56

As a crowd now gathered on the dock, Benjamin and Noah worked to fish the men and little boy out of the water, Agent Moore stepped forward with her badge held high. A few of the firemen and crewmen from the cruise ships helped pull them out of the water. The figure who’d run by had been Bobby, much to everyone’s surprise. Apparently, he’d launched himself off the dock, splitting the water like a needle to pull Bryan up from the water.

Steinman came out of the water last huffing and puffing. He was sputtering, angry and waterlogged, but the final embarrassment was that he was pulled out of the water by the duffle bag. The men on the dock hauled him out of the water by the bag still draped around him like a harness, his arms yanked high over his head so that his pale white belly was exposed for the world to see. The gun had been lost to the harbor itself, and the doctor-turned-drug dealer was harmless.

Looking up, Leo gulped in mouthfuls of fresh, salty air, and felt the sunshine fresh on his face. The wind had blown away every hint of cloud in the sky, and the bright rays from above felt like a reminder of how good life could be. It was a good day to be alive, even if he was a little soggy. 

Sitting on the dock, across from Steinman, who was under the watchful eye of Agent Moore, Leo shook his head in disbelief at the man’s fiery frustration. The sputtering doctor was still griping about the weather and the foolishness of living on the island, and complaining that the island’s new pastor had prevented him from escaping. Leo said, “I don’t think the island is too fond of you either, but no hard feelings over here.”

George and Betty Williams had little Bryan wrapped in a blanket, and he was gnawing away at a chocolate bar. They had found a matching blanket for Bobby, who was grinning from ear to ear, high-fiving the little boy over and over again to his delight. Apparently his old Navy diving training had kicked in when he saw what Dr. Steinman had done and he entered the water without thinking. He didn’t even look too sore for the effort either, as acting with purpose cured a bunch of the world’s ills. 

Leo walked over to where they were sitting, leaned against a dock pylon. “You saved Bryan’s life, Bobby,” said Betty, tears drying on her face. “I don’t know how we’ll ever repay you.” 

“This won’t repay you, sir,” said George, looking on. “But Betty and I are coming to build a boys and girls’ recreation center on the island, to help give the island some opportunities for its children. After what I saw today, I’d be thrilled if you’d be our first aquatics director.”

Bobby had been drying his hair and playing peekaboo with Bryan. At this, he stopped rubbing his head and looked up, “You want me to help with that?”

“Absolutely!” said Betty. “Do you think you could do that?”

Bobby looked up at Leo and grinned. “I think I could pull that off. Where in the world are you going to find space for that though, and funding?”

The Williamses looked at each other. “Well, this was supposed to be a surprise. But Mr. O’Rourke has agreed to invest in renovating the old library. It’s still going to have a library wing – named after your wife.”

Leo couldn’t tell why Bobby cried next – either out of joy or sadness – but he figured either way that Bobby was discovering that there was a purpose to his life, and that was a good thing. 

By now, the crowd had grown bigger on the dock, and Leo saw a mix of Tranquility residents and cruise ship tourists mingling. Out of the crush of people, Aggie pushed her way through to speak to Bobby, who grinned sheepishly and winked at Leo over Aggie’s shoulder. Isabelle, Red, David and Johnny were dispersed throughout the crowd, sharing their versions of what had gone down. The new rec center folks were talking to a diminutive woman who looked like she was crying, joyfully though. Standing sheepishly next to her were the Moma boys, indicating to Leo that the woman was their mother. Apparently she would be signing them up for whatever services the new center provided. 

Leo walked over and greeted the boys, who introduced him to their mother. “Mrs. Moma, I don’t know if you know this, but the boys both have some skills in the garden!” Leo shared. He thought Mrs. Moma would start crying all over again, as unused to positive feedback as she was for the boys. “Mr. Hammersmith out at the Farm could certainly use some able bodied help out there. Maybe you should take the boys out there in the next couple of days and see if he couldn’t hire them for some additional help.”

The little woman smiled up at Leo, and hugged the boys to her tightly. They squirmed a little but finally gave in. “I’ll do that, sir, and thank you,” she said. “They told me about your talk in the garden. Thank you for seeing them for who they are.”

Leo nodded, and patted the boys on the shoulder. Some of their friends ran up, including the trio of youth that Leo had played basketball with. Junior grinned at Leo from ear to ear, and high-fived him, before all five of them moved off to chat. 

Leo looked up at the sun overhead, and shook his head, a grin dawning. Nothing about the last few days had gone as expected, but what resulted was even better than any plan these people could have devised for themselves. All’s well that ends well, he thought, slipping away to see about a change of clothes.

57

Later, when Agent Moore had seen that Dr. Steinman was secured to the bench at the back of the ferry deck and Leo had changed out of his marina-soaked clothes, the two of them stood talking to Red, Miss Isabelle, David, and Johnny. 

Moore had just finished explaining how there had been signs of large quantities of drugs coming through a funeral home on the mainland that had been traced back to Tranquility. She explained how all of this had come to a head with the less than illustrious procession involving Richard Simon Culcutter IV’s funeral and the unclasped latch. The DEA office on the mainland knew that cruise ships were passing contraband back and forth, but they needed someone to figure out why Tranquility was a hub for this activity. Several feelers had been put out through the agency and someone had suggested that Red O’Rourke had once run a tight ship and might still have an ear to what was going on in the cruise ship circles. 

On his last trip to the mainland, O’Rourke had shared that he knew smuggling was occurring locally, having seen it happen on ships when he’d been a captain, and wondering why there’d been an uptick in suspicious behavior on the island. He hadn’t named Steinman when talking to the DEA, but he admitted that he’d been watching his former colleague with a closer eye over the last few months. Moore acknowledged his willingness to help again. “We couldn’t have wrapped this up without you.”

The older man turned red, and tried to look away but Miss Isabelle wasn’t letting him miss the moment. She smiled and patted his back while holding onto him with her good arm. 

“Hopefully, Tranquility can live up to its name now,” David piped up. “And maybe next time there’s trouble, Uncle Red will know to ask for some help instead of keeping it all to himself.” He hugged his uncle sideways, and O’Rourke hugged him back fiercely with his other arm. 

O’Rourke looked down, a tear threatening to drop from the corner of his eye. “Son, I should’ve trusted you to help with this. I should’ve trusted you with a whole lot more,” he said, wrapping David in a one-armed hug. In the other arm, Miss Isabelle smiled up at him, her right arm wrapped in gauze.  

“Well, I thank you all for what you did. A little bravery and maybe a little crazy, too,” Agent Moore said, elbowing Leo in the ribs. He grimaced. “Easy now, Agent. I’m still a little sore.”

Agent Moore didn’t look too apologetic as they all chuckled at Leo’s discomfort. He certainly didn’t fit what they individually would have expected from the village parson. Leo just shook his head and turned the subject to other stories, like Bobby’s new job or the opportunity that O’Rourke was taking to care for the next generation of Tranquility youth. They all thought that building up the next generation would go a long way toward avoiding another situation like Steinman’s. Moore checked her watch, realizing it was time to go, and shook each of the Tranquility residents’ hands and turned to Leo, “We’ll pull away when you’re ready.”

Leo nodded, turning to Isabelle and Red. “You certainly have a story to tell, don’t you?” he asked. They turned to each other, and quietly smiled. Red cleared his throat. “I think there may be a proposal that’s well overdue.” 

Miss Isabelle squeezed him with her good arm, and Red awkwardly received the high fives of David and Johnny. “Looks like you’ve got a wedding to help plan when you get back,” said David, excitedly. 

Leo chuckled. “Time will tell. No need to rush anything,” he said, with a wink. “I said I’d accompany Agent Moore until she’s met by another DEA agent on the mainland, so I better go.”

As the ferry pulled away, Leo and Moore looked back at the island, getting smaller and smaller. The salt spray had a certain appeal, but they were both thinking about the storm that had raged on the island, and the way it had almost ended so differently. 

58

When the ferry came around the corner of the mainland, Agent Moore stood up and looked toward the ferry landing. There were several people in black suits and sunglasses milling around, and they responded in unison when the first agent saw the ferry, like ants attracted to the scent of sugar. 

Captain Benjamin looked back at Moore, who winked and gave him a thumbs up. Leo was looking a little green, but with the inevitable end in sight, he swallowed hard and stood up next to her. 

“You finished your mission, Agent Moore,” he said, smiling weakly by her side. She looked more self-assured than she had earlier in the week on the island, the weight of her secret no longer burdening her. 

“We caught the bad guy, Leo,” she replied, patting his white knuckled grip on the ferry’s railing. Looking down at their quarry, she chuckled at how miserable Dr. Steinman looked, his smug certainty replaced by a frumpled man who thought he’d gotten away with murder and even a little profit. “‘And I would’ve gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for you meddling kids!’” she added, mimicking Steinman’s nasal whine. 

Leo just stared at her. “Scooby-Doo? Seriously? Where are you from anyway?” Moore muttered, shaking her head. 

With a bump, the captain had run the ferry into the dock, clearly even more anxious than normal at the sight of all of the federal officers milling around. The press had arrived too, with camera flashes and a few news station reporters sticking microphones into the faces of passing agents, some of whom brushed them away and others who stopped to answer questions. 

Moore and Leo helped Steinman to his feet. The man’s lab coat was no longer pristine white, after his quick dip in the island harbor, and a smear of color on one sleeve showed that he’d been a little seasick on the ride back. He grumbled at Moore as she unlocked his handcuffs from the ferry railing and then cuffed them again behind his back. “Doc,” she said, “it’s going to be a long day for you, so you might as well embrace the ride.”

As she walked Steinman to the ferry gangplank, a rotund middle-aged agent in an ill-fitting DEA jacket barged onto the ferry. “Moore, do you need any help? You finally caught him,” he was yelling, loudly enough that reporters were turning to look. 

Leo saw Gillian stiffen. “Dewey,” she muttered under her breath.

As Dewey tried to get onto the ferry to get his hands on Steinman, and Leo crossed the gangplank, their paths crossed awkwardly. Leo apologized and stepped to the side, but somehow his foot hooked Dewey’s, and the big agent started to lose his balance. A person of grace and beauty, he was not. 

As Dewey’s arms spiraled, hands flying everywhere, his face turned white as a sheet. Tilting forward, the man threw his shoulders back to try and regain his balance but overcompensated. He tried to call out for help, but no one could have reached him in time. As Moore looked on, her boss splashed into the water next to the dock. 

Apparently Dewey, sent to New England from one of the flyover states in the midwest, didn’t know how to swim. 

Looking from the splashing arms of her boss to the calm presence of Leo, who was dusting off his coat as if nothing had happened, Moore handed Steinman off to a pair of agents, who were barely concealing their laughter behind less-than-subtle coughs. She turned back to Dewey, tossing him an end of rope, as his hairpiece floated by her. 

Several junior agents had rushed over to help, and one of them even dove into the water, dragging a life preserver to their boss. Moore looked to see that the captain and first mate had gone about their business, like it was just a day at the dock, and now the first mate was even selling snacks out of the little shop. It looked like the New England ferryman didn’t figure you were much of their concern if you hadn’t paid for a ticket, and she couldn’t blame them.

Looking back at all of the reporters gathered around in the parking lot, Moore could only imagine what would happen when the news caught footage of Dewey flailing around in the water while several of his colleagues munched on popcorn, entertained. It was going to be another long week in the office, for everyone except for Dewey. 

Stifling a laugh, Moore fistbumped a few of the people from her office, accepting it as congratulations for capturing Steinman and also watching Dewey run over by the karma truck too, she was sure. She fished around in her bag and pulled out the remote access for her car, comforted by the technological beep that followed. It was good to be back on the mainland. 

After packing her luggage into the trunk of her personal car, Moore signed off on paperwork that provided a preliminary explanation of what had happened on Tranquility. She agreed to report the next morning at nine a.m. for a full debrief, and accepted the congratulations of her peers who understood what she had accomplished undercover. 

Finally extricating herself from the group of agents, Moore watched silently as Steinman was driven away in the back of an agency vehicle. She turned back to the ferry, looking for Leo, expecting an opportunity to thank him for his help both in the capture of Steinman, and whatever had happened on the gangplank moments before. 

“I haven’t seen him in a bit,” said Noah, when Moore asked. “Captain’s about ready to return with these folks though, so he best be hurrying up if he’s going back now.”

Moore looked around the parking lot, but couldn’t find Leo, and finally drove off, eager to get a shower and collapse on the couch with her dog and internet access.

59

Stepping off of the ferry a few hours later, the young man awkwardly pulled at his collar, clearly uncomfortable with its starch fit, and walked a little unsteadily across the gangplank in shiny new dress shoes. He thanked the first mate for helping him get his bags to the dock, hoping someone might be there to meet him. But when no one appeared, he asked the captain for directions, and set out on his way, leaving the captain and first mate behind to clean up the ferry.

As he walked up the ramp from the dock, the man took notice of the Ocean’s Spray Grille, Kauffman’s Bakery, and the other elements of small island life. He nodded politely to the people he passed, and stopped once to clear his glasses of the salty mist they had acquired. Island life would certainly require some adaptability, but he figured he was up for the challenge. 

Walking down Main Street, he paused for a moment in front of the infirmary, noticing that a sign had been posted announcing it was closed until further notice. He wondered what that could possibly mean for the health of the people on the island, but he pushed ahead toward his destination, eager to get to there and figure out what would come next. 

Arriving at the end of town he had been directed to, the latest arrival to Tranquility pushed open the chapel doors, and looked at the casting light and shadows that decorated the walls of the sanctuary. It truly was a beautiful sanctuary, if not simpler than many of the churches he had worshiped in over the last twenty or so years. At the front of the chapel, he saw a little woman, her one arm bandaged and held by her side gingerly, and a big redheaded man who was helping her put out some garland and flowers. Another woman was gently warming up on the piano and a little man with a thin mustache was setting out paper bulletins, and lighting candles. They looked expectantly toward him as they heard his tread down the carpet. 

“Can we help you?” the big man asked. “I’m Red and this is Belle, er, Isabelle. We’re actually preparing for a wedding!”

“I’m terribly sorry,” said the man, “I know I’m running behind. But there was a hang-up on some of my paperwork and I was supposed to be here a few days ago. I thought you would be expecting me. Did you not get my message?”

Red and Miss Isabelle looked at each other, and then back to the man quizzically. The other man and woman had drawn closer to find out what was going on. They all waited expectantly, not suspiciously, for what the newcomer would say next. 

“Well, I was hoping that you could show me the way to my rooms,” said the man, clearly thinking that it should’ve been obvious, lifting his bags in hand. When they didn’t respond, he added,  “I’m the new pastor.”

The End…

52

An hour later, Leo heard the sound of the door unlocking. He was facing the door, still sitting on the floor. As the door opened, David prepared to launch himself at Dr. Steinman, but the doctor entered on one side with another man, side by side, pointing guns in either direction. Fred’s smile seemed a bit more sinister than it had before, but he just shrugged when he saw Leo’s disbelieving stare. “What? A guy has to make money,” he said. “You do what you have to do. That dumb bar wasn’t bringing in nearly what this job does.”

Dr. Steinman gestured with his gun. “David, Johnny, Leo, get up. We’re going for a little walk.”

This time, Dr. Steinman was prepared. He had Fred zip tie the hands of his captives, and nudged them in the back with his gun to get them moving down the stairs. Johnny stumbled but caught himself on the bannister, groaning with the impact. Leo felt the push of Fred’s gun in his back, and continued walking down the stairs. On the floor, the two dogs lay, quiet but not still, twitching spasmodically, clearly drugged. 

“C’mon, guys, we’re going to lock you in the cooler,” said Steinman, barely looking down at the dogs. 

As the three prisoners walked ahead of them, Steinman and Fred joked about how the storm had shaken up their timeline, but helped them in the long run. Soon, there’d be even more sick cruise ship passengers and maybe a few of them would die, making the shipments to the mainland easier. The profit margin would be even greater without the steroid jockey in the middle. Leo was sick to his stomach, not just for himself but for the whole island.

Entering the kitchen, Leo saw that the back wall was actually a walkin in freezer. The two drug dealers were getting rid of them, without directly killing them. Everything slowed down, as the others made the same recognition, the space around them becoming quiet. 

Suddenly, a loud clang rang out, and Fred cried out. Leo turned to see Fred on the floor, as Miss Isabelle raised up a cast iron skillet to again swing away at Steinman. Steinman, startled, was slow to react, but he was still faster than the septuagenarian. He pulled the trigger, and she gasped, dropping the skillet. Steinman had shot her in the arm, and she screamed in pain. 

Steinman didn’t know who to aim at, suddenly flush with targets. He spun from Isabelle to the ziptied captives and back, his gun flashing in the kitchen’s dim light. He snarled, “I guess I’ll just end this now!” His finger tightened once more around the trigger.

With a roar, a blur of red hair rose up behind Steinman in the hallway as O’Rourke finished his stealthy approach. He had limped down the hallway, supporting himself with one hand on the wall the whole way. Red grappled with Steinman, the bigger man’s size neutralized by his recent injuries. Fred scrambled for his gun, while Leo and the other two men looked helplessly on. Isabelle had sunk to a seated position against a kitchen cabinet, and moaned softly. The two struggling for the gun crashed into pots and pans, upending canisters on the counter. The gun skittered away from them to the other end of the kitchen. 

David went for the gun while Johnny dove at Steinman’s legs. Leo protectively went to pull Miss Isabelle out of the way of the men scuffling. When he turned back, he realized that David still hadn’t found the gun, and Fred had recovered from the blow Miss Isabelle had dealt him. 

“Enough!” Fred shouted, firing once into the ceiling. The kitchen became ethereally calm, spices and powders still filling the air and giving them all a ghostly appearance where it rested on them. 

“Just in the knick of time,” a breathless Steinman whispered, adjusting his collar. He pulled himself away from Red, who slumped to the ground. “Maybe next time you should try not to be taken out by everyone’s favorite grandmother.”

Fred rubbed the back of his head and grimaced, “You weren’t doing so hot with grandpa either.” 

“Go get the cooler open,” Steinman ordered, taking the gun from Fred, and waving it generally at their captives. 

Undoing the lock, Fred gestured for the men to enter the cooler. Leo knew that they were running out of time, and that if they made it into the cooler, they were finished. Johnny entered, and then David.

Suddenly, a voice called out from the back door of the kitchen. Standing half in shadow, Gillian stood in the doorway with a gun pointed directly at the island doctor. 

“Anna Moore, DEA. Drop your weapon,” she repeated. 

The look on Dr. Steinman’s face only lasted a few seconds as Fred charged the DEA agent with a guttural roar. His momentum carried them out of the door into the rain. Moore’s gun went off, three rapid shots together, and they heard the combatants crash to the ground.

Leo ran toward them, as the door clanged shut on the cooler, pinning Johnny and David inside. Red knelt protectively over Miss Isabelle, who was holding her arm tightly, as blood seeped from the gun wound. 

Outside, Leo pulled on Fred’s arm, and together, he and Anna pushed Fred’s lifeless body to the side. “Three shots, center mass,” she wheezed, as Leo pulled her to her feet. “I think that guy bruised my sternum.”

“Thankfully you’re better with the gun than you are with the internet on the island,” Leo said back. “Do you have anything that’ll cut these ties?”

Inside, Red sat on the debris-covered floor to cradle Miss Isabelle, but she was slapping his hands away, muttering that it would take more than a graze to put her down. “Belle, my Belle. I thought I’d lost you,” Red was mumbling. 

“Even your ornery stupidity can’t do that!” she muttered back, rolling her eyes. “You haven’t called me that in years.”

Leo popped the latch on the cooler, and the cold but still alive David and Johnny stumbled out, surveying the damage in the kitchen.  

Red laughed, surprising everyone. “Oh, Belle, only you.” Looking up at Anna, he said, “Cutting it close, Agent.”

“Sorry, sir,” Anna replied. “I had narrowed down the suspects but based on your experience, Dr. Steinman wasn’t at the top of my list yet. We knew something big was moved off the island during the last migration, but he was keeping a low profile.”

“Hey, guys, speaking of which, where did Dr. Steinman go?” asked David, looking around. In the flurry of action, the doctor had disappeared, a set of powdery footprints leading down the hallway. 

Leo and Moore rushed down the hallway, but the only remaining inhabitants of the house were Poseidon and Neptune, still fast asleep in their drug-induced dreams. 

Steinman was on the run. 

53

You have to be kidding me, Steinman whined to himself as he rushed down the hill, pedaling as fast as he could on the bike as it wobbled from side to side. The weight of the pistol in his pocket as it slammed against his leg kept him aware of the situation, even as part of his brain tried to avoid the reality of the situation. He had never set out to hurt anyone, but only to help his beautiful wife as she lay suffering. The people who used these drugs deserved whatever they got if they were stupid enough to use them. How was it his fault if people hadn’t understood or had gotten in the way?

When he’d snuck out of the mansion during the confusion, he had skirted the dogs and made a break for the woods. He wouldn’t miss anything he was leaving behind in the cabin, because it contained too many old memories and past ties that he was ready to cut. If he hadn’t been so tied to his wife, he would have never ended up in this mess! Moving forward, he promised himself that he wouldn’t commit to anyone or anything, because those connections just caused more pain and aggravation. 

Steinman had never moved so fast in his life, but he knew that his future freedom rested in his ability to get off of the island before the group from the mansion got to Main Street. They would be actively searching for him by now, and they had enough clout to bring the weight of the island crashing down on his head. 

Sweat pooled up under his hairline, caking his strands of remaining hair to his scalp. His beard dripped, the products he vainly used greasing his face and causing him to clear off his glasses periodically. He wasn’t one much for exercise, and this whole endeavor was leaving him panting. He couldn’t stop though, because there was no going back. 

The ding of a bike alarm sounded but Steinman was too focused to acknowledge the friendly wave of another little old woman from his neighborhood. He ignored her bewildered look, and sped past the pathway of his own home. He barely glanced up when he went by, aware that he would never see the place ever again. 

It doesn’t matter though, he thought, because it hasn’t been the same without her. Everything I did was for her, and about her. If people can’t understand what they would do for someone they love, then I just can’t help them. It was foolish to ever commit to what I did but in the end, I have to live with it. 

Steinman crossed the front of the school, relieved that there were no children around or teachers either to report to anyone which direction he had gone. He had never really had any interest in having children, and when his wife found out that they were infertile, that was the end of the discussion. Thankfully, he hadn’t had to see too many children as the island doctor, because dealing with the drama adults raised was plenty for him. 

The library came into view around the bend and Steinman wondered if there was anything worth taking out of there. He had carried the duffle bag with money in it wherever he went, and it was still clutched to his chest now as he ran. It should be enough to make a new life and to figure out a way forward, he thought, and he shook off the thought of the library and any additional gains to be had. 

The need was simple: make it to a boat and get off of the island. There were enough places along the mainland that he could dock a boat and disappear. He didn’t need much to be happy, and if he was off of the island, he would serve no future services for the people who thought that they had him under their thumb. 

Get off the island! He silently shouted at himself, doubling his pace. His chest was beating a spasmodic rhythm against his ribcage and he knew he had to get himself to the dock soon or find himself stuck on the island with the angry mob coming for his soul.

54

Anna took charge back in the mansion kitchen. She decided that it was best that David and Johnny escort Red and Miss Isabelle to town, hoping that Bobby or one of the retired nurses who lived on the island could stitch her up, and check Red’s sutures. They would also see if Captain Benjamin could relay a report to the mainland, for law enforcement to back up Anna. 

The law enforcement agent was prepared to track down Steinman alone, but Leo refused to leave her side. They briefly looked over the side of the cliff, but didn’t think that the doctor could have descended that quickly, and with the truth out in the open, where was he going to go? His cottage on the property was another possibility, but David had already gone to check and now came running back from the edge of the forest. 

Panting, he bent at the knees, while the others looked on. “I just realized I left my bike outside when we decided to go fishing earlier, and it’s gone. The only place Steinman would’ve ridden it to is town,” David explained. “He must be headed toward the dock to find a way off of the island.”

Anna was already walking fast after the others, groaning as she walked. “That’s more soft targets, more hostage situations,” she mumbled. “Is there anyone else we can count on out here?”

