Sins of the Father (2 page)

Right?

How can I find out without drawing attention
to the fact that once again, I lied to Johnny when he asked me a
direct question?

Had Andy Gillette said anything else to
me?

No, Johnny. He didn’t tell me anything.

Not more than the fact that this would not
be the first time I’d been sold. And then he threw that name out
there,
Martha Henderson
. He knew full well that if I had
investigated to my usual thorough standard, that it would point me
to the missing Conall baby immediately. If I had missed the boat,
it would’ve driven me nuts trying to find a way to learn who she
was.

I could get a DNA sample. It should be
simple enough. Maya Winslow is the closest thing to a best
girlfriend that I’ve ever had. She’s the chief medical examiner in
Bay County. It would be a small favor to ask. I might not even have
to offer an explanation.

Crevan was in and out of my house almost as
much as Johnny was. Offer him a drink. Swab the rim of the glass
for DNA. Easy.

If it were true… large and new can of worms
would burst open.

Crevan’s father, in my opinion, is insane.
Think Jim Jones without the poison Kool-Aid. David Koresh without
the compound going up in flames. Nathan Bedford Forrest with all
the racism. No, scratch that. Aidan Conall is worse than a racist.
He is a xenophobic jerk. Any parent who could turn his back on a
child based on sexual orientation has more than a screw loose. At
least that’s my view on the matter.

Speaking of fathers, Wendell Eriksson would
probably be the most direct path to the truth. Irony was a father
who lied, cheated, murdered and stole be the preferable gene pool.
Wendell, the only father I’ve ever known, knows I killed Rick. He
guided Johnny to the quickest, most effective path of protecting me
from ever being a credible suspect. The added bonus was that Dad’s
plan also took down the east coast branch of the Marcos family.

All roads lead back to Darkwater Bay. Does
my father have a history here too? Would he tell me if I asked? Or
was he telling me the truth when his plan aimed to end my
relationship with Johnny and send me scurrying off into a new
hiding place, far away from this city and the secrets that infected
me like cancerous tentacles?

My indecision is pretty clear.

The flip side of this coin is to merely
follow Dad’s advice. Plan B the whole mess, evaporate into the
night and never look back.

Nothing in life is ever that simple. On the
contrary.

Johnny Orion, my new husband, is also the
rather boastful father of the unplanned child growing in my womb. I
felt something strongly about this, before I was abducted and
shackled on a ship bound for some country where slavery isn’t quite
the human rights taboo it is in the United States.

I felt fear and uncertainty. Johnny helped
me see the new life differently. A tiny spark of hope blossomed in
my heart. I never felt anything like it before.

Resignation to my fate on
The Celeste
extinguished it. A child born into slavery, what kind of life would
he have? Probably not any better than a child born to an
incarcerated mother. If there is any justice in the world, that’s
where I’ll finally land.

Until then, I’ve got the plan to run away
from this life.

Problem is, something is keeping me here. I
don’t know if it’s Johnny or the baby or my damned need for facts.
Why probably doesn’t even matter.

Strong legs appeared in my field of vision
where I lay curled on the side of the bed. I stared off at nothing,
completely still, mimicking sleep without closing my eyes.

“Helen, what’s wrong?” Johnny asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

He placed a tray of soda crackers and a
glass of ginger ale on the nightstand. “You haven’t said more than
half a dozen words since you came home last night. I think we
should listen to that psychiatrist. You really need to talk to
somebody about what happened to you.”

The educated woman inside agreed
wholeheartedly. I wasn’t feeling quite so amenable. If there is any
part of me that still lives, it’s the stubborn part, the one
committed to doing things her own way, regardless of the
consequences.

Instead of answering Johnny’s plea that I
seek help, I closed my eyes and rolled to the middle of the bed and
ignored him.

Chapter 2

Time heals all wounds. Isn’t that how the
saying goes? Three days have passed since I left the hospital. I’m
getting better. When I close my eyes, there is nothing. No dreams,
no hauntings from faces of the deceased. It’s blissful blackness.
Yet this is not an improvement.

