What She Inherits

by Diane V. Mulligan

  “I would have taken care of you!” Rosetta said. “And the baby.”

  “I know that now,” Casey said, throwing her arms around Rosetta. They were not huggy people, didn’t demonstrate their feelings physically under normal circumstances, but Casey clung to Rosetta like her life depended on it now. “I was scared and stupid and I hadn’t seen you in two years. That’s a lifetime to a kid.”

  Rosetta nodded but she held onto Casey for a moment longer before letting go. Then she thought of something. “But the baby would be legally an adult now. You can contact her.”

  “How could I do that to her?” Casey asked. “Suppose she knows she’s adopted. The Ellises could have told her about me and she could have found me, but that hasn’t happened. So either she doesn’t want to know me or she doesn’t know she’s adopted.”

  “She has a right to know.”

  “It’s too late. It won’t do any good.”

  “You have to get that test,” Rosetta said.

  “No, I don’t. Just because medical science has made something possible, I am not required to use that science. I don’t want my future told by some geneticist. I want to live my life.” Casey got up, rubbed her eyes again, and stood as if waiting for Rosetta to get up and leave.

  “But what if you gave it to her?”

  Casey sighed and crossed her arms. “I can’t think that way. I can’t. I would have been better off not knowing what happened to my mother, like she is better off not knowing about me. Now if you’ll leave me alone, I have to get ready. Brett’ll be here in a minute.”

  “You aren’t still going out with him today?” Rosetta asked. She’d come here to prevent Casey from this date and instead she’d learned that her niece had lived a life of secrecy for twenty years. Apparently secret-keeping was a family habit.

  “Of course I am. I said I’d go and I’m going.”

  “Do you really think that’s smart?”

  Casey rolled her eyes. “Nothing’s changed. I’m not going to sit here all day.”

  “I don’t know about Brett,” Rosetta said, getting up to leave. “Watch yourself around that one. Those business types can’t be trusted.”

  Chapter 33

  St. Nabor Island, South Carolina

  Randy brought a couple of boxes of pizza over to Grace’s, and they went down to the beach. When they sat down on a blanket on the sand, neither of them spoke. It was a lovely fall day, crisp blue sky, smooth blue sea, gentle rollers breaking in the distance, and big gulls circling, eager for crusts of pizza. Angela had never felt less at ease on the beach in her life. She was too confused to appreciate the serenity of it, but she didn’t feel like talking, either. Angela had already repeated Marilyn’s story. They could sit around and speculate all night about what CJ had been thinking when she’d agreed to let the Ellises adopt her baby, but what was the point?

  They talked a little about how all of this fit in with Angela’s ghost encounters. Randy felt the answer was fairly obvious. In fact, it was exactly what he’d already surmised before the last investigation: Ryan’s ghost was trying to help her discover the truth, her mother’s ghost was trying to keep it from her.

  “Now that I know, do you think it’s over?” Angela asked.

  “We don’t know one-hundred percent for certain what your mother wants,” he said.

  Angela felt tired and frustrated. They’d solved the mystery, so now life had to get back to normal. No more ghosts. No more huge family secrets. She wanted it all to be over.

  Randy said, “Maybe you should try again. See if Calliope can communicate with your mom and put this all to rest. We didn’t get very far—”

  “I’m starting to think there never were any ghosts, okay? It was my subconscious or whatever telling me something was wrong, and now I found out what was wrong, so it’s over,” Angela said, her voice tense. This wasn’t what she thought at all, but it was what she wanted to think. Maybe, if she told herself none of it was real it would stop. She got up and collected their paper plates and pizza boxes and took them to a trash can near the lifeguard chair.

  “Two things,” Randy said, when she sat back down. “One, I think I know how we can find out about CJ, and two, I think we should go back to your house tonight.”

  Somewhat against her will, Angela listened to Randy’s explanations. First, his idea to find CJ was to seek out classmates of Ryan’s from high school. If anyone could tell them where to find CJ, they could. After all, the two of them had been high school sweethearts, so they must have known the same people. Angela had to admit, that was a pretty good idea, even if she wasn’t sure she actually wanted to find CJ.

