The Pickle Boat House (12 page)

Ryan stood still throughout her tirade. His hand went instinctively to his face, but there the instinct stopped. He did not attempt to stop her. “What are you
talking
about?” he said. “Slow down. You’re not making sense. You think I did what?” He turned on Jean. “Why are you checking up on my employer behind my back? All of a sudden, we’re into trust issues here? I would have told you anything you wanted to know. All you had to do was ask.”

“Don’t try to deflect the issue,” Van said. “I asked Jean to look up Hector Young. And from what I’m reading here, it’s a good thing I did! Not exactly a stellar track record they have! You came here to cash in on the land. Buy cheap, sell high? Do you always use people to get what you want? I suppose you throw them away when you’re done, too.”

“Van, listen, it’s not like that,” he said, grabbing her arm. She took a step back, and he sighed and let go. He couldn’t afford to drive her further away.

“Don’t lie to me, and sure as hell don’t touch me! Your wandering eye wasn’t the only thing Hector clued me into. He said HYA was involved in a huge land deal in this area. He said you were using me to get insider information, to make the sales go smoother. Of course I didn’t believe him. I thought too much of you and too little of him to think that could be true.”

Ryan knew she had him. If she hadn’t blindsided him, he could easily have talked his way out. He was good at that. Instead, he stood mute, horrified at the turn of events and at his lack of control over the situation. He had to give the two of them credit: they weren’t quite as gullible as he had thought.

“I should have known! To think I
trusted
you …”

“You
can
trust me,” he said, moving toward her again, but again she took a step back.

“It was no coincidence that you rang my phone on the boardwalk that day, was it?”

“No.”

“How did you know my number?”

“I saw you earlier in the week. If you watch someone long enough, you can find out all kinds of things about them.”

“That is so creepy and repulsive,” Van said, turning her back to him. I’ve been such a sap.”

“Look, Van, this doesn’t have to be a negative thing. Look at the positive. Hector Young is a solid company. They can pay good money for Nevis land. I can influence how much they pay. People here can sell their properties for more money than they could ever dream of otherwise.”

“I am looking at the positive,” Van shot back, her eyes dark with fury. “I’m positive you’re going to try to yank the land right out from under our feet. People’s families have owned this land for generations,
centuries
. Roots go deep here. Did you ever stop to think what would happen to those who didn’t want to sell? This will swallow them up! Come back in a year’s time and see that all that we hold dear and special is gone. I can still look inside there and see where my great-grandfather struck matches on the stones of the fireplace to light his pipe. Do you really think I would let you take that away from me—let you bulldoze the pickle boat house? You sure as hell can try, but it will be over my dead body!”

She shot a look at Jean that froze her where she stood. “And don’t lecture me. I’m not in the mood!” She stomped into the house without giving Ryan another look.

As the door slammed behind her Van could hear Jean’s voice. “I couldn’t have said it better. Why did you do that to her? You know, you’re the first person she’s opened up to in a long time. She trusted you. You brought something besides pain into her life … till now, anyway. Since she met you her eyes have begun to light up and just sparkle. Why did you have to turn out to be such a dick? Typical man. Get your sorry ass out of here before I turn the dog loose on you.” And turning her back on Ryan, Jean went inside and slammed the door behind her.

Van was standing just inside the door, leaning her head against the wall. She turned, and Jean walked toward her.

“My BS detector is obviously broken,” Van said weakly. “I think you can slap that smile off my face about now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Van said, sobbing, and she buried her face in Jean’s shoulder.

“I’ve decided to give you a pass this time,” said Jean, wrapping her arms around Van and just letting her cry. “I just wish we had a bigger dog.”

* * *

Ryan felt as if he had been run over by a freight train—a train with Hector as the engineer. For the life of him, he couldn’t figure why Hector would sabotage everything they were doing in Nevis. Ryan knew he always had to watch his back with Hector, but the guy had never before put his own fortunes at risk to make Ryan look bad. Hector was no dummy, and he needed this to go right as much as Ryan did.