The stragglers had caught up to Red, Miss Isabelle and Johnny who were all limping down the cobblestone path. Anna told them she would go on ahead alone, but Leo announced that he was stuck with her. He knew she had risked a lot to get this far, and he didn’t want her to have to bear the weight of catching Steinman on her own. David said he would help shepherd Red and Isabelle down the hill. 

Anna’s perfect locks were anything but, now matted with mud and grass from her tussle with Fred. She was banged up too, like the rest of them, having had a huge man fall on top of her, but the determination on her face told Leo why she had been assigned the undercover job. She was laser focused on finding Steinman, slowing only to see if there were any kind of disturbances in any of the homes they passed. No one sounded the alarm, and they saw no evidence of any kind of conflict. 

The two of them didn’t exchange any words as they pursued Steinman down the slick cobblestone path, knowing that they had to stop the doctor from hurting anyone else. He was desperate, and out of control. He had a bit of a head start thanks to stealing the bicycle, but it wouldn’t be able to go too fast on the slick paths. 

On the outskirts of town, they found the old library vacant, staying only long enough to secure the swinging door and to make sure the doctor wasn’t holed up inside for one last stand. “I don’t think he’ll stay,” admitted Leo. “He seems more concerned with self-preservation than anything else.” Anna gritted her teeth and agreed, darting out of the door and taking a shortcut through the woods. 

“That’s fair,” replied Anna, nodding her head in Leo’s direction. “But he has one of two firearms that we know of on the island, and he’s already proven that he’s not afraid to shoot someone with his. Even if it means firing at some of the people that he’s known the longest.”

When they reached Main Street, Moore flashed her badge at the first people they encountered, asking if they’d seen the doctor go by. They looked at her quizzically and Leo realized that they were tourists from the cruise ship. None of them knew Anna or Leo, or even the island doctor. 

Of the thousand or so people who resided on Tranquility, all of them would have known Dr. Steinman. “Did you see a man on a bicycle ride by? Glasses and a beard… like the KFC Colonel?” asked Moore. The first few people shrugged and moved on. Some backed away before they even heard the questions, seeing the gun in Moore’s other hand, as Leo and Moore moved forward. 

Finally, the two crossed in front of the France’ Grocery, where Bill was sweeping off the front sidewalk. “Oh yeah, I saw Stein ride by just a few minutes ago, headed toward the funeral home,” he said, pausing from sweeping. “He looked awfully focused. Is there something wrong?”

Leo replied, “Just tell everyone to stay inside for the next few minutes,” as he hurried to catch up with Moore who was racing toward the funeral home, suit coat blowing open as she ran.

Up ahead of them, a scream rippled through Main Street, and Leo saw George and Betty, pale faced and with hands extended in supplication. The mother was screaming, a panicked shrieking thing, and the father had both hands out in front of him, trying to plead with someone about something. Leo could see the agony written all over his face. 

The agent came to a dead stop just shy of the funeral home, and as he caught up, Leo could see why. Backing down a ramp toward the dock, Dr. Steinman had his arm around the toddler’s neck, with his gun waving around in the other. He was half-carrying, half-dragging the boy along, and the boy’s face was stricken with abject terror. On his back, the doctor was carrying a giant duffle bag that Leo assumed was filled with more of the drug-stuffed plastic bags or money. 

Bobby had come out of the funeral home and was hobbling after Steinman and his hostage. Bobby’s face was devoid of emotion, but his eyes were locked on the doctor and his gun. 

“Come any closer, and I shoot the kid,” growled Steinman. “I’ve already shot one person who got in my way and I’m not afraid to shoot another. You people have to let me go!”

The little boy’s face was white, and it was clear that he’d run out of tears to cry. He initially struggled against Steinman’s grip, but finally gave up. “Please, mister, just let Bryan go,” the dad was saying. Leo thought he heard the mother praying behind them, but the words were choked by her sobs. 

Between rows of fishing boats and personal sailboats, Steinman retreated on the dock. The parents were following at a distance, and now Leo, Moore, and Bobby were approaching the doctor and his hostage as well. The doctor finally saw a small motorboat and half-crouched behind the boy to untie it from its mooring. 

George made a move toward the gunman, but Steinman saw him coming and fired at his feet, causing the boy’s father to dive for cover behind a group of pylons. “Don’t come any closer!” growled Steinman, yanking the boy closer to the gangway plank. 

Moore still had her gun aimed at Steinman, but she had stopped approaching him. She was assessing the situation, and Leo watched as she reluctantly settled in to wait. Leo couldn’t see any options to allow the group to get to Steinman before he left. Bryan had started to moan again, and Steinman was dragging him like dead weight. Then Leo heard a voice speaking and realized that it was his own voice. He was sweating and inside his stomach contracted with what he thought was fear, as he said, “Dr. Steinman, let the little boy go and take me instead. He has a family that cares a lot about him. There’s no one to worry about me.”

Dr. Steinman stopped backing up toward the unattended boat he had untied. A smile played across his face. “Sure, Leo,” he said. “You probably stand a better chance of helping me operate this boat, at least better than this little kid does.” He beckoned with his gun for Leo to come closer, and lowered the bag in the process. 

Leo passed Moore, who looked at him questioningly. He nodded, and slowly walked down the far ramp to the dock, hands in the air. As he approached Dr. Steinman and Bryan, who by now had reached the gangplank, he felt another burst of rain open up directly overhead. 

Momentarily distracted, the doctor looked up and took his eyes off of Leo. “This island and its weather!” Dr. Steinman whined. “I hate it here.”

As Steinman went to turn his gun on Leo, he swept the little boy over the side into the harbor. Leo tried to grab onto Steinman’s left arm, wielding the gun that was turning to point in his direction, while at the same time watching Bryan disappear into a splash between the boats moored there. The boy surfaced, splashing once, and then twice, before a line of air bubbles were the only trace of him. Leo could hear Betty Williams’ screams, but he was focused on the gun that was swirling around his head.

Grunting, Steinman tried to bring the butt of the gun down on the crown of Leo’s head but the strap from the duffle bag tangled on the barrel of the gun and pulled his arm backward. Leo bodied the doctor to the right, wrapping him in a bear hug and pinning the gun to Steinman’s body. The gun fired once, twice, and Leo felt a sharp pain in the outside of his foot. 

A little flash whistled by Leo and Steinman out of the corner of Leo’s eye. Part of Leo’s brain was trying to decipher who the person was as the figure launched off of the dock into the water after Bryan. In his hesitation, Steinman snapped Leo in the face with his head, causing stars to appear. Leo’s foot felt like it was on fire, and he was struggling to see the doctor, who now stood over him. 

Leo’s grip had loosened as he fell to the dock. Steinman laughed, and Leo thought it sounded like the world had slowed down around him. The doctor was trying to adjust his glasses so that he could see well enough to aim at Leo, but the frames had been bent by the head butt. There was little space between them but it felt like a vast difference as Leo launched himself toward the gunman. 

Steinman fired and a bite like a hornet’s sting sliced through Leo’s palm, but he couldn’t stop his momentum. He heard Agent Moore fire and Steinman dropped his gun, screaming in pain. Leo’s forward progress sent him into the doctor’s midsection, and he tackled the man to the ground. Leo tried to hold Steinman tight, but his hand hurt beyond anything he had imagined possible, and it kept sliding off of the doctor as blood poured out of the open wound. The two assailants rolled, tangled together, through the handles of the duffle bag, over the side. They bounced against the side of the ferry, off of a sailboat, and finally into the brackish water around the dock below. 

55

Leo must’ve blacked out momentarily, a combination of the shots from Steinman’s head and a glancing blow he experienced on the way into the water. But the water was like an icy blast forcing his eyes open, and he found himself still netted together with Steinman by the straps of the duffle bag. Steinman himself was trying to pull himself free from Leo, but the weight of his labcoat and the pistol were dragging him down. 

Leo’s face broke through the surface of the water momentarily, and he hungrily gasped a gulp of fresh air. He saw faces in general peering over the edge of the dock, and then was sucked under again as the doctor struggled, pulling on Leo’s legs to try and get to the surface himself. As they wrestled, the two combatants ran into a pier of the dock, causing them both to grunt and let go of each other. 

Steinman’s efforts were still divided, as he tried to free himself from Leo and still maintain control of the duffle bag. Leo wrenched his arm out of the tangled straps of the bag, and kicked out to create space between them. Steinman let out a silent cry as the breath was knocked out of him, and Leo tried to grab onto the pier for support. His hands slid off of the post covered in algae and he stopped suddenly as Steinman swung the gun around toward Leo. 

The doctor pulled the trigger several times but nothing happened. Leo unfroze from his position and lunged again at Steinman, who swung the gun viciously. Even moving through slow motion, the arc of the gun brought the barrel down into Leo’s cheek, and he again saw stars. Leo reached out with both hands and grabbed Steinman’s wrist, wrenching it back. He pulled down and out, away from Steinman’s body, and the doctor lost control of the gun. 

The two men looked at each other and watched the gun disappear into the darker waters below. Steinman made a sudden move toward a ladder that ran up from the bottom of the dock toward the dock itself. Leo grabbed onto his pants leg and held on, while Steinman tried to kick him off. Steinman’s other foot snapped Leo in the face and he let go, writhing with pain. 

With a few half strokes, Steinman reached the ladder and began to pull up. Weighted down by the duffle bag, he had moved slowly enough that Leo had caught up. Wrenching backward on the bag, Leo heard the straps begin to stress, and then tear. Steinman shouted at Leo, and tried to hold onto the bag. In the process, he lost his handle on the ladder, and fell backward head over heels into the water. Steinman half-floated on the surface of the water, and Leo swam to the ladder.

48

The next morning, Leo woke to cloudy skies and a stiff breeze blowing in his open window. He dressed himself, and went out into the sanctuary. To his surprise, he found the Moma boys sitting sullenly on the back row of the sanctuary. They were still dressed similarly but in the daylight, Leo could see that Jimmy was taller and Joe was a bit more muscular and solid. They stood up when he approached, and he registered the thought that someone had taught them manners, even if they had sometimes strayed back and forth across the line between doing good and doing ill. Based on what he’d heard, they had never really done anything with the intent to hurt someone else, but they had certainly done things that had cost other people time and money. 

“Good morning, gentlemen,” said Leo, greeting the boys. “I hope you’ve thought about the prank you pulled last night. Do you have anything to say?”

The brothers exchanged glances, and both of them stood up. Jimmy spoke. “We’re sorry that we startled you, that we kidnapped that dog, and that we didn’t respect the chapel. We understand if that’s not good enough and we need to do something to make up for it.”

Leo nodded. He glanced around the sanctuary and saw that only a few hymnals had been knocked out of their spots by the dog the night before. “Well, it doesn’t look like there’s much damage,” he said, watching as the boys stood up a little straighter. They were sensing a hopeful ending. 

“How about we pick up things in here and work in the garden for a little bit? Then we’ll call it good,” said Leo.

The boys were sure they were experiencing some kind of mercy and immediately agreed. With Leo’s supervision, the boys put everything back in order within the sanctuary and moved their efforts outside. As they worked, Leo asked questions and gave the boys a chance to share their thoughts with him. He wanted to know about their family, and why they kept choosing to break rules that ended up getting them in trouble. He was happy to see that both of the boys took to the garden in a way that showed some natural ability and a willingness to work. 

Joe did most of the talking. He explained about the way that he and Jimmy had been the older siblings of a baby girl named Jamie. She had suffered from childhood cancer and passed away before her tenth birthday. Their parents had been devastated, but they continued to do their best to provide love and attention to their two sons. Their father worked on a fishing boat and their mom had jobs around Tranquility cleaning for others in their homes. She also took care of the Bed and Breakfast. 

One day, their father went out on the fishing boat and never came home. The crew of the fishing boat were reluctant to talk to their mother about what had happened, but she figured out that something had gone wrong with the net and their father had been hung up in it. Dragged underwater, he had drowned before the crew could reverse the process and get him out. Their mother had become absentminded and standoffish, her grief overpowering her and driving a wedge between her and the boys. The boys started to act out and find ways to entertain themselves, and they found themselves farther and farther from the path that their parents had started them on. 

Leo realized that the garden had become silent, and he looked up from weeding at the two boys. Jimmy had tears in his eyes, and his brother had an arm wrapped around him. Leo dusted off his knees and went over to them, gently laying a hand on each young man’s shoulder. He closed his eyes and prayed silently. When he opened them up, the boys were staring at him. 

“Mister, I know you don’t really know us, but you’re the first person to ask us why we did things we shouldn’t,” Jimmy admitted. “Most people haven’t even been by to see our mom or to ask how we lost our dad.” Joe nodded. 

“I’m sorry that’s been your experience,” Leo said, slowly. “Sometimes people don’t know how to deal with things they don’t understand, that they haven’t experienced for themselves. People should’ve stood up for you both better, and your mom, too. But you have to start to make decisions for yourselves that are better for you, regardless of what everyone else says or does. You can’t control them, but you can control your own actions.”

The boys nodded, and Leo put his hands in his pockets, looking carefully at each boy. “Sometimes, it just doesn’t feel like there’s much of a point,” said Joe slowly. “Like, if our dad could die like that, then what good is it trying to be good all of the time?”

“You’re just going to end up dead anyway,” added Jimmy. 

“Well, it seems like the best we can do is love the people in front of us,” Leo said slowly. “I can quote scripture to you, but you can read that yourself. It seems like our best lives are lived when we put other people first, and we try to find ways to serve those who are less fortunate than we are.” He saw the boys glance at each other, and then they sort of nodded in unison. 

“We could probably do a better job of that,” Jimmy said, elbowing Joe, who shook his head in affirmation. “We’re sorry we messed up the chapel, and we haven’t been acting the way we should.”

“Everyone makes mistakes,” Leo replied, “including me. Don’t be too hard on yourselves.”

Surveying the garden, Leo realized the boys had achieved more in an hour than he could have hoped. They certainly seemed to have a knack for the work of the garden. 

“Let’s go grab some breakfast and then you can get on with your day,” he said. Following him out of the gate, the boys went with him to get something to eat. 

49

The sun looked like it was trying to come out, but the storm hadn’t completely given up its hold of the island yet. The remnants of the storm seemed to be lingering, with occasional bursts of rain peppering Main Street, but owners had reopened shops and business seemed to be returning to normal. A few of the cruise ship’s tenders were bringing people to shore, and Captain Benjamin had apparently decided that the passage was clear enough for him to get through. Leo practically bumped into Noah entering Ocean’s Spray. 

“It’s a good day to be an islander!” Noah exclaimed. “Try the pigs in a blanket if you haven’t already. It’s the best dish for breakfast.” He looked over his shoulder at the Moma boys who were following Leo and raised an eyebrow, but Leo just smiled. The first mate clapped him on the back and headed out down Main Street.

Leo pushed through the crowd to a vacant table near the bar next to Gillian. She was already pushing sausage wrapped in pancake around her plate, clearly having received the same advice. She was staring intently off into the distance while absentmindedly drowning her sausage in a giant pool of syrup. 

“I guess that’s what everyone is having today,” Leo said with a chuckle. “How’s the story business?”

“Well, with the storm gone, I think I can go back and type up some of the things folks have told me here,” Gillian said, shaking herself out of her reverie. “We’ll see if that’s enough. I thought I’d go say my goodbyes to Miss Isabelle and maybe see Red one more time before I take the ferry back this afternoon.” 

“Give me a bit to eat and I’ll walk up there with you,” offered Leo. “I should check on Red again.”

Leo ordered plates of pigs in blankets for three. When they arrived, all three of them dove into the plate of pigs in blankets that Fred slapped down in front of them and covered it all with syrup. He had to admit that the starch and meat went well together, and the sweet syrup made it nearly dessert-like. He would certainly take it over a hotdog in a bun. After mopping up the rest of it, he said goodbye to the Momas, paid his bill and went back to Gillian, who was now shoulder to shoulder with Cindi, who had come in to grab breakfast before heading to work. A few other women joined them while Leo watched amused by the way Gillian had been included in the circle. When she finally extricated herself from the gossip, Gillian winked, and told him that she had plenty of background on Tranquility now. Leo decided he didn’t need a haircut badly enough to walk by himself into that lion’s den. 

An hour later, Gillian and Leo crested the hill. They’d seen trees damaged by the storm, and a  few of the lights along the path had been knocked down, too. But the mansion looked as pristine and decadent as it always did, looming at the top of the hill, a few scattered storm clouds highlighting the sky.

David answered the knock at the door, welcoming the two into the mansion. He exchanged a few pleasantries with them, and told them that he and Johnny were headed down to the beach to fish. He invited them to come try their luck fishing, telling Leo they owed him for the other day, and then went to gather his gear. 

Gillian went hunting on the first floor to find Carol or Miss Isabelle, and Leo went upstairs to check on Red. 

The door hung wide open, and the bed was empty, sheets and pillows bunched and tumbled on the floor. Red had clearly felt well enough to get out of bed, but Leo didn’t think he could’ve made it far. 

Down the hall, Leo heard a toilet flush. And Red opened the door, his face still bruised but now covered in dashes of shaving cream. “Good morning,” Leo said, waiting to see what kind of response he would get from the big man that day. Somehow, even in silk pajamas and wincing with every step, the man still looked like a behemoth that could’ve thrown Leo down the stairs. 

Red softened when he saw that it was Leo, and turned back to wash his hands and rinse off the rest of his face. “Telling you that story has really helped me,” Red admitted. “I slept like a baby last night, and I haven’t slept that way in years.”

Leo reached out his hand to squeeze Red’s shoulder. This time the retired ship captain didn’t flinch or pull away. “You’ve been convincing yourself again and again all these years,” said Leo. “You have to let it go and be willing to move forward. You make amends as best you can. How other people respond is up to them.” 

Red smiled wanly, his abrasions and bruises lingering, and sagged against the doorframe. “I’m still not quite up to speed, but I’m getting there. I have some thoughts about what happened to me the other day, too. I remember being hit in the back of the head, but I don’t remember why. Maybe something fell on me. I don’t know.” 

Supporting some of Red’s body weight, Leo helped the injured man back to his bedroom, where he puffed up some pillows and rested in a seated position. Leo pulled open the blinds and Red gazed wistfully out to sea. 

“I heard the boys are going fishing,” Red said. “I wish I could go down there with them today but I’m just not ready. I do think it’s time I start to get to know them better and learn who they really are. But I’ll have to wait. I don’t think I could make it down to the beach right now.”

Leo agreed with the assessment, but he decided even with the new and improved Red, he wasn’t going to put himself in harm’s way. He patted Red on the arm, and said, “I think I’ll go check on them. Maybe I’ll even try my hand at fishing, too.”

Red chuckled, wincing as his chest shook. “It’s called fishing not catching for a reason, so don’t beat yourself up if you don’t catch anything on your first try.” 

The older man sat down in his armchair and stared out at the sea below. Leo patted him on the shoulder one last time, and left him to consider how to help his heart and mind heal. 

50

Walking down the stone steps to the cove, Leo marveled at how different the beach looked at low tide, as the storm was ebbing away. He saw that David and Johnny were laughing, casting their lines out past the break into the deeper water. As he approached, he saw a few splashes from the bucket they had positioned behind them in the sand. Apparently they had experienced some good luck so far. 

There was still light rain falling, but the tide’s ebb and flow was returning to something soothing and calm. Farther out to sea, there were less whitecaps than the day before, even if the ocean itself wasn’t completely placid. 

“Hey, you joined us!” David exclaimed, clapping Leo on the back. “Thanks for coming down. Maybe you’ll be a good luck charm.”

Laughing, Leo replied, “I don’t know if that’s how it works. And it looks like you’ve already had some good luck yourself.”

Over the next hour, the three took turns baiting and casting, with moderate success. Leo found that he enjoyed the rhythm of the process, and appreciated that the two friends would include him in their outing. He reeled in the line and this time found that he had been cleaned out by something that had been too smart to get hooked. He shook his head, and turned back toward the tackle box the fishermen had set up to get some more bait. 

As he walked by, he realized that David was straining against something on the other end of his line, digging in deep with his heels and pulling back on the rod. Reeling it in, he groaned, and held up a broken tree limb wrapped in seaweed. “That’s so not worth it.”

Johnny looked over, chuckling, and said, “Leo, David could fish all day regardless of his luck but I still need a break. Let me try one more cast and then the rod is all yours.”

Leo nodded and began to wander around the beach, inspecting seashells, and other debris washed up on the beach. He went to inspect what appeared to be the carcass of a sand shark tangled in the shallows around some rocks, farther away from the fishermen. Looking at its gills, rapidly moving in and out, he realized that the animal was still alive. Gingerly, he reached down and felt it jerk as he wrapped his hands around its tail. Its teeth snapped, but he continued, picking it up and carrying it to the edge of the water. 

As he let the shark swim away, Leo looked at the cliff wall, where the water had worn away the rock wall in incremental steps over time, and the distance up to the mansion seemed even more impressive. The power of the ocean couldn’t be more apparent looking at the massive rock worn away over time. 

Stepping closer to a bend in the wall, where the ocean, sand, and rock met, Leo saw that there was an opening in the wall. In fact, a few feet off of the edge of the sand, an inlet had been carved into the rock. 

“Where does that go?” Leo asked, calling out to David and Johnny. 

David had been baiting his hook for another cast, and he came over to see where Leo was pointing. “Oh, we call that The Cave,” said David. “When I was little, Carol and Red used to forbid me to climb around in there. I used to try anyway, but the last time I went, I almost got stuck when the tide rose. You could hang out there for a while I bet, but I think at high tide, you’d run out of oxygen. There’s a shelf up in there that we used to try and hang out on for awhile though. It’s fun, but a bit dangerous. 

As the tide continued to recede, Leo watched as a rubber box floated, catching on the top of the cave and almost popping through as the tide ebbed away. “What is that?” Leo asked, loudly enough that David and Johnny abandoned their rods to come find out. 

Without thinking, David waded into the water, reached into the opening of the cave. The tide went out again, and the box banged up against the upper part of the cave. David grabbed onto a protruding handle and pulled it the rest of the way out of the opening and then aside to the shore. He had to work to get it across the sand, but managed well enough to get it back to Leo and Johnny. 

Popping the clasp on the box, David’s eyes widened as he turned it to show Leo. Bags of white powder were stuffed into the box. “Uh, guys, I don’t think that’s sugar,” Johnny whispered.

David swatted Johnny on the arm, his eyebrows raised at the amount of drugs contained there.

“Who would’ve put that there?” Leo asked. 

“We need to tell Red. But I need to check something first,” said David, as he waded into the water. Leo and Johnny watched as he submerged himself to fit through the half-filled cave opening. They waited, nervously, until they saw him re-emerge and surface again, shaking his head grimly. 

“There are at least ten more of those boxes inside the cave. It looks like they were tethered but a strap broke,” he explained. “There’s a radio and a lamp in a waterproof box, too, with some other records, I think. That’s a crazy amount of drugs that someone has hidden here. You know they’re coming back for them, too.”

Leo nodded toward the mansion high above them. “We need to go ask Red what he knows about the cave, and how to get a message off of the island to law enforcement.” Numbly, the other two nodded, and picked up a handle of the rubber box. They broke a sweat carrying it up the stairs, stopping periodically to catch their breath. Halfway up the stairs, Leo took a side of the box himself to give one of them a break. Somehow, this was harder than dragging three hundred pounds of O’Rourke up the stairs. Maybe that was because O’Rourke had been on a mission of rescue and mercy, and the realization of the sheer magnitude of all of these drugs filled their hearts with dread. 

Finally back to the mansion, Leo reached the door first, pushing it open, and turned back to say that he would go get Red to come downstairs so that they didn’t have to carry the box any farther. The sound of a gun cocking made him stop where he was, hands automatically going into a raised position. 

Stepping out of an alcove, his right arm around Johnny’s neck and his left hand holding a gun to David’s head, Dr. Steinman stood, smirking and taking it all in.

“It’s a shame for you that you had to be the people to find that.”

51

Leaving the box in the entryway, the three prisoners marched up the stairs with Dr. Steinman waving his gun behind them. At one point, he was sure that the doctor had started whistling showtunes, but he wasn’t sure, the sound of his own pulse pounding a beat in his head. 

