She turned her hand in Patty’s loose grasp until the side of her wrist was facing upward, exposing the curved silver scar in the shape of the new moon.
“That scared my mother,” Tessa remembered, thinking of the lines bracketing her mother’s thin, hard mouth. “She waited until my father went out to the fields and then she borrowed the keys to the neighbors’ truck and drove us into town. I was light-headed with the pain, which ebbed and flowed but never got any better even though we kept stopping to pack it with fresh snow from the side of the road.”
“Merciful heavens,” Patty murmured. “But at least your mother finally took you to get treatment.”
Tessa sighed. “Well. For the burn, yes. But when the doctor asked how it happened and I started explaining about my episodes, he got very serious and wanted to run a whole bunch of tests. My mother refused. I don’t know, maybe she was worried about paying for it. We didn’t have health insurance. Or maybe she just didn’t want to know what was wrong with me—sometimes she acted like if we ignored the rest of the world and the things we didn’t like about it, it would all go away. But as we were leaving, the doctor pulled me aside and told me my episodes were called seizures, and that they could be very serious—but they could likely also be treated.”
Without a word, Patty slid off the bar stool and went to get another wineglass. She poured herself a half portion, her lowered eyebrows daring Tessa to comment. Tessa kept her mouth shut and Patty sat back down. Taking a ladylike sip, she said, “Okay. Go ahead. Tell me your parents refused to get you treatment.”
It was even worse than that. Tessa bit her lip. “I hate the way this all makes my parents sound—they aren’t bad people. They hold their beliefs very close to their hearts, and they endure a lot of hardship to adhere to those beliefs. My mother, especially. It must have been a huge blow to have a child who needed more than she could give, more than she believed any person should need.”
Patty set her wineglass down with such force, it was a wonder she didn’t snap the stem. “You are a sweet girl and I love your forgiving heart. But I swear by the Almighty, sugar, if you make any more excuses for those people—”
“I’m not making excuses,” Tessa protested, even as Patty’s fierce protectiveness warmed her heart. “My father was a hard man, and the amount of control he wanted over our household—I know now that there are other ways to live, and I can’t imagine going back to that oppressive, domineering … But you know, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand their reasoning, to see the situation from their perspective, to understand what it was that forced them to react the way they did.”
To understand how they could be willing to see their only daughter die rather than submit her to the care of medical science.
Frustration flattened Patty’s mouth into a grim line. “Finish the story. I won’t interrupt again.”
Blowing out a breath, Tessa bolstered her courage with another sip of wine. “The whole ride home, I argued to be allowed to take the tests. I was really afraid—I don’t know how to explain how terrifying it was to feel so out of control of my body. I hated those seizures, and the idea that I could find out more about what was going on and maybe even get treatment … But Mother gripped the wheel and stared straight ahead. She wouldn’t even look at me. When we got back to the commune, it was late and my father was waiting for us. He took one look at the bandage on my wrist and sent me straight to bed, but I could hear him yelling at Mother about betraying their way of life, giving in to temptation and fear, stuff like that. But instead of agreeing with him, for the first time ever, I heard her talk back.”
The moment was emblazoned on Tessa’s memory. She’d crawled out of her bed and inched over to the edge of the loft, where she could peer down into the cabin’s main room. Her mother had been down on her knees, hair straggling around her shoulders and a look of raw misery on her lined face. “She told him what the doctor said about the seizures and she … she pleaded with him. On her knees, she begged. The look he gave her, I’ll never forget. Contemptuous, disgusted. He sneered at her that she wasn’t the helpmeet he thought he’d married, if her principles and morals could be shaken so easily. He grabbed her by the arm and yanked her up to her feet and I remember being sure he was about to hit her, but he didn’t. He shoved her toward their bedroom and slammed the door behind them, and I knew … I had to leave. My parents never fought. Ever. They were united about everything, except this. I was the thing tearing my family to pieces, and I couldn’t bear it.”
Tessa peeked at Patty, who appeared to be holding her breath. “It’s okay,” Tessa said, attempting a smile. “It was a long time ago, and not to ruin the ending but obviously, I did get away.”
“You ran away,” Patty corrected. “At what, seventeen years old, with no money and no resources and no experience of the world outside your community.”
“It could have gone so badly.” Tessa shivered. “When I think about it now, the kinds of people I could have met up with, the kinds of things I could have fallen into—I really am the luckiest woman alive. Because the person I met was Johnny.”
“Now we’re getting down to it.” Patty settled in, eyes bright and interested.
Tessa nodded. “I waited a couple of hours until I was sure my parents were asleep. Then I got up and dressed in my warmest clothes. I went down the loft ladder as quietly as I could and let myself out of the cabin. It was so dark, but when the clouds shifted, the moon and starlight reflected off the snow, and I could see my way forward a little bit. I didn’t have a plan, exactly, except to get back to town and be at the doctor’s office the next morning to have those tests. I was putting one foot in front of the other, not looking any farther ahead than that—and I hadn’t reckoned on how cold it was. I’d only gotten a few miles when I started stumbling and falling down because my feet were numb inside my boots. I realized I was slowing down, and I’d lost my way in the snow. Part of me wanted to just lie down in a snowbank and go to sleep, but I knew if I did that, I’d never wake up again. So I kept putting one foot in front of the other until, finally, I saw a light in the distance.”
