Chapter 60

Entering the house via the balcony door placed Joshua in a bedroom. A large, cleanly-swept space, it was sparsely furnished with only a queen-size bed, dresser, and a small bookcase packed with several old Bibles, as if Rachel had come there to do penance. Her suitcase lay open beside the bed, clothes with the tags still on them lying inside.

In the hallway outside the room, Joshua found a black-and-white photo hanging on the wall: two attractive young black women wearing church dresses and big hats, and a girl of perhaps four standing between them, also in a formal dress, her hair done in Afro puffs. Both of the women bore a strong resemblance to Rachel, and the child had Rachel’s eyes.

There were other old family photographs displayed in the hallway, some of which he recognized as copies of pictures she kept in their house in Atlanta. Other photos featured people he had never seen before.

Although there were three more doors off the hall, he didn’t feel right snooping through the rooms. He went downstairs, where Rachel had said she would be waiting.

He found her in the kitchen. She sat at a dinette table, drinking coffee and reading a newspaper. From the strands of hair that had escaped her bun, Joshua knew she had been scratching her scalp, one of her nervous habits.

She looked up from the paper, smiled hesitantly. “Coffee?”

He nodded.

She went to the counter. As she was opening a cabinet to retrieve a cup, he came behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders. She flinched at his touch, as if expecting a blow, and then she relaxed, her body becoming pliable in his hands.

He gently turned her around. She looked up at him. Hope and anxiety wavered alternately on her face.

“I forgive you,” he said.

She closed her eyes and released a sigh that seemed to come from the depths of her soul. “Thank you.”

“There’s no way I’m leaving you. You’re my wife, the mother of my unborn child. I pledged to stay with you till death do us part, and I’m not changing my mind now. I don’t like what you did, but I love you.”

She opened her eyes. Tears streamed out of them, rolled down her cheeks. “I love you, too.”

He flicked away her tears with his finger.

“No more secrets between us,” he said.

“No more.” She shook her head.

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. She slid her hands across his back and nuzzled against his chest.

They stood in the kitchen, holding each other, for a long time.

* * *

Later, over coffee at the kitchen table, Joshua said, “You know I’ve got a lot of questions.”

“I know you do.” She looked at him over the rim of her cup. “Like about this house, for example.”

“That’s a good place to start. Do you own this place?”

“The property’s been in my mother’s family for many, many generations. My aunt Betty placed it in a trust to avoid the hassles of probate . . . in the event of her death.”

“I heard about your aunt.” He reached for her hand. “I’m so sorry.”

Clenching his hand, Rachel pulled in a shaky breath. “Anyway, she designated a bank as the trustee, but I’m the only beneficiary. I’ve been responsible for taking care of things here for the past few years, ever since Aunt Betty has gotten up in age.”

“In the hallway upstairs, I saw an old photo of two young women, and a little girl. I know you were the kid in the picture, but you favored both of the women, too.”

“The pretty ladies in the big church hats? That was my Mom, and Aunt Betty. After my parents passed, when I was a teenager, Aunt Betty . . . she became like a mother to me.” She sighed heavily, closed her eyes.

“You don’t have to talk about it right now if you don’t want to.”

“I can’t talk about this house and not talk about Aunt Betty.” She looked around, a wistful smile surfacing through her grief. “I’ve got so many happy memories of this place. Growing up, I used to spend summers here with her—she was a teacher back home in Illinois and would come here for summer vacation. It was an annual thing we’d do, up until the time I graduated from high school.” She shrugged. “When I left Illinois and came to Georgia, to start fresh, I lived here for a few months, trying to get my head right again.”

“The guy who drove me here, Jimmy, hinted that your family was very prominent on the island. Does the name of this area, Hall Hammock, have something to do with that?”

“Sure does. Back in the 1870s, my great-great granddad, Frederick Hall, got together with two friends and bought this part of Hyde Island from a white plantation owner.” Her voice was rich with pride. “Seven hundred acres—a huge land purchase now, and practically unheard of for black people back then.”

“That’s the truth,” Joshua said. “That was right after the Civil War, too.”