“Do you really think you’re going to get away with it?” asked Leo, incredulously turning to the doctor. 

“You have no idea what I’m capable of,” Dr. Steinman replied, “now be quiet and go sit in the corner over there.” 

Leo did as he was told, and sat beside David and Johnny, their backs up against the wall. Dr. Steinman pulled an old pager out of his pocket and sent a message, and then pulled a chair away from the men on the floor. 

Crossing his legs, Steinman sat back, and looked at each of them steadily. When he got to Red, he realized that the mansion owner was awake. “Ah, Red, you’ve decided to join us,” Steinman said with a wry chuckle. “Too bad you couldn’t just go away painlessly.”

The veins in Red’s forehead throbbed, and he gritted his teeth. “You! You’re the one that hit me. I caught you messing around on the beach, didn’t I?”

At first, it didn’t seem that the doctor was going to reply. But Leo could tell that Steinman was enjoying himself, reveling in the opportunity to be in charge and to control the discussion. “When you announced that you were going to be touring the library with the people from the mainland, I knew the drugs had to be moved out of there. It took forever but we get it done, before you all decided how to renovate that place. That old dump had served me well for awhile.”

O’Rourke started to speak up but a wave of Steinman’s gun silenced him.

“I was loading the boxes into the cave, and you just had to take your pre-breakfast walk with the dogs. Apparently you saw me and came down to see what was going on there. I tried to make something up about finding my missing golf balls, but you said you knew I had been smuggling things off the island. You told me that you were going to report me, and started to walk away, so I gave you a good whack with a piece of driftwood. I figured the ocean would finish you off and people would think you’d fallen on the steps. I slipped those ridiculous dogs a tranquilizer and they didn’t cause me any problems.”

“But I thought you and Red were friends!” David blurted out from the floor. 

“Friends? We were never friends,” Steinman laughed sarcastically. “Your uncle kept me here to take care of your saintly mother. I don’t know what happened to her, but I know he believes it’s his fault. I was the ship doctor that night, and he paid me to follow him back to Tranquility to take care of her. I was supposed to keep everything quiet on the island about her. Everyone worships the ground he walks on, and I’m the most educated man on the island. He’s a nobody with a broken heart but everyone always treated me like I was just the good doctor they could call for everything they needed.” 

“But what about the drugs? Why would you do that here, instead of just asking Red for more money?” Johnny asked.

“You all have no idea what I’ve been through since setting foot on this island,” Steinman’s voice rising. “When my wife got sick, we didn’t have the insurance we needed to pay for everything she needed. I couldn’t get your uncle to pay me any more than he already was, and my education didn’t matter out here on this deserted island. When one of the guys on a cruise ship approached me about selling prescriptions, doctoring medical records to write prescriptions for ship passengers who didn’t really need them, I figured that was my opportunity. It kept increasing bit by bit, and I was able to cover most of the bills. But my wife got worse instead of better, and I’m still paying her bills even though she’s been dead for six months.”

“One day, a year before she died, a man came to see me. He made it abundantly clear that they had taken plenty of photos and kept records, too. Every transaction, every malfeasance. I was on the hook, caught like a fish. He told me that during the annual migration, a shipment of drugs would be brought out to the island, and I needed to send them in smaller quantities to the mainland.”

“I told him I didn’t know how to do that, but the man just laughed and told me that he was sure I was resourceful. He threatened to expose me, to tell my wife where I’d gotten the money, and to bring down my whole life. So I started using the dead body shipments as a means of getting them to the mainland via the coffins. No one ever noticed anything. And no one got hurt until that steroid-pumping idiot showed up a few days ago demanding that he get a bigger cut. He had no idea that I haven’t seen any money in years because it all goes to the insurance company. They’re still collecting on my debt even though my wife is gone. He helped move the drugs to the cove and then tried to force me to give him more money.”

“When we got up the stairs, I shot him and pushed him off of the side of the cliff. I never thought his body would get stuck on the island. I figured it would get sucked out to sea and no one would ever know.”

Steinman seemed to run out of energy, emotion overtaking him. But then the beeper chirped, and he seemed to snap out of it. “Looks like my helper will be here soon. Sit tight and don’t go anywhere, okay?” he laughed, stepping out into the hallway.

As he shut the door behind him, Leo heard the click of the lock. They were stuck in Red’s bedroom, with a crazy man out there. He turned to look at David and Johnny, and then to Red. Red’s face was a mashup of tormented thoughts, and he was fighting for control. 

Leo looked around the room and didn’t see anything that would obviously be used to cut the zip ties or that they could use to overpower Steinman when he returned. He closed his eyes, and willed away the anxiety that bubbled up inside of him.

“I think we need to have a plan when he comes back,” David said, “but I don’t know what it is.”

Chapters 52-55 coming June 14!

44

Bobby had heard enough. He’d been by the infirmary to see Dr. Steinman, asking the physician if there were any drugs that would ease his back pain. Steinman had pointed out that he’d had the maximum number of cortisone shots that the mainland would send for one patient, and that the next step was to visit with a neurosurgeon to see what surgery could do to help him. Steinman hadn’t seemed interested at all in helping Bobby, too distracted by a sheet of information he was tallying on his desk. Bobby assured him that he could live with the pain, because what good was going to do to go to a neurosurgeon? He didn’t have anyone to watch over him when he came home and needed to recover.

Later on, when he reported to work at the funeral home, Bobby found his work desk a mess, and files strewn everywhere. Steinman had fussed that there were two invoices out of order in the system and accused Bobby of slipping, the same way his wife had. Bobby couldn’t remember seeing the particular invoices,  but he knew that Steinman checked the coffins before it was turned over to a mainland funeral home. If there was some kind of mix-up with the paperwork, shouldn’t he have seen it himself? When Bobby had woken up that morning, this was not the way he hoped that his day would go. 

Pushing away from the computer, Bobby rolled his chair backward to look out the window. Down on the dock, a tourist couple were twirling their toddler around in the little park. Bobby could hear the boy laughing, and watching the family’s joy made him smile. They were all soaking wet, but you couldn’t stay in the B&B all day, Bobby thought. Sometimes a kid just had to be a kid. 

Steinman stuck his head into the office. “I need your help with something,” he said, and then walked away. Bobby grimaced, pulling himself out of the rolling chair and followed after him. 

“I need to move this coffin out of the way so that we can display the newer version,” explained Steinman. He grabbed one end and waited expectantly for Bobby to grab the other. 

Bobby looked at the box and then at the doctor. His hands were already trembling. He took a deep breath and grabbed the handle on his end, and saw that the doctor already had his end elevated. Sweating, Bobby lifted, barely, and the coffin moved incrementally off of the table. 

Steinman was already moving, and Bobby tried to keep up. The empty box didn’t weigh much, but Bobby’s balance was off, and as they left the parlor, he tripped. His left hand lost purchase on the handle but his right hand locked up and down he went, face first into the coffin. 

“Bobby!” Steinman shouted. “What are you doing?”

“I’m sorry, Dr. Steinman,” Bobby stammered. “It’s just that, I can’t-”

“It’s pretty clear what you can’t do,” snapped Steinman. “I’m starting to wonder if this is a good fit.”

The doorbell chimed, and in walked Fred from Ocean’s Spray. He looked at Bobby on the floor, and the coffin halfway propped against Steinman’s hip. The doctor tried to smile, but it was only half-hearted. Fred started to laugh, but he saw the hurt expression on Bobby’s face, and swallowed mid-chuckle. 

“I’m sure Fred can help,” Dr. Steinman purred. “Just finish up what you’re doing and get out of here. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off and go home to rest a bit, Bobby?”

Bobby got up stiffly, nodding to Fred, and then to Dr. Steinman. He grabbed his raincoat off of the hook in his office and then headed outside into the rain. 

The walk wasn’t long but in his sore state, Bobby couldn’t move as fast as he’d like. To make matters worse, he didn’t see the puddle until he’d stuck his whole foot, up over his ankle, into the mess of mud. Now he was sore, wet, and muddy. He groaned, looking down at his ruined shoe. 

Just then, the Moma boys came running out of the hardware store, with Phil hot on their heels. Bobby dodged Joe but couldn’t quite get out of the way of Jimmy. They both went down in a heap, soggy and banged up as the teenager crashed into Bobby. 

Bobby stared up at the sky, as the rain continued to pelt him in the face. Jimmy pushed off of Bobby’s sore rib cage to get back on his feet, and looked down sadly at the older man on the ground. By now, Joe had turned back, and together with Jimmy and Phil, pulled Bobby up to a seated position and then to his feet. “I’m awfully sorry, mister,” Joe said, elbowing his brother. Jimmy actually looked chagrined, which was more than Fred had ever seen him before. 

“I’m sorry about your wife,” Jimmy added, but Bobby was too numb to respond. 

Bobby remembered how his wife had been the only person he had ever seen go out of her way to talk to the Moma boys. Apparently, before their father died, they would come in with him to the library and check out books once a week. She said they were into classical authors like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, and that their father always read the books the same time that they did. She’d had a soft spot for the two troublemakers and no matter what they did, they’d always left the library alone. 

Finally, Bobby just nodded, looking down at his torn pants and soaked shoes. He knew this particular outfit was ruined, and he was running out of things to wear that Steinman thought were appropriate to wear to work. He really was sore all over, but he couldn’t find any words to fuss at the boys. How were they supposed to make a way forward in the world without their dad? He could only blame them so much when he thought about all of the things he’d done, only to be corrected by his father. 

The rest of the walk home was muddy and stiff. The tremors were bothering him more than normal, and his whole body was sore from the collision with Jimmy. Getting older wasn’t for the faint of heart, but it would’ve been a lot more enjoyable if he’d had someone to share the stories with. 

Hanging his coat up on the wooden rack that he had made for Elaine decades before, Bobby kissed his pointer finger and touched the framed picture of his wife from their wedding. Pulling off his sodden clothes, he fixed a hot tea and fell asleep in his recliner staring at the pictures on the wall.

45

Pushing through the driving rain that seemed to come from all directions at once, Leo passed the upper edge of the woods and realized that the storm had gained intensity since the morning. He knew where the mansion was supposed to be, but his vision was so obscured that he couldn’t even make it out as he pressed on up the cobblestone path. Rain was pelting him in the face, and even his new coat couldn’t keep him completely dry. If he’d had his dress shoes on, he would’ve fallen down several times, too. There was enough rainwater flowing down from the top of the hill that he slipped a few times and had to reestablish his footing. Cresting the hill, he could see the shadow of the mansion in the storm. Finally. 

One step, and then the other. Leo was more concerned about falling off the side of the edge of the cliff than anything else, and he carefully stayed on the path. At this point, no one else was moving around, and he assumed that they’d all taken cover until the storm would blow over or at the very least lessen. He shook his head at his own decision to return to O’Rourke’s mansion, and silently regretted having given his word to come back. Maybe he should’ve just given the man a rain check. Leo laughed at his own joke. 

A glimmer of light appeared, causing Leo to raise his hooded head, rain dripping off the top of his hood down onto his face. He pulled down harder on the hood, continuing to drive himself forward one step at a time, and slowly the mansion came into focus. The storm seemed to know he was getting closer to his destination, and a gust of wind blew his hood off of his head. Rain came down on his bare head like buckets of water, and he doubled his pace. He tried pulling on the hood but the gusts were too strong. 

Breathing a sigh of relief, he passed the fountain and followed the light to the front door. He took a moment to catch his breath and pulled the jacket off, careful not to dump the accumulated water inside the hood onto his own body. Turning back to the mansion, he’d barely had time to knock, when the door swung open, and Miss Isabelle stood there, expectantly. She smiled up at him, her energetic spirit undeterred by the storm raging around them.

“Red told me you’d be coming back,” she said. “I think he has something he wants to talk with you about.” 

Leo crossed the threshold, and looked around for a coat rack. “I’ll take your coat,” Miss Isabelle said. “You head upstairs. Red certainly needs someone to talk to and for some reason, he wants it to be you.”

The older woman took his coat at arm’s length as it dripped a monsoon of its own onto the entryway floor. Neptune and Poseidon yipped as they ran underneath it, and felt the cold water hit their backs. Leo patted them each on the head, thanking Miss Isabelle for her help. The mansion felt warm and calm compared to the storm outside, and Leo was grateful to be out of the weather for the time being. 

Up the great staircase and down the hall, Leo walked, thoughts bouncing like bullets, ricocheting around his head. What could Red want to talk about? He’d been so unresponsive the day before. Was it about his fall? Or something about Martha? Leo knew that sometimes people just needed to clear their conscience, and it was easier to feel that way if they knew someone else was listening, receiving the news that they finally decided to share. 

Knocking on the door softly, Leo pushed it open as O’Rourke’s gruff voice commanded him to enter. The blinds were open, but the storm was obscuring any real natural light. O’Rourke’s room was spacious but spartan, stripped of pictures and other adornment. Lying in the bed, and nearly filling it up, O’Rourke looked even bigger under the bedding that covered him up to his arms. 

Silently, Red indicated that Leo should sit in the chair next to the bed, and pulled a cord on the lamp sitting on the nightstand. The tepid light stretched toward Red, but half of his face was hidden in shadow, as he lay on his back staring at the ceiling. The man looked troubled, more so than angry, and Leo wondered what could have tormented a man like O’Rourke to the point where he felt that he had to share. 

Crossing the room, Leo sat down on the indicated chair, recognizing that he was leaving a water trail as he walked. He started to apologize but a raised hand from Red silenced him. Leo immediately stopped, and sat up a little straighter. 

“This storm is ripping up the island,” Red said. “A little water in my house isn’t going to change anything. It means quite a bit that you would come during this storm. I never had much luck with the old pastor coming to see me, or listening to what I had to say when he did. You’re proving to be different than what I expected.”

Leo shrugged, and sat back, crossing one leg over his other. “Miss Isabelle said you wanted to talk to me about something. I’m here to listen if you want to talk.”

Red lay there motionless at first, staring up at the ceiling. Without ever turning to Leo, he sighed deeply and asked, “Do you really think change is possible? Do you think people can change, for the better? Do you think I can actually change, right here and right now?”

“Well, of course,” Leo replied. “It’s evident that physically and mentally we’re capable of change, and that we change for the better. It takes time, and one has to be intentional. But yes, I think change is possible.”

“But do you think we can change the direction of our lives? Do you think our souls can go from dark to light, from bad to good?” O’Rourke responded, his voice wavering in the dark. 

“Sir,” said Leo, “I know we are capable of more than we’ve ever dreamed, and I certainly believe that a person can choose to turn aside from their way of life to something better.”

“Is there something specific you need to share? I mean, are you seeking confession?”

Leo watched as a tear rolled from Red’s eye, down his cheek, before plopping softly into the pillow. He could see that the man was trembling, and that there was something warring inside of Red’s soul to get out, to be made known.”

“You’re only the second person I’ve ever told any of this to,” Red whispered, still staring at the ceiling. “The old pastor here was an old school type. My father would’ve loved him. When I told him what I’m about to tell you, he told me that I’d made my choice, that life was decided, that I was going to hell. I stopped going to church when he was preaching because I could feel his condemnation, the way that he was judging me every time he opened his mouth. That man didn’t really know my life but he thought he knew me. He knew why I wasn’t coming, and he wouldn’t even speak to me in town when I saw him. That will rip a person apart.”

The pain in Red’s voice was palpable, and it drove lines up and down his face as he spoke. He turned to Leo as he continued, the certainty of what he said about Leo causing the younger man’s heart to flutter. It was one thing to be doing what you thought you were supposed to, and something completely different when someone else acknowledged what you hoped everyone would see. 

“Then you showed up and you seem pretty convinced that we get more than one shot at getting things right, that our decisions can change how things go. You said something about community, and showing each other mercy the other day. I’ve watched you, the way you treat different people respectfully, regardless of who they are in the community or what they’ve done to you. I think you really believe what you say, that you really mean it, that there might still be hope for me. So I’m going to tell you my story, and see if you still think we’re all redeemable or not.”

Before he could respond, Leo watched as Red pulled himself up higher in the bed. The man was still clearly weakened, but his strength was returning. He pulled the blanket up to his chest, and rested his giant gnarled hands on top of the covers. He had decided that he was telling his story to Leo, no matter what response he received, and he was summoning the effort to do it. 

“Everyone knows that we left the island together, Martha and I, but they don’t really understand how close we were or how our dreams of life were greater than anything the island could contain. When we left as young adults, Martha and I had already graduated with our degrees when we headed off of the island, for what I would have said was the last time. We had said our goodbyes and we longed to establish ourselves in the world on our own two feet without resting on Mother and Father’s wealth or name or favors.”

“My parents weren’t thrilled by the idea of us moving away, because they were incredibly strict and principled. They thought the world outside could only turn us away from the things they believed, and maybe they were right to fear that. They were incredibly conservative, beyond strict by today’s examples, and we felt unable to actually think for ourselves about what we believed. They had no idea what we hoped and dreamed because they believed we’d always just be part of the family and do the things they thought were important around the island.”

“They had sent us to the finest schools and abroad for big learning opportunities in the summers, but always under their expectations and only to where they wanted us to go, with money they inherited from their parents. My parents knew nothing about really making decisions or finding their way because everything they had, including the mansion, had been given to them. They had money to make any problems that appeared go away, and never thought about what it was like to deal with something that was in the gray area. Right was right to them, and it came with a distinct set of beliefs that involved their best interests, and everyone else could just sort through whatever was left.”

“My father never had to work with anyone he didn’t like because he just replaced them. He thought anyone who wasn’t WASP was beneath him, and he’d employ men of other races, but never call them friends. They were a different class of people to him, sometimes not even people, because they lacked the money and education and power that he took for granted. He was the privileged type and he thought he deserved it. So that was the kind of thinking I grew up with, and Martha, too. It wasn’t until later that I even thought to challenge those ideas, so emblazoned in my head were the things he said and worse, did.”

“I don’t think that my father had to make half of the decisions in life that I’ve made, and my mother never strayed far from the mansion gardens. She wouldn’t even come out during the annual migration, for fear of interacting with someone she thought was strange. When Martha and I went to the mainland for schooling, we discovered how much more there was to the world and how much other people could matter to us. Martha really took to those beliefs. I think I only partially understood.”

“So Martha and I, sweet Sissy, we’d sworn that we would live free of the claustrophobia of knowing everyone and being known by everyone, that we were going to find our own way to be free of them and see the world, and sometimes you have to make your own way to figure out your way back. I wanted to see the world and Martha just wanted to make music. I ruined that for both of us.”

“Sometimes you think you leave the thing behind you, but you can’t because it’s already in you, part of who you are. I couldn’t get out of Father’s way of thinking, and it cost Martha everything.”

Red became quiet for quite some time, to the point where Leo thought maybe he’d fallen asleep. Outside the storm raged, and the wind blew against the mansion windows. The light flickered at one point but refused to go out, even as the storm caused the sky to darken. Leo wasn’t scared, but he wasn’t too comfortable either, and he’d almost convinced himself that he could slip out of the door unnoticed. But then Red began to talk, and the words rolled out of his mouth like the sea, as he explained the tragedy that had become of Red and Martha O’Rourke. 

46

As Leo listened, Red’s story took them around the world, to exotic locations and every continent. The siblings found their way aboard a cruise ship, working apart but on the same vessel. Red wanted to see the world and had a taste of sailing and travel through the university that he had attended; Martha just wanted to find a way to make music, to play and to sing, to collaborate and to celebrate all that was good in the world. At first, everything was glorious and wonderful, a new real world education to match (and maybe replace) what his father had forced him to learn that was primarily about the rich and privileged. O’Rourke wasn’t seen as special, important, or privileged when he was working below decks on the cruise, mopping, cleaning, hauling, and serving. He sweat just like any other man, and found himself dog tired from his time working that well eclipsed any chance he had to rest. He ate with the crew from the meager meal offerings and sometimes went whole days without seeing the sun. He began as a member of the crew, soaking up the lessons he learned along the way and growing in status because of his hard work. He gained more responsibility and even found a few of the crew to be as close as he’d ever experienced another relationship. There he met Carol and Steinman, and realized that other people could be part of one’s circle even if they were from different circles. 

Above decks, Martha latched on with a musical ensemble who needed a pianist for one of the evening shows. She observed and asked questions, taking on extra shifts when someone else needed a night off and providing backup vocals even when her voice was clearly superior. Over time, the musicians came to count on her, and to trust her. She gradually became the voice that people rode the cruise for, that people sought out, that called out in the dark ballrooms at night to people of all backgrounds who found her voice alluring.

So O’Rourke and Martha found success, applying their education and desire to endear them to the people who they worked with and rising up the ladder of success on that first ship. Then their paths diverged onto different ships, in search of their own dreams. Red crossed paths with Martha occasionally when they worked on the same ships, watching her play the piano and sing for passengers on the cruise ships. She told him of her trips to Europe and Asia, and of her desire to settle down in a big city where she could perform every night. He longed to stay aboard a ship and sail forever, never finding himself bogged down or stuck again in one place with one way of thinking. 

O’Rourke became the first mate and then the captain. He was granted more responsibility, and his academic background and experience endeared him to the financial brokers who backed the cruise line. He traded favors for stocks, and extra time served for promotions. Rather than setting for the instant gratification of a bonus, he deferred what they offered into something that would set him up for the future he wanted, independent of his parents’ fortune and all of the strings that were tangled up with it. 

The next time that Red and Martha ended up on the same cruise, he went to hear her perform on the main stage as the captain of the ship. He watched as she played the keys even more elegantly than before, and when she finished singing, it brought everyone to their feet. Red could see that the audience saw what he knew about his sister to be true: she was beautiful to look at and skilled. He was abundantly proud of what she had accomplished with her life, and how she was pursuing her dream. She had dazzled them and they were eating out of her hand. 

Applause rippled for minutes afterward, and Red watched as Martha made eye contact with the band’s saxophonist. A black man about Red’s age, the man smiled broadly at Martha, and joined in clapping, too. There was clearly chemistry between them, and Red was reminded of all of the things their father had said about race, class, and education. This man was not Martha’s equal and did not need to be fraternizing with her.

O’Rourke had left the performance troubled. But he and Martha didn’t run into each other for a few days. As captain of the ship, he had duties that kept him moving from station to station, and Martha usually stayed isolated with the musicians. When they did happen to meet one night, Martha was walking with the saxophonist around the upper deck. She introduced him to Red as her friend Charlie Watson. Red stiffly shook hands with the man, wanting to ask about their relationship, and too scared by what might erupt from his mouth if he started the conversation. They made small talk stiffly, and then they parted ways, few words spoken between them. It was clear to both men that neither liked the other, and Martha appeared frozen between them in their standoff.

Two years later, the brother and sister were on the same cruise again. By now, Red owned a group of the cruise ships, having invested his stocks and savings in the burgeoning cruise line. He was not captaining the ship, but serving as an advisor to the captain and giving feedback on what should happen during the cruise. He was free to move about the world, to see the sites, to learn things in places he wanted to learn. He had achieved the dreams he had since his teenage years and was experiencing the life he had longed to live. 

Late one night, he was passing by and heard the voice he knew so well singing inside on stage. He slipped into the back of the great room, watching the packed audience respond to the glorious tones pouring out of his sister’s mouth and settling in himself to soak up his sister’s gift. After the opening song, his stomach stiffened when he saw that Charlie Watson was now center stage with Martha. Martha sang back to back with Watson who was laying down riff after riff on the saxophone; later she was sitting atop the piano while Watson played, eyes on Martha the entire time. He knew he needed to keep a closer eye, to see where this was going.

Wandering to the front of the room, Red took a seat at an unoccupied table and listened. He was spellbound by the music the two were making, but his anger boiled at what was evidently more than a musical partnership. At the end of the first set, Martha bowed gently to the audience and Charlie planted a kiss on her lips as she waved to the audience. Throughout the evening, their music was magical, but their interaction was more than just a collaborative musical partnership. Everyone could see it. The two did an encore, with Charlie playing the saxophone while standing on top of the piano while Martha dazzled the keys, ending face to face, just inches away. In that moment, over Charlie’s shoulder, Martha saw Red, and her smile fell away as she saw the rage smoldering in his face. Red left without a word. 

