Page 46 of Light of Day (Sea Smoke Island #1)

The next lobster boat that churned across the mouth of the cove was lit up like a Christmas tree.

When Heather saw Gabby on the stern deck, waving wildly, Heather could have cried.

When she saw Luke at the controls, she did cry.

A beam of light shone from the top of the cabin, sweeping across the shoreline.

She darted out from under the shelter of the trees and jumped up and down, shouting and screaming in the rain.

Yes, the rain. On top of everything else, Sea Smoke Island had decided to grace her with its signature weather pattern.

But she didn’t care how drenched she got, as long as rescue had arrived.

Luke left someone else in charge of the controls—in the cluttered confines of the barely lit cabin, she couldn’t make out who—and rowed toward the rocks. She picked her way down them, shaky muscles and all, and practically threw herself into his wooden skiff.

He shipped the oars and gathered her against him.

“You came,” she kept saying through her shivers. “Thank you, thank you, thank you…I kept thinking about you that whole time…”

“Shhh. It’s okay,” he murmured as the dinghy rode the waves. The tide was coming in now, the current pushing them toward the rocks. “Let’s get to the boat. You’re freezing.”

“I’m fine. I’m so much better now. Luke, I’m sorry I doubted you. I…I think I was afraid because…I…I have real feelings for you. I’m not used to that. This is…this is big.” Her teeth were chattering so much she wasn’t sure he could understand her.

Until his lips claimed hers in a kiss that sent warmth and life coursing through her being. She clutched at him in the dark and the falling rain, in this tiny craft rocking on the waves, and knew she’d found safe harbor.

“I do too, sweetheart. You scared the hell out of me.” His lips moved against her mouth.

Joy shot through her body. “Now do you mind if I let you go so we can get to that boat out there? Not a single person on it has ever driven a boat before. Well, except Fiona and Carson, but they’re both incapacitated. ”

With a hysterical giggle, she settled on the bench at the bow and watched his strong body stroke across the water. That moment of laughter did almost as much as the kiss for her state of mind. Then she sobered. “Luke, it was a whole conspiracy, your family?—”

“I know.” He cut her off. “We have a confession from Fiona, and I already know Celine was involved. Fiona tricked her into it, made her think Dad was having an affair, but that doesn’t absolve her from what she was planning.”

“She was trying to pull a Hennessy, wasn’t she?”

“Yes. They wanted to claim he had dementia so he couldn’t ruin their inheritance.”

“To be fair, I think he might have some dementia.”

“Maybe, but I’m going to make damn sure several legitimate doctors make that diagnosis, not some hack hired by Celine.”

She could tell he didn’t want to say anything more about it. Those family connections went deep, even when you’ve gone a different direction from the rest. She understood that very well.

Finding a way to love her family and free herself at the same time—tricky.

But she’d done it, she realized. So had Luke. Welcome to adulthood, she thought dryly.

Onboard the lobster boat, Gabby and Heather fell into each other’s arms. They babbled apologies and explanations, talking at the same time, then stopping so the other could talk, then hugging again.

Huddled in the cabin, glaring at her, was Fiona, wrapped in a yellow Helly Hansen jacket with fishy bloodstains on it.

It must belong to the boat, because she looked repulsed by it.

Carson lay unconscious on the bench. An Asian woman who must be Detective Chen was tending to a bullet wound in his leg, with the assistance of another girl Heather didn’t recognize.

But in a flash, she knew who it must be. “Is that Sasha Mackey?”

“Yes, it is. Nice. You figured it all out, didn’t you?”

The two of them settled on top of a cooler wedged in the stern of the deck so they could talk away from the flying spray.

“I don’t know about all, but some,” said Heather. “Denton reached out to you because you’re from southern Maine and you’re Black, and he thought you might be from a family who was forced to leave.”

“Correct. Well, partly. I’m not, obviously, since my people are from Georgia and Puerto Rico. But Denton actually contacted me because he thought we might be related.”

“ What ?”

“He figured out that one branch of his family was forced off the island, but the Simms side was able to pass as white. They blended in with the hotel workers so they were able to ride out the purge. Jimmy knew about it, too, but he didn’t want it to come out.

He was embarrassed. Denton sent me an old tape with an interview of one of his uncles.

It was enough to make me come out and try to find the rest of the story. ”

“I should have come with you from the start.”

Gabby clutched the railing as they plunged into a wave coming straight off the ocean.

“I told you it’s a bombshell story. Denton was super-paranoid about it.

He wanted to be the one to share the information, and only face-to-face.

I couldn’t tell you anything until you were here.

And then when you told me he’d died…I got a little paranoid too, I don’t mind saying. ”

“So is Sasha…”

“She’s the proof. DNA proof. That kid Andy found an old bone shard that they were able to get DNA from. It matches Sasha. Denton had already located her, all I had to do was talk her into a blood test. And keep any nasty Carmichaels from finding her.”

“He left his house to her. It’s burned down now, but the land is still hers.”