Perhaps it was a symptom of the ambivalence
I feel. Should I run? Should I stay? Will this mystery of who I
really am drive me insane, or do I even care about the truth this
time?

Johnny thinks I’m depressed or suffering
from post traumatic stress. I overheard him talking to Dr.
Schwartz, the man who told me I’m pregnant, earlier. Johnny asked
if I should start taking Prozac again. Not a good idea for a
pregnant woman.

I know Dr. Schwartz suggested counseling
based on Johnny’s reply.

“I already asked her to talk to someone.”
Brief pause. “She didn’t respond either way.”

Of all my internal debates, one matter has
been settled. If I don’t snap out of this funk, at least for
Johnny’s benefit, I won’t have any options. He’ll haul me back to
the hospital and insist that they commit me for treatment
again.

It isn’t that I don’t want to respond to
him. I simply feel nothing right now.

He snuggled behind me in our bed, rather
tentative at first. I recognized his touch subconsciously, the warm
hand at my waist that drifted down over my hip before it smoothed
back up for a gentle squeeze. His breath cascaded over my right
shoulder, slow and heavy. Johnny is worried. If I could feel
something, it would be guilt. He doesn’t deserve this. He’s never
deserved where my decisions have taken me, taken us, really. I
didn’t insist that he join me on the wild ride, though.

His hand left my side, swept hair away from
my neck. Johnny’s lips pressed beneath my ear. “Helen, I love you
so much. Tell me what to do to bring you back to me.”

Of course, he believed I was sleeping
soundly, that his words didn’t penetrate my skull. My awareness
dragged tension bone deep. It radiated around me.

“Did I wake you?”

“Mmm, not sure,” I mumbled. “What’s
wrong?”

“Nothing,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to
disturb you. It seemed like you were resting this time.”

Opposed to the tossing and turning I’d done
since coming home and refusing to leave the bed when he tried to
lure me back to the land of the living. I pushed the instinct to
withdraw from him into the pit of my stomach and rolled onto my
back. Our eyes met in the dim light that flickered from the
fireplace across the room.

“Johnny, I know you’re worried. Please
don’t. I just need a little bit of time to process everything that
happened. I was chained to a wall for days without food or water. I
killed two men to try to save myself before realizing that I was
still just as trapped as I was when they were alive.”

Agony filled his eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

Fingers skimmed over his weary face. “It
wasn’t your fault, Johnny. It wasn’t even my fault. This time.” I
forced a tiny smile.

His concern deepened. “Why would you think
it was your fault?”

“You know. My tendency to run off and finish
things alone.” Yes, it’s as much a part of me as anything. Maybe
that’s all that I’m sure is left of Helen Eriksson. Habit.

“I wish you’d talk to me, Helen.”

“I thought I was.”

“You know what I mean. Those days, alone on
that ship while you were trapped, what you must’ve thought. I hope
you knew that no matter what, I was coming for you. I would have
never stopped searching.”

Yeah, I did know it. That was part of the
problem. My lips rolled inward.

“Helen, please talk to me. Don’t shut me
out. I can’t stand the thought that a stupid fight has put this
wall between us. I was wrong. I can admit it now. I knew when it
was happening, but it hurt me, you know?”

Ah yes, our infamous wedding day fight over
what my love of a male friend really meant. Johnny is a jealous
man, and to be honest, I never discouraged my friend Devlin
Mackenzie’s crush. But loving a friend is different from… well
whatever I felt when I could still feel anything.

Ordinarily, his plea for understanding
would’ve melted my guts. Tonight, my eyes were dry. My mouth mute.
The brain understood that a response was necessary. I nodded.

“I hope you knew.”

“Yeah,” I pushed the word out. “I didn’t
really believe that our spat would’ve stopped you from looking for
me.”

“I love you,” he said.

Nod. “I know.”

Johnny pressed a tentative kiss along the
corner of my mouth. “This isn’t how I imagined our marriage
beginning.”

“It’s not too late to change your mind,” I
said. “It’s still just a piece of paper, Johnny. We haven’t…”

We hadn’t made the marriage legal in the
physical sense. Biblical, he’d probably call it.

