After the Storm (26 page)

She had been walking along the road towards Oak Ridge for about forty minutes before she heard and then saw a battered pick-up van drive by with two men and a dog sitting in the back. They had tools with them, farmworkers on their way to the fields. They called out to her but she wouldn’t ask them for a lift. Her high-heeled sandals were pinching badly and her feet were swollen and sore. She took them off and walked on barefoot even though the road surface was rough. She was suffering and felt she deserved every bit of it. How could she face Owen and what could she say? Even if she said the storm had meant she couldn’t get back to the cabin look at her filthy dress and grazed arms and her purse gone. How to explain all that? She thought back to her fight with Owen the evening before. She had felt she was entitled to a night of fun and, yes, she had wanted to get away from him for a few hours. She stood on a sharp pebble in her bare feet and cried out in pain, sat on the ground and saw the sole of her foot was bleeding. She put her thumb in her mouth and wet it with saliva and held it against the sore place. All kinds of men had come onto her over the years but she had never once betrayed Owen. What made her feel worse was that she had enjoyed the sex with Gideon Carter while it was happening. She remembered saying to him more, harder, more. He had pulled her on top of him like Owen used to do and had pinched her nipples. They felt sore now beneath her dress. She stood up and made herself walk on. She heard the sound of another vehicle, this time approaching from Oak Ridge, and as it came into view she saw it was a blue saloon car with large flashy chrome fins. It drove past her then slowed down and stopped. The driver got out. It was Teyo. He walked over to her grinning widely. His black hair was held back with a pair of sunglasses on the top of his head and his thick gold chain swung beneath his half opened shirt.

‘Hola pretty Kimberly. Can I give you a lift?’

‘But you were driving away from Oak Ridge,’ she said.

‘You need to get there?’

‘Yeah, our boat is there but…’

‘I can take you. It’s a short detour.’

She was still over three miles from Oak Ridge and her feet were so sore.

‘I don’t wanna put you out.’

‘It’s no trouble,’ he said.

‘Well um, I guess, if you’re sure, well that would be kind, thanks.’

He opened the passenger door for her with a flourish and as he walked round to get in the driver’s side she was thinking fast. Get him to drop her down by the boat, not at the cabins, she wouldn’t mention the cabins. He got in and looked over at her.

‘Where can I take you Kimberly?’

She hated the way he said her name, Kim-ber-ly, as if he was tasting her name, rolling it around in his mouth. She should have refused the lift. He must have noticed her stained dress and dirty feet and wondered where Owen was.

‘Our boat’s moored on the far side of the harbour. Can you drop me near there please.’

He made a three point turn in the road and started to drive back towards Oak Ridge.

‘You were at the big party last night?’

She needed to be careful. She knew that on Roatán everyone was connected to everyone else and there was always the bush telegraph humming around the island.

‘Yeah I was.’

‘And you just left?’

She resolved to say as little as possible, to give nothing away, so she merely nodded half smiling at him and put her hands in her lap and clasped them.

‘I heard they ordered two hundred bottles of champagne,’ he said.

She made no reply. Her temples were pulsing painfully. Every now and then he looked over at her as he drove along the road and his looking made her feel uneasy and ashamed. She in turn found herself looking at his hands on the steering wheel with a sick fascination. He had thick stubby fingers and the tops of his hands were scarred.

Doug sailed his boat back to his mooring at Oak Ridge and he and Rob exchanged email addresses and said they would keep in touch. Rob strode up the hill, looking forward to telling Anna about his wondrous dives on the pristine reef. Their cabin door was unlocked which surprised him. He went in and there was no sign of her. The beds were made and the kitchen was tidy. If she’d gone out for the day surely she would have locked up. He left his rucksack on the floor and went next door to Owen’s cabin. This door was locked and he could hear no voices or movement from within. He walked around the side of the cabin and looked through the slats of the bedroom window. He saw Anna lying stretched out on the double bed. She was still in her clothes, her long dark hair was spread out on the pillow, her arm was resting on Owen’s hip and he was asleep at her side. Rob stepped back from the window as if it had burned him. He went and sat on the doorstep and tried to calm the clamour of his jealous heart. He did not want to think badly of her. He had always loved that Anna was different to most of the women he met, he loved her uprightness, her lack of vanity, her straightness, if you like.

