I thought back. “Her name was Eleanore Bellamy.”
“Bellamy! Why didn’t you say so? That was me mum’s name before she married that scoundrel Robert Masterson. He left us to fend for ourselves when I was four. We be kin, my dear. No wonder you raised me—fooling around with the dark arts. You’d better be careful or you’ll feel the noose around your neck, or worse. They say the fire is a bad way to go. Not that hanging is any fun.”
I didn’t believe him—didn’t want to believe him. We weren’t related. There were probably dozens of Bellamys. It was ridiculous. Gramps wasn’t related to a pirate either. “I didn’t raise you from the dead, Mr. Pirate Masterson.” I stumbled over my words. “And if I did it was a mistake. Please go back to your grave or wherever now.”
“So yer mum is dead, eh?” He continued as though he hadn’t heard me. “Murdered, was she? That’s why you’re trying to raise her?”
“No.” I choked a little on the explanation. “She drove off a bridge and died in the water, they say. Her body was never found.”
He nodded. “And you had unspoken things between you. I see.”
“Then you see why you can’t help me,” I said. “Go back home now. Leave me alone.”
“Dae?” Kevin’s voice got my attention and I looked away from the bar. “Can’t sleep?”
“No,” I said. “I slept. Then I was hungry. I saw a light on in here.” I looked back at the bar and the pirate— possibly my pirate ancestor—was gone. I noticed the glass and the bottle of rum were still there.
“Did you chase someone out of here?” Kevin looked around at the empty bar and bottle.
“Maybe. I don’t know.” I shook my head. “I’m going back to bed for a while. Sorry I woke you.”
“You didn’t.” He smiled and put his arms around me. “I was having really vivid dreams about being a pirate. Crazy, huh?”
“Maybe not so crazy. The way we talk about them around here, they almost seem real.”
I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I’d chatted with Rafe Masterson while he drank Kevin’s rum. I wasn’t sure I believed it myself. Maybe I was just hard to convince. It was going to take more than a middle-of-the-night conversation when I was half awake to make me believe.
I went back to bed but sleep eluded me. I was up and cleaning an hour later when the first of the guests came down for coffee. Soon after, all the restless souls were eating breakfast and listening to Scott Randall explain which roads were closed and how people could best get back to their homes.
It sounded like the roads and the town itself were in much better shape than they’d been yesterday, which made everyone happy. It was easier once you’d seen all the damage for yourself and could make a plan for what needed to be done. Gramps and I had faced storm damage many times, as had everyone else who lived in Duck.
Several local insurance agents came by to talk with their clients privately. A few relatives stopped in to pick up their husbands, wives or other family members who’d been trapped at the inn since the storm.
“I guess we should be heading home,” Gramps said after filling up on oatmeal. “I know there’s some damage to the house. Sooner we get started on it, the sooner it’ll get done.”
I agreed but thought it was only fair to stay and help Kevin clean up. The guests were leaving a mess behind—every room in the inn was dirty.
But Kevin disagreed with me. “I have my usual cleaning crew coming in today. We’ll handle it. I’m going to try and drive over to Hank’s Hardware to order glass for the upstairs windows. Let me give you two a ride home, since the golf cart was trashed.”
I had to admit I was ready to go. I was eager to get home and see how the house had fared. And I had a few private questions I wanted to ask Gramps. I hoped the words would come for those questions. It wasn’t easy to talk to him about my mother.
Kevin’s cleaning crew was arriving as we left. Marissa waved to us as she told them what to do. Duck maintenance crew members were out too, cleaning up the streets as we made the trip home.
Gramps and I lived only a few minutes away from the Blue Whale (along with everything else in Duck), but it took about twenty minutes to get there. There was still so much debris in the road, Kevin had to drive very slowly and continually go around tree branches and manmade items that blocked our passage.
“I heard the cell phone towers might be working today,” Kevin said as I got out of the truck. “Let me know how things are going, if you have service. Or I can come in now and we can look at the damage.”
I hugged him. “Go home. Take care of your own damage. Gramps and I have been at this a lot longer than you. I’ll call you later if I can.”
“Okay. I’ll talk to you later.”
I watched him leave, wondering if I should’ve told him about the pirate ghost—in case Rafe was haunting the Blue Whale now. Who knew if ghosts could travel from one spot to another? He might be drinking rum in Kevin’s bar for the next hundred years.
Gramps and I walked around the outside of the house that had been in our family for several generations. The clapboard siding had splintered in a few spots where something had been blown against it, and two windows had been smashed, but otherwise, nothing major was wrong. We closed up the windows with plastic right away. We’d have to replace them later.
“Not too bad,” Gramps said when we got inside. “We were pretty much spared.”
“I guess this house is in a good spot.” I looked around at the place I’d always called home. “Whoever built this place knew what they were doing.”
“That would be your great-great-grandfather, Lewes O’Donnell,” Gramps said with a smile. “He was a merchant who traded with the ships that docked here.”
I couldn’t believe it! Rafe had said that Lewes O’Donnell was a pirate. Basically when anyone from Duck talked about their ancestors trading with English or Spanish ships, at the very least they salvaged goods from their wreckage. In the worst cases, they caused it. “Was he a pirate by any chance?”
Gramps shrugged. “Could be. But he died in his bed at the ripe old age of ninety-two. If he started out as a pirate, he was never caught. Anything is possible, Dae. Not many people who are from here have a family history that doesn’t include pirates or scavengers.”
As our house was in fairly good order, we went next door and checked on our neighbors. Their homes had been hit a little harder. We swept sand, mopped water and put up tarps in places that needed repair. It would take a few days to get the insurance adjusters in to appraise the damage. In the meantime, everyone would have to make do.
When we were finished, we had lunch together. Most people didn’t have generators. When something happened and they were on the verge of losing the food in their refrigerators and freezers, they hauled out grills and smokers to cook as much food as could be saved. I had no doubt that there would be large crowds at supper, inside and outside the house. Not everyone put in enough seafood to feed an army like Gramps did. But at these times, it was a good thing.
The weather was nice. I decided to walk down to Missing Pieces for a while. I wasn’t really expecting any customers. There weren’t many out-of-town visitors in October, and most local people would be occupied with their own storm cleanup.
But I never minded being at the shop, even without customers. It was Gramps’s idea for me to open a shop to sell the things I collected. He said the house couldn’t hold any more and I could make some money. As usual, he was right.
The only thing I’d known him to be wrong about was not telling me about my father. When I’d first found out, he’d said it was my mother’s story to tell. But with her dead, that left him in the hot seat. It was hard hearing from a stranger, the infamous Bunk Whitley, of all people, that a big part of my life had been a lie perpetrated by the two people I trusted and loved most. Old Bunk was supposed to be dead. People had a way of coming back sometimes.
I knew it would be hard for him to explain why he’d lied. Gramps was basically an honest, decent person. He had a stronger sense of right and wrong than most people—which had made him a good sheriff.
He was protecting me, I realized that. But I was an adult. I didn’t need protection from the truth. No matter what kind of man my father was, I could handle it. From what I’d seen and the research I’d secretly done, Danny Evans wasn’t cut from the same cloth as Gramps. He’d made a lot of mistakes in his life. But it had been a while since he’d been in trouble—about as long as he’d been sober. Surely everyone deserved a few chances.
