Persuasion Page 4

  She stared up at him while the yunwi wove slowly around the bushes and the driveway as though they, too, were hunting for something or someone. “I’m not crazy,” she said. “I don’t make people up.”

  “I know.” Eight cast another glance around the yard before he ushered her up the stairs and back into the house. “I really wish I thought you did.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  In the dim light of the foyer, with the front door safely closed behind them and the grim portraits of Watson ancestors watching Barrie from the walls, it seemed ridiculous to have been so shaken.

  “Don’t say anything to Pru, all right?” She tugged the rolled-up sleeve of Eight’s shirt and coaxed him to a stop. “I don’t want to worry her about nothing.”

  “This wasn’t nothing. I need to go back out there to look around.”

  “If you’re going, then I’m going with you.”

  “Whoever was out there disappeared when I showed up, which means you’re the one he was after. You’d be safer in the house with Pru.”

  Barrie hated when he was logical.

  Catching her hand, Eight hurried toward the kitchen with its 1970s avocado-colored appliances and lack of anything remotely modern. The warm scent of roasting beef and herbs hung to dry in the window mingled with the perfume of fresh-cut roses in the bowl laid on the crisp cloth draping the kitchen table. If love had a scent, this was it: food and flowers and herbs and warmth. Coupled with the sight of her aunt slicing tomatoes at the counter beside the sink, it instantly made Barrie feel more grounded.

  “Now, where did you two get to?” Pru turned with a smile. “I went to see if you wanted some tea after Seven left, but you had disappeared.” Her smiled faded as she took a closer look at Eight. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

  “Not at all,” Barrie said.

  Eight sent her a sideways glance, but continued undeterred: “There was someone trespassing out front. A man. He tried to speak to Barrie.”

  “One of those ghost-chasers from the river?” Pru’s voice went tight, and the tendons in her neck stood out, as taut as strings beneath her skin. “I swear, I’ve had it up to here with them. One of them came sneaking up past the fountain this morning. I had to tell him to clear out.”

  “I’m not even sure I saw anyone,” Barrie said, sending Eight a fearsome glare. “It could have been a shadow, for all I know. If someone was there, he’s long gone by now.”

  Pru turned to Eight for confirmation. “I don’t understand. Was there someone or wasn’t there?”

  “He left a footprint in the flowerbed,” Eight said without looking at Barrie.

  “Which could have been there last week, for all we know,” she pointed out.

  Eight tilted his chin at her. “It looked pretty fresh to me.”

  “Because you’re suddenly an expert on footprints?”

  “Oh, I am so tired of these people!” Pru wiped her hands and tore off her apron. “Why can’t they let us have some peace and quiet? Seven should have forced the sheriff to arrest a few of them days ago, and then we wouldn’t have trespassers roaming around thinking they can do whatever . . .” She stared at the floor, and then her head came back up.

  Eight watched her with concern. “Want me to call Dad and get him to come back here?”

  “No. I’ll do it.” Lips pursed, Pru threw the apron onto the counter before marching toward the square, black phone on the wall near the back door that led out to the porch and upper terrace. She picked the receiver up to dial.

  Eight poured himself the last glass of sweet tea from the pitcher and dropped into a chair. “Want this?” he added as an afterthought, holding the glass out to Barrie as if nothing had changed between them. As if one little worry wiped away their entire argument.

  “No, and for someone who knows what I want, you pay zero attention. Why are you making such a big deal out of this?”

  “Why aren’t you making a big deal out of it?” Folding his arms, Eight studied her, taking her apart and putting her back together. “You’re the girl who used to hate having strangers wandering around here when the garden was open. Now some random guy shows up and you aren’t even scared? That makes no sense.”

  He was right. Barrie should have been scared. She should have been panicked.

  Why wasn’t she?

  Eight seemed to believe she had mentioned a man named Obadiah. Not only did she not remember saying the words, she didn’t remember why she would have said them. As if the memories themselves had been plucked from her brain, leaving behind empty spaces.

