Heartbroken (36 page)

“You’re lying.”

It was all Emily could think to say. The sinking, empty feeling threatened to swallow her whole. There had been so many crushing disappointments in her life already. But to lose this—she didn’t even know who she was without this. Without her memories of Joe and this magical place, there was nothing golden, only ash.

“Anyway, the money was enough for your mother,” said Birdie. She played with a heart locket she wore around her neck, moving the clasp between her fingers. “We never heard from her again. So, I suppose, in that way, it was worth it. It spared me further humiliation.”

He doesn’t want us, Emily
, Martha had told her.
He doesn’t want you
. Emily had carried this with her, the idea that her father hadn’t wanted her. It had taken on a shape and a form inside her, a kind of ragged hollow, a valley she had spent her whole life trying to fill. That was why she’d come to Heart Island, for him. She had thought he’d be here to save her from the awful things she’d done.

“Why did you come here?” Birdie asked, reading her mind. “What did you think would happen? That you’d be taken into the fold?”

“I didn’t think anything,” Emily said. She sounded weak and foolish. She was in the principal’s office after cutting, or facing off against the woman whose ring she’d stolen, or trying to explain to her
soon-to-be-former boss why she was snooping around the office. She was in the wrong again, trying to make herself understood. There were reasons, good reasons, why she did the things she had done. Or so it seemed in the doing. In the aftermath, under the microscope of judgment, those reasons always seemed so flimsy, so
wrong
.

Emily stood quickly and saw Birdie lean away from her, a startled look of uncertainty flashing across her face. Emily realized that Birdie was frightened, wasn’t sure what the younger woman might be capable of doing. That thought frightened Emily.

On the table, Emily saw a flare gun. It was big and thick and looked like a toy. It was out of Birdie’s reach where she was sitting. Emily found herself diving for it. The older woman stood and backed away, moving toward the kitchen.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” said Emily. She looked down at the flare gun in her hand. “I never wanted that.”

“It’s far too late to be making assurances,” said Birdie.

Emily heard something outside, a loud crack, different from the thunder they’d been hearing, something loud enough to be heard over the wind and the rain. The sound sent a shock of fear through Emily. What had he done?

She was running then, away from the frightened stare of that horrible woman and her lies. She was out in the rain, which poured down on her in great sheets. She slipped, her right foot shooting out from underneath her on the slick rock. She came down so hard that it knocked the wind from her. As she lay there, breathless, a form moved out of the rain.

“What did you do to her?” she yelled. “What have you done now?”

He bent down and yanked her up roughly. She let out a wail of pain and anger, started to struggle against his hands on her. It took her a second to realize that it wasn’t Dean. It was Brad.

In his face, she saw everything ugly and awful in her life. It was almost a relief when he put his hands to the back of her head and
started pulling her toward the house. She couldn’t fight him; her pounding fists and kicking legs felt like they were hitting the thick trunk of a tree, rooted and immovable.

“Who’s in the house?” he said into her ear.

“No one,” she yelled. “There’s no one here.”

“Bullshit.”

His grip was tight around her hair, and the crown of her head was screaming with pain. It felt like her hair was going to come out by the roots. Still, she pushed back against him, digging her heels into the ground. Finally, he knocked her down, and the ground rose hard, pushing the wind from her chest, leaving her gasping.

He dropped his weight on top of her. “You know where that safe is,” he said, his voice a deep, threatening rumble. His knees were resting heavily on the crooks of her arms.

She let out an enraged scream:
“Get off of me.”

“Just tell me where the goddamn safe is, Emily.” He sounded tired, his breath coming in ragged bursts. “What do you care about these people?”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll show you.” It was a lie. She didn’t know anything about the safe. There it was again, that horrible, ugly smile of his.

“I knew what you were the minute I saw you.”

The words drained the energy from her, and she felt herself go limp. She’d been fighting all her life, swimming against the current that wanted to take her to a place of despair and disappointment. She’d been so sure she could find something better. But no. Here she was, on the island she’d always held in her imagination as a kind of heaven, and it was worse than any nightmare she’d ever had. She’d brought destruction here. She’d wreaked havoc.

