I was looking at his skull. I felt faint, a rush of dizziness, and lurched away from him. I gulped air into my lungs. I couldn’t pass out. I had to help him. I approached him again.
“Koa, the tide is coming in. I’ve got to get you to the other side of the wall. Can you stand? If I hold you, do you think you can walk?”
He lifted his arm. I took it, hooked it over my shoulder, and hauled him up. God, he was heavy, heavier than I’d expected. His clothes were soaked with seawater and blood, and I had to steady myself against the rush of each wave.
“Try to walk,” I said and I felt him draw himself up the slightest bit.
We staggered along the wall, stopping every time a particularly large wave hit us, until we finally made it around the edge of the middens. The foal trotted over to greet us, but I shooed her back and let Koa sink down against the wall. I crouched beside him.
“The tide’s coming in, so I’ve got to get you to higher ground. The Jeep’s just up on the bluff. Do you think you can make it?”
His head was bowed, exposing the open, glistening gash on his skull. I swallowed the bile rising in my throat and rested my hand on his chest.
“Koa, can you hear me?”
A voice rang out above me. “Meg!”
I looked up—at a black figure standing on the top of the wall, blocking the sun. Aiming a shotgun on me. I jumped back, my heart jackhammering my ribs.
“Don’t shoot. It’s Meg.”
I stood and shaded my eyes. The features of the figure sharpened. It was Doro, staring down the barrel at Koa and me.
“Are you okay?” she called out. “What are you doing?”
“Koa’s hurt. His head is bleeding. I think Billy attacked him.”
“Oh, shit.” She lowered the gun. “Oh, no.”
“I was with Billy before. He held a gun on me and was taking me to the dock. A snake bit him, and I got away.”
Doro sat on the wall, then dropped to the sand. “Oh my God. I knew it. I knew—” She knelt beside Koa. Touched his face. “This is my fault. He doesn’t want anyone to have this island but him. He’s crazy.” She sounded like she was about to cry.
Something about what she was saying—it was starting to make sense. My brain was finally starting to make connections. And things were finally adding up.
Crazy Billy.
Dr. Lodi, earlier, on the phone.
Saying she’d found something on my X-rays, something in my leg.
Pellets.
Doro reached across Koa and grabbed my shoulder. “Meg. What is it? What’s wrong?”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter right now. We have to get Koa help.”
“He said something, didn’t he? Billy said something to you about me.”
She gripped my arm, so tightly I gasped.
Doro was a proven liar. Billy had poisoned me and pointed a gun at my head. I didn’t know who to believe and I didn’t know how I’d gotten here—stuck in the middle of this insane father-daughter blood feud. All I knew was I wanted out.
But Koa needed me.
“Meg, talk to me,” she said. “Don’t you understand? We need each other right now. The only way we can get through this is if we trust each other.”
KITTEN
—FROM CHAPTER 20
Fay gulped the air, then attempted to stand. She gasped in pain. Her leg—or rather her knee. She’d wrenched it so badly she couldn’t stand. She scanned the grass around her. The mico’s bowl—the ashtray—was lying a dozen feet away. She dragged herself toward it and, when she reached it, panted over it—a mother hen protecting her egg. She let the sharp, cold edge press into her cheek. Then a voice above her:
“Now it’s got your fingerprints on it.”
Fay rotated her face into the sun and squinted. Kitten was looking down at her. The child was wearing a green gingham dress edged with ruffles. It was stained with blood. Her head was wrapped in some kind of red silk turban—Beverly Cormley’s scarf. Henrick’s prized white ostrich feather drooped from the back of it. Miss Bolan’s silver necklace, the one that had gone missing before everyone got sick, hung around her neck.
Ashley, Frances. Kitten. New York: Drake, Richards and Weems, 1976. Print.
Chapter Forty-Four
I stared at Doro, kneeling in the water on the other side of Koa. Her top half—tan, freckled skin and green bikini—was crosshatched with red. Koa’s blood. I noticed, hooked to her belt on her soaked jean shorts, a knife in a leather sheath.
She was staring at me, wisps of her hair blowing around her head, the wild electric blue of her eyes. Eyes that pleaded.
We need each other . . .
She was right. I couldn’t help Koa alone. We needed each other.
“I always thought it was a birthmark,” I said. “But I still have the pellets, lead shotgun pellets, inside me.” I looked at her. “Somebody shot me when I was little. That’s what’s been causing the neuropathy. The tingling and the numbness.”
“No,” she whispered hoarsely.
“That can’t be true, right?” I said. “Because that would mean I was here on Bonny Island when I was just a baby.”
Her lips parted.
“Which isn’t true,” I said. “Is it?”
She shook her head but still said nothing. Her eyes had grown large and red.
“Why would I have been here when I was a baby? Unless . . .”
She raised one hand to cover her mouth, her eyes shiny with horror and shame.
“. . . unless I’m yours,” I finished.
She dropped to her knees in the sand, the gun splashing into the water beside her. She brought both hands to her face, like she had to hold it in place.
I touched her. “Doro.” She didn’t look at me. “Doro, we have to help Koa.”
“I can’t. I can’t,” she gasped. “This wasn’t how I wanted . . .”
“Okay, just . . . just, take a breath. Just take a breath.”
A deep, guttural groan tore from her throat—a keening sound unlike anything I’d ever heard. My scalp prickled. She wailed, long and low. A wave of chills rolled through me. I wanted to run. To plug my ears with my fingers and run until I couldn’t see sand or moss or water any longer.
I checked Koa again. He wasn’t moving.
I pried her hands from her face and wrapped my arms around her narrow shoulders. Without one second of hesitation, without even a thought, it seemed, her body molded to mine. I held her as she shuddered with sobs. Then, before my brain could register what was happening, she held me back, her hands in my hair, up and down my back, like she couldn’t embrace me tight enough.
She was crying, and suddenly, I was too. Our tears fell and mingled on both our faces.
She cupped my face. “When I got pregnant with you, Billy was so angry. Pete was a married man. He wasn’t going to help out. And Billy said I was too unstable . . . not cut out to be a mother.” Her voice cracked, lips trembled. “One night, he took you. He brought you here, to the middens, where he used to bring the old horses and shoot them.” She inhaled. “I followed him. I saw him put you there, against the wall.”
I held my breath.
“He pulled the trigger, but I pushed him and he missed. I grabbed you. I ran through the woods, drove his skiff to St. Marys, and called Frances. She was the only person I knew who could help. She had money and connections. Everything I didn’t have.”