It maddened Harper that she couldn’t put together what had happened to Father Storey in the woods. She felt it was all right there, everything she needed to know, but it was like meeting an acquaintance and not being able to remember the person’s name. No matter how she strained, she couldn’t see it.
So leave it, she thought. Didn’t matter. She didn’t need to figure it out. Not right now.
“Bring John,” Father Storey said gently. “Then we’ll talk with Carol. And Allie. And Nick. I’d like my family around me, now. If there are difficult things to say, we’ll get through them together. That’s what we’ve done in the past and it hasn’t failed us yet.” He narrowed his eyes. “Do you think—people will understand what Carol did to Mr. Cross? Do you think they’ll forgive her?”
Harper wondered how many people would forgive Father Storey for exposing her, but didn’t say so. He saw her doubts in her face, anyway.
“You think it will be the end of our camp?” he said.
After a moment, she replied . . . not with an answer, but with a question of her own. “Do you remember all the talk about Martha Quinn’s island?”
“Yes.”
“It’s real. We know where it is. I’d like to go there. There’s a medical facility where I can safely deliver my baby. I know some others would like to go as well. I think . . . after it gets around about Harold Cross . . . and that you’ve recovered . . . I think, yes, camp might break up. The night you were attacked, you told me someone was going to have to be exiled from camp. Sent away for good. I didn’t know you meant Carol. I suppose”—she drew a deep, steadying lungful of air. She was about to suggest an idea she found perfectly loathsome—“she could come with me. With us. Those who will leave, if we’re allowed to go.”
“Of course you would be allowed to go,” he said. “And perhaps it might be better to keep Carol here after all. In some form of confinement. I would stay behind as well, to look after her. To help her back to her best self, if at all possible.”
“Father,” Harper said.
“Tom.”
“Tom. Maybe we should wait for another day to talk to your daughter. You’re very weak right now. I think you should rest.”
He said, “I’ll rest better when I’ve seen my granddaughter and John. And yes, my daughter. I love Carol very dearly. I understand if you can’t—if you hate her. But know at least that whatever she’s guilty of, whatever her crimes, she always believed she was doing it in the name of caring for the people she loves.”
Harper thought Carol had a sick need to make others conform—to yield—that had nothing to do with love at all, but Tom Storey could no more see that in his daughter than Nick could hear.
She didn’t bother to say so, though. If Tom really meant to deal with her tonight, there was plenty of unpleasantness to come, and she didn’t care to add to it. So: John first. Send word for Allie. Allie would bring Carol. Whatever Father Storey had to face, he wouldn’t face it alone.
She turned to Nick and spoke with her hands. “I am going to get the Fireman. Keep Papa company. He needs you. He can have sips of water, small, not many. Do you see? Is my words right?”
Nick nodded and his hands replied, “I got it. Go on.”
Harper began to move. She was glad to move, wanted her body to catch up to the speed of her thoughts. She ducked through the moss-colored curtain.
Michael was on watch, as he had promised he would be. He had set his Ranger Rick aside for once and had his .22 rifle across his knees, was rubbing some oil or polish into the butt with a rag.
“Michael,” she said.
“Yes’m?”
“He’s awake. Father Storey.”
Michael jumped up, grabbing his rifle to keep it from falling on the floor. “You’re pulling my leg. No way.”
She had to smile, couldn’t help it. The simple surprise in his face—the wide-eyed innocence—made him look more of a boy than ever. His guileless expression brought to mind her four-year-old nephew, although in truth they looked nothing alike.
“He is. He’s awake and he’s talking.”
“Does he—” Michael’s Adam’s apple jogged up and down in his throat. “Does he remember who attacked him?”
“No. But I think it’ll come back to him soon enough. He’s much keener than I would’ve expected or hoped for. Listen, he wants me to get John. When John’s here, he wants us to bring Carol. And Allie, of course. He wants his whole family around him. And I want you there, too.”
“Well—I don’t know that I have any place—” he faltered.
“This might be a difficult reunion. I’d like you there in case . . . people get carried away by their emotions.”
“You think they might fight about the things Mother Carol has been up to?” he asked.
“You don’t have any idea, Michael. It’s not what she’s done while Father Storey’s been unconscious. It’s what she did before he got his head bashed in. If people knew, she never would’ve been put in charge of anything. Her or Ben Patchett, either.” She thought of Ben Patchett pumping a bullet into Harold Cross and all at once could taste the sweet-acrid flavor of bile in the back of her throat. “Fucking Ben Patchett,” she said.
Michael frowned. “I don’t think Mr. Patchett is too bad a guy. Maybe he got a little carried away once when those outlaws got dragged into camp, but I can kind of understand—”
“He’s a criminal,” Harper said. “He shot a defenseless boy.”
“Harold Cross? Oh, Ms. Willowes, he had to do that.”
“Did he? Did he really?”
There was such innocence and wonder and bafflement in Michael’s expression, she couldn’t help herself, had to lean forward and kiss his freckled brow. His shoulders jumped in surprise.
“You remind me of my nephew,” she said. “Little Connor Willowes—Connor Jr. I’m not sure why. You both have kind eyes, I guess. Do you think you can be brave a while longer, Michael? Can you do that for me?”
He swallowed. “I hope so.”
“Good. Don’t let anyone in to see him until I get back. I’m trusting you to look after him.”
Michael nodded. He was very pale behind his copper beard. “I know what I have to do. Don’t you worry, ma’am. I’ll take care of Father Storey.”
21
She wanted to run, but there was no way. Her stomach, heavy with baby, had assumed a firmness and size that was magnificent, planetary. So she zigged and zagged through the mazy pines in a shambling jog, sweating and breathing hard.
In the dark, with her pulse thumping behind her eyes, it was doubtful she would’ve seen Michael Lindqvist following at a distance, even if she had looked for him. He went with care, in no hurry, watching for a long time before he moved from one tree to the next. If she had seen him, she might’ve been surprised by his expression, his small tight mouth and narrowed eyes. There was nothing particularly childlike about it at all. He followed her as far as the boathouse, but when she went on toward the dock, he went in, and had soon disappeared among the shadows.
Harper took her time making it down the wooden steps cut into the sandy embankment, grabbing bunches of sea grass to steady her. The ocean was a metal plate dented all over as if it had been battered by a thousand hammer blows. Moonlight blinked silver on the edges of the waves. Looked a little choppy out there. Harper didn’t see the man sitting on the end of the dock until she was out on it, halfway to the rowboat.
Don Lewiston jerked his head around to look back over his shoulder. He sat with a steel pail on his right and a fishing pole across his knees.
“Nurse Willowes! What brings you boundin’ down the hill?” he asked.
He wasn’t fishing alone. Chuck Cargill stood on the pebbly beach, holding a rod of his own, his rifle behind his feet on the rocks. Cargill squinted doubtfully up at them.
“Father Storey is awake. Can you get away? He wants to see John, just as soon as possible.”
Don’s tangled eyebrows shot up and his mouth opened in an almost comic gape.