It was then, in the moment when she was about to surrender, that the idea of the child inside of her became more than an abstraction. There was a voice calling out to her, and it offered something
she was sure she’d lost: hope. In hope, she found an unexpected reserve of strength.

He grabbed her hard by the hair again and yanked her up so hard that she heard her neck crack. “You better not be fucking with me,” he said. “Or I’m going to burn this place to the ground.”

Summoning all of her will, she issued a guttural moan and began thrashing. She was going to fight him—and everything he thought he saw in her.

chapter twenty-nine

S
ean had called his mother, who’d rushed right over to stay with Brendan. Now he was racing up the highway. The road was lightly traveled, bathed in amber light. He was just over the speed limit, reminding himself that this was probably nothing—a teenage girl afraid in the night.

Even at seventy-five miles an hour, weaving past the stray car on the highway at four in the morning, he felt like he was wading through tar, time and distance expanding to confound him. The last call from Roger had said that he was on his way to the marina, that he’d call when he knew something. Sean fought the urge to call again. Instead, he called his father-in-law. “Call Joe,” he told the voice dialer.

“Calling Joe,” it responded. For once, it actually worked.

The phone rang, and the car sped. The landscape was a dark blur studded by streetlamps. It was hypnotic.

“Joe Burke.” The old guy always sounded like he was at the ready, and Sean felt a familiar internal cringe at the sound of his voice—like the recruit in front of the drill sergeant, the employee in front of the big boss, the student before the teacher. Sean had never felt this way with his own father or anyone else. He didn’t owe anything to Joe: He didn’t take his money; hell, he didn’t even let Joe pick up the dinner bill. And still.

“It’s Sean.” There was a pause when he considered adding
your son-in-law
.

But then, “What’s wrong?”

Sean ran the situation down for Joe, listened to the other man breathing on the line.

“Did you call the police?” asked Joe when Sean was done. He didn’t sound the least bit concerned; maybe he sounded a little annoyed.

“I did,” said Sean. “I’m on my way up there now.”

“Don’t overreact,” said Joe. It was his way, Sean knew, to be cool, level, to assess and analyze before acting. But Sean felt himself bristling at the implication that he was overreacting. “Have you tried to reach Birdie?”

“I’ve been trying to call since last night,” said Sean.

“Why did you not go up with them?” asked Joe.

“I had a showing,” Sean said. The words practically stuck in his throat. It sounded so stupid and lame—because it was. Why did he not just go with them? Why did they not wait for Sean? What was it about that stupid fucking island and Kate’s awful parents that had them all jumping through hoops all the time? Whatever the reason, it was the last time they would. “I had to work, Joe.”

He heard Joe give a sniff that to Sean was the very sound of disdain. As if Joe ever did anything but work, as if he hadn’t always put that before everything. He just didn’t think anyone else’s work was as important as his.

Sean was in no mood. “Why did
you
leave?” he asked. He was surprised at the anger in his own voice. “You were supposed to be there.”

It could have been any number of “important reasons”—a golf game, a massage, or a “business lunch.” Joe had been semi-retired for years but still managed to act like he had no end of critical things to do.

“The place was closing in on me,” said Joe. “It’s oppressive to be there alone with Birdie.”

Sean didn’t say anything; he couldn’t. In over ten years, those
might have been the only real and honest words his father-in-law had ever said—not some rambling story designed to show off something about himself, some vague pleasantry or adage, some declarative about the weather. Maybe that was what happened when you woke someone in the night. He didn’t have time to put on his mask.

“Okay,” said Sean, for lack of anything better to say.

“So,” said Joe. Sean heard the rustling of bedcovers. “You called the police. And they’re sending someone out?”

“I spoke to Roger Murphy. He was going to take a boat over there.”

“And you’re on your way, so that’s covered,” Joe said. “Call me when you get there.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going back to bed, son. Let me know if there’s something to worry about. Not much I can do now.”