In his stateroom, Red poured himself drink after drink. He admitted to Leo that he had been drinking since he left his parents’ watchful eyes, growing more and more tolerant of the alcohol, needing more and more to quiet the anger in his heart over feelings from his childhood. The disquiet he felt about his childhood and the loneliness that he’d experienced as he found no one equal to his status were overwhelming. At least when he was drinking, he could dull the feelings of depression and anxiety that threatened to overwhelm him during the day. 

That night, he drank more and more, but instead of softening his anger, it brought it to an overflowing boil. He raged within his stateroom about what he would say or do when his sister brought Watson up in conversation. He knew that he couldn’t let their family name be laughed at or ridiculed, because his father simply wouldn’t have allowed for that. He was expected to do something about it …There was a knock at the door, and when Red answered, Martha entered the room with Charlie beside her. 

Martha spoke quickly and assuredly about her love for Charlie and how they would be raising a family together. She was trying to answer Red’s unanswered questions, faster than he could fire them away at her. Finally, Red pushed back that their family would never include anyone of Charlie’s kind, that their parents would never allow it, and that Martha should know that kind of relationship was beneath her. He told her that she had disgraced her family, and that he would have none of it. That their parents would hear of this immediately. 

Up until that time, Charlie had remained quiet, clenching and unclenching his fists. But to accentuate his point, Red threw his glass, shattering it on the wall, and causing Charlie to move out of the way. Charlie was ready to leap at Red, but Martha forced him to stay still, gripping his hand like a vise. She cried out that she and Charlie loved each other, that she was pregnant with Charlie’s baby, and that they’d been married a year before that while spending a week ashore. Red could barely restrain a murderous rage that vomited up inside of him.

With no filter left, Red told Charlie exactly what he thought of him, and shoved him in the chest, banging home each point. Charlie had heard enough, and came back at Red in the stateroom, swinging away with his fists. Red was too inebriated to notice the pain Charlie caused as a few of the blows landed, but he returned swing after swing, landing one shot after another into the smaller man’s body, and ignoring everything else. When Charlie hit the floor, Red continued to pound away at him, leaning down to batter the defenseless man. He was so enraged, that he began banging Charlie’s head against the floor until he was unconscious, oblivious to Martha’s screams. When Martha tried to pull Red off of Charlie, he mindlessly backhanded her away from him. 

A crewmate passing by heard the commotion and ran for help. It took five of the members of the crew to pull Red off of Charlie. Charlie’s face was a mangled mess that hid his identity from any casual observer, and he was barely breathing. The crewmates debated about what to do until one finally went to find the ship’s doctor, Dr. Steinman. When the remaining crewmates turned to Martha, they found that she had slammed into the corner of the bookcase, and lost consciousness. By now, sobering up, Red was inconsolable, kneeling over Martha and wailing. The crew later told O’Rourke that he had sounded like a dying animal, and everyone had been scared to approach him.

The crewmates had taken Charlie to the infirmary but brought one of the ship’s doctors back with them. After a cursory examination, he determined that Martha had broken her neck during the impact, but she was still breathing. It appeared that the baby inside her was unharmed, a viable heartbeat still beating inside of Martha. The news at the time hardly registered with O’Rourke. He was so consumed by his guilt and shame over what he had done to Martha, that he couldn’t even process her impending motherhood. 

Because of Red’s status, the crew involved in what had happened were all sworn to secrecy, to not bring negative attention on the cruise ship line, paid to forget the night had happened. Charlie was quickly dropped off at a hospital at the next port, where he could receive necessary treatment, having signed an NDA for a momentous sum of money. He was still confused about what had happened, and couldn’t remember anything about the fight. Martha was unresponsive, and no one asked what should be done about their baby. Later, Red brought Martha back with him to Tranquility, refusing to tell anyone what had happened to her, caring for her in the mansion where she spent her days bedridden and unresponsive. Months later, David was born, and Steinman helped deliver him. Few people on the island even knew the end of the story.

47

“Can a man come back from that?” Red asked. “I allowed my prejudice to end a relationship. I beat a man nearly to death and I took my sister’s life away from her. Who could forgive that? I know I couldn’t if it happened to me! But to think that someone, some God, might forgive me for the evil that I’ve done? I don’t think there’s enough grace for that.” 

Leo had listened, quietly absorbing everything Red had said. He was shaken by the story, the momentary violence causing tragedy in several lives forever. Leo cleared his throat, and said, “I believe that everything can be forgiven. And then we choose to live differently.”

Red turned toward Leo, his face a roadmap of tears, all traces of his anger gone. “I gave up drinking that night, and I dedicated my life to caring for Martha. Seven months after that, when David was born, I swore I’d pay for his college education and that he’d always have a place to live.” 

“But then he decided to be friends with that other boy, and he broke my heart all over again.” Red groaned. Old prejudices died hard indeed, thought Leo. 

“It seems you’re putting an emphasis on who you think people should be in relationships with,” said Leo, choosing his words carefully. “Maybe if you stop worrying about controlling people’s love, and just try supporting it, you’d find a new way forward. Maybe love is bigger than how we define it ourselves.”

The look on Red’s face showed Leo that he wanted to argue, and he tensed his shoulders as if to rebuke Leo. But instead he closed his eyes, and sank back against the headboard. He was breathing deeply, and periodically his mouth moved like he was about to speak. It was hard in the dark to tell whether the man had finally had enough and given himself over to sleep. Leo figured that maybe some rest would help heal the man’s body, and his heart. 

Leo waited for a half hour, but Red never opened his eyes or spoke again. Figuring that he was dismissed, Leo quietly left the room, pulling the door shut. He stood in the second floor hallway for a few moments, trying to process the story he had just heard. He shook his head solemnly and walked down the stairs to the entryway. Miss Isabelle and Carol were in an animated conversation, and the dogs sat at their feet, looking from one to the other. Miss Isabelle stopped in mid sentence as Leo approached, and then reached out for him, putting her hand on his arm. Leo knew what was coming but he still wasn’t sure exactly how to respond, or sure what was his to say or not. 

“How did it go?” she asked. “Is he any better?”

Leo nodded. “I think he’s reflecting on his life a good bit. That tumble he took certainly shook him up.” It seemed safer to stick to the present than the past for Leo. He wanted so badly to help O’Rourke overcome his guilt and shame, but that wasn’t within his power to make magically happen. 

Carol fixed Leo a cup of warm tea, with a healthy dose of both honey and sugar. He tried to relax standing in the kitchen with the two women, but his mind was still stuck on O’Rourke’s past and his current predicament. Carol and Miss Isabelle prattled on to each other, oblivious to Leo’s silence. He finished his tea, and acknowledged their effort, before excusing himself to head back into town. 

After retrieving his raincoat, Leo headed out into the storm to walk back to the chapel. Reflecting on what he’d learned about Red, he was heartbroken about the hurt that had been caused, and he wondered if anything he said would provide the older man some form of closure. 

Back in town, Leo noticed that most of the shops and other businesses were locked up tight. The storm had pushed most of the tourists back onto their cruise ships or into temporary stayovers on the island. The Ocean’s Breeze was even buttoned up, with all of the lights out. Leo was sorry he wasn’t able to spend some more time talking with the islanders, but he wasn’t going to complain about a few moments of quiet to himself. He settled for a bowl of cereal for dinner, and stretched out on his bed, hoping to fall asleep. 

A crash outside in the sanctuary startled him from where he’d dozed off, and he slid both feet to the floor and cautiously opened the door. He didn’t quite know what to do if someone was up to no good, but he couldn’t in good faith let them destroy the sanctuary. The lights were off, but Leo could hear laughter and running feet in the sanctuary. He stepped out of the hallway and squinted. 

Wham! A forceful body had launched itself into his chest and he fell backward into the wall. He wasn’t so much hurt as startled, and his senses exploded as he recognized one of O’Rourke’s dogs as the culprit. Poseidon or Neptune, smelling like a dog that had been let outside for too long, was licking Leo’s face with its long, rough tongue. In the dark, the wagging tail caused the dim light of the stainglass window to appear to be flickering. 

How’d the dog even get into the chapel? Questioned Leo. He tried to pull the dog off of his chest but it was too excited to comply. Out of the dark, two figures materialized, and Leo saw that they were young men. 

“Sorry, padre,” one of them said, chuckling. “We didn’t realize that you were sleeping back there.”

The other youth elbowed the first one. “Why didn’t you tell me they found a new guy to be the pastor?”

They reached down and pulled the dog off of Leo. “We were just playing a prank on Red, putting his dog in the chapel. We’re sorry we scared you, mister,” said the second youth. 

“Who are you?” asked Leo, dusting himself off. His momentary fright was receding, and he was curious about what would make these two mess with Red and his property. 

The first youth sighed. “I’m Jimmy, and that’s Joe,” he said. “We’re the Momas. We sort of have a reputation for getting in trouble. But messing with ol’ Red is kind of our favorite pastime. Our dad worked for him on one of the cruise ships, and met our mom there. Red used to be Dad’s favorite but he hasn’t really helped Mom out since Dad died.”

The dog was quietly pawing at the door to the outside, and began to whine. “It sounds like you two need to take him home,” said Leo, trying to sound stern and only partially succeeding. “I expect to see you two in here tomorrow at 8 a.m., to help me make sure everything is in order.”

The boys looked sheepish but nodded their heads. Jimmy collected a makeshift leash from the back of the sanctuary and they left with the dog. Leo watched them disappear down the street, and closed up the doors to the sanctuary. The day had been incredibly informative, but not necessarily in a good way. Name it whatever they had, Tranquility Island was anything but peaceful.

Leo pulled off his wet clothes, now smelling like a dog, and fell into a fitful sleep marred by visions of violence and trouble.

Chapters 48-51 coming June 7!

40

That night, Red O’Rourke dreamed. It felt more like the space between sleeping and waking than like something unreasonable and far out. It was memories twisted and reimagined, as his injured brain trawled the depths of his past. 

Initially, O’Rourke found himself in the long dining hall of the house, but his parents were there and so was Martha. Another girl was there, someone whom O’Rourke had liked, even loved, as a friend and maybe something more. She wasn’t from the island but someone who had visited one summer and who had captured Red’s heart the moment that he had seen her. She was sitting at the table, but in the dream, she had no plate or bowl to eat from and no utensils. 

“Red, we don’t mix with that kind,” his mother said, her well-coiffed hair sitting up high on her head and spoon full of soup barely touching her makeup-covered lips. His father, sitting at the long end of the ornate table just glared at Red disapprovingly. Red himself was sweating, and sitting there in a child’s seat and in child’s clothes. He looked over at his friend and saw that she had no face, and then no hands, as she faded away…

The O’Rourkes were sitting in the chapel now, and listening to a revival preacher who had shown up sometime when Red was small. His parents were dressed in their finest clothes, and he was sitting in a starched white dress shirt, tightened tie, and dress pants that ended just above his loafers. His feet barely touched the ground as he sat on the pew. 

“We are sinners, all of us!” cried the preacher. “God is angry with us, for our sin and our disappointment of Him. We are to be kept pure and holy, not mingling ourselves with the things of the world or the people of this world. We are set apart and called to be blameless of all of the temptations of the world.” 

Red’s mother and father were nodding, and everyone seemed to turn and stare at him, except his sister. 

“You are damned to hell, for not being who you’re supposed to be! You are unforgivable!” shouted the preacher, rising to a crescendo. “You are forever lost, Red O’Rourke!”

In the dream, the child version of O’Rourke felt his stomach boil over and his tears begin to fall. Everyone in the church was turning and looking at him with judgment, and his father’s face was contorted in a look of anger and rage. O’Rourke turned to his sister, hoping that at least she could see him as he was and still love him…

Now Martha had no face, like the girl from the first dream. And then suddenly everyone was laughing and pointing at Red in the church until their faces all disappeared, too. 

O’Rourke woke, soaked in sweat and clenching the blanket in a white-knuckled grip. He knew that the sun was not yet up, but he could hear the rain falling hard in sheets against the window panes. His heart still beat wildly and there was bile in his throat. The back of his head throbbed to its own beat, and he saw bandages on his hands and arms. There was no memory of what had happened that had landed him here in bed, hurting like this. But he could remember the dreams. 

The dreams hadn’t arrived for the first time that night, but they had haunted him for years. He knew the names of the people in the pews that day and the name of the girl who had been humiliated by his parents at lunch. He knew because they all caused scars that still existed on his heart, that still felt picked and reopened by the words he said or things he did. O’Rourke knew that his parents had tried their best; they had wanted what was best for him. But they had failed to show love in a way that set him up to succeed in the world, and in the process they had steered him onto a path that he still wasn’t sure that he could return from. 

Lying there, O’Rourke thought of Martha, locked into an unresponsive life, to a life that he wasn’t really sure was living at all. Did she know him? Did she know David? Did she understand their words, or receive the cries for forgiveness he left in tears on her blanket as he bent over her and prayed nearly every night? Were the nightmares enough punishment or was there more to come? Could he ever get away from these terrible dreams?

O’Rourke rolled onto his stomach, and screamed into his pillow, a loud, long, mournful scream. He would have suffocated himself in that moment if he could have but his scream reduced to big, sloppy tears that flooded the pillowcase. He was alone and terrified, and it left him ready to confess his sins to whoever would listen. 

41

That morning, Leo woke up without any incessant banging on the door or stabbing blindness from the sun. He did a quick set of pushups and situps to warm up his muscles, and some deep breathing exercises. Outside, the rain came in waves, blowing down sheets periodically and then letting up again for ten to fifteen minutes at a time. He didn’t really care what the weather was, because he was determined to get outside and run, regardless. 

Setting out on the path that the search party had followed the day before, Leo jogged toward the other side of the island. He kept an eye out for glimpses of the lighthouse, having decided it would be his destination that morning. With a reasonably steady pace, Leo found himself on the lighthouse property after fifty minutes, and he walked around its base, examining the structure that had once been responsible for keeping fishermen safe. 

The light was low enough and the fog high enough that the battery-operated light was still pulsing its light out to sea. The lighthouse itself was locked and Leo had not been given a key. He couldn’t imagine the claustrophobia of having to manually operate the light and staying up in the tower for hours, or days, at a time. But the new system seemed to be keeping the cruise ships away from the rocks on that part of the island. 

As Gillian had shared, the lighthouse was padlocked shut. But a new padlock was in place linking together an older chain that someone had used to keep the door from opening. Leo could see that someone had tried to pry the door to the lighthouse off its hinges, but the old hinges had held. He didn’t know if the new padlock was someone’s responsibility from town or merely there because of whoever had tried prying the door open. And the graffiti was endless, around and around at the bottom for them and then rising up the center of the structure that was farthest away from the woodlawn path.

By now, the rain was pelting Leo, hard. He decided that maybe running in the rain wasn’t his favorite, or maybe that was just nor’easters. Either way, he knew it was past time to head back to town, as he’d spend the next hour running through giant puddles in a torrential downpour. 

Screaming from the rocky beach to his left cut through the wind and the rain. Looking down from the lighthouse landing, he saw Steph waving her hands frantically, amidst the rocks. Just beyond her, Steven was gingerly navigating his way out from the shore. And there was Junior, twenty feet out to sea, struggling to stay above the water as angry waves crashed over him. 

Leo hopped down off of the lighthouse platform, and ran as quickly as he could over the slick rocks on the shore. Steph grabbed his arm as he drew closer and pulled him toward Steven. “Junior followed us out here when we came to fish,” she explained, breathlessly, as they moved closer to her brothers. “A hook got stuck and we told him just to leave it, but when we turned around, he headed out to get it. He isn’t a good swimmer!” 

Leo’s legs carried him into the shore break and out to Steven, who was now fighting the tide and trying to reach his brother. Leo stuck his arms out to Junior, as another wave threatened to consume the younger boy, and for a moment, Junior was lost beneath the waves. Steven screamed, and Leo took a deep breath seconds before the wave crashed into him. 

The water made the rocky surface hard to gain purchase, and Leo felt one foot slip out from underneath him. His leg ran into Junior’s, and under the water, he followed the space up until he had his fingers clutching onto Junior’s shirt collar. As the water ebbed back out to sea, Leo surged back to shore, fighting the pull of the waves on Junior’s body. Then they broke through to the surface, and he heard the young man crying. 

Steven slipped one arm under Junior’s left arm and together, he and Leo dragged Junior through the surf to the beach where Steph waited, nervously wringing her hands. 

“Junior! Don’t do that again,” she fussed, wrapping the little boy up in her tight embrace. “Mom would’ve killed us if something had happened to you!”

Junior tried to pull away but finally gave in. He looked up at Leo, and solemnly stuck out his hand. “Thanks, Mister,” he said. “It was deeper than it looked!”

Leo shook his head, and Junior grinned up at him weekly. “But I did get the lure!” 

As the rain fell, Steven, Steph, and Leo looked down at Junior’s other outstretched hand, proudly displaying the homespun lure he had rescued from the rocks. 

42

On the way back to town, Leo found himself matching step for step with Steven, whose head still hung down. Leo didn’t have a lot of experience with teenagers but he decided he’d try to draw the younger man into conversation. 

“What do you usually catch out there?” he asked, indicating the fishing poles that Steven had clutched in one hand. The bucket they had carried out to bring back their caught fish bounced off of Junior’s heels ahead of them, empty except for a few raindrops. 

“Sometimes flounder. Maybe cod,” mumbled Steven in response. The rainwater dripped off of his bangs down to his nose, and then slid off falling to the ground. Leo noticed that not all of the water was from the rain though, and he realized that Steven was crying. Was it out of sadness or fear or …?

Leo cleared his throat. “Um, sometimes, it’s good if you, uh, talk about something that’s bothering you?” He realized he had phrased it as more of a question than a statement, and he wasn’t sure if Steven would even respond. 

The rain echoed off of the vegetation around them, but Leo had noticed it didn’t seem quite as rainy on the path back to Main Street, thanks to the heavy tree coverage overhead. He looked around but they still hadn’t seen anyone else, and it seemed that Junior had returned to normal. Young kids had a habit of rebounding faster than everyone else, even if they had been scared out of their minds just moments before. 

With nothing but the rain as a soundtrack mixed with the muted discussion from Junior and Steph ahead of them, Leo realized that his stomach was growling. He’d definitely have to take a shower before going to Ocean’s Breeze, but a hot cup of coffee and some food sounded good. 

“I can’t stand him sometimes!” blurted out Steven suddenly. Leo looked up, startled by the fury of Steven’s statement. 

“I’m sorry,” said Leo, realizing that Steven was only speaking to him. “But who are you talking about?”

Steven glanced at Leo, furtively, before going back to watching the ground. “My brother. He’s so annoying. He wants to do whatever I do and he’s always in my space.” Leo saw that Steven was looking ahead at Junior, but his eyes weren’t angry. 

“And then I almost let him get hurt,” Steven continued, “or something worse, and I-”

The words hung in Steven’s throat as a sob threatened to over take him. Leo reached out an arm, and the boy didn’t fight him, as Leo gave Steven a one-armed hug. The boy’s body shook, and his legs came to a stop. “It’s okay,” said Leo, looking down at the top of his head. “Nothing bad happened, and you did help save his life! It’s hard being the older brother, and figuring out who you are, too.”

Steven nodded, and pulled back to keep walking. Leo caught up to him, and Steven didn’t say much more on the way back toward town. When they arrived at the intersection where most of the houses began, Junior high-fived Leo, Steph thanked Leo for being there, and Steven extended a shy half-wave. Leo nodded and told them he would see them around town, and headed back toward the chapel. 

43

As the rain continued to fall, Leo realized that everything would be a stage of damp over the next few days. He resigned himself to dealing with wet clothes and decided that rather than get cleaned up and dressed and then soaked again, he would brave the lunch crowd first before going back to the chapel. He ducked under an overhang and wrung out his shirt, before stepping into the Ocean’s Spray. 

Pushing his way through the clamor inside, Leo saw that the bar was half-filled with people he hadn’t seen at Tranquility before. He realized it was possible, with a population of a thousand or two, to not recognize everyone, but the people that stuck out to him were all wearing matching polos to the body of John Perrier. Leo wound his way through the crowd to the bathroom and used paper towels to dry his face and hair. Looking at his reflection in the mirror, he actually felt human, thanks to the exercise and camaraderie of the people he had met already. At the bar, Fred nodded to Leo and slid a Coke from the fountain across the bar top. Leo ordered a meal of fish and chips, and turned on the stool to watch the crowd behind him. 

There was a buzz that Leo sensed, but couldn’t quite name. He listened to the conversation fragments he could pick out, and realized that the island people were afraid that the killer was on the island and the cruise ship employees were afraid the killer was on their ship. Apparently John Perrier had quite a reputation, and steroids were mentioned in a few of the conversations. No one felt safe from the killer, and Perrier wasn’t exactly being mourned.

“There’s no way someone just overpowered him,” one of the crew was saying. “It would have to have been multiple guys who got the drop on him. That guy was huge. And mean!”

Another crewmate nodded. “I once saw him punch a hole through the wall when a guest refused to pay for the session he’d just provided. The guest thought everything was all inclusive and Perrier was riding high from shooting up that morning.”

Someone said they’d once seen him throw punches at the chief security officer, breaking the man’s nose and jaw. Perrier had been reprimanded, but in the end, the security officer left the company and Perrier kept his job.

Interspersed with the crewmembers, Islanders were sharing details about the recovery of the body with each other. Leo knew from having stood there when they pulled the body ashore that some of the details were true and some of them sounded like the mashup of imagination and reality that happened when children tried to play “Whisper Down the Lane.” He heard one version where a snake had crawled out of Perrier’s mouth when they discovered the body and another where he’d actually been found half-eaten by sharks. 

Leo wanted to reach out and comfort them, and correct the things that weren’t true. He knew the wild rumors were leading to more fear and discorance, and that at some point, what people thought was true actually weighed on their hearts heavier than what was true. Gaslighting was real, and sometimes people did it to themselves. 

Leo turned back as Fred slid his lunch plate across the wooden bar. “These folks are scared,” Fred said, adding with a wink, “and it doesn’t even take my special bartender skills to know it.”

Leo agreed, taking a bite out of the fried fish he’d already grown to love at Ocean’s Spray. Halfway through, Gillian landed on the stool next to him, with her bag slapping down on the floor in between them. “This island is exhausting!” she said, as her hood dripped rainwater down on the bar. She grabbed a napkin to mop up the water, but Fred swept it all up with one of his rags, winking at her as he did. 

With a grateful smile, Gillian said, “I’ll have what he’s having,” and turned back to Leo. “I assume you know there was a body discovered on the island.”

“It’s hard to avoid it,” Leo replied. “This place doesn’t leave any story untouched, or unchanged.” He grimaced, and put his half-eaten fish back on the plate. Pushing the plate away, he looked like he might be sick. 

Gillian chuckled. “Let me guess, you’ve never seen Weekend at Bernie’s, have you?”

When Leo gave her the same blank stare that he had given her earlier, Gillian decided maybe pop culture wasn’t their mutual language. Leo was sipping Coke like it might actually erase the memory of finding the body. 

“It’s fine with me if they want to tell stories,” said Gillian, brandishing a stack of now damp notes. “Between Red and the body, I think my boss will flip. But it’s hard to know when they’ll take me back to the mainland. Captain Benjamin radioed to the guy at the post office that he won’t be coming back for at least two days, and the cruise ship folks won’t travel any further than the ships out there, or take me aboard so I can use their communications office. It’s like we’re stuck in the middle of an Agatha Christie novel a hundred years ago.”

“That’s one heck of a storm,” said one of the cruise ship crewmen pushing his way to the bar between Leo and Gillian, oblivious to their discomfort. “Makes for a captive audience! Bosses will love that,” he tossed over his shoulder to a coworker, never acknowledging Leo and Gillian. They recoiled a bit because of his invasion of their space, and they fell into silent laughter when he stumbled away, another set of beers in hand. 

The crewman tripped and the beers crashed to the ground, spilling everywhere. The man’s tablemates laughed as he dusted himself off and returned begrudgingly to the bar for more beer. This time, Gillian caught his eye, and he tried to get her attention, pushing into the space between Gillian and Leo. Gillian pointedly ignored him, continuing to talk to Leo about nothing in particular. 

