Compulsion (18 page)

The path and lawns sloped toward the water, and the shadows playing at the edges of Barrie’s vision seemed more agitated the nearer they came to the dock. She hadn’t been down to the river yet. From there, the old Watson and Beaufort rice fields sprawled to her right on both banks, mirror images in tangles of thick, green foliage. Alligator territory.

Downstream, the broken columns of Colesworth Place rose like clenched fists against the sky, while behind them puffed-up McMansions marked where the Colesworth fields used to lie. Maybe that was proof enough that the Watson gift was necessary. Without it, would there be enough money to keep Watson’s Landing from being parceled off into tiny lots?

Barrie cast Eight a sidelong glance. “Did you know Pru leaves food out for the
yunwi
every night?”

Eight stopped on the dock. “What? Why?”

“So you know about them too. And you didn’t think to mention that last night either.”

“That’s not the point. Why is she feeding them?”

“Because they help her in the garden. On the other hand, they also seem to be taking the house apart, which makes no sense. According to what Cassie said, the Fire Carrier is supposed to stop them from doing that—”

“ ‘According to Cassie’ being the operative phrase. Nobody knows much about the
yunwi
.”

“Somebody has to know something. Will you help me? Ask your dad, or look up ‘
yunwi
’ on the Internet? I would do it myself, but Pru doesn’t have a computer, and I don’t have my phone.”

Eight read her for a moment. “If I say I will, can you promise you won’t do anything stupid?”

Barrie bristled. “Stupid?”

“Hunting for answers where you shouldn’t.” He strode toward the boat as if he knew he had made her mad and was getting out of firing range.

She stepped out onto the long, floating portion of the dock. The boards swayed and the water flowed through the rushes all around her. Apart from one summer of lessons, Barrie had never learned to swim. And while Eight’s boat looked bigger than it had from the balcony, it rocked precariously beneath her feet as Eight helped her on board.

He dug a life vest out of the seat compartment. “Here, put that on,” he said. “And would you grab a couple of Cokes from the cooler in the cabin while I untie the dock line?”

The sun-bleached vest smelled of fish and salt. Barrie buckled herself into it before she leaned into the tiny cabin and rummaged in the cooler. Icy condensation stiffening her fingers, she brought up the two Cokes as Eight jumped in. The boat pitched with the sudden movement, and she had no way to hold on.

Eight set down the can she handed him. “You doing all right?”

“Fan-damn-tastic.” She settled herself on the bench.

Smiling faintly, he focused all his attention on her another moment before ducking under the horizontal arm of the mast to settle beside the motor. He pulled the cord, one long, sharp movement that made his muscles flex. How had Barrie not realized how strong he was? The motor sputtered and spat water before finally kicking in.

She hadn’t seen the boat under sail yet. She wasn’t sure if she was disappointed not to see it now, either.

“No point trying to go without the motor when the wind comes straight over the bow like this,” Eight said, reading her again. “You’d spend the whole time ducking while we tacked—turned—to keep the sails full. Which is what makes the boat go. Sailing, get it? There’s a reason they call that a boom.” He
grinned and pointed to the arm extending off the mast.

“Go ahead. Laugh.” Barrie tugged on her life vest strap to make it tighter. “I’ve been on a boat exactly once before this.”

It wasn’t until she looked down that she realized how much her hands were shaking at the memory of her mother’s funeral, of the boat rising and falling in the swells beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. Was it only a week ago that she had leaned over the side and done her best not to throw up as she’d scattered Lula’s ashes? She slid her hands beneath her thighs. This wasn’t Lula’s funeral. Lula’s ashes were long gone, drifting somewhere in the Pacific, a continent, a lifetime away.

“I thought you wanted to come with me.” Eight’s tone went flat. “I know you did.”

“I do.”

Worry and hope stirred in Eight’s eyes. He didn’t move, but he suddenly seemed closer. Closer, the way he had been in the parking lot when he had almost kissed her. Barrie turned to look out across the water to break the spell.

