Authors: Judy Blundell
Now the nightmare is real. Crashing through the underbrush in a blind panic, not remembering where the trail is, the swamp sucking at me like a breathing monster, trying to bring me down. He’s behind me, panting, not yelling, just running, and I know my head start is going to dissolve.
The cover of the trees helps. He can’t see me. I run as quietly as I can, but it’s hard not to make noise in a swamp. Things snap and rustle, and I hear him change direction and come after me again.
I burst through a thicket. Brambles tear at my skin. I push through, fall, get up, run around a tree, and almost bump into Nate.
He jumps and catches me. “What are you doing?” he practically shouts.
“Shhh!” I start to sob.
“Gracie, what’s going on? I followed you from the ferry, and let Shay know. I just want to talk to you, I’ve been looking…”
“Let her go, Nate.”
Jeff stands with the shovel. Casually. Dead-eyed.
“What are you talking about, Jeff? Gracie…”
“I know about you,” Jeff says. “When you
reappeared on the island, I looked you up. Your life played out just the way I thought it would.”
“He killed Billy,” I tell my father. “And Hank Hobbs.”
“You killed Billy? What? Why? You hardly knew him!”
“Didn’t you suspect it?” Jeff asks. “Come on, Nate. Did you really think he just disappeared?”
“Yes!”
“I don’t believe you. You knew I did it and you walked away, with money in your pocket and the girl, right? You know what it looks like? It looks like you were an accessory. I can say you even helped me hide the body, and who’s going to doubt me?”
“What do you want, Jeff?” Nate asks. I hear him swallow. He’s just beginning to understand what he’s walked in on.
“I want you to let her go and walk away. Find another one of your identities and get lost. Get lost for good.”
“She’s my daughter.”
“Yeah, that meant so much to you.”
I feel Nate’s fingers loosen on my arm. Feel his muscles relax.
And then a strange thing happens, stranger than maybe anything that’s ever happened to me, and that’s saying a lot. I know what he’s going to do before he does it. And it isn’t because I sense it, it
isn’t a psychic thing. It’s a connection. One I didn’t even realize we had.
So I move when he moves. I bend my knees just as he pushes me down. I tuck and roll as he catapults forward and slams Jeff Ferris with a fist on the side of the head, a blow I can hear, knuckles against skull, and then kicks him somewhere in his midsection and pushes him down.
But Jeff grabs his legs and yanks, and Nate topples. They grapple in the mud. I hear the blows and hear my father grunt.
I crawl toward the shovel. I stand, but I’m weaving, and I can’t get a good shot at Jeff. I can’t imagine I can slow him down. They are charged with adrenaline, and I see Jeff’s fingers tighten on Nate’s throat.
I feel a hand on my shoulder. I haven’t even heard him come up.
“No need for that, Gracie.” Joe’s voice is calm. It’s easier to be calm when you’re holding a gun. “Jeff, get up. It’s over.”
I meet Nate at the inn, where he’s spent the night. He and I had stayed over an hour at the police station last night, talking about what happened. In another room, Jeff Ferris had confessed to everything he’d done.
The venom of years had spilled out. How he had done so much for the island, and no one appreciated it. How he knew Mason and his friends had vandalized his house, so he got back at them by framing Mason for breaking into my house, and maybe for the Hobbs murder. He even trashed his own office so Joe would think the kids did it.
And his envy spilled out, too. How much he hated Hank Hobbs, who could so easily buy the house Jeff had bought but couldn’t afford to live in.
His father refused to hire a lawyer for him. Jeff was on his own.
And Joe had suspected Jeff from the beginning. He’d been quietly gathering evidence while I was running around trying to pin it on everybody else.
Now, Nate leans against his car. “I’m sorry, I can’t stay longer, but Rachel wants me home. She’s so glad you’re okay.”
“You’re not going to Russia, are you?” I say. “You’re leaving again.”