“He and his buddies kept about a hundred acres apiece for themselves, and then divvied up the rest in tracts that they sold to other freed families who had lived as slaves on Hyde before the war. Free Geechee folk from all over the rest of the island poured in Hall Hammock. It was a new beginning in a place they could call their own.”

“That’s pretty amazing,” he said.

“We’ve lost some of the land to the state parks department—they operate a big marine institute on the North End—and a lot of people have moved out, too, to live on the other side where they can have jobs, ‘cause there aren’t many jobs here any more. But some of us are still here, hanging on to our roots.”

“How long has this house been standing? It doesn’t look that old.”

“An awful hurricane came through here in the late seventies. It destroyed a lot of homes, including ours. Aunt Betty and Uncle Sammy took the insurance money and built a new house, the one we’re sitting in now.”

A frightening thought occurred to Joshua. “Does Dexter know anything about this place?”

“Are you kidding? I never dared to tell him a word about it.”

“But you were married to him. How did you hide . . . well, never mind.”

“It’s a fair question. I kept it secret from Dexter because I realized on some level, even then, that he didn’t have my best interests at heart. This house has always been a very personal, important place for me and my family.”

“You never told me about it, either.”

She touched his hand. “But I was planning to tell you, baby, sometime after the business with Dexter settled down. I felt it wasn’t a good idea for anyone to know about it, not when he could’ve popped up at any time. This is the one place in the world where I’ve always felt safe.”

“I understand,” he said. “You’ve got your own private little hideaway.”

She frowned. “Now let me tell you about Dexter. If I’d told him about this house when we were married, he would have demanded that I try to take it out of trust, and sell it. That man didn’t want me to have anything that I cherished—outside of him, that is.”

“What a nutcase,” Joshua said. “Did you ever love him?”

“Never,” she said plainly. “But I was only twenty-three when we got married, naïve, and Dexter is ruthless about getting what he wants. He wanted a trophy wife, and he decided I was the one. When I met him, it was like getting swept away by a tidal wave. We got married within three months of our first date.”

“Three months? We got engaged after six months, and some people told me that was too fast.”

“Every relationship is different. In the case of you and me, we’d developed so much chemistry that after a few months, it was a given that we were going to get married.”

“True,” he said. “Actually, by the third date, I had a pretty good idea.”

“With Dexter, though, it was like being forced into a corner. He started talking about marriage on the first date, and he went all out with the flowers, chocolates, jewelry, designer clothes, expensive dinners. He wanted to see me every single day. He would tell me, ‘My mission is to make you marry me.’”

“His mission?”

“Right, his mission. Nuts. But he wore me down. Like I said, I was young and dumb then. I looked at him, saw that he was this successful attorney, handsome, ambitious, a take-charge kind of guy, and figured I could grow to love him, over time.”

“But you never had a child with him,” he said, which was both a statement and a question.

“Lord, no. Dexter can’t have kids, Josh. He tried to get me pregnant almost immediately after we tied the knot—I think he wanted me to have a baby so he could have another way to pin me down, control me. But we did some fertility testing, and the doctors told us that he had a low sperm count.”

“Seriously?”

“Oh, yeah. Dexter was pissed, let me tell you. I thought he was going to tear apart the doctor’s office. He went to two more doctors, and both of them told him the same thing. So of course, Dexter turned it all around and laid the blame at my feet. He said that the doctors who tested him were jealous of him, and that I was the one who had a fertility problem.”

“Damn. He’s a real piece of work.”

“It’s all part of the nutty package that’s Dexter.”

Joshua shook his head. It was still a struggle to believe that Rachel had once been married to such a certifiable madman.

“There’s another thing I’ve wanted to ask you,” he said. “After you left Dexter, how did you go about starting over?”

“After Dexter went to prison—for trying to kill me and almost succeeding—I got an uncontested divorce. Then I went to court for a legal name change—I changed my middle name to my first name, and then took my mom’s maiden name, Hall. I knew Dexter would get out of prison one day and come after me, and I wanted to have a last name that I didn’t think he would know, or remember. At the same time, I didn’t want to totally cut my family ties, you know?”

“Makes sense,” he said. “Although something tells me he probably figured it out.”

