“I rode the Greyhound to Savannah,” she said, “and there was this waitress in a diner, and she told me about Hanover House here and the nice people who owned it, Thelma and Wayne Owens, only I didn’t know they were dead. And she brought me here and dropped me off thinking they would give me a place to stay.”
Morgan gaped at her for a moment. “Thelma and Wayne were my parents.”
Sadie brought her hand to her mouth. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.” She got out of the boat, grabbed her backpack, shoved her empty sandwich bag into it. “I’m leaving. Please, don’t be mad. I won’t come here again. I’m sorry I scared you, and I’m sorry I came in when I wasn’t supposed to.”
“Where’ll you go?” Morgan asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll find a job before long, and maybe then I can get an apartment on the beach—I’ve always dreamed of living on the beach.”
The girl sounded like Dorothy dreaming of what lay over the rainbow. She was clueless about the price of beachfront property and had no resources of her own. She might get a job with hourly wages, but until she had a deposit for an apartment, no one was going to lease her a place.
For the first time, Morgan realized what her parents had felt each time they discovered a stray soul looking for refuge.
But she told herself the danger wasn’t worth it. She didn’t know this girl or anything about her. She was sure she had lied about her age. And she was certainly a runaway.
But she couldn’t escape the fact that she needed a place to sleep, a roof over her head. There was a killer on the loose, and this child could be perfect prey for him. She couldn’t send her back out there alone.
She set the paddle back on its hook and touched the girl’s shoulder. “Look, you did scare me, but a lot of things are happening around here that I can’t explain. I’m still upset about my parents’ murders, and I’m a little on edge. But your waitress friend was right. My parents wouldn’t have turned you away—and I won’t either.”
The girl looked so small and wounded, so innocent with her wispy blonde hair stringing around her face. “I’ll be okay. Really.”
“I know you will,” she said. “You seem like a very enterprising young lady, very independent. But it would help you a lot if you had a place to lay your head tonight, and I have that big old house.”
The girl’s eyes filled with tears and hope, and she stepped toward Morgan. “You mean it? I could stay there?”
“I’m not promising it’s safe right now,” Morgan said. “There are other tenants there. Two of them are ex-cons, and the third one is in jail right now for identity theft. We don’t know who killed my parents. But you could lock your door. It’s better than sleeping out here. And meanwhile, there would be a place to take a bath and eat. I could loan you some clothes, so you’d have a better chance getting a job.” She regarded her broken arm and the big bruise beneath her eye. “Or you could even just hang low for a while, let yourself heal before you start beating the bushes.”
The girl’s face reddened and twisted as she began to cry. “I’ll pay you,” she said. “Even for the time when I don’t have a job—I’ll pay you back as soon as I have money. I don’t expect this for free.”
“It’s okay,” Morgan said. “We have a whole list of donors who contribute to the Hanover House ministry. It makes it possible for us to take people in without pay until they get on their feet.”
She took Sadie’s backpack, slipped it over her own shoulder. “Come on,” she said. “It’s probably time you got settled. We have an empty room on the beach side of the house. I think you’ll like it.”
The girl couldn’t stop crying as Morgan put her arm around her and escorted her out.
C H A P T E R
37
As Sadie showered upstairs, Morgan called Blair at the library to tell her about the girl. Blair went ballistic and told her she was coming over to talk some sense into her. She pulled into the driveway moments later, her face full of indignation.
“What are you thinking?” she asked in a loud whisper when she found Morgan in the kitchen. “We don’t even know if we should be keeping the tenants we have, and you’re bringing new ones in?”
“You would have done the same thing,” Morgan said. “She was sleeping in the boathouse. She has a broken arm and this big bruise under her eye. What did you want me to do, send her back to the people who did that to her?”
“She’s not your problem,” Blair said. “She’s not our problem.”
Morgan checked the oven, where she had pork chops baking.
Blair grabbed her arm and stopped her. “Morgan, we have to find her another place to stay. We have to tell her to leave.”
Morgan swung around and leveled her gaze on her. “Mama and Pop would have done just what I did, Blair.”
“Maybe that’s why they’re dead!” Blair said. “And if we’ve learned anything from it—”
“I learned more from their lives than I did from their deaths, Blair,” Morgan threw back. “I learned that sometimes it’s important to do the right thing, even if there’s uncertainty.”
Blair paced across the room, rubbing her temples. “I don’t understand this treacherous compassion you have, just like they had. I guess it’s a religious thing, something you feel you have to do to score points with God.”
“It’s not about scoring points,” Morgan said. “We rescue others because God rescued us. We’re grounded enough in reality to know that we could be floundering, just like them.”
“Reality?” Blair asked. “There’s no reality involved here, Morgan. You think you’ll bring Mama and Pop back somehow by taking in lost souls like they did. But it’s not going to happen. You’re just going to have a lot more stress on you, a lot more responsibility.”
“I can handle it,” Morgan said.
“Well, can you handle moving back into this house? Because you can’t bring a teenage girl home and leave her alone here. You have to stay and watch over her.”
