“Thanks. But I don’t think so.” I sighed and held the gloves, looking at them. “How would I learn to control it?”
“Sit down, Dae,” he said, and when I wouldn’t, he fetched a towel for me to sit on.
We were close together, facing each other, the firelight throwing shadows across the room. He took my hands in his and told me to focus.
“The only thing we can control about the things that happen to us is our reaction. I learned that at the beginning of my FBI career. In your case, the only thing you can control is your reaction to what you touch. You have to get ready for it mentally, then keep it from affecting you on a deeper level.”
“And how do I do that?” It sounded hopeless to me.
“Close your eyes and concentrate. Know that you’re going to be affected and be ready for it. Did you ever play softball?”
“A little in school.”
“It’s like that. You mentally prepare yourself to catch the ball as it comes toward you. You know it’s coming, and your brain gets ready to catch it by working out its trajectory and speed.”
“Okay. I think for me that might be more like riding a wave,” I explained. “When I used to surf, I’d watch and wait for the right wave, then get ready for it as it came at me.”
“That’s it exactly! Prepare yourself in that same way for the feeling that’s going to come at you from something you touch,” he said. “Then when it happens, you won’t be so thrown by it.”
My eyes popped open. I was feeling a little silly and very vulnerable discussing my inner workings with him. I also couldn’t help wondering if this was something he had suggested to Ann to help her. “That’s a great idea, Kevin. I’ll try it right now with this dress.”
“Are you sure?” He picked up the strawberry-colored dress he’d brought out for me. “Maybe you should practice on a few of your own things first.”
I looked at the pretty red dress. It was made in a style from the 1940s, maybe even earlier. Wide shoulders, narrow waist, it was satin covered in a delicate lacework. “I think I can do it.”
“All right. If you’re sure. Think of it like the next wave,” he encouraged. “You’re prepared for it. You know what’s going to happen when you touch it. Create a space between you and the outside emotions.”
I was determined to best this new ability. I had prepared mentally my whole life to handle this kind of thing. I never knew for sure what would happen when I went into someone’s head to help them find something they’d lost.
I swallowed hard on my fear, tried to think about controlling what I’d feel from the dress, and reached out to touch it.
The dress was handmade for a woman named Adelaide. Her nickname was Addie. She met here frequently with Bunk Whitley. The two shared a clandestine love affair. Addie was married and had a child. She was happy sometimes, but there was too much heartache.
Her sorrow swallowed me, drowning me in a wave I couldn’t swim out of.
“Dae!” Kevin called my name several times with urgency. “Get out of it! Control it!”
One minute I was drowning and the next I was sitting on the floor, gasping for air. “I think she was wearing this dress right before she killed herself. She was standing at the window over there thinking about drowning herself.” I tried to breathe and talk at the same time. I ended up coughing. “She killed herself because of Bunk Whitley.”
Kevin put his arms around me and held me for a long time, both of us sitting on the floor in front of the fire that crackled and steamed as it burned down. “Never mind. Forget what I said about controlling it.” He kissed the top of my head. “Maybe you should just wear the damn gloves. That was too much. I thought I’d lost you.”
I leaned my head on his shoulder, recovering from the feelings left in the dress from so many years ago. Glad I hadn’t actually put it on. “There was no way to know what would happen. I had to try it. I wonder if anyone knows what happened to Adelaide.”
Kevin offered but I decided against any more wine. My head was starting to ache. He drove me home in the moonlight, the back roads without streetlights strangely illuminated. Shadows of the past played in the darkness, refusing to come out where they could be seen and understood. Duck’s sometimes strange past would always haunt this place, even if someday people finally forgot Rafe the pirate.
Kevin kissed me good night at the door to the house. “Lunch tomorrow? I can’t make breakfast. I have a delivery.”
“Sure. I’ll call you if anything comes up.”
“Be careful, Dae.” He touched my face and smiled. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“You won’t,” I promised before I went inside. I locked the door and faced Gramps. He was grinning like a Jolly Roger as he played with his white beard.
“So? You’re awfully late, young woman. What have you been up to?”
“Like you weren’t watching through the peephole!” I hugged him, glad to be home despite the excitement of the evening. “What a night.”
“Care to share over some hot cocoa?”
“Not tonight.” I smiled and headed up to my room. “It’s been a long day and I’m too tired to think. Can we talk in the morning?”
“Sure, honey. Sleep well.”
But I didn’t sleep, at least not for a while. I crept up to the old widow’s walk on the roof and looked out over the sound. From here, above the trees and most of the other houses, I could even glimpse the moonlit ocean.
Widow’s walks were designed for ship captains’ wives who watched for their husbands to come home. Many times they were already widows who wouldn’t know for months, sometimes years, that their husbands had been taken by the sea.
The rooftop walk was a very quiet, kind of moody place that had always enchanted me. I was brought up on tales of shipwrecks and legendary pirate figures that made death at sea almost romantic. Even in the summer when I had to fend off bats who liked the spot as much as I did, I loved to come up here.
I could imagine those poor women waiting for their men. As a child, I always wondered why they didn’t go to sea with them. Gramps told me it was because women weren’t welcome on ships back then. It seemed to me that I would’ve found a way. There were female pirates who captained their own vessels. I would’ve been one of them.
But tonight my rooftop walkway was too full of sorrow and the ghosts from the past. I went back to my room and finally fell asleep dreaming that I was wearing the red lace dress, waiting for Kevin to come home.
The next day was busy at Missing Pieces. Not so much with people buying my stuff as with people stopping in because it had begun to trickle out that I had been hurt when the museum exploded. Everyone wanted to know what had happened, play by play.
I explained what I could, then told them all to come to the meeting that night. I hoped the chief had thought about what he was going to say to the anxious citizens of Duck. I was still working on my piece.
More than a few people asked about the pirate curse. I tried to assure them that Rafe hadn’t blown up the museum, despite what they might have heard. I had the feeling most of them didn’t believe me. It was almost like a “poor Dae” kind of thing. They smiled and patted me on the head or the arm as they looked at my gloved hands. I could almost hear them talking outside the shop:
Tim stopped in before lunch to ask me to eat with him. When I told him I already had plans, he shrugged and said, “I have some new information about the museum.”
He was obviously dangling a carrot in front of me. I decided to bite. “Okay.”
“I thought I could tell you what I found out over lunch. The Rib Shack has a special today.”
“Thanks.” Why did he always invite me to go to the Rib Shack with him? He knew I didn’t like eating there. “I can’t today. But I’d love to know what’s going on with the investigation.”
“It’s Kevin, isn’t it? Old Man Sweeney said he thought he saw him drive you home late last night. You two have finally hooked up, haven’t you? What about us?”
