JOSH AND BRIANA got to Illyria just in time to pick Nealie up from school. They would not tell her about the wedding—not yet. She was too young to keep a secret. They would decide when the time was right for everyone to know.
As her husband and daughter bantered about school, Briana put her hand gently on her abdomen. What she’d told Josh was true. She didn’t feel pregnant—but it was too soon for such feelings. And she was married. It did not seem possible. It was like some strange dream.
She was jerked back to reality when Josh asked Nealie, “What’s that spot on your sweater?”
Nealie said, “Oh, I had a nosebleed. I got bumped in the hall.”
A chill swept through Briana, and her hand tightened protectively over her midsection.
“Did you go to the nurse’s office?” Josh asked, voice taut. “Did they put ice on it?”
“Yes,” Nealie said, as if the subject was boring. “It was just a little nosebleed. It stopped fast. I got a drop on my sweater, that’s all.”
“You’re sure?” Josh asked.
“I’m just glad I didn’t get it on my picture. I drew another picture for you. I’ll give it to you when we get home. It’s in my backpack.”
Just a little nosebleed, Briana thought. Just a little one. Nothing to panic over. But for the rest of the trip, nothing felt dreamlike.
At home, Nealie ran upstairs to change clothes. Her limp seemed more pronounced. Josh watched as she closed her bedroom door. “I want that kid well,” he said, his face hard with emotion.
“We both do,” Briana said softly. She touched his shoulder. He turned, put his arms around her, bent and kissed her lips.
The office door opened upstairs, and Penny’s voice called, “Briana? I needed to ask you about this customer who wants—” She stopped when she saw Briana in Josh’s embrace.
Briana looked at Penny but kept her hands locked around Josh’s neck and didn’t move away from him. She was tired of hiding her feelings about Josh. It was time to let people know.
“Yes?” Briana said.
“Oops.” Penny eased toward the office. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s okay,” Josh said. He stepped away from Briana reluctantly.
It was just as well he did. Nealie came bursting out of her door in blue jeans and a yellow sweatshirt. As she dashed down the steps, Penny slipped inside the office.
“Here’s my picture,” cried Nealie, waving a piece of paper. “It’s for you, Daddy. So when you go away, you can look at it and think of me.”
She ran to him and thrust it at him. “See? It’s a shamrock. We’re studying Ireland, because St. Patrick’s Day is coming. Ireland is forty different shades of green. I used all the green crayons in my box.”
“That’s nice work, Nealie,” Josh said, studying it. “Good composition. Nice color. Let’s put it on the refrigerator so we can look at it.”
Nealie looked hesitant. “But it’s for you to take when you go.”
“I’ll carry it everywhere,” Josh promised her. “I’ll never be without it, and I’ll bring it back home to you.”
“Promise?” Nealie asked.
“I swear it,” Josh said, raising his hand solemnly.
Nealie threw herself at him. He set the picture aside and swept her into his arms. Warmth stole through Briana’s veins. Josh loved the child so much, and the love was deep and mutual.
“It’s a beautiful picture, Nealie,” she said. “A very nice present. For now I’ll put it by the picture of George Washington’s cherry tree.”
Nealie looked up at Briana. “George Washington couldn’t always be home, either. He had to go during the war and be a hero. Daddy’s a hero, isn’t he? I think so.”
Josh looked dubious, but Briana said, “Yes. I think so, too.”
Nealie’s expression went moody. “The trouble with heroes is that they have to keep going away. Can’t a person stay home and be heroic?”
Josh and Briana glanced at each other and then away. He set Nealie on her feet and knelt before her, his hands on her shoulders. “There are all kinds of ways to be heroic,” Josh told Nealie. “Your mother is. And she stays home.”
Nealie pushed her glasses up her nose. She looked soberly at Josh. “I love Mommy. But heroic? She just stays here and works.”
Josh gazed into Nealie’s eyes. “You’re mother is the most heroic person I know. Some day you’ll understand that.”
