Compulsion (8 page)

Maybe it
was
reckless, and totally unlike her, to sneak behind Pru’s back to meet her cousin. She wondered if Lula had felt the same sense of scared anticipation, the same rush of being alive, when she had snuck off to meet a Colesworth in spite of the feud. Had that been the attraction? The knowledge
that Wade was forbidden? But Lula must have loved Wade to run off with him.

Wrapping her hand around her necklace, Barrie leaned forward in her seat. She thought of the way Lula had watched her, for hours sometimes, without saying a word. With Lula’s expression invisible beneath her veils, that furious, silent scrutiny had felt like hate. It shamed Barrie to realize she had never wondered
why
her mother would feel like that.

“Why do the families hate one another?” she shouted to Eight over the music and the wind. “What began the feud?”

Eight’s shoulders stiffened visibly. He glanced at her, then snapped his attention back to the road as a truck whipped past them going the opposite direction. “That’s a long answer, and it gets mixed up with the promise I made your aunt.”

“Which you can feel free to ignore anytime now,” Barrie said, but even as she spoke, she knew she wanted Eight to be the kind of guy who didn’t break a promise.

Barrie was digging for aspirin in her purse, so she missed Eight driving past the bridge to the mainland. She looked up to find that they had arrived on the outskirts of Watson’s Point. Having found no aspirin, she threw the bag onto the floor and flopped back in her seat. Eight slowed the car almost to walking speed.

His eyes flicked between the road and Barrie, and she tried not to be embarrassed by how intently he watched her. Or flattered. “So, what do you think?” he asked.

She thought she had never really been alone with a boy like this.

She thought it was strange to take pride in being only a little afraid instead of terrified.

“Of the town,” Eight said.

“I don’t know yet.” Barrie turned to concentrate on her surroundings. Elevated on pilings, the first houses of Watson’s Point clung to the beach in a single file, the stark blues and grays of their clapboard sidings relieved by masses of roses and bougainvillea. The houses scattered onto residential side streets deeper in town, and colorful signs creaked in the wind in front of stores and restaurants. Shoppers strolled along the sidewalks in bathing suits, shorts, or summer dresses.

Barrie felt no connection to any of it, no pull of foundness or sense of recognition, not even as they passed the Watson Bank where Lula had worked for a couple of summers for her father—one of the few things Barrie’s mother had ever mentioned about growing up. Eight drove nearly to the center of town, turned inland, and made a second right. Suddenly the car was on a collision course with a monstrous oak tree growing in the road.

“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the one, the only, gen-u-ine tourist attraction in Watson’s Point.” Eight spoke in a theatrical announcer’s voice. “I give you . . . the Devil’s Oak.” The
i
in “Devil” was stretched long in his usual Southern drawl.

Despite its name, sunlight shone through the canopy, outlining the hanging tendrils of moss, like fingers from heaven. The trunk was nearly the width of Eight’s car. Several of the branches had grown so heavy, they snaked along the ground. The tree had to be older than the town itself. The road split
to get around it, leaving room for a grassy knoll dotted with benches, tourists, and a soft-serve ice-cream stand. Eight parked on the shoulder across the street. Barrie wished she had her sketchbook, or at least her cell phone.

“Would you take a picture of me?” She reached for the door handle. “I want to send it to my godfather.”

“Sure.” Eight grabbed his phone from where he’d stored it in the ashtray, and loped around the front of the car to get her door.

He
had
to be too good to be true.

Still, Barrie waited in her seat for him to come around, and she couldn’t help smiling as she stood up. He didn’t look away. Time slowed, stretched like a rubber band, and snapped back into place when she stepped aside feeling breathless.

A sturdy tugboat of a woman had emerged from the side door of the soft-serve stand and came steaming toward them in a haze of pink: pink pants, pink T-shirt, and pink-painted lips clearly used to being pursed in disapproval. “Wadded-up tight,” Mark would have called her.

“Eight Beaufort, is that Lula’s little girl?” she called before she was even halfway across the road.

Eight’s smile withered. “Hey, Emma Jean. I didn’t know you were working the stand today.”

