Page 15 of Trick of Light
He caught her glance and raised an eyebrow, gesturing toward the house. He didn’t want to invite anyone in without her permission.
“Why don’t you two come inside and Barnaby will make us some tea,” she offered.
“Still doing chores?” Luke murmured as he followed Tamara down the path to the tiny house.
“Looks like.” If that was supposed to be a dig, it didn’t hit. Barnaby would do anything to take care of Tamara—or at least anything she’d let him do. She was still highly independent.
Inside, Barnaby immediately shifted into his familiar role of helper. While Tamara settled into her armchair with a sigh, he filled the copper teakettle and set it on the vintage O’Keefe and Merritt cookstove, which Tamara had inherited from her grandmother. She was a master of maintaining things, of reusing things, of finding new uses for items other people would discard. She hung empty thread spools in her garden to startle away the starlings. She’d made her own loom out of the wood from broken chairs. A timepiece out of old spoons. Her ingenuity was endless.
There was no one on this earth he respected more than this tiny woman with the enormous heart.
He stole a glance at Gabby, happy to see that she was giving Tamara the respectful attention the older woman deserved. Some people couldn’t see past the white hair and shrunken form. But he could tell that Gabby saw a person, and a fascinating one at that.
“Back to the part where you didn’t tell any of us,” Luke prompted, as he lowered himself carefully onto one of Tamara’s spindle-back chairs.
“At first I was afraid Dad wouldn’t let me come out here,” Barnaby explained. “You know how he felt about the western end of the island. I didn’t know about my mother until right before I left. It blew my mind. I had to get away. I felt like I’d been lied to my whole life. I had been. I couldn’t handle it.”
“That’s why you left the island?”
Barnaby checked with Tamara to see which glass jar of tea she wanted to use. When she pointed at the chamomile, he took it down from the wooden shelf next to the stove.
“Yeah. I confronted Dad. He doesn’t like to be challenged, and I went about it head-to-head, like a dumb bull. He told me if I said anything, he’d call the FDA on Tamara.”
“The FDA?”
“And the IRS and some other acronyms. Her herbal business is all under the table. If someone wanted, they could make trouble for her. And you know Dad. John Carmichael is a really bad enemy to have.”
If anyone could understand that, it was Luke. “Amen to that. But why didn’t he want you to tell anyone?”
“I don’t know. At first I thought, money, but Annabeth obviously knew she wasn’t my mother so it wouldn’t affect her divorce settlement. Reputation, maybe?”
“The man’s had four wives. It kind of fits his reputation. I don’t think anyone would be surprised.”
Barnaby shrugged, since he’d put years of thought into that very question, and still hadn’t come up with an answer.
Luke went on. “To be honest, it explains how Dad managed to have three kids in three years. Turns out you, me and Fiona all had different mothers.”
The teakettle whistled, drawing his attention that direction. Gabby and Tamara were deep in a murmured conversation that he couldn’t hear. It unsettled him, and he strained to catch a word or two, something that would give him a clue.
If it had to do with her damn podcast, he’d blow a fuse.
Luke was asking him something, and he forced himself to pay attention to that instead of to Tamara’s low storytelling murmur.
“What did Annabeth do when you found out? Did you contact her?”
Barnaby poured boiling water into the pot he’d prepared. “She was hard to reach, like always. When I finally talked to her, she said, ‘You’re a Carmichael and that’s all I have to say, except best to leave it alone’.” He put the kettle back on the stove, feeling itchy at having to relive that incredibly uncomfortable conversation. “It was weird, but that’s not a surprise. Annabeth went through a lot being married to Dad. Now she’s very religious and sends half her alimony money to a church. It drives Dad nuts.”
“I bet you would have liked to know earlier,” Luke said softly.
“Wouldn’t anyone? I think it was cruel to keep it a secret, and not just for me. For Tamara.” He glanced again at his grandmother. She was toying with her knitting needles, which she couldn’t use anymore due to her arthritis. These days, they acted as a kind of nostalgic fidget toy. “Sophie was Tamara’s only child. It would have meant everything to her to be able to spend time with me as a baby. That’s what I can’t forgive. Dad never cares about the collateral damage of his actions.”
His brother gave him a comforting squeeze of his shoulder. If anyone could understand the fury and frustration of being a Carmichael, it was Luke.
“Seems like you’ve made up for lost time. I get the feeling you do a lot for her.”
“It’s the other way around. I owe her everything. If not for Tamara, I’d be another Carson.”
“The hell with that. You’re nothing like Carson.”