“You’re exasperating sometimes, you know that?” Eight said. “Also, I’ve been sailing my whole life. You’re perfectly safe.”

“Which is exactly what someone always says in the movies just before the disaster hits.”

“This isn’t a movie, and it happens to be true. Anyway, the river isn’t deep. You can trust me.”

Barrie turned her face into the wind and the fine spray
kicking up from the bow. The chug of the motor drowned the shush of the river. Eight steered out into the current and turned the boat downstream.

Like a switch turned from off to on, a sudden ache of loss hit Barrie, along with a sharp pain in her head. She looked back at the dock and house, waiting for the pressure to abate. It didn’t, though. Come to think of it, it had subsided yesterday only when she and Eight had returned back to Watson’s Landing. Unlike her normal reaction to a lost object, the pull and the headache hadn’t diminished with distance. Instead, like now, they had grown stronger, and no amount of rubbing at her temples released the tension.

She tried not to panic. There had to be a reasonable explanation.

They passed the Colesworth dock, and she looked up the low hill to the eight jagged columns. Set farther back, the ordinary two-story house where her cousins lived was overshadowed by the size and eeriness of the ruins.

She distracted herself by kicking her feet against the bench. “Do you suppose there could really have been something valuable buried there all these years?” she asked.

“Why not?”

“How can they know it’s there and not know where to find it? Isn’t it more likely that whatever valuables they had were looted by the Yankees?”

“Listen to you, sounding all Southern already.” Eight laughed as Barrie rolled her eyes, and in the sun and wind he looked like the boy she had seen playing with his dog across the river that first day. It was only now that she realized she hadn’t seen him that carefree since.

“Treasure hunting is practically a Southern pastime,” he said. “Seems like half the families in Georgia and the Carolinas have ancestors who buried the family jewels and silver when they knew Sherman’s army was heading in their direction. If the men were killed and only children or women or slaves survived to tell the story, exactly where the stuff was hidden never got passed along. How something might have gotten lost at Colesworth Place isn’t what worries me. I’m more concerned with what happens if there’s nothing for you to find. Don’t kid yourself. Wyatt came by last night for a reason. If he’s that eager for you to find their lost fortune, what’s he going to do when you don’t?”

Barrie dropped her eyes. “I got the feeling it was all Cassie’s idea.”

“Then why did Wyatt follow you to the Resurrection?”

“Maybe for the same reason I want to go to Colesworth Place. Have you been there? Aren’t you the least bit curious?” Barrie turned back to watch the columns receding. “And maybe I’ll get a chance to talk to him about the night Lula left.”

“If he’ll tell you.”

“You suppose Cassie’s play is any good?”

“It doesn’t have to be good. You’ve met Cassie. She could hold an audience captive reading a nutrition label.”

Of course she could. Barrie stomped down a jealous pang and reminded herself she was the one who had asked for Eight’s opinion. Girls who looked like Cassie owned a room the moment they walked into it. Eight might claim he didn’t know Cassie well, he might not trust Cassie’s family or her motives, but he wasn’t indifferent to her. How could he be?

And how could it already matter this much?

The wind swept Barrie’s hair into her face, but she didn’t bother to hold it back. Colesworth Place vanished as the boat puttered around the bend. Here the river emptied into the sound, and the smell of the water changed.

“You never answered me before,” Barrie said, “about what you want.”

“What I want changes all the time.”

“Not the important stuff. Come on. You owe me.”

Eight adjusted the rudder, and they detoured around a sandbar exposed by the outbound tide. He was silent so long, Barrie started to think he wasn’t going to answer at all. But he knew so much about her, and she deserved at least a crumb.

“All right. Two things,” he said. “One, I hate the Beaufort gift, and two, I’d get rid of it if I could.”

“Neither of those count. I’d pretty much figured them out already. Tell me something personal. Something real.”

