Blood Kin

by Judith E. French

  If only her mother had confided in someone . . . if she’d gone to her aunt or told her secret to a friend, Bailey mused. But, as Emma would say, “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”

  If she was to learn anything about the final hours of Beth’s life, there was only one place to start. Carrying both books, Bailey retraced her path down the beach and took the overgrown lane that led to her uncle Will’s house. She’d gone no more than a few hundred feet into the woods when a rustling of brush brought her to a halt.

  Heart thudding, Bailey watched as the boughs of a cedar parted and a doe stepped daintily onto the path. The graceful animal stared at her with huge eyes and, when Bailey didn’t move, uttered a small grunt. Seconds later a spotted fawn leaped out of the tall ferns. The mother nuzzled the little one and then moved away into the trees on the far side of the lane. The fawn made two stiff-legged hops and darted after her.

  A small bubble of joy rose in Bailey’s chest, and she hurried forward to where the deer had crossed. A single hoofprint, hardly larger than her thumb, was pressed into the damp soil. For the space of a dozen heartbeats she stood there, wondering if she’d stumbled into paradise or a community so rife with secrets that it was rotten to the core.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Daniel stood at the corner of the house and watched as Bailey entered the woods. She was a lot tougher emotionally than he’d expected, and he had to admit that, despite his determination to avoid her, she’d gotten under his skin. His intuition told him that she was in no physical danger from Will, and whatever the two had to settle between them was personal. He didn’t have the right to interfere, but if things went bad and he’d been mistaken in his assessment of Will’s character, he might be forced to help pick up the pieces.

  He was unstrapping his tool belt when his satellite cell phone, one of the few toys he’d retained from government service, rang. He was annoyed but not surprised when he recognized Lucas’s voice on the other end.

  “Daniel.”

  The tone was far too old-comrade-in-arms hearty. He’d worked with Lucas twice and didn’t particularly like or trust him. “What can I do for you, buddy?”

  “Just wondering how you were making out in the wilds of Treasure Island.” Lucas chuckled, a dry laugh that never came off as genuine. “Had a few drinks at Madigan’s the other night with some of the boys from the office, and your name came up. Not much action on Tawes, is there? I heard they roll up the sidewalks at night.”

  He glanced around to be certain that he was alone, and that Bailey hadn’t returned. “What do you want?”

  “Daniel, Daniel, is that any way to talk to—”

  “There’s nothing you could tell me that I want to hear.”

  “What do you know about the senator’s accident?”

  “Marshall died of a shotgun blast to the chest, presumed accidental. I found the body in the marsh weeks later, but I’m sure you’re already aware of that. Otherwise, no more than what I read in the papers.”

  “Right.” This time the amusement in Lucas’s voice was real.

  “I’m a civilian.”

  “And I’m the next candidate for pope.”

  “Your point?” The silence drew out between them, and a faint static that shouldn’t have been there told Daniel that someone was recording the call.

  “We need to talk.”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  Lucas gave a time and place. “I’ve got to catch a flight to Prague. Don’t be late.”

  “Wouldn’t think of it.” If Lucas was telling him Prague, his destination was more likely Australia or Tokyo. One thing he wasn’t was sloppy.

  “Same old Daniel.”

  “No, not the same old Daniel. And this had better be worth my time, or—”

  “Making threats?”

  “Just a promise.”

  The call was terminated. Daniel gripped the phone and swore softly, wondering when it would be over. If ever . . .

  As Bailey neared Will’s house, the three dogs ran down the path toward her, barking wildly. She forced herself to pretend that she didn’t see them and kept walking until she reached the clearing, where she discovered her great-uncle splitting wood.

  Will tossed two sections of a log into a pile, turned, and scowled at her. “Don’t you ever give up?”

  “No.”

  “The trouble with you is, you’re too damned much like your mother.” He picked up his tools and leaned them against a pile of neatly stacked wood.

  The dogs circled her as she approached him.