She paused, caught in the memory of that shambling, painful half run toward the tiny light that represented hope to a girl with none. The welcome sight of that red-sided barn whose safety lights had been her beacon. The shock of sudden warmth and the exhaustion that overtook her when she finally allowed herself to stop running.
“It was a barn on the edge of a neighboring farm,” she told Patty. “Johnny’s family’s farm, as it happens. And when he came out to milk the cows the next morning, he found me huddled in the hay, in the middle of one of my fits. I came to in the arms of the handsomest young man I’d ever seen, being carried to his truck and bundled into the passenger seat. I told him I was better, that I was sorry for trespassing, but he waved it all away and took me straight to the hospital. I had my tests, and when I came back out … Johnny was still there, waiting for me.”
Tessa closed her eyes, reliving her complicated joy at the sight of a familiar face when everything in her life was in such turmoil. “The whole story came tumbling out of me, right there in the emergency room reception area, and Johnny never hesitated. He was amazing. He had a solution for every problem—I had juvenile absence epilepsy, I needed treatment. My parents wouldn’t pay for the medicine, Johnny would. He didn’t have the money … but he’d joined the army upon graduating from college, and if we got married before he shipped off to basic training, I’d share in his health benefits. I wasn’t quite eighteen? Well, the age of consent in Maryland was sixteen. Johnny took my hand, and swore to me that all he wanted was to help me.”
Patty made a noise in the back of her throat. “Oh, sugar.”
“I know. I was inexperienced, but I wasn’t an idiot. Of course I was scared, but what could I do? What were my options? The doctor was very clear with me about what I needed to do to control the seizures, and what the consequences would be of letting them go unchecked. I couldn’t stand the thought of going back to the commune, and I knew my father would never relent about the medications anyway—and here was this boy, enough older than me to seem like he knew everything and had all the answers. And he was so handsome, so kind. I took a chance. A crazy chance.”
“You were only a baby,” Patty said gruffly. “When I think what could have happened, I could strangle those parents of yours.”
“But nothing terrible did happen,” Tessa pointed out. “I got married, to a good man who wasn’t lying when he said all he wanted was to help me. I got the treatment I needed, and when I was nineteen, the seizures stopped all by themselves—but by that time, I was taking my GED and keeping the house for when Johnny came home on leave, and I just … stayed married to him.”
Patty’s mouth worked for a moment, silently, before she finally managed to say, “Sugar. When you say all Johnny wanted was to help you…”
Tessa could feel the sting of bitterness in the corners of her smile. “I mean, that’s all he ever wanted. He never touched me. At first I was relieved, but oh, Patty, as the years went by … He was gone so much of the time when he was in the army, but when he was home, it got harder and harder for me to pretend I didn’t want more. We weren’t husband and wife, we were roommates. I’m not proud of how long it took me to leave, but I was sure I was doing the right thing…”
She paused, uncertainty welling up in her belly and mixing unpleasantly with the chardonnay. Patty’s gaze sharpened. “And now you’re not so sure. Because he came for you.”
“I don’t understand how he could want to stay married to me! I’m nobody to him, just some waif he rescued almost a decade ago. It’s long past time I let him out of this deal, so he can find someone he can have a real relationship with. And so I can find a man who actually wants to be with me!”
Taking a last, savoring swallow of wine, Patty leaned her elbow on the butcher block and regarded Tessa consideringly. “Are you certain Johnny doesn’t want you? I would think his actions in pursuing you to Sanctuary Island indicate otherwise.”
Tessa’s mind flashed back to the way he’d kissed her in the park that afternoon, tender and fierce … and hungry. Was it possible Johnny could actually want her? It was hard to believe, after years of being looked through as if she were invisible. Tessa wasn’t sure she was brave enough to let herself believe Johnny’s desire was sincere.
“Johnny’s always had a thing about loyalty,” she explained dully. “He would never leave me, even if he wanted to. I had to be the one to do it. So I did it.”
Even though it had felt as if she were tearing out her own beating heart and leaving it behind. But that was a pain she was sure she could overcome, given enough time—unlike the insidious, soul-killing pain of living every day knowing that she was desperately in love with a man who could never see her as anything other than a vulnerable child to be protected.
That kiss wasn’t real, Tessa decided as she accepted Patty’s fierce hug. That kiss just couldn’t have been real. What Tessa had to remember was how it felt when Johnny kissed her forehead and sent her off to her lonely bed, night after night. She refused to go back to that. She wanted more out of life. She deserved it. And goodness knew, so did he.
But as Patty went back to cooking dinner, finally allowing Tessa to help chop and stir, it was the kiss in the gazebo that kept replaying in Tessa’s head.
