The Islanders (7 page)

ZOEY DIDN'T GET AWAY FROM
the restaurant till after ten o'clock, her apron stuffed with forty-two dollars in quarters, singles, and the occasional five-dollar bill. Her feet hurt from running and her back from hoisting heavy trays.

The night air was like a slap of cold water on her face. Getting away from the smell of food and beer and people's cigarettes to breathe the fresh, salt air revived her. The thought of heading straight home to sit in her room or watch TV downstairs with Benjamin held no great attraction. Neither did the idea of going over to Nina and Claire's house. The last thing she wanted was to face a cross-examination by Claire.

Instead she stayed on Dock Street as it curved along Town Beach, enjoying an unusually clear sky filled with stars. It was the sort of sky you saw in winter, when the sky got so clear and cold that it seemed like nothing lay between earth and empty space.

She reached the end of Dock, where it merged into Leeward.
She'd expected to head over to Jake's house, just a hundred feet away, a blaze of lights amid the pines. Instead she turned right, following the dark road that led to the breakwater.

There was a sign at the head of the sandy patch that connected the road to the breakwater, stating that no one was to be there after dark. The town had put up the sign after some tourist kids had been swept away by high surf and badly battered before they could be rescued. Naturally, no resident of the island paid the slightest attention. Unlike tourists, residents knew better than to parade around the breakwater when a freak summer storm was sending fifteen-foot waves crashing over it.

To the right, the bay was placid within the shelter of the breakwater. To the left, the sea kept up its relentless attack, churning and surging. Every so often it sent explosions of spray up into the air, carrying on the breeze as a salty dew that condensed on Zoey's warm skin.

It was one of Zoey's favorite places, a walk that never failed to affect her, at once deeply calming and exciting. The slowly flashing green light at the breakwater's tip glowed like a firefly. Across the harbor, she could see light spilling from the restaurant she had just left. Up on the ridge she could pick out the lights from Aisha's inn. And across the four miles of water, Weymouth.

But for Zoey, the better view was always the view north,
straight out into a profound darkness unnaffected by man-made lights, indifferent even to the stars and the moon.

She neared the end of the breakwater before she saw him sitting on the wall, his legs hanging over the side, seemingly oblivious to the crash of waves at his feet. A fountain of spray erupted, drenching him in a salt shower. He tilted back his head and smoothed his hand over his hair.

Zoey stepped back, hoping to walk away before he noticed her.

“Too late, Zoey,” Lucas said. “I've watched you all the way from your folks' restaurant.”

“I was just heading over to Jake's house,” Zoey said, pointing, as if that would help convince him.

Lucas brought up his legs and stood, shaking his head to throw off a new dousing of water. “I saw you hesitate down at the crossroad. You like it out here? I do. It's one of the places I kept thinking about while I was away. I kept thinking of a night just like this, and the smell of the sea.”

Zoey nodded. “It is nice out here.”

“You have no idea,” he said softly. “You've never had it taken away from you.”

“I guess you're right.” She paused, gazed back over her shoulder at the lights of Jake's house. “Well, I have to go.”

He fixed her with his gaze, curious, confused. Then he
smiled a faint half-smile. “Oh. You're scared of me, aren't you?”

“No, I'm not. I mean, you and I used to be friends. You know, neighbors, anyway.”

“I used to bring my mom's sweet rolls down and hang out with you and Ben and your mom for breakfast. Your dad would already be down at the restaurant. You'd be telling your mom about school, or what Nina said, or getting upset over the hole in the ozone or whatever.” Lucas looked at her and smiled. A real smile this time. “And your mom would be nodding and muttering
uh-huh,
having no idea what you were saying because she hadn't had her first cup of coffee yet. Ben would be sitting there, pretending to read the newspaper upside down.” Lucas laughed at the memory. “Does he still pull stuff like that?”

Zoey smiled despite herself. “He's added a few tricks. He walked into a classroom with a substitute teacher last year and acted like he thought he was in the boys' bathroom. He pretended to believe the teacher's desk was a urinal. The sub totally lost it.”

“Did he . . . ?”

“No. He's not crude, just strange.”

“I always did like Ben. I always liked your whole family. You seemed so nice and normal to me.”

“Normal? I don't know about normal. Personally, when I want normal, I go over to—” She fell silent and looked away.

“You can say Jake's name,” Lucas said. “That feud is all one-way. I have nothing against Jake McRoyan, except that he hates my guts.”

Zoey glanced over her shoulder again, her heart fluttering. For the second time in two days, she found herself talking to her boyfriend's greatest enemy.

“Did you tell Claire what I said?” Lucas asked.