  Pru half-turned away to speak into the telephone, winding and unwinding the loopy black phone cord around her finger as she talked to Seven in a voice designed for Barrie and Eight not to overhear.

  When she finally hung up, she came back to the table. “Seven’s coming back over now. And, Eight? He told me to remind you that Wyatt Colesworth had some unsavory friends. Regardless of how it turns out with Ernesto, you shouldn’t go out there by yourself.” She caught Eight’s eye and held it a moment as if there were more to the message than the words.

  Barrie’s stomach knotted and she gripped the edge of the table. “What do you mean, ‘turns out with Ernesto’? I thought the police assumed that his body swept out to sea or the alligators got him? He’s dead.”

  “Of course.” Pru and Eight exchanged another look. “This close to the ocean, they might never recover the remains,” Pru said. “But it never hurts to be cautious. The point is, he and Wyatt weren’t smuggling drugs alone. There had to have been other people involved. Quintero Cartel people, not to mention locals—Colesworths, most likely—helping them on the boat. It’ll be months before the police untangle all of that.”

  The smile she gave Barrie was meant for reassurance, but the best Barrie could manage was a stiff nod in return. Pru didn’t push the point. Averting her face as if she were the one who needed time to collect herself, Barrie’s aunt crossed to the butler’s pantry and disappeared. Barrie dropped into the chair beside Eight’s and kicked his ankle beneath the table.

  “Ow.” He gave her a wounded look. “What did you do that for?”

  “You know exactly why, you jerk. You didn’t tell me the police were still investigating Ernesto. Also, I told you not to upset Pru about Obadiah.”

  “She’s not that upset. Anyway, what about me? Here you are, talking about a guy who disappears into thin air and then telling me he wasn’t there and acting like I’m the crazy one for being worried.” Eight’s eyes were grave, and despite his teasing tone, he was clearly more shaken than he let on.

  Lifting the empty pitcher of tea from the table, he sloshed the ice around in the bottom, and then poured the last few drops of liquid out into his glass as Pru came back into the kitchen. She was carrying a large bowl filled with raw sweet potatoes, which she proceeded to peel at the sink in a flurry of flying skins. A Band-Aid-size strip of potato skin hit the backsplash behind the sink and slid slowly down the tiles.

  Barrie watched it, oddly mesmerized. Then she gave Eight’s ankle another tap. “Right. Clearly Pru’s not upset. At all.” She pushed her chair back, then crossed over to the sink. “Want me to peel those potatoes for you, Aunt Pru?”

  “That’s all right. I’ve got it. I need something to do with my hands anyway.” The furious peeling paused, and Pru plucked the skin off the counter and threw it into the sink.

  “Speaking of doing something . . . I think I’ll go check to make sure all the doors and windows are locked.” Eight got up from the table.

  Pru cast him a narrowed look. “With everything that’s been going on, I’ve made sure every one is closed up tight, believe me.”

  Barrie thought of Pru alone in the house, alone without even Seven nearby to call, and people creeping around the property at night. It upset her all over again. How could the Beauforts have kept that secret from her?

  “What about installing motion detectors along the waterline and dock?” she asked. “We had them in San
Francisco. I’m not sure if animals or the yunwi would set them off—the yunwi might think that was fun—but it might be worth a try.”

  Pru tilted her head as she considered. “It’s not a bad idea. You could explain to the yunwi. They seem to listen to you, so maybe they’d leave a system like that alone. On the other hand, we do have raccoons wandering in from the woods, not to mention gators and birds, so we could ask whoever installs the system to adjust the sensitivity. Darrel down at the hardware store ought to know who I could call for that.”

  As Pru returned to the phone, Barrie opened the cabinet and took down four Blue Willow plates. The sense of familiarity that came from seeing the same pattern she had used all her life at her mother’s house was comforting.

  For the first time, it occurred to her that maybe it had been more than nostalgia that had made her mother try to re-create Watson’s Landing in the San Francisco house, from the style of the house itself and the furnishings down to these same Blue Willow plates.

