The Water Keeper(90)

On the beach, under the glow of the moon, a peacock marched. I was conflicted. Summer or Sisters of Mercy. I wanted to help Ellie, but my mind would not let go of Summer, alone in a boat with a bad man. I swore.

Sister June turned and found me staring at my phone. I gently beached Gone Fiction in a foot of water. Enough to hold her against the tide while not enough to hold her against the Mercury in the event I needed to leave quickly. As we hopped down, I turned to Gunner. “Stay.” He didn’t like it, but he lay on his stomach, hung his front paws over the edge of the bow, and rested his head on his front legs. Whining. His ears trained toward me. I spoke softly. “I’ll be back.”

Sister June, rather nimble at eighty-plus years, led us up the beach beneath the canopy of trees and turned north, walking in the soft sand. Scattered above and around us, leeching to the tree limbs, were more orchids than I could count. Dozens. Maybe a hundred. Orchids are opportunistic so they grab on where they can, whether placed by the hand of God or the hand of man. Such a dense collection meant that somebody here had to love orchids. The water lapped on our right; the cottages stood stoically on our left. Toy soldiers. Under the shadows of the orchids, we paraded up the beach. Sister June, Ellie, and me.

At the last cottage, Sister June turned and began winding her way toward the back porch. This cottage had been better maintained than the others. Fresh paint, roof not caved in, and from the sound of the A/C unit, the air was conditioned.

Sister June climbed the few steps, stood on the back porch, and knocked the sand off her feet. She knocked quietly, opened the door, and said, “Just me.” Swinging wide the door, she ushered us in and closed it quietly behind us. The room smelled of lavender, and a single lamp lit the far end where someone with a very small frame lay in a bed. The sheets were ironed, folded back neatly, and tucked, making a cocoon of sorts. Next to the bed sat a single bookshelf. The person was sitting upright in the bed, and a green, cylindrical oxygen tank stood next to it. A clear plastic tube led from the tank. The sound of rhythmic breathing filled the room.

A bedside lamp shone on the bed and cast a shadow across the person’s face. Sister June shooed us into the room, then unfolded a blanket at the end of the bed and spread it across the person’s bottom half. Having straightened it, she patted the person’s foot and said, “I’ll check on you in a bit.” As she left, she touched my arm and whispered, “Be gentle.” Sister June closed the door behind us and left us alone. Ellie looked down at the woman shrouded in shadow, up at me, and then in the general direction of Sister June. She looked confused.

The woman in bed slowly extended her right hand across the space between us. Her arm was thin, almost emaciated, and spiderwebbed with veins. A silent pause sounded between the time her arm came to rest and her speaking. In between, she inhaled and exhaled purposefully and with some labor, drawing a thin life from the line that draped over her ears and the two small prongs that protruded into her nose.

She whispered, “You must be Ellie.”

When I heard the whisper, I hit my knees.





Chapter 43


The lamp had thrown a shadow across her face. I rotated the base of the reading lamp, and the light climbed up her chest, neck, and face. She was skin stretched across fragile bones. A tattered canvas sail. Nostrils flaring, she struggled to breathe. I inched forward, leaning in. Her face was nearly unrecognizable. Her eyes were not.

I tried to speak, but no voice came. She tilted her head and her palm brushed my cheek. I whispered, “Marie?”

She pulled me to her. Smiling. And trembling lips reached across time and space and heaven and hell and kissed me, drawing my heart up and out of a watery grave fourteen years in the making.

Moments passed. Years. I struggled to breathe. How? What? When? The pain in my chest exploded, and I cried. I held her, strained to see her, shook my head and tried to speak, but words, like time, had retreated with the tide. Pulled out to sea by a lover’s moon.

Ellie stood, a wrinkle between her eyes. Marie reached a second time. Ellie held her hand and sat in the chair next to the bed. Marie sat and cried and focused on her breathing. Finally, she spoke. “I need to tell you a story.” A purposeful breath. “I need to tell you about you.”

Only the pulsating ding from my pocket brought me back from the other side of the Milky Way. Marie smiled and her head tilted. “You working?”

She remembered. How could she forget? I nodded and stared at the phone. The text was a five-second video. Taken from the helm. It showed the steering wheel and a corner of the Garmin electronic chart. The chart showed their speed. Currently, sixty-two miles an hour. When the camera focused, the speed rose rapidly to eighty-seven. Then ninety-four. Having established the speed of the boat, the video turned 180 degrees and showed a body lying across the three rear seats. Limp limbs bouncing with the rhythmic rocking of the boat.

Summer.

The video closed in on her face. The expression and the drool exiting her mouth suggested she’d been drugged. The video moved in closer to her waist and hips, where the hand not holding the phone moved gently up and down her leg.

Just before the video ended, he laughed.

I wanted to throw up. I stood. My phone was ringing. It was Bones.

Marie held my hand. Inside, my anger was bubbling. She read the uncertainty on my face. I shook my head. “I—”

She pulled me to her, placed her hand flat across my heart, and kissed me. Holding it several seconds. Then again. “Nobody is better at finding the one . . . than you.” She looked at Ellie and patted the bed next to her. The image of Summer tugged at me. Marie sensed it. “We’ll be here. We have a lot to talk about.”