It didn’t take Ryan long to find his faithless partner. He was down sitting on the boardwalk, as if expecting the coming wrath. He didn’t bother to get up as he saw Ryan approaching.

Ryan walked up toe to toe with Hector, towering over him with both fists clenched.

“You asshole!” he growled. “What’s your fucking problem? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, can’t you be discrete? Keep your damn mouth shut and your personal issues to yourself! She doesn’t trust me anymore, which means you just pretty much destroyed everything we’ve been working for here.”

“The only personal issues giving us any problems are yours,” Hector replied. “From getting so personally involved with that woman. Find another piece of ass—one with less potential for problems.”

Ryan grabbed Hector by the shirtfront and yanked him up inches away from his face. “I swear, if I didn’t need you right now I’d kill you.” He shoved him back against the bench and let go. Hector landed sitting up, but the bench toppled backward, dumping him on his back on the ground. Wisely, he didn’t get up.

Ryan started to walk away, but suddenly he whirled around and pointed a finger at Hector. “Talk about her like that again, and I
will
kill you,” he said. And then he turned and walked away past the gawking people on the boardwalk without another word or a backward glance.

* * *

Ryan took off down the boardwalk at a brisk walk. No amount of deep breathing or positive self-talk was going to calm him down right now. He knew he had just made a mistake, and not his first by any means. Losing his temper wasn’t going to help the situation. He knew deep down—had known all along—that he had an intense attraction to Van and that it was getting in the way of what he needed to do. He just couldn’t help himself. Now Hector was a big problem, much bigger than he would have been if Ryan had kept his head. He probably couldn’t straighten it out with him. Hector had found the weakness he had always been searching for in Ryan, and Ryan had no doubt he would exploit it. One call to New York—that was all it would take.

Stop, slow down, and think it all through,
Ryan said to himself. He was in it deep. There had to be a way to fix this. If he could noodle through it, there might be something he could salvage of the situation.

And then all the troubling thoughts that had been nagging at him suddenly coalesced. HYA and Van—they couldn’t coexist in his life. He was at a point of no return. He would have to make a choice.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
RECAPITULATION

The fire now burning in Van’s gaze scared Jean. In Van’s mind, Ryan was just one more lying cheat. She may have been gullible, but she didn’t plan on sitting back and taking it. She immediately sat down with Jean and created a list, dividing up Nevis’s residents according to whether they would sell or hold out. Inevitably, some would sell because of the obscene amount of money HYA was going to throw at them. But others would resent HYA in general, and especially for the way it was trying to buy its way into Nevis. And it was this second group that Van and Jean were going after.

“Why don’t we meet with the more influential residents first?” Jean asked. “We can’t do this all by ourselves.”

“I agree. Once we get a few key people to agree not to sell, we can sway some of the others. We just have to stick together, help each other. I think we …

The doorbell interrupted her. “Be right back.”

Van pulled the front door open and found herself face-to-face with Ryan.

“Go away,” she hissed, and tried to slam the door in his face, but Ryan slipped his foot inside before she could get it closed.

“Van, wait, please,” said Ryan. “I need to talk to you. Please. Look, I’ll even just talk to you through the door. Just hear me out.” Van opened the door, folded her arms across her chest, and waited.

“You were right last night,” he said. “I owe you an apology, an explanation. Please hear me out. When I came to Nevis it was all just about business. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever expect to meet someone like you. It’s true. When I spoke to you the first time on the boardwalk, I only saw you as an opportunity to help move along what I had to do here so I could get back to my life in New York. But you have to know, I’ve never used you. When it’s been anyone else, yes, I’ve used them. I’m really good at using people. Getting what I want and need has never been a problem for me. But I never used you. I need for you to understand that. And when I kissed you the other night, my feelings for you were genuine.” Ryan paused. “Are you going to deny that you felt something, too?” he whispered.

“Are you finished? The only reason you say you haven’t used me is because your plan isn’t far enough along. Look, you must have some good qualities, somewhere. I’m not usually wrong about people, and I’ll admit I am—was—drawn to you. I’m baffled by that. But you see, Mr. Thomas, I’m not used to playing the victim, and I’m not going to start now. Any credibility you had with me is shot—zero, zip, gone. I don’t have any need for someone I can’t trust. So you can be on your way. I don’t need a forwarding address. Don’t bother me anymore.” She unfolded her arms and grabbed the door.

