“No,” Cassie breathed.
“Then put the gun down and help me figure all this out.”
Opening her fingers, Cassie let the weapon fall. Slowly she sank to the ground and drew her knees to her chest, then rocked back and forth while Barrie held her.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
The police took Cassie aside to question her, and the paramedics came. Ambulances and ambulances, but none for Obadiah, who had vanished.
Barrie burrowed into Eight’s shoulder. He was as pale as bone beneath his tan, his eyes darkened to slashes of shadow she couldn’t read as he searched her face as if it were his turn to memorize her. “Christ, you scared the crap out of me again,” he said. “You have to stop this. My heart can’t take it.”
“I thought you were in Columbia,” Barrie said.
“I dropped everything to race back here when your aunt called to say you weren’t picking up your phone. I figured you were doing something stupidly brave or insanely stupid, and I was on my way to the tunnel when I heard the picks striking brick. For future reference, next time you see people with guns, try running away instead of running toward them.”
The police stayed for what seemed like hours, taking statements and photographs. The procedure felt too familiar. Except that the bodies leaving in ambulances were alive this time, alive and under police escort. Barrie hoped it would be a long time before Ryder and Junior went anywhere that didn’t involve armed guards and prison bars.
She sat on the grass leaning against Eight’s knees. Berg and Andrew Bey and a parade of archaeologists, police, various people from the university, and even someone from the coroner’s office milled around the excavation area, trying to assess the damage, and trying to confirm what Barrie had told them she’d deduced from Caroline’s journal. Seven alternately barked into his phone and hovered anxiously nearby. Now and again, he dropped a hand on Eight’s shoulder, as if he needed that connection to assure himself Eight was there.
Pru paced, but she barely took her eyes from Barrie. “How much longer do we have to stay?” she said to Seven after Barrie had given her statement and the police had come back several times with additional questions. “Barrie’s already given her statement. What more do they want?”
“They haven’t finished with Cassie yet,” Seven answered, stopping with his hands in his pockets so that he looked eerily like Eight.
“They’re not going to arrest her, are they?” Barrie swiveled to look back at her cousin. “That lawyer of hers was crappy at the hearing. Maybe you should help her.”
A sharp denial formed on Seven’s lips, but he bit it off and shook his head. “I don’t think they’ll arrest her, under the circumstances,” he said cautiously. “You and Eight both explained Cassie didn’t shoot until they went for their guns.”
Standing with Dr. Ainsley, the doctor who had stitched up Barrie’s shoulder, a policewoman, and Mrs. Colesworth on the other side of the excavation area, Cassie looked shaken and bewildered, devoid of her usual bravado. Cassie’s mother’s car still stood on the grass with the driver’s door open and the dashboard lights glowing as if she’d left the keys in the ignition. She looked stunned and unsure what to do for Cassie, or what to do with herself. Cross-legged on the hood of the car, Sydney sat with her elbows on her knees and her chin cupped in her palms, watching everything with quiet but avid interest.
“Someone ought to go talk to Sydney,” Barrie said.
She started to get up, but Pru firmly pushed her back down. “Oh no, you don’t. You stay right here,” Pru said. “I’m not sure how anyone is going to explain all this to that poor child, but leave it to her mama and Cassie to do it.”
From beside the excavation site, Berg and the archaeologists went to meet another dusty Prius approaching down the drive. Each of them veered around a nearby stretch of grass seemingly without reason, walking around it as if they weren’t even aware they were detouring around. It was the same place Obadiah had been lying before he had disappeared, and Barrie leaned forward, staring hard at the spot, as if staring would let her see what the others couldn’t. She had before.
But if Obadiah was still there, he was hiding himself from her now as well as from the archaeologists and police. Maybe he wasn’t there at all.
Dr. Feldman, the head archaeologist, levered himself out from behind the wheel of the Prius. He listened to Andrew and Berg talking while he reached in the backseat for a large square plastic case. He handed the case to Berg, and they all walked over to the police and stood in a huddle, talking rapidly. Two plainclothes police led the way back toward the excavation site.
“Watch that spot over there when they go past it,” Barrie whispered to Eight, pointing to the apparently empty stretch of grass. “Tell me what you see.”
“I don’t see anything.”
“Just watch.”
Dr. Feldman, the police, and the others all walked around the same area again.
Eight sat forward. “You think Obadiah’s sitting over there being invisible again?”
“Maybe he was too hurt to go anywhere, so all he could do was make it look like he disappeared. He could be there sucking up enough energy to make himself strong again. It would make sense, wouldn’t it?”
Dr. Feldman reached the dig. The police, Berg, and Andrew all pointed out various things, talking over each other. He gestured for Berg to give him the case, and then he flipped it open, extracted something that looked like a flexible flashlight mounted to a computer screen, and flipped a switch. Two LED lights flared up brightly. Kneeling beside the exposed brick of the roof, Dr. Feldman fed the lighted end of the scope into the narrow chip that Junior had managed to make with the pickax. Everyone else gathered around, peering over his shoulder at the screen.
“What is that? Some kind of camera?” Barrie asked, looking back at Eight.
