They’d already agreed to that; it was just that he said it with such authority, and she thought about that as she gathered up the blanket and stowed it in the car. What she didn’t want was Mac upsetting the balance she had with her daughter, and it was already too late for that.
He had come over in the morning in his rental—a classier, cleaner car than the cheap one she’d rented before he got there—and picked them up, and now he was driving them back, and it seemed, incrementally, that he was in the driver’s seat a lot. She still wasn’t certain how she felt about that.
From the moment yesterday when Mac had flown in and found them, the life she’d shared for five years with Katie had been over. She’d stepped over a threshold into another world, and it scared her.
What was worse, she had no idea what it was doing to Katie.
Katie had been subdued—shocked—when she’d met him, stealing quick looks up at his face before moving out of reach. Mac had taken it slowly, never pressing, and that, too—his restraint—pressed a guilty place in her heart and made Grace want to run.
That first night, they’d eaten dinner in a small local café, the only outsiders. The wife of the cook served them steaming plates of rice and fish and when Katie yawned as the plates were cleared, the server said in a musical voice over her shoulder as she swayed back to the kitchen, “Looks like it’s time to get your little one home.”
Home.
They were so far from that, all of them. Far from the safety of home. From the idea of it. And Grace feared she’d never find her way back, and that even if she could, she might be returning empty-handed. Losing the one thing that mattered most.
She watched as Mac and Katie came up the beach toward the car, wrapped in damp sandy towels, Katie chattering. There was a warm gusty wind but suddenly Grace felt chilled, the growing tug of distance, separation.
She gripped the side of the window as Mac bumped the car down the narrow rutted road that led to her bed-and-breakfast. They turned a corner and a haphazardly built octagon painted a startling shade of Creamsicle purple appeared, set back in a tangle of undergrowth.
A truck idled in the drive. The back looked like a flimsy covered wagon held together with duct tape. A sunburned man with a nest of red dreadlocks sat hunched in the driver’s seat, talking on an iPhone. He clicked it shut and sat up and eased out of the truck as Grace and Mac got out of the car. Mac was taller and bigger through the shoulders but the other guy was younger. He smiled.
Grace made a sound. “He’s back. That’s my landlady’s son. Clint. He likes to stop by unannounced.” She reached into the backseat to help Katie out.
“Swell,” Mac said. “And he has the key, right?”
“Actually the door doesn’t lock.” Grace unsnapped Katie’s seat belt and she scrambled free.
“Ah.” Mac nodded.
Clint plodded over and pulled a crinkled envelope out of the pocket of his board shorts. The flap had been opened and resealed with a piece of cloudy Scotch tape.
“Here.”
She ripped the envelope open and pulled out the single sheet, scanning it.
“Is that who I think it is?” His voice had a lilt to it, as if he’d had a couple extra beers and couldn’t quite shape the hard vowels anymore.
She glanced up.
Clint was staring at Mac.
“No, Clint, you’re getting them mixed up.” She refolded the letter and put it in the pocket of her cover-up. “The other guy’s better-looking and works for Fox.”
Clint frowned and brightened. “Oh, I get it. A joke. Very funny.”
Mac touched her arm. “Okay?”
She knew he was talking about the letter. She shrugged. “Why don’t you ask him, he’s already read it.”
Clint ignored her, hitched up his board shorts and padded over to a twisted tree that stood in the yard.
“It’s from my uncle Pete,” she said to Mac. “Wants me to call him. Said it’s business. He works for the FBI in Palm Springs. Whatever it is, it can wait.”
“I didn’t know you had an uncle in the FBI.”
“He’s not even a blip on my radar, Mac. We haven’t talked in years.”
“Forgot to tell you, Grace, about this tree.” Clint cleared his throat importantly. “Katie, this is important for you, too.”
Katie started to trot forward and Mac shot out an easy hand and stopped her.
Black sap oozed from creases in the bark. Clint scooped a finger of sap and held it out. “See this sap? Don’t touch it. It’s called a poisonwood tree, because that’s what it is.”
“Poison?” Katie cried. Grace instinctively reached for her but Mac was there first. He rested his palm on Katie’s curls.
“Yes, Katie, it can kill you.” Clint leaned on the word kill like it was a horn. “Some people are immune, like me.” He wiped the sap onto his board shorts and left a trail. “But no worries! It stands next to this tree.” He patted an ashy colored tree with flaking bark. “It’s the antidote. I haven’t figured out how to use it yet, but it’s here, if you need it.”
“Ah,” Mac said again.
A black snout poked through the slats of the truck, followed by a second, more massive head.
“Oh, and don’t worry about those guys.” Clint gestured grandly to the dogs. He walked down the path toward the front door of the B-and-B. “They only attack if they smell fear.”
He pushed open the door. “Got anything to drink?”
“Okay,” Mac said. “We’re done.”
Half an hour later, Mac moved them. He turned in both cars, took them by water taxi to Harbor Island five minutes away, and relocated them to the Pink Sands Hotel, owned by the man who started Island Records. Now they stood in the living room of a villa.
Katie dropped her backpack, her eyes wide. “Wow. It’s got flatscreen.”
“And movies, Katie. I can rent whatever you want.”
Katie flung her arms around Mac’s legs and Grace looked away. The windows and French doors opened onto a patio that faced a three-mile pink-sand beach dotted with lavender beach umbrellas, sand as soft as corn silk, the water a turquoise that slid into mauve at the horizon.
“Come on, I’ll show you where you’ll sleep.”
Katie took his hand and skipped beside him and Grace trailed behind, the sherpa hauling suitcases. It occurred to Grace that Mac already knew where the bedrooms were.
“Here’s where you and your mom can stay.” The room held two queen-sized beds with a view of the beach. “My room’s on the other side, and the bathrooms are in between. Want to see?”
Katie nodded, her eyes round.
“I’ll wait,” Grace said. Mac shot her that look again and she flushed.
That night they ate in the hotel dining room at a small table covered in brocade, next to a plaster wall of vivid pinks and oranges, wooden mermaids hanging in the archway. Katie sat next to Mac and insisted he cut her chicken, and he bent over it as if it were a sacrament. Nobody bothered them.
Clemens, the manager, explained that their villa had housed kings and queens, heads of business and Hollywood royalty, and that one of the hallmarks of the place was the other guests’ exquisite ability to leave those whose faces were familiar alone.
That, and the staff’s attention to detail, anticipating every need and silently meeting it.
It