THE CALL CAME two days later.
Josh and Briana and Nealie were working in the greenhouse when Penny came with the message that there had been an urgent call from Carson Michelman. He wanted Josh to phone immediately.
Josh saw Briana’s face go pale and felt his muscles tense.
Penny said, “I drove. You can ride back with me. If you want.”
“Yeah,” Josh said tonelessly. He turned to Briana. “I’d better go.”
Briana’s chin quivered, but she squared her jaw to make it stop. “Should we go with you?”
“No,” he said, washing his hands. “It might be nothing. I’ll come right back.” He didn’t bother with his parka. He left the greenhouse and got into Penny’s car.
“I hope it isn’t bad news or something,” Penny said.
He shook his head. If it was Carson, it was bad news, all right, because it probably meant that Adventure finally wanted its pound of flesh. It was going to be Burma, he knew it. Well, Burma was dangerous as hell, but he couldn’t stay over four weeks. That was all a visa was good for.
At the house, Penny went to the office, and Josh used the downstairs telephone. He dialed Carson Michelman’s number. He thought of Nealie. He thought of Briana. He thought of the child who might or might not being growing within her, and suddenly four weeks seemed an eternity.
Carson answered on the second ring. “Michelman and Associates.”
“Carson, this is Josh. I got word you called.”
“Right. How’s your kid?”
Josh knew this question, coming from Carson, was a mere formality. “She’s holding steady.”
“It’s not necessary for you to be there any longer?” Carson’s voice was brusque. He sounded in the mood to waste neither words nor sentiment.
“Maybe not absolutely necessary,” Josh said. “But I’d like to stay longer. There are still serious family concerns.”
“There are also serious contract concerns,” Carson returned. “And you’ve had three weeks off. Vacation’s over. Adventure calls.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Josh said, resigned to it, hoping Briana was. “So give me the bad news. Burma, right?”
“Nope,” Carson said. “They finally made the breakthrough. Adventure pulled it off, by God. Pitcairn Island approved you. You’ve got a visitor’s permit.”
He felt numbed, in shock. “What?”
“It came through last week. We’ve been looking for a way to get you there.”
Josh swore. “Pitcairn? Are you crazy? Is Adventure crazy? They really want to go through with this? Pitcairn’s a rock in the middle of nowhere. There’s no real story, and they don’t like talking to journalists.”
“The story is that it’s the most remote community on earth. It’s in trouble, it’s dying,” Carson said.
“That’s been happening for years,” Josh said. “It’s old news.”
Carson said, “The Pitcairners are considering tourism, but not too much. They’re going to let Adventure do an article—”
Josh was full of foreboding. Pitcairn was an inaccessible and dangerous place, and nobody would pay it an iota of mind if, over two hundred years ago, Fletcher Christian hadn’t led the mutiny on the Bounty.
After Christian seized control of the ship, he went to Tahiti, picked up the women he and his followers had left behind and set out to find the farthest-flung hiding place he could.
And that place was Pitcairn Island.
The island was close to no other civilization. It was an isolated dot in the middle of the world’s biggest ocean, three thousand miles from New Zealand, four thousand from Chile.
The few people living there were mostly descendants of the mutineers. The place had a romantic reputation. But it was primitive, and there were rumors of a darker side, as well.
Josh said, “It gives me bad vibes, Carson. It’s too hard to get there and back. A man could get stuck there for months.”
“Right, right,” Carson said. “But your visitor’s permit is only for six months. By then a ship will come along.”
Six months, thought Josh. Six bloody months? When he was younger he would have thought half a year on Pitcairn would be heaven. Even six months ago he might have thought it. Now, with Nealie sick and Briana trying to get pregnant, it sounded like an interminable season in hell.
He said, “I don’t want to stay six months. I need to be back here.”
Carson swore at him. “Listen, you SOB, the islanders had to vote unanimously to grant you that permit. Right now you’re the only photographer in the world who has one. Watson’s the only writer.”