  Then again, Helen hadn’t replied to Angela’s message, a fact Angela was trying not to read into. Helen’s past posts to Facebook were scattered, often with several weeks in between updates. If Angela wanted to find proof to back up Marilyn’s story, and she didn’t want to wait weeks and weeks for Helen to notice her message, Randy’s idea might be the way to go.

  His second idea, to go to the house, was based on the logic that if, as Angela claimed, there would be no paranormal happenings now that Angela knew the truth, then there was no reason not to go spend the night there.

  “Your mother’s spirit is restless, right? But now that you know the truth and there’s nothing she can do about it, maybe she needs help going wherever spirits go,” Randy said. “I really think we should bring Calliope back. Through her, you can assure your mother that you still love her and help her let go of whatever is keeping her here.”

  “I’m sure Calliope is busy tonight,” Angela said. She was tired of the house, of the drama, of the confusion and questions. Yes, she still wanted answers, but so far she’d found more answers outside the house than inside.

  “No, I texted her. She said she’s up for it,” Randy said.

  She could see how much he wanted this. They had been really getting somewhere before Marilyn interrupted the night before. Maybe this, on top of everything else she’d learned, would finally bring her some closure. “Fine, one more,” she said, and then she added, “We’re bringing Marilyn, too.”

  Chapter 34

  Devil’s Back Island, Maine

  By the time Brett knocked on Casey’s door, she had gotten herself together. Mostly. She had showered despite the fact that she’d get salty kayaking, dressed in her nicest cut-off jean shorts, favorite black tank top, and least-stained hoodie, even put on a little makeup, if only because the puffy circles around her eyes were dead giveaways that something was wrong.

  All this time she had kept the truth from Rosetta. So many times she had wanted to tell her, especially in that first year when Rosetta brought her back here. She knew she owed it to Rosetta. It was no exaggeration to say that Casey would be dead by now if Rosetta hadn’t come to New York to find her.

  Rosetta, God bless her, hadn’t asked any questions. She showed up with an empty suitcase, crammed as many of Casey’s things in it as she could, and got her the hell out of that flea bag apartment. Not that Casey had gone willingly. In fact, on her first attempt, Casey had literally kicked and screamed. Rosetta had left, and when she returned an hour later it was to say that the cops would be raiding the apartment on a drug tip in matter of minutes, so unless Casey wanted to be arrested, she would need to get in the car.

  Casey never found out if that was true. She hadn’t spoken to any of the people she’d known in New York since she left. She had never really known them, anyway. They were people she somehow found herself living with, people she got high with, people who would steal from her if she didn’t hide her money and her valuables, people who were even more lost than she had been.

  From ages 17 to 29, Casey’s life had been like a slow-moving natural disaster, and if Rosetta hadn’t stepped in when she did, it would have met its logical conclusion long ago. She didn’t know how Rosetta had even found her, and it took her the better part a year to be grateful that she had.

  Rosetta had given her a blank slate. She had n
ever once held those lost years of Casey’s life over her head, never reminded her what her life would have become without her intervention. No, Rosetta always focused on exactly one thing: The Future. The big, bright, bold future that had everything in it. She dreamed a life for Casey, and Casey eventually started to share that dream, and now here she was—running a café, doing something she loved on this beautiful island where most days she could forget where she came from.

  And on the days when she couldn’t forget, the days when she wanted to confess everything to Rosetta and get her advice, the days when she showed up at Rosetta’s door in tears, Rosetta hadn’t let her. No pity parties, she would say. We’ve all had troubles, she would say. You mustn’t look back, she would say. And now it had been so long...

  “I always suspected there was more than you had told me,” Rosetta had said that morning when Casey finally let go of her secret. She did not exclaim at the injustice of it all or offer empty condolences. She just sat there, scratching the dog’s head and nodding as if it all made perfect sense. Then, when the conversation was about finished, she had said, “I think this means you have to get tested, Casey.”

