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“Yes. They wanted to claim he had dementia so he couldn’t ruin their inheritance.”
“To be fair, I think he might have some dementia.”
“Maybe, but I’m going to make damn sure several legitimate doctors make that diagnosis, not some hack hired by Celine.”
She could tell he didn’t want to say anything more about it. Those family connections went deep, even when you’ve gone a different direction from the rest. She understood that very well.
Finding a way to love her family and free herself at the same time—tricky.
But she’d done it, she realized. So had Luke. Welcome to adulthood, she thought dryly.
Onboard the lobster boat, Gabby and Heather fell into each other’s arms. They babbled apologies and explanations, talking at the same time, then stopping so the other could talk, then hugging again.
Huddled in the cabin, glaring at her, was Fiona, wrapped in a yellow Helly Hansen jacket with fishy bloodstains on it. It must belong to the boat, because she looked repulsed by it. Carson lay unconscious on the bench. An Asian woman who must be Detective Chen was tending to a bullet wound in his leg, with the assistance of another girl Heather didn’t recognize.
But in a flash, she knew who it must be. “Is that Sasha Mackey?”
“Yes, it is. Nice. You figured it all out, didn’t you?”
The two of them settled on top of a cooler wedged in the stern of the deck so they could talk away from the flying spray.
“I don’t know about all, but some,” said Heather. “Denton reached out to you because you’re from southern Maine and you’re Black, and he thought you might be from a family who was forced to leave.”
“Correct. Well, partly. I’m not, obviously, since my people are from Georgia and Puerto Rico. But Denton actually contacted me because he thought we might be related.”
“What?”
“He figured out that one branch of his family was forced off the island, but the Simms side was able to pass as white. They blended in with the hotel workers so they were able to ride out the purge. Jimmy knew about it, too, but he didn’t want it to come out. He was embarrassed. Denton sent me an old tape with an interview of one of his uncles. It was enough to make me come out and try to find the rest of the story.”
“I should have come with you from the start.”
Gabby clutched the railing as they plunged into a wave coming straight off the ocean. “I told you it’s a bombshell story. Denton was super-paranoid about it. He wanted to be the one to share the information, and only face-to-face. I couldn’t tell you anything until you were here. And then when you told me he’d died…I got a little paranoid too, I don’t mind saying.”
“So is Sasha…”
“She’s the proof. DNA proof. That kid Andy found an old bone shard that they were able to get DNA from. It matches Sasha. Denton had already located her, all I had to do was talk her into a blood test. And keep any nasty Carmichaels from finding her.”
“He left his house to her. It’s burned down now, but the land is still hers.”
“All that is up to her.” They looked over at Sasha, who was busy bandaging Carson. “She’s a triage nurse. Lucky for Carson, huh?”
“What an ass. He would have killed me.”
“The sister’s pretty sus, too. As soon as her bag got threatened, she went to work.”
Heather wrapped the solar blanket Luke had given her tighter around her shoulders. “It’s too bad that they just doubled down on the shit their ancestors pulled. They made people leave, didn’t they?”
“Yes. They cleared a whole community out of here because they wanted to build that cursed hotel. Not only that, but they slandered the residents who lived here. They worked with the newspapers to put out all sorts of lies about them, accusing them of incest and so forth. And you know how they got away with it?”
“I think I do,” Heather said slowly. All the pieces had come together in her mind as she’d sheltered under that pine tree, like ghostly threads weaving themselves together. “The people who lived here were Black.”
“Some of them were, not all. It was a mixed-race community. There were Black folks, freed slaves mostly, who settled on some of the islands after the Civil War because no one lived there. Some Wabanaki joined them. White people too, obviously, mostly Welsh and Scots and Irish and Portuguese. They all intermarried, they fished, they grew crops here, they took in laundry during hard times. The shell beach was one of their settlements, by a middens left by the ancient Abenaki. That’s why there are so many mussel and clamshells there. Andy figured that part out. Everyone lived in peace, no problems other than poverty, until the tourism business got going around the turn of the century. All of a sudden a faraway island like Sea Smoke became a hot real estate prize.”
Heather gazed out at the tall pines marching up the ridge toward the lights of the Lightkeeper Inn. “So that’s why the public believed that whole smear campaign. They didn’t like the race mixing.”
Gabby nodded sadly. “The residents here had three things against them. They were poor, they were mixed-race, and they happened to be squatting on land that became prime real estate. The funny thing is, apparently interracial marriage was mostly accepted in Maine before then. I talked to a local historian about it. But then came the eugenics movement, and the propaganda started, and that was it. The public believed the worst and it cost the islanders everything. They all had to leave. Some of them got sent to the School for the Feeble-Minded. Everything was destroyed, whatever homes were left, their schoolhouse. Oh! They even moved the graves of their dead.”
“That photo of coffins on your flash drive.” The memory of that black-and-white photo sent chills up and down her spine.
