by Lena North
“That was awesome,” I said.
Nicholas put a steady hand on my shoulder, and I heard the others move, so I looked up at them.
“Thank you,” I said again.
This was met with a resounding silence, so I turned to Joao, uncertain what we were supposed to do next.
“Why did you say that?” he asked. “Before, in the water, and now again?”
“Someone said welcome home to me.”
He took a step back, looking like I’d slapped him.
“You heard?”
I blinked because of course, I’d heard. I wasn’t deaf, was I?
“Yeah,” I said. “Someone asked who I was, you said I was Charlie, and then everyone told me welcome home.”
“Holy fu –” the man who was Joao’s brother started, swallowed the rest of the word when he caught the look on Pauline’s face, and ended on, “u-udge.”
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said immediately.
“What?” I asked again.
“Okay,” Nicholas cut in when it looked like I’d get another statement that it was nothing when it clearly was something. “Wow. Someone needs to explain a few things to Charlie, it seems.”
I wasn’t going to stand there repeating the same word again like a demented parrot, so I didn’t even if it meant biting my lower lip just a little bit to stop myself.
“Let’s go back to your house, Uncle Nico,” Joao said and shuffled us toward the cars.
Everyone went with us, and since no one uttered a word in the ten-minute ride up the hill, I didn’t either. I looked at the group of people in front of me as we sat down at the tables in the courtyard, and wondered if I’d accidentally made a huge Island faux-pas.
“Can someone please explain whatever it is you felt I needed to know?” I asked into the silence.
“Weird shit sometimes happens here on the Islands,” Joao’s brother whose name I didn’t remember said.
“Quiet,” Joao said calmly.
His voice had deepened, and it felt as if it vibrated through me. Roark turned slowly to stare at him, and a few of the others did too.
“Since you apparently want to be the one telling me whatever I did wrong, then please, Joao. Do so.”
His face softened, and I wondered if he was laughing at me.
“You did nothing wrong. It’s just that there are a few families here on the Islands who have a few… let’s call them, abilities.”
“Okay,” I said, not understanding at all.
“Nicholas’ family, the d’Izias, have the sight. They see details, nuances, a lot more than others do, and remember them in a way that is similar to photographic memory. Some have only a little of it, and some are exceptional. You met Domenico, and he would be one of the exceptional ones.”
“D’Izia eyes,” I whispered, remembering I’d told him he had them.
“Exactly. Then there are the Jamieson and Torres families. We interact with dolphins.”
I blinked. Then I blinked again, several times. My mouth fell open, and I had absolutely nothing to say. Interacted with what? Dolphins? How? And out came that stupid word again.
“What?” I hissed out, and elaborated, “What the… what?”
“That went well, Joao,” someone murmured, and Joao made a hoarse sound.
“Honey,” Pauline murmured, although if it was for him or me was unclear.
“We interact with dolphins,” Joao repeated.
“I heard you the first time,” I said. “What does it mean?”
“That we interact with them,” he said.
I leaned forward and hissed in his face, “It doesn’t matter how many times you repeat the word interact, Joao. You’re gonna have to elaborate at some point because I don’t understand.”
“Right,” he grunted and glared at his brother who was unsuccessfully trying to hide the fact that he was laughing. “We talk to dolphins in various ways, either as direct communication in the form of words or as showing simple images to each other. Some sing with them too.”
“I see,” I said, but I didn’t.
Not in any way.
“It isn’t so strange,” Joao said calmly. “There are people on the mainland who can do similar things.”
Huh?
“And it runs on the… families. So, it’s an inherited skill?” I said, mostly because they seemed to expect me to say something.
“Yes. The families have become intertwined by marriages over the years, but the ability seems to stick with the family whose name the person carries. It follows the males basically.”
I thought about it for a while and tried to not squirm because they were all watching me intently.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.
“Because you heard the dolphins,” Joao answered immediately. “You heard them asking me who you were, and then a very large group of them welcomed you home.”
I closed my eyes and tried to stop my brain from exploding with this piece of news.
“Charlie?” Pauline murmured. “Are you okay?”
I opened my eyes and looked straight at Joao’s brother.
“You,” I snapped, and he straightened. “What was your name again?”
He opened his mouth, but the nurse burst out laughing before he got a word out.
“Guess you didn’t make much of an impression,” she chuckled.
“I don’t remember your name either,” I shared.
“Tina,” she said calmly. “He’s Roark.”
I nodded and turned back to Roark.
“You were right, that is some weird shit,” I said.
He stared at me for a while and then he drawled, “Okay. And you heard them because…”
That’s when it hit me, and my mouth fell open, although I closed it quickly because I didn’t want to look like an idiot.
“How can I do it? I’m not from –”
My mouth fell open again, and this time, I didn’t close it. I turned slowly to look at Joao.
“We have reason to believe your father is from the Islands,” he said gently.