He shakes his head. “I know you see things. Don’t
imagine
them, too.”
I fix him with my gaze. I pin him down. “Tell me the truth, for once.”
He looks away, then looks back again. “Well,” he says, “I guess I am leaving her, then.”
“You’re a real piece of work, Dad,” I say.
His mouth twists in a way I haven’t seen. “Yeah. I really thought I was ready to stick this time. Look, Gracie, everything you think about me is probably true. I’ve bounced from family to family. I don’t mean to leave. But I do.”
“It’s just so weird and awful, having brothers and sisters I don’t even know about.”
He looks startled. “What brothers and sisters?”
“The kids in Tampa—Bunny and Ben.”
“How do you know about Bunny and Ben? Okay, never mind. They weren’t mine. I was married for less than a year. They were my stepkids. I’m a deadbeat dad on a technicality. I didn’t owe Leslie child support. I mean, except in her own mind.”
“What about Cheryl Ann? You stole her money and her wedding album?”
“Her wedding album?” He laughs. “I’m sorry it’s just that…I didn’t take her wedding album. We weren’t even married. We only had a ‘commitment ceremony’—her idea, I assure you. That
album is probably kicking around the house, I bet—the house was always a mess. I might have lifted a few bucks when I left, though.”
“Like you’ll do with Rachel.”
“Serves me right, I guess,” he says. “I came here so you
wouldn’t
find out these things. When Shay sent that private eye after me, I was afraid of what he’d dig up. So I came here to talk to her, to see you. I’m glad I came, even though now you know what a crook your old man is.”
“You’re not just a crook, you’re a sociopath. I don’t know if anything you told me is true.”
“Well, now is your chance to ask.”
“Did you suspect that Jeff killed Billy Applegate?”
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “I never dreamed that Billy was murdered. Of course I didn’t think Jeff killed him.”
“Did you really think you were manic-depressive? Is that really why you left?”
He hesitates. “No.”
I think back to the way he told the story, how sincere he was, how, even though I was resisting him, I was listening the whole time. The hurt of it takes my breath away. What a good liar he is.
“You’re sure good at telling stories,” I say. I hear the bitterness in my voice. “It’s a wonder you’re not a millionaire.”
He steps toward me and curves his whole body
toward me, lowering his head so that he can speak softly. “I wasn’t afraid of losing my mind. But the rest of it is true. I did think I was hurting you. I know I was hurting your mom. I wasn’t cut out for marriage.”
“Did your father really commit suicide?”
“Yes.”
“He had cancer! You’re still lying!”
“And he took his own life when it got really bad.”
“Oh.” Suddenly, I feel deflated. I realize that the facts don’t really matter. He lied to me once, and now I’ll never quite believe him, even at his most sincere. “So why did you ask me to come back to Rachel’s, then?” I ask. “You knew you were going to leave her.”
“I was trying to stay,” he says. “I always want to stay, kiddo.”
“You know, I thought it might have started here, when you took the bribe and betrayed your friends. But it probably started way before that, didn’t it? People don’t matter to you. Nothing matters to you. I bet you gave away your
dog
when you were little.”
“How’d you know?” He grins, but I don’t smile.
But suddenly, to my surprise, his face changes and he steps forward and hugs me, really hugs me. He lifts me off my feet.
“This matters to me,” he says in my ear. “This is the one true thing I know.”
For a moment, I just sink into it. The feeling of being loved.
He pulls away. His hands dangle by his sides now.
“If you love me, then try,” I urge him. “Try with Rachel. Get the baby. Start again. Do it right this time.”
“Oh, Gracie. I don’t think I can. She expects too much of me.”
“Well, I do, too, and you love me,” I say. “You’ve got a two-hour trip to consider your options. I’ll call at eleven A.M. and if you’re not there, I’ll put Joe Fusilli on your tail.”
“You’d do that to me?”
“In a heartbeat.”
