Allingham/Patroness/1

Allingham/Patroness/1

Allingham/Patroness/1

Fellow Writers, I have included a list of characters introduced so far in the synopsis. This will be included in any published versions of this book as well. Thank you to all who made the suggestion.

PART II

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

Leigh

Di’s hard edge dissolved as soon as Leigh crossed the threshold into her house. The home was bright, beautiful, comfortable, with high stone walls and warm tile floors, plush sofas and chairs in sunset colors. Di was just as warm, giving Leigh free reign of the home and showing her the lay of the land.

Fresh clothes and hot showers were only the most basic comforts Di provided her with. In the mornings, she took Leigh into the garden, teaching her about the plants they harvested for their meals and their medicinal uses. Garlic and oregano and rosehips, peppers and kale and tomatoes. Sometimes they would eat while they picked the days fruit, but usually they held out for breakfast. Di did wonderful things with the eggs her chickens laid and the crusty bread she baked.

Then they would swim and fish in the warm blue-green waters. Di would tell her stories about when she was younger. How much younger, Leigh couldn’t tell. Di seemed at times to be only a few years older than her, and other times she was sure she had to be in her forties. There were hard lines that formed around her mouth when she discussed her family, but her eyes would shine when she talked about her deceased fiancé.

Mostly she talked about working as a nurse. The people she met, friends she made. She seemed to miss the profession but said she had no place there now.

“It’s better for me to just keep to myself,” she said one afternoon as they caught crabs for dinner. “I don’t like many people and most people don’t like me.”

“I don’t believe that,” Leigh said as she pulled two crabs up in her net. She didn’t know what sort of crabs they were. Not blue crabs like they ate in Jersey. Not stone crabs like she’s had down south. These ones were big and docile and full of sweet meat.

“When you get to be my age, you get fed up with bullshit,” Di said.

She never asked Leigh about herself, for which Leigh was glad. Since that first day on the island, she felt as if she were living a beautiful dream, and acknowledging the life outside of it could burst it around her like a soap bubble. At night, after sitting under the stars with Di and listening to stories she had for each one, she slept on the fresh white cotton linens of Di’s guest room, alone, with no fear of disruption from her safe sleep.

Each night she had strange dreams, of the tall woman who had come to her as a child, who had climbed into the light. Sometimes it was like Leigh was living her life, feeling her pain and her victories, and other times she observed her as an outsider, watching her flounder as life became too complicated. The faces around her changed. Sometimes the queen was Aunt Rebecca, sometimes the uncle was Frank. Often her father and the woman’s father seemed interchangeable.

And when she would awake in the morning, sometimes she was unsure about what part of her life really was the dream. Was it this story in her head as she slept? Was it her time with Sid and Rebecca? Was it now?

As much as Di warmed to Leigh, she remained cool with General Alea, who spent most of her day working on the boat. Various patches and replacements she’d attempted had been to no avail and she often came to dinner with filthy hands and a deep frown.

Di generally ignored her as she sat across from her at the table, only occasionally snorting at her reports on the continuing failures of the boat repair.

“I will get you home, Leigh,” General Alea promised one night.

“It’s okay,” Leigh said. “I— I don’t mind it here.”

Di cast General Alea a sharp look and the general sighed. “We all must deal with our problems eventually,” she said, looking back at Di with her brow raised. “No one can hide on an island forever.”

“I’m not hiding,” Leigh said. “We’re trapped here.”

“For now,” Alea said.

Di threw her napkin on the table and stalked out of the kitchen. The general watched her go.

“Would you care to take a walk with me, after dinner?” she asked, turning back to Leigh.

“A walk? I guess so.” Leigh much preferred Di to the gruff and elusive general.

General Alea had saved her life, brought her here, but she always seemed to studying her, looking for something Leigh was sure she lacked. Di was happy to tell her stories and share her knowledge. Leigh feared that if she spent too much time with the general, her own stories would spill, and then how would the general look at her? What would a woman like that think of something like her?

They hiked up to the highest rocky hill where they could see almost the entire perimeter of the island and the general sat down on a boulder. Twilight faded from pink to purple to black and the stars that Di liked to tell stories about began to sparkle in the sky overhead.

“Orion’s belt.” Leigh pointed out absently. “That’s Di’s favorite.”

“I’m glad you are getting along with Di,” Alea said. “She has a lot to share.”