“Hey, I’m trying to talk to you!” growled the belligerent crewman. In the background, his fellow crewmates were laughing and cheering him on at the same time. Gillian sipped her drink and continued to ignore the man. Leo could see that the man was blushing with embarrassment, and watched with surprise, as the man put his hand around Gillian’s wrist. 

“I’d advise you to let go of my arm,” Gillian said, calmly and clearly as if she’d just announced the weather they’d be experiencing. The man inched closer to her, and started to snarl something else. 

Leo halfway rose out of his chair. “She asked you to leave her alone, sir,” Leo said, quietly. He was no longer a bystander, but he hadn’t made any kind of move to stop the man. 

The crewman didn’t even turn as he shoved Leo hard with his free hand, and sent him backpedaling over the bar stool onto the floor. Leo’s back hurt from where he had landed awkwardly between his chair and the person beside him, but he was joined a moment later by the drunk crewman. 

Somehow, Gillian had twisted the man’s hand behind his back and shoved him down to the ground. He was eye to eye with Leo, and his face was awash with pain. “You need to apologize to the pastor and help him up off the ground,” Gillian whispered, bending down to speak into the man’s ear. Through his tears, the man nodded as Gillian released him. 

Grabbing both of Leo’s hands, the crewman pulled Leo to his feet and muttered an apology before speeding off through the tables to the exit. His buddies around the table were all shaking their heads and laughing, and Gillian eyed them with an air of disgust until they all dropped their heads and hurried out of the Ocean’s Breeze after their friend. Leo looked at Gillian in a mixture of awe and wonder, but she refused to return his glance. He shook his head, and rubbed his lower back, before settling in to finish off his lemonade. 

Fred rotated back to them a few moments later. “These cruise ship guys are the worst. Most of them are minimum wage and they make tips hustling. But it’s all a game to them. They can’t actually treat you with respect because you’re not going to pay them anything.” 

Somehow, Leo and Gillian had made it onto the islander insider track with Fred, and whatever filter bartenders were supposed to maintain had fallen away. Leo noticed a harder edge to Fred than he had expected before, as if the combination of island happenings, weather, and additional cruise ship tourists had pushed him to the edge. Fred sideeyed a few of the cruise ship guys getting rowdy over by the darts, and moved away to tell them to take it outside. 

Gillian lifted an eyebrow, and turned back to Leo when Fred disappeared with their empty plates. “Now, that’s an island hot take that will move the meter!” she exclaimed, reaching for her bag. Then she groaned, disgusted by what she saw. 

Leo looked down, and saw that her bag had been spilled around their stools. The crew member had practically stepped into her bag, and different items had been scattered. Leo hopped down to help her recover her possessions, and in the process, he saw a flash of metal weighing down the bottom of the bag, before Gillian closed up the bag again. Gillian looked at him, quizzically, but he pretended he hadn’t seen anything, and handed her a roll of lipstick that had rolled to the other side of his stool. 

“I think that’s everything. Thank you,” she said, sighing. “That’ll teach me to leave my bag on the floor in here.”

Leo was considering what he might say, or not say, about what he thought he’d seen. He felt a little foolish, because what woman traveling alone didn’t have a right to defend herself even if she had a gun? Before he could decide what to say, Gillian had thrown cash down on the bar to cover her meal, and quickly darted through the crowded bar. Leo stared after her, but the words stayed caught in his throat.

The clamor rose higher and higher, and Leo decided he’d had all he could take of this version of the Ocean Spray. He paid Fred and left a tip, telling the bartender that he hoped his experience would improve. Fred just rolled his eyes and kept rubbing circles on the bar with his rag.  

Outside, Leo ducked his head to try and get more protection from the raindrops pelting his face as he trudged down Main Street. Slipping into the hardware store, he found a workman’s coat with a hood that had more chance of covering him than his suit coat did. After being rained on a few times, without being properly cleaned, his suit coat already looked like some rumpled detective’s coat. He looked around until he found a pair of workboots and a pair of sensible dungarees to tide him over while the storm raged. He paid, thanking the clerk, and headed back out into the rain. 

Back at the chapel, he found a note from Miss Isabelle pinned to his door. It said that O’Rourke had woken up that morning and demanded to see Leo, that he had something they needed to talk about. The note was short and sweet, but Leo could see that Isabelle’s writing had been fast and excited. She closed the note by saying she hoped that Leo could make a point of talking to the man in the mansion that afternoon. 

Knowing that the rain would continue indefinitely, Leo changed out of his rain soaked clothes, and after a shower, he slipped into his new dry outfit and tore the tags off of his new coat. It would have to be enough to make the trip up the hill. He sighed at the thought of trudging uphill through the woods in the rain, and felt a cold shiver run down his spine. He had to go; he had no choice. 

Red O’Rourke was waiting, and Leo had promised to return.

Chapters 44-47 coming May 31!

37

The next morning, Leo was toweling himself off after a shower when the knocking began. He quickly slid into a pair of pants and a collared shirt before reaching the door. This time he recognized that it was Miss Isabelle before he even opened the door, but the look on her face shocked him. “What’s wrong, Miss Isabelle?” he asked, reaching out to touch the shoulders of the older woman. 

Miss Isabelle was shaking, slipping against the doorframe as Leo reached out to support her. “Benji found a body on his way into the dock this morning,” she moaned. 

“A body. Like an animal or something?” Leo asked, still confused. 

“No,” Miss Isabelle trembled. “It’s someone from one of the cruise ships.” 

Leo asked Isabelle to wait momentarily, and he turned back to his apartment to slide on his socks and shoes. He tucked the sheets of his bed in and pulled up the comforter. With one last check of his living quarters, he slid his suit coat on and went out into the chapel where Miss Isabelle was sitting quietly, her face in her hands. 

After escorting Isabelle down to the dock, Leo found a group of people gathered around Captain Benjamin and Noah. They were explaining how they had discovered a body on the far side of the island. The body was stuck in overgrowth that made it impossible to get to by boat, and they were discussing what might be done to recover the body. 

“It’s totally one of the crew of one of those ships,” Noah proclaimed. “The guy is wearing one of their uniforms.”

Several of the islanders turned to each other and shrugged. Noah’s logic made sense. Everyone knew that the different ships had different colored uniforms so it was just a question of which part of the ship this particular crewman had come from. 

Leo noticed that Gillian had arrived, pushing her way to stand close to the sailors as they explained what they had seen. “Shouldn’t someone call the police?” a tourist asked. 

“There are no police on the island,” said Captain Benjamin. “The worst we have had happen here is someone gets a bit drunk and wanders around town causing problems. Pat Garrett usually handles those but no one can find him. They normally just drunks sleep it off in Stein’s infirmary. But we’ll have to get word to the mainland, and they’ll send someone. I doubt that they’ll make that happen until after the storm blows through though. It’s going to get rough.”

The crowd gathered on the dock was determined to go and retrieve the body. A few of the volunteer firemen were rallied from their homes, and Miss Isabelle asked Leo to go with them, “in case that poor man needs last rites.” Gillian announced that she would tag along to see if she could get more details on a headline story for the paper, sidling up to different members of the search party to get their thoughts on what was happening. 

Leo walked alongside a few of the firemen who had loaded tools into a wagon and were taking turns pushing them along. This certainly seemed like a situation where some more technology might have come in useful, but the group seemed unfazed by the additional steps they were taking. The firemen all said they were happy not to be pushing or pulling a full tank of water as they sometimes needed it to put a fire out in one of the more inland buildings. Most of them wanted to know how a crew member could’ve ended overboard, and whether anyone from his particular cruise ship had noticed yet or not. 

After a forty-five minute hike with Captain Benjamin leading the way, Leo was grateful when he realized that he could see the water again through the trees, but he understood why they had brought all of the tools they had. They had left the path twenty minutes prior, the last sign of organized activity a dirt road up to what Bobby had told him was The Farm. Apparently, much of the fresh vegetables available for consumption came from a collection of retired farmers who worked together. Leo thought he would have to check that out further. 

Removed from the residential section of the island, the brush around the perimeter of the island grew fierce and dense. The volunteer firemen put their effort into clearing a path to the location that Captain Benjamin indicated, hard work that left them taking rotational shifts carving. Little by little, they pulled back the underbrush that coated the perimeter of the island. Leo realized that at least half of the island was currently inhabitable or at least underdeveloped. He figured that was part of what kept the island the way it was. Change was slow.

Several of the bushes had to be chainsawed away for them to fit more than one person through the gap at a time. It took most of the morning just to cut a path through until they could see the body floating in a cluster of reeds and overgrown branches. The firemen collapsed against tree trunks, soaking up drinks they had carried with them, exhausted. Bobby and Noah were the two left to wade several feet off the shore to extract the body and drag it back to the rest of the group.

Noah pulled up from his approach, and Leo watched as an animal splashed away from the body. No one could tell exactly what it was but it was big enough that the men in the water were reluctant to get close enough to find out. Noah resumed his movement, and step by step, he and Bobby made their way through the shallows to the body. 

As they drew closer, it became clear that the dead body had belonged to a man who clearly cared about staying in shape and keeping up appearances. Noah thought that the man looked like a bodybuilder, a massive brick of a man, but it hadn’t really helped him out in the long run. His body was beginning to bloat from its time in the water, and while he might give them all nightmares, it wasn’t because he was intimidating in death. The two men cut reeds and ferns clear to make a path to the land, and then each of them took a hand under the body’s armpits and dragged it toward the rest of the group.

The body was relayed, hand over hand from the marshy outskirt of the island back onto dry land. When they had finally brought the dead man out of the brush, a noticeable gasp ran like a wave as people noticed that the man had not died from natural causes. While the bloating had definitely caused some disfiguration, the root cause of the man’s death was visible in his back

Leo didn’t know much about guns but he could see that a small caliber bullet hole was present centered between the dead man’s shoulder blades. Another burn was present on his left calf, and another hole showed in his right forearm. It looked like the guy had died painfully, and his face was stuck in an expression of abject terror. Even with the water damage and apparently a few bites from fish, the gunshot wounds were too obvious to be anything but the results being shot at. A wave of anxiety flowed over Leo, and he wondered just what kind of situation he had been made part of by arriving on the island. 

“We’ve got to get him to the funeral home,” said Bobby, from the circle of firemen. He’d finally waded ashore himself, and was drinking from an offered water bottle. Wiping sweat from his forehead, he added, “Until the police can send someone out here, at least. We can put him in the freezer.”

“Where did someone get a gun on the island?” asked one of the volunteer firefighters. “I mean, did the guy accidentally shoot himself or did someone do this to him?”

“I dunno,” replied another. “But if that’s a murder victim then that means someone on the island right now is a killer.”

“Has anyone seen Stein? He’s the one that will have to check out the body,” interjected another fireman, looking around.

Leo wasn’t sure it took a rocket scientist to figure out what the cause of death was, but he knew that there was still a protocol to be followed, even on the island. 

Someone piped up. “He wasn’t going to volunteer to walk out here with us, and the island isn’t paying him to be here, so…”

A few good natured guffaws followed. The group determined that they best head back to town, to get the body situated before they missed lunch. It would take another hour to get back to town, and no one wanted to be with the dead body any longer than they had to be regardless of the circumstances. They loaded the body onto the wagon, and different people including Leo took turns dragging the wagon forward. 

Halfway back to the town, Leo looked inquiringly at Gillian but she was lost in thought. He decided to keep one foot in front of the other, and went back to watching the path in front of them. Two teenagers almost knocked him over racing past him on the return trip, and a few minutes later, one of the volunteer firefighters came crashing past him muttering about the Mamo brothers and what he was going to do to them when he caught them.

Leo craned his neck to see if he could catch sight of the boys or if the fireman ever caught them, but he was too tired to put in much effort. Around the bend, the group passed the sign to The Farm, and Leo decided to split off from the group. 

“Where you headed there, padre?” asked Gillian, shaking out of her reverie. 

“I want to introduce myself to the farmers here,” Leo replied. “More of my people, you know?” 

Gillian looked at the procession escorting the body back to town, and up the road past the sign to the fields and buildings beyond. “Not much these folks can tell me about that guy yet, I guess,” she mused. “Let’s do it. Maybe one of these guys will give me the background for the story I need.”

38

Through the break in the trees and up the hill went Leo and Gillian. The buildings came into focus as they drew closer. A large farm building opened into a corral where a few horses and several cows were taking turns eating and sleeping. A few pigs lifted an eyelid or two as the pair drew closer, but stayed hunkered down in the shade of the building. Off to the right, a low hanging roof stood over several large pieces of farm equipment, and farther up the hill stood a two-story house that doglegged away from them back toward the fields beyond. 

A man working on the underside of one of the large tractors rolled himself out from underneath it as they walked up. “What can I do you for?” the wizened old man asked, running a greasy hand through his long beard. “If you’re looking for town, you’re a bit lost.”

“I’m Gillian, a reporter,” she said, extending her hand and gamely shaking the grease-covered digits extended back to her. “This is Leo, he’s the new preacher.”

Leo nodded, sizing up the man in the flannel shirt and dirty coveralls. His sharp eyes examined the two newcomers and he finally smiled. “Well, I’ll be! It’s about time we got a new preacher in the chapel. I’m tired of hearing the same old stories from the ones who are filling in. Guess that makes me a bad person but I’m ready to hear from someone who knows what they’re doing.”

Leo put his hands up as if fending off the comment. “I don’t know if that’s me, sir,” he started. “But I just wanted to come out here and meet you myself.”

“Well, I’m Gus Hammersmith,” said the old timer, shaking Leo’s hand emphatically. “The other guys are out in the fields right now, but they’ll want to meet you sometime, too. I guess we should get ourselves cleaned up and head in there Sunday, right?”

Leo smiled. “You just come as you are,” he said. “There’s no requirement that you get cleaned up first.”

Gus looked at Leo, and squinted, as if trying to decide if Leo really meant it. “Well, you’re certainly different than the last guy. But he was older than me, so that must’ve made him about a hundred! We’ll see what we can do. Right now we have too much work and not enough hands.”

Leo looked around at the buildings, the animals, and the crops themselves. “How many of you are there?” he asked. 

“There were twelve of us, including wives and kids,” Gus explained. “But a couple of us old goats died, and some of the kids didn’t want to live the sun up to sun down we have to here. So they left for the mainland and didn’t come back.”

“Honestly, if we don’t get some new blood out here soon, The Farm is probably done.”

Leo and Gillian spent a half hour petting the horses and meeting the assortment of other farm animals that Gus scared up for them to examine. They said their goodbyes and headed back to town, each wondering what if anything could save The Farm. 

39

Looking out of the chapel window, Leo caught a glimpse of Bobby entering through the cemetery gate. He saw that the man had brought a sizable bouquet of bright flowers, and was making a beeline for one of the newest graves in the back of the cemetery. 

Stepping out of the side door into the cemetery, Leo listened as Bobby carried on a one-sided conversation with his dead wife, Elaine. 

“Sweetheart, I miss you something terrible,” Bobby was whispering. “The pain in my legs is driving me crazy, and Dr. Steinman says there’s nothing more he can do for me.”

“You used to tell me to find a purpose, a reason, to get out of bed and stay positive. But I’m not sure what to do without you. Everywhere I go in our house, or on the island, I think of the times we spent together. I think of all the places we visited and all the things we did.”

“I just wish I was with you. I want that more than anything else.” 

Leo watched as the man wiped away tears from his cheeks. His mustache was soaked with the sadness he felt as he looked down at his wife’s simple gravestone. “Do you think it’s okay to just let go, Pastor?” Bobby asked without looking up. 

Surprised, given that he’d thought he was reasonably quiet, Leo was speechless. “It’s okay, Pastor Leo, people think they’re sneaky and such, but during my time with the SEALs, we got really good at sneaking up on people and figuring out when they were fit to sneak up on us.”

Leo chuckled. “You got me, Bobby. I didn’t want to stop you from talking to Elaine or praying.”

“It’s alright,” said Bobby, rising to his feet and brushing off his knees. “I just come to talk to her every day sometime, because that’s what we did for nearly sixty years. We talked every day. We told our secrets and shared our hopes. Now she’s gone and I don’t know what to do. I don’t see the point of living without her. At least when I’m dead we’ll be back together.”

“I think there’s always a point,” said Leo, slowly. “Sometimes we go through spells where it doesn’t feel like it, or where we question what the point is. But I believe you have a purpose. It can be frustrating but occasionally it takes us a while to find it.” 

The older man nodded, eyes still on the flowers at his wife’s headstone. “Okay, I’ll take your word for it today. And see if it doesn’t get clearer for me. You say a prayer for me, okay? See if I can’t get some answers.”

Leo agreed to pray for Bobby, and the one-time Navy Seal let himself out through the cemetery gate. Leo stared after him until he disappeared, wondering what he could do to help this man find his purpose. Shaking his head, he went back into his rooms to prepare for the day, and see who else he might meet on the island. 

By midafternoon, Leo was frustrated. 

Everywhere he went, people wanted to talk to Leo about the dead man. Someone had found an identification badge in the man’s back pocket identifying him as John Perrier of Indiana, a member of the Gateway Cruise Line’s Physical Fitness Team. The townsfolk were buzzing with questions. Had the man been killed on the ship and thrown overboard? Had he made his way to the island and been killed there? Was there a killer loose on the island? 

Leo was more interested in what the living were doing and would do about the strange chain of events happening in Tranquility. He laughed at the irony there, of these people fleeing from all of the things they saw as distracting and problematic, only to find the same problems bubbling up on the island. Leo was no armchair Dr. Freud, but he figured that was just human nature!

The tittering of gossip in the town was drawing out more and more ridiculous lines of thinking, like moths to a flame, and the pressure drove Leo up the hill, like a magnet being repulsed by the same charge. He figured it was about time that the pastor of the chapel visit one of his parishioners recovering from a major health incident anyway. And it gave him an excuse to get away from the noise of the drama that others seemed focused on. Instead of doing something, they were consumed with being in the know. He didn’t understand the attraction, because in his mind, knowledge wasn’t actually power. 

In his experience, relationships were where energy and power came from, as a person found their connections and outlets into other people. The past needed to be considered and examined sometimes, but dwelling on it only meant you were stuck in the past and unable to move forward with whatever you were called to do or supposed to be. Leo had found plenty of time to think about purpose, truth, and eternity, so even if he didn’t have all of the answers, he certainly had opinions. 

Above, Leo could see through gaps in the trees that the sky had turned darker, and big heavy clouds were pushing in from the sea. Thunder could occasionally be heard, in distant echoes, and there were lightning flashes farther out on the skyline. Rain still hadn’t started to fall on the island, and he figured he had probably picked the right time to come and visit O’Rourke. 

As he approached, there was no movement at all outside of the O’Rourke mansion, and looking down over the side of the cliff, Leo could see that the tide was splashing up well past the third stone step. Whatever beach there was normally present was now hidden by the dark rolling waves. Those waves were anything but welcoming, with the angry froth that happened as they boiled over and smacked against the side of the cliff wall, higher and higher. 

Leo felt a chill up his spine, and realized it was because of the way they’d discovered O’Rourke at the base of the steps. If they hadn’t come along when they did… He pushed the thought back into the recesses of his mind.

Turning back to the mansion, Leo took a deep breath and prepared himself for what he might find inside. Knocking on the door, Leo heard the expected growls of the two dogs just beyond the door. Carol answered the knock with a big smile, and shushed the two dogs. They sniffed around Leo, and discovering he had nothing to offer them, they slunk off to some far corner of the house. Without natural sunlight streaming in, the house was even darker, Gothic even, on the quiet afternoon. Leo could see why someone could get depressed living in a place like that. 

“I was hoping to check on Mr. O’Rourke,” Leo explained, as Carol let him into the house. She smiled warmly up at him, and squeezed his arm.

“He’s resting, but I think it would be fine for you to spend a few minutes with him. Just be that presence to calm his nerves,” Carol said, in a conspiratorial whisper. “I know that he says he doesn’t believe in anything but I listen to him, and sometimes, I think he’s paying more attention to God than he lets on.”

Leo smiled, nodding back at the cook, unsure about what to add. But he moved quickly to follow her, as she soundlessly and swiftly moved up the stairs, leading Leo to O’Rourke’s master bedroom.

Carol knocked lightly on the door and pushed it open without waiting for a response. The room was mostly darkened, except for the meager light cast from the hallway through the door. The immensity of the room, which took up a whole side of the mansion, was momentarily stunning. Leo could barely see Red’s big frame under the cover of a blanket, and his face was turned away from the door toward the ocean outside. When Leo approached, he could see that the bruising had already significantly reduced, leaving abrasions spiderwebbed across O’Rourke’s face and arms. And as he approached, Leo could see a nasty welt had raised up on the back of Red’s head. 

Carol smiled at him, and motioned him closer to the bed. When Leo could reach out to touch the bed itself, Carol turned and left the door ajar, returning to walk down the stairs. Walking around to the other side of the bed, Leo could see that Red’s eyes were open, but unfocused. “Mr. O’Rourke, can you hear me?” Leo asked. He reached out his hand to take O’Rourke’s hand in his own hand, but O’Rourke yanked his hand back into the sheets, retreating out of sight and out of reach.

Leo pulled a giant wingback chair closer to the bed and sat down, eye level with O’Rourke. He tried to make eye contact, but O’Rourke couldn’t, or wouldn’t, look at him. Leo again thought he saw deep sadness reflected in the old man’s eyes, even if he was still playing at being nothing of consequence. He wished he knew the words to say to take away the pain of the other man, if only he had that kind of power. 

“You’re a lucky guy, Mr. O’Rourke,” Leo said. “If we hadn’t found you when we did, you might not have made it. If it wasn’t for David and Johnny, we couldn’t have brought you back up the steps.”

Leo was going to say more but he saw something shift in the man lying in the bed. At the mention of his nephew, O’Rourke’s face clenched up, his crystal blue eyes filling with tears. He turned away from Leo, dabbing at his face with a corner of the sheet. “I thought maybe that you would want to talk,” offered Leo.

Sitting there silently for a minute, the silence and darkness weighing down on him, Leo wondered if coming to the mansion was a mistake. He didn’t actually need to be there, or feel like he was doing any kind of greater good. Why not just move along to a place where someone appreciated him and wanted him to be around? He heard a grandfather clock ticking from somewhere in the far darkness of the room. When he couldn’t stand it any longer, Leo asked, “Do you have anything you want to talk about? I can certainly pray for you if you’d like.”

The silence stretched, the darkness around them palpable to Leo. He felt his own heartbeat, and tried to wait until O’Rourke might address him. But no words came. 

Finally, Leo stood up, certain that O’Rourke was finished with him. He prayed a short prayer for healing and for peace, and patted O’Rourke lightly on the shoulder. “I’ll be back tomorrow to see how you’re doing, Mr. O’Rourke. Take care of yourself, okay?”

Crossing to the door, Leo saw that the two dogs had followed him upstairs and now lay just outside. As he went to pull the door shut behind him, he heard O’Rourke muttering to himself, too unintelligible for Leo to pick out the words. If only the man had been willing to speak to him before Leo walked back down the hill again. 

On the walk back to town, Leo mulled over the strange events of the last twenty-four hours. A giant of a man in reasonably good health almost drowned. And a cruise ship workout coach shot in the head. This island certainly had more than its fair share of mysteries. As he crossed over from the treeless area into the forest of pines, Leo heard a roll of thunder and saw lightning out over the water. He picked up his pace, as big sloppy drops of rain began to pelt the foliage around him, and a few even made it through to land on him. By the time he arrived at the chapel, he was soaked to the skin. 

The storm had arrived. 

Chapters 40-43 coming May 24!

34

The knocking on the external door to Leo’s living quarters woke him from a restful nap, and he rubbed his eyes as he stood to answer the door. Miss Isabelle stared up at him, her big green eyes magnified and distorted by her glasses. “Did I wake you, Leo? I’m so sorry about that! I just wanted to make sure that you knew we have a prayer meeting tonight at 7 p.m. in the chapel. Didn’t want you to be caught flatfooted. We know that you’re settling in so you don’t have to come but we’d appreciate it if you did.”

