Heroes Are My Weakness(110)

“Makin’ our kids go to school in a trailer’s a disgrace,” a female voice in the back called out.

“We convinced ourselves the end justified the means,” Naomi said.

“I’m the one who started the whole thing.” Louise Nelson leaned heavily on her cane and looked toward her daughter-in-law in the front row. “Galeann, you didn’t mind living here so much until the schoolhouse burned down. I couldn’t stand the idea of you and Johnny leaving. I’ve lived here all my life, but I’m smart enough to know I can’t stay without family nearby.” Age had weakened her voice and the room fell silent. “If you leave, I’ll have to go to the mainland, and I want to die here. That made me start thinking about other possibilities.”

Naomi shoved her hand through her hair again, pushing up a second rooster tail. “We’re all getting ahead of ourselves.” She took over, laying out what they’d done step-by-step, sparing none of them. She described sabotaging Annie’s grocery delivery, vandalizing the house. All of it.

Annie sank lower into her seat. They were making her look like both a heroine and a victim, neither of which she wanted to be.

“We made sure we didn’t break anything,” Judy interrupted, dry-eyed but clutching a tissue.

Naomi detailed hanging the puppet from a noose, painting the warning message on the wall, and finally, firing the bullet at Annie.

Barbara dropped her gaze. “I did that. That was the worst, and I was responsible.”

Lisa gasped. “Mom!”

Marie’s lips pursed into a buttonhole. “I was the one who came up with the idea of telling Annie that Theo Harp had been hurt in an accident so she’d leave the island with Naomi. I’m a decent woman, and I’ve never been more ashamed of myself. I hope God forgives me because I can’t.”

Annie had to hand it to her. Marie might be a sourpuss, but she was a sourpuss with a conscience.

“Annie figured out what we’d done and confronted us,” Barbara said. “We begged her to keep quiet so none of you would find out, but she wouldn’t promise anything.” Barbara held her head higher. “Sunday I went to see her to beg her again to keep our secret. Right then, she could have told me to go to Hades, but she didn’t. Instead she said the cottage was ours, free and clear. That it belonged to the island, not to her.”

Annie squirmed in her seat as more people turned to look at her.

“At first, all we felt was relief,” Tildy said, “but the more we talked, the harder it got to look each other in the eye, and the more ashamed we were.”

Judy blew her nose. “How were we going to face all of you day after day, face our kids, knowing in our hearts what we did?”

Barbara straightened her shoulders. “We knew this would eat at us for the rest of our lives if we didn’t come clean.”

“Confession is good for the soul,” Marie said sanctimoniously. “And that’s what we decided we had to do.”

“We can’t change what we did,” Naomi said. “All we can do is be honest about it. You can judge us. You can hate us if you have to.”

Annie couldn’t take any more, and she sprang up again. “The only person who has a right to hate you is me, and I don’t, so the rest of you shouldn’t either. Now I move to end this meeting right now.”

“Second,” Booker Rose called out, overlooking Annie’s nonresidency issue.

The meeting was adjourned.

Afterward all Annie wanted to do was get away, but she was surrounded by people who wanted to talk to her, thank her, and apologize to her. The islanders ignored the grandmothers, but Annie didn’t doubt that the worst was over for them. It would take the Mainers a while to sort things out in their own minds, but they were a tough lot who admired resourcefulness, even if it was ill-advised. The women wouldn’t be ostracized for long.


THE SEAS HAD GROWN ROUGHER by the time she returned to the boat, and a bolt of lightning sliced the horizon. It was going to be a wild night, a perfect bookend to the wildness of the night when she’d arrived. By this time tomorrow, she’d be gone. She prayed Theo wouldn’t show up to say good-bye. That would be too much.

A wave washed over the stern, but she didn’t want to seal herself in the cabin yet. She wanted to watch the storm roll in, soak up its ferocity. She located the boat’s foul weather gear. The oversize jacket smelled of bait, but it kept her dry to midthigh. She stood in the stern and watched the violence of the light show. The city isolated her from nature’s shifting rhythms in a way the island couldn’t. Only as the lightning came closer did she go below.

The cabin lit up, then darkened, then lit again as the storm attacked the island. By the time she’d finished brushing her teeth, she was queasy from the boat’s rocking. She sprawled on the bunk without getting undressed, the legs of her jeans still wet. She tolerated the roll as long as she could, but the queasiness grew worse, and she knew she’d throw up if she stayed down there any longer.

She grabbed the wet orange jacket and staggered back up to the deck. The rain blasted her through the open end of the pilothouse, but that was a price she was willing to pay for clean air.

The boat continued to pitch, but her stomach settled. Gradually, the storm began to move off and the rain eased. A shutter banged against the side of a house. She couldn’t get any wetter, so she climbed up on the dock to see if there’d been any damage. Branches were down, and a distant flash of lightning revealed dark patches on the town hall roof where a few shingles had blown off. Electricity was expensive, and no one kept their porch lights on, but several were burning now, so she knew she wasn’t the only one awake.