“All that is up to her.” They looked over at Sasha, who was busy bandaging Carson. “She’s a triage nurse. Lucky for Carson, huh?”

“What an ass. He would have killed me.”

“The sister’s pretty sus, too. As soon as her bag got threatened, she went to work.”

Heather wrapped the solar blanket Luke had given her tighter around her shoulders. “It’s too bad that they just doubled down on the shit their ancestors pulled. They made people leave, didn’t they?”

“Yes. They cleared a whole community out of here because they wanted to build that cursed hotel. Not only that, but they slandered the residents who lived here. They worked with the newspapers to put out all sorts of lies about them, accusing them of incest and so forth. And you know how they got away with it?”

“I think I do,” Heather said slowly. All the pieces had come together in her mind as she’d sheltered under that pine tree, like ghostly threads weaving themselves together. “The people who lived here were Black.”

“Some of them were, not all. It was a mixed-race community. There were Black folks, freed slaves mostly, who settled on some of the islands after the Civil War because no one lived there. Some Wabanaki joined them. White people too, obviously, mostly Welsh and Scots and Irish and Portuguese. They all intermarried, they fished, they grew crops here, they took in laundry during hard times. The shell beach was one of their settlements, by a middens left by the ancient Abenaki. That’s why there are so many mussel and clamshells there.

Andy figured that part out. Everyone lived in peace, no problems other than poverty, until the tourism business got going around the turn of the century.

All of a sudden a faraway island like Sea Smoke became a hot real estate prize. ”

Heather gazed out at the tall pines marching up the ridge toward the lights of the Lightkeeper Inn. “So that’s why the public believed that whole smear campaign. They didn’t like the race mixing.”

Gabby nodded sadly. “The residents here had three things against them. They were poor, they were mixed-race, and they happened to be squatting on land that became prime real estate. The funny thing is, apparently interracial marriage was mostly accepted in Maine before then. I talked to a local historian about it. But then came the eugenics movement, and the propaganda started, and that was it. The public believed the worst and it cost the islanders everything. They all had to leave. Some of them got sent to the School for the Feeble-Minded. Everything was destroyed, whatever homes were left, their schoolhouse. Oh! They even moved the graves of their dead.”

“That photo of coffins on your flash drive.” The memory of that black-and-white photo sent chills up and down her spine.

“Yes. My God, Heather. There’s so much, so many stories. Do you have my flash drives?”

“Yup. One’s at home, and I hid the other one somewhere safe.”

Gabby turned to look at her with alarm. “I sure hope it’s safe. Most of the research I did is on there. I hid it in my room so only Safiya would find it.”

“Safiya gave it to me just today. I had it with me in the cave, and that’s where I left it. What’s on it?”

“Actual historical photos of the Sea Smoke islanders from that era. It’s incredible.

You can see their houses, their little schoolhouse, their families.

How they dressed. Those old pinafores they wore.

With Denton’s house burned down, that drive might have the only copies, unless Jimmy saved some.

” She put a hand on her chest, as if her heart was about to jump out of it.

“Heather, whoever has that drive could write the best exposé The New Yorker has ever seen. There’s enough visuals that it could be like three Frontline episodes. ”

“ The New Yorker …” Heather thought longingly of her lifelong dream of publishing some kind of groundbreaking story under her byline.

All the fantasies she’d had while huddled in that little cove came back to her.

“I can see it now. Part confessional, since I’m actually related to one of the bad guys.

Part history, part research, plus a few trends that are very relevant to today. ”

The boat reached the buoy that marked the reef below the bluff where the inn perched. They turned into the leeward side of the island, the calm side.

“Too bad they’ll have to watch it on the Dirty Rotten Bastards podcast like everyone else,” Heather finished.

Gabby shoved her shoulder against Heather’s. “You almost had me going for a minute.”

“Sorry. Couldn’t resist. No, babe, this is your story. You did the groundwork, you compiled the research. My job now is to help you get the best possible story on the podcast. I’m going to earn my co-credit. By the way, I decided I want to focus on the pod full-force.”

“You sure? Because you’ve been acting like you didn’t want to bother with it.”

“I don’t blame you for the side-eye.” Heather made a face.

“I haven’t been holding up my end. I made you come out here on your own and get into all kinds of trouble.

Here’s what I’m thinking. I think we should both stay here on the island and work on this incredible story you dug up.

I have to stay a while to help my mother, plus there’s this sweet orange cat I plan to adopt, and we can get tons of local color… ”

She trailed off. Heather knew that Gabby valued receipts, not words. She’d just have to prove her commitment. And she would, whether or not Gabby stayed.

“I’m in. Let’s do this. Besides…” Gabby glanced toward the cabin, where Luke stood at the controls, legs braced apart.

He was steering them toward the dock, which was illuminated only by a single light in the freight shed.

That was enough for it to look like home.

“I was wrong about that one. He’s a keeper. ”

Heather laughed. “You might even say a lightkeeper.”