“Yeah, he probably did—he’s got a mind like a steel trap.” She chewed her lip. “Anyway, because I was a victim of domestic violence, I was able to get a new SSN, tied to my new name. I bought Coco—he never allowed me to have a dog—and moved down here for a little while, to get my affairs in order. I’d been to Atlanta several times before, for hair shows and whatnot, so . . .”

“You relocated to ATL,” he said. “And started working at a hair salon in College Park.”

“Yep. And after a while, we bumped into each other at an art museum.”

“I bumped into you, actually,” Joshua said. “You know how clumsy I am sometimes.”

“Maybe. But how do you know I didn’t make sure that I happened to be in your way?”

They smiled at each other. Hearing her story, Joshua was amazed at how life worked, at how it could bring together two people from such disparate backgrounds, and give them an opportunity to build something lasting together.

“Now.” She set her mug on the table. “I’ve got a question for you that’s been burning a hole in my brain. How the heck did you find me here?”

Joshua pushed up his glasses on his nose. “This might sound kinda crazy, but . . . I dreamed about this place.”

“You did? That doesn’t sound crazy—not to someone like me. Dreams can be visions of the future.”

“Maybe, but I didn’t look at it that way. I’ve never been someone to have visions, or whatever. For me, it was more of a . . . a fantasy of the kind of life we could have. I dreamed about it every night after you left. It made me want to find you.”

“What exactly happened in this dream?”

“We were walking on the beach out there.” He pointed toward the shore, a slice of which was visible through a nearby window. “I was holding our son, Justin, too. He was maybe a year old.”

Rachel was grinning. She rubbed her belly. “Wow. A son.”

“And our lives, in the dream, seemed just perfect. Our lives probably weren’t really perfect, but they sure felt perfect because we were together, a family . . . just enjoying each other.”

“Sounds perfect to me,” she said.

“I was pretty broken up when you left. But the dream motivated me to start doing research, to find out where you were. I found out that you’d hired a property management company. I found their number in your cell phone.”

“How’d you get into my cell? I always kept it locked.”

“You know my boy Eddie’s got hacking skills.”

“Oh, I forgot,” she said. “Go on.”

“I met the woman at the property management place, LaVosha. She didn’t really tell me anything, except that you’d gone somewhere that was very dear to you. She was pretty adamant about preserving your privacy.”

“Go, LaVosha. She’s good people. She sends a crew here to do upkeep on everything.”

“After she gave me that hint, it finally hit me: all the photos of the beach that you kept in our house. You were here.”

She was nodding. “Every time I look at them, I think of being here, and I feel at peace.”

“Eddie magnified one of the photos on a scanner, we deciphered the words on the ferry, Hyde Island Queen or something, and we did a search online . . . and voila. Here I am.”

“Bravo. I would clap if I wasn’t worried.”

“What’re you worried about?”

“Eddie knows that you’re here.”

“But he’s the only one who knows. I had to leave Coco with him.” Joshua paused, and then added: “You can trust Eddie. He won’t tell anyone.”

“He’ll tell Dexter.”

“No, he won’t,” Joshua said, but he was thinking about how he hadn’t received a text message from Eddie, and had been unable to contact him via telephone. “Do you have a landline in the house?”

“It’s not in service. One of the main reasons I come here is to be isolated—from everything.”

“What if you have an emergency?”

“Some of my neighbors have phones in their houses,” she said. “Anyway, remember, we’re on an island. Nothing gets here fast. It would take even an emergency helicopter a while to reach us here.”

“There are no cops, no hospitals?”

“None. Any emergency services would have to come from the other side. Some people here have boats, but they’re not exactly rapid transit.”

“I tried to use my cell after I got off the ferry,” he said. “It didn’t work.”

“I bought a prepaid cell on the way here, and that one doesn’t work, either. We’re out of area.” She studied his face. “Are you worried about Eddie?”

“I don’t know how Dexter would have found out about him, but . . .”

“But Dexter has a way of getting the answers he wants,” she finished for him.

“Yeah. He’s like a human bloodhound.”

“Let’s find out about Eddie, then.” Rachel rose from her chair, took his hand. “Come with me.”