“Not much choice, seeing as how Gilly’s gone to the orthodontist.” Emma Jean dismissed Eight with a wave of her hand,
and her eyes raked over Barrie. “Well, let me have a look at you. Gracious, you
are
a Watson, aren’t you?” She shook her head, making it clear that being a Watson wasn’t a thing to which one should aspire. “Gawd. Imagine Lula having a baby and never saying a word about it.” She paused and her expression sharpened, her nostrils flaring like a hound that had caught a whiff of a scent. “How old did you say you were, sugar?”

“Seventeen.” Pronouncing each syllable carefully, politely, Barrie stepped backward, but the car door behind her cut off her escape.

“Seventeen?” Emma Jean’s eyes narrowed, and she studied Barrie’s features even more closely, as if her sight were bad. “Not sure there’s anything of my cousin Wade in you at all,” she said finally. “Not a single thing.”

The woman might have been talking about features, but given the question about Barrie’s age, it was probably more than that. Maybe the Colesworths didn’t even want Barrie to be related to them. She caught herself glancing at Eight, but she wasn’t sure what she expected him to do. Play her knight in shining armor? Open doors and slay pink dragons? He hardly knew her.

She didn’t need him to defend her. And she didn’t need the Colesworths.

“My father was killed the night I was born,” she said. “I never saw him, and I can’t help looking like a Watson.”

Emma Jean’s ginger curls were sprayed so hard, they didn’t budge when she shook her head. “Bless your heart, I know that. I don’t mean any of this is
your
fault. It’s just . . . none of this makes sense, that’s all. Lula was supposed to have been dead since the fire. I keep telling Wyatt to calm down, that there’s bound to be an explanation, but—maybe we’ve got it all wrong. Were you adopted? Maybe it was your adopted mama who died last week?”

Oh, for Pete’s sake
. “I wasn’t adopted,” Barrie said.

“Then where has Lula been?” Emma Jean gave the sort of cautious sniff someone might give a glass of milk that had probably gone sour. “You’re telling me she’s been alive all this time, with Wade’s baby, and never said a word to anyone? Never got in touch? Don’t tell me there isn’t more to it than that. Trying to keep you away from us, most likely. That would be like Emmett, like all of them. Everyone around here will side with Pru Watson and Seven Beaufort, buy their version like it’s gospel.”

“There is no version!” Barrie’s chest was squeezing tighter and tighter, and she pushed back against the car, letting it hold her up. Breathe out, then in. Out, then in. “And there are no sides,” she continued more calmly. “Not where I’m concerned. My mother was hurt in the fire. Disfigured. She didn’t want to come back here looking like that, and I can’t blame her.”

For the first time, Barrie could imagine what it would
have been like for Lula to face someone like Emma Jean, face any of the people who had known her before. Back when she’d been beautiful. Barrie let out a hitch of breath, little more than a hint of sound at the sudden memory of Lula on the floor, her wig askew, her scarred face exposed and still.

“Don’t be upset, hon.” Emma Jean’s voice was softer. “I’m sorry. Everyone knows I talk too much, and Lord knows I don’t always take the time to think before I open my mouth. I meant the situation was odd, that’s all. Strange.”

No arguing that. But it hadn’t been all Emma Jean had meant.

Rubbing Mark’s watch, Barrie wished herself back into the car. Wished herself back at Watson’s Landing. Wished herself back in San Francisco.

“Wow, look what time it is. We need to get going, Bear.” Eight peeled his hip off the fender and nudged her aside to pull the passenger door open for her. “Sorry, Emma Jean. I’m sure you’ll be seeing Barrie around. I’ll bring her back for ice cream.” He hustled Barrie into the car and winked as she dropped into the bucket seat. “Emma Jean here makes the best ice cream in town.”

“Is that right?” Barrie buckled her seat belt with a snap.

“Fourteen flavors fresh every day. Homemade. Every one of them.” Emma Jean puffed up with pleasure and smiled, benign as a shark, watching while Eight trotted around to the
driver’s side and settled behind the wheel. She waved as he pulled slowly off the shoulder.

