The Silkie's Call

by Laura Browning

  She swam away from her cousin then, her stroke just as strong and graceful as it had always been. Cayden watched her with a longing so great he was afraid to stay any longer. Turning swiftly, he torpedoed his way out of the cove and into the waters of the bay. He had to stay away from her. There were just two weeks remaining, but even then, she had to call him.

  And now he feared she wouldn’t. She’d said as much. She wanted to get away from here. While he remembered their summer with longing, she apparently had no such similar feelings. Hope disappeared to be replaced by anger and bitterness.

  ****

  Annabel pulled herself back up the ladder. It was a slow process, and not particularly graceful, but it was a damn sight better than it had been. At least now she could rest her weight on her legs even if she still did most of the actual lifting with her upper body. Taylor wasn’t far behind her, levering himself back into the Revenge without using the ladder.

  “Come on, Poppy! Let me take you out to dinner, even if it’s just so I don’t have to eat your cooking.”

  She turned her face away unhappily. Taylor was so good to her, and she did always have a good time with him.

  “Taylor, it’s just… I’ll have to use the chair.”

  He knelt next to her. “Poppy, the only one it bothers is you. Yes, people might look at first, but you make them forget when you let yourself forget. Come on. Put on something pretty and let me take you out.”

  She brushed the hair off his dear, dear face. “You don’t know how often over the years I’ve wished you were my big brother. You have always been there for me, Taylor. Out of everyone in our family, including my dad, it’s always been you.”

  He tweaked her cheek. “Somebody has to look out for you, Popper.”

  Chapter 2

  Cayden saw them at dinner on the terrace that night. He had finished cleaning up several boats that were out on day trips and now he was headed back to put his supplies in the maintenance shed when he looked up. Taylor’s back was to him, and he saw Bell sitting across the candlelit table. She looked incredibly lovely. Her honey colored hair was swept up off her neck in a loose knot, showing the slender column of her throat and her bare shoulders to advantage. He stopped and simply stared. If anything, she had grown more beautiful in the last seven years. She paused in her conversation with Taylor and looked up. A puzzled look crossed her face as she gazed out at the marina, her eyes searching.

  Cayden ducked his head and kept going. He had already run afoul of the traditions of his clan, and he wouldn’t do it again, not when he was this close. He wouldn’t survive seven-year banishment.

  ****

  “What’s wrong?” Taylor asked as they finished their meal.

  Annabel shook her head. “Nothing. Just a strange feeling for a moment. I guess I’m more tired than I thought.”

  “Would you like to go home?”

  “Yes. I think that would be best. And thanks for helping me fix up the spare room off the kitchen. That will save me trying to negotiate the steps every day.”

  “Hey, I just appreciate you putting me up until Mom and Dad get here to open up the house. You’re sure you don’t mind?”

  She smiled. “Positive. You’re doing me a favor. I suspect I’ll need the help getting things out and moved around.”

  Taylor grinned. “Happy to be your hired hand, Poppy, you know that.”

  “Then play the gentleman and wheel me out of here.”

  Hours later, Taylor was sound asleep in what had been her father’s room upstairs, but Annabel lay wide awake in the former storage room off the kitchen. She was restless and unsettled. What sleep she’d managed was disturbed by dreams of her summer with Cayden. She tried so hard to put it behind her, and during the day when she was busy doing other things, she truly didn’t think about it or him, but night was a different story.

  She would remember how he taught her to hold her breath. She was never as good as he was, but she had reached the point where she could stay under for just over four minutes. Then there was the skiing. His father, Carrick, and Cayden both helped her learn, but she was never as proficient at that as she was at sailing and swimming. Now of course, it wouldn’t matter. Skiing was out of the question.

  I love you Annabel Lee…I never left you. I was coming back to you.

  But it was a lie. He never came back. And if that was a lie, then everything else about that magical summer was too. His kisses, his touch, and the way they had held back, knowing they were too young and thinking they had all the time in the world. All of it was a lie.

