The Final Victim(110)
"She isn't. She happened to be here dealing with another issue altogether and she overheard me. It turns! out that her husband has been stricken by the same terminal illness-Kepton-Manning Syndrome, an incredibly rare condition for which there is no cure-that & referred to in these files."
No cure.
That isn't news to Mimi. Yet hearing her husband's inescapable doom affirmed again makes her want to stick her fingers into her ears and scream.
She refrains. That isn't going to help anybody. Certainly not Jed.
Nor is her being a part of this disclosure likely to help him, but she manages to maintain control of her emotions, just as she did when she revealed Gib Remington's incriminating comment the day of the shooting.
That was even more difficult. Gib might have committed far worse crimes than she, but that doesn't alleviate the guilt she's lived with for three years.
The night of Theo Maitland's drowning, Jed was working a double shift.
But Gib was there, on the beach, watching the search for the boy's body. He was the one who comforted Mimi when they gave up looking-comforted her with bourbon from his silver flask, then with kisses that quickly led to passion.
It was just that one night. And Jed never knew.
But Mimi will forever be haunted by the consequences of that day, for reasons that go well beyond the drowning on her watch.
"Kepton-Manning Syndrome?" Detective Jones frowns. "I've never heard of it."
Mimi informs her, "That's because it's so rare. Chances of coming down with this disease are one in a million-"
"They're much lower than that," Hawthorne interrupts. "Statistically speaking, there's a relative handful of documented Kepton-Manning cases worldwide each year."
"And…?" Jones looks from Hawthorne to Mimi, and back again.
"And there have been more than half a dozen cases on Achoco Island."
Jones nods, steepling her hands as if in prayer. "What does this have to do with the Remingtons?"
Tyler Hawthorne clears his throat. "For one thing, Connie June Remington, Charlotte's mother, died of this disease, but nobody ever knew it. Not even Connie June herself."
"She didn't know she was ill?"
"Oh, she knew she was ill." Tyler's abrupt laugh is utterly devoid of mirth. 'There was no doubt about that."
Fists clenching in her lap, Mimi pictures Jed, gaunt and helpless, wasting away before her eyes.'
Tyler leans forward, resting his forearms on the table. "But her physician told her it was cancer."
Both Mimi and Jones gape at the attorney, who goes on to reveal, "The physician's name was Silas Neville."
Silas Neville…
Yes. Old Doc Neville. He treated Mimi's family for as long as she can remember; it was he who referred Daddy to a lung specialist in Atlanta.
Daddy-
"That's it!"
Mimi doesn't realize she'd spoken aloud until both Jones and Hawthorne look over at her, startled.
"I'm sorry," she murmurs, shaking her head, brows knit. "I just remembered something."
She knows where she's seen that nurse before-the one she encountered in the hall at Oakgate this morning: at the Baywater Hospice office on the mainland.
She was there on that awful, memorable day when Mimi went to set up her father's care, when he first became ill three years ago.
Only back then, the nurse was a good thirty pounds heavier, her hair was short and dark…
And her eyes were brown, not green.
Plunged into the raging tide at the causeway's island edge, Charlotte narrowly misses striking a concrete piling that juts from the frenzied water.
She attempts to paddle away from it, toward the island's rocky western shore that, hours ago in this spot, would have been dry land beneath her feet.
Dragged under by the relentless current, she struggles to surface.
I'm drowning, she realizes in disbelief.
Is this what Adam felt?
Oh, Adam… my baby.
Her resolve rapidly weakening, she flails helplessly where the surface should be, finding nothing but water.
Lianna…
Lianna needs me.
I have to get to her…
With a burst of adrenaline and a mighty upward thrust, she manages to get her head above water.
Immediately, a rogue wave hurtles her back toward the piling; this time, fighting her way to the surface inches from it, she instinctively grabs hold.
Her feet claw helplessly at the smooth cement surface and, miraculously, find a toehold. Propping her arches on what feels like a jutting metal prong, she hoists herself upward so that the incessant waves batter her knees and thighs instead of repeatedly sweeping over her head.
I'm still going to die, she thinks, looking helplessly at the shore just yards away.
I'm going to die and Lianna will be left alone.
No, not alone.
Charlotte closes her eyes against the spray.
Lianna will be left with her stepfather and stepsister-who inexplicably call themselves Royce and Aimee Maitland.
Charlotte's eyelids snap open abruptly.
Gazing, with a renewed vow to survive, at the cobblestone boat ramp on the rocky shore, she never sees the monstrous wave bearing down on her from behind.
"Dr. Neville treated Connie June along with the other patients on Achoco who were ill with the same disease," Tyler informs his rapt audience. "Most of them were former employees of Remington Paper, and two were children who lived in houses at Tidewater Meadow."