* * *
Johnny paced the deserted beach, sand crunching under his leather boots and the rush of waves almost drowning out the thunderous silence on the other end of his phone call.
Losing patience, Johnny said, “Brad. Are you still there?”
A sigh. “I’m here, Johnny. But I was kind of hoping you were kidding.”
The back of Johnny’s neck felt hot. “I know how it sounds, but there’s something going on with this bartender, Brad. I’ve got a gut feeling.”
“Much as I respect your gut…” Brad paused again, seeming to choose his words carefully. “I have to wonder if this is hypervigilance left over from spending the last eighteen months in an incredibly stressful, high-pressure situation where your life was literally in danger every second.”
“Not everything in my life is a reaction to the past eighteen months,” Johnny growled, staring out over the ocean.
“I sent you to Sanctuary Island to get some rest and reconnect with your wife, not to get embroiled in another investigation.”
“I slept fourteen hours straight last night,” Johnny countered. It was the truth. Waking up had been like coming to after a coma. He still felt groggy, although the sea breeze was helping to clear away the mental cobwebs.
“That’s good. And what about your wife? How’s it going with Terri?”
This time Johnny was the one who paused, replaying the memory of that spectacular kiss. After years of dreaming about the softness of her lips, years of imagining the surprised sound she’d make in the back of her throat and the way she’d wrap her arms around his neck and kiss him back, Johnny’s dreams had come true. And the reality had been even more devastating than anything he could have dreamed up.
Maybe he’d been wrong to keep their relationship chaste for so long. But after the way they met, how young she’d been, he would have felt like he was taking advantage of her. The idea of pressuring her into something she didn’t want was the surest way Johnny knew to kill his own desire.
But now that he knew Tessa left because she thought he didn’t want her, all bets were off. Maybe that kiss was fighting dirty, but Johnny was fighting to save his marriage. He’d use every weapon at his disposal.
“She goes by Tessa now,” was all he told Brad. “And she’s my number one priority here. I’m not going to let anything get in the way of that, not even looking into Marcus Beckett. But I’m not going to ignore my gut and pretend the guy doesn’t ping every one of my internal alarms. He lives on the same tiny island where my wife lives, Brad. I need to know who Marcus Beckett is and what he’s doing here.”
Brad finally snapped. “Let it go, for the love of—Johnny, come on. This is textbook paranoia, man. Dr. Reeves talked about this. It’s one of the most common reactions when someone is trying to reintegrate from undercover work back into civilian life.”
“It’s not paranoia if Marcus Beckett is actually a danger to the people in this town!” Johnny stopped, breathing hard into the phone and wishing he couldn’t hear the way he sounded like a raving lunatic just then.
Brad, because he was a stand-up kind of guy, didn’t bother to point it out. All he did was say, very gently and with no trace of judgment, “Your first session with the therapeutic riding center is this afternoon at one. Let me know how it goes.”
As if Brad didn’t have a line on that information already, Johnny mused resentfully. He probably had Johnny’s new therapist on speed dial.
Reminding himself that was fair, since the ATF was footing the bill for Johnny’s therapy and Brad was his boss and had to account for that money in his budget, Johnny forced a calm tone. “I’ll be there. Don’t worry about me.”
“It’s my job to worry about you.”
The fond exasperation in Brad’s tone pulled a reluctant smile out of Johnny. “Oh, in that case, I’m happy to keep you busy. I’d hate for you to get bored at work.”
“You don’t need to dream up new reasons for me to worry! I’ve got plenty already!”
That pulled a reluctant smile from Johnny as he ended the call. The smile faded quickly, though, when he went back to brooding about his new landlord.
So Brad refused to help out and run a background check on the mysterious, surly Marcus Beckett. Well, special agents with the ATF were broadly empowered to investigate criminal activities on their own, and Johnny had every intention of doing just that. He’d already embedded himself in Beckett’s home base. He’d figure out what the man was up to, soon enough.
Johnny turned to trudge back up the beach toward the town square. He’d slipped out of the Buttercup Inn while Beckett was drilling something in the back, and headed out looking for a place where he could be sure of making a private phone call.
Johnny knew better than to ever say anything confidential in a closet or a locked, so-called private office. He’d taken advantage of enough hiding places in his day, and he’d overheard plenty that he wasn’t supposed to.
No, if you want to have a completely private conversation, look for an open field or a stretch of empty sand where you’ll see an eavesdropper coming for miles before they’re close enough to hear anything.
Luckily for him, Sanctuary Island was a sleepy sort of place, not exactly bustling with activity on this spring morning. Other than a dark-haired woman watching her little boy on the jungle gym and an elderly man walking a bulldog around the rose garden, Johnny hadn’t passed anyone.
On his way back up to the town square, things were a little busier—more cars, more pedestrians, a couple of people on bikes. The lunchtime rush, maybe. The thought of lunch got Johnny’s feet moving faster. He hadn’t eaten anything in what felt like years, and those cinnamon rolls he’d smelled at Patty Cakes the day before were calling his name.