  Annabel punched her pillow and pushed up into a sitting position, using her hands to move her legs until she sat on the side of the bed. She had done too much today, and now she was paying the price for that. She ached. She knew better. She knew from bitter experience in the past that she had physical limits, and they were a lot more confining than before her accident.

  After shifting from the bed to her chair, she wheeled into the kitchen and made herself a cup of tea. Then she rolled down the hallway to her father’s office. It seemed almost sacrosanct to enter it on her own, especially when her intention was to go through the items in his desk drawers.

  After setting the cup on the blotter, she started with the center drawer. Her father had been a pack rat when it came to his office. She doubted seriously that he had ever thrown anything away. Half-used pencils were shoved in the drawer simply because their erasers were already exhausted. Loose change dotted the bottom of the drawer underneath piles of old receipts, phone messages, and notes he jotted to himself. There wasn’t much in this drawer to sort; it was simply a matter of cleaning it out.

  That done, she turned to the drawer on the right. The top drawer was filled with unused writing supplies: paper for the printer, pens, pencils, paper clips, and all the usual things. Below that were the drawers large enough to hold files. Now the going was slower. These drawers contained partial manuscripts, records of household bills, and copies of contracts for other books. Part of the danger was getting caught up in reading everything, Annabel thought with a sad smile, but she continued to plug away and soon had the first of the file drawers knocked out, too.

  The bottom drawer contained journals. Her eyes widened. She never knew her father kept personal journals. She had always just assumed that all of his writing was for publication. The last entry in the small book on top was dated just a week before her father’s suicide. She ran her hand over it. So he had come back here one last time. Annabel’s hands shook as she picked it up.

  Dear Emily,

  Annabel looked up, a frown on her face as she stared off into the distance and then she flicked back several pages. Each and every entry was written as a letter to her mother. Her eyes clouded with tears. Her father’s grief and despondency had run far deeper than she ever suspected. She turned again to the final entry.

  It will be fourteen years in July since the cancer took you, but you and I both know you were gone before then. You really left me two months earlier when you made the decision to stop fighting. I’ve made my decision as well. It’s time for me to stop fighting. Annabel has just one more year of college remaining, and I’ve put all our finances in order so that she will want for nothing.

  You would be so proud of her, Em, the way she’s fought through the obstacles she’s faced in the years since that awful summer. She’s as strong as you, and far, far stronger than I ever was. I can leave now knowing that she will be all right. Annabel is a fighter. I look forward to seeing you soon, my love.

  She slammed the journal shut, put her face in her hands and cried for the shell of a man her father had become. You’re wrong, Annabel thought. I’m not as strong as you think, and I don’t feel very strong now. She only vaguely remembered her father from when her mother was healthy, just as over time, her memories of her mother had faded to moments, snapshots taken out of time and context. They could only be viewed like a slide show now. They were incomplete.

  After a few minutes, she w
iped her eyes and stared down at the drawer. It was filled with similar composition books. How far did they go back? While she couldn’t bear to read them now, Annabel pulled them out one by one to check dates and put them in order.

  Fourteen years. They went back to the year her mother died. Annabel looked over to the drawers on the other side of the desk and yanked open the bottom drawer on that side. More journals! She slammed the drawer shut. She couldn’t face any more than what she looked at right now.

  She pulled the one dated that summer she was seven from the top of the stack and it fell open to a date just a month after her mother’s death.

  Poppy disappears every day right after breakfast and she’s gone until dinner. I guess I should worry. I know you would, Em, but I can’t right now. I miss you so much and part of me is glad Poppy’s not around. Is that so terrible of me? Every time I look into her face, I see you…oh not in the coloring, that’s all my side of the family, but in the shape of her face, the lift of her brow and the expressions. She’s all you, and right now it’s so hard to look at her, knowing that she is the only reason I must go on.

