Compulsion (10 page)

“You just have to be my little cousin. Barrie, isn’t it? I heard you were coming—in this town everyone knows everything!” She gave a laugh and pulled Barrie into a hug. “I am so, so glad to meet you.”

This
was the girl Pru and Seven didn’t want Barrie to meet?

Barrie wanted to be the kind of a person who could throw her arms around a stranger and not feel self-conscious. But she returned the hug awkwardly, too aware of everyone staring at her. Closing her eyes, she forced herself to relax.

“Now tell me, did you come to eat or to say hello?”

“Both,” Eight said at the same time Barrie answered, “I wanted to meet you.”

“And I am so glad you did! Here.” Cassie dragged Barrie toward a table by the window. It hadn’t been cleared yet, but she swept up the cups, red baskets, and debris with a quick “Hold on a second,” then rushed to drop them onto the counter by the order window. She returned with a fresh bucket of peanuts and
a damp cloth, which she used to wipe the table. When she’d finished, she straightened with her cheeks slightly flushed.

“There now. Have a seat.”

“Thank you,” Barrie said, although she couldn’t, because Cassie was in the way.

“You know,” Cassie said, examining Barrie’s face, “you don’t look anything like the pictures I’ve seen of my uncle Wade.” She turned Barrie to face Eight and dropped her arm around Barrie’s shoulders. “What do you think? Do we look alike? Can you tell we’re cousins?”

Barrie’s face heated until, she imagined, she was the color of the crab shells hanging on the wood-planked walls. Even in her high-heeled shoes, she was almost a head shorter than Cassie. On top of that, her cousin had the kind of effortless confidence that came from being in-your-face gorgeous from the moment you entered the world. In their level of perfection, Cassie and Eight were a matched set. Barrie was nowhere near their league. She knew that. Seemingly everyone else did too. They were all still staring.

“You know what? It doesn’t matter.” As if she’d caught Barrie’s embarrassment, Cassie gave a blinding smile and squeezed Barrie’s hand again. “Look at this beautiful pale skin of yours! And bless your heart, look how skinny you are! I wish I had your figure. Now you sit right here. Sit. You order, and by the time your food is ready, I’ll be able to sneak back and talk a
bit.” She pointed to a chalkboard menu hanging above the order window. “What can I get you? On the house, of course.”

Barrie sat and tried to concentrate on the options, but there were too many combinations and hot dog condiments she had never heard of: the Blue Dog with blue-cheese slaw and sweet potato mustard; the Hottie Dog with chili, cheese, slaw, and spicy mustard; the Green Dog, which was tofu with mustard, ketchup, and onions . . .

“If anything seems too adventurous, you can always order the Bikini Dog.” Cassie pointed to an item on the bottom of the listing. “That’s just plain.”

Eight slid along the bench, closer to Barrie. Her mouth was watering at the
idea
of sweet potato mustard; it sounded tangy and spicy and sweet all at the same time. “She’ll have the Blue,” Eight said. “Do you want sweet potato fries with that, Bear? And a Cherry Coke?”

“Sounds great.” Perfect, actually, which bothered Barrie almost as much as the fact that Eight assumed he could order for her or casually give her a nickname as if he knew her. On the other hand, bears were strong, and she needed all the strength she could get.

She gave an annoyed nod, and tried not to notice the way Cassie stared into Eight’s eyes while he ordered a Hottie Dog for himself.

“All right. I’ll put this in and help a few more customers,
and then I’ll be back.” Cassie scribbled the last item onto her pad. “I can’t wait to hear all about you and your mama and San Francisco—and well, just everything!” She gave Barrie a dazzling smile before departing.

The moment she was gone, a silence blanketed the room. A motionless silence. Then a bench scraped loudly a few tables away. A couple of teens hurried over, a boy and a girl with long legs and golden skin. The boy slapped Eight on the back and they introduced themselves, but Barrie didn’t catch their names. Suddenly it seemed like
all
the benches were scraping back and the peanut shells on the floor were being trampled by every foot in the building en route to their table. Eight acted like it was no big deal, easy peasy, all these people, all those words, all the smiles and laughs and weighing, scrutinizing eyes. He sat on the bench like it was a throne and he was holding court, and the crowd made a half circle around their table, talking, elbowing one another out of the way to wave or hold out their hands in introduction.

