Wicked Lies (62 page)

He couldn’t scare up a smile.

“What?”

“I think I owe you an apology.”

“For saving my life?”

“For being angry with you about the pregnancy.”

“Oh.” She sighed, not wanting to go there yet.

“I’m in love with you, Lorelei. I’d just figured that out and it scared me. But then . . . thinking I might have lost you.” His jaw slid to the side and his throat worked, but he didn’t break down. Instead, he slid his fingers around her nape, leaned over, and placed a kiss on her lips. “If you only knew how sorry I am.”

“I should have told you. . . . I didn’t know how. I was pregnant by my ex-husband, with a baby I intended to keep.” Her throat caught as she remembered the pain of the miscarriage, the loss of the baby. But there was more. He was being honest, and now so was she. “The truth was, I was falling for you. Hard. Fast. I couldn’t believe it was real. It . . . it just didn’t make a lot of sense.”

“I know.”

She stared at him long and hard, saw the depth of his pain, a mirror of her own, then reached up to draw his mouth to hers once more. “Maybe we should start over.”

“Think that’s possible?”

“Anything is if you want it badly enough,” she said, knowing her eyes were twinkling.

“Then, how bad do you want this?” he asked.

“Bad. You?”

“Even badder,” he said, a slow smile curving his lips.

She laughed. Then she kissed him. Hard. Just as he expected.

EPILOGUE

S
he’d made a mess of things, Catherine thought as she rode in Earl’s motorboat to Echo Island.

With all her good intentions, in trying to save her charges from heartache, ridicule, and pain, Catherine had fouled up.

In the two months since Justice had died, their life at Siren Song had never returned to what Catherine proclaimed was normal.

The gates of Siren Song were closed and locked again; the work and rules restored. But there was a restlessness with the girls, and Catherine knew the order she had preached, had tried to instill, was forever broken. Ravinia was chomping at the bit to leave; the others would follow.

They had seen Rebecca with her husband and little girl, had witnessed firsthand Harrison Frost’s dedication to Lorelei. They’d all been swept away by the fantasy and romance that he’d risked his life for her.

As Earl guided the boat to the small dock here on Mary’s island of exile, her “Elba” she’d once said, Catherine wondered what she would say to her sister, how she would explain her change of heart. Could she admit that she’d been wrong? That perhaps Mary should return to Siren Song and, as far as anyone knew, from the grave? Of course that wouldn’t work. There were laws about those kinds of things . . . laws similar to faking someone’s death, she supposed. And now that Lorelei spent more time with her sisters, and that fiancé of hers had a nose for news . . . no, it would never work.

She would have to think of something else.

The sound of the sea was louder here, the tides splashing around the rocks and shoals. Mary had always said she’d found it comforting.

Catherine wondered.

But if she was happy, so be it. Of course, Mary had always been delusional. . . . It ran in their family. . . .

“I shouldn’t be too long,” she said to Earl as he cut the engine and tied up. “Half an hour, maybe.”

He nodded. “I’ll wait. Got my pole.”

With his help, she climbed onto the dock, and left him opening his cooler of bait. Holding her skirts so that the hem of her dress wouldn’t skim the dirt and bird excrement on the old boards, she bustled to a sandy, overgrown path that wound a hundred feet to Mary’s home. The cottage was little more than a one-room cabin, even more austere and cut off from the world than Siren Song. It was a wonder no one had ever found her here. . . . But then, Catherine knew from her own experience that even the most bizarre circumstances did exist . . . how else to explain all the gifts the girls had received.

There were rumors in town of a hermit who lived on the island, an old hag that ran sightseers off, but if anyone had made the connection between the recluse and Mary Beeman, Catherine didn’t know about it.

She swatted at a fly as she walked, felt a bead of sweat on her brow. It was late summer now, going on September, the August sun hot against her face.

A fly?
she thought.
Out here?

Odd.

Then again, what wasn’t odd these days? Everything about her sister had been “out of sync,” “a little off,” or “odd” since her birth. Upon her exile, the cover story was that Mary had fallen to her death on one of her solitary walks, while the woman sometimes seen on Echo Island was the bereaved, reclusive wife of one of the lighthouse caretakers from Whittier Island who had died, but no one really paid attention. Everyone today was all caught up in their own lives, too interested in themselves to do more than gossip about the weird old lady of Echo Island.

Catherine hurried on. Squinting against a lowering sun, she noticed that Mary’s garden, usually so perfect, was untended. Beach grass had taken over, and the tea roses were leggy, the blooms dried and dying. “Mary?” she called as she walked to the door and saw the boxes of supplies on the porch. The cardboard was sun bleached, the fruit and vegetables gone bad, the stink of rotting meat overpowering.

What the devil?

“Mary!” she called again and pushed on the door. How long had it been since she’d been here?

It was unlatched and from within the stench was worse. It hit Catherine with the force of a malodorous tidal wave. The buzzing of swarming flies competed with the sound of the surf. Catherine’s stomach revolted as her eyes grew accustomed to the darkened interior. On the bed was a corpse, what was left of her sister, little more than dried, rotting flesh and exposed bones. Mary’s face was unrecognizable, her eyes gone, two dark exposed sockets where those beautiful blue orbs had once been. Her hair was long and splayed around a skull of darkened, dried skin, her teeth exposed as she had no lips, her cheeks gone. She looked like a zombie with a ghoulish, wicked grin.

The hilt of the knife rose from her chest. The skeletal fingers of Mary’s right hand surrounded it, as if she’d tried to yank the blade out and failed. Hanks of old flesh hung from her fingers and arm.

A scream boiled to the heavens. A wild shriek of pure fear.

It took Catherine a moment to realize it came from her own lips.

“Holy mother of God!” she whispered, retching, backing away.

But the vision of Mary was burned in her brain as she scrambled backward, nearly tripping over her own skirts. Trying not to scream, she turned and ran for the door.

What in God’s good name had happened to her sister?

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