Persuasion (8 page)

“I’m sorry.” Eight caught her hand and helped her out. His arm slipped around her waist, circling her in warmth that felt good in spite of the scalding temperature of the mid-June morning. They passed a pair of old men with faded eyes and faded T-shirts stretched tightly over rounded bellies. Each man stood with one foot braced on the gangplank of a rust-dribbled cabin cruiser that stank of fish.

“Morning, Eight. Barrie.” One smiled while the other nodded.

“Morning,” Eight said, which Barrie echoed, even though she’d never seen the men before. Their curiosity followed her
as she passed, but it seemed no more avid or hostile than it had felt when she’d first arrived in town. Barrie really missed the cloaking fog and anonymity of San Francisco.

“What Emmett did has nothing to do with you,” Eight said, reading her with his uncanny accuracy. “You aren’t him.”

“He’s my grandfather as much as Cassie is Wyatt’s daughter—and actually, the Colesworths are my family, too. You should be afraid of my genes.” Barrie scowled down at the weathered boards of the floating dock peppered with seagull guano and occasional bleached fish bones as fine as needles. “Maybe you
should
go to California.”

“Are we really doing this again?” His face crinkled adorably into a question mark.

They climbed the stairs to Seven’s office, and the lavender-haired receptionist in an iron-gray suit rose from behind the
MS. CONLEY
sign on her desk to stop Eight from pushing through into the inner office. The way she put herself between him and the door, Barrie got the impression she would have defended it to her dying breath.

“He’s on the phone,” she said.

Eight’s expression darkened faster than Barrie had ever seen it. “We’re supposed to be in Charleston at eleven.”

“Half an hour.” Ms. Conley’s lips pursed in disapproval as Eight let out a groan. “He promised.”

“It’s always half an hour,” Eight said, “and he always
promises.” Turning to Barrie, he added, “We may as well sit down. If we’re both really good, maybe we can get a cookie while we wait. They’re amazing cookies.”

He winked at Ms. Conley, who hurried to her desk. “I didn’t think to bake any—it’s been so long since you or Kate had to wait after school. But I think I have a granola bar in here somewhere.”

Barrie had a sudden image of a little-boy Eight, with a cowlick and missing teeth, kicking his heels against the quiet chairs and white sofa with its don’t-touch-me vibe that made her want to break out her most violently brilliant pens and crayons.

“Let’s go wait at that bakery across the street,” she said, thinking of Mark’s chocolate-and-coffee-can-fix-anything-broken philosophy. “I don’t know about you, but I’m dying for chocolate.” Grabbing Eight’s wrist, she spun him away and shoved him out the door and across the street before he had a chance to argue.

She watched his reflection in the glass of the SeaCow Bakery as they approached, observing the gradual release of tension as he got farther from his father’s office and the ghosts of his childhood faded. The realization that there was a shadowy figure of a man reflected between them in the window, as if he were walking very close behind them, came so gradually that Barrie couldn’t say when he had appeared or whether he had been there all along.

She recognized him. The glossy dreadlocks snaking below the dark shoulders of his suit, the dark eyes as avid as a bird’s, his head slightly tilted as he watched her curiously.

Obadiah.

The name swam out of the mist in Barrie’s mind and dropped onto her tongue, but before she could turn or even say it, he was gone.

Wait. Who was gone?

She tripped on the sidewalk as she whipped around to look for something out of place, and she ground to a halt as Eight steadied her.

“You all right?” he asked, a hand gripping the top of each of her arms.

Blinking at him owlishly, she couldn’t find the words to explain, so she simply nodded and shoved open the bakery door still feeling disoriented.

Taking a deep breath of chocolate, coffee, and comfort, she paused at the edge of the room, feeling an odd sensation of having escaped from something she couldn’t remember. An immediate rustle of fabric brought a flush to her cheeks. Heads turned and whispers fell into an unnatural hush punctuated by the espresso machine’s hiss and gurgle. Everyone quickly looked away, as if embarrassed to be caught staring, except for a big man in a sand-colored T-shirt pulled tight across massive shoulders.

He sat alone, which surprised Barrie, because he looked like the sort of guy who usually had a girl on his arm, the kind who spent half the time in the gym and the other half watching himself in mirrors and store windows. He stared at her until she squirmed and threaded her fingers through Eight’s and towed him toward the counter.

