The Night Mark(73)

No. She wouldn’t give in. She’d just found Carrick, and she wasn’t about to lose him. With all her strength, Faye clawed at the water, tore through it, digging an escape tunnel where none existed. Her heart felt like a drum in her chest, huge and pounding, ready to break out of her body. She surfaced with a roar of pain as air filled her scalding lungs. Broken and exhausted she limped out of the water, crawled on the beach and collapsed.

She heard the sound of birds calling.

Birds? Carrick said the storm had scared away all the birds.

And she heard music, too.

Music?

Faye forced her eyes open, lifted her head, and looked out onto the water. The calm, lazy water. She saw a boat. A yacht. On it a dozen twentysomethings lounged around in board shorts and bikinis, drank beers from cans and lay out on the roof in the sun. Faye looked down at her body. She had on jeans. Jeans and a black tank top.

Instinctively she looked to the lighthouse for comfort and it was there. Thank God it was there. But the house was gone. Her house. The seawall. The vegetable garden. The oil shed and the root cellar and the outbuildings and the beach. So much of the beach was gone.

And Carrick was gone. And Dolly was gone. And it was 2015 again, which meant Will was gone.

And she was here.

Goodbye, Oz.

Hello, Kansas.





17


Numb from shock, Faye dragged herself to her feet and wandered unsteadily down the beach toward the lighthouse. Her mouth was dry and tasted of salt water. Sand and sweat stiffened her clothes, chafing her skin as she walked. The lighthouse door hung open on its rusty hinges. The black-and-white tile on the floor was gone, replaced by bare cement.

“Hello?” she called up, and only a dusty echo answered.

She walked around the lighthouse, disoriented by her sudden reentry into this time. Her head swam and her eyes watered. A brown pelican swooped overhead, and Faye flinched, mistaking it at first for a vulture. In a daze, she wandered to her car. A fine layer of dust and sand covered the windshield, but the keys were still in the ignition, the doors unlocked.

The car started on the first try. “Thank you, Hagen,” she muttered, grateful he’d given her the new car when she’d left. She’d been gone a week, and to have the car start up without any trouble was a relief. Wait. Six days? Was that how long she’d been gone? Her phone was dead and she’d left her charger in her luggage. She drove back to Beaufort slowly and fearfully, remembering how to drive as she drove. When she was off the island with the lighthouse miles behind her, she picked up speed as muscle memory kicked in. The more distance she put between herself and Bride Island, the more she remembered who she was and where she was and when.

“My name is Victoria Faye Barlow. I’ve always gone by Faye because Vicky is my mom. I was born June 5, 1985 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire...” she recited as she drove across the Sea Island Parkway bridge and merged onto Carteret Street. She pulled into the parking lot of the Church Street house and had a sudden panicked thought that her room had been given to someone else while Faye had been gone. Surely Miss Lizzie would have called the cops or something. And if not that, she would have chucked Faye’s luggage out and given the room to someone who hadn’t skipped out on her tab.

Feeling like a criminal, Faye slipped in the front door and peeked into the living room and TV room. No one there. She went back to the kitchen and saw Ty at the counter constructing a sandwich roughly the size of a human head.

“You,” she said to him.

“Me?” He smiled and pointed at himself. “What about me?”

“I know you.”

“Biblically,” he said.

“What day is it?” she asked.

Laughing, Ty looked her up and down, whistled and shook his head.

“If you don’t know, I’m not telling. Are you hungover?”

“Something like that.”

“You look like shit, baby. No offense.”

Faye rested her head on his shoulder a moment, before straightening up and crossing her arms over her chest, shivering.

“It’s freezing in here,” she said.

“You know how Miss Liz loves her AC.”

“Where is she? Did she say anything about me being gone?”

He shrugged. “Not to me. Why?”

“You know how I asked you what day it is?”

“Yeah...?”

“Can you tell me what year it is, too? I know what year it is. I just want you to tell me.”

“It’s 2015. And you need this more than I do,” he said, handing her his sandwich. “Go upstairs. Eat. Sleep. Take a shower. A long one, ’cause you smell like a sailor on shore leave.”

“Thank you,” she said meekly, obediently taking the plate from him and walking upstairs. When she reached the door to her room, she put the key in the lock and eased it open, worried someone else had moved in while she’d been gone.

But no, there was her luggage, her clothes, her camera equipment and laptop. Nothing had been moved, nothing touched. It was like she’d been gone a night and no longer.

“What the hell...” Nothing had changed. It was like no time had passed at all.

Dizzy and sunburned and exhausted to the bone, Faye sank into her desk chair and placed the sandwich in front of her. It was so tall she didn’t know how to eat it. She extracted the top layer, which consisted of lettuce, bacon, tomato, onion, mayo, more lettuce, maybe Thousand Island dressing, all between two pieces of toasted wheat bread. She took a bite. Then another. Maybe Ty was onto something. She’d feel more like herself once she’d eaten, had a shower and slept. The shower was top priority, right after the sandwich. Faye leaned back in her chair and started to put her feet up on the desk. When she saw the Singer sewing emblem under the tabletop, she sat up again.