Wiping the sleep from his eyes, Leo assured Isabelle that he would show up for the prayer meeting, and went into the bathroom to splash water on his face and run his fingers through his hair. In the chapel, he found her setting up black folding chairs in a circle, equally spaced several inches apart. Isabelle explained that sometimes one of the women would play a few songs on the piano, and then they’d take prayer requests and spend time in prayer. He grabbed a few of the chairs himself, but every time he set up a chair, she would cluck her tongue and slide it to the exact distance that she had in mind. 

Isabelle told Leo that David had asked if she would take a shift sitting with Red, and she had agreed, dabbing at the corner of her eyes with her sleeve. “That was a terrible thing that happened to him,” she said. “Should be more careful on those steps. Especially at the bottom where they get slick with all of that seawater.”

Leo wasn’t sure exactly how Red had ended up concussed, but he had to admit that Miss Isabelle’ advice seemed reasonable to him. Still, she seemed upset enough for the both of them, so he went back to setting up chairs and pulling hymnals from the pews even though he figured that the people at prayer meeting probably knew all of the songs by heart. He started humming an old hymn, only marginally aware that Miss Isabelle had stopped to stare at him. Finally, she shook her head and told him that she had to run home and check on a few things. When he finished putting a hymnal on each chair, he decided it was time to introduce himself around town, hopefully one at a time instead of wholesale. 

The clock on the wall said it was a little past four, so Leo threw on his suit coat and headed down Main Street. There was a buzz on the street that hadn’t been there a day ago. There wwe certainly more people, he noticed, as he sidestepped out of the way of two sets of strollers, neither one belonging to his fellow travelers. By now, the sun had almost completely set, and a quiet sea breeze blew through. Leo was thankful for his coat, and buttoned it for just a bit more warmth. 

At the hardware store, Leo introduced himself to twin brothers Bruce and Phil, who had inherited the business from their father and kept up the tradition. The walls were loaded down by shelves, full of appliances, building materials, and products for every construction situation that Leo could think of. The men explained that they were often the ones called to fix plumbing or electrical problems, too, but they had a crew of teenagers providing most of the work in the hardware store itself. Still, they were more than happy to tell Leo about all of the jobs they had done on the island, from re-establishing the foundation of the O’Rourke mansion to replacing the siding on the chapel. 

When Leo walked into Cindi’s, he thought he might be able to get a quick haircut, but the line was already wrapped around her little salon. Each chair was taken and every head turned like Stepford Wives in unison as he dinged the little bell above the door. He introduced himself to a row of nodding heads, and Cindi herself, a big black woman with a smile that lit up the salon, and promised to be back sometime soon. Cindi grabbed him by the arm and a few of the women murmured that as the new preacher, he had to get a cut ahead of them. He spent the next hour smiling and nodding, until all of his cheek muscles hurt. On the street, Leo decided he wanted to interact with a few less people, and one of the remaining establishments looked like it would meet his needs. 

The funeral home was situated at the opposite end of Main Street and one block over. It was a simple building, with a pleasant facade up front that simply said Remembrances and Memories on the front. No matter where it was in the world, the hint of death and suffering had to be kept at arm’s length and if possible, behind closed doors. Leo pulled on the door handle and stepped into the dimly lit room. He could see straight into the giant room for gathering in memory of a loved one and off to the left he saw a door that led directly into a smaller parlor. The only other room he could see was the office, and through it he observed an older man who seemed intent on some paperwork he was doing. When the front door beeped, the man jumped up and came out of the office, removing a pair of reading glasses as he did so. “Oh, you’re the new pastor!” he exclaimed, hobbling over to shake Leo’s hand. 

Leo swallowed a smile, and observed the diminutive man more closely. While he was certainly taller than the other man, the man’s eyes held pools of meaning. His weathered face was heavily lined, and his grip was exceptionally firm. Except for a thin mustache, the man’s head was closely shaved, and the mustache moved spastically when he talked. Leo appreciated him immediately, and decided that he might be one of the more likable people that he had met on Tranquility.

“I’m Robert, but everyone calls me Bobby,” he was saying. “I’m not really a mortician but Tranquility pays me to balance the books and help if there’s a funeral. I served in the Navy back in the day, but I got this job when my wife asked me to move back home to take care of her parents. Stein, I mean Dr. Steinman doubles as the actual mortician and the town doctor.” 

All of this came out in a flurry of information that Leo tried to process and store away. He nodded, figuring it made sense for a little island like Tranquility to not have a full-time mortician, given that he heard they didn’t pay for any real law enforcement either. “How many funerals do you have a year here?” asked Leo, giving a side eye to the door marked ‘Private.’ 

Bobby sensed his discomfort and chuckled. “Yeah, you don’t want to end up behind that door. You do, and you’re probably leaving the island in a box.”

“Really, we only have a dozen a year,” Bobby continued. “We only have one kind of coffin available here, but folks can always get their loved one changed into something else on the mainland. It takes a special boat to come with a crane and everything, unless the person chooses to be cremated. But Dr. Steinman has to escort the body over until it’s turned over to the real funeral home on the mainland.”

Bobby limped over the room where families could confer with the pastor and funeral director, including any requests they had for their deceased loved one. One of the simple island boxes was on display in the room as well. Bobby gingerly opened it to show Leo, and Leo saw how badly Bobby’s hands shook as he grasped onto the handle. Bobby flexed his knuckles and winced, looking down at the left hand that wouldn’t completely follow his right’s lead. 

“You seem like you’re in some significant pain,” Leo pointed out. “What seems to be the cause?”

“Old age,” Bobby said, chuckling bitterly. “And maybe a few daredevil experiences of my youth that finally have caught up to me. My body just isn’t what it used to be. I’m not worth much anymore at this point.”

Leo looked Bobby in the eye. “Don’t sell yourself short, Bobby. Sounds like you’re providing the island with a service it needs. I’m sure your wife is proud of you!”

Bobby’s face fell. “My sweetheart has actually been gone for a while now, but I lost her way before that to dementia. She was proud of the way I’d gotten involved on the island, but she can’t really give me any advice now. I’m sure she’s looking down on me though.”

Leo apologized for his gaffe, and Bobby assured him that there was nothing to worry about. The funeral home volunteer walked Leo through the rest of the funeral home and then walked outside to stand in the gentle breeze.The two men exchanged pleasantries for several more minutes. Leo invited Bobby to come to the prayer meeting, and Bobby at least promised to see Leo for chapel service that Sunday. Leo told him that he would keep an eye out for him, and wished him a good afternoon.

By the time it was six, Leo had discussed the impending weather and tourist invasions with the senior postmaster who doubled as the volunteer fire chief, been offered a “free weekend getaway” by the Bed and Breakfast proprietor, and learned about the wares sold by a half-dozen pagoda operators who specifically came to the island to maximize on business during the annual migration. He was exhausted from smiling so much, forcing himself to match the cheerfulness of these folks who had made the island what it was. 

Deciding against cereal for dinner, Leo ducked into the Ocean’s Spray, but didn’t see anyone familiar. He took a seat at the bar, and introduced himself to the bartender, Fred. Fred was the big, garrulous man with an even bigger beard who Leo had seen refrain from whacking the tourist earlier over a credit card. Fred had the tattoos to show his military service, and a few more besides that. Looking at Leo, Fred cocked his head to one side, as if seeing Leo for the first time.  

“You’re the guy who paid for that obnoxious tourist, aren’t you?” Fred asked, eyes widening. “Those guys should either figure it out or move on.”

“I’m Leo,” Leo replied, choosing to leave the rest alone. 

Fred slapped the bar. “That’s right! You’re the new guy at the chapel. Well, welcome to Tranquility. Don’t let the tourists bring you down. Dinner is on the house tonight. Thanks for keeping me from doing something reckless.”

A few minutes later, Fred slid a burger and chips across the bar to Leo. “You need anything else, Pastor Leo?” Fred asked, while surveying the rest of the customers over Leo’s shoulder. Something in Fred’s expression made Leo turn, just as Gillian and Dr. Steinman walked in together. Gillian waved to Leo, who lifted a hand in greeting, as the two worked their way through the tables to take seats on either side of Leo at the bar. 

“I’ve been picking Dr. Steinman’s brain about the island and the cruise ships,” Gillian explained excitedly. “He knows a lot of the people here, and the stories around the island so it’s fantastic information for my backstories.”

The doctor shrugged sheepishly, lifting his hands in a ‘what can I say?’ sort of way. He asked Fred for a drink and slapped a few dollars down on the bar. 

Leo nodded at Gillian, his mouth full of burger. Gillian briefly perused the menu and looked around for someone to take her order. Fred had walked away from them, but a passing waitress collected Gillian’s request. 

Clearly feeling chatty, Gillian launched into her findings of the day, from Steinman’s knowledge of cruise ships to her detour out to the old lighthouse. She deemed it “ancient” and “creepy,” reporting that when she had finally reached that point of the island, there was no one there except for a few teenagers who hurried off when she showed up. “I couldn’t get into the lighthouse itself because it was chained shut with a padlock,” she explained. “The light apparently only turns on in the dark or fog, so it was just an old, empty tower to me.”

The waitress returned with Gillian’s food, finally forcing her to stop her monologue. Steinman looked relieved, and Leo finished up his meal, leaving a tip for Fred on the bar. 

After a few gulps of Coke, Leo pushed back from the bar. “The food here is fantastic! I’m going to have to watch it while I’m on the island,” he said, quietly squelching a burp. 

Dr. Steinman nodded. “Why do you think I look like this? It’s because I’ve been eating Ocean’s Spray and island food for too many years!” Steinman had ordered some food by now, and he and Gillian were digging into their meals vigorously, and Leo moaned at the thought of eating anymore. 

“I hate to cut out on you, but I have to get to prayer meeting,” Leo said. “You’re welcome to join us tonight if you’d like.”

Saying his goodbyes to Fred and the others, Leo headed back to the chapel. Ten of the twelve folding chairs were already occupied when he arrived, and Miss Isabelle waved him over to sit next to her. An old coffee pot had miraculously appeared, and most of the prayer meeting participants were holding styrofoam cups. “It’s decaf,” whispered Aggie to Leo, conspiratorially. “None of us can afford to drink caffeine this late!”

Leo smiled and poured a quick cup for himself, deciding based on its smell that he would have to soak the coffee in sugar and cream to choke it down. If only it was caffeinated so that it could serve a greater purpose! Around the circle, introductions were exchanged, and Leo found that he was in the presence of Tranquility’s oldest residents. Beyond Cindi, Phil, and Isabelle, the participants were strangers to Leo, and he marveled at the way that the island could seem too closed and limiting and yet full of so many people he didn’t see regularly throughout the day.

Malcolm had retired from running the island’s only lawn care business, and he lived with his oldest son who had taken it over. Juliet and Tom were lifelong Tranquility residents; she had run the now defunct library and Tom had been the previous postmaster. Phil’s wife had been a stay-at-home mother. The final participant was a tourist from one of the big ships moored just off of the island. She thought she was coming to an Alcoholics Anonymous group, and seemed uncomfortable at first, but the group drew her out of her shell. 

The group was halfway through sharing their joys and concerns, from various minor ailments to major upcoming surgeries, from grandchildren’s report cards to impending weddings, when the sanctuary door opened and Bobby walked in. He seemed hesitant to enter, but the longtime Tranquility residents all called out to him by name, and he sat in a pew just outside of the circle while they finished reflecting on the highs and lows of their lives. Millie’s granddaughter had broken her clavicle falling off of her bike; Liz Astin’s husband was fighting through a cancer diagnosis; several islanders were worried about how the storm would impact business income and opportunity; no one had seen Pat Garrett and Miss Isabelle said that wasn’t like him, so they prayed he wasn’t stuck somewhere feeling poorly. And of course, they prayed for Red O’Rourke, who still hadn’t fully regained consciousness but seemed to be improving. All of the regulars agreed that O’Rourke would never participate in the prayer meeting but that didn’t mean they couldn’t pray for him! Bobby didn’t say anything, but Leo watched him intentionally scribble down the requests of others on a miniature notebook he kept in his back pocket. 

For forty-five minutes, the group sang hymns while a woman named Ruth Lowery banged out songs on the piano with arthritis-ridden hands. Leo had to smile when he saw Aggie slide over to Bobby and offer to share her hymnal with him. He knew that community was something they each needed if they were going to be able to work through their grief. 

A little while later, the sanctuary was vacant, with the chairs and hymnals all returned to their regular places. When Leo locked up and turned off the lights, he surveyed the now still and dark sanctuary. He felt his way along the back row of pews to his living quarters, and sat for an hour at his kitchen table, eating a bowl of Pops and contemplating all of the things he had learned about Tranquility in just a few days. Thankfully, so far, the coffee seemed to be the worst of it. 

35

On the little beach, the tide low enough that one could move about, the two men turned back from where they had hidden the drugs and grimly shook their heads. Both of the men were sweat soaked from the exertion of moving the heavy containers, mixed with the anxiety of being caught by someone else from the Tranquility community. They had found different ways to hide their actions from less-suspecting people over their time working together, but the murder of the old policeman had made them more nervous than normal. 

“Do you think we secured it all?” asked the first man. His taller accomplice just shrugged, throwing some peanut shells down that had accumulated in his pockets. The first man pulled off of his glasses, and wiped off the mist that had coalesced there. He looked at the accomplice and shook his head. 

“It’s fine,” said the first man, attempting to reassure himself. “We just have to keep this buttoned up for another day or two and then we’ll be done with this. We can leave this godforsaken island and go wherever we want, and they’ll never find us again.”

“Who won’t find you again?” asked a voice from the shadows. The two accomplices turned, startled as a large figure emerged from the dark. It slowly took the form of a muscular man wearing the insignia of one of the cruise lines. 

The first man had his hand on his pistol inside of his coat pocket, and his fingers tightened almost instinctively. He looked out of the side of his eye at his accomplice, who looked just as stunned as he felt. 

“Who are you?” replied the first man. The stranger laughed, and ran his fingers through his long, perfectly maintained hair. 

“You can call me Jim,” said the newcomer, his dazzling white teeth flashing in the night. “Who are you two?”

“If you’re ‘Jim,’ you can call me Spock and he’s Bones,” chuckled the taller of the two accomplices. “Why are you here and what do you want?”

“I’m who our bosses sent to check up on you,” said Jim, pulling on his short sleeve cuffs, accentuating his overgrown muscles. “They’re pretty sure that you’re skimming off of the top. And you’ve gotten sloppy because word is out that there’s going to be law enforcement looking into the island soon. I told them you weren’t but I want a bigger cut than you paid the last guy, or I’m going to tell them that you’ve been ripping them off. I’m ready to get out of the drug business and stop looking over my shoulder all of the time.”

Jim grinned as he offered this last threat, and Bones and Spock turned to look at each other. “That won’t be necessary,” carefully said the one called Bones. “We’re happy to show you what we’ve been doing and where we are in the process. Right ‘Spock?’”

Spock nodded, and took a step toward Jim, balling his hands into fists. “Now, now,” said Bones, “there’s no need for violence.” 

Jim grinned at Spock, who gritted his teeth and stopped his advance. Jim casually slid his own switchblade out of his back pocket, flicking it open. “You’re welcome to try, big man,” said Jim, chuckling, “but I’ve tangled with bigger than you before and I’m still here.”

“Boys, let’s go up and have a conversation over some beers,” said Bones. “We can sort this all out.”

Spock looked like he still wanted to hit someone, but Bones’ words made him pause. He struggled with his desire to knock down the muscle-bound newcomer but he wasn’t going to override Bones. He looked at Bones, who nodded once, and gestured for Jim to lead them up the stone steps to the island.

Jim had made it ten steps up, when he felt the sting of bullet in his left leg as it creased his calf. He turned back to see the two men standing below him, and the one called Spock had drawn a pistol from his coat and was firing at him. The second shot caught him in the forearm, as his arm felt like it was electrified. Turning back toward the steps, Jim started to run, hoping to hurry up the stairs and put some space between himself and the two accomplices. 

Spock’s gun fired again, just barely audible above the roar of the waves and the wind. The pain in Jim’s chest was intense, and he looked down to see the hole where blood was now streaming out. His breath became rapid and he suddenly felt lightheaded. Spock fired again and missed, but Jim had to put out an arm to brace himself against the rock wall. He tried to take a step and slipped, his body not responding the way that he hoped it would. 

Suddenly, Jim’s body pitched to the right and his arms windmilled. He couldn’t hold his body up anymore, and now it was hanging out in space over the side of the rocks cut in the wall. His right shin banged off of the step and he fell away from the rock stairs into the air beside the stairs. Jim hit the water with a sudden splash and felt the coolness of the water envelop his body, and then he remembered nothing of the experience anymore. 

36

Carol had stood in the kitchen washing dishes and cleaning up after a day spent trying to coax Mr. O’Rourke to eat something that would help him regain his strength. He hadn’t said anything, but she knew that he was alert enough to recognize her and look at her when she entered the room. But the big stubborn bear wouldn’t eat anything. He just lay there staring at the ceiling most of the time, still dressed in the bathroom he’d worn the day of his terrible fall down the stone steps. 

Sliding Ziploc containers into the refrigerator, Carol had put away several servings of soup and a few ham biscuits she had put together, but which he had refused to eat. She’d even tried making one of his favorite desserts, but even the allure of chocolate chip cookies didn’t seem to have the ability to elicit a smile. He had taken to nodding at her when she entered the room, but it was as if he had forgotten how to talk. She’d seen this in soldiers who returned after serving in wars abroad, but she didn’t know what could possibly be eating at him to take away his voice altogether. 

Carol knew that Mr. O’Rourke had to eat sooner or later. She couldn’t bear the thought of him wasting away to nothing like Martha had. That woman hadn’t said more than a word the whole time Carol had been in the O’Rourke’s employment, but she thought sooner or later, the woman might open her mouth and let loose with a whole stream of thoughts that she’d kept bottled up for so long. Or maybe they would just find her singing one day and never get her to stop. Either way, Carol was hoping for something miraculous to shake up the O’Rourke household.  

Outside, the clouds had gathered and hung like a blanket over the island. Even in the dark, Carol could see the clouds when the moon reflected off of the water. The whitecaps were rising in frequency, and the calm breeze had given way to a stiff wind. Carol wasn’t swayed by the impending threat of a nor’easter, having lived on the island for decades. She’d seen worse than that out to see on a cruise ship, or growing up on her dear old daddy’s lobster boats back in Maine. She figured everyone would be fine if they would just get to doing what needed done and stopped worrying about what might or might not happen. The weather was the weather afterall. It was going to change. 

A whimper and scratch at the back door of the kitchen reminded her that she hadn’t seen the dogs in an hour. Opening the door, she was nearly knocked over by Poseidon and Neptune as they came surging in from the outside, hungry for whatever leftovers she had left unattended. A gust of wind blew in with them, and she struggled to force the door back closed. Then something caught her attention, a noise that didn’t seem normal for this time of night. 

Carol thought she heard something outside beyond where the dogs had come hurtling in from. Never inclined to take things lying down, the New Englander in her drove her to investigate, taking a three-foot long metal serving spatula as her defense. She listened intently, and thought she heard the sounds of voices blowing around in the wind. Looking left and right she didn’t see anything, but then Carol heard the noises again. 

Down over the side of the cliff, a flicker caught her eye. Carol’s eyesight wasn’t what it once was. She used to be able to shoot an acorn off of a can at one hundred yards, and now she was lucky if she could see the acorn at all. But she was reasonably sure she could see people moving around on the beach below. The tide must be out, she thought. 

The words weren’t loud enough to reach Carol but the tone seemed unfriendly. She knelt down to peer over the edge of the cliff again, as a giant cloud swept over the moon. She thought she heard a loud “pop” and then a splash. She couldn’t be sure that her eyes and ears weren’t playing a trick on her, but she was determined to wait for the next bright patch to move through so she could see for sure. She shivered in the wind, and felt the spray of the water around the island caught up in the frenzied wind. 

The moonlight disappeared completely as a cloud passed, large and threatening over the moon, making it darker than before. Carol was drenched in darkness momentarily, and she reminded herself not to lean forward for fear of pitching out into nothingness. When the cloud blew on by, Carol blinked because there wasn’t anyone or anything to observe on the beach below. Looking down, she couldn’t see anything except for the edge of the beach as the waves lapped up over it and then dropped away again. 

“Crazy old woman,” Carol muttered to herself. “That’s enough late night murder mysteries for you.” She looked down at the spatula clenched in her hand and shook her head. “What did you think you were going to do with that? Scare them away from the kitchen? You’re getting old, woman!”

Brushing off her knees, Carol wiped her hands on her apron. She made her way back to the kitchen door, where she locked up for the night, making sure to deadbolt the storm door, too. The dogs were running laps around the central island in the kitchen, waiting for her to get back. As she turned away from the door, they sat still, immobile like statues. When she called them by name, they wagged their tails and walked politely to the kitchen’s pantry. She poured generous portions of their favorite dog food into bowls marked with their names, and added some leftover bits of steak to each bowl. The dogs licked her hands happily and she left them nose down in the bowls, eating away.

As Carol walked the perimeter of the first floor, she made sure that every light was turned off and that the front door latch was locked as well. She imagined once or twice that she caught sight of someone staring at her in the window, but each time when she turned around, there was nothing to see there. Ascending the grand staircase slowly, Carol reflected on how jumpy she had become. Her wild reckless days were behind her, and she longed for peace and quiet. She knew her imagination was playing tricks on her, but one could never be too careful, she thought.

Mysteries could happen anywhere.

Chapters 37-39 coming May 17!

31

The sunlight through a broken blind was blazing a trail across Leo’s face. He groaned as he blinked his eyes open, and the sun left him momentarily blinded, unsure of where he was. Throwing off the sheet, he stumbled down the hallway to the bathroom, registering the cold emanating from the stone floor, and recalling his trip via ferry to Tranquility and the events of the night before. He groaned, splashing some cold water on his face, and decided breakfast was the top priority. 

In the kitchen of his living quarters, Leo quickly browsed the different cabinets and refrigerator. Someone, most likely Miss Isabelle, had stocked it with things for him to eat. The abundance of food was impressive, given how small the grocery store on the island was. He grabbed a granola bar and an apple, and drank a few mug’s worth of water from the tap, figuring it was a decent way to start the day.

Slipping on an old t-shirt and sweatpants he found in the closet, Leo stepped out into the main street, and greeted a few of the townsfolk who were milling about. He turned uphill and began jogging slowly, picking up speed gradually. He took different trails off of the cobblestone road, and found himself winding around to the side of the island where the O’Rourke mansion was. He still hadn’t figured out which paths would take him out to the old lighthouse but he figured that he would keep exploring. 

As he neared the top of the hill, he saw two figures with fishing rods making their way toward him. David and Johnny were dressed like they didn’t mind getting a little dirty, or if necessary, wet. They broke into broad grins at the sight of Leo, and he came to a stop in the path. 

“You survived your first night!” chortled David. “And the first Red explosion!”

“Or two,” Johnny added wryly. 

Leo nodded, unsure if he should make light of what had happened. “Yes, I slept pretty well,” he admitted. “What are you two hoping to catch?”

“We’re heading down to see if we can catch some flounder to cook for breakfast,” Johnny shared. “You want to come with us?”

Leo knew that he had a long day of meeting people ahead of him, but the invitation seemed genuine and friendly, and he was aimed at building up some early relationships at Tranquility. He figured that he could do worse than get to know two of the young adults on the island. He pushed his expectations for the morning aside, and followed the two young men down the stone steps toward the beach. He thought maybe some time with them would reveal the backstories of the drama he’d seen unfold the night before.

Halfway down the steps, David pointed toward something that seemed out of place, a giant pile of clothes on the lowest step. They couldn’t quite make it out yet, but their pace quickened. but their concern became real when they saw that an arm and a leg were evident. It was the body of a man. 

“That’s Red!” David cried out, and the three men began to descend faster and faster. Taking two steps at a time, David and Johnny greatly outdistanced themselves from Leo, whose stomach was caught up in his throat. 

“What do you think happened to him?” asked Johnny, as they moved down the stairs. “Did he fall the whole way down the steps?” David shrugged as he leaped forward. 

When they reached O’Rourke, he was breathing faint shallow breaths. His face was badly bruised, and the back of his head was matted with blood. He looked to be dressed in his pajamas, with a winter coat thrown on to keep away the cold. David tried to revive his uncle, rubbing his shoulder gently and speaking to him. 