  Casey knew that already. She had known it the minute she read her mother’s letter. If Casey had inherited her mother’s genetic defect, then she could have passed on that genetic defect to the baby she gave away when she was seventeen years old. But even if Casey got the test, she wasn’t allowed to contact her daughter. She so seldom let herself think that word. Daughter. Usually, she thought Baby, but that wasn’t right. She had been born twenty years ago! Twenty! It was inconceivable.

  Casey had agreed to all of Deb’s requests. She had signed the papers and had never so much as held the baby after she was born. She wasn’t supposed to know the gender, but a nurse let it slip. She didn’t know what Deborah and Richard had named the baby, but she knew who they were. If she wanted to, she could find them. Which was why it was so perfect for her living here on Devil’s Back where she had no cell phone reception, no internet connection. She avoided the temptation of finding her child by never going online. It was so easy to shut the world out by living here. In New York, she’d had to use drugs to do it. Here, she could pretend that this island was all there was to the world.

  “You could cancel your date, you know,” Rosetta had said when Casey said she had to get dressed.

  But Casey didn’t want to. She wanted distraction. If she canceled her date, she would sit here all day thinking about her mother and her baby and the likelihood that her genetics left her disposed to die an early death from an aggressive form of cancer. That didn’t sound like anybody’s idea of a day off. Besides, the only thing that had changed since she agreed to spend the day showing Brett around was that now Rosetta knew everything Casey knew.

  So she’d pulled herself together and when Brett knocked, she even managed to smile as she opened the door.

  “You look fresh as a daisy,” Brett said, offering his trademark grin. He was dressed impeccably, like an actor going kayaking in a movie—cheerful board shorts, one of those sunscreen swim tops, fancy athletic sandals, expensive sunglasses.

  “You sound surprised,” Casey said, stepping out onto the porch and pulling her apartment door shut behind her.

  “I half-expected you to cancel on me after last night.”

  “I wasn’t that bad,” Casey said.

  He raised an eyebrow and she said, “Okay, I was. But here I am now.”

  They strolled along the gravel path that led back toward the Wild Rose Inn. It was another beautiful day, the sort of ideal autumn day that late-season visitors flocked to the island to enjoy.

  Casey led the way to the boat shed and selected two of the newer kayaks and paddles. She hoisted hers and told Brett to do the same. Behind her, she could hear him fumbling with it. She set hers on the beach and went back for life jackets.

  “I can swim,” Brett said.

  “Tell it to marine patrol,” Casey said. “You have to have it in the kayak. You don’t have to wear it.” She tucked hers into the straps on the front of the kayak, and Brett imitated her with his.

  Casey kicked off her flip-flops and put them in the boat and dragged it into the shallow water. It was cold. The sun-warmed late summer water was losing out to the cool fall nights. She sat and pushed her paddle gently on the beach to move forward, free of the sand. In a few quick, sure strokes, she was well away from the shore. She swiveled around as quickly as the boat could manage and saw Brett still hadn’t gotten situated. He had tried to get in without getting his feet wet and was beached. She laughed out loud. Maybe today would be fun after all.

  As they paddled around the island, Brett got the basics pretty quickly. He could mostly keep pace with Casey. He couldn’t maneuver very well, which led to a lot of laughter each time he tried to follow her into a narrow cove, but he was doing all right. When they paddled side by side, he talked to her, revealing more about himself, his life in LA, his childhood in upstate New York, and his desire to move back to the East Coast. He was a good storyteller, charming and self-deprecating, good with a punchline. Casey couldn’t help but laugh at his jokes. She hated to admit it, but it was hard to dislike him.

  After the better part of an hour, they came to the formation of rocks that gave the island its name. Casey steered toward a pebbly cove where they could pull the kayaks up and then got out and climbed up over several boulders to sit looking out over the water.

  Behind her, the cliff rock formed a sort of terraced slope rising fifteen or twenty feet. The profile of the cliff was like the spiky back of a dinosaur. In front of her, two pointy boulders jutted up from the water—the horns of the devil emerging from the depths.