Of course. Why not? It felt as if I’d entered the twilight zone so why not add my mysteriously absent father into the mix.
“Reason to believe?”
“He’s from the Islands, Charlie.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes,” Joao said and glanced at Pauline.
It was just a brief movement of his eyes, but I saw it, and suddenly, I knew.
“Domenico. He has the d’Izia eyes. You brought him here to look at me.”
“Yes.”
“He told you who my father is?”
“We already knew, or suspected anyway. He confirmed it.”
“Have you talked to the man?”
“Yes.”
“Was anyone ever going to tell me?”
“Yes.”
Our eyes were locked, and it felt as if I was in a bubble where no one else existed. It was just me and Joao Torres.
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“Dupree Torres.”
“What?”
God, I thought. I really needed to work on my vocabulary.
“Dup –”
“I heard you. Are you my… cousin?”
“In a way.”
I swallowed and looked around at the group of people. Joao had introduced them as cousins, so did this mean they were also my cousins?
“All of you?” I asked weakly.
“There are many more,” Roark shared.
I assumed he was trying to be helpful, but I scowled at him, which made his brows go up. I had never had any family. Not ever. To suddenly have large groups of people claiming to be cousins made my chest tighten and I didn’t know how to react.
“What do you mean, we’re cousins, in a way?” I asked Joao.
“Our grandmothers were cousins. Out here we call everyone from the
families cousins when we’re the same generation, though.”
“Okay,” I whispered. “Dupree Torres?”
“Yeah.”
I looked to the side and tried to think, but my mind was filled with nothing but complete confusion. I knew one thing, though. I needed to see the man.
“Take me to him.”
“Charlie –”
“Take. Me,” I said and leaned forward to poke him in the chest. “To. Him.”
***
By the time we’d reached the harbor, I was mostly angry. I wasn’t quite sure why I was angry, but I was, so I jumped out of the car with a huff when Pauline indicated a low house with a huge sign which said, “Bar.” Next to the sign was a cartoon-like cutout depicting a very happy dolphin.
Of course. If this man were a Torres, then he could probably chit-chat with dolphins too. I straightened my back and stomped into the bar and glared at the man wiping off the tables.
“Are you Dupree Torres?” I asked.
“I’m Lippy Torres if that’s good enough for…” He’d turned as he spoke and when he saw me, his jaw fell. “Holy mother of God,” he breathed.
“No, that’s not who I’m looking for,” I snapped. “I’d like to speak with Dupree Torres.”
“He’s out on the dock,” the man said hoarsely just as another man walked in from a door in the back.
He stopped and put a tray full of glassed down slowly. For a long time, no one moved, and we stared silently at each other. I knew without a doubt this man was my father. I had his eyes, and the curve of his jaw was familiar. We had the same hair color too, or I thought so, at least, but he kept his dreads tied back, so it was difficult to see. My mother had been short, and I’d outgrown her already when I was eleven, but this man was tall. He wasn’t bulky, though, not like Joao and Nicholas. He was lean and wiry, something I’d also inherited.
“I think I’m your father,” he rasped out finally.
Oh, hell no.
“You might be the man who fathered me, but you are not my father,” I retorted. “I am not as eager to jump on the bandwagon of family bliss as everyone else seems to be.”
He nodded slowly, not taking his eyes from me and I couldn’t look away either. Then a small smile showed in his eyes.
“Doesn’t make you any less my daughter,” he said.
I turned around and started to walk away. When I was a girl, I’d dreamed up scenarios for how this would be, and reality wasn’t anywhere near the cheesy scenarios I’d come up with. I’d thought my father would have a suit and a fancy car. He’d come charging into the church, pick me up from the mattress on the floor where I slept and tell me he’d been looking for me for years. Then he’d give me hamburgers and soda, and we’d drive off into the sunset. I’d been young, so the burgers had been more prominently featured in these fantasies than the actual man himself, but for some reason, I’d always thought he’d look like some kind of businessman.
The man I had in front of me looked like a beach bum.
“Charlie,” he called out, and I turned. “Where’s your mother?”
I shrugged.
“She spent the last six years of her life together with people as crazy as she was, and then she died.”
His face darkened, and he straightened.
“There’s no need to disrespect your mother like that.”
I stomped back to the bar, put both my hands on it and leaned forward toward him.
“Did you have a nickname as a child?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said calmly.
“I did too,” I shared.
There was a long silence. I didn’t know what he went through his mind because his face was a blank mask, and I used the time to try to calm down.
“I was known as the devil’s child,” I finally said hoarsely, swallowed, and added, “And do you know who gave me that nickname?”
He winced, which I assumed meant he’d guessed the answer to my question.
“That’s right,” I confirmed. “The woman you stand there and pompously tell me to not disrespect came up with that lovely epithet. You do not know how I grew up, so you do not get to scold me for talking about my mother any goddamned way I like. She was mentally unstable and then she turned crazy, so I grew up alone, although considering what I had all around me; that was a good thing.”