“Watson’s in the middle of an assignment in Mexico,” Josh argued. “I know that.”
“Not any longer,” Carson snapped back. “The senior editor’s hauling him out because—get this—Adventure found a ship willing to take you. But you’ve got to be in Houston in forty-eight hours.”
“That’s impossible,” Josh protested. “You couldn’t find a way there this soon.”
“Adventure got word three weeks ago this might happen. They’ve been monitoring ships all over the world. And they got very, very, very lucky. You and Watson have to work your way over on a Swedish chemical tanker.”
Josh groaned. “Oh, that sounds great. Watson and I become swabbies on a chemical tanker and go to the big rock. Do you have any damn idea how we get back?”
“I told you,” Carson said irritably. “Something’ll turn up. A mail boat comes three times a year. If you’re lucky, you can get passage. We’ll do what we can from this end. Just don’t get sick or something stupid like that.”
“Right,” Josh said sarcastically. “You get appendicitis on Pitcairn, you’re a dead man. The closest hospital’s thirteen hundred miles away—and there’s no way to get there.”
“You sound like an old lady,” scoffed Carson. “Before, it was, ‘If the Pitcairn assignment comes up, I’m first in line.’ You’re going soft, Morris.”
I have a wife, a kid, maybe another kid on the way, thought Josh. Maybe it’s time to go soft.
But there was also honor at stake. Repeatedly he had said he wanted the Pitcairn assignment. But he no longer was hungry for it. Instead, it gave him a poisoned feeling in the pit of his stomach. “It’s too long,” he said. “I don’t want to be gone that long.”
“You want me to get tough? Call in lawyers?” Carson asked, starting to play hardball. “You’ve got contractual obligations to Adventure. You break them, you get black-balled by every Tessman publication in America. And, Josh, that’s one hell of a lot of publications.”
Josh cursed silently.
“Look,” Carson said. “I said okay to your dropping everything else. You wanted to go back to Hysteria, Missouri—”
“Illyria, dammit.”
“Whatever. You wanted to go back, and you knew you had this commitment to Adventure, and you were going to have to take a tough assignment from them sooner or later, probably sooner. I cut you slack to keep you in the States as long as I could.”
You’re all heart, Josh thought.
“Well, the assignment’s now. The place is Pitcairn, and it doesn’t matter if it’s hell on earth, it’s where you’re going. The money, I might add, is excellent.”
Doctor bills, thought Josh. Big ones. Lots of them.
“Adventure wouldn’t ask just anybody to go,” Carson said, softening. “But they figured you were good enough that the Pitcairners would approve you. You’re smart and you’re careful. And you’ve got the one extra thing that makes you the man for the job.”
“What’s that?” Josh asked, not buying it.
“Luck,” Carson said with satisfaction. “You’re the luckiest SOB I know in a tight spot. Remember that mess in Haiti? What were the odds of your hardly being touched? Face it, Morris. You’ve got it and you’ve always had it—luck.”
Josh thought, Luck can run out.
But in the end he said yes. He had no choice.
“PITCAIRN ISLAND?” Briana said, dark eyes widening in fear. “It’s so far away. It’s dangerous, Josh.”
“Babe, I’ll watch my step,” he promised, “you know I will. I’ve got every reason to be careful.”
“But,” she said, “but—” She knew about places like Pitcairn. She knew because of him. It was one of he places he used to talk about and she’d prayed he’d never be sent.
It was not for the usual reasons. There were no violent political clashes, terrorists, bombings, land mines, drug wars, firefights or tortures.
No, it was frightening in a different way. Going to Pitcairn was like going to the moon. It was barely accessible. No plane could land there. No helicopter could make it that far. There was no real harbor, and no big ship could negotiate its crashing waves.
Even to set foot there, you had to risk your life. You had to cross the deadly stretch of sea in a small boat, then climb a three-hundred-foot cliff. Once you got on the island, there was no guarantee when you would get off. It might be weeks—or even months.