Barrie waggled her fingers in response, nodding a dazed good-bye.

“You all right?” Eight glanced sideways at her.

“Sure. Fantastic. That was fun.” She blew out an exasperated breath, wanting to sock him in the arm. “What
was
that? First she implies that Wade wasn’t even my father, and then she’s acting like I was practically kidnapped by the Watsons. Psycho much? Why didn’t you get us out of there sooner?”

“You were doing fine on your own. Anyway, you might as well get used to being grilled like a steak. There are plenty more where Emma Jean came from.”

“Psychos?”

“Colesworths. And busybodies. Town’s full of both.”

Eight’s thumb tapped the steering wheel in time to the music while he followed the road around the Devil’s Oak. Barrie watched the families: camera-happy fathers, frazzled mothers, sullen teenagers, elementary schoolers with chocolate ice-cream lips. She and Eight hadn’t gotten the photograph for Mark, but she didn’t care. She’d had enough of questions she couldn’t answer.

They turned on a side street, then doubled back toward the perimeter road. A cute girl in shorts emerged from a QuickMart carrying two green mesh shopping bags as Eight
slowed to turn the corner. Spotting the car, the girl waved and called: “Hey, Eight! Is that her? Y’all come on over here!”

Barrie prayed Eight wouldn’t stop.

He slowed until the car was barely moving. “Hey, Jeannie. It sure is, but we’ll have to catch up with you later.”

How was it possible to feel claustrophobic in an open car?

Barrie gave the girl a wave and concentrated on taking deep, slow breaths. Of course people would talk about her. She was the new girl. Mark had predicted this was how it would be. But it was early June, and in a few weeks she would be old news. By the time Labor Day rolled around and school began, the curiosity would have died. Until then she was trapped in hell and descending deeper.

They turned back onto the main road, and Barrie had to laugh. There in front of them, incongruous among the weathered clapboard storefronts, stood a black building with flames painted up the facade, perfectly mimicking her thoughts. A battered sign above the door read:
THE RESURRECTION TAVERN: RIBS SO GOOD, YOU’LL THINK YOU’VE DIED AND GONE TO HEAVEN.

“Looks more like the devil’s playground,” Barrie muttered.

“What?” Eight glanced over.

“Nothing. I’m sensing a religious theme in town.”

Eight grinned in a way that would have made Mark comment about the devil and temptation. “Besides it being hell to
live in, you mean? There’s a story for everything on Watson Island.”

“And the story is?” Barrie found herself smiling back at him.

“The devil used to take a nap under the oak every day, until a thief came along and stole his favorite pair of shoes. Old Satan had to borrow the hooves from a goat to get home, but every summer, when it’s as hot here as it is in hell, he comes back to dig for them—which accounts for the holes people find on the beach around here.”

“Holes? Like someone’s digging? But why?”

“Treasure hunting, for one thing—”

“Because Thomas was a pirate?” Barrie eyed him warily.

“A privateer.” Eight gave her a slow, easy smile. “Our ancestors were respectable pirates, thank you.”

“
Our
ancestors?”

“Thomas Watson and Robert Beaufort. Well, John Colesworth, too, but no one would call him respectable.”

“That’s kind of hypocritical, don’t you think? Doesn’t seem like we have any right to judge who’s respectable.”

“How well did you like Emma Jean?”

Barrie flushed and knew exactly how Pru must have felt in the kitchen with Seven the night before. Beauforts were infuriating. “Did you take me to the Devil’s Oak knowing I was going to meet Emma Jean? Is that it?” She poked
Eight in the arm. “You thought I would reconsider meeting Cassie.”

“Hold on.” Eight threw her an incredulous glance. “I had no idea Emma Jean would be there. It’s not just a question of respectability. Our ancestors may have been privateers, but Beauforts and Watsons have always been law-abiding citizens. The Colesworths sold guns to the Indians, ran slaves through the Middle Passage, and tried privateering again in the Civil War. They smuggled alcohol during prohibition. Wyatt’s still running drugs, if you believe the rumors. He’s not catching many fish on his boat, that’s for sure.”