Johnny looked down at the water. “The tide is rising, so I think we have to get him up to the house and let Dr. Steinman check him out. He’s a tough old guy, so I think he’ll survive our carrying him up. We’ll take turns supporting his head, while the other two carry his arms and legs.” 

With a plan in place, the three men hoisted O’Rourke up, fishing poles abandoned for the time being. They stayed attentive to his head, not wanting to cause him any more danger, but he moaned softly with each step, never opening his eyes. Leo prayed under his breath that O’Rourke would survive this, whatever had happened.

Back at the house, they passed Poseidon and Neptune lethargically sleeping by the fountain. The dogs barely lifted their heads as they made it back up the cliff, but as the men carried O’Rourke past, the dogs followed and began to whine pitifully. When the men lay O’Rourke down on the front step to get the front door opened, the dogs licked his face and he moaned.

The men carried O’Rourke up the grand staircase to his room, pulling off his wet clothes and pulling on a dry pair of pajamas. Leo worked on washing off his face and head with a towel from the linen closet, softly speaking to O’Rourke while the older man moaned. After a few moments, David went to look for Dr. Steinman, and Johnny went downstairs to the kitchen to look for ice to help reduce the bruising. 

As Leo cleaned up the blood, O’Rourke shuddered and opened his eyes, a look of fear and terror sweeping over him. He tried to speak, but no words came out of his mouth. Leo put a comforting hand on his shoulder and said, “David and Johnny have gone to get help.” He wasn’t sure what else to say, or if O’Rourke even knew he was speaking to him.

O’Rourke closed his eyes, but his breathing was still erratic. Leo washed the rest of the blood and grime from the sea off of his face, and watched the man intently. O’Rourke’s lips kept trying to form words, and nothing Leo did seemed to fully calm his twitching. Finally, the pattern became apparent, and Leo understood that he was saying, “Martha, I’m sorry,” over and over again. 

While puzzling the connection over in his mind, Leo was distracted by the arrival of Dr. Steinman who swept in with his medical bag. He shone a flashlight in each of O’Rourke’s eyes, and gently felt around O’Rourke’s back, arms, and legs. 

“Has he said anything?” Steinman asked Leo, zipping up his bag. 

“Not really, he couldn’t talk when he tried,” Leo answered. “He seems to be pretty out of it. I think he said something to Martha.”

“Well, he has all of the classic signs of a concussion, which can include memory loss,” Steinman explained. “It’s possible that he has a broken rib or two, but he’s stable at least. It wouldn’t surprise me if some longer standing issue, like his relationship with Martha, would be something his brain would lock onto.”

“What do you think happened?” Johnny asked, returning with the ice. 

“Based on the injuries I can see, he probably took a tumble down the steps,” said Steinman. “It’s hard to know exactly what caused the injuries. And we don’t have any X-ray capability on the island, so we’ll have to see how he’s doing in a day or two. If he doesn’t show signs of improvement, we’ll get Captain Benjamin to ferry him to the hospital. Right now, he just needs rest.”

David and Johnny waited expectantly at the door, clearly concerned for the safety of the old man. “What do we need to do for him?” David asked. “I know he’s not a huge fan of my life decisions, but he’s still my uncle and everything.”

“Someone should probably stay with him around the clock,” Steinman replied. “Carol can help, but we can get some other folks from town involved if need be. I need to know as soon as he’s able to communicate how he’s feeling.”

David shook his head. “He won’t like that if he wakes up and someone he doesn’t like is in the house. I’ll talk to Miss Isabelle, Johnny and I can take shifts, and Carol, too.”

Leo put up a hand and spoke. “I’m willing to help, as best I can. Just let me know what you decide and I’ll be there.”

David thanked Leo profusely and turned to fill Carol in, as she’d arrived later. She stood ringing her hands, tears rolling down her face as she asked David for details about O’Rourke’s injuries. Dr. Steinman excused himself to make rounds to a few of the homebound Tranquility residents, and assured them that he would return. For a few minutes, the remaining four people stood there silently, praying that O’Rourke would recover quickly and that his injuries would not jeopardize his long term health.

Recognizing that he was expected to interact with more townspeople that day, Leo left the three Tranquility residents to watch over O’Rourke. He patted the dogs on his way down the stairs, looking back to see them settle in outside of O”Rourke’s room. He figured that they would stand guard against any future malady, and let himself quietly out of the front door.  

32

Gillian stretched in the back of the little boat ferrying her back from the Princess Kay. As promised, when she had arrived at Main Street that morning, Captain Burchard had a crewman with a smaller craft waiting patiently for her on the dock. The crewman had spoken little, only pointing out the fresh fruit juice and pastry that the captain had thoughtfully packaged for her brief jaunt out to the cruise ship. Gillian had looked delightedly at the food before remembering what had happened the last time she ate before a boat ride. 

Walking around the spacious interior of the cruise ship, Gillian had seen just how much pride Burchard took in the Princess Kay. When she asked about amenities, he was happy to show her the giant arcade, the ballroom for evening dances, and the full service gymnasium. He had shown her the inside of a passenger’s room and pointed out the two pools and three dining facilities. It was overwhelming to Gillian, but she found herself feeling claustrophobic when she was not out walking around on the deck. 

Glancing at the crewman who was piloting her return taxi over to Tranquility, Gillian considered asking him what he thought of Burchard. The captain had seemed more at ease on his own ship, and completely in control. Compared to the night before, the man had seemed like a completely different person. Gillian wondered what the two men could have discussed that would have set him off like that. 

While Burchard was waiting with Gillian for the return ride, another crew member had run up and tried to start a conversation with the captain about the meeting that the leadership team had the night before. Burchard had turned quickly to look at Gillian and then tried to hush the man, an overgrown package of muscles and more muscles. Gillian watched as the man had blundered ahead, much to Burchard’s consternation, snapping him out of whatever veneer of calm he had pasted on. Gillian was sure that this had been for her benefit, as he had asked her several times about where her article or report would be published. 

Smoothing back his hair, the captain had pulled the heavyset man aside and talked firmly in a whisper that kept Gillian from picking up all of the information. Her ears perked up when she heard “drugs” and “Tranquility,” but with the wind blowing on by, she couldn’t catch most of it. When the captain returned, Burchard was all apologies and formalities, reminding her of her open invitation to dinner onboard in the next few days. 

Now, looking back at the Princess Kay, Gillian wondered what could have set someone like Burchard on edge. She knew something wasn’t quite right but she would need more time to get to the bottom of it. Everyone on Tranquility had a story, and it seemed that the cruise ships only added to the levels of intrigue. 

33

The excitement of the morning was wearing off as Leo returned to town but the adrenaline still needed somewhere to go. His hands were shaking, and he slipped them into his pockets to make it less pronounced as he walked past others on the path. A few people moved around as he approached and he greeted them neighborly, but he kept to himself, absorbed in his thoughts. 

A rumble in his stomach reminded him that he hadn’t eaten much for breakfast and it was well past midmorning. A creature of habit, Leo decided he didn’t feel like trying somewhere new at the moment, with enough excitement in his day already. More exploration would have to wait while he filled his stomach with food he might regret later.

Stepping into the Ocean’s Spray, Leo found Gillian sitting at one of the two-seater tables, her laptop and phone pushed to one side, a stack of handwritten notes laid out in front of her. Her hair was less put together than the day before, and she had dark circles around her eyes shining through her makeup. She seemed to be puzzling over some of her notes, and she finally looked up when he plopped down into the chair across from her. Whatever mood she had been suffering from last night had left her, and her upbeat, put together vibe was in full effect. “Good morning, sunshine,” she said, cheerfully. “It’s a great day in the neighborhood. Maybe it’s time to change my shoes!”

“Um, sure,” Leo replied, staring at her blankly. 

“Mister Rogers? Sweater? Switching shoes?” Gillian responded, a bit turned off by his obliviousness. “Nevermind. What’s going on in your world?”

“Well, Red O’Rourke took quite a tumble this morning,” Leo responded, glad they were moving forward from the awkward greeting. While flagging down a waitress for a cup of coffee, he continued. “The doctor says he has a concussion, but he might not have broken anything. I was headed to the beach with David and Johnny to go fishing, and we discovered him. It’s good we did, because if the tide had risen before we got there, he might have drowned.”

Gillian had only been half listening but now she turned her full attention to Leo. “Wait, are you saying he fell? Or did someone do something to him?” Gillian said, reaching for a new piece of paper. “Red O’Rourke might be the most interesting person on this island, present company not included of course. If something were to happen to him, that could be devastating for the island’s reputation and financial wellbeing.”

Leo shook his head, chuckling. “I’m boring. There’s nothing to see here. I would assume Mr. O’Rourke fell, but I don’t know. His injuries seemed consistent with that, but he’s pretty out of it right now. What was your morning like?”

“I took a tour of the cruise ship with Captain Burchard,” Gillian replied. “Talk about boring. I wouldn’t want to ride around in one of those oversized floating cans.”

“Seriously?” Leo asked, surprised. “I thought everyone was into cruises.”

“Not this landlubber,” Gillian retorted. “Give me flat, dry earth any day.”

A different waitress arrived with Leo’s coffee and a plate of biscuits that she said were fresh out of the oven. Leo broke the bread up into bite-sized pieces, popping them into his mouth in between swigs of coffee. He blanched as the coffee burned a bit going down his throat, and realized he’d better slow down.

Gillian watched him eat for a moment, and then grabbed one of the biscuits for herself. “So I’m supposed to be finding out backstories for the annual migration, and you just got here, so you’re no help there. But what’s a guy like you doing on an island like this?”

“You heard Miss Isabelle, right? The old pastor left and they needed someone to fill the spot.”

“So what is it exactly you do?” Gillian responded. “I’d assume there’s a church service or two on Sundays, hanging out with some old ladies looking at pictures of cats, and healing the sick, right? What do you work, like on Sundays, and on call?”

“All in a day’s work,” Leo responded, his focus on the biscuits.

“Well, if you find out more about Red’s condition, let me know,” Gillian said, packing up her bag. “I’m going to go see if I can get a few more of these townspeople to tell me their stories. Someone has to want to talk!”

With that, Gillian was gone, and Leo sat back to watch the other people in the Ocean’s Spray. A few of them nodded to him, and one blue-haired lady came over to tell him that Miss Isabelle had been singing his praises already that morning. News sure travels fast here, he thought, a bemused smile pulling at his face. No one even really knows who I am yet!

A well-dressed tourist was arguing with the bartender at the bar that the Ocean’s Spray had to take credit cards or at least Apple Pay, to no avail. The tourist was getting louder and louder, and by now, several surrounding tables had turned to watch the show developing at the bar. Leo could see that the bartender was slowly losing his temper, so decided he’d pay the bartender directly, sliding across enough cash to cover his bill and gratuity, and the tourist’s bill, too. Nodding to the stunned tourist as he left, Leo figured it was time to explore more of the town before it became overwhelmed with tourists.

Outside in the sunshine, Leo walked to the dock to look out at the cruise ship he had seen yesterday. Now, another ship had joined it, and he could just make out people moving around the outdoor decks. He couldn’t imagine being stuffed in a traveling building like that, with no way to get to the ground, but he realized different people had different life expectations.

As he watched, the ferry came around the back of the island, with Captain Benjamin at the helm. This was clearly a cargo delivery, given the stacks of boxes piled high. Leo walked closer to the dock, and the first mate tossed one of the ropes to him. “Tie us off, would ya?” the sailor said. 

Leo did his best to tie the boat securely, but he noticed with some dismay that the sailor retied his knots after Leo stepped away. “No worries, man,” the first mate said, noticing Leo’s discomfort. “I’m Noah. I appreciate your help. Can’t have the boat floating off into the middle of the bay or something.”

“Sorry, Noah. I wouldn’t have made much of a Boy Scout,” Leo replied, chagrinned. 

“It’s all good,” Noah replied. “We’re grabbing something to eat and then we have a full load of tourists who want a ride this afternoon.” 

“It’s always something, isn’t it?” Leo said. “Hopefully they’ll all get where they’re going.”

Two teenagers emerged from behind the pile of boxes. They were glaring at each other, and Leo could see that one had a fistsized bruise on his left cheek. They started to jostle with each other as they headed toward the dock, and the captain stepped in, grabbing them each by the collar and keeping them separated. “You two have caused enough problems already!” he grumbled. “Keep this up, and you’ll end up back in juvie. This time they might just decide to keep you there!”

The boys muttered and stalked past Noah and Leo. Leo raised an eyebrow and Noah shared, “They’re two of the town teenagers, and they’ve been busted for graffiti, petty theft, disturbing the peace. We don’t have any actual law enforcement officers on the island, so if something comes up, we have to take them to the mainland. Those two can’t seem to stay out of their own way!”

“We had to bring them back today because of the weather. They’re kind of lucky I guess that they got an early reprieve,” added the first mate. “Their dad died awhile back and their poor mother has been trying so hard to make ends meet while also keeping these knuckleheads out of jail.”

Benjamin joined the conversation. “Today should be fine, but tomorrow and the day after aren’t looking too good. That storm is going to blow in and the ferry isn’t getting any younger. We might have to wait a day or two before we can come back after it blows through.”

The captain stalked off toward the Grille, an early morning adult beverage certainly calling his name. On the way, he’d have to escort the two young troublemakers back to their mother.

“He’s always negative,” said Noah. “I’ve never seen him miss more than a run at a time.” 

Leo left the two sailors arguing about the weather and sailing conditions, and headed to the grocery store. He noticed that Miss Isabelle had brought a batch of dry goods to the chapel kitchen, but he wanted milk for the cereal and some orange juice besides. 

Pushing his way through the door, Leo nodded to a few of the townspeople, and wandered around the store. It was funny to him that everything about the island was different, but the grocery store still lined up with produce and a bakery left to right to the frozen goods. He found the milk and orange juice, and grabbed a few candy bars for good measure. When he approached the front register, a tall older woman grinned and greeted him as he approached. 

“Father Leo, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes! Miss Isabelle told me you might show up in our store today,” she said, loud enough for everyone several aisles back to hear her. Her energy was more than he could handle, given the events of the morning already. 

“It’s just Leo, ma’am,” Leo choked out, as other customers turned to stare at him. 

“Well, I’m Della France, and this is Bill’s and my little grocery store in paradise,” she said. “Groceries are on us this time, Father Leo.”

Refusing to be argued with, Della bagged Leo’s items, and called her husband over to meet Leo, too. A bit dazed from all of the attention, Leo realized that he hadn’t changed his clothes since the morning run, and he’d now met half of the town dressed like someone who worked from home, covered in sweat and dirt. 

Walking back to the chapel, Leo made the mental note to remember that everyone was someone in Tranquility, and that they were bound to tell each other everything. He figured he’d have to tell Gillian about the Frances, because they were sure to give her the scoop she needed. 

Chapters 34-36 coming May 10!

28

On the way down the hill back to Tranquility proper, Miss Isabelle tried to console Gillian. “How am I ever going to develop a rapport with people now?” she asked. “Red is going to blackball me with everyone and my boss is going to crush me for failing to get the scoop he needs. I’m totally getting fired.”

“Oh dear, don’t sell yourself short! You’ll bounce back with folks quickly, you’ll see. Even with Red. There’s no way you could have known about Martha,” said Miss Isabelle. “She’s been catatonic up in that mansion for years. All of the locals know about her condition and none of them bring it up, even though everyone has questions. She doesn’t ever speak, and the only people to check in on her are Red, David, and Dr. Steinman. Well, and Carol doubles as the cook and her personal nurse. I sneak in there occasionally to brush her hair or read her some poetry but Red doesn’t really like that. Poor old soul, she hasn’t really lived for several decades, but there’s nothing that can be done except to keep her comfortable.”

Leo turned to Miss Isabelle and asked, “What made her like that?” 

“No one here really knows,” Miss Isabelle admitted. “Red and Martha had both moved out of the mansion as young adults, leaving their parents to the mansion itself. I don’t think either of them were really happy living there under their parents’ strict set of rules. After a stint in the Navy, Red was captain of several cruise ships, and after pursuing music in college, Martha got a job on one of them, playing the piano for a band. She could play the keys like no one’s business, and her voice was out of this world. Everything seemed to be going fine for them, and then all of a sudden, Red showed up on the dock one day with Martha in a wheelchair. He’s never said a word about what happened and no one is going to ask. That’s his business, I think, but he carries a sadness he didn’t have when he first left the island. He was just so excited to explore the world.”

The glow of the moon lit up their path and cleverly strung street lights hung just below the coverage of the pine trees, making the cobblestone path as bright as if it was daylight. They passed a few people out later than expected, strolling around the island, with many returning from dinner at one of the eateries on Main Street, and several riding five-speed bikes on trails just off of the cobblestone path. 

Miss Isabelle seemed lost in her own thoughts, and Leo realized that the older woman cared quite deeply about the old cantankerous man. Gruff or not, there was something Isabelle knew about him that kept her connected even when he pushed everyone else away. Walking down the hill, looking at nothing in particular, Isabelle seemed to have been lost to her memories. But that didn’t stop their companion from forging ahead. 

“There’s definitely a story there,” Gillian said, brightening up marginally. “But it’s going to take the jaws of life to get that story out of him now.”

Turning to Leo, she asked, “Hey Rev., do you think you could crack the case for me? Find out what happened? ‘Mysterious rich island magnate finds his way forward after tragedy.’”

“I think people’s stories are their own to tell, and besides, isn’t everything anyone tells me the pastor confidential?” Leo retorted, with a wink. “Besides, I’m still trying to find a way to get everyone to like me! I don’t need to get caught up in your drama and intrigue. I mean, Captain Burchard did invite us out to the Princess Kay, but that seems more your cup of tea than mine.”

Gillian wasn’t laughing, but she wasn’t as glum as she had been moments earlier. The scent of a story had the wheels turning, and she was raring to go. Miss Isabelle and Leo shared a look, and shook their heads, stifling chuckles. 

Turning the final bend toward the town, Miss Isabelle stopped, and said, “This is my street here. Do you have a dying desire to meet a couple of old feral cats and see my mess of a kitchen?”

Gillian and Leo laughed, and shook their heads. “I’ll assume the two you can find your way back into town?” she continued.

Leo grinned. “As long as she doesn’t go prying into anyone’s secrets on the way, we should be fine.” 

Gillian punched him lightly in the arm, and the two continued down the road as Miss Isabelle watched them get smaller and smaller in the distance. She sighed, remembering her own youth, and headed into her quiet cottage. 

Leo walked Gillian to the Bed and Breakfast, noting that half of the rooms now were lit up by residents who had taken up refuge for the evening. A few of the tourists from the morning ferry were sharing stories around a firepit outside, and offered them a cold beer and a seat. Gillian said she would stay to see what other background she might find out and Leo wished them all a good night. 

Back at the chapel, he soaked up the quiet in the dark of the empty chapel. It felt peaceful, and pure. Recognizing that he had his work cut out for him, he rose from the pew and walked back to his sleeping quarters. 

Washing out his shirt in the sink, Leo hung it on a hanger, and unpacked the rest of his duffle bag. Staring into the mirror above the sink, he pushed back the dark curls that had fallen down into his eyes. He almost didn’t recognize the person he saw in the mirror, the dark circles under his eyes or the three days worth of growth on his chin. He wasn’t sure exactly he was supposed to pastor the people of the island, with the levels of brokenness he’d already heard in their stories. 

Little did he know that this was just the calm before the storm. 

29

The salty waves crashing against the rocks along the shore splashed droplets up onto the camera lens, but the heat from the motor caused them to dry quickly. The salt remainder fell away as the drone flew inland again. Most of the island was cloaked in darkness whenever the moon went behind a cloud, but the night vision lens allowed the camera to scan for people of interest.

The drone floated and hummed above the trees, its winding path less linear and more haphazard, as it traced the edge of the island. It had already explored the edges of the island closest to the ocean, scanning up and around the lighthouse and down to the rocky shore below. 

The thickness of the forest trees and underbrush made it too difficult to fly lower than the tallest tree, and its camera, especially at night, was no match for the depth of the dark on the forest floor. It scanned in a circular motion, its night vision picking up a raccoon staring up at it and a pair of teenagers engaged in kissing behind a thick copse of trees. They were oblivious to its whirring rotors and the drone flew on, leaving them to their young romance. 

Pausing to examine some of the domiciles interspersed throughout the thinning forest closer to Main Street and the dock, the drone was less effective filming the area given the ambient light from Tranquility’s ‘downtown’ area. The drone operator knew that the intended target wouldn’t be located there, too close to too many people and too dangerous to be left out in the open. 

Flying on, the drone visited the outer end of the island past Main Street, and found that the marshy area of forest populated that portion of Tranquility, too. Nothing would be located there, as there was too much chance that the hidden goods would be floated away by a rising tide or stormy winds. 

This left only the mansion side of the island and the giant cliff below. Of course the drone couldn’t get access into the mansion itself, but the drone operator used the camera to scan the outsides of mansion walls and ducked up over the roof before it could attract the attention of the guard dogs. A smaller building stood adjacent and beyond the mansion, but it too seemed to be too intimate a setting to be the location the drone was sent to observe. 

Miles away, the drone operator sighed and pushed the drone out over the edge of the cliff. There wasn’t much left to see about the island, but the steps down to the cove were intriguing. The news that he had gotten implied that the whole gambit was in jeopardy, that authorities might already be aware of the drug trafficking through Tranquility. The timetable for this particularly situation had just been moved up, from theoretical to immediate action. 

The drone’s camera rocked, signifying that the drone itself was drifting a bit. The operator squinted, trying to ascertain details from the night’s flight, but the constant motion was making it hard to distinguish what was helpful and what was shadow. Rock walls on either side loomed large, and the meter on the drone controls began to blink, with growing insistence. Apparently the sides of the cliff were interfering with the signal. 

Still, the drone operator pushed the little machine farther. There was still enough battery power to fly the drone back. And the night vision camera seemed to be picking up some kind of signature below. Zooming in, the operator tried to highlight the water level near the cove…

The drone camera connection fizzled out, and the operator checked all of his meters. Looking up, he realized that the drone itself seemed to be spiraling, aimed at the rocky wall. There was no sound from the drone, but there seemed to be something causing the drone to fly off target. Then the drone picture seized up, and started tumbling end over end, until it slammed against the wall. 

The camera feed stopped altogether, and then the drone’s battery signal blinked once, twice, and then went out. Cursing the machine, the drone operator threw the controllers across the room, where it shattered into a million pieces. Somehow, one way or another, the search on the island would require manually walking from place to place until the cache of drugs was found. The man was tired of being the inbetween for the drug dealers on the mainland and the island. He wanted a bigger cut of what was happening and he had decided there was no time like the present to make a move. 

30

In the Bed & Breakfast, Gillian couldn’t sleep. She decided that lying in the bed staring at the old-fashioned stencils on the walls wasn’t getting her anywhere, so she threw on a pair of pants, a shirt, and a baggy sweatshirt. Lacing up her running shoes, she realized that the only exercise that she’d incorporated into her day so far was the walk up the hill to the mansion. After a few stretches, she checked that her bags were away and that her computer was hidden in the back of the closet. One could never be too careful.

On the landing outside of her room, she stopped, listening. But the only sounds she heard were from the open windows in the hallway, where the sounds of the waves crashing on the side of the dock could be heard. Nothing else stirred within the house, and she pulled the door shut behind her. 

Tiptoeing down the stairs, Gillian made it to the common area where different meals were served throughout the day. Again, she looked around for signs of other people lurking within the dining room or living room areas. She didn’t want to have a repeat of her experience at the mansion. Everything seemed as it should, and she eased the front door open, letting it close behind her with a quiet click. 

Instead of heading out toward the dock, Gillian pulled a flashlight out of her pocket and shone it on the cobblestone path that ran between the B&B and the business next door. She followed it as it meandered away from Main Street, and through residential areas, leading her deeper and deeper into the forest and away from the town, in the opposite direction from the path up to the mansion.

