.”
I was amazed at his understanding of the situation without one word of explanation. “How do you know?”
“Bah! I’m not an imbecile. I know what you can do. I saw the greedy looks on their faces. It doesn’t matter if you’re a pirate or a king. Those looks are on everyone’s faces who want their way. They need yer aid in this investigation. They don’t care about what happens as long as they win the plunder. It’s all the same—my time and yours.”
He had summed it up remarkably well. I wasn’t sure I could be as fast to turn down what would surely be presented as my duty, but I was glad he comprehended. The two of us up on this lonely rooftop had found a way of understanding each other despite the centuries (and so many other things) between us.
“I appreciate that. I know you’re right. I don’t know if I can just say no. I want Sandi Foxx’s killer to be found. That might not happen without me.”
“The hell with that,” he roared. “That girl is dead. Finding her killer won’t bring her back. You think on that, girl. Think about what ye will give up to do this thing. You can only lose so many pieces of yourself before there’s nothing left.”
And with those pirate words of wisdom, I was alone again.
He was right about losing myself. It was what I feared most from this part of my gift that took me into other people’s emotions. I could handle most of the day-to-day things—towels manufactured at a sweat shop in China, cars that had been used for smuggling. But things like the perfume bottle, and probably the gun that had killed Sandi, were more difficult. The effects from objects like those were hard to recover from. The strong emotional undercurrents sometimes dragged me down like the cold Atlantic and didn’t want to let go.
I smiled thinking that Rafe was probably a good source of wisdom when it came to losing pieces of yourself. Wasn’t that what happened to him? Mary and his children had redeemed him, given him a lineage and legacy that he wouldn’t have had if he’d died on his ship at the hands of the British.
But I wasn’t a pirate, and I’d been brought up with a strong sense of right and wrong, duty and honor. I didn’t know if I could look the other way when the time came.
I went back down the secret stairs that led from the widow’s walk to my bedroom. Even though I was used to Rafe popping in and out now, I took a step back and gasped as a figure separated itself from the shadows in my room. “Kevin?”
He put his arms around me and we kissed in the darkness. “I missed you. I don’t ever want to argue with you again.”
I felt the same, but I wasn’t necessarily ready to let it go. “Is that something like an apology?”
“It’s whatever you want it to be. Do you feel like walking?”
Gramps was already in bed—probably having ended the discussion with the sheriff and the chief by volunteering my help with the gun. Kevin and I slipped out the front door without disturbing him and started down the dark, wet street.
“I know you were supposed to call me,” he began. “But I waited all day and you didn’t call.”
“I was busy with the Weather Channel thing and everything else.” I told him about what happened at the museum with the perfume bottle. “But I’m sorry I didn’t call. You were right. I should’ve admitted that my father stole from me. I just believe that anyone could be desperate enough to do it.”