  “There’s no way I can discourage you?”

  She shook her head. “I’m afraid not.”

  Something close to a smile passed over her uncle’s chiseled face. “Then I suppose you’d best come inside and have some coffee.” He waved the dogs back. “Go on now; you’re worse than kids. She doesn’t like you, and she doesn’t have any bones in her pockets.”

  She followed Will to the porch, beginning to think that his bark was worse than his bite. He opened the wide door and stepped back to let her go in first. A combination kitchen and living area opened on the right. A comfortable couch and several easy chairs, all obviously dog-friendly, were arranged around an elaborate cast-iron woodstove raised on a brick foundation. Although the stove was not in use at this time of year, kindling and wood were stacked neatly beside it.

  The galley kitchen area was neat, the wide maple flooring free of dog hair and dust, although rope chews, several balls, and a ragged stuffed toy duck littered the rug. A partially painted carving of a bird of prey stood on newspapers on the table.

  The cathedral ceiling over the main living area made for large expanses of white walls. These spaces were hung with wildlife paintings and photographs, a Navaho rug, and a faded patchwork quilt. Books lay on the tables, on the floor, on the chairs, and over-flowed the shelves of a floor-to-ceiling bookcase. Bailey had expected the house to smell like dog, and it did, a little, but most of all, it smelled of wood shavings, pine oil, and fresh coffee.

  Will waved her to a chair at the table and rummaged in a cupboard for an oversize cup. “Cream? I warn you, it’s goat’s milk. I don’t keep a cow—too much work.”

  She sat and laid the photo album and the sketchbook beside her. “Black is fine.” She inspected the carving on the table. Apparently her uncle was in the process of painting the wing feathers on one side of the piece. The head and shoulders of the life-size hawk were completed, and so real that she expected the eyes to blink. “Is it an osprey?” she asked.

  “That’s right.” He nodded in approval. “There’s honey on the table. I don’t keep white sugar in the house. Any man who eats white sugar every day will be chewing with false teeth by the time he’s sixty.” He poured two cups of steaming coffee and carried them to the table. “This is good. Comes from Central America, and it’s shade-grown. No pesticides, so it doesn’t harm the birds.”

  She looked at him in surprise. Hadn’t Daniel said that Will was a hunter and trapper?“Where do you buy it?”

  “I have it all shipped in. Coffee’s my weakness. I’ve cut back to no more than six or seven cups a day, but . . .” He shrugged. “A man has to have at least one addiction or he starts to think of himself as a martyr.”

  She glanced back at the osprey, amazed by the intricate detail of the legs and claws. “This is fantastic.”

  “Should be, for the price I charge.”

  “How long have you been doing work of this caliber?”

  “Since prison.” He took a seat across from her, blew on his coffee, and took a drink. “Not this good, of course. But it’s where I began to take my art seriously. I took a class in sculpture, clay. They didn’t trust us with knives and chisels, but the concept is the same.”

  They talked about the carving and what kind of brushes Will liked to use, her first impression of the island, and Bailey’s fourth graders before she summoned the nerve to mention the photo album and the sketchbook.

  “Is this
what you were looking for that day I met you in your sister’s house?” she asked.

  Will reached across the table, picked up the book, and reverently turned a few of the pages. His Adam’s apple bobbed, and he averted his eyes. “This meant the world to her, but . . .” His voice cracked, and he had to clear his throat to go on. “I’ll show you.” He rose and motioned for her to follow.

  Leaving the books on the table, she did, moving out of the two-story living area and passing the foot of a staircase before entering another room. Here, the walls were covered with yet more photographs of ducks and marsh birds. Over a desk hung a charcoal drawing of a woman on horseback. The picture was simple but moving. The shape of the horse’s head and neck, the flawlessly proportioned legs, and the muscles of the animal’s hindquarters were a perfect foil for the graceful lines of the spirited rider.

  “Is this your work too?” Bailey asked.

  “Beth did it for me as a birthday gift. It’s Elizabeth and Dandy,” he answered quietly. “Beth was only thirteen.”

  “She must have been very talented.”

  “She was.” His eyes narrowed. “Are you brave or foolish to come into the fox’s den, knowing that I could be a pervert or a madman?”

  “Probably foolish,” she admitted. “I’m not particularly courageous.”

  “That’s what I wanted out of Elizabeth’s house.” He stared at the drawing. “It was mine, and my sister took it there for safekeeping while I was in prison. Never did give it back, and I was too proud to ask for it.”

  “You didn’t speak to Elizabeth for years? It’s what . . . what I heard.”

  Will scoffed. “From who? Emma?”

  “No.”

  “Daniel then. He talks too much for his own good.”

  “But it’s true?” Bailey asked. “Was it over Beth?”

  “You cut right to the heart of things, don’t you, girl? I need more coffee if you’re going to open that nest of hornets.”

  They returned to the kitchen. Will poured them each another cup, and he removed a pie from the refrigerator with only one missing slice. “Have you got nerve enough to try my baking? Blueberry.”

  “You bake?” she asked.

  “Bread, biscuits. This is one of those pie shells you can buy in the dairy section of the supermarket. I picked the blueberries myself last summer.”

  “And you froze them?”

  “Sure didn’t can them. My name’s not Emma.”

  Bailey found herself laughing. “She’s a marvel, isn’t she? I don’t think there’s much she can’t do. She puts me to shame in the kitchen.”

  Will frowned. “You’ve fallen under that one’s spell too, have you?”

  Bailey accepted a slice of the pie and a fork. “I like her. She’s been wonderful to me since I’ve been on Tawes.”

  He poured them each more coffee and came back to the table with the two mugs and his serving of blueberry pie. “You know, Elizabeth never thought that I’d taken advantage of Beth, not in a foul way. She knew me better than that. But she knew I had a temper, and she knew how much store I put on the family honor.”

  “She thought you beat Beth when you found out she was having a baby?”

  He nodded. “Went to her grave believing it, I suppose. She never had a child of her own, and she loved Beth with all the passion of a lonely woman. When Beth showed up at her house in that thunderstorm, her face smashed, one wrist broken, bruised and bleeding, Elizabeth thought she’d run from me. I don’t know what she would have done if I hadn’t come looking for Beth. By the time I got there, Bethie was bleeding worse and already in hard labor.”

  “With me.” Bailey laid the fork down, her bite of pie untouched.

  “With you. Later we found out that you’d come early, probably because of what had happened to her. She was just a little bit of a thing, like you, and too young to be a mother. Maybe the beating killed her, and maybe it was just bad luck that everything went wrong with the delivery and she lost so much blood.”

  “I don’t understand. How could she have been so far along in the pregnancy without you noticing? Without someone—”

  “Hell if I know,” Will snapped. “You think I haven’t asked myself that a thousand times?” He lowered his head and cupped his face with his hands. “I was stupid, I guess. I’d seen that she was putting on weight, but she wore loose clothes. It was cold weather, and when you were born, you didn’t weigh as much as a five-pound sack of sugar.”

  Bailey leaned forward in her chair. “You didn’t do it, did you?”

  Her uncle straightened and looked directly into her eyes. “On all I hold sacred, girl, I never hurt her. Damnation, I only spanked her once in her whole life, and that was when I caught her and Grace Widdowson throwing stones at a blind mule.”

  He shook his head. “I never could abide cruelty to an animal, a woman, or a child, and I wouldn’t tolerate that meanness in Beth.”

  Bailey pushed the photo album toward him. “Daniel found this in a trunk in Elizabeth’s attic.”

  “That was hers. Elizabeth was always big on taking pictures. She had a talent for painting, but she always did oils of flowers. I never could get her to try seascapes or houses.”

  “All the snapshots are of Beth. I’d like to have the album, if it’s all right with you, but I’d be glad to make copies for you.”