Zoey shook her head. “Not exactly. I told Nina, though.” She looked down at his feet. “What did you mean about Claire didn't have to worry, and you kept your promises?”

“Nothing,” Lucas said. “Old news, old history. We were kind of close before the accident, Claire and I.”

“I know. She's going out with Benjamin now.”

“Poor Ben,” Lucas said.

“He doesn't think so, I guess. They've been going out for a year almost.”

“And you're still with good old Jake, huh?”

“Yes, still.” It was so odd, Zoey realized. Here she was, talking to Lucas as if he were a stranger. Except he was a stranger who knew all the people she knew, knew much of her life, her history. Sometimes when he spoke it was like the old times, an easy, familiar feel, as if he were still the same guy who dropped by for breakfast. Then, suddenly, she would remember what he had done, and why he had been away.

And why Jake, the guy who loved her, and whom she loved in return, so hated him.

“You're looking confused,” Lucas said, reading her thoughts. “You don't know how to treat me, do you? Am I the enemy? Or am I still a friend?”

“I guess I don't know,” Zoey confessed.

“I know how I feel about it,” Lucas said. He turned to look off toward the town. Lights were being extinguished as North Harbor began to go to sleep. “When you're locked up, you spend a lot of time with your memories. At first you tend to focus on all the bad stuff, like how it was you came to be locked up. But you can't spend almost two years reliving the bad times. Eventually you start to remember all the good times. All the places you enjoyed. This place, for example. And all the people you cared for.” He looked at her again, his smoldering dark eyes wide and glittering with reflected moonlight. “I remembered Claire, yes. And Nina and Ben and Aisha. I remembered Wade, too. I even remembered all the times I was out with my dad, working, hauling up the lobster pots, him cursing at me in Portuguese. Even though they weren't all happy memories, they were a million miles away from my cellmates and our cinder-block walls.” A dark shadow crossed his face, like clouds momentarily blotting out the moon. Then he looked up at her again, his expression peaceful.

“I also thought about you, Zoey. Strange, because I don't think I'd ever paid much attention to you when we saw each other every day. I don't know that I'd ever really seen you until that day when you . . . when you gave me that ice-cream cone. Still, I found my thoughts returning to you. I think in some way you came to represent everything that I had lost.”

Zoey's throat had gone dry. She swallowed hard. A jet of spray shot up, landing as noisy rain in the space between them.

“Now you're really worried, aren't you?” Lucas said.

Zoey shook her head, not trusting her voice.

“It's okay, I understand,” Lucas said. “Don't take me too seriously. I've just been around guys who don't talk much except in four-letter words and threats. And then there's my folks. My dad hasn't spoken a word to me. He's forbidden my mother to speak, too, although once when he wasn't around, she . . .” He stopped as his voice broke. He took several deep breaths. “Sorry. They say it takes a while to readjust to normal life. You'd better get going. This island is so small, somebody's likely to see you.”

He was giving her the opportunity to leave. And that's exactly what she should do, Zoey knew. This was Lucas. Lucas Cabral, the person responsible for Wade's death.

More important, Jake, Claire—everyone—was determined to make Lucas a pariah. It was a matter of islander solidarity. And if they knew she was giving any sort of support to Lucas,
she herself might be the next one cut out of the group.

“Go on, don't feel bad about it,” Lucas said. “I know how it is.”

Zoey nodded and turned away. She took a half-dozen steps before she turned back. “Lucas!” she yelled.

“Yeah?”

“Why don't you stop by for breakfast sometime?”

“Why don't you stop by for breakfast?” Zoey muttered into the darkness of her room. Was she nuts? Was she coming unglued? Was she absolutely begging for trouble? She tossed in the bed, flipping from her left side to her right side, scrunching the pillow up under her head.

Not enough that she had talked to him, no, not nearly enough. Jake might have forgiven that. After all, he knew she was no good at being mean to people. But no, she'd had to go that one step further. She'd had to make the leap from
dumb, but we can overlook it
to
what on earth were you thinking?

Still, Lucas had seemed so sad. Sad and alone and . . . well, face it, kind of gorgeous, if you liked guys with smoldering, melancholy eyes. What was she supposed to do? Add to his sadness? Stomp on his sort of sexy vulnerability? What if he'd gone out to the breakwater thinking about suicide? What if it was like the guy in that movie,
It's a Wonderful Life
, that Christmas
movie where the guy was getting ready to kill himself and the angel came along to rescue him at the last minute? What if the angel had said
Screw you, pal, no one wants you around
?

It would have been a very different movie.

And it really had nothing to do with the fact that Lucas had great dark eyes.