“The doors have locks on them. And Rick’s in jail.”
“Didn’t you hear?” Blair asked. “The judge set bail this afternoon. He’s already out. He’ll be coming back here.”
“I thought you didn’t think he did it!” Morgan said. “You’re the one who was all friendly with him last night.”
“I don’t think he did it,” she said. “But Gus might have. Whoever did it is still out there.”
“All right, then, you’ve made your point. We could bring her to your house to stay with us—”
“No!” Blair cried. “I’m not entertaining some teenage kid!”
“Then I’ll have to stay here,” Morgan said, picking up a dish towel and rubbing a wet spot on the counter. “And you too because I don’t want you alone at your house.”
“This is crazy, Morgan!”
“Go up and meet her,” Morgan challenged. “See if you could have turned her away. You might think you could, Blair, but I don’t think you’re that cold.”
“Well, that’s great, Morgan,” Blair said, her lips compressed. “I’m cold just because I think clearly while you think with your emotions.”
“Sometimes emotions matter!” Morgan said. “They’re not all just whims, you know. Sometimes your heart tells you the truth.”
“And sometimes it doesn’t. It didn’t that day Mama and Pop were murdered. Whatever they had done that day, whoever they had seen, it did them in. And it doesn’t matter how good they felt or how emotional, they’re still just as dead.”
Morgan started to cry, and she flung down the dish towel. “I just want their legacy to be worth it,” she said. “I don’t want it to end right here. I want some of it to stay!”
“Pass it on,” Blair said. “There are other people who can love stray people. If Hanover House doesn’t get closed down, we can find somebody else who will want to run it.”
“Maybe we don’t need to,” Morgan said. “Maybe I can do it.”
“Yeah, i
f you don’t wind up dead yourself. And if you think Jonathan’s going to sit by and allow it, even from jail, you’re cracked.”
“He’ll get over it,” she said. “He’ll understand as soon as he meets her. He couldn’t turn her away either. That’s why I married him, because of the compassionate man he is.”
Blair pulled out a chair and dropped into it. “All right, Morgan. I can see I can’t talk you out of letting the girl stay. But will you at least honor your husband’s wishes and stay with me tonight? You don’t need to sleep in this house, and I won’t.”
Morgan leaned against the cabinets and crossed her arms. “All right,” she said. “I’ll ask Mrs. Hern to look after Sadie—if she can remember to—and I’ll make sure she locks her door. After I take care of a few things around here I’ll go on over,” she said.
“You promise?” Blair told her. “You won’t get all warm and fuzzy and decide to stay here, will you?”
“No,” Morgan said. “I won’t. I just want to make sure Sadie’s settled.”
Moaning, Blair left the house, muttering under her breath about her sister’s lethal compassion, and the complications this girl had just added to their lives.
C H A P T E R
38
Blair left her car at Hanover House and crossed the street to the beach. She needed to walk, to get the anxiety and frustration out of her mind. She needed fresh air and a moment to think.
She walked around to the river side of the island, past her own house, and farther up to the dock where her parents had been murdered. The front door of the warehouse was sealed with crime-scene tape. She walked around to the pier where she had waited as they had searched the building and photographed their bodies. She sat down on the boardwalk, her legs crossed Indian style as she looked between the slats to the water beneath her.
Despite the heat, a chill ran through her. Looking across the water, she saw Jonathan’s boat docked in its place. It was a good day for sailing. A schooner moved out from the dock, making its way toward the sound. Another was coming in, slowly drifting home. She knew some of them brought back sweet secrets of faraway places. Others would move on forever out of her sight, taking their secrets with them.
She wondered if any of those secrets had to do with murder.
She looked at the side door of the warehouse. It too was locked, but it didn’t have any crime-scene tape across it. She pulled her keys out of her pocket and found the one her parents had given her long ago. She studied the door and wondered if she had the strength to go in and see the blood still on the floor.
She wanted to go in, not because it was the place of her parents’ death, but because it was the place of their life.
Slowly, wearily, she got up and unlocked the door.
The building was as they had left it only four days ago, with its donated pews and the makeshift pulpit her father had put together. It smelled of mold and cedar and the faint scent of fish brought in by travelers and seamen who had sought out her parents for help with their sagging spirits.
She stepped across the room, to the stain on the floor where her parents had bled to death. She forced herself to look down at it, but that tornado of emotion whirled up in her again. Queasy, she went to the other side of the room and slipped onto the back pew.
She sat there quietly, wishing she had come to more of their services and watched as her father led in the singing, his deep bass voice ringing with authority and enthusiasm over the crowd, and her mother skittering here and there, greeting everyone who came in with hugs and encouragement.
She hadn’t shared much of it with them. More than once her mother had cornered her and tried to talk her into coming. “But I don’t believe what you believe,” Blair had said. “It doesn’t even make any sense to me.”
Thelma had looked at her with genuine pain in her eyes. “How could you have grown up in our home and feel that way? Didn’t you see all the ways God worked in our lives?”