It was some time later when he steeled himself to tap on the cabin door. He waited, hearing movements behind the door and then Anna opened it. She looked half asleep.

‘Oh Rob, thank God you’re back.’

She went to hug him and he pulled back from her.

‘What are you doing here?’ he said in a hard voice.

‘Keep your voice down. Owen’s sleeping. He’s been very sick.’

‘Really?’

‘We’ll talk in our cabin.’

She turned and crept back into the bedroom. Owen was still asleep. He looked pale but less feverish. She picked up her shoes and closed the door gently behind her.

‘The crisis has passed,’ she said.

They were back in their cabin and Rob was standing with his arms crossed over his chest.

‘What crisis?’ he said.

‘Owen was very sick last night. He had febrile convulsions and was vomiting and then he started to cut himself.’

‘I don’t understand what you’re saying.’

She took a deep breath and tried to order her thoughts.

‘It all came out last night. His father flipped and stabbed his mum and his little sister and then killed himself. Slit his throat. Owen saw it all. Can you imagine?’

Rob sat down and tried to take it in.

‘His father?’

‘Yes his father. He went berserk. Owen was fourteen and his sister was younger. Killed her and Owen’s mum. Owen escaped. He was hiding under the bed.’

‘Christ!’

‘He has so much guilt Rob, that he did nothing to save them. He saw it all and he blames himself. So he’s been self-harming for years, cutting himself on his chest and stomach. He used Kimberly’s knife on his chest last night. It was horrible; so frightening and so sad.’

‘Where is Kim?’

‘She didn’t come back from the party and I couldn’t leave him.’

They sat in silence.

‘I’m exhausted,’ she said.

She did look done in and he felt guilty he had suspected her.

‘You best get some sleep.’

She undressed and he tucked her into bed and kissed her face before arranging the mosquito net over her bed frame.

‘Were
you
OK? We had an awful storm here last night and I was worried it might make you sick,’ she said.

‘It was rough but I wasn’t sick this time. And the reefs were miraculous Anna, quite miraculous.’

‘I’m so glad.’

But she didn’t look glad. She had a troubled look on her face. He closed the bedroom door and left her to sleep.

It was two hours later and Rob was sitting outside when he saw Owen emerge from his cabin. He was shocked at how ill Owen looked. He hadn’t dressed, was wearing a white T-shirt and boxer shorts and his feet were bare. He took unsteady steps over to Rob, who went and got him a seat from the kitchen.

‘I just woke up. Where’s Kim?’

‘She’s not come back yet.’

‘She should be back by now.’

‘Sit there I’ll make us some coffee.’

Rob came out with two mugs of coffee and they sat and drank it.

‘She may have gone back to the boat. We had words last night,’ Owen said.

‘I can go look for her in a bit.’

‘I’m coming with you.’

‘You don’t look up to it. Really. Anna said you were very sick last night. I can go down to the boat for you.’

As he sat there Rob wondered if he should make any reference to what Anna had told him. He was about to say something when he noticed that blood was seeping through the front of Owen’s white T-shirt.

‘You’re bleeding,’ he said.

Owen looked down.

‘Anna bandaged me up last night.’

He got to his feet.

‘I’ll get dressed and then we can go find Kimmie.’

Anna was still sleeping so before he left Rob wrote a note and left it in the kitchen. He felt reluctant to leave her and he locked the cabin door behind him. Owen had changed into another T-shirt and long shorts. They took the hill down to the shore slowly as Owen seemed to be in some pain. He scanned the beach and the sea. Through the hazy morning light they could see that his dinghy was on its mooring.

‘It’s still there, look. She can’t have gone to the boat,’ Owen said.

‘Is it worth rowing over anyway, to check?’

‘Yep, let’s do that.’

Rob rowed them out to the
El Tiempo Pasa
and Owen waited in the dinghy as he climbed aboard the boat. He pulled up the washboard and checked the saloon. There was the pile of sewing Kim had left on the berth, the new curtains she had made, but she wasn’t there. He slid the washboard back into place and shook his head at Owen and got back into the dinghy.

‘Could she have stayed over at the Carters’? There was a big storm last night.’

‘Maybe. I wanna check Oak Ridge first,’ Owen said.

As Owen and Rob walked through the streets and alleys of Oak Ridge they both sensed that something was up in the town. The shrimp and fish processing plant was shut, the gates chained. Small groups of workers were standing outside the gates talking and smoking. They fell silent as Owen and Rob passed them. Owen was walking with difficulty – he was obviously in pain.