“Did you know she used to be a nurse? She said it was before she came to stay here, but she talks like that was a long time ago,” Leigh said. “How old do you think she is?”

“Is that your only question?” General Alea asked.

Leigh turned to look at her and found her gray eyes sparkling the fading light, dark and intense. She turned back away, to look out over the endless ocean.

“I don’t want to leave,” she said. “Di said that when she got fed up with people she came here to stay. I think she’d let me stay. No one ever has to know I survived.”

“Di can’t stay here forever and neither can you. But, if you like, while I try to fix the boat or rig up the beacon so it could work again—”

“You can’t rig the beacon! People would come to Di’s island!” Leigh cried.

“While I figure out how to get us off this island, I can teach you some things too. Like how to protect yourself. How to survive on your own.”

Leigh saw a light blink on the horizon. A ship, somewhere out there. If they built a fire or shot off flares, it might see them. She turned to see if Alea had noticed, but the general was gazing at her, her eyebrows raised into twin arches, awaiting her reply.

“Yes,” Leigh said, glancing back to see the blinking light fade behind the horizon. “Yes, I would like that.”

Maybe they would never be found. Maybe she could stay forever, but the general was right. If she did have to go back, she better know how to defend herself.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

Leigh stepped out of the shower and paused before her reflection in the full length mirror. She looked different. Her previously ashy skin glowed warm brown in the rising sunlight, filtering through the open bathroom window. Her black curls were tight and shiny. The chub in her face and body was gone and there were subtle lines sculpted into her muscle.

She looked like her mother.

All her life she had prayed for the resemblance and now, here it was. Her eyes welled up.

Keisha Winslow wouldn’t know if she lived or died.

Keisha Winslow wouldn’t know anything had changed at all.

Keisha Winslow hadn’t seen her in three years.

She ran her fingers over her abdomen, brushing her fingers over the white lines across her newly tight brown stomach. They looked like reverse tiger stripes. She pulled on a sports bra and a pair of athletic shorts Di had put in her drawers and went out to meet the general in the garden. General Alea stretched her leaned muscled arms in her gray tank top and a pair of cargo pants she must have also gotten from Di. Leigh mimicked some of her moves and then the general turned to her.

“You ready?”

“I think so?” Leigh replied, pretty sure she was about to make a fool of herself.

They ran the perimeter of the island. Leigh was amazed to find that after the initial winding she settled into an easy rhythm with the crashing waves. She knew the general wasn’t pushing her today, but when they ended up back at the lagoon beach they started from, she silently rejoiced in still being on her feet.

The general tossed her a bottle of water and she drank it down, looking out at the water. A cool swim tempted her.

“The swim is the reward.” The general followed her eyes. “Now that we have the blood flowing, we’re going to work on some basic self-defense.”

“Self-defense?” Leigh asked. “You mean like, fighting?”

“I mean like self-defense. Now the most important thing, the thing I can’t stress enough is your stance. You must always keep a balanced stance. Start like this.”

#

General Alea went back to work on the boat after their lunch of bread with a creamy cheese and strawberries. After helping Di in the garden, Leigh hiked down to where she had the boat braced across two saw horses. A pile of junk was stacked beside her. Spare parts from Di’s house, and Alea was trying fuse a piece of plastic she’d cut from an old toy over the cavernous crack.

“Haven’t you already tried that?” Leigh asked.

General Alea glanced up at her irritably. “Well, I don’t know what else to do.”

“Maybe set it with something else that will float, even if the crack does take on water. What about these?” Leigh kicked at a set of old tires in the pile. “Do tires float?”

Alea frowned. “An object floats if it displaces its weight in water. Yes. A tire will float.”

“So if you strapped them onto the boat somehow, maybe they would keep it buoyant.”

General Alea cocked her head to the side and regarded Leigh through narrowed eyes. “I thought you wanted to stay.”

“Well, I mean—” Leigh realized she was right. She’d come down here just to check on the progress, not to help, but once she had the idea, she couldn’t help but point it out. “We still need to fix the propeller.”

“And the engine is seized. But I should be able to figure that out. The important thing is not to sink.”

Leigh shrugged. “I dunno. I guess, don’t be in too much of a hurry to fix it. We haven’t been gone that long.”

The general turned her head partially from Leigh, regarding her from the side of her eyes, “How long do you think it’s been?”

