Page 71 of Trick of Light
“Shut up,” he grumbled, making her laugh even more. He called Judy and got the location of the garage where the Land Rover was kept. “We still need a Lyft to get to the car, so you can stop laughing at me now.”
“Hell no. Imma be laughing about this for a while.” She realized she’d slipped a little code-switching in there. That must mean she was really comfortable with Barnaby.
How did that happen? It wasn’t just the sex. Since they’d gotten closer, Barnaby had offered her respect, support and protectiveness—all things that meant more to her than good sex, though he’d also given her that. Barnaby was hitting all the marks so far. It hasn’t been that long, she reminded herself. So much had been happening lately that she felt she’d known him much, much longer.
In the Land Rover, they drove up the coast, through tiny towns with wooden bridges arching over rivers, past smokestacks rising from old brick mill buildings, harbors bristling with sailboat masts.
“Maine is such a pretty state, sometimes I do miss it,” she mused as they drove past a green jewel of a downtown park next to a white-clapboard church.
“Would you ever consider moving back?”
Was he asking for a reason? Don’t get ahead of yourself. “My parents would love it. I do think about it. I sublet my apartment when Heather and I decided to spend the summer up here. Heather just gave hers up, so it looks like she might be staying on the island with Luke and Izzy. What about you? What’s your next adventure? How long will you be stuck at the Lightkeeper?”
“I have no answers to any of that. Right now, this is my adventure. Helping Tamara, figuring out what happened to my mother. Spending time with you.” He flashed her such a devastating smile that it knocked the breath out of her. “Best adventure of my life so far.”
“That can’t be true. Didn’t you kayak the Inside Passage in Alaska?” Before he could answer, she snapped her fingers. “Crap, I forgot. I wanted to do a little more research on the Garners. Heather dug up the information about that plane crash, so I never saw it myself.” She pulled out her phone and flexed her fingers again.
“I love watching you do your thing. You get so excited.”
“That I do.” Her fingers flew over the keys. “Being good at something is the ultimate high. Here we go. I’ll start with Jill Garner since she was the attending nurse.” She added hospital details to her search. “She didn’t work at the hospital. But she was an obstetric nurse. It looks like she worked for a medical temp agency that had a contract with the hospital. But she left the agency that year.”
She checked another site that focused on voter addresses.
“And that’s the same year her address changed to Sea Smoke Island.”
“So she moved to the island the same year I was born?”
“That’s right. Keith must have been a toddler then. Heather thinks he was about seven or eight years older than her, which means he’s a little older than you. That must have been when they bought the house that Amelia lived in.”
“Or someone bought it for them,” Barnaby said darkly. “Another payoff.”
“Could be.” She switched to a property records database. “There’s no mention of the Carmichaels, but that doesn’t mean anything.”
“Do me a favor and google these other names.” He passed her the list of names of the medical team who had assisted during and after his birth.
She did more than that. She found contact information for everyone on the obstetrics team. The OB/GYN who had delivered Barnaby died a few years ago. Both of the nurses had retired and moved out of state. She called one of them and reached her daughter, who said she’d recently had a stroke and couldn’t come to the phone. The other, Nancy Baggot, answered the phone herself.
Gabby scrambled to come up with a way to approach her request, and landed on a “partial Carmichael.” “Hello, I’m calling on behalf of Barnaby Carmichael, of the Carmichael family from Sea Smoke Island in Maine. I’m sure you’ve heard of him. He’s working on a memoir and wants to start at the very beginning—the moment of his birth. Would you be willing to answer a few questions? I can put him on the line when you’re ready.”
“Oh my. Barnaby Carmichael?” Nancy’s previously cheerful tone turned wary. “John’s son? Does John know he’s calling?”
“Barnaby’s in charge of the Carmichaels’ affairs now and he doesn’t do anything without full authorization.” Close enough to the truth, she thought.
“Because there’s that NDA…I don’t know…I’d have to talk to a lawyer…no, I’m sorry. I can’t say anything until I’ve spoken to him. What did you say your name was?”
Damn it.
Barnaby gestured for her phone. She put it on speaker and held it closer to him. “This is Barnaby Carmichael.” The commanding Carmichael tone was back. “As the official family representative, I give you permission to break the NDA. If you need that in writing, you’ll get it. In the meantime, I’d like to ask a few questions, and you can choose what you want to answer.”
After a long pause, she said, obviously still reluctant, “Okay.”
“First, about the NDA. I assume it was put in place to keep the fact that Sophie Brown was my mother a secret. Is that correct, or is there another reason?”
“I shouldn’t…” she stammered.
“Is it also because of what you witnessed afterwards?”
That question sent Nancy into a panic. “I…I didn’t see anything. Just the blood. I didn’t see anything else.”