‘Let’s stop for a coffee now. You look all done in,’ Rob said.

They found a bar, one of the rougher places where the fish plant workers went, and Owen sat down, wincing and put his hand up to his chest. Rob went to the counter and waited while the woman made them two coffees. There was a group of local men standing there talking in low voices. They stopped talking as he reached the counter and looked at him suspiciously. He recognised the atmosphere. Something bad had happened, something that had disturbed these men, and they were tough men. He carried the drinks back to Owen.

‘Something’s up,’ he said.

‘I know; there’s a bad atmosphere in here,’ Owen said.

Owen drank his coffee down in one gulp.

‘We should leave. I don’t like the mood in here.’

The door opened and Cesar the driver came into the café and looked around. Owen called his name and he approached their table slowly, reluctantly even.

‘What’s up Cesar? What’s happened?’ Owen said.

Cesar wiped his hand over his mouth and looked over at the men standing at the counter.

‘Sit with us. Come on. Let me get you a drink,’ Owen pressed him.

Cesar would not sit down at their table.

‘You haven’t heard have you,’ Cesar said.

‘Heard what?’

He leaned in towards them and said:

‘They found a woman’s body at the fish plant, a few hours ago; murdered.’

At Cesar’s words Owen leaped to his feet. His chair crashed onto the floor and he ran out of the café. Rob put money on the table and followed him. Owen was running towards the fish plant. He got to the gates and started to shake them violently. He was shouting at the top of his voice, howling for someone to come open them, but no-one came to the gates. The frantic effort of shaking the gates had made his chest start to bleed again. Rob saw a dark wet patch spreading across his T-shirt.

‘It can’t be her; it can’t be her,’ he kept saying as he rattled the gates.

‘It could be anyone. Don’t torment yourself,’ Rob said.

Owen’s face was waxy and he looked close to fainting. He slid down the wall and sat on the ground. Rob sat down next to him.

‘You’re sick Owen; you must go back to the cabin.’

‘Where is she?’

‘I’ll go up to the Carter villa now, make some enquiries there,’ Rob said.

‘I’m coming with you.’

‘No. She may come back to the cabin at any time. You need to be there.’

He wouldn’t listen. Rob helped him to his feet and they walked away from the fish plant. Some way along by the side of a small chapel Rob saw an alley and a yellow sign at its entrance saying Mini Cabs and Water Taxis This Way. They walked up the alley and found a small dark office which had no entrance, there was a window with chicken wire over it. Rob spoke through the grille.

‘We need to get to Port Royal as soon as possible.’

‘The boats are out. We can take you by road.’

‘OK.’

They got into the back of the car and it worried Rob that Owen was travelling with his wounds still seeping blood.

Anna slept deeply for several hours and when she woke up she lay in bed and went through the events of the night before. She got up and found Rob’s note in the kitchen and showered and dressed. Rob and Owen were still out so she decided she’d take the bus over to Coxen Hole. She remembered seeing an internet café there, the only one she’d seen on the island, and she had to find out more about what had happened to Owen all those years ago. She couldn’t stop thinking about it. She wrote on the bottom of Rob’s note telling him where she was going but not why, in case Owen got to see the note too.

It was eighteen miles on the bus and it was hot and crowded with local people again. The internet café she had spotted was near the post office. She paid the two-dollar fee and found herself a desk at the back of the room. She typed in Owen Adams and the location: Clearwater, Florida, USA. A number of news reports came up on her screen. She clicked on one, a Florida newspaper, and read that Jim Adams had served in the US Air Force for twenty-two years and his last posting was at an Air Force base in Tampa, Florida. In 1988 he was discharged on grounds of ill-health, suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. On 26 February 1989 he killed his wife and daughter by stabbing them repeatedly. His daughter Megan was seven years old. He then killed himself. His son Owen, who was fourteen years old, was in the house and alerted the police. There were photographs of Jim Adams and Owen’s mum Bronwyn and his little sister Megan. She found the picture of Megan Adams particularly heart-breaking. A bright little face looked out from the screen, a face which shared some of Owen’s features. Poor little tragic Megan, dead at seven. She remembered the words Owen had said to her while they were watching the baptism on the beach: