by Jay Forman
Not surprisingly, Erica didn’t waste one second of her precious time asking about our well-being. Instead, she berated us for asking stupid questions about the name of a panda bear that she’d never seen, and for not yet knowing the name of the man in the video with Kayla.
We knew his name, but neither of us wanted to be the one to tell her that that name was Greg Horscroft.
Jack tried calling Kayla’s father, too, but his call went straight to voicemail.
“I’m right on this one, Jack,” I said as I carried our dinners into the living room and put the containers down on the low coffee table in front of the couch. “Jocelyn took that bear out of Kayla’s room and I’ve tried to lift him. There’s definitely more than just stuffing inside him.”
“It does seem odd.” He opened one of the containers. It had Greek Quinoa salad in it, with olives.
“How about Allamanda? Are you starting to believe me about that?” I opened the other salad container. No olives. “What did Marcy say about it?”
“She agrees with me. Everything’s above board. The accounting firm who prepared the documents and did an audit last month at Marcy’s request is very reputable. And after Art Chapman’s scam she really looked hard.”
“You’re all missing something! Jack, there is nothing on that island! And it’s going to be a nature preserve, not a luxury community with polo ponies and a golf course. You know most people don’t hand over what... what’s the cost of buying into Greg’s thing?”
“Three million for the lot and...,”
“What kind of idiot drops three million on something they’ve never seen?”
“That’s the way it works in finance. People buy stock in our mining company, but they never see the actual mines. They trust the documentation.”
“They can physically see your diamonds in every high end jewellery store in the world. There’s physical evidence that your company is real. You’ve got nothing but numbers on paper to say that Greg’s company is real. I’ve seen the real thing. Why won’t you believe me over your dollar signs?”
“Numbers don’t lie, people do.”
That stopped me cold. It was the second time he’d said that to me in less than twenty-four hours. Did he think I’d lied to him about something? “What about pictures? Do they lie?” I went into the kitchen and got my computer out of my backpack. “I can show you what’s at the south end of Allamanda, we anchored there and took the zodiac into the beach.” I scrolled through the photos I’d transferred from my camera to my cruise file. Unfortunately, I had to scroll through several pictures of Hunter. I’m not sure who cringed more when those flew by on the screen, Jack or me. Finally I found the ones from Allamanda that had reminded me of Angkor Wat. “There! See? Nothing but palm trees and sand.” Allamanda was a typically flat Bahamian island so it was easy to see that there wasn’t any construction equipment nearby.
“And you’re one hundred percent sure that you were at the south end?”
“You and numbers! Yes, I’m one hundred percent sure.” I scrolled through the rest of the photos from my visit to Allamanda, including several of the West Indian whistling ducks. There wasn’t a single man-made structure in any of the shots. I closed the computer screen when an all too familiar man started popping up in a few shots from the ship.
“Mind sending me some of those? I’d like to show them to Marcy.”
“Finally, you’re starting to believe me. What if Kayla found out about this? Or Ethan? It would give Greg a really good reason to want both of them permanently shut-up.”
“But he was in Texas when Kayla died.”
“No, Pam’s plane was in Texas. We don’t know for sure that Greg went with her. We’re just assuming that he did. Then there’s the sex video. Once I get a look inside that panda bear in Jocelyn’s room...,”
“We’re not involved in the investigation any more, Lee. Will made that perfectly clear.”
“He doesn’t know about the panda bear.”
“I’ll call him.”
“No you won’t! You promised Kayla’s father that you’d find out what happened to his daughter. You, Jack Hughes, have never gone back on a promise in your whole life.”
“I know, but Will...,”
“Will wants us to be careful, so we’ll be careful. I won’t eat anything there.”
“Or drink anything.”
At least he was starting to give in a bit. “I’ll get the panda, see what’s in it, we’ll talk to the security guard about who was at the school and when. Then we can go see Will.”
“Are you sure you didn’t have anything strange at lunch?”
“I ate the same thing as everyone else. The only strange thing was when Mem C got all uppity about the sugar. She took everybody’s sugar bowls away and brought back cubed sugar. It was bizarre! But the other teachers at the table told me some stories of other strange things she’s done in the dining hall.”
Jack chuckled. “I was there when there was a fork mix-up.”
“They told me about that. Honest, the sugar cube conundrum was the only strange thing that happened at lunch, and it’s highly unlikely that Mem C laced the sugar cubes.”
“You’re right. The last thing Mem C would ever do is something that could hurt Berkshire. She loves that place more than life itself. She’d be homeless if it weren’t for Berkshire. She’s harmless crazy, amusing crazy, but not killer crazy. And you’re no threat to Berkshire, you’re there to help solve a Berkshire problem.”
Then again, maybe I’d been right about her to begin with. What if she really did hate me? “Maybe we shouldn’t exclude her just yet.”
“Get serious! That doesn’t make any sense. She didn’t look at what was on that USB key, she didn’t know what Kayla was up to, and even if she had known she could have simply gone to Dr. Campbell and the whole thing would have been stopped and brushed under the rug. Erica would never have let it go public. Killing me wouldn’t help her in any way – I’m paying her salary for the school and I paid to have her apartment built. She’s living there rent free. And as for Ethan, what possible reason would she have had to hurt him? She adored him! And he was a big, buff teenager. She’s a ninety-year old woman. I can’t see her knocking him in to the water and hauling his kayak out, can you?”
“No.” He was making some good points.
“We should concentrate on seeing if there actually are any other videos and if you can find those videos in the bear.”
I liked the way he was talking – he wasn’t trying to talk me out of going back to Berkshire. “You know a lot of the other parents at Berkshire, who would be your first guesses to be on the other videos, if there are other videos?”
“My best guess? The men on the Board. Kayla knew them all; she met with us twice a month to give her boarder captain report. And Dick would be at the top of my list. He’s a pig.”
“Agreed. And Andre for sure. That man oozes sex appeal.”
“I noticed. I almost had to hand you a towel to mop up your drool when you met him.”
“I wasn’t that bad!”
“Yes, you were.”
“Nothing’s ever going to happen between me and Andre. He’s married and you know my number one rule – I don’t do married.” Jack flinched when I said that and it confused me. What had I said that was flinch worthy? “What?”
“Nothing.” He wouldn’t look at me.
“It’s something. What’s up?”
“It’s nothing.”
“What’s nothing?”
“I don’t want to get into this now.”
“I do and I don’t even know what ‘this’ is! Spit it out, Jack.”
“Some rules were made to be broken, right?”
I didn’t like the tone in his voice, and could feel my blood pressure shooting up again. “Are you accusing me of something? I have never, ever, had sex with a married man.”
“Don’t lie about it, Lee.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I was
angry, really, really angry. How dare he accuse me of lying to him?
“You know...,”
“I don’t know!” I screamed.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket, turned it sideways, brought something up on the wide screen and then handed me the phone without saying anything.
I didn’t know what I was looking at. There was a photograph of the sidewalk 3D shark mural in Pontiac, Illinois. Two little boys were pretending to ride the shark and their mother was standing on the drawing of the plank that looked as if it was hovering over the opening in the sidewalk. They were all laughing. A happy family unit. What did it have to do with me?
“Scroll down. Read the blog post.”
I scrolled up instead. My heart sank when I saw the header banner for the blog. A Dingo Ate My Passport. Hunter’s blog. So what? Maybe he’d taken a shot of a family who was there at the same time as he was? I scrolled down to read the post below the photograph. It took less than a paragraph for me to learn that the people in the photograph were Hunter’s wife and sons. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to cry. I wanted to have a hot shower. Many hot showers. So hot that they hurt. “I didn’t know. I swear.”
“How could you not know? You’ve been travelling with him for years!”
I threw Jack’s phone into his lap. “I didn’t know! We never talked about our home lives!”
“You seriously expect me to believe that.”
I stood up with a jerk. “I expect you to believe me! I have never lied to you, Jack. Never! And for you to just assume that I lied to you about this, I... I... I don’t even know what to say. How dare you think so little of me! You know me better than anyone.”
“Apparently, not.” His eyes had turned the same black icy cold that they’d shown when he was attacking Greg.
“The man I know, thought I knew, would never accuse me of lying to him!”
“The woman I know, the woman who claimed to live by a set of rules that I respected, has been blatantly breaking her number one rule for years. How do you expect me to react to that? And, in fact, you have lied to me before. About your parents living in Switzerland.”
“Get out of my house!” How dare he bring that up!
I wanted to run, but chose to walk calmly, slowly, into the kitchen to get my backpack and I kept that steady pace as I went upstairs. What was Jack’s line? If you stay in control of yourself, you stay in control of the situation. The only thing I still had control over was my body. I told my ears to ignore his pleas to come back and talk it through. There was nothing to talk about.
I sat on the edge of my bed and calmly typed a text message to Hunter.
You lying bastard. Your wife is beautiful. Did you think about her when you were fucking me? Don’t ever contact me again. Book yourself a one way ticket to hell. I hope you rot there and that your small dick falls off.
I was just about to push on Send, but couldn’t resist adding one more line.
You weren’t that good with it, anyway.
He really hadn’t been that good. Mediocre at best. I’d faked more than I actually felt. But I’d enjoyed the attention. The human contact.
Oh God. Everything was messed up. Jack would never look at me the same way again, might not even trust me again. And Auntie Em? If she found out she’d be so disappointed in me. And they’d both said, more than once, that I didn’t really know Hunter. What had Auntie Em just said recently – that I couldn’t know someone I only met up with for trysts? For hook-ups. She’d been right. They both had. And I was the stupid moron who hadn’t listened to the advice offered by the two people who did know me, the two people who cared more about me than any other people on the planet.
I pushed Send. I had more to say, but it wasn’t worth saying. I’d wasted too much energy on Hunter, he wasn’t going to get another second of my time.
I felt so dirty. So used. I could understand why Kayla would want to strike back and hurt someone after the way she’d been treated. But I was supposedly an adult. I had to be more mature, more measured.
Jack thought I was a liar.
