Page 13 of Light of Day
“One of those oral histories? I doubt it. She’s new in that job. They say she staged a coup and took over the joint. I don’t know why she cares. It’s just a bunch of old stories. So was that Luke Carmichael’s truck I saw drop you off?”
The change in subject made Heather startle. “Yes. He’s looking for Gabby too. She’s been missing for over two days now.”
With a worried frown, Sally took her feet off the railing. “Missing? That ain’t good.”
“Clearly.” But something in her mother’s tone made her do a double-take. “What are you getting at?”
“Isn’t it obvious? There’s people on this island who…well, they might not like…” She put her cigarette to her mouth instead of finishing the sentence. She probably expected Heather to fill in the blanks.
“Come on, Mom. Just say it. Are you saying some people would have a problem with Gabby because she’s Black? What is this, the nineteen-fifties?”
“For some folks, maybe it is. Time moves slow out here. We got phone service thirty years after the mainland, same with Internet.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but I refuse to believe that anyone here would hurt her for no reason other than she’s Black.” Heather bolted to her feet. Despite that confident statement, the seed that her mother had planted sent fear filtering through her nervous system. Hadn’t Gabby herself said she felt uncomfortable here? “Do you have any names you can give me?”
“No, I do not,” Sally said stoutly. “You know I don’t spread gossip.”
“It’s not gossip. It’s Gabby’s safety.”
After some more pestering, her mother relented. “If I were you, I’d go have a talk with Clyde and his crew. They got into a fistfight with some of the kitchen workers from the hotel. There were so many injuries they had to send the fire boat out with extra paramedics.”
About an hour later, after she’d thoroughly quizzed her mother about that incident, Heather’s phone buzzed. Her heart leaped with the hope that it was Gabby, finally checking in after getting her phone recharged. But no—it was Luke.
Ready for a cruise?
A-yup.
She was more than ready to shake off the unpleasant feeling of this conversation and feel the wind in her hair.
7
Heather was surprisedto learn that Luke’s boat, theIzzy C, was of the classic lobster boat design, with a low stern and enclosed cabin. It even had a pulley for pulling up traps. “Are you lobstering these days?”
“I have two traps out there, just for personal use. I tried lobstering when I first left home, but the fleet didn’t take kindly to someone new trying to horn in on their territory.”
“You’re supposed to start as a deckhand so you can learn the ropes. Then you wait for someone to die so you can take their place.”
“Yeah, I didn’t know all that. Someone could have warned me.” He busied himself in the cabin, stowing a tote bag, finding binoculars for her. He’d rowed them to his mooring with the speed and power of someone who’d grown up on the water.
“Carrie didn’t?”
She caught his quickly hidden reaction to her mention of his ex-wife. Sally had given her a quick rundown of that relationship before Luke had picked her up. Married two years, one child, divorced, shared custody. Everyone had been surprised when Luke stayed on the island after the breakup. But now they were used to him, and he generally got high marks from the islanders for his part-time parenting.
“She probably did,” Luke admitted. “I didn’t used to be the best listener.”
“How very…self-aware of you.”
“Yeah, well.” He started the engine, and Heather felt the familiar vibration under her feet and in her bones. “Some of us are born self-aware, others have to figure it out as we go.”
She had to giggle at that. “It’s never been my strong point, either. It took me lots of therapy to see how every decision I made was so I wouldn’t end up like my parents. Want me to cast off?”
He nodded, and she climbed onto the bow of theIzzy Cto untie the line that tethered them to the mooring—a large neon-pink buoy marked with the name Carmichael. As he steered the boat into the channel, she coiled and stowed the rope, then clambered off the forecastle, making sure to hold on to the railing—you never knew when a wave could rock you off your feet.
“You’ve done that before,” he commented when she reached the cabin.
“Only about ten thousand times. Summer job for as long as I can remember.” She put the binocular strap around her neck. “I’ll be on the deck unless it gets too cold.”
“Give a shout if you see anything.”