The coffee menu was stenciled on an old-fashioned chalkboard overhead, and the huge selection of desserts was labeled on folded rainbow-colored index cards in front of each item. Eight leaned a hand on the counter and turned to Barrie. “What sounds good to you? Pretty much everything they bake here will make your toes curl.”

They both ordered, and by the time the server had plated their pastries and left to prepare their coffees, the smell and thought of chocolate made it impossible for Barrie to resist breaking off a small piece of the Mississippi Mud Brownie that looked big enough to serve six people. It turned decadently gooey in her mouth.

“Damn, that’s good,” she said.

The server handed the drinks to Eight and smiled at him. “Hey, I heard you might be going to school in Charleston. You going to play ball there?”

Barrie blinked at how fast the news had traveled, but Eight smiled affably enough. “Haven’t decided between Charleston and Columbia yet. I’m meeting with one of the
coaches tonight.” He slapped down a twenty, took their tray, and waited while the server gave him change.

At a booth halfway down a wall hung with hundreds of photographs, Mary stood and waved. After meeting them partway, she wrapped Barrie in a hug, then stepped back and laid both palms briefly on Barrie’s cheeks.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes, and that’s the truth.”

Dressed in a bright turquoise shirt and white slacks, Mary looked both worried and thinner, and a wave of impotence over the closing of the tearoom hit Barrie all over again.

“It’s good to see you, too. You doing okay?” she asked.

“I’m mad as hell, but there isn’t anythin’ I can do about it. I can’t figure people out. Imagine huntin’ for ghosts, when what folks ought to be doin’ is runnin’ away just as fast as they can. Let’s hope they all give up before much longer. Now, look at you!” She turned back to Eight. “What’d you feed the girl out there in California? Bean sprouts and lettuce?”

“She ordered a brownie and a pound of truffles to take home to Pru. She’ll be all right,” Eight said.

Glancing behind her to the table she had left, Mary waved to the pretty girl in a pink-and-brown SeaCow server’s apron who was there nursing a cup of coffee. “You haven’t met my granddaughter, have you? Come on over here, Daphne.”

Daphne grinned when she arrived, revealing a deep dimple in her left cheek and a front tooth that was badly
chipped. “I’m glad I get to meet you finally. I wasn’t sure when I would, with the tearoom closed and all this mess.”

Eight waited until they’d finished the introductions, then nodded at Daphne’s uniform. “I thought you only worked on weekends,” he said.

“Just picking up some extra hours.”

Mary squeezed Daphne’s shoulder. “Girl won a scholarship, and now she’s tryin’ to cover the rest on top of it. Always feels like she’s got to do all the heavy liftin’ by herself.”

“I wonder who I get that from?” Daphne smiled at Barrie and Eight, and both she and Mary excused themselves.

Barrie turned to follow Eight to the table. Across the aisle and two booths down, she found the same guy still staring at her over the rim of his cup. Reddening, she looked away.

“What’s Mary doing now that the tearoom is closed?” she asked as she slid in across from Eight. “Can she get another job? Pru and I could give her money.”

“She wouldn’t take money. As for work, there’s not a lot of that in a town this size, and the summer jobs are all taken. With three grandkids to care for, she can’t leave the island, so it’s a problem.”

“Three grandkids?” Ashamed she hadn’t known already, Barrie fiddled with her watch. “Where’s their mother?”

“A drug house somewhere, probably.” Eight shrugged, but his voice vibrated in a way that said he cared more than the
gesture suggested. “She’ll show up in a few years with a new baby for Mary to raise, promising to go straight. Then she’ll take off again a month after that. That’s how she usually does it.”

More shame settled into Barrie’s stomach. “Then we’ll open the tearoom back up. To hell with the ghost hunters.”

“And the second some idiot wanders into the woods and steps on a copperhead, you’re going to have a lawsuit. It’s too dangerous. Pru and Dad were right. People can’t go traipsing around unsupervised when you don’t know what they’re after. Look at that Obadiah guy.”

“I’m starting to hate being a Watson.”

Eight’s jaw softened, and his lips tipped upward. Not quite a smile, but close. “It’s not all bad. I know you’re worried about what Emmett did to Luke and Twila reflecting on you, but the Watsons have done a lot of good on this island over the years. That still means something. And you—you’re a hero as far as the people in this town are concerned. There have been rumors about Wyatt smuggling drugs, but no one suspected one of the big cartels could be involved. That’s over because of you. So don’t worry. No one is thinking less of you. Give people a chance and they’ll meet you halfway.”

