Frantically she tried to open the window, but it seemed nailed shut. “Come on, come on!” she cried, trying to force open the sash, breaking her nails in the process. The damned window wouldn’t budge. “Oh, God . . .”
Propelled by fear, she yanked open the door and raced barefoot out of her room and down the hall to the back stairs, her feet slapping against the smooth wood of the steps. Down, down, down she ran, breathless, one hand on the rail. Noah, oh sweet, sweet baby. Noah!
She burst from the stairway into the kitchen, then through the back door off the kitchen, across the screened porch, and out to the sweeping grounds of the house and beyond.
Now she could run. Fast. Even though night was falling swiftly.
“Noah!” she yelled as she sped along the weed-choked pathways, past the deadened rosebushes and through the dripping ferns to the dock where darkness and fog had disguised the end of the pier. She was breathing hard, screaming her son’s name, desperate to see him, to witness his little face turn around and look up at her, his wide, expectant eyes trusting . . .
The dock was empty. Fog playing in the shadows of the water, seagulls crying hollowly in the distance.
“Noah!” she screamed, running over the slick boards. “Noah!”
She’d seen him! She had!
Oh, honey . . . “Noah, where are you?” she said over a sob and the rush of the wind as she reached the end, the last board cutting into her feet. “Baby, it’s Mama . . .”
One last, wild search of the dock and boathouse told her he was gone. She didn’t hesitate but jumped into the icy water, feeling the rush of frigid cold, tasting salt water as she splashed and flailed, frantically searching for her son in the dark depths. “Noah!” she yelled, coughing and sputtering as she surfaced. She dived back down into the black water again and again, searching the murky depths, desperately hoping for some glimpse of her son.
Please, God, let me find him. Help me save him! Do not let him die! He’s an innocent. It’s I who am the sinner. Oh, dear Jesus, please . . .
Again and again, she dove, five times, six, seven, her nightgown billowing around her, her hair loosened from its rubber band, exhaustion overtaking her as she drifted farther and farther from the dock. As she surfaced slowly one more time, she was vaguely aware of a voice.
“Hey!” a man yelled. “Hey!”
She dove down again, her hair floating around her, her eyes open and burning in the salty water, her lungs so stretched she thought they might burst. Where is he? Noah, oh, God, baby . . . She couldn’t breathe, but she couldn’t stop searching. Had to find her son. The world grew darker and colder, and Noah grew ever more distant.
Someone dived in next to her.
She felt strong arms surround her rib cage in a death grip. She was weak, about to pass out, when she was jerked upward, roughly dragged toward the surface, a ripple of air escaping her lungs.
As they broke through the water, she gasped, coughing and spewing as she found herself staring into the stern, uncompromising gaze of a total stranger.
“Are you out of your mind?” he demanded, slinging the water from his hair with a muscular twist. But before she could answer, he snarled, “Oh, hell!” and starting kicking hard, holding her tightly, dragging her to the shore. She’d drifted away from the dock, but his strokes, strong and sure, cut through the water and pulled them both to the sandy beach, where he deposited her in the waist-high water. “Come on!” he snapped. His arm steadied her as they slogged through the lapping water and up the sandy shoreline Her teeth were chattering, and she was shivering head to toe, but she barely felt anything other than a deep-seated and painful grief. Swallowing against the pain, she tasted salt and finally roused herself enough to look at this man she’d never met before.
Or had she? There was something remotely familiar about him. Over six feet tall, in a wet, long-sleeved shirt and soaked jeans, he was rugged-looking, as if he’d spent most of his thirty-odd years outdoors.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he demanded, shaking the hair out of his eyes. “You could have drowned!” And then, as an afterthought, “Are you okay?”
Of course she was not okay. She was damned certain she would never be even remotely okay again.
“Let’s get you inside.” He was still holding on to her, and he helped her past a pair of boots thrown haphazardly on the grass, then up the overgrown sandy path toward the house.
“Who are you?” she asked.
He eyed her up and down. “Austin Dern.” When she didn’t respond, he said, “And you’re Ava Garrison? You own this place?”