Then I turned yet again and walked away.
“Charlie,” he called out again.
“What?” I snapped as I turned.
“I didn’t know. If I had known, swear to God, you wouldn’t have been alone.”
His face was hard suddenly, and his words hurt more than I had expected them to. More than I could handle right then.
“I need to think about all of this,” I told him, and he nodded.
“I’ll be here,” he said.
He didn’t try to stop me from leaving again, and I got back in the car. It had only been Pauline and me, and I was grateful for that as we moved up the hill toward her home.
“Are you okay?” she asked softly after a while.
“Yeah.” I was lying, but she didn’t need to know that. “That man?” I added and answered my own question immediately. “He means nothing to me.”
She parked the car, and we walked slowly toward the entrance of her home. When the door shut behind us and we were in the hallway leading out to the courtyard, she put a hand on my arm.
“Charlie?”
“Yes.”
“That man? He means nothing to you, and I get that. But he means something to me. He’s my brother.”
My heart skipped a beat, and then it started thumping so hard I felt the pulse through my whole body.
“You’re my aunt?” I asked, which she would be, but I couldn’t believe it.
“Yes.”
“Carrie is my cousin?” I asked because I couldn’t believe that either.
“Yes,” she confirmed.
My eyes burned suddenly, and there was a tingle in my nose. Carrie and I had become friends from the start, and I’d always felt a connection to her. We didn’t look at all alike but we were very much alike on the inside, and I liked her. And we were cousins?
“Does she know?”
“No. She suspected you have Island blood, but she doesn’t know you’re Dupree’s.”
I didn’t want to think about Dupree, but there was something I needed to know.
“Do I have any siblings?”
“No, Dupree kept his dreads all these years, or so we thought at least.”
“Kept his dreads?”
“Oh, sorry,” she said with a smile. “It’s a tradition here on the Islands. When a man fathers a child, to show respect for the life he’s part of creating, he cuts off his dreadlocks.”
“Okay,” I said. I wanted to be alone when I thought about Dupree, and what all of this would mean for me. “I need to…” I trailed off and made a movement with my hand toward the door to my room.
She nodded but stopped me again with a gentle hand when I started to move.
“My brother is flighty, easily distracted and floats through life with no aim. He’s always been like that, and I don’t think he will change. And you might not like it, but he is your father, so my advice to you is to find a way to accept those parts of him because he’s also loyal, interesting and incredibly funny. He portrays himself as a simple and stupid man, but he’s neither. He’s also not a bad man, and he’s not lying. He didn’t know about you. He would have come for you if he’d known.”
I nodded slowly.
“I don’t know him, and I don’t know if I can trust him, but I trust you. When I think about all of this, what you just said will weigh in heavily,” I said.
When I moved again, she didn’t stop me, but after a few steps, I turned and walked back to her.
“Pauline?” I said quietly.
“Yes?”
“When you talk to Carrie next time, will you tell her it ma
kes me very happy to be her cousin?”
Her face softened into a smile, and she gave my cheek a caress with the back of her hand.
“I will. Don’t worry so much about all of this, Charlie. Just go with the flow.”
She walked into the kitchen, and I stood there, staring after her.
Just go with the flow? What the hell did that mean?
Chapter Five
Free
Joao
Joao drove away with a wave at the elderly woman who had stopped him to ask a lot of nonsense in an attempt to find out what he knew about Charlie. The news was all over the Islands, and Croxier buzzed with gossip about Dupree’s daughter who apparently had arrived already two months earlier and had stayed hidden with Nicholas and Pauline all this time to allow father and daughter to meet and get to know each other without everyone getting involved. It was a sketchy story, but since it spread by word of mouth, it had been highly embellished to the point where there were so many snippets of hilarious and conflicting information floating around it didn’t matter that none of it made much sense.
Charlie had still not left the house, but she’d have to eventually, and Joao wondered how she’d handle it. Pauline had told him how the first meeting had gone and it had surprised him. He’d thought Charlie would be quiet and thoughtful, and perhaps also grateful to find her father, but that had apparently not been the case. Pauline had also asked him to check in on her brother, so Joao and Roark had spent that evening at the bar, and Dupree hadn’t batted an eyelid when they walked in. Through the evening, the man had joked and sold beer and drinks like he always did, although he had for once not been receptive to the invites a few of the visiting ladies very clearly had been throwing his way.
Dupree had talked to his brother about Charlie, though, that much was clear. Lippy kept watching them, and when things slowed down a bit, he came over to sit at their table. It was obvious he wanted to ask questions.
“Don’t,” Joao murmured. “We can’t talk about it. Not now. Not here.”
Lippy closed his mouth and nodded.
“We’ll talk about a jellyfish instead,” Roark said.
Both Joao and Lippy turned slowly to stare at him.
“Dupree’s jellyfish?” Roark whispered exaggeratedly and wiggled his brows.