“Apparently.”
An excited murmur rippled through the archaeologists, and several pointed at the screen, talking at once. Then something happened. They all drew back, exchanged puzzled looks, and leaned in closer. Dr. Feldman slapped the side of the screen, and flipped the switch on, then off again.
“I think Elijah and Ayita broke their camera,” Barrie whispered to Eight. “But why did they let Ryder and Junior dig in the first place?”
“Maybe they were too weak in daylight? Or they’d used up their strength pitching that fit this morning? Who knows,” Eight said.
Berg stepped away from the other archaeologists. He looked first toward Cassie, who wasn’t paying any attention, before he crossed to Barrie instead. Worry—or Obadiah—seemed to have aged him five years since that morning. “There’s good news and bad news.”
“Did they see any details before the camera died?” Barrie asked.
His face sharpened. “How did you know it died?”
“Call it a lucky guess.” Barrie shrugged halfheartedly. “What’s the good news?”
“We caught a glimpse of a skeleton. And stacks of boxes that could be just about anything. Exactly what you told us we would find.”
Andrew Bey, looking equally pale and hollow-eyed, stepped up beside Berg and ran a hand through his hair, managing to look both sheepish and elated. “I wish I had made the time to read Caroline’s journal more carefully,” he said. “Because Cassie insisted we start the dig so quickly, I had too little preparation. I only took the time to really study the entries around the night of the fire, and I skimmed the rest. I should have considered that children will often write about events without understanding the significance of what they’ve seen. And I didn’t take into consideration that it might have taken Caroline years to finally write about that night.”
Barrie’s gaze slipped back to Cassie, who had waited four years to speak about her pain. Ironically, she was comforting her mother while Marie Colesworth cried. But maybe needing to care for someone else would help Cassie come out of herself.
Barrie thought of her own mother, and all that Lula had been through. All the things L
ula had never talked about. Pru had said Barrie needed to read Lula’s letters, but Barrie had been so fixated on finding answers to the questions she needed answered herself that she hadn’t been ready. She hadn’t had the courage. Watching Cassie, she was starting to understand that courage took many different paths.
“You think she’s all right?” Berg asked.
Barrie rubbed her thumb across Mark’s watch. “You tell me. How long does it take for someone to become ‘all right’?” She thought of her own memories of the night of the explosion, the suddenness that could make her see everything as if she was right there in the moment. And she was all right. Relatively all right. What she had been through was nothing compared to what Cassie had been through, or the things that Berg must have seen in Afghanistan, or what Lula had suffered because of Cassie’s father. What the Union soldiers had done and what the slaves had suffered. How could human beings continue to do so many inhumane things to each other?
Hands clasped behind his back, Berg dropped into his quiet stance, deceptively relaxed. “There’s no easy answer for that. Everyone is different,” he said. “The important thing is that she’s talking and getting help. Or at least, I hope she’ll get help.”
“She will.” Barrie stood up and dusted off her shorts. Eight stood up with her. “What are they going to do about the room? About Charlotte?”
“We can’t risk breaking through from the top with the skeleton down there. We’ll get a bigger crew and excavate around the room until we find a way inside. Since we can’t be certain whether the Union gold is down there or not, we’ll have a guard on-site,” Berg said.
Barrie exchanged a look with Eight, but she wasn’t ready to bring up the ghosts and the curse, not with Andrew standing there. First, she needed to know if Obadiah was still alive.
“Could you take an extra volunteer to help dig?” she asked. “I want to be there. For Charlotte.”
For Charlotte and her mother and father. For Caroline and Daphne.
“Make it two volunteers.” Eight waited until Andrew and Berg had gone back to the huddled group of archaeologists, then laced his fingers through Barrie’s and pulled her up the marble steps and off behind one of the broken columns of the old mansion, out of sight of everyone.
“What?” Barrie said, her eyes stinging because she was afraid she already knew.
“Several things. First, if we’re going to have any kind of a relationship, Bear, I need you to stop deciding things for yourself and then charging off without me. A relationship is about two people deciding. You should have talked to me about volunteering.” He threw a dark glance back to where the archaeologists eddied around the bare spot at the excavation area. “It doesn’t look like things are going to be any safer here.”
“That’s why we have to come back. We have to find a way to break the curse. We’re going to need to find Obadiah to figure that out.”
“You’re assuming he’s alive—or even willing to help.” Eight pushed a hand through his hair, as if he was doing that because he wanted to do something else—like shake her. “I mean it about you not deciding things on your own, Bear. I can’t do that anymore. You have to talk to me.”
“Like you talked to me before you sent the email turning down your scholarship?”
“That’s not the same. I knew you wanted me to stay here,” Eight said, but then he rocked back on his heels and shook his head. “No, you’re right. It is kind of the same. I’m not even going to try to argue.”
“That’ll be new.” Barrie found herself smiling, even though she hadn’t expected to want to smile for a good long time. “What else did you want to tell me? You said you had several things.”
“There was that one thing,” Eight said, stepping closer, “and then there was this.”