  The Watson gift had already been exerting its pull on Lula the night she had run away after finding the entrance to the Watson tunnel. After having taught his daughters that the gift was evil so that they wouldn’t discover Luke and Twila’s bodies, Emmett must have been scared and furious. And how had Lula felt when she ran away from that rage? She had rowed across the river with some romantic notion that Wade Colesworth was going to save her, envisioning a Romeo and Juliet romance. Instead, she had stumbled across Wyatt smuggling drugs, and then spent her life exiled from Pru and Watson’s Landing while her gift did its best to pull her back.

  The thought of Lula grasping for childhood things, longing to have a part of Watson’s Landing with her, even after all those years in San Francisco, made Barrie feel like she was trying to breathe underwater. When it came to her mother, her emotions were still too raw. How was it possible to both love and hate someone more after they were dead?

  She still needed to read her mother’s letters, but . . . Not yet. Not if she wanted to be fair to Lula while she read them.

  Returning to the table with the stack of plates, she found Eight leaning back watching her, his legs stretched out in front of him. The last bits of sun through the window cast his face in shadow, and he looked like an unfinished statue, perfect and maddeningly imperfect. Barrie’s heart filled with ache and want.

  “What?” He folded his arms across his chest as Seven’s master-of-the-universe tread sounded on the porch outside.

  “Nothing,” Barrie said, turning away. “Nothing at all.”

  Eight glanced at his father through the glass-topped back door, and stood up in one graceful move. “I know you’re mad because I made a fuss.” He stepped in close to whisper into Barrie’s ear. “But the other night I thought I’d lost you before we even had a chance. That’s not going to happen again. It’s not about you not being strong enough. Watson’s Landing is yours—I get that. And everything else? School? All that? We’ll figure it out.”

  Figure it out. That was Eight’s solution for everything. He was so sure about things that had no surety, as if he could simply will things to turn out all right, while Barrie had to fight for each scrap of conviction.

  “Please tell your dad not to scare Pru about the man I saw,” she whispered back. “There’s no point making her more upset, and whoever it was has long since gone.”

  “Maybe, but it’s worth looking around to figure out where he came from. And if we don’t find him, I’ll stay until the motion detectors are installed. It’s not like there aren’t extra bedrooms.”

  Barrie bit her lip, holding back the refusal that would only lead to another argument. The idea of having Eight think he needed to spend the night, of thinking that she and Pru weren’t safe in the house, of not being able to keep themselves safe . . . No. That wasn’t acceptable.

  After they’d said good-bye, she waited on the porch until Eight and Seven had reached the bottom of the terrace steps. Then she marched through the kitchen and pushed open the swinging door that led out into the corridor.

  “Where are you going?” Pru demanded, running after her and hitting the door with the heels of her hands to keep it open.

  “To see the footprint. I need to remember what happened.”

  “What do you mean ‘remember’?”

  Barrie pulled up short a few feet from the foyer. It hadn’t been something she’d considered consciously, but now that the words were out, she realized they were exactly right. She needed to see the footprint, see something of Obadiah’s, to make the memories clearer.

  “It’s just a figure of speech,” she said.

  “Don’t go out there by yourself. At least hold on a second, and I’ll come with you.” Pru disappeared back inside the kitchen before Barrie could answer, and when the door swung open again, she marched out like vengeance in a sundress, carrying a shotgun and stuffing brass-topped red gun shells into her pocket.

  CHAPTER SIX

  A search of the flowerbed didn’t so much as raise a ping from Barrie’s finding sense. Her memories of Obadiah returned when she saw the footprint, then swirled away into fog again each time she moved her eyes away. She kept reminding herself she was looking for an intruder, for a man named Obadiah, and at least that fact stayed with her.

  What was wrong with her memory?

  And how had Obadiah vanished? There hadn’t been time for him to get to the other side of the house, and if he’d ducked around toward the chapel, Eight would have seen him. That left the oak avenue that led out to the gate.