Nothing.

She was just being nice.

See, Jake had great eyes, too. And Jake didn't end up going to reform school.

Whereas Lucas probably hadn't even seen a girl for two years.

She threw back her covers and twisted her Boston Bruins shirt she was wearing back around. She went to the cramped desk in the dormer window and looked for a while down the street, dark under an overcast sky.

She snapped on the little brass light mounted on the wall and sat down, pulling out her journal. She found the paper clip that marked the end of her last version of the romance novel and checked the draft number. Picking up her pen, she wrote:

She'd been wrong all along, she realized. It shouldn't be a story about the lusty yet virginal maiden who is carried off by
the lusty, fiery, yet strangely sensitive knight, Viking, or prince. It should be a story about the same knight, only he was lying wounded, nearly dead after a terrible battle. He'd been wandering lost, perhaps not even knowing who he truly was anymore. Wandering lost, bloody, thirsty, hungry, and alone.

He would wander into the maiden's village, where she lived with her ancient, gnarled uncle after her entire family had been killed by marauding barbarians.

The very barbarians who had wounded the knight. That way there would be a connection between the two.

The maiden would take him into her humble, historically accurate yet clean house and lay him tenderly on her straw mattress. She would remove his armor, piece by piece, and hide it in the woods, so if the barbarians came looking for the knight they wouldn't know it was him.

What would he have on under the armor?

A leather jerkin. Whatever that was. But that would have to be removed, too. And the wound would have to be cleaned and bandaged. And the rest of him would have to be cleaned as well. After all, dried blood and so on.

Then she'd spoon-feed him some soup. He'd thank her and ask her name, which would be . . . Meghan. Or Raven. Or Chastity.

Chastity for now, anyway. Later, when the knight recovered . . .

Zoey put down her pen and sat back in her chair. She had covered three and a half pages with her looping, disorganized handwriting, but now a wave of sudden sleepiness reminded her that it was, after all, the middle of the night.

She snapped off her light and went back to her bed.

She was letting her imagination run away with her, something it often did. All that had happened was she'd spent a few minutes talking to Lucas on the breakwater. It didn't mean anything. Besides, he'd said he remembered her as skinny.

He'd also said she represented everything he'd lost. What did he mean by that?

And why did she care?

Zoey fell asleep with that question running slower and slower around in her mind. And the memory of Lucas's eyes.

“IF YOU HAVE A TOUCH-TONE
phone, please press one now.”

Aisha pushed the one.

“Hi, this is Christopher. If you'd like the accounting department, please press two. If you'd like the lingerie department, press three. If you'd like to be connected to the space shuttle, press four.”

Aisha pressed four.

“Hi, this is Christopher. If you'd like to join a suicidal cult, press pound and five. If you'd like to speak to one of our sales representatives, press star-nine.”

Aisha pressed seven, two, and four.

“Hi, this is Christopher. If you'd like to order pizza, press ninety-nine. If you'd like to eat fish, press
E: none of the above.
”

Aisha wrapped the cord around her finger and yanked it from the wall.

“Hi, this is Christopher. If you'd like to know what
Zeitgeist
means, press the
Zeitgeist
button. If you can spell
waba waba waba
waba
, please press
press
.”

Aisha threw the phone at the door.

The door opened. Christopher stood there, grinning his cocky grin. “Hi, this is Christopher,” he said.

Aisha woke up in a cold sweat, eyes wide, breathing heavy, and heart pounding. Sunlight blazed around the edges of her curtains. Outside she could hear a familiar
peet-weet, peet-weet
from the sandpiper who had been coming by in the mornings before heading down to the water.

Aisha liked birds. Although she would be relieved when this particular sandpiper decided it was time to head south for the winter. He'd been waking her up lately.

At least he'd put an end to that dream. That
nightmare.

She put her feet down on the braided rug and rubbed her eyes. The clock said six ten. Thanks to her sandpiper friend, she was already back on a school-year schedule.

Aisha got up, put on her blue terry-cloth robe, and forced a comb through her hair. Because her room was downstairs, just off the common area used by guests at the inn, it was important for her to look somewhat civilized when she came out of her room in the morning. She had to walk through the foyer to reach the little downstairs powder room, where she quickly splashed cold water on her face, taking care to wipe the sink
down afterward with paper towels. Everything the guests saw had to be perfect at all times.

The shower in the family bathroom was upstairs in the semidetached wing that included her parents' bedroom, the family room, the small family kitchen, and her mother's office. Her brother Kalif's room was just around the corner in the main house, right beside one of the guest rooms—which meant he was doomed to have a stereo- and TV-free room, lest he annoy a guest.