“Is that what you think, that I want our
marriage annulled?”

My eyes flitted away from the intensity of
his stare. “If this isn’t how you imagined it, maybe it means
something, Johnny.”

“No.
No!
That’s not what I want.”

“All right.”

“Is that what you want?”

“No, Johnny.” Another lie. It would be
easier to figure out what to do without him by my side every moment
of the day. I could vanish if that’s what I needed to do.

“Helen, do you still love me?” His thumb and
index finger anchored my chin and forced me to acknowledge him and
his question.

“Yes,” I said. “Of course I do.”

“You haven’t said it since before this
happened.”

“Haven’t I?”

He let go of me. “You don’t anymore, do you?
You blame me for what happened –”

“Johnny, no. Am I feeling a hundred percent?
Not exactly. I told you, I’m trying to process all of this. You
weren’t here for the other times that I’ve been through similar…
trauma.”

“No, because you pushed me away, and I
allowed it.”

“Allowed it?”

“I’m your husband, Helen. You’re
supposed
to need me. Lean on me. Let me help you through
this. Can’t you see how much I want to –”

“Yes,” I said.

“Then why do you keep running away from me?
Why can’t you tell me you love me? Why won’t you tell me what
you’re thinking? I know you so well. In all this time, I’ve never
felt so… cut off from you. Not even when you avoided me for two
months after you were shot.”

I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled
him against me. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to make this better. I
don’t know what to say to make you stop worrying. I will be fine,
Johnny. I need time. Can’t you trust me, just this one time?”

“I trust you completely.” Urgent words
flooded my ear. “I want you to trust me enough to let me in, baby.
Even against your better judgment. I know you’re plagued with
thoughts. I can hear them churning in your brain.
Talk
to
me. Maybe it won’t be so bad if you talk about what really happened
out there.”

He handed me a perfect opportunity. I nodded
against his shoulder.

“Yeah?”

“I already told you everything related to
Gutierrez and Gillette.” Not quite everything but close enough.
“But Raul was terrified of me. They didn’t even come in and
retrieve Gillette’s body after I killed him. It happened shortly
after we left Darkwater Bay, at least I think it did.”

“That you had the opportunity to kill
him?”

I nodded. “I was in that cargo hold for
days, Johnny. Sick. Using a corpse to relieve the weight of my body
being held up by chains.”

“Honey,” he said and pressed a kiss to my
temple.

“I wanted to die. I started thinking about
what they planned to do to me. I hoped I didn’t survive, I prayed
that our baby wouldn’t survive, because I would rather that he die
than be born into slavery.”

The tension built in his shoulders. I knew
it would be difficult for him to hear certain things, but giving
voice to those thoughts, the ones that weren’t riddled with
confessions of what Gillette hinted at would silence Johnny. He’d
believe that I suffered in emotional pain, worried for our
child.

“When you showed up, I couldn’t believe you
were real. I thought I was hallucinating, that maybe some kind of
delusion had made me imagine that I’d killed my captors.”

“I know,” he said softly. “You called me
Gillette. Begged me to kill you.”

“Johnny, I wasn’t sure when I was finally
lucid. I didn’t know if it was really a hospital or…”

His lips pressed my flesh and didn’t move
away.

“You can’t imagine what that feels like.
I’ve always… my mind, my ability to reason.”

“I know.”

“I kept thinking maybe I lost it, you know?
Maybe I’ve snapped. Maybe none of this is real. I could still be on
The Celeste
, or worse, another ship you couldn’t find or
even identify.” That part was absolute truth. I shuddered with
lingering fear that maybe I was still trapped, simply living a
fantasy in my head.

“You are safe. You’re home, Helen, in our
bed, in my arms. I will never let anyone hurt you again.”

“Johnny you can’t make that promise.”

“Yes, I really can. If it means that I
literally become the ball and chain type of husband –”

“Please don’t do that. I want you to have a
life, your career. We can’t live in fear because I’ve had a little
bit of bad luck.”