She wanted to cry. It was starting all over again. She might be pregnant, and once more he was going away from her to a distant and frightening place.
He said, “I will always come back to you. To you and Nealie—” he patted her abdomen “—and whoever may be in here. I will always come back. Always.”
She blinked back the tears. “When do you have to go?”
“They want me in Houston day after tomorrow. There’s a tanker that’s agreed to carry us if we work our way.”
“A tanker?” she said, relieved. “Then you’ll be near shipping lanes?”
“No,” he said. “But they agreed to take us as close to the island as they can get. The islanders come get us in long boats. I—don’t know yet how we’ll get back. Or when.”
She understood that too well. “But the baby?” She choked the words out. “What if there’s not a baby this time?”
He rubbed her nose with his. “There’ll be a baby. They’ve got me in Popsicle form in the lab.”
“I don’t want you in Popsicle form,” she said, collapsing against his neck. “I want you in the warm, old-fashioned form.”
“Then you’ll have me that way,” he said. “Again and again and again.
NEALIE CRIED HARD when he left. He didn’t know which was worse—Nealie’s tears or Briana’s stoic cheerfulness.
With luck he might be back in three months, even less. But he was haunted by ominous feelings about this trip he had once so desired. For the first time in his life, he didn’t want to go. He wanted to stay put.
He sensed disapproval from Leo and Larry. See? the men seemed to say with silent looks. He’s deserting her again. Can’t depend on him. Not that one.
Glenda seemed concerned for his welfare, and oddly, so did Inga, who had suddenly started acted almost like an ally. Did she suspect something? Josh was starting to think she did.
Harve clasped his hand and wished him a safe journey, a speedy return. With an ironic shock, Josh realized he was beginning to like Harve. But it tore his heart out to leave Nealie and Briana. He kept telling himself it would be all right. Briana would be pregnant, and Nealie would be safe, and he would come home to his family.
By then it would be late spring or early summer. He imagined evenings sitting in Briana’s porch swing, Nealie on his lap. Briana would lean her head on his shoulder, and together they would listen to the frogs and crickets. He would rest his hand on her swelling abdomen, where their new child grew.
THE SWEDISH SHIP had to drop anchor in the open ocean when it neared Pitcairn. The waves crashed violently against the great rock that was the island, and waves and reefs could tear the tanker to pieces. The ship had arrived at night. The sky was black, the sea was rough, and a chill rain fell.
By radio contact the Pitcairners knew the ship was there and set out in their longboats to reach it. They knew the tanker would stay a few hours at most, and they must dare the sea, no matter how dark and pitching.
They came across the nighttime sea guided by their flashlights and lanterns, a supernatural winking across the black water. Part of their journey was to bring barter—handcrafts and fresh fruit and fish. They easily clambered up the sides of the ship using a rope ladder and bearing bundles and baskets on their shoulders.
What they purchased, they swung in baskets over the side into the longboats that rose and fell on the waves. Trading done, the men and women scrambled over the rail one by one.
Each had to time exactly his or her drop from the swinging ladder. If they did not hit the longboat when it crested on a swell, they would plunge at least ten feet to crash into the boat—or miss it and fall into the sea.
Josh climbed down the side of the tossing ship on a ridiculously thin rope ladder that was slippery beneath his sweating hands. When it was his turn to free fall into the boat, he prayed, gritted his teeth and let go.
A group of islanders lowered his equipment in wildly swinging baskets. Then came the last man, the writer, Watson. He couldn’t bring himself to let go of the ladder and had to be dragged into the boat by a burly man who cried, “Now, now! Let go now!”
Watson collapsed into a heap, but nobody seemed to notice except Josh, who pulled him up to sit on the thwart beside him. The others were already concentrating on making the arduous voyage back to land. They did not speak to the Americans.
Later Watson told Josh he’d never been as scared in his life as hanging on that threadlike ladder and tossing in that small boat over the night sea. “I almost peed my pants,” he said.
Josh decided he probably shouldn’t tell Briana about this part of the voyage for a while. Maybe never.
