Accidental Shield (Marriage Mistake #6)(79)

It takes me a moment to turn away and form words again, staring at the green palm trees by the beach, their leaves waving in the breeze.

“Val?” he says, cocking his head.

“Sorry. I’m not sure, honestly, but it’s not because I don’t remember. I’ve never been able to pin down what’s going on. Ray took over as manager after my father died, but lately, he’d pushed me and Mother out of the day to day business. I’d never shown much interest in the company until about a year ago, when I wanted to get out of my funk.”

“Funk?” Flint folds his hands, leaning closer.

“I’d just spent a year at an expensive art school. I hated it, honestly. It was too rigid, too stifling, too many people I couldn’t relate to, and I guess I just...I wanted to create beautiful things. Simple stuff. I wanted to draw by hand and make things people could enjoy in their everyday life. I didn’t want to make the kind of crazy, new wave shock pieces meant to tickle rich buyers at galleries. And I didn’t want the Instagram fame the others were after constantly. They spent more time shooting pics of their pieces and obsessively posting them online than they did making art.”

He snorts. “Yeah, fuck. So you wanted something real. That’s no sin.”

I shrug. Maybe not. But if I’d just swallowed my own angst and stayed in art school, perhaps this nightmare wouldn’t have happened.

“What’d you do then? I know there’s more,” he says, gently goading me.

“Well, I dropped out and came home. I decided I’d do my art on my terms, and I’d get more involved with King Heron. I was even working on a project before things went nuts, this huge mandala I planned to make out of colorful sand in the shape of a sea turtle...”

His eyes twinkle. “Fucking finally. Had a feeling those turtles were in there somewhere. You don’t just talk like you did that day at the beach without knowing your stuff.”

I smile. No denying that.

“I wanted to make it realistic. So I read a lot, and then I thought maybe I’d find a better muse spending more time working, more time out at sea with the turtles. And I wanted to help the family business, too. At first, Ray tried to brush it off like a flash in the pan. He said I needed to stay home with Mother. She told me not to worry about it, and why did I want to work, anyway? Especially on those dirty fishing boats. Easy for her to say. She spent her whole life with the curtains closed, isolated in her ivory cave, like she never wanted to know what’s happening with the world, or even her own family. I couldn’t live that way.”

“It’s not you,” he says.

I close my eyes. “When Dad was alive...it kinda was.”

“Bullshit,” he growls. “I don’t believe it.”

But I’m already shaking my head. “You don’t understand. I grew up spoiled, with Mother and the servants who were always around looking after every little thing, fawning over me constantly. I never had to work hard in school. I was a decent student, but I think my teachers were afraid to mark me down when I deserved it, knowing who my father was.”

I pause, letting out a heavy sigh. “Before art school, I’d nearly accepted shutting myself up in the house with Mother and Savanny, but I hated it. Dad’s heart attack was sudden. It shook me out of my stupor. So when I came home, I got too involved. I knew something was just off.”

“You started using your gut, Val. Your instincts. And judging by what I’ve seen, you’ve got good ones.” Flint offers me a smile.

It helps, but I still feel hollowed out. And I’m far from finished.

“I kept asking Ray questions he wouldn’t answer. Whenever I went to the office, asking why he wouldn’t just put me on the stupid ships like he agreed, he always had excuses. He’d get angry, throw his weight around, remind me how much more he knew about daily operations than I did since he’d been involved with the company for years. There was always a change in scheduling, fueling, the crew manifests...of course, I know now. He meant to keep me off those boats as much as he could.”

“He fucking buffaloed you,” Flint growls, his fingers on one hand forming a fist. “Seems like his modus operandi. Just wait till it finally catches up with him...”

“Anyway, that day, the day of the accident, I went to the office. Ray wasn’t there. I heard he was taking the yacht out for a cruise. Nothing about it made any sense. Ray barely touched the yacht since Dad died, and spontaneous pleasure trips by sea weren’t his thing. If he wanted to fly to the other islands, or even the mainland, he’d just hop on a chartered flight. So I went to the slip shortly before he was due to depart and snuck on board. Savanny came with because I thought I might actually wind up on another island, and I didn’t want to leave him alone too long. On board, the galley was stacked to the ceiling with these long, black boxes. They had these—I don’t know?—old-fashioned looking padlocks attached? Almost like the kind on school lockers.”

Flint smirks. “Just like the ones when you were in seventh grade?”

“Close. Thing is, King Heron doesn’t use anything like that. We use insulated ice boxes for fresh fish, shrimp, anything we pull out of the sea. And those boxes weren’t for fishing gear, either. That’s what Ray tried to tell me they were when he found me. I knew he was lying and told him so. We argued. Then I heard the other people, men who weren’t part of the crew, demanding to know what the hell was going on. He grew frantic, snarly, and told me he was making this run to keep us safe. Keep us alive.”