  With Pru beside her, she headed across the gravel driveway. They had almost reached the first of the thick tree trunks when Eight and Seven came back around the side of the house from the maze.

  “Oh, Lord. Now we’re in for a lecture,” Pru said as Seven approached with long, angry strides that kicked up dust.

  “I thought I told you to stay in the house,” he said before he’d even reached them. “You trying to give me a heart attack, woman? Traipsing around here with a shotgun. Do you even know how to use that thing?”

  The color in Pru’s cheeks deepened, and her chin came up. “I hear it’s pretty self-explanatory, actually.” She adjusted the gun in a way that said she knew exactly how to use it. “And if you don’t want me to put a load of buckshot up your backside to prove it, I’ll thank you not to talk to me like that. Barrie thought that this would have been the most logical place for someone to duck out of sight in a hurry. It made sense to come and look. Did you find anything out back?”

  “No sign.” Seven’s voice was grim, and he turned back to Barrie. “What was the guy wearing? Could he have waded ashore? Were his clothes wet? Can you give us any sort of description?”

  Barrie stared blankly, digging down into her brain, but the harder she tried to remember, the more her thoughts turned to mist.

  What in the hell was wrong with her?

  “It’s okay. Don’t stress about it.” Eight touched her shoulder, and that small contact made her calmer.

  Seven glanced from her to Eight and back. A gust of evening wind blew his hair into his face, and he pushed it aside without taking his eyes off her. Barrie fought to keep herself from squirming—being read by two Beauforts at once was exponentially worse than when Eight was the only one doing it.

  “All right.” With a disconcertingly easy smile, Seven turned and spoke to Pru. “Seeing as how you have the gun, why don’t you and Eight go around toward the chapel and check if there’s any sign of anyone down that way. Barrie and I can walk up toward the gate.”

  Pru arched her brows at Barrie, who gave a shrug and started plodding toward the plantation’s main entrance with a wary glance at every tree and bush along the way.

  Twilight was turning the sky a bruised lavender as the last rays of the sun spilled over the river behind the house. Shadows darted across the lawn and chased one another up the lane, and the stillness gave a sense of time passing at a pace different from that of the world beyond Watson Island. Touching one of
the ancient trunks that stood at the edge of the grass, Barrie absorbed the hum of energy beneath her fingers and closed her eyes.

  She opened them again as Seven stopped beside her. “I’m not going to apologize for not cowering inside,” she said. “Pru and I are the ones who have to live here. I hate that I feel like I am constantly having to fight everyone to have my opinion matter.”

  “Of course it matters—but you’re not invincible. Or infallible.” He sighed and steepled his fingers in front of his lips as though searching for words, which was something that Barrie imagined happened very rarely. “I understand what a struggle all this is for you. You’re still grieving and settling in. You and Eight have spent virtually all your time together since you got here, and I can see why you wouldn’t want to say good-bye. But he just told me about turning down the scholarship. You have to make him change his mind.”

  “Why?” Barrie braced herself against the oak tree and stared at him. “You didn’t want him to leave in the first place—that’s why he had to get the scholarship.”

  “My objections were never about the scholarship—or even about playing baseball.” Seven took two steps toward the gate and stopped with his back to her. He ran a hand across the back of his neck. “All I wanted was for my son to choose to stay here and practice law. To decide he wanted to do that, before he found out he had no other options. I thought if he decided for himself, he wouldn’t feel as trapped. After almost losing him . . . I realize that was a mistake. He deserves the chance to experience life away from the island while he can.”

  Barrie stared hard at his back, but he refused to turn and look at her. “While he can? Are you trying to say that Eight’s bound to Beaufort Hall the same way I’m bound to Watson’s Landing?”

  “Not exactly. Not until after I’m gone and he inherits.”

  The words defied comprehension. Yet the signs had all been there when she and Seven and Eight had been together in San Francisco: the way Seven rubbed his head, his irritability, his eagerness to get back. Barrie had assumed that was all due to his missing Pru . . . How had she missed making the right connection?