“Part of it.” She tried to wring the cold salt water from her hair, but it was impossible.
“Most of it.” His eyes narrowed on her as she shivered. “And you don’t know who I am?”
“Not a clue.” Even in her state of shock, the man irritated her.
He muttered something under his breath, then said, “Well, now, isn’t that something? You hired me. Just last week.” He was pushing her toward the house.
“Me?” Oh, God, how bad was her memory? Sometimes it seemed as thin and fragile as a cheesecloth. But not about this. Shaking her head, feeling the cold water drip down her back, she said, “I don’t think so.” She would have remembered him. She was sure of it.
“Actually it was your husband.”
Oh. Wyatt. “I guess he forgot to tell me.”
“Yeah?” His gaze skated over her bedraggled, freezing form, and for a second, she wondered just how sheer her sodden nightgown was.
“By the way, you’re welcome.” He didn’t so much as crack a smile. Though darkness was settling over the island, she saw his features, set and grim. Deep-set eyes, their color undetermined in the coming night; square, beard-shadowed jaw; blade-thin lips; and a nose that wasn’t quite straight. His hair was as dark as the night, somewhere between a deep brown and black. They trudged together toward the behemoth three-storied manor.
On the back porch, the screen door flew open, then banged shut behind a woman running from the house. “Ava? Oh, God, what happened?” Khloe demanded, her face a mask of concern as it caught in the porch light. She sprinted past the garden and jumped over a small hedge of boxwoods to grab Ava as the stranger released his grip on her body. “Oh my God, you’re soaking wet!” Khloe was shaking her head, and her expression was caught somewhere between pity and fear. “What the hell were you doing . . . oh, don’t even say it. I know.” She held Ava close and didn’t seem to care that her jeans and sweater were soaking up the water from her friend’s nightgown. “You have to stop this, Ava. You have to.” Glancing up at the stranger, she added to Ava, “Come on, let’s get you into the house.” Then to Dern, “You too. Dear God, you’re both soaked to the bone!”
Khloe and Dern both tried to help her up the path, but she shook them both off, startling Virginia’s black cat, Mr. T, who had been hiding behind a withering rhododendron. With a hiss, the cat slid into a crawl space under the porch just as Ava’s cousin, Jacob, came running from his burrow of an apartment in the basement of the old house.
Some of her old pluck began returning. She was tired of playing the victim, bored with the pitying stares and the knowing glances shared between others as if to say, Poor, poor thing. So they thought she was crazy.
Big deal.
It wasn’t as if she hadn’t questioned her sanity herself, just minutes ago, and yet everyone’s concern was really beginning to get under her skin.
“What happened?” Jacob demanded. His glasses were off-kilter and his reddish hair mussed, as if he’d been asleep.
Ignoring him and everyone else, Ava clambered up the stairs, dripping, her nightgown sucked tight to her body. She didn’t give a damn what they thought. She knew she’d seen Noah, and no matter what Khloe or her cowboyesque savior or even the damned shrink Ms. Evelyn McPherson thought, she wasn’t insane. Had never been. Wasn’t ready for the loony bin.
“Let me help you,” Khloe said, but Ava was having none of
it.
“I’m fine.”
“You just jumped into the ocean, Ava! You are definitely not anywhere close to fine.”
“Just leave me alone, Khloe.”
Khloe glanced at Dern, then backed up, lifting her hands, palms out. “Ooookay.”
“No need to be melodramatic,” Ava muttered.
“Oh, yeah. I’m the drama queen!” Khloe sighed heavily. “Just for the record, who was it who flung herself into the bay a few minutes ago?”
“Okay, okay.” Ava was up the stairs and opening the screen door. “I get it.” Once inside, where the heat hit her like a wall and the tangy scent of tomatoes and clams swept through the hallways, she hurried past the wall of windows that overlooked the yard, taking another quick glance. Now, aside from a few security lights, the grounds were dark, the fog too dense to see the end of the pier. Her heart ached at the thought of her son, but she pushed her grief aside.