Aisha could hear her mother in the formal downstairs kitchen, preparing coffee and the usual amazing spread of fresh-baked muffins, poached eggs, bacon, and fresh-squeezed orange juice for the guests, at least one of whom already seemed to be waiting in the breakfast room at the rear of the house.

“Aisha,” her mother called out from the kitchen in her cheery, fake, for-the-guests voice, “would you be a dear and get the paper for Mr. and Ms. O'Shay?”

Aisha rolled her eyes. Days like this she really wondered about the whole idea of running an inn. Sure, her father's job as a librarian in Weymouth wouldn't let them live like millionaires, but at least wherever they lived it would be all theirs.

Fortunately, winter wasn't far away, and then it would be many weeks between guests. They would slowly take back the huge house, and she'd be able to do wild and crazy things like
step out of her room without having her hair combed and a cheerful smile plastered on her face.

Tough, looking quaint and cheerful when you'd just woken up from a nightmare.

Aisha opened the heavy front door and walked out onto the steps. The papers were halfway across the lawn, and she grimaced in annoyance. She was bending over to pick up the
Portland Press Herald
and the
Weymouth Times
when she heard him. The voice straight out of her dreams.

“Hi,” Christopher said.

Aisha spun around like a cat, feeling the little hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

“Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you,” he said. He was wearing overalls with no shirt on underneath. There was a dirty trowel in his hand.

“What the hell are you doing here at six in the morning?” Aisha demanded, pressing her hand over her beating heart.

“I'm starting on the garden,” he said.

“The sun is barely up,” Aisha said, outraged.

He shrugged. “I have to start early. Mr. Passmore wants me to come in and cook the lunch shift today. Besides,” he said with his all-too-familiar grin, “I've been up a long time. They bring the newspapers over on the water taxi at one a.m. the night before and drop them at the dock. I have to pick them up and
have them bundled and ready to go before five so the fishermen can have theirs to take out with them for the day.”

“Wait a minute, you also deliver the papers? Since when?”

“I just started two weeks ago.”

“Exactly how many jobs do you have?”

“Just what I told you: I cook part time at Passmores', I deliver the morning papers, I do a little work around my apartment building, and now I'm starting to do yard work. Also, sometimes I do shopping on the mainland for some of the older folks.”

“Are you involved in working with telephones at all?” Aisha asked sourly.

“No. Why?”

Aisha waved off his question. “Never mind. Are you going to school?”

“That's what I'm working for,” Christopher said. “I'm accepted for U Mass next year. I have some scholarship money, but I need to save some up, too.”

Aisha nodded and started to walk back to the house. On the steps she looked back over her shoulder. “Business major, right?”

“How'd you guess?”

Zoey woke up late and hungry. The day before she had worked straight through what should have been dinnertime. After that
she'd had the chance encounter with Lucas at the breakwater and since then, she hadn't really thought about food at all.

She trudged toward the shower, scratching her head and trying to pry open her left eye. She brushed her teeth and started running the water in the shower. It always took a good minute for the hot water to come.

This time, however, it didn't come at all.

“Oh, man,” she groaned through a foam of Crest. The hot-water heater must have gone out again, a regular occurrence. Either that, or Benjamin had taken one of his half-hour showers.

She rinsed and stomped barefoot down the stairs, feeling grumpy and sleepy and a little dopey. “Four more and I'd have the seven dwarfs,” she muttered.

“The damned hot water is out again!” she yelled as she reached the kitchen.

“I'm sorry to hear that,” a voice said calmly.

Zoey jumped, and spun around. She clapped her hand over her heart.

It was Lucas.

Her brother was nowhere to be seen. Neither was her mother. Only Lucas, who was sitting in the breakfast nook and sipping a cup of coffee. A plate of sweet rolls was on the table, two left.

“Your mom invited me to wait for you,” Lucas said. “She had to go to the restaurant, then catch the eleven-ten ferry. Ben went with her. Something about school clothes.”

“Oh, Lord,” Zoey muttered under her breath. She reached for her tangled mess of hair and tried to shove and pat it into something human-looking. But then she realized that with her hands over her head, her Bruins T-shirt rode perilously up toward her cotton panties. She slapped her arms down to her sides and tugged the shirt hem downward, which had the effect of drawing the fabric taut over her breasts. She released the hem and started on her hair again, then crossed her arms over her chest and tried her best to look nonchalant.

“You did invite me for breakfast,” Lucas pointed out.