“He works differently in mine,” Blair said. Her hand came up and touched that scar on her cheek. Everything in her life had been filtered through that mangled scar. She didn’t see the blessings they saw, for they were not always blessings to her, and she couldn’t understand their reason for faith.
But now, as she sat in the pew and looked up at the pulpit from which her father had preached, she couldn’t help wishing that she believed.
The front door opened, and she swung around, startled.
Cade stood in the doorway, squinting in as his eyes adjusted to the dim light.
“Cade,” she said, catching her breath. “You scared me.”
“Someone from Crickets called and said they saw you coming in here. It’s still a crime scene, Blair. You shouldn’t be here.”
She sighed. “You know I’m not going to disturb anything. I just wanted to sit here for a minute.” She pulled the pistol out of her pocket. “I’ve still got my friend with me. You don’t have to worry.”
He was quiet as he walked down the aisle and sat down next to her. “I know you want to be alone, Blair,” he said, “but if you don’t mind my saying so, there’s got to be a better place.”
“I didn’t come here enough when they were alive,” she said carefully. “I guess I just thought . . . that there would be some answers here.”
He looked around at the dim building, its shadows speaking of death instead of life. She knew he wasn’t going to leave, not until she came with him, but she wasn’t ready to go. She just sat there, her eyes trained on that pulpit, trying to picture her father, his bright eyes laughing and full of life. She had never expected to see them shut in death.
“They changed lives here, Blair,” he said softly. “There are people all over the world who’ve come through here.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Some day when we get to heaven, you’re going to see your pop surrounded by all kinds of people who are there because of him.”
“I wish I could believe in heaven,” she said. “You have no idea how I wish that.”
Cade looked at her, and she was glad her scar was on the other side. “You can believe, Blair.”
She shook her head. “It’s not that easy for me,” she said. “I need more evidence, more facts. I don’t do well on faith alone.”
“Your parents’ whole lives were a testimony to Christ. They were the evidence.”
“But they’re dead,” she said in a flat voice, “and now none of it really matters, does it? None of the hard work or the love they showed. None of the people they took into their home or the lives they sheltered. They weren’t blessed or sheltered or protected. They were murdered.”
“I see things differently,” Cade said. “I knew them to be a couple that is still bearing fruit. Their faith multiplied into lots of other people, and it’s still multiplying because those people are out there helping other people. They were blessed. You know, if you could sit down with your father and talk to him about this now, that’s what he would tell you.”
“My father would tell me a lot of things,” she said. “But he could never adequately explain to me how God’s control works with man’s free will. Is God some kind of divine terrorist who uses homicidal maniacs to carry out his will? Or did that person wrench control from God in the time it took for him to get the speargun and shoot them? Was God sleeping when my parents were murdered? Or did he cause their murders? And if he did, then why should I pay homage to him? Why should I do anything for him? If there really is a God like that, it wouldn’t matter whether I worshiped him or not. It didn’t matter that my parents spent their lives serving him.”
She hadn’t meant to say so much, but her words were fueled by days of thought.
“I don’t have all the answers, Blair,” Cade whispered. “But your father taught me that God is not a ‘divine terrorist.’ He’s a loving father, with purposes we don’t even have the capacity to understand.”
She breathed a bitter laugh. “There is no purpose in my parents’ murder.” r />
“Not from your vantage point,” he said. “You may never see the purpose in it. But I bet they already know the good that will be done through it. Life is such a short little blip on God’s timetable. He has all eternity to show them how the plan worked.”
It was as if Cade parroted her father’s exact thoughts, as if Wayne himself had sent him here to say these things to her.
But she didn’t want to hear them. “How convenient, to believe that,” she said. “To look at evil and decide that it’s somehow good.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“For me to decide to look at this as no big deal,” she said, “as just another mysterious part of God’s plan, would be the ultimate betrayal. I’ve earned my anger, and if I ever find out who killed my parents, you can bet that I’ve earned the right to get my revenge. How could anyone see any good in this? My parents were so convinced of a sovereign God. So this sovereign God planned to cut my parents off when they were doing so much good for so many people? I never could believe their stories, and I believe them even less now.”
Cade shifted on the pew to face her. “What do you mean, their stories? Your parents never told a lie in their lives.”
“Yes, they did,” she said. “They told lies. Some intentional, some not.” She tapped on the scar on her face. “This is the biggest one.”
Cade only stared at her.
“They told me I was burned in a grease fire when I was three. But they wouldn’t talk about it beyond that. So I’m left wondering why there’s so much secrecy attached to a grease fire. It was a lie. But I don’t know why they told it.”
“What do you think happened?” Cade asked.
“I have no idea,” she said, “just like I have no idea what happened to cause their murders. I may just have to add it to that long list of questions I have that I’ll never have answers to.”
She expected Cade to turn away, to act awkwardly, as if he hadn’t noticed the scars. She didn’t know why she had shared these things with him. She usually kept the terrible secrets of her heart wrapped up, never to be opened.