“Well, like— um— maybe a couple weeks? Or…” she trailed off. She didn’t know. It felt like days. It felt like years. How long had they been here? It was early May when the cruise yacht capsized and it was warm but not hot on the island, so it couldn’t be summer yet, could it? Or had it been longer? They weren’t even sure about the location of the island. If it really was further south, could it just be the sea breeze that kept it pleasant? Was it like this year round?

She thought of her body in the mirror that morning, of how much she had changed. Was that a few weeks worth of change or a few months?

“General?” she looked up at Alea, suddenly afraid. The general put down her tools and took Leigh’s shoulder.

“Now then, don’t think too hard on it. Go back up to Di. See if she has anything to ease your headache.”

Leigh hadn’t realized she had a headache until the general mentioned it, and then it split across her skull like an ice pick. She stumbled back over the rocky path to Di’s house and her slight, ageless friend rushed out to meet her on the steps, helping into the cool dark house.

“You just lay down right here and I’ll get you some willow bark tea,” Di said, helping her onto the long leather sofa.

A light flashed around her peripheral vision and she realized she was having a migraine. She hadn’t had one in years. Not since after her mom left. They had been so bad the year after she left that her dad had taken her to a neurologist. They’d gotten an expensive diagnosis of acute stress. It had infuriated her father, although he never said a thing to her about it. The way he looked at her had been the only indication, like she was too weak to handle a little bump in the road. That’s what he’d called Keisha’s departure. A little bump in the road. Because who needed a mother?

The house seemed to get darker as Di brought her the tea. It was bitter, but Di had added honey and it seemed to sooth the pounding edges of the migraine right away. Her eyes got heavy as she sipped it and Di brushed her hair back from her face, like Keisha used to do.

“When I was a little girl, I was scared to try anything. My brother was so good at everything. All my siblings were.” Di whispered as her fingers grazed Leigh’s pounding forehead. “I was afraid if I tried and failed, they would think I was weak and I would become easy prey to their nasty games. My mother was a sweet woman and she never pushed me. She let me stay close to her, to hide from anyone who might hurt me. She provided a safe home for me, a quiet place where I could explore and practice without being noticed, so when I began to find my talents, I could refine them before I presented them to the world.”

“My mother left me,” Leigh whispered. Her head didn’t hurt anymore, but it was heavy, sleepy, and her eyes were closed, imagining her mother beside her instead of Di.

“Maybe she thought you were better off,” Di said. “My mother would have left me too, if she thought I could fare better without her. In the end, I guess she did, but I think maybe she was just tired. She was sweet, but she fought for a long time.”

“She tried to come back,” Leigh murmured, “But my dad wouldn’t let her. Not unless she came back to him. And that was worse than being without me.”

“You just sleep now,” Di said. “You’ll feel better when you wake up.”

But Leigh was already there.

#

“— butterfly wings!” a voice hissed in the kitchen. “You know that!”

Colors swirled behind Leigh’s eyelids, another dream fading in and out. Her mother’s face now, instead of the lady with the veil. The voices in the other room intruded and she rolled to bury her face in a linen pillow.

“I had to ask her. I had to give her the choice,” the other voice replied.

“If she learns too much, who knows what kind of damage you’ll do!”

“Then help me.”

“I am helping! Even though I have no idea why you are doing this. Don’t you remember the girls? Is that what you want?”

“Times have changed.”

“Times never change that much.”

“They have, and they will continue to, if I can keep up against the rising tides. But I can’t do that alone. That is why I always failed.”

“So you come to me with this. You think I’ll just drop everything and take up arms with you? Against them?”

“No. I gave up looking for you long ago. Arriving on your island was… fate.”

“Fate,” the other spat. “I came here to be alone! You had no right, with a child in tow.”

“I’m telling you, I didn’t plan any of this. I’ve kept my eye on her, yes, but the wave, the current, landing here, none of that was planned.”

There was a long silence and Leigh began to drift back into her dream. Her mother’s open arms. Her father at her side, smiling with pride.

“I don’t lie, sister,” the voice confirmed. “You know that much about me to be true.”

“I know nothing about you anymore. And you know nothing about me. And that is the way I prefer it.”

“I can have the boat afloat tomorrow. I can try to catch a good current.”

“Shut up. I’m not telling you to leave. You can’t take her now, obviously. She’s not ready yet.”

“Do you want to keep her here with you?”