"I told her."
"And you're both even more uncertain of my memory now." She wandered down from the terrace, through the lush grass toward her enclosed herb garden. Tall flowers—pale pink, dark purple, frothy white, creamy yellow—glinted in the last of the evening sun. She glanced back at Clate, and he noticed there was no kerchief or crocheted snood today, just pins and cloisonne combs. "If Jason was responsible for my parents' deaths, I want to know. I have to know. What I saw that night could have been coincidence. Maybe he was burying something that had nothing to do with the shipwreck. Maybe I'm misinterpreting what I remember."
"Is that what you believe?"
"This isn't about what I believe. It's about what really happened here. The truth."
"What about what's happening now? The calls, the rest of it."
"They're related." She spoke with conviction. "I just don't know how. But Jason's dead. He didn't set Piper's house on fire."
"So you really do believe the fire was set?"
She eyed him. "Don't you?"
He didn't answer at once. He could hear the boys whooping as they raced down through the marsh, the family inside talking more quietly now, occasional laughter punctuating their conversation. His head ached. He hadn't noticed before. It was the tension, he knew. It was caring about these people. About Piper. He wasn't accustomed to these sorts of complications in his life.
"Yes," he said at last. "I do."
The screen door banged open and shut, and Piper burst out onto the terrace in baggy jeans, an oversized sweatshirt, and, presumably, new underwear delivered by Liddy's friend. She was carrying a fresh mug. "Hannah, this tea is swill. Absolute swill. I'm not going to dump it on the grass because it'll probably kill it."
"I never said it had a pleasant taste."
"I'd rather drink out of a mud puddle." She fastened her eyes— a vivid, lively green now—on Clate and thrust the mug up at him. "You want to try?"
He laughed. "Thank you, I'll pass."
"You're looking much better," her aunt said. "I think the tea's working."
"I had two sips."
"Perfect."
Piper let that one go and turned to Clate. "Did you show her the missing herbs?" When he nodded, she waved her mug at her great-aunt. "Come, Hannah, and tell me what misery the missing herbs can cause and cure. I want to be ready, just in case someone poisons my water."
Clate left them to it, and he walked down his sloping lawn, trying to get some space around him. He could hear car doors shutting, more people arriving. Who the hell would show up with chowder and doughnuts if his place in Tennessee burned down? Nobody he didn't ask to show up, that was for sure. Another indication of how different Piper's world was from his own.
She eased in beside him, not quite touching him. "My family and friends tend to hover in a crisis. When it gets claustrophobic, I send them home." She sighed out at the view. "I hate being in the position of needing their support."
"You'd rather be the one bringing the chowder."
She smiled, turning to him. "It was good chowder. Did you have any?"
He shook his head. He wanted to slide his arm around her, hold her close, ease the last edges of panic and shock out of her, but he could feel her restraint. Leaning against him at the picnic table, in the thick of the crisis, was one thing. Now the shock had receded, and her family and friends were watching, on alert. In spite of her straightforwardness about almost everything else, she was reserved, even self-conscious, about her romantic life, even when it was uncomplicated and unconfiised, which, with him, it wasn't. Clate understood. Enough, for now, that they just walk together.
"You must be climbing the walls," she said. "All these people, everyone making themselves right at home. Getting a little claustrophobic yourself, Clate?"
"Just carving out some space for a few minutes."
"I can leave you alone."
"No." He glanced at her and smiled. "I like having you in my space."
She almost managed a laugh. "You're a devil, Clate Jackson. Well, I told them I was going to look at my house. I declined all offers to join me. I don't need a lecture right now on eighteenth-century chimney construction and plaster replacement. I just want to see the place."
He gave her a long look, saw past the fatigue, the shock. "Bullshit." He drawled it out, lightened it with a wryness in his tone. "You want to check on Hannah's shoebox and your research notes."
She grinned up at him, unrepentant. "Don't you?"
He laughed. "Lead the way, Miss Macintosh."
The shoebox was there, smoky smelling but uncharred. All her notes—her notebook, scraps of paper, printouts, copies—were gone.