Barrie smiled until her cheeks hurt. “Nice to meet you,” she said at least twenty times, nodding and feeling like her head was as empty as a bobblehead doll’s. Why was it so hard to think of anything intelligent or witty to say in answer to the questions thrown at her?

“How do you like Watson’s Point?” someone asked.

“It’s charming,” Barrie answered.

“So you’d never met your aunt Pru before now?” an older man said. “That’s what I heard, isn’t it?”

“Nope, never met her,” Barrie said. “But she’s very nice.”

“Sorry to hear about your mama passing,” the golden girl said.

“Thank you.” Barrie smiled even wider.

“Yeah, we sure were sorry to hear about your mama,” someone else said. “A little confused about it, but awful sorry.”

Barrie nodded again, feeling trapped and stupid. And so it went for a few more minutes, and though they were all very nice, she wished they would just go away.

“How long are you going to stay?” someone asked. “You moving back for good?”

Eight cleared his throat. “Y’all do know the girl just got here? We might want to give her some room to breathe or she’s going to run out of here faster than a scalded haint. No need for her to meet the whole town in one swoop.”

He didn’t raise his voice. If anything, he spoke more softly than the others, but they heard him, laughed, and started to disperse. Barrie answered the last calls of “Well, welcome,” and “Good-bye,” and sighed in relief. It didn’t escape her, though, that almost everyone seemed to pull out their cell phones before they had even gotten back to their tables.

“Everyone’s going to race to make sure their friends know they met you first,” Cassie said, coming back with their food.
“This place. I swear, you’d think no one had anything to do all day but gossip.”

The front door banged and a middle-aged couple entered. As he passed their table, a man with a thinning thatch of hair stopped and gaped at them.

“Rolls the years back to see the two of you here like this,” he said.

Barrie looked at him blankly. He seemed to give himself a mental shake and held his hand out. “Sorry. You must be Lula’s daughter. Welcome back home, honey.”

“Barrie Watson,” Barrie said. “Thanks, and nice to meet you.”

“Joe Goldstein.” His smile was sheepish and sweet. “I edit the local paper. Heard you were back, of course, but I won’t deny it caught me by surprise. I could almost think it was Seven and Pru back here, keeping one eye on each other and the other looking out for old man Emmett.”

Cassie, rolling her eyes, excused herself and stepped back from the table. “Gotta get those orders,” she said. “I’ll be back.”

“That’s probably my cue to go sit down so I can tell her what I want to eat,” Joe Goldstein said with a chuckle. “Sure hope I’ll be seeing you again.”

“So there
was
something between your dad and Pru?” Barrie whispered to Eight as the man threaded his way out the door.

“Must have been a long time ago.” Eight reached across to Barrie’s basket and stole a sweet potato fry.

Barrie slapped his hand away. “Quit.”

“Mine don’t taste as good as yours.” He grinned, not the least bit repentant. “Hey, did you know your face gets pink when you’re mad? Or embarrassed. Or confused . . .”

“Just for that, keep your hands off my food.” Barrie slid her basket away from him, reached in for the Blue Dog, and took a bite. Sensory overload. “Oh, God. This has to be the best hot dog on the planet. Ever.”

“It’s the mustard and the salt air. And the company, of course.”

“Shame you have such a case of self-confidence deficit disorder.”

“Sounds dangerous. You should give me a compliment immediately to boost my self-esteem.” Eight stole another fry, and frowned as the door opened and then banged closed behind a woman who stopped and scanned the room. “Heads up. Here we go again.”

The woman who had come in was probably Pru’s age, with a cute bob of dark hair and a pretty figure shown off in clothes that, while still elegant and expensive, looked about a size too tight. Spotting Eight, she smiled and marched determinedly toward their table. She was breathing hard by the time she reached them.

“No, no, don’t get up,” she said, clearly expecting they would. “Everyone is talking about how charming Lula’s little girl turned out, so I had to rush right over here to say hello.”

Eight stole another fry from Barrie as he stood up. “Barrie, meet Julia Lyons. She and her husband own the big boat shop across the parking lot.”

“You just call me Julia. I was a friend of your mama’s,” Julia added. “Her best friend. I miss her like crazy.”

“It’s nice to meet people who knew her,” Barrie said.