Zoey nodded. “Yes. Yes, of course, because I hoped you'd bring some of those delicious sweet rolls and I see you did so I guess I was right in inviting you . . . not that that was the only reason, I mean it's not like you're the baker or something I mean I . . . we, I mean my mom and Benjamin . . . I also, you know . . . you know, we're like friends and all from before.”

Nicely expressed, Zoey
, she thought.

Lucas smiled his serious smile. “I guess I kind of surprised you.”

“Why? Do I look terrible?” She cringed and took another stab at untangling the bird's nest on her head.

“No, you look wonderful.”

“I don't think so,” Zoey said, laughing wryly. “I mean, usually I try to wear something more than a T-shirt.”

“Trust me, you look wonderful.”

“Not that I'm wearing
just
a T-shirt,” Zoey added quickly. “I mean, I'm wearing underwear.” Instantly she felt the blush rising in her cheeks. She gulped and looked down at the table.

“Me too,” Lucas said, grinning at her discomfort.

Zoey sighed. “I'm not exactly awake. When I'm awake, I babble a little less. I still babble, but less.”

“Want some coffee? There's still some in the pot your mom made.”

“Normally, no, but since the hot water's out and I'm making a fool of myself, maybe I could use a cup. Or six.”

Lucas got up, went to the kitchen counter, and poured. She sat down at the table and reached for a sweet roll. With the first few sips of coffee, her confidence began to return. So she'd babbled, big deal. After all, it wasn't like Lucas had a lot of other alternative conversational partners on the island.

This thought brought guilt with it. Her stomach churned. A mental picture of Jake formed in the air just over Lucas's head.

“Your mom can still cook,” Zoey said.

“Yeah,” Lucas agreed affectionately.

“Is she . . . are you two talking?”

Lucas shrugged. “My mom is trying to play it safe. She wants to make peace, but if she defies my father outright, well . . . You know my father. He's very ‘old country.' He thinks he's the absolute ruler of the house, period, just like he is on the boat.”

“Still, he's letting you live there,” Zoey remarked, taking a bite of the roll.

“It's all a part of the same thing,” Lucas said. “He's Portuguese,
Acoreano.
He's an islander going back in his family to long before Chatham Island had even been discovered by whites. Family is very important, and you have to take care of family no matter what, so no, he won't just kick me out. Not until he can figure out something to do with me, anyway.” He rolled his eyes. “Like I said. Very old world.”

“But isn't your mom from the Azores, too?”

“No. She emigrated from the Netherlands. The Dutch are a bit looser, I guess.” He used his fingers to rake a strand of hair that had fallen over his eye. “That's where I got my blond hair,” he said. “Just think Little Dutch Boy.”

Zoey patted her own hair with her free hand. “Just think sparrow's nest.”

Lucas was about to say something else, but he bit his lip and fell silent. The silence stretched awkwardly for a moment.

“Are you going to be going to school?” Zoey asked.

“Yeah. I still need a year, what with the Youth Authority
being so much better at locking people up than it is at education. So, yeah, I'll be going to Weymouth High. I know everyone on the island will be thrilled to find that out.”

Zoey nodded glumly and chewed the last bite of her roll thoughtfully. “I guess it will be kind of rough for you.”

“And for anyone who befriends me,” Lucas said, his voice dropping. “Which is why I want to say something. You've been very sweet, Zoey, but I don't expect you to talk to me in public. I understand how it is. I promise it won't hurt my feelings if you blow me off.”

Zoey hesitated. What was she going to do about this? It seemed awfully hypocritical to talk to Lucas here, even to enjoy talking to him, and then pretend that she couldn't stand him later.

Lucas grinned crookedly. It was meant to look tough and indifferent, but the corner of his mouth collapsed a little. “I'm a big boy,” he said. “I can handle it.”

“No one can handle it,” Zoey said. “You can't live life totally cut off.”

Suddenly she stopped. She had reached for him without thinking. Her hand, dripping with sugar glaze from the roll, was covering his. Slowly, Lucas's fingers entwined around hers. Neither of them was breathing. Zoey's heart was beating so loudly she was sure he could hear it.

“I . . . I got you all sticky,” Zoey said, her voice a squeaky gasp.

Lucas raised their locked hands to his lips. He brought her sugary index finger to his mouth. His eyes were nearly closed, his every movement in slow motion.

The doorbell rang. Zoey snatched her hand away. He withdrew his as well.

“The door,” Zoey said breathlessly. “Probably Nina.”

“I'll leave through the back,” Lucas said.

“You don't have to—”

“Yes,” he said regretfully, “I do.” He turned away as the doorbell rang a second time. At the back door he paused, looking down at the knob. “Thanks,” he said. And then he was gone.