The Great Escape (Wynette, Texas #7)(29)

He grabbed the bottom branch of the biggest tree in the front yard, a maple that Gram had said was older than she was. As he climbed he scraped his knee on the bark, but he kept going because the higher he climbed the farther he was from her and from the bees and from thinking about the lady in the Remington house. And the closer he was to Gram and to his dad in heaven. His mom, too, but she’d left him when he was a baby, and he didn’t think much about her. Gram said she’d loved her daughter, but that she’d been sort of worthless.

Gram and his mom were white, but he was black like his dad, and as much as he missed Gram, right now he missed his dad more. He’d been four when his dad died. His dad was a tower dog, the most dangerous job in the world, ask anybody, and he’d died saving this other guy who’d gotten stuck on this big cell phone tower up by Traverse Bay. It had been in the winter, a couple of degrees below zero, and there’d been a snowstorm. Toby would give everything he had—he would even cut off his arm or his leg—if that meant his dad could still be alive.



LUCY FOUND THE EXPENSIVE MOUNTAIN bike in the garage and a fancy sea kayak in the boathouse, both too new to be castoffs from the Remingtons. After discovering the journey into town wasn’t nearly as complicated as her first night’s wanderings had led her to believe, she used the bike for transportation, carrying the groceries she bought in her backpack. Charity Island was used to all types, and her orange dreads, nose ring, and combat boots didn’t attract much attention.

After a few days, she took the ferry to the mainland to get rid of her rental car. While she was there, she shopped for a couple of additions to her new wardrobe, as well as some incredible temporary tattoos.

By the end of her first week at the house, she’d cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom. Each time she entered, she hated the big table more. It was not only hideous and much too large for the alcove, but also painted an ugly shade of mint green that was supposed to match the walls but didn’t. She’d even baked a few loaves of bread.

Other than occasional glimpses of the twelve-year-old spying on her from the woods, she had no distractions, which made it the perfect time to start the writing project for her father’s book. Since she hadn’t planned to resume her lobbying work until September, she’d originally intended to begin working on it as soon as she got back from her honeymoon. Mat said he was fed up with other people defining Nealy’s legacy, and he believed future generations deserved a more personal history of the nation’s first female president.

Her father was an experienced journalist, and he’d originally intended to write the book himself, but after a few months’ work, he’d decided one viewpoint was too limiting. He wanted several perspectives, each highlighting a different aspect of Nealy’s life, so he’d asked Nealy’s father to write one section and Terry Ackerman, Nealy’s longtime aide, to write another. Most of all, he wanted Lucy’s viewpoint. She had been an inside witness from the time Nealy had first run for the Senate through her presidency, and she was to write about Nealy as a mother. Lucy had jumped at the opportunity, but so far she hadn’t written a word. Even though her deadline wasn’t until September, now would be a perfect time to get started.

She’d found a laptop computer in the den—a computer wiped clean of any personal information—and after she’d finished breakfast, she carried it out to the porch. As she arranged herself on one of the chaises she had covered with a beach towel, she inspected the tattoo of thorns and blood drops that encircled her bicep. It was gloriously tacky, and she loved it, or maybe she simply loved the idea of displaying something like it, if only temporarily. The packaging said it could last up to two weeks, but she’d bought replacements as well as a few other tattoo patterns she might or might not use.

She pulled her eyes away from the bloody thorns and thought about what she wanted to write. Finally she set her fingers on the keys.

When my mother was president …

A squirrel chattering just outside the screen distracted her. She pulled her attention back to the keyboard.

When my mother was president, her working day started every morning before six with a stint on the treadmill …

Lucy hated treadmills. She’d rather walk outside in the rain and snow than on a machine.

My mother believed in the benefits of exercise.

So did Lucy, which didn’t mean she liked it. The trick was to find something you didn’t hate doing.

A trainer had designed her program, but she and my father were usually alone in the gym.

Lucy didn’t like gyms, either.

They started their routine with easy stretches, then—

She frowned. Anyone could have written those boring sentences. Mat wanted something personal, and this wasn’t it.

She deleted the file and shut down the computer. The morning was too beautiful to write anyway. She grabbed her baseball hat and climbed down the rickety wooden steps to the boat dock. The life vest in the kayak was too big for her, but she cinched it up anyway and took the boat out.

Even as she paddled around the rocky beach that marked the perimeter of Goose Cove, she had a hard time believing she was holed up on an island in the Great Lakes. She’d come here to unearth the secrets of the man her parents had hired to keep her safe, but the house hadn’t yielded any clues, so why was she still here?

Because she didn’t want to leave.