  Will tapped his head with one finger. “I’ve got her here, in my mind, from the first time I laid eyes on her until the last. I don’t need photos of my Bethie.”

  She took a deep breath. “I can understand why you’d hold me responsible for her death, but—”

  “You? Damn, girl, I thought you had better sense than that.”

  “I’ve got a name,” she flared. “Bailey. I’m Bailey.”

  Will snorted. “You’ve got the Tawes temper; I’ll give you that. And I know your name well enough. I gave it to you minutes after you were born. Elizabeth thought you wouldn’t survive the night, so she sprinkled well water on your head, and I came up with the name. My grandmother on my mother’s side was a Bailey, Mildred Bailey. She was always a favorite of mine.” Mischief sparked in his eyes. “I’d hardly be doing you any favor if I’d named you Mildred, would I?”

  “So I’m named for my great-grandmother?”

  “Your great-great-grandmother. It’s a family tradition with us.”

  “You really didn’t do anything to cause Beth’s death, did you?”

  “It’s what I told Elizabeth, and she didn’t believe me. It’s what I told the judge and jury, and you know how that went. Not much sense in repeating it, is there?”

  “But if you didn’t,” Bailey said, “then who did?”

  Will’s hand tightened into a fist, and the eyes that had been full of amusement only a moment before became cold. “I’d give my right arm to know the answer to that riddle,” he said softly.

  Bailey suppressed a shiver. Suddenly, for the first time, she glimpsed the man whom the islanders feared. “It’s been a long time,” she offered. “Whoever it was may have moved away, or he could even be dead.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. But if I ever find him, he’ll wish he were.”

  She pushed the remainder of the pie away. “Thank you for telling me,” she said. “It means a lot. I know we’re strangers . . . but you’re the only real relative I have, other than my father. He’s living in California, and I hardly ever see him.”

  “He was good to you?”

  “Yes, he was a good father. He and my mother gave me a home, an education. I never lacked for anything.” Anything but affection, she thought. “I loved them both, and I had a lot of respect for them as parents and as educators.”

  Will nodded. “That’s as it should be. I always hoped you were with good people. None of what happened was your fault. I always figured Elizabeth would keep you, raise you as her own. But she thought it was better for you to be away from all this.”

  “But in the end, she brought me back here. When she left me the bequest,
she must have known that I’d—”

  “Blood is blood. And that’s something that can’t be changed by laws or courts or papers. You’re Beth’s girl, and no matter who fathered you, you’re as much a Tawes as she was. And I know she’d be proud of that.”

  Bailey stood. “I’ve kept you from your work long enough. I’d better—”

  “No.” Will pointed toward the chair. “You sit. You wanted the truth, and I’ve given it to you. And so long as we’re digging old turnips, there’s more you need to know.”

  Bailey sank down in the chair again. What more could he possibly tell her? Surely . . .

  “I want to share a secret I’ve carried since before Beth was born. There’s nobody else alive who knows, and I think it’s your right to be told. Beth wasn’t my niece, like everybody thought. She was my daughter.”

  Bailey stared at him in disbelief. “What?”

  “I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. I had a brother, Owen, who was more what my mother and father expected in a son than I was. Owen and I rarely saw eye-to-eye, but for what’s it worth, I loved him. The trouble was, we both cared for Anne.”

  “Beth’s mother?”

  He nodded. “My head was full of drawing and whittling. I would work thirty hours on a carving without stopping to eat or sleep, but I didn’t give a tinker’s damn for planting corn or hauling in oysters for market.”

  Will got up and walked to a window and looked out. And it seemed to Bailey that he was seeing not what was so much as what had been.

  “I had it bad for Anne, and she was as wild as I was. I would have married her when I found out that she was in the family way, but she wouldn’t have me.” He pressed the palm of his hand against the windowsill. “She knew how Owen felt about her, and she went to him and told him straight out about the baby.”