Page 43 of Trick of Light
“We took care of each other.” She paused in the midst of fixing her hair. Her eyes went out of focus again. “We talked about the journal and she told me stories she’d heard from her mother and her grandmother, and her great-aunt. I think that dream was inspired by one of her stories. I was Marianne on the pirate ship about to arrive at the island. My…Joshua was there.”
“Your Joshua?”
“That was the pirate’s name. I looked him up, you know, when I first read the journal. He never made it back after he left Marianne and his unborn baby on Sea Smoke Island.”
“Unborn baby? The plot thickens. Were you pregnant in the dream?”
“Oh yes. Big old belly. I knew it was twins, but I was keeping it a secret…” She drew in a slow breath. “In the dream I knew that I’d never see Joshua again. But I could have dreamed it that way because in real life, I know he died soon afterwards. The subconscious works in weird ways.”
“Yes, but this sounds more like a movie than a dream. Dreams don’t usually make much sense. They’re surreal. They follow their own logic.”
“Are you saying you don’t think it was a dream?” She shook her head with a frown. “What else could it be?”
“Toxic plant?” Although he meant it as a joke, he winced as soon as he said the words. He didn’t mean to add fuel to the toxic-plant fire.
Gabby crossed her arms over her chest. “Are you saying your grandmother poisoned me too?”
“No. Jesus. She didn’t poison anyone, and I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. But Tamara can have a strange effect on people.” He said that last bit reluctantly, since he hated saying anything that might reflect badly on his adorable grandmother. “She didn’t make you any tea, did she?”
“No! We had no tea in jail.” Gabby flopped down in the chair opposite him, a wingback, needlepoint-covered, bombproof piece of furniture. “But she did give me a snack,” she admitted. “Some weird pemmican kind of thing, dried berries and nuts.”
“And rendered animal fat. Tamara makes her own, she says it’s an old family recipe from a Wabanaki relative.”
She shuddered slightly. “Can’t say I loved it. Never been a jerky kind of girl. Anyway, it was the only food either of us had with us, so she very generously shared it with me.”
“They don’t feed the prisoners in lockup?”
“They did. This was a midnight snack kind of thing. I remember it took forever to eat it, and I might have fallen asleep mid-chew.”
He raised his eyebrows at her and she sighed. “Okay, maybe you’re right and Tamara’s weird snack gave me that vivid dream. My mother is really going to love this. I went to jail and then I ingested hallucinogens. I’m definitely on the road to ruin now.”
He let out a booming laugh, the kind he didn’t usually unleash with people he didn’t know very well. But it brought a wide smile to her lips, and a moment later she was laughing too. They both carried on like that for a while, each one’s laughter spurring on the other, until finally she clutched at her stomach.
“Please make it stop,” she gasped. She lay limp and quivering in the chair, her slim brown hands on her belly.
As if she were cuddling a baby bump.
He shook off the weird flash, only to be struck by another thought. Did Tamara really need her toothbrush, when Marigold had provided her with one? Did she really need her extra socks? Or had she sent him here so he’d cross paths with Gabby? And if so, why?
Maybe Tamara wanted him to find out what Gabby was up to.
“Why are you so interested in this Marianne character?” he asked slowly.
“It’s for the podcast, I told you. We’re focusing on Sasha’s story as a way to personalize the stories of the eviction victims. It’s easier to connect with one person than with a nameless, faceless group that you don’t know. Sasha is the perfect person to spotlight. Sasha is related to Tamara, and Marianne, and, I guess, you.”
“I’m not appearing on any podcast.”
“Well, that works out well, since you’re not invited.”
Looking at her more closely, he saw that his automatic response had wounded her. “Sorry.”
“For what?”
A gust of wind flung a spatter of rain against the windows on the east side of the house. A thunderstorm was in the forecast, he remembered. Here on the southwest point of the island, they were usually sheltered from the brunt of the summer storms, but they would no doubt hear the thunder.
He got to his feet and went about the room closing windows. “For speaking that way about your podcast. That’s your work and I should show more respect for it.”
She snorted. “How far back does that apology go? You’ve been talking that way from the beginning. And then you chased Sasha away and forced us to change direction.”