  But I won’t let you down, Em. I promised I would stay to take care of her, and I will. Until I’m sure she can handle things on her own, I will be here for her just as I told you.

  She had always suspected it. Now it was in black and white. Had she not been here, her father would likely have killed himself years earlier…probably right after her mother’s death. Annabel shivered, but she couldn’t feel contempt for her father. She understood.

  It was very nearly what her mindset was following her accident. Cayden disappeared, and the doctors told her she was paralyzed. It was a very, very dark time. They gave her painkillers while the bruising and the fractures healed, and she was grateful for them. Her father and Taylor were there to offer her encouragement. How hard that must have been for her dad!

  “Poppy?” Taylor leaned in the doorway, his chest bare and his boxer shorts resting low on his hips. “It’s almost dawn. How long have you been down here?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t sleep, so I got up. Gosh, I guess it’s been hours. I started going through Daddy’s desk.”

  He walked closer, running his long fingers through his hair, so similar to hers in the way it bleached out. “What’s all this?” he asked in his morning voice, still roughened from hours of sleep.

  “Journals. Daddy kept them.” She looked up at Taylor. “These go back fourteen years.”

  His brows disappeared beneath the hair that hung over his forehead. “These? Does that mean there’s more?”

  Annabel pulled open the drawer on the opposite side and Taylor peeked inside. “Damn! How far do those go back?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t sorted through them. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed right now.”

  Taylor pushed the drawer shut. “Let’s get cleaned up and get some breakfast, and then I’ll help you with them.” He looked at his cousin’s pale face. “How you feeling?”

  She sighed. “I did too much yesterday, Taylor.”

  “Legs hurt?”

  She nodded.

  They knew each other so well. She knew he could see it in her face, what she would never ask. Taylor’s mouth thinned. “Let me massage them for you, Poppy, and help you with some exercises. You know you’ll start cramping otherwise.”

  She looked away from him, her chin tilted, but after a moment, she nodded. As he moved her legs for her, she stared up into his face.

  “Why are you so good to me?” she asked, truly puzzled by this cousin who didn’t seem to fit with the rest of his family.

  He smiled, not his normal fun-loving grin, this smile was gentle and sincere. “You’re the sister I wish I had.”

  “You’ve got Sydney.”

  Now he did grin. “Like I said—you’re the sister I wish I had.”

  “Come on. Sydney’s gotten better since she married what’s-his-name, the third.”

  “Thomas Remington Hensley, the third? Better known as Trip?”

  Annabel grinned. “And such an original nickname.”

  “Meow. You must be feeling better. Is the valium kicking in?”

  “My life as a drug addict,” Annabel murmured happily in a fog.

  ****

  Cayden crewed for a boat making a run up to Boothbay Harbor. He had learned to enjoy sailing over the last several years, though he still preferred to travel in the water rather than over it. Still the trip to Maine would be a break, and it would get him away from the temptation of Bell for at least the next week.

  At this point, he felt getting away was the best way to avoid running into Bell by accident. While he waited in Maine, he would fish and swim on his own terms. The guy he was crewing for didn’t give a flip what he did once they reached Maine. Then all he had to do was transform and show back up in time for the return trip. By then, there would be only a couple of days left before his seven years of banishment would be over. He could let Bell see him. And he could see his family.

  There had been no contact with his parents, his brother, or any Silkies for that matter, for the last seven years. He hoped they would show back up for his birthday. In fact, he sent up prayers every day for that to happen. It was almost as fervent a prayer as his desire to be with Bell once more. Almost.

  ****

  Annabel decided to leave the office for a while and tackle her father’s room first. It took them about three days to sort out the items she wanted to keep, but there were very few of those. Most of what she sorted went to charity, and a few things simply needed to be thrown out. When that part of the house was done, Taylor helped her back downstairs and fixed her a cold glass of lemonade.

  He popped the top on a beer and took a long pull on it.