NOT MERELY was Pitcairn’s shore dangerous to reach. Its one settlement, Adamstown, could be reached only after climbing a cliff aptly named the Hill of Difficulty.
But Josh knew that at the top of the hill was a prize of enormous value—a telephone that could reach the outside world. The telephone was a recent acquisition, bouncing its signal only a part of the day off a New Zealand satellite. He could talk to his wife and daughter.
On that phone, two days later, he learned that Briana was pregnant. When she told him, he was so stunned he could hardly speak.
“Hello?” she said through the static and fluttering hum. “Josh, did you hear me? The test was positive. There’s going to be a baby.”
At last he managed to say, “I’ll get back as soon as I can. There should be a mail boat in a couple of months. Then I’m coming back to you. All three of you.”
“And I’m telling my family,” Briana said. He could hear the happiness in her voice. “I think Glenda has a hunch something’s up. And Inga, too. I think she’s been preparing Poppa that this might happen.”
“Your father—is he strong enough to take it, do you think?”
“He’s better than he’s been in years. Inga makes him toe the line, but he loves the attention. It’s so obvious, it makes Nealie giggle.”
His throat tightened at the mention of his daughter. “My Panda Girl, how is she?”
Briana said, “Oh, Josh, Nealie’s going to be over the moon when she finds out.”
“I love you,” he said. “Listen. The telephone signal’s been bad lately. There’s no Internet. I won’t be able to talk to you as often as I want. But I’ll think of you every minute.”
“Josh, please be careful and come back to us soon.”
“I’ll say it again,” he told her. “I love you. I’ll be home as soon as I can. I’m counting the days.”
He did count them. And count. And count.
NEALIE WAS so excited that she wanted to dance everywhere she went.
Sometimes she did dance and sometimes she got a nosebleed, and when that happened, she had to stop dancing, but that didn’t stop her from being excited. What was an old nosebleed? Her daddy and mommy were married again!
They had gotten secretly married. They did it that way so that Grandpa wouldn’t be upset. Grandpa got upset anyway, of course, but Inga was helping him smooth his feathers. She had grown expert at it. Still, Grandpa grumbled that Pitcairn Island was the most obscure place on the earth and nowhere for a sane married man to go. And Mommy, as usual, was worried when Daddy was away.
But unlike her mother and grandfather, Nealie would not believe anything could ever happen to her father. He was strong and smart and brave, and he would come back to them just like always. He especially had to come back because in November there would be a new baby.
Nealie convinced herself this child would be a girl. “Julia Ann,” she kept whispering to herself. She would pretend to introduce the baby to people. “This is my little sister, Julia Ann.”
But still, Mommy was distracted. Sometimes she stared at the horizon, almost as if, if she looked hard enough, she could see Daddy, as far away as he was. She would stand with her hand on her tummy, and Nealie knew she was thinking of Daddy. Three months was a long time to wait for him to come home.
In three months, winter turned into spring and spring was changing into summer. And Nealie noticed people changing, too. Uncle Larry was not as loud, and he made his boys behave better—finally! Mommy said this was because of Inga, who knew how to handle people like Larry. Aunt Glenda seemed happier than Nealie could ever remember.
Harve had changed, too. He was busy building his new house, and he had stopped mooning around after Mommy. Now he liked Penny, which was, to Nealie’s mind, a much better arrangement.
So Nealie thought that life was good except for Daddy being gone. The doctor said the baby was healthy and strong and would be born right before Thanksgiving. Daddy would be home by then, and maybe he could stay a long time before he had to go away again.
But May came and went, and Daddy had to stay on Pitcairn. He couldn’t book passage on the mail boat. It was already overcrowded. At last he called and said he would be home at the end of July. Adventure had found a yacht coming from a place called Mooréa, and the captain had agreed to pick up Daddy and the writer and get them to Tahiti, and from Tahiti, Daddy could be home in almost no time.