At least her mind had cleared somewhat; her headache, if not completely gone, at least had receded to somewhere far away from her frontal lobes. She heard the screen door open and close behind her and knew that her confrontation with Khloe, and possibly the man who had leaped in after her, wasn’t yet over.
Great. Just what she needed!
Teeth chattering so hard they rattled, she was heading toward the back stairs when she heard the clunk of the elevator from the shaft that ran along the east side of the stairs, then the whisper of the elevator doors slowly opening.
She prayed the occupant wasn’t Jewel-Anne. But, of course, she wasn’t so lucky, and within seconds her pudgy cousin emerged, her electric wheelchair carrying her into the hallway. Through thick glasses, she threw a look at Ava, taking in her soggy nightgown, plastered hair, and probably nearly blue skin.
“Swimming again?” she asked with that smug little smile Ava would have liked to wipe off her face. Jewel-Anne pulled out an earbud from her iPhone, and Ava heard the strains of Elvis’s “Suspicious Minds” sounding tinny at the distance.
“We’re caught in a trap,” he warbled, and Ava wondered why a woman who had been born long after the rock icon had died had become such a die-hard fan. Of course, she knew the pat answer, because she’d posed the question to Jewel-Anne just this past year. Over her oatmeal, with one earbud plugged in, Jewel-Anne had turned deadly serious. “We shared the same birthday, you know.” She’d added a second scoop of brown sugar to her cereal.
Somehow, Ava had managed to keep her sarcastic tongue in check and said only, “You weren’t even alive when—”
“He speaks to me, Ava!” Jewel-Anne’s lips had compressed with certainty. “He was such a tragic figure.” She paid attention to her breakfast, stirring her butter and brown sugar and swirling her hot cereal in her bowl. “Like me.”
Then she’d looked up at Ava with innocent eyes, and Ava had felt the deep jab of guilt that only her paraplegic cousin could inspire.
You’re not the only one he speaks to, she’d wanted to say. There are hundreds of Elvis sightings every day. He’s probably “speaking” to those lunatics, too. Rather than escalate a fight with no end, she’d pushed out her chair, scooped out the remainder of her cereal into the sink, and dropped her bowl into the dishwasher just as Jacob, Jewel-Anne’s only full brother, strolled into the kitchen without a word, found a toasted bagel, and walked out the back door, his backpack slung over one thick shoulder. Once an all-state wrestler, Jacob, with his curly red hair and acne-scarred fair skin, was a perpetual student who owned every electronic gadget imaginable. He was a full-blown computer geek and as strange as his sister.
Now Jewel-Anne, with her straight, waist-length hair and trusting, so-sincere blue eyes, didn’t have to utter a word but Ava knew she still believed she had a special connection to the King of Rock and Roll. Oh, sure, Elvis speaks to Jewel-Anne. Even in nonliteral terms, Ava doubted they had even the most tenuous of connections and quickly took the stairs two at a time.
Why should she worry about her own sanity when she was living with a group of people who, at one time or another, could have been certifiably nuts?
CHAPTER 2
The lights flickered twice as Ava stood under the hot shower spray. Each time darkness flooded the bathroom, she tensed and placed a hand on the tiled shower wall, but fortunately the power didn’t go out. Thank God. That was the problem with this island, which was set off the coast of Washington with no access to the mainland except by private boat or a ferry that ran twice a day to Anchorville, weather permitting.
It had been a haven for her great-great-grandparents, Ava knew, who had settled here, commanded the largest chunk of real estate, and somehow, through logging and sawmilling, had made a fortune. When other people had settled on the island, Stephen Monroe Church had offered them lumber and supplies and, more importantly, jobs.
Ava had always wondered about the population back then. Why leave the comfort of the mainland? What had the settlers been running to . . . or, more likely, from?
Whatever their reasons, they had helped Stephen and his wife, Molly, construct this grandiose home, complete with three sets of stairs, three floors above ground (not counting the attic), and a basement now used for storage and Wyatt’s wine cellar and Jacob’s apartment. Built in the Victorian style on one of the highest points on the island, Neptune’s Gate had nearly a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view from its westerly turret, which rose over a widow’s walk. Hence it was a house of windows that winked and caught in the summer sunlight. This time of year, though, with the fog and rain, sleet and hail, the refracting rays were few and far between.