  “You know we’ll have to celebrate your twenty-first birthday next week,” he told her, looking at her over the edge of the can.

  She laughed. “Hmm. If I don’t take my drugs, then I might actually be able to have a drink.”

  “It’s the law,” he assured her with a grin. “You have to have at least one drink when you turn twenty-one.”

  “Maybe a glass of wine.”

  “It’s a date.”

  He took her out for a drive along the island just so they could get some fresh air. He still had the Miata his father gave him when he was sixteen.

  “Now that you’re going to be an attorney, are you getting the big car to go with the big job?”

  “Not likely, Poppy. I like this old thing. It’s fun. Besides, you know what it’s like in the city; I never use a car. I can walk or grab a cab.”

  “You know, I used to really look forward to when I would turn sixteen. I used to dream about you teaching me to drive, or Daddy taking me out in the Volvo.”

  “You could still learn.”

  She shook her head. “No. It’s enough for me to be at a point where I can sail. And I have to thank you for that too. If you hadn’t convinced me…no forced me…to get back on a boat, I probably never would have.”

  They returned to her dad’s office early the following morning to continue cleaning it out. She had boxed the journals to keep and was going through the remains of what was in the second drawer when her hand hit something wedged in the back of the compartment. She pulled, but it wouldn’t come out.

  “Taylor?” she called to him. He was in the kitchen fixing them breakfast. “Can you give me a hand?”

  He showed up in the doorway, wiping his hands on a towel. “What’s up?”

  “There seems to be another journal, or something, wedged in the back of the drawer. I can’t get it out.”

  “No problem.” He flopped down on the floor at her feet and reached into the back. After twisting his hand around and manipulating the angle of the drawer, he finally came out with a simple composition book. “Ta da! All this for one little notebook.”

  He handed it to Annabel and she flipped idly through it. “Yeah, but this one’s a lot older. The rest of them started around th
e time I was born. The first date in this one goes back almost twenty-five years.”

  Taylor rolled his eyes. “Ancient history, then. Tell you what. While you read it, I’ll finish breakfast.”

  He hopped up with a grin and headed back to the kitchen. She stared after him. He would leave at the end of next week. That’s when Uncle George and Aunt Helen would arrive to open their house. She would be on her own then. While that didn’t really bother her, she had gotten used to having Taylor around, and she would miss him. He could always make her smile.

  Annabel opened the notebook and paged through it. Like the other journals written while her mother lived, these entries were not addressed to her mother. She began reading about a year into the journal.

  I’m going up this weekend to open Grandmother Taylor’s house on the sound. I couldn’t believe she left me the property in her will. What great good fortune! It will be the perfect place to write and get away from the city—not to mention a great place to raise kids. I’m seeing a wonderful girl—Emily Wainright.

  Wow! Annabel thought. The beginnings of her father’s relationship with her mother. She flipped a few more pages and read some more.

  As it turns out, Emily’s older sister, Helen Stokes, has a place not far from grandmother’s house. She’s going to give me a lift up there this weekend, as she was getting ready to open their house as well. She’s a lot different than Emily, but really a fun person to be around. I can’t say the same thing for her husband, George Stokes. Kind of a stick in the mud, but Helen seems happy with him and they already have a young daughter, Sydney.

  Annabel skipped a few pages, but noticed that her father’s handwriting seemed agitated in a series of entries, so she stopped and began reading again. This time her hands began to shake.

  No one expected the storm. It blew up out of nowhere. Helen and I were already here working on getting the house open when it struck. We were stranded without electricity. It was all supposed to be harmless fun. I got out a bottle of wine and some cheese and crackers…oh God! I can’t believe what I’ve done. I don’t think Helen can believe it either. We didn’t mean for it to happen. Things just kind of got out of hand, and the next thing I knew, we were in bed together. I won’t lie. It was a long night, and the sex was great, but Em’s SISTER? She would kill me if she ever found out .