“Careful. You might fool someone into thinking you
like
this place.”

Eight reached across the table to take her hands. “I never said there weren’t things here to like.”

Kitty-corner from them, the big, dark-haired man levered himself out of the booth. His eyes were still locked on Barrie beneath lowered brows, and he made a point of bumping their table in passing. She tried smiling at him, meeting him halfway, as Eight had said.

“Bitch,” he said loudly enough for the whole room to hear.

Barrie’s face flamed, and her eyes watered. For an instant that felt too long, the walls tunneled in, and her heart pounded too fast.

Eight jumped out of his chair, but she tightened her grip on his hands and refused to let go. “Sit back down,” she hissed. “We don’t want any more drama. Especially not here.”

His cheeks blotched with rage, Eight watched the man’s retreating back. Finally, he dropped into his seat and sat back so that Barrie had to release her hold. Their only contact was his legs against hers beneath the table, and she was grateful to have that much.

Eight leaned forward with his forearms on the table. “Ignore that guy. Don’t even worry about him. Ryder Colesworth is just the idiot who proves the rule. He used to work with Wyatt—they’re cousins. But he’s so crazy that even Wyatt wouldn’t have anything to do with him anymore. Nobody’s going to listen to anything Ryder says.”

“You know, I need an app on my phone to tell the Colesworths apart from everyone else. Or maybe they could
wear black hats so I’d be warned when I saw them coming. That would be helpful.”

Eight grinned as she’d intended, but he sobered quickly. After plucking the last bite of his maple bacon cupcake from the wrapper, he popped it into his mouth as he stood up. “Watson Island is no different from anyplace else,” he said. “There’s no such thing as a pure white hat or a pure black one. Everyone comes in different shades of gray. Give it all a little time. With Cassie in jail and Wyatt dead, maybe the feud will finally die down.”

Snatching the bag of truffles from the table, he headed toward the door. Barrie smiled at everyone, pretending not to notice the sympathetic and embarrassed glances on the faces she passed. Having lost her appetite, she tried to hand the rest of her brownie over to Eight as they exited the building, but he shook his head.

“Don’t make me throw out chocolate,” she said. “That’s sacrilege.”

“I’m full. And anyway, I like my desserts more layered and subtle. I think we’ve discussed this before. Someday, I’ll give you a rundown on my philosophy about cakes, women, and complexity.”

Despite her anxiety, Barrie’s blood gave a zing of pleasure at the look in his eyes, and she wanted to hug him for it. “Apparently, you like cookies, too.”

Eight looked both ways then crossed the street back toward Seven’s office. “Mostly I liked that Ms. Conley took the time to make them for us.”

“So I guess you and Kate spent a lot of time waiting for your dad,” Barrie said.

Eight’s expression darkened. “Pretty much every day after Mom died.” Instead of climbing the full length of the outside staircase that led to Seven’s office, he sat down on the fifth step up. “Dad used to promise he would drop us at home any minute, and then we’d wait, and wait, and wait. Looking back, I don’t think he wanted to go home to the memories.”

Thinking of families, looking across at the bakery, and smelling the chocolate brought an idea bubbling to the surface of Barrie’s mind. She braced her elbows on her knees and turned her head to look at Eight.

“Remember I told you how Mark and I used to re-create restaurant recipes?” she asked. “There was a place we went once that had a lottery where they picked random people to come when the restaurant was closed. They pushed all the tables together, and by the end of the meal, we felt like we’d been part of a family. At least, I imagine that’s what a big family feels like. It was the first time I had seen Mark hold a crowd. Sort of like Cassie. You know how she can make everyone in the room, in the building, disappear until she’s the only one you see? Like she blinds you to everyone else.”

“Except that Mark used his superpower for good,” Eight said. “I’m assuming.”

“Mark
was
good.”

Was.
The ugliest word in the English language.

Barrie could see the night in the restaurant as clearly as if she had painted it into her memory. A violinist and a cellist playing Bach, the click of cutlery, and the low moans of foodie pleasure, and then the wrong note—the waiter dropping a plate, spilling sticky cream into Mark’s lap and shattering the dish. Into the mortified frenzy of cleanup, the chef had brought out homemade hazelnut truffles and coffee, and Mark had laughed and said,
Dessert and laughter are better than glue. There’s not much broken that they can’t fix.