He cupped her face, his callused fingers both rough and gentle against her skin as he bent to kiss her. They came together like thirst and water, like dark and light. Eight’s thumb traced the shape of Barrie’s face, the curve of her cheek. Then he groaned and dropped his arms around her waist to pull her closer. Barrie felt found, the way only Eight ever made her feel found.
At that moment, the gifts didn’t matter. There was only skin, and breath, and touch. For that moment, in that moment, they were each enough.
Enough. The word echoed through Barrie’s heart, leaving a wake of emptiness.
Were they enough? She stiffened, and Eight pulled back to look at her.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
“I thought we were done with the secrets,” he said, pulling away.
And wasn’t that the problem? Secrets were never done. Secrets left their barbs burrowed deep within people, within relationships, quietly doing more damage with every passing day. What kind of a chance would she and Eight ever have with secrets between them? Without honesty?
Without trust.
Because that was what it all came down to. Love was mutual. It was give-and-take, and laugh and cry. Love was about sharing, not persuading. Didn’t they have enough examples right in front of them about how that went wrong in so many different ways? How was Seven’s use of withholding money so that Eight would choose the college Seven wanted that much better than the threat of force the Union captain had used against Daphne? They were different levels of awfulness motivated by different reasons, but a threat was a threat. By the same token, if there was any chance Eight’s gift was making him want Barrie, or even contributing to it, then wasn’t that only a milder version of what Ryder had done to Cassie? Persuasion and coercion came in varying degrees.
“What is it, Bear?” Eight watched her steadily. “What are you thinking?”
She couldn’t face him while she spoke. “There’s something I haven’t told you. Something your father didn’t want you to know, and he asked me not to say anything, either.” She took a deep breath. “It isn’t only the Watsons who are bound to the land. The Beauforts are bound to Beaufort Hall. You’ll be bound to it after your father dies, if we don’t break your gift.”
Eight’s face closed, his eyes darkening and the pupils receding as if to underscore the distance that had reared between them.
“That’s why you were trying to help Obadiah? Because I was going to be bound?”
“That, and he threatened to take the Watson gift away. He said he knew the Watson lodestone was buried near the Scalping Tree.”
“Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“He told me not to! And your father begged me not to tell. Mostly, I couldn’t bring myself to say anything because I didn’t want to hurt you. Your father keeping it from you, making decisions for you. I didn’t want to have to be the one to tell you he’d done that.”
“So you made decisions for me instead.” Eight’s voice was so quiet, Barrie scarcely heard him. “You made decisions for both of us, because you couldn’t trust me and you couldn’t trust yourself.” He shook his head in disgust. “How long have you known?”
Barrie caught one of his hands, willing him to, begging him to, try to understand. “Since the night we came back from San Francisco. He wants you to have the choices he feels like he never had. He wants you to go and live while you can.”
“That’s not any kind of a choice worth having.”
“I didn’t say I agreed with him!”
“But you kept it from me. That speaks loudly enough.” Eight’s shoulders dropped an inch and curled in on themselves, and he took a step away, pulling his hand from hers. “You had opportunities, Bear. Every time you told me you would change, that you would trust me, you were lying by omission.” He swallowed, blinking rapidly, as if trying to see Barrie clearly. Or maybe he was trying not to cry.
Barrie couldn’t stand it, knowing that she had done exactly what she’d been trying so hard not to do.
Before she could think what to say, Eight rubbed his finger across his lip and briefly closed his eyes. “You and my dad both think I’m not
smart enough to make decisions for myself,” he said. “How could I not have seen that? Dad trying to tell me what to do with my life. Pushing me to be a lawyer. You starting the restaurant to give me something to do.” His head jerked up and his brows lowered. “I even thought it was cute when you called me ‘baseball guy.’ I thought you were teasing, but what you’re really saying each time is that I’m just a poor, dumb jock.”
He walked away.
“Eight, wait! Please. That’s not what I meant at all. God, I’m sorry. You know I only called you that because I don’t like baseball. You’re far smarter than I am. You’re the one who always thinks problems through, while I jump into them without looking.” Barrie ran after him, but he started running, too, and halfway to the trees she realized she wasn’t going to catch him.
He didn’t turn around, and he didn’t slow down, and even if he had, she had no idea what to say or what to promise that she hadn’t already said or promised him before. Her knees threatened to buckle, as if her body were too heavy for them.
She’d tried so hard, and yet she’d still managed to get it wrong.
Eight dropped back to a walk as he reached the woods, hurrying farther and farther away, growing further and further from her.
This was why she hadn’t told him, because she had known this pain was coming. Not her pain; that didn’t matter. He was the one who was hurting, and she didn’t know how to reach him.
She was going to, though. She had to. She had so many things to fix.
She had barely had the thought when three black feathers drifted from the sky and floated to the grass. They rocked gently a few times, then stilled and sank into the ground. The air above her was empty, but when she looked behind her, the tops of the broken mansion columns were filled with ravens. None of them appeared to have moved, and none was positioned right to have lost the feathers.
“Obadiah?” she asked. “Is that you?”
There was no answer, but her gift gave an insistent pulse, a reminder of more unfinished business.
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