“Wait,” said Ryan, shoving his foot back in the door. “See, like you said, we have a connection; we’re drawn to each other. I can tell you’re as surprised by it as I am. You do things to me … make my head spin. I tried to tell you before Jean interrupted us. I think I understand the connection. There’s something deeper here than meets the eye, because we’ve met before.”

“We never met before that day on the boardwalk.”

At this moment, the little boy Ryan had been laughing with at the crab feast yesterday raced up the porch steps. “Mr. Ryan, Mr. Ryan, would you teach me the song you told Janet? She won’t let me play.”

Ryan sighed. “I’m sorry, Jason,” he said. “Ms. Van and I are having a big-people discussion right now. Tell you what: I’ll teach it to you once, but then you have to run along and play.” He turned to the little girl standing nearby. “Janet, would you come here, please?” She came up the stairs with her head down, but he could see she was fighting to keep a grin from spreading across her little face. “Do you remember the song I taught you?”

She looked up at him, nodded her head, and began to sing in a clear soprano child’s voice. “Birdies up in the trees, singing in the breeze, I like the birdies.” When she was finished, she blushed and went back to studying the rubber toes of her sneakers.

Ryan smiled. “Janet, you have the voice of an angel. Now,” he said to the little boy, “can you two run off and play?” She nodded with a huge grin, socked Jason on the arm, and fled down the steps with Jason close on her heels.

Ryan turned to Van and said, “You’re pale. What’s wrong?”

“Where did you learn that song?”

“It’s just something that floats around in my head. Old memory, I would guess. Why?”

“My son made that song up.” Van put her hand over her eyes. “How much digging into my personal life have you done, Ryan? What game are you playing?” She turned and glared at him, her eyes burning with hurt and misery.

Ryan shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not trying to pull anything. I’m leveling with you. Ever since I came to Nevis, I’ve been having dreams, strange ones, over and over again. All this useless information that I’ve begun to accumulate in my head: names without faces, faces without names, dates … places I’ve never been.”

Van continued to stare at Ryan, a series of emotions flitting across her face. She could feel her fingernails digging into the porch railing, and when she spoke again her voice was controlled and deliberate.

“Describe one of your dreams,” she challenged.

“Most are about a young boy. I think it’s me. And in many of them, there’s a woman. The woman … honest, Van, she looks and feels like
you
.”

“Dreams don’t have to relate to reality. What on earth would make you think it was me?”

“I didn’t say it was you, only that she
looked
like you.”

Van swayed, and goose bumps rose on her arms, as if a cold breeze had sent an icy chill down her spine.

“Did your son die on May seventeenth?”

“Jesus! You have his death certificate? Is nothing sacred to you people?”

“Was your son treated by a Dr. Phillips?” Ryan asked.

“His medical records, too?”

Ryan continued with his interrogation. “On the day your son died, were you wearing a red dress?”

“Red plaid. Who have you been talking to?”

Beethoven’s Opus One-twenty-three?”

“James’s funeral mass. You’re going to rot in hell, Mr. Thomas.”

Ryan stopped. “I don’t know how else to say this without being blunt.” He paused. “I think I’m your son.”

“Say what?”

“I may be standing here in the body of Ryan Thomas, but I am thinking with the body and soul of James Hardy. I know the specifics of James’s life because that’s who I am. The pieces in my memory are coming back. Drowning … an out-of-body experience … waking up in the hospital as Ryan Thomas—someone I didn’t even know. There, I’ve said it. I’m pulling my elephant out into the center of the room.”

Van’s eyes never left Ryan’s face, and she didn’t even blink an eye at his bizarre statement.

“Van, say something. Anything.”

And then she laughed. “No tunnel or bright light at the end?” she asked. “Write it all down. It’s a prize winner. But you didn’t do all your homework. My son was twenty-four when he died. How old are you—pushing thirty?”