“I didn’t want to like you as much as I do,” he said. “Is that real enough for you?”

Barrie turned her face back into the salty spray and tried to decide if Eight’s declaration was an insult or something to celebrate.

Barrie’s expression must have registered her confusion. Eight shook his head and leaned toward her with one hand still on the rudder. “Hold on. I phrased that wrong. What I meant was more that I wasn’t expecting to like you as much as I do. Which implies I wasn’t expecting to like you at all, and I wasn’t. I mean, I didn’t have any expectations.” He sighed and gave her a rueful grin. “I’m still not saying it right, am I?”

The boat rocked in the choppy water, and the spray on Barrie’s face now carried the sting of salt. “What are you trying to say?”

“That I like you, but I’m going to California at the end of next month.” He steered toward the marina in front of the lighthouse. “I’ve wanted to get away from Watson Island for so long, I can’t remember not wanting it. Now, for the first
time, there might be a reason to stay, and it’s too late.”

Too late? That summed it all up, didn’t it?

They were passing the strip of beach where Eight had shown her the turtle’s nest. Beyond it, the sound turned to ocean, and a jumble of umbrellas and tropical towels dotted one of the public beaches, echoing the chaos in Barrie’s mind. Turning back to Eight, she caught him in three-quarter profile: his straight nose, his stubborn chin, his eyes wary on her as if he weren’t sure what she would do. She wondered what he would look like in the dead of winter when his tan faded and his hair darkened. But she wouldn’t see him then.

Last night he had talked about meeting someone for dinner, but she had been too focused on seeing Cassie to pay attention. “You mentioned a recruiter,” she said.

“Yeah, I got a baseball scholarship to play at USC—Southern California, not South Carolina. Around here those two are easily confused.”

“Free hint. California’s a whole lot farther away.” Too far.

But Barrie refused to feel dismay. She refused to want him to stay. That would confuse things further. She had only just met him, and he was being nice to her because . . . Oh, who knew why? Because of the Watson-Beaufort connection Cassie had mentioned, maybe.

“And after college? Are you coming back?”

“If I did, Dad would want me to join the family business.
I’m not cut out to be a lawyer.” Eight said the word as if it had four letters. “I was lucky to get the minimum grades for my scholarship, which I needed so Dad couldn’t threaten not to pay when he found out what I was going to do. . . .”

Barrie waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. “Does it matter that much? Aren’t there other jobs you could do here?”

“Not for a Beaufort. Law goes with our gift the same way finding investment opportunities goes with yours. Beauforts know how to negotiate settlements, pick juries, make deals.” Eight steered the boat toward the harbor, and pointed suddenly off to their right. “Look,” he said.

Barrie turned in time to see a dolphin glide back beneath the waves and reemerge. One, then two, then five or six sleek gray bodies arced and knifed below the surface, again and again, until they were only splashes in the distance.

“I wish it were that easy to get away. This place makes me claustrophobic,” Eight said. “I’m dyslexic. You know what that is?”

Barrie nodded. “It makes it hard to read because you see the letters jumbled.”

“It’s not that I couldn’t manage if I wanted to. Plenty of dyslexic people are doctors and lawyers and whatever. But that just isn’t me. I don’t want it enough to work that hard, and the whole town expects things from me that I can’t deliver. My dad expects things. If I stay, I’ll always be a failure when I
don’t meet those expectations, and I’d rather do something I am good at. Something that makes me feel good about myself.”

The longing etched into his expression just then, the defiance and the slight hoarseness in his voice . . . those more than the words made Barrie want to reach out to him, to touch him and somehow know the right thing to say to make him feel better. But her mind was a mess of elusively swirling words.

Unlike her, Eight wore confidence like a second skin. How could she have missed seeing that he had the same insecurities she had? Maybe if she had bothered to look beneath his beautiful-boy exterior, she would have seen his doubt. Recognized it.