He heard Joe hang up the phone. After a moment of stunned silence, Sean started to laugh. He wondered, not for the first time, where Kate had come from, how she had turned out the way she had. It was a miracle.

“Call Kate.”

“Calling Kate.”

“Hi, it’s me.” She sounded strong and clear, and he felt a blessed rush of relief. Then, “I can’t talk right now. Leave a message.”

He fought back the crushing disappointment. “Hey, it’s me,” he said. He ran a hand through his short dark hair, which felt stiff and a mess. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t go with you. I’m sorry I didn’t make you stay and wait. I’m on my way. I don’t know if there’s really something going on there, or if Chelsea was just freaking out for nothing. But I’m coming. Brendan’s at home with my mother. Even if I get there and this is all some crazy misunderstanding, you guys are coming home with me. Because you
know what? We need a break from your parents and from Heart Island. We really need a break. Okay?”

He felt exhausted and overwrought and a little silly. Maybe Joe was right, maybe he was overreacting. He had to believe that it was better than underreacting. He didn’t want to be the guy who under-reacted when people he loved might need him. “And Kate, I love you. I love you so much.”

The silence on the other line crackled. He pressed the button on the steering wheel that ended the call. It was under two hours to the Blackbear marina. He inched his foot down on the gas.

K
ate approached the main house along the path. Though the rain had lessened a bit, she could hear the water slapping against the rocks. Across the channel, Cross Island was dark. It was a ten-minute swim in calm water. One might shout from island to island. But it seemed liked another planet, unreachably distant.

After she watched the girls head away from the house, an odd stillness had settled over her. It was very clear what she needed to do. She needed to get the gun, get her mother, and get all of them off the island, even if that meant taking the boat out in a storm.

The open water had always been a problem for Kate. She was comfortable in a pool, a safe and predictable small body of water. But the wide expanse of a sea or the lake, with its incalculable volumes, its deep mysteries, caused a rising tide of panic within Kate. As a child, she’d refused to swim at Heart Island, was white-knuckled on the necessary boat rides (and often seasick), absolutely rejected the kayak. Kate remembered Birdie raging at her refusal to jump off the dock and swim with the family. Once, in a fit, Birdie pushed her.
You can swim, Katherine
, she shrieked. Kate remembered how the dark water seemed to engulf her, to pull her down. Her panic caused her to take in water, her mind growing blank with fear. It was her father
who dove in after her, lifted her onto the dock, and held her while she threw up lake water and bile. Her mother stood by, arms crossed, the ugliest twist of anger and disapproval on her face. How Kate hated Birdie in that moment.

“You can swim, Katherine,” Birdie had said. She walked up to stand before Kate and Joe. “You know you can.”

“Shut up, Birdie,” said Joe. Kate buried her head in his chest. She thought,
If not for him, she would have let me drown
.

“You would rather she gave in to her fears?” said Birdie. She sounded indignant, as if she had been wronged. “We face the things that frighten us, Kate. Or they swallow us whole.”

Kate could hear the gulls calling, the generator humming in the distance.

“Are you trying to prove to everyone what a monster you are?” Joe asked.

“This is ridiculous,” said Birdie. She marched off in that way she had, stomping her big feet, her whole body and aura stiff like an exclamation point. She called back, “
I’m
a monster because I don’t want my daughter to be a sniveling invalid standing on the shore of life.”

Joe raised Kate to standing, wrapped her in a towel, and led her back up to the house. How old had she been then? Maybe ten.

“What happened?” he asked her.

“She pushed me,” said Kate.

“I know,” he said. “But why didn’t you swim back?”

Kate couldn’t answer him. She didn’t know why. The water had seemed so black, so dense. It seemed to want to pull her down into its depths.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I was scared.”

“Are you sure you’re not doing this just to spite her?” he asked. But his tone was gentle. “Maybe you didn’t swim because you knew how badly she wanted you to.”

“No,” she said. “I was
scared
.” She’d been adamant. But even then hadn’t she wondered if, on some deep level, maybe it was true?