He cocks his head and looks at me. “You know, sweetie, that you can’t make someone stick. You just can’t. No matter what you hold over their head.”
He’s right, of course. I can’t reform him.
“Just go with her, then. Help her get Sonia. Don’t take that away from her, too. You can leave later.”
“I’m afraid the die might be cast.”
“You mean the money? For the rent and the airline tickets and things?”
He shakes his head in a marveling way. “You know that, too?” He sighs and gets in the car. “I guess I’ve got some thinking to do. I’ll be in touch.”
I watch him drive away. I don’t know where
he’s going. I think he’ll go back to Rachel, just because he doesn’t want Joe Fusilli on his trail. But I really don’t know.
I stand there, watching, until I can’t see his car anymore. I feel so tired. Tired of looking at all the cracks in love, all the imperfections. Tired of him. I don’t want him in my life.
But there he is.
When I turn, Shay is waiting. She is always waiting. She waited for me to grieve for my mom. She waited for me to accept her. She waited for me to love her. She’ll never stop waiting.
“Can I buy you breakfast?” she asks.
We start walking toward the diner.
“He’s a real creep,” I say.
“Yeah,” she says. She hands me a tissue, and I wipe my tears.
“Did you make up with Joe yet?”
She stretches her arms above her head and smiles. “Not yet. But I feel a thaw coming.”
We walk up the hill silently for a minute. “I thought you weren’t coming back,” Shay says. “I was so scared you weren’t coming back.”
“I want this to feel like home,” I say. I want to be honest with her. “And sometimes it does. But in a way, I’m still looking for whatever that is.”
She lets out a breath. “Okay.”
“And I can’t get over that you lied to me.”
She stops and faces me. Her hair blows crazily in her face, the way it does. She’s not wearing
makeup, and everything looks naked on her face, all her emotion, all her feeling.
“Well, you’re just going to have to get over it,” she says.
I laugh at her fierceness. I can’t help it.
“And stop saying that I lied,” she goes on. “You know darn well what the circumstances were. You can’t expect to know every detail of my past.”
“Did you ever have a crush on Nate?”
She’s startled. “Nate? No. I left that to Carrie.”
“Did you like him?”
“Sure. Everyone liked Nate. But I guess maybe there was something about him I didn’t trust…some instinct, because when Carrie fell for him, I was worried. Something…something seemed to be missing in him. But she loved him, so there was nothing more to say.”
“You didn’t go to the wedding.”
“I was in Spain.”
Shay opens the door to the diner. She smiles at Josie, the waitress, and holds up a finger, which means this morning she wants coffee. I know her routine as well as Josie does.
“Tea, Gracie?” Josie calls.
I nod.
Shay slides into a booth. Josie brings the coffee, and Shay takes the first sip with great appreciation, sniffing it first, curling her fingers around the thick
mug. She smiles her thanks at Josie, asks her how her son is doing.
I am beginning to realize, as Zed told me, how lucky I am. And if making this work takes work, I’ll work it.
“I don’t expect to know everything,” I say to her. “Just the important things. It’s just that…there were secrets in my family. Things my mom couldn’t tell me. And my dad is obviously one major liar. So I think I’m making a decision in my life to live differently. And I’d like it to start with you.”
“Fair enough.” Shay puts down her mug. “Fire away.”
“Who was Diego’s father?”
Shay takes a sharp breath. “Well, you certainly cut to the chase.”
She doesn’t want to do this. I see that. I see something there so deep, it hurts just to probe it.
She takes a sip of coffee and nods again.
“His name was Pablo,” she says, and our long morning together begins.
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eISBN 978-0-545-28327-4
Premonitions
was originally published by Scholastic in 2004.
Disappearance
was originally published by Scholastic in 2005.
Copyright © 2004, 2005 by Jude Watson. All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
This edition first printing, March 2010
Cover photograph © by Hilda Bordahl
Cover design by Tim Hall