Emilie Richards - Rising Tides

“So?”

“Well, that’s what it’s been like growing up as a Gerritsen,” she said. “And even though I don’t like what I’ve heard about my grandmother, I guess I’m grateful you’re here to chase off the fog.”

His eyes searched hers, as if he expected to see some thing there to contradict her words. Then he shrugged. “There won’t be any fog at all by the time we’ve finished here, Dawn. Our grandmother’s going to see to that. I really hope you’re ready to see the whole picture. But I can tell you this. By the time these four days have ended, you may wish for fog again with all your heart.”

“Lies.” Ferris slashed his hand through empty air. “What kind of game are you playing, Dawn?”

Dawn had waited until her parents were awake and dressed; then she had invited them both for a walk down the driveway, where she quietly related what she’d learned from Phillip. No one else was in sight.

“No games,” she assured Ferris. “I’m just telling you what I know.”

“You’re telling me what Phillip Benedict told you.”

“That’s part of it. But I’ve read the letters, and Phillip’s story fits.”

“You believe it?” Ferris demanded. “You’re that gullible?”

“Grandmère dictated the story to him, and Phillip says that Spencer and Pelichere can verify everything he told me. You can ask them.” Dawn didn’t step back as her father moved in on her, but she felt as threatened as she had on the rare occasions in her childhood when Ferris had been angry at her.

“I told you Nicky Valentine was a liar. Apparently she’s passed it on to her son. Don’t you know she’ll jump at the chance to turn this into a scandal?”

Dawn was beginning to get angry right along with him. “Don’t kid yourself, Daddy. Nicky doesn’t want to be related to you any more than you want to be related to her. Her reputation will suffer.”

“I think the two of you have said enough for now.” Cappy stepped between them. “Dawn, Pelichere made French toast this morning. Why don’t you go inside and get some before Spencer calls us all together?”

“When does this family reach the point where any two of us can have a conversation without a referee?” Dawn watched something—acknowledgment, perhaps, or possibly even sadness—pass over her mother’s face. Then, before she could identify it for certain and be disappointed, she turned back up the driveway and left them behind her.

“It’s a lie,” Ferris said when Dawn was gone. “An insidious lie. I won’t have my mother’s name destroyed this way.”

“Your mother’s name?” Cappy gave a humorless laugh. “Nobody’s out here except you and me, Ferris, and both of us know whose name you’re worried about.”

“Don’t you start on me. You’ll be tarred with the same brush if these lies are spread around.”

Cappy made a show of looking at her watch. “We’ve got forty minutes before we’re all supposed to get together again. I’m going for a walk along the beach. I’d suggest you use the time left to figure out how you’re going to come to terms with the fact that Nicky Valentine is your sister.”

“I don’t know what these Gerritsens are trying to do, but I don’t see why I have to stay here and play along.” Nicky glimpsed Phillip and Jake exchanging looks as she stalked to the closet. She had been so quiet as Phillip related the story of her birth that she guessed neither man had expected this response.

As she began to pull clothes off hangers, Phillip stepped toward her, but Jake put his hand on his step son’s arm and nodded toward the door. Phillip stood poised between what he thought he should do and what he obviously preferred. Finally he settled for the latter. The door closed softly behind him.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Jake asked.

“I’m going home.”

“You gonna drive all the way back by yourself in this rain?”

She faced him. “You’re not planning to stay?”

“I’m not leaving. You don’t stay to find out what’s going on, I have to.” Jake sat down on the bed. “The way I see it, someone’s lying, or someone’s telling the truth. Either way, we got to ask ourselves why. We can’t pre tend it doesn’t matter.”

“Aurore Gerritsen was not my mother.” The bed was soft against Nicky’s legs. She felt Jake’s hand on her knee and realized she was sitting beside him.

“What do you remember about your daddy?” Jake asked.

“Little things. He was a good man.”

“And what did he tell you about your mother?”

“Nothing. He never said anything.”

“Could she have been a white woman?”

“How would I know what color she was?”

“Because you can put two and two together same as any reasonably well-educated person.”

“We’re talking shades? I’m supposed to guess my mother’s race by my father’s color? By mine? We’re not mixing a pitcher of chocolate milk here. Add a little more Hershey’s syrup, make it a little darker. People aren’t that simple, and you know it.”

“Your daddy didn’t tell you anything about your mama? Did anybody else?”

She was silent for a long time, wrestling with the things she couldn’t forget, wrestling with something too terrible to remember. “The place where I grew up was full of women as light or lighter than me, and all of them had colored blood. I always thought my mother had been one of them. Someone told me she’d died giving birth to me.”

“But it’s possible she could have been white?”

“No! Aurore Gerritsen was not my mother. There’s something wrong here.”

“Then stay and find out what it is.”

She stood and walked to the window. Dawn had been right. Nicky could see the Gulf. Now the waves were angry, and the water was a dark seaweed green. She thought of Phillip’s story, of a small boy and girl caught up in the water’s fury, of a woman screaming as her lover cut the thin tether that anchored her to the future.

She covered her ears. “I hate this place! How can you even think about staying? We weren’t welcome yester day, and we’ll be less so now. Once Ferris Gerritsen finds out what Phillip is saying, he’ll come after us with everything he’s got.”

“I’ll be looking forward to that.”

She faced him. “You think anybody in this state would take your side in a fight with the almighty senator?”

“I spent the first part of my life running from who I was, and the second part making peace with it. I plan to spend the last part standing up for what’s mine. You going to stand with me?”

“You’re not my conscience, Jake. If I stay, I stay be cause it’s right for me. For me!”

“I know. I’m just asking you to take a little time to let it all settle.”

“Give me some time alone before I have to face everybody again.”

He left quietly. He had been gone for a long time be fore Nicky was calm enough to think about her surroundings. The room was airy and feminine, decorated in a casual beach-house style with which she felt completely comfortable. Aurore Gerritsen no longer seemed a stranger. She had left her personal stamp everywhere. Nicky stood in the bedroom of the woman who had reached from the grave, claiming to be her mother, and she cursed Aurore for ever having been born.

Nicky didn’t look right or left. She held out her hand as Spencer stepped in front of her. Spencer’s wasn’t quite steady as he rested a jeweler’s box in her palm. “Aurore hoped that this might, in some small way, explain a great injustice.”

Nicky didn’t speak, and neither did anyone else.

Ben and Phillip exchanged glances. Phillip had told Ben the truth about Nicky and Aurore, and Ben knew that he had told Dawn, as well. Now, judging from the rigid set of her head, Nicky knew, too.