I went into the bathroom and threw up. Then threw up for a second time after my painfully hot shower. I scrubbed too hard with the loofah and that inflamed the remaining hives on my body.
I wanted to go for a run to burn off some of my anger and humiliation, but I knew Jack was still downstairs. Waiting. Being calm. Being reasonable.
I threw up again. Then deleted the text messages that had come in from Hunter without reading them.
I curled up in my bed and saw Dad’s guitar leaning against the wall behind the chair by my closet. It only made me cry harder. I didn’t just cry myself to sleep; I cried myself to the point of exhaustion and passed out.
Chapter Sixteen
The first explosion of light in the sky shot me upright faster than a bullet leaving a gun. I felt the cannon booms of thunder roll through the house. Then I felt the wind. Waves of pelting rain were coming through the open window beside my bed. I crawled across the bed, but something was blocking my way. It was soft and squishy and big. Another flash of lightning lit up the room and I saw that the lump in my bed was Imbri. I threw him on the floor and made it to the other side of the bed just in time for a wet gust of wind to blast me in the face as I reached up to pull the window down. The cold water actually felt good. My eyes felt as if someone had sprinkled sand in them, but I knew that my own saltwater tears were the cause of the sting. My eyelids were super puffy, too. I was almost tempted to open the window again to let nature cool down my swelling. But it was too cold for that. I was too cold for that. I scrambled to get back under the duvet ... wait a minute. I’d fallen asleep on top of the duvet, but I’d woken up underneath it. And I’d left Imbri downstairs.
Jack.
Damn it, he’d been nice again.
He accused me of lying. That wasn’t nice.
I rolled over to see what time it was, but the clock on my bedside table wasn’t lit up. I reached up under the shade of the lamp beside it and pulled on the little chain. I heard the click of the switch but the light remained off. Great. We’d lost power.
Mother Nature flashed her spiked spotlight across the sky again and roared with thunder at the exact same time. The storm was right on top of us.
I wrapped the duvet around me and sat cross-legged in front of the window to watch the storm moving through.
Flash, bang, boom, walls of water moving across the lake like curtains.
A fork of lightning shot straight down onto the little island in the middle of our lake, and I was pretty sure I heard the pop of a tree exploding.
When had Jack come up to my room?
Why hadn’t I heard him clump-clumping up or down the stairs?
And he’d brought Imbri with him. That couldn’t have been easy if he’d been using his crutches.
He was nice. Very nice. He remembered the scientific name for the Hawksbill. He remembered that I didn’t like olives. He probably saved my life by getting Grace to throw him my EpiPen. He’d saved my life once before.
It hurt so much to think that he questioned my honesty ... but ... he wasn’t to blame for that. I was. He and Auntie Em had warned me, too many times, but I’d known better. I could handle myself.
Yeah, right.
I’d handled myself right into Hunter’s bed without getting to know him first.
My cellphone started to vibrate and went cha-ching. I crawled across the bed to get it.
You awake?
Yes.
That last strike was close.
I think it hit the island.
Then nothing. He obviously hadn’t left, even though I’d told him to. He’d stayed.
Why did I find him so confusing? He didn’t act the way every other man in my life did or had. He was rock solid. He didn’t lie. He didn’t run when things got complicated or unpleasant.
But. There was always a but. He was male. Sometimes the thought of letting myself lean on Jack was tempting. Very, very tempting.
But. I’d learned the hard way that if I let myself feel comfortable, safe, let myself lean without hesitation, the eventual crash down was too painful. And it always came. Sometimes sooner rather than later. I’d leaned on Dad for fifteen years. Not once in that time had he dropped me. He’d been rock solid after Mum left us. But then I found out what he’d been doing after tucking me in – sneaking out to rape and kill the pretty rich cottagers who shopped in our grocery store. I’d felt like Humpty Dumpty, my life shattered into a million pieces. Uncle Doug tried to glue me back together again, but even he had his secrets. Secrets he’d taken to his grave the night he deliberately drove into the river. And Steve? No, my brother didn’t deserve to be on the list. He’d never been there for me. Growing up, I’d known exactly where to look if I felt a knife in my back. Hunter? He wasn’t ever there for me. He was there for exotic hook-ups. Nothing more.
Jack. Even he had let me down. The one time I’d reached out for him, been willing to risk leaning on him, he’d run off to marry Lisa. If he’d just waited another hour he would have heard my answer.
If I’d just called an hour earlier he would have heard my answer.
Daylight savings time had messed up our timing. Messed up everything.
Us. It hadn’t been all his fault. I had to shoulder half of it, too. We messed it up.
It had hurt so badly. I didn’t want to hurt like that again. My motto had always been ‘if you don’t expect anything, you wouldn’t be disappointed’. But, without realising it, I had expected Jack to blindly trust me and I’d disappointed him. I could have asked Hunter more questions. I should have.
He hadn’t left, even though I’d tried to throw him out.
Auntie Em and Joni Mitchell were right. If Jack had left, if we cut ties permanently, only then would I truly appreciate what I’d had, what I’d lost. Just the thought of him being gone from my life forever...
I quickly typed another text.