Mommy was starting to get a round tummy, and the further into July it got, the happier she seemed.
But that was before Mommy got the telephone call that made her cry.
IT WAS just after ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning in mid-July, and Briana waited for Josh’s call. He tried to phone as often as possible, and always on Tuesdays.
He was late calling, but that did not upset her. The island’s phone service was patchy and unpredictable. She was eager to hear from him, for she had much to tell him. At her exam yesterday, doctors had said both she and the baby were doing excellent.
Nealie’s latest blood test showed she was still holding steady, and she had not had a nosebleed for a week and two days. Leo seemed to have grudgingly accepted the marriage and even seemed excited, almost against his volition, at the thought of another grandchild. Briana was eager to tell Josh everything.
But when the phone at last rang, the voice she heard was not Josh’s. It was that of the writer, Tim Watson. Watson asked if she had anyone with her.
Briana was puzzled. There was no one else in the house—everyone was off somewhere, and she was alone.
“I’m sorry,” Watson said. “I’ve got bad news.”
Her knees felt suddenly rubbery, and her breath choked in her throat. “What is it?” she managed to say.
“Josh is hurt,” he told her. “It’s bad.”
The edges of her vision went dark. All the light seemed to leak out of the room. She gripped the phone tightly, closed her eyes and forced herself to say, “How bad?”
“It’s serious,” Watson said. “He’s got a fractured leg, a concussion and a broken collarbone.”
“No!” she cried. “No. What happened?”
Her heart thudding, she listened to Watson stammer through a disjointed explanation. She could only half comprehend his words.
On the north side of Pitcairn was a ridge of rock jutting into the sea. It was called Down Isaac’s, and the islanders waded from it to catch fish.
But Down Isaac’s could be reached only by descending one of Pitcairn’s cliffs, and after rains, the cliff was dangerously slippery. Josh had gone to photograph the morning’s fishing. He had fallen, and nobody could clearly explain how it had happened.
“He’s at the island’s dispensary,” Watson said. “Listen, we’re doing all we can for him.”
“The dispensary?” Briana said, still in shock. “There’s no doctor there. There’s only one nurse—”
“She’s a good nurse,” Watson said, trying to comfort her. “She was able to set his leg. It was a clean break. Thank God for that. She’s got him in some kind of harness for his collarbone, but he’s in a lot of pain. The circulation in his arm’s affected. He may need surgery.”
“B-but for surgery h-he needs a—he needs a doctor,” Briana stuttered.
“Yes,” Watson admitted. “He should be in a real hospital.”
But he’s on Pitcairn, Briana thought in panic. The nearest hospital is over a thousand miles away. “The yacht coming from Mooréa,” she said desperately. “It should be there within a week. Is that soon enough?”
There was a long pause full of interference and whirring, and she squeezed her eyes tightly shut. She sensed more bad news coming.
Watson said, “I’m sorry. The yacht can’t make it. Motor trouble. It had to turn back. Nobody’s on the way that we know of.”
“Oh, God,” she said, and fought back tears of hopelessness.
“It wouldn’t have helped,” Watson said. “He needs a faster boat and one with a doctor aboard. We’ll do what we can. We’re sending out signals that we’ve got a medical emergency.”
“Can I talk to him?” she begged. She was frantic to hear his voice.
“He’s pretty drugged up now,” Watson said. “And he wasn’t very coherent when they brought him in. What he talked about mostly was you—you and your little girl and the baby.”
Briana put her hand on her belly and felt the unborn child kick.
“Tell him we love him,” she said, her voice breaking. “Tell him to hurry back to us.”
When the call ended, she collapsed onto her desk and wept.
On Pitcairn a man could die of complications of even minor injuries, and Josh was badly hurt. How could she tell Nealie? What could she say to her?
This was the sort of thing she had always feared—that Josh would take one chance too many, that he would take one dangerous assignment too many, that one day something terrible would happen, and he would not come back.
She would never see him again, nor would Nealie, and his unborn child would never know him.