Scrubbing with lavender soap and some guaranteed-gentle shampoo, she washed the salt and grime from her skin and hair, letting the soothing water calm the fear that split her soul—fear and confusion about her son.
What had she been thinking earlier?
Noah hadn’t been on the dock.
It was just her willing, weak mind playing tricks on her, vestiges from her dream remaining to confuse her.
Yet the image of him standing in the rising mist, teetering on the edge of the dock, eerily real, still stayed with her.
It’s been two years . . . let him go.
She rinsed off, thinking that her son would be four years old now, had he survived.
Tears filled her eyes and her throat grew thick. She turned and faced the nozzle, letting warm water wash the damned tears away.
By the time she’d dressed and combed the tangles from her hair, she felt better. Rested. No longer balanced upon a mental precipice.
She was just walking out of the bathroom when she heard a tap on her bedroom door. “Ava?” her husband’s voice called softly as the door opened.
“I thought you were in Seattle,” she said.
“Portland.” His smile was thin, his features marred with worry, his sandy-colored hair rumpled as if he’d been forcing stiff fingers through it.
“Oh. Right.” She’d known he’d driven south. Wyatt’s client was from Seattle but had real estate holdings in Oregon and had some kind of lawsuit leveled against him.
“Doesn’t matter.” Wyatt stepped closer to her, and she tensed but didn’t back up, not even when he brushed an errant curl off her forehead, his fingertips warm and familiar as they grazed her skin. “Are you okay?” he asked, his hazel eyes dark with concern. That same old question that no matter how she answered, everyone had already come up with their own conclusions.
“I’d like to say fine, but . . .” She tipped her hand side to side. “Let’s just say I’m better than I was an hour ago.”
She remembered falling in love with him, or at least she thought she had. They’d met in college . . . yes, that was right. At a small private school near Spokane. That had been nearly fifteen years earlier. He’d been handsome and athletic and sexy, and those attributes hadn’t changed over the years. Even now, with his light brown hair mussed from raking his fingers through it and a day’s worth of whiskers darkening his chin, he was a good-looking man. S
trapping. Bold. A take-no-prisoners attorney who now looked rumpled, his suit jacket wrinkled, his white shirt open at the throat, his tie loosened. Yes, indeed, Wyatt Garrison was still a sexy, attractive male.
And she didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him.
“What happened?” Wyatt asked as he sat on the edge of the bed, on “his” side, the mattress sinking a bit under his weight. How many times had she lain in his arms in that very bed? How many nights had they made love . . . When had they stopped? “Ava?”
She snapped out of her reverie. “Oh. You know. The same thing.” She glanced to the window where she’d been certain she’d seen her son. “I thought I saw Noah. On the dock.”
“Oh, Ava.” He shook his head slowly. Sadly. “You’ve got to stop torturing yourself. He’s gone.”
“But—”
“No ‘buts.’ ” The mattress groaned as he climbed to his feet. “I thought you were getting better. When they released you from St. Brendan’s, the doctors were convinced you were on the road to recovery.”
“Maybe it’s just a bumpy one.”
“But it shouldn’t have U-turns.”
“I was getting better,” she said, preferring not to think of the hospital from which she’d been recently released. “I mean I am!” She swallowed hard, didn’t want to think about having to go back to the psych ward at the inland hospital. “It’s just the nightmares.”
“Have you seen Dr. McPherson lately?” Evelyn McPherson was the psychologist Wyatt had personally chosen upon Ava’s release from St. Brendan’s. He’d said it was because she practiced in Anchorville and was willing to visit Ava on the island, which made sense, but there was something about the woman that bothered Ava. It was as if she were listening too intently to her, was too damned concerned, as if Ava’s problems were hers. It was all too personal.
“Of course I’ve seen her. Didn’t she tell you?” When had it been? “Last week.”
His dark eyebrows lifted as if he didn’t believe her. “When last week?”