Slowly, Gillian picked up speed, breathing slowly and regularly, regulating her heart rate. She had left her airpods at home, but the night noises provided a soundtrack that her legs seemed to respond to.  Through the breaks in the foliage above her, moonlight broke through periodically to shine on her path. Instead of being tentative or scared, she found the dark, silent forest comforting. Away from the drama of the people she had met and her own inner monologue. Away from the office drama she’d left behind. She scowled in the darkness at the thought of the overbearing Dewey, who was always trying to find ways to minimize her efforts and take responsibility for her success. 

The forest opened into the far side of the island, which was clearly less people-friendly than the section that the town had grown on. Rocks of different shades of black and gray made up the shoreline, and led up to the flat ground where hundreds of years before, the early inhabitants of the island had built the lighthouse. 

As Gillian passed the edge of the forest, the lighthouse light swiveled around and the light momentarily blinded her. She slowed her pace and finally came to a stop staring over the edge of the dropoff. She explored around the upper edge of the rocky beach, and saw nothing else of note. Approaching the lighthouse, she stopped and soaked in the way that it served as a beacon out into the darkness over the water. 

The breeze blew a sea mist over her, and she wiped away the salty taste from her lips. Walking out onto the lighthouse landing, she saw that there was a relatively new padlock on the door, and the chains didn’t give at all when she pulled. Different graffiti adorned the door and some of the walls facing the ocean. Apparently the culprits were aware that the lighthouse would shield from unwanted attention, so they’d tagged one side and not the other. 

As she read some of their messaging, Gillian heard voices approaching, carrying over the sound of the waves, Gillian heard voices approaching. She didn’t know who or what she might be dealing with, and ducked behind the lighthouse itself as flashlight beams illuminated the area, bouncing off of the lighthouse, the ground, and the hazy sea fog in the air. 

Gillian stayed still, pressed up against the lighthouse. She heard the voices closing in on the lighthouse, and then she heard the sound of the chains on the door rattling. Laughter followed, and then the voices were lost in the roar of the waves crashing on the stone beach below. Gillian heard movement inside of the lighthouse meaning that they had the combination to the padlock, but she didn’t move, knowing that there were no windows on the first floor, and that whoever was in the lighthouse couldn’t see her on the outside wall. 

The time of night seemed suspicious to Gillian, but she knew that if she revealed herself, she would appear suspicious, too. She considered making a break for the forest, but she knew that if the people in the lighthouse exited, that she would be caught in open ground, unable to hide. She sank to a seated position, edging up against an alcove in the exterior of the lighthouse, and waited for the people to leave. 

Gillian woke up with a wave of panic, as the sky above her was brighter now, the clouds having rolled away. She had apparently nodded off, lulled to sleep by the gentle breeze and the ambient sound of the waves. She looked around but didn’t hear anyone or see the flashes from the others’ lights. She crept slowly on her hands and knees around to toward the back of the lighthouse, and still saw nothing. 

Looking at the closed door, Gillian realized that the door had been chained shut again, and the padlock replaced. She couldn’t hear any voices coming from the forest, and figured the people must have left long before she woke up. Looking around, she saw an old piece of rebar and tried to pry away at the chain. When she realized that was futile, she went to work on the hinges to the door itself, but that too went nowhere. 

Recognizing that her surveillance had nothing to show for it, Gillian took one last look at the lighthouse and headed back to the town. The farther she went, the more tired she became, as the events of the previous day caught up with her. When she finally arrived back in the residential area, she turned off her flashlight, disinterested in drawing attention to herself. By then, Gillian was nearly sleepwalking, so it came as a shock when she ran into another late night walker just outside of the B&B.

Both Gillian and the other person let out muted shrieks as they collided. Gillian quickly apologized when she realized that she wasn’t being mugged or attacked, noticing that the other woman was the mother from the ferry. 

“I’m so sorry,” she said, bending down to help the other woman collect the belongings that she had dropped. 

“Oh, it’s not your fault. I’m not supposed to need these anymore, so sometimes I sneak one on the side,” said the woman. “I’m Betty Williams by the way. I saw you on the ferry.”

Williams offered Gillian a cigarette, admitting that she had recently fallen back into the habit, stressed by the trials of raising a toddler. Gillian passed on the offer, but sat down on the front step of the B&B with Williams, looking at the waves rolling into the dock. 

“It’s peaceful here,” Williams was saying. “My husband and I are thinking about relocating. Do you know much about the people here or what you think of the island itself?”

Blowing smoke away from Gillian, Williams turned to see if Gillian had any thoughts on the matter. “I don’t know if I could live here, but I’m sure it works for some people,” she said, not sure that she was the one to advise Williams correctly. 

“George and I wanted to give Bryan a different life than what we have seen so far in the city,” Williams said, wistfully. “It feels like we need a new start, and Tranquility might just be the place for that.”

“Speaking of new starts, tomorrow is going to come faster than I’d like,” Gillian said, standing slowly to her feet. “I better try to get some sleep now, or I’ll regret it tomorrow.”

The women said good night to each other, and parted ways. Gillian fell asleep on top of the bed, still snug in her sweatshirt, one leg dangling over the slide.

Chapters 31-33 coming May 3!

25

The two brothers had made a name for themselves around Tranquility from the time they were old enough to communicate a plan from one to the other and carry it out. They didn’t really care who they hurt, but they weren’t bloodthirsty or particularly vicious. They just did what they wanted to do, when and where they wanted to do it. The who they did it to part was indiscriminate, but it had certainly gotten them in hot water. 

Right now, Joe and Jimmy Moma were sitting in a juvenile detention center on the mainland. They weren’t allowed to room together, for fear that they would wreak havoc on the other youth in the center, concocting plans of wholesale mischief. It wouldn’t have taken much effort on their part; while on the island, they had graffitied the lighthouse, let loose all of the boats moored to the dock, jerry rigged the old chapel bell to play every hour on the hour through the night, greased the path leading up to the mansion, removed all of the lightbulbs in the town lampposts, and loosened all of the screws holding the bar chairs together at the Ocean’s Spray Grille. That didn’t even include the time they’d been visiting their aunt on the mainland and sent correspondence through the mail to the Bed & Breakfast, announcing a need for reservations for every room in the place, as a prank.

Needless to say, the people of Tranquility had breathed a sigh of relief when the Moma brothers had been mandated to spend three months in the center, out of their hair and off of the island. They were to be let loose on the world again in just three short days, thanks to good behavior. It’s hard to cause any kind of trouble when your every move is under lock and key, with no hope of restoration or breaking bad. 

Joe was sitting at the cafeteria table under the watchful eye of an unnamed prison guard, slowly slurping down his gruel and setting the vegetables aside. He hadn’t decided just yet what he’d do with the veggies, but he figured with just a few days left, he would be able to get away with a food fight if it didn’t turn too violent and he didn’t hit the wrong administrator who was traipsing their way through the cafeteria.

The facility coordinator buzzed into the closed cafeteria, sliding his card up and down the reader outside. In truth, you couldn’t get much of anywhere in the center without a key card, which was a fact that the Momas had discovered all too well when they attempted to break out just a few days into their sentence. 

The coordinator was walking quickly toward Joe’s table. He couldn’t quite remember what the guy’s name was, but something had clearly made the short skinny man even more anxious than normal. He was dabbing at his face, and also patting at the excuse of a mustache he wore, even though most of the juveniles had more facial hair than he did. The man wore a vest over his long sleeve dress shirt. He was the only person who was allowed to wear whatever he wanted in the center. Everyone else, from first time offender to prison guard, had to wear the kind of uniform as outlined by the prison manual, which of course, the coordinator had edited to suit his fancy.

Now, standing mere feet away from Joe, the coordinator was sweating even more profusely, the armpits of his dress shirt stained a darker color. Worse, Joe could smell the man, and he was around testosterone-fueled young people in the wings of the living quarters, in class, and in the cafeteria. Smelling the coordinator showed how little presence the guy actually had. 

“Mr. Moma,” started the faculty coordinator. 

“Is my dad here?” asked Joe, looking up with a smirk on his face. “Oh, of course not! He’s dead already, isn’t he?”

The coordinator’s stammer only deepened as the red spot around his neck deepened. “Mr. Moma, that just won’t do!” he cried out. “We have to be respectful here to be a meaningful part of the society out there.”

Joe stopped listening as the coordinator launched into his well-used speech about respect and community. He had already counted the number of ceiling tiles in the cafeteria (eighty) and throwing the veggies that he had saved now seemed, at best, inopportune. Now the coordinator’s tone was changing, and Joe heard him say something but he couldn’t believe he’d heard directly. 

“That’s right, Mr. Moma,” said the coordinator, recognizing that he was gaining the upper hand. “You are being released early tomorrow because you have to make it back to your home on Tranquility before the storm hits and you can’t get back to the island. See, we can release you early but you can’t stay here any longer than your sentence. Tax dollars and all of that, I guess. I’m sure you understand?”

The older half of the Moma brothers had started to consider what they could accomplish in the next twenty-four hours. But he had to get reunited with his brother to make those pranks a reality. “Mr. Anderson,” Joe said, reading the man’s nametag in an attempt to schmooze. “Do you think my brother and I could spend our last night here together? I’m sure we are able to keep ourselves out of trouble for the next twelve hours…”

26

Carol served steaming cups of coffee and English toffee cookies to each of the guests, as they were sitting or standing around the parlor. Leo had to admit that the cookies were every bit as delicious as the meal had been, but he watched as Gillian wolfed hers down and set aside her coffee cup. Apparently someone liked her sweets more than her green vegetables! With her notebook and pencil out now, she launched into a cross-examination of sorts, aimed at the others from the island. No one was safe from Gillian’s line of questioning and as the night grew on, her questions became more invasive. 

Carol was the closest, and the least conversational. She was initially resistant to answering questions, but finally admitted that she had once worked in the galley of O’Rourke’s cruise ship and been offered a chance to work on the island. She glanced periodically at O’Rourke, seeking his approval without receiving it, but for the most part, she stayed quiet and on the fringes of conversation.

Next up was the island doctor, but Dr. Steinman used a mouthful of English toffee to fend off her questions. Miss Isabelle gamely answered Gillian about growing up on the island, the number of whales she had seen over the last fifty years, and more. Turning to Johnny, Gillian asked him what he thought of the island and the impending migration. He bashfully admitted to a love of dance and theater that had driven him to Hudson where he’d become friends with David. He was here for a first visit and knew even less about the migration than she did. She tried to pry Leo’s mouth open with questions about his first-time impressions of the island but he gave only monosyllabic answers. Captain Burchard proved to be even less revealing, answering in monosyllabic tidbits that clearly frustrated the reporter. Clearly not getting the kind of answers that she was looking for, Gillian turned toward O’Rourke. 

“So, Mayor O’Rourke, tell me about yourself,” she began, flipping to a new page, and tucking a loose curl behind her ear. 

O’Rourke turned red in the face, flushing the whole way from his cheeks to his bald spot. He turned to Miss Isabelle, who was giggling into the back of her hand. He responded, each word its own thought as he now glared at Gillian who feigned ignorance to his anger. “I’m. Not. The. Mayor,” he growled. After a deep breath, he added, “I’ve just been here the longest, I guess, so some people have tagged me with the moniker.”

“Red pays for the things that the town needs that no one else will work for,” Miss Isabelle interjected. “He covers costs so that the rest of us can enjoy the island ways. The island wouldn’t be the same without him-”

“That’s enough,” Red said, curtly, clearly embarrassed by the tone this had taken, the lines on his face providing a roadmap of emotion as he frowned over his cup of coffee.

“Red, tell her about the plan for the library,” Isabelle responded, ignoring the hard look she was receiving from the man. 

O’Rourke sighed, and said, “We’re going to renovate the library. Maybe provide a space for young people to congregate to keep them out of trouble.” He spat out the information and went back to staring into the fire, drinking his coffee. 

Looking up from his own cup, Dr. Steinman asked, “When’s that supposed to happen? That place hasn’t been used in years.” 

The group turned to O’Rourke, but it was Carol who answered. “Mr. O’Rourke has a meeting with a couple from the mainland who are going to help see about turning it into a youth center. They’re here, surveying the island, to see if they think it’s viable. It’s really a great thing Mr. O’Rourke is trying to do.”

The man in the big armchair refused to look up or acknowledge what had been said about him, and Gillian decided that she should try a different track of questions. She looked up over her notebook. “Uh, why don’t you tell me about how you got here?”

“It’s a short story,” murmured O’Rourke. “Grew up here, moved away to have a life and find a job, and then finally returned and I guess I’m stuck here now.” His bushy eyebrows practically connected at the last sentiment, so deep was his frustration and disdain. For someone who had the position of respect on the island, his tone didn’t imply that he was happiest about it. He certainly seemed like he would rather be left alone, or even ignored.

Gillian looked a bit flummoxed by the response, having expected the richest man on the island to be there happily, by choice. “What about you, David?” she asked. 

David had been exchanging whispers with Johnny, and he appeared startled by the sudden attention. “Uh, I grew up here, went away for school, and I have one year left to finish my art degree,” he said. 

“What are you going to do when you graduate?” Gillian asked, probing. Johnny elbowed David, and David looked down. Gillian looked from David to O’Rourke, wondering what was going on behind the scenes. No one would make eye contact with her. 

“I’ll probably try and get on with a gallery,” he said. “But I’m still working on it.”

Gillian wasn’t done. “Well, what will that mean to your relationships here, and to the island?” 

David was still examining his coffee cup like it held the answers to the world’s unsolved mysteries. The room had suddenly gone incredibly still, and the only sound was the deep breathing of the sleeping dogs at O’Rourke’s feet. Gillian looked over at David’s uncle, and Red accidentally made eye contact, and turned red in the face all over again. 

“This is my nephew,” growled Red. “Not that you can tell it by looking at him, or by listening to his drivel about art school and no purpose. And then he’s thrown in his lot with this one -”

O’Rourke’s glare was fixed on Johnny, who had also turned bright red. Carol gasped, and Miss Isabelle jerked out of her chair. “There’ll be none of that, Red O’Rourke,” she snapped. “Give people respect for their own lives and learn to know who they really are.”

David and Johnny were already on their feet, as David’s lip trembled with a mix of embarrassment and anger. His look showed the disappointment he felt in his uncle’s condemnation. Together, the two men hurried out of the room. Leo glanced after them, but Gillian cleared her throat, set down her cup and saucer, and spoke. “Let me go check on them,” she said. “This is my fault anyway.”

Having risen out of her seat, Carol poked the burning logs in the fireplace, sending smoke and shards of embers up the chimney. When it was burning to her satisfaction, she left the fire and started cleaning up the cups and saucers, careful to keep her eyes from making contact with O’Rourke’s. Miss Isabelle said she would help, and Leo was left with Dr. Steinman and Red O’Rourke. 

“So what do you think of the island?” asked Steinman, pushing forward as if family drama had not just exploded like an inferno in front of them. He popped another cookie into his mouth, and settled in with a bemused smile to hear Leo’s answer. In the glow of the fire, Steinman’s comb over couldn’t keep his forehead from gleaming as bright as the reflection from his glasses.

“It’s quite beautiful,” Leo gulped, spitting out a run of the mill answer. “The people are quite friendly, and it’s a bit different than the hustle and bustle of the mainland.”

“Yes, that’s quite true,” Steinman nodded. “I’m not sure there’s anywhere else you can go and still be free of the distractions. But what do you think of that kind of lifestyle change?”

Leo agreed. “I can see why it would be so attractive. And once you’ve made it your lifestyle, why would you want anything else?”

Steinman replied, “There’s certainly a pace to the island that’s different, and allows our little children and elders to move about freely.”

A grunt from the other side of the room drew Leo and Steinman’s attention. The redheaded giant was grinding his teeth, and the dogs stirred as they sensed his agitation. O’Rourke glowered. “There’s nothing free about all of this! Hard work and tons of money went into making it what it is. And what is there to show for a life’s work? A man could only count on working hard for whatever he gets and then finding himself six feet under when it’s all said and done.”

Steinman raised an inquiring eyebrow in Leo’s direction. On the spot, Leo cleared his throat unwillingly, and began stammering. “I’m not sure that’s exactly true.”

Steinman was clearly surprised Leo would argue with O’Rourke, but he nodded, smirking, encouraging the younger man to wade into deeper waters.  “You know there’s grace, companionship, community…” continued Leo, to the doctor’s delight. 

“Oh, please,” O’Rourke was on the prowl now. “You think anyone really gives someone else a hand up? Does anyone actually care what happens to someone else? We’re stuck fending for ourselves and dealing with the consequences. Everything else is social expectation and falsehood.”

Leo raised a placating hand. “You have to have seen moments in your life where someone else did something for you, or where someone else showed kindness in a way that benefited you with nothing gained by them in return. Surely, someone has shown you mercy!”

“Mercy!” O’Rourke had slipped from disgruntled to incensed. “No one has ever shown me mercy. No one has given me a hand up or shown me grace. You’re stuck living with the consequences of your decisions, and hoping you slide out of this life to the other side without too much damage. You’d be better off trying to tell me that we’ll find life on another planet, than that people can really count on someone to help them or that they change the way they’ve become.” 

Steinman watched, quizzically, over his eyeglasses as Leo gathered himself and went on. “Of course there’s grace. Of course people can change. That’s one of the tenets of the church, that a person can actually be better than they were before.”

O’Rourke pulled himself to his feet, steadying his hands on the arms of his chair. For a moment, Leo was afraid that the big man was headed out of his chair to physically confront him. “You’ll understand when you get older, that there’s no help coming, that change isn’t possible. Things just are the way they are. We suffer alone.” With that he picked up his cup and headed down the hall toward the kitchen. 

Steinman looked at Leo, grinning wanly and shook his head. Leo heard O’Rourke’s cup and saucer crash into the kitchen sink, and wondered if anything was left intact. With a deep sigh, the doctor groaned his way out of the easy chair and limped out into the hallway, leaving Leo to stare into the kindled fire to consider the impact of his words. 

27

After leaving the parlor, Gillian had followed along behind David and Johnny, but she hadn’t actually pursued them. Neither one of them knew that she had left the parlor when they did, and she hung back to see if she could hear what they had to say about O’Rourke’s comments. She watched as David threw his arm around his friend, and they exchanged some words that she couldn’t hear. The two went up the grand staircase, and disappeared around the corner while Gillian lagged behind. 

Gillian froze for a moment, torn by indecision. Then, rather than continue to follow them or return to the parlor, Gillian began to inspect the different rooms on the ground floor. Off of the open entryway, in the direction David had emerged from when she arrived, Gillian found another hallway that ran parallel to the main one. Instead of opening on each side, the rooms off of the hallway all faced the cliff instead of the rest of the island. 

Cautiously leaning into the first door, Gillian pushed and turned the knob to no avail. Frustrated, she walked farther down the hallway, away from the entryway. The next doorway stood open, the thick wooden door ajar. Gillian glanced back down the hallway, and listened momentarily for any signs that others were headed in her direction. Sensing nothing, Gillian pushed the door the rest of the way open and stepped in. 

As her eyes played over the room, Gillian’s ears picked up the faint sounds of the wind and ocean beyond the closed window. This room must be nearly on the edge of the cliff, she thought, pulling back a curtain to confirm her suspicions. By the light of the moon, Gillian found that the room was almost entirely stacks of frames, propped up against couches and chairs that had clearly not been used in quite some time. She shook a cobweb off of her hand where it stuck, and let go of the curtain. Slipping quickly from one frame to the next, the reporter pulled back the tarps to let the hallway light shine on the pictures

The stacks of frames held various paintings and even a few enlarged photographs of the O’Rourke family. Gillian could pick out Red in most of them, as he had clearly been the one to inherit his size from his father’s side of the family.  A few of the pictures included Red’s parents and grandparents, and most included a woman approximately Red’s age who also had bright red hair. Chances seemed strong that this was Red’s sister. Could that be David’s mother? The room was frozen in time, and had no answers to questions about the current situations in O’Rourke’s mansion, so Gillian decided to move on.

Leaving the room, Gillian listened intently again for the sounds of others approaching. Hearing none, she pulled the door back to its slightly open position and tiptoed farther down the hallway. It was clear that David had not come from the room full of pictures, and without a lockpick or key, she wasn’t getting into the first room. The paneled hallway appeared to end with a huge mirror set floor to ceiling, but as Gillian approached it, she realized that there was a more narrow hallway that cut off from the main one just before the mirror. Again, sensing no footsteps or voices, Gillian ducked down this hallway and followed the windowless passageway until it ended abruptly at a closed door. 

While the building appeared massive from the outside, Gillian was discovering that it had even more rooms than she could have imagined. The knob to the closed door wasn’t locked, and Gillian carefully turned it while pushing it open with her other hand. The room itself was completely dark and windowless. As her eyes acclimated to the dark, Gillian saw that she was in a bedroom, but its details were obscured by the depth of the dark. She breathed deeply and slowly, giving her senses more time to adapt to the darkness within the room, as details began to emerge from the shadows. 

The room had a feminine touch to it, much more than anywhere else Gillian had seen in the mansion. There was a full-length portrait of a woman, beautiful and glamorous, with red hair that cascaded down from her head over her shoulders to her waist. She was in a stunning evening gown, and had been portrayed on the steps up from the entryway in the mansion. She had O’Rourke’s cheekbones, but her smile dazzled, even pictured on the oil canvas as it was. Her joy had certainly been captured by the artist, and Gillian knew that happiness like that could not be faked.

A makeup table with an extensive mirror caught Gillian’s attention next, thanks to an ornate set of jewelry that had been carefully laid out on the table. Emerald jewels highlighted the earrings, bracelet, and necklace, and Gillian looked back at the painting, recognizing these were the adornments of the woman pictured in the painting. Looking back at the table, Gillian caught a flash of motion in the vanity mirror and gasped as she saw two pairs of eyes reflecting back at her in the dark. 

Startled by their sudden, silent appearance, Gillian stifled a scream, recognizing the dogs from the front porch. She figured if she could just pet them, they would be pacified, but when she approached them, they growled in unison. She tried to scurry away from them, and tripped onto the top of the bed. Finding purchase, she tried to scramble higher as they approached menacingly, but she screamed when she felt that there was someone else in the bed. Looking down, she saw the faint outline of a woman’s head lying on the pillow. 

Footsteps pounded on the hallway floor outside, and Red O’Rourke’s bulky frame filled the doorway. He flipped the light on, and yelled at Gillian, who was still shaking. 

“What are you doing in Martha’s room? Leave her alone!” he bellowed. “There’s no story for you here!” 

Crossing the threshold in quick, long steps, he grabbed Gillian’s arm to yank her away from the bed, and pulled her onto the floor in the process. His temple throbbed and his grip sent sparks up and down Gillian’s arm. He released her but stood there glowering down at her, with words left unsaid between them.

Others came running down the hall now, as Leo and the other women flooded the room. They pulled up quickly when they saw O’Rourke standing over Gillian, and Isabelle went to put her arm on Red’s but he shook her off. 

Gillian awkwardly rose to her feet. “I’m so sorry, Mr. O’Rourke, I was just trying to check out the house for background for my story.” She had her head down, unable to look the mansion owner or anyone else for that matter in the eye. A groan from the bed shook them both out of their current situation, as everyone turned to look at the woman in the bed. 

“Sissy, shhh, it’s alright,” O’Rourke said, rushing to the bed. He picked up the woman’s hand and rubbed it tenderly. “You don’t need to be alarmed.”

Martha O’Rourke had once been tall like Red, captured as a vibrant beauty in the painting, but her body had shrunk over time. Emaciated and frail, she still had long red hair that spread across the pillow and down by her sides. Her eyes were closed, and her mouth twitched as she moaned again. 

Gillian felt everyone’s attention shift from Martha O’Rourke to her. She knew that they were judging her, willing her to be anywhere but where she was. In truth, she wished that, too. She wanted to explain what she was doing, but she knew that she’d worn out her welcome in the mansion, and that O’Rourke’s patience had been drawn well past its breaking point. She walked ashamedly through them to the front door, leaving O’Rourke still whispering to his sister, throwing her purse over her shoulder. 

After a few moments Leo and Miss Isabelle joined her, having said their goodbyes to everyone else, whatever muted feelings they had silenced by Gillian’s shame and embarrassment. Poseidon and Neptune watched them silently as they slipped out of the mansion and into the night.

Chapters 28-30 coming April 26!