Page 69 of Light of Day
“After having mind-blowing sex,” he suggested, as he dragged himself to a sitting position.
“Right. Now that you mention it.” She bent to gather up her clothes, which were scattered across his floor. Debris from the shipwreck. “I came to tell you something, but you chased it right out of my brain with that fine penis of yours.”
He let loose a deep belly laugh. Heather’s irreverence got him every single time. “What is it? You shouldn’t leave until you tell me, otherwise it was a wasted trip.”
“I definitely wouldn’t call it that.” She checked the time on her phone, then sat on the edge of the bed, her clothes bundled in her hands. “Okay, just a few more minutes, just until I’m dressed. There’s this dream I’ve had my whole life, and I finally put together what it is. It’s based on stories passed down from Hennessy McPhee, through Hector, my great-grandfather. And I think I figured out what it’s all about. Hennessy McPhee helped ‘diagnose’—put in your own scare quotes—some of the folks who lived here so they’d be sent to the School for the Feeble-Minded. The ones who were left, I think they were forced to move their houses off the island. My dream is about being in a house that’s moving toward the ocean. Remember Jimmy said his great-uncle was rambling about floating houses? Maybe that’s what he was talking about.”
That rang a tiny bell in the back of his mind. “There’s an old photo in my father’s library of a house floating on a big raft made of wooden logs. I asked him about it, and he said it was from an island off Harpswell. He said in some areas, when the fishing stocks dropped, people would just move their houses somewhere else.”
“Do you believe him?”
“Well, yeah. I had no reason not to believe him.”
“Maybe the same thing happened here. There’s another thing. Your ancestor, the first John Carmichael, is the one who hired Hennessy McPhee to come out here!”
“Oh shit.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “I guess we know why.”
“Exactly. The Carmichaels wanted to build the hotel here, and they didn’t want any riff-raff hanging around to spoil the ambiance. All those scare articles about how rowdy and incestuous the outer islands were, the ones in Gabby’s thumb drive, I bet they were just drumming up public outrage so people like your ancestor could develop the islands. Money rules, right?”
Heather stood up and slipped her panties over her hips. He watched with regret as her intimate parts disappeared from view. She pulled on her jeans, wriggling a bit to get the tight denim onto her body.
“Sounds like speculation.” He preferred to deal in solid facts and evidence.
“You think so? The same thing happens today. Disinformation, misinformation…people have been doing this shit forever. And apparently your family,” she jabbed a finger toward him, “did it to mine.”
“What are you talking about?”
“My mom told me that Grandpa Hector used to warn her about the Carmichaels because they were responsible for ruining Hennessy’s reputation and driving him to drink. Which in turn drove Hector to drink, and then Arthur, my grandfather, and my mom too, which drove her to hook up with my dad, who also drinks, and just generally ruined the McPhee family all down the line.”
The resentment in her voice confused him. “I’m sorry, are you blaming me for all that?”
“You? No.” She put on one boot and zipped it up. “Of course not. Your family did benefit, though. They got their hotel, then smeared the name of the man who knew what they’d done to make that happen.”
“Aren’t you getting ahead of the facts here?”
She tied her other shoe, and jumped to her feet. “You think the Carmichaels just happened to stumble across a beautiful uninhabited island perfect for building a resort? Or maybe they peacefully worked out something with the people who lived here, offered them jobs, treated them with respect, shared resources equally…you know, like they do now?”
“Heather, Jesus, why are you angry at me?”
“I’m not,” she cried, still sounding angry. “I just…I know it’s not your fault. It’s not my fault either, what Hennessy did…if he did it. But I know he did, because…” She plopped back onto the bed and dropped her head into her hands. “I had another dream last night. It felt so real, like I was there. It was horrible. Terrible things happened on this island, and my family was part of it, and I don’t…I don’t know what to do with that.”
He scooted closer to her and tentatively touched her shoulder. Although she didn’t pull away, he felt her tension through the jacket she’d pulled on over her tank top. “Tell me the dream.”
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“It was the telephone,”Heather said slowly. The thick sense of dread that had come with the dream flooded back to her. “The other times I’ve had the dream, the word ‘telephone’ kept coming up. Like, someone was shouting it, or it was echoing around somehow. The whole dream was confusing, but at least now I understand the part about the house moving into the ocean.”
Drawing in a long shaky breath, she told him the new part of the dream.
“The same little girl that I always see in the dreams is standing in the doorway of the house. She looks terrified, she’s almost crying. And I’m asking her if she knows what a telephone is. I keep repeating it over and over. ‘What is a telephone?’ But she doesn’t know. She starts crying. Then I ask her who the president is. She can’t answer that either, and just starts sobbing into her pinafore. I feel bad, but I have to keep going. She runs past me and I see that she’s barefoot and she’s running across the beach. It’s the Shell Beach, our Shell Beach, the same as in my other dreams. Then she runs into the ocean and I feel like I should go after her, but I can’t because it’s not my job, and I have to do my job, but I feel so terrible that I close my eyes because I can’t watch her drown herself. And I know thatI willdrown myself when I’m done, and it’s what I deserve.”
She shook off the residual horror of the dream, grateful for Luke’s hand on her shoulder, holding her steady.
“Jesus. Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” She shuddered as the last vestiges of those nightmarish feelings wisped away. “It wasn’t me in the dream, I know that much. I think it was Hennessy. I read in an article I found last night that Hennessy developed a test to give the islanders. If they didn’t pass, they might be sent to the School for the Feeble-Minded. It was based on something called the Binet Scale, but much simpler, just a few questions. I think my brain put it all together for me last night. Wait, let me check something else first.”
She found her phone and did a quick Internet search. Sure enough, what she suspected was true.