“Oh, honey.
Everyone
knew Lula.” Julia laughed. “It was always more a question of who Lula was willing to know.” Her eyes slid toward Cassie and rested there a moment before she gave a slight shake of her head. “I suppose the island always was too small for her. I shouldn’t have been surprised when she and Wade ran off.”

“Were they that much in love?” Barrie couldn’t help asking.

Julia stilled momentarily, then sat down on the bench across from Barrie. “I’ve asked myself that question a million times. I never heard about it, if she was. But if Emmett forbade her to see Wade, she might have convinced herself she was in love with the boy. You couldn’t ever tell Lula no.” Julia glanced at Barrie and then at Eight with her eyes brimming. “Sorry. I’ve spent all this time wondering if I could have done something different when she left. I cried myself to sleep for weeks. You take things hard at that age—your age, just about.
I’ve gone over every moment of that summer so many times. I waited by the phone for her to call, and there was only the stupid letter.” She tried to smile, and couldn’t manage. “Now I find out she had a baby and didn’t tell me. At least it explains why she had to leave so fast. Emmett would have locked her away for the rest of her life if he’d found out she was pregnant.”

“My birthday’s in September,” Barrie said. “So I couldn’t have been the reason she left. You said she sent a letter, though? She wrote to you?”

“Not to me. She sent me an envelope to give to Pru and scrawled instructions on a Post-it for me to make sure Emmett didn’t see it.” Julia twirled her wedding ring around her finger.

“Didn’t Pru tell you what it said?” Barrie asked.

“She might have if I’d given it to her, but none of us could get past Emmett. He would tell me Pru wasn’t there whenever I called or stopped by, and she never seemed to leave Watson’s Landing unless he was with her. I kept waiting for a chance to slip it to her, but then we heard Lula was dead anyway. It seemed cruel to open old wounds.”

Barrie leaned forward eagerly. “Do you still have it—the letter, I mean?”

“I haven’t seen it in years, so maybe my husband threw it away. Or it got put somewhere. I don’t know.” Julia’s eyes dropped to her wedding ring, and she twisted it around her
finger as if she wished it could make her invisible, like Frodo’s ring. “To be honest, the letter was the kind of thing I knew I shouldn’t throw away, but at the same time, it was too late to do anything with it.”

“So you never opened it?”

Julia shrugged, but her expression was vulnerable and almost pleading. “How could I?”

How could she
not
? Barrie held back a growl of frustration. When the answers were right there and all you had to do was open an envelope and read them, why would you not want the answer?

Julia’s chin was starting to tremble, and she had stopped twisting her ring in favor of pressing her hands tightly together on her lap. “Lula and I were best friends. Best friends. We did everything together. And then she left without a word. She didn’t even consider how I would feel. She left and then she died. It was impossible to think of Lula dead. She loved life so much.”

Barrie wanted to reach across the table, take Julia’s hand, and tell her it would be all right. Of course, it wouldn’t be. It couldn’t be, because Lula was still dead. The conversation withered into an embarrassed silence.

With a soft subject-changing sound in his throat, Eight got up and plucked his empty cup off the table to get a refill. “I saw Jack Sprague in front of the Wishy-Wash earlier, Miss Julia. Weren’t you wanting to get your oven fixed? You probably
want to catch him before he heads back across the bridge?”

Julia quickly rose. “Thank you for reminding me. Yes, I suppose I’d better go.” She smiled as Barrie stood up too. “I hope we can catch up more. Come anytime.”

Barrie nodded, but Julia was already hurrying toward the door.

Eight got the refill, came back, and dropped down beside her. “You haven’t even touched your drink.”

“I haven’t exactly had a chance. And
you
should take up fortune-telling. How did you know about her oven?”

“It’s Watson Island,” Eight said, as if that explained it. “You had about enough? Why don’t we get out of here?”

“No, you can’t leave yet.” Cassie came up behind them. She lowered herself gracefully to sit on the bench between Barrie and the wall. “What did I miss, Cos? I swear, it’s been busier at this table than the kissing booth at the barbecue festival. Lord, I hate this place.” Her eyes narrowed, and for a moment she looked very different, not pretty at all. “You may as well get used to everyone getting into your business if you’re going to stick around. They think they own our families. Eight and I have lived here all our lives. We’re old news. Imagine what it’s going to be like for you with everyone watching to see what you do.”