  “This is why they call it Devil’s Back,” she said, as Brett picked his way over the rock to sit by her.

  “Not hard to see why.”

  “Now, sure, but at high tide those points are almost totally submerged. Despite the buoys, every few years a boat wrecks itself on them.”

  “The devil will get you,” Brett said, lightly.

  “Yeah. It’s always rich bastards in fancy yachts who don’t know how to read charts,” Casey said.

  “I have to admit, I did wonder about the name. It’s not exactly friendly.”

  “It’s mysterious,” Casey said, turning to look at him.

  “Yes, mysteries abound here.”

  He was flirting with her. She decided that she wouldn’t mind at all if he kissed her. Except that he had a girlfriend.

  “How’s your girlfriend feel about moving east?” Casey said, looking back out to sea.

  “She’ll come around,” Brett said, the flirty tone gone from his voice.

  Casey got up and went back to the boats. They might as well keep moving along. The tide was almost slack.

  Along the seaward side of the island, the cliff rock was steep. They paddled along the coast now with nowhere to pull up for a break. As they passed under the highest point, Casey stopped paddling to point out Lover’s Leap, the supposedly haunted cliff. Brett looked up at the stark rock wall and gave a low whistle.

  “Wouldn’t want to fall from that height.”

  Casey agreed.

  “But you don’t think it’s haunted.”

  “I think what haunts most people is their own pasts,” Casey said, and then she resumed paddling and he had to hurry to keep up.

  They continued along with the jagged rock face to their right and the wide blue-black sea to their left until they rounded the curve into the sound. Here the island was covered in tall pines and Casey turned into a narrow inlet. She heard Brett cursing behind her as his kayak bounced off the side of the rocky entry. This was one of her favorite places on the entire island, accessible only by a boat. In the spring, a small stream trickled down a stony bed between fragrant pines and emptied into the sea. Although the entry to the cove was narrow, once inside, a small beach opened up. Now, in the fall, the stream bed was dry, but the cove was still lovely. The gentle lapping of the
water on the sand, the breeze in the trees, the smell of sun-warmed pine needles—to Casey it was heaven. She hadn’t intended to show it to Brett. It was her special place, after all, but as they had paddled up to it, she found she couldn’t resist. And she didn’t mind sharing it with him, either. She had misjudged him when they met, had thought he was too preppy, too stuck up, too business-like. But actually he was nice, thoughtful, maybe—given how he’d taken care of her last night—a real gentleman.

  Casey got out of her kayak and dragged it far up onto the sand out of the reach of the incoming tide. They wouldn’t be able to stay long. As the tide rose, it would erase the beach here.

  “My God, this is beautiful,” Brett said, as his kayak scraped into the sand.

  Casey sat on a smooth flat rock and leaned back to tilt her face to the sun. Brett came to sit beside her. They should have brought lunch, Casey thought, as she soaked in the warmth of the early afternoon. Her stomach rumbled.

  “Look at that,” Brett said, and she opened her eyes.

  On the pebbly beach near the water’s edge, she saw a flicker of movement, and then another and another. Hermit crabs. Hundreds of them, ranging in size from as small as a sunflower seed to as large as a teacup, all scuttling in the same direction, light reflecting off their various shells and off the trickle of water around them, streaming toward some unknown destination for some unknown reason. It was strange, and strangely breathtaking. Casey had often seen fiddler crabs at dusk popping in and out of the holes they dug on the beach by the hotel, dozens at a time, in and out, in and out, but she had never seen hermit crabs congregate this way.

  “Why do they do that?” Brett asked.

  “I have no idea,” Casey said.

  When he took out his phone to take a video of the parade of hermits, it took all of Casey’s restraint not to knock the stupid thing from his hand. Why wasn’t it enough for people to participate in the moment? Why did everyone feel the needed to record everything now? They never lived anything. They only recorded things for posterity, but she doubted any of them ever bothered to look back at what they recorded.