Cork glanced toward the door where the younger Hornett stood. The man stared at the floor, frowning, lost in deep, unhappy thought. He didn’t appear to have heard his wife’s name mentioned.
“Did Josh or Mary see him?”
“No, they were sleeping.”
“Is that where he fired at you?”
“Yes.”
“And you returned fire?”
“I did.”
“With that?” Cork nodded toward the rifle Hornett had left near the door.
“No, with my handgun.”
“What kind?”
“A Colt Commander.”
“You always take the Commander with you when you go to pray?”
“I started wearing it when we first began having trouble with Smalldog trespassing.”
“After you exchanged fire, that’s when he ran?”
Hornett nodded. “To the dock, and then he shot off in his cigarette boat.”
Kretsch asked, “Any idea why he was here, Gabe?”
“I don’t pretend to understand how evil thinks.”
A door on one side of the big room opened, and a woman entered. She was stocky, with a single braid of gold hair down her back. She wore khakis and a dark green T-shirt and hiking boots. She reminded Cork of the stout Swedish immigrant women who’d helped their men carve farms out of the wild Minnesota prairie in the 1800s.
“I thought your guests might be hungry, Gabriel,” she said and brought to the table a plate filled with slices of dark bread.
“My wife, Esther,” Hornett said and introduced Cork and the others.
“Abigail is coming with tea,” Esther said.
As if on cue, the door opened again and a second woman appeared. She was older, maybe late fifties, hair gone gray. She was lean and fit like Hornett and with many of the same sharp features in her face. She wore jeans and a short-sleeved denim shirt and sneakers. There was a fluidity to her movement that made Cork think of an athlete. She carried a tray that held a white ceramic pot and several mugs. She swept across the hall toward the table.
“The tea, Gabriel.”
“Thank you, Abigail,” Hornett replied.
The woman slid the tray from her hand. “Hello, Seth, Tom.” She turned a gracious smile on Cork. “And hello to you. Welcome to Stump Island.”
“Cork O’Connor,” Bascombe said in introduction. “This is Abigail Hornett.”
Cork wouldn’t have needed to know she had the same last name as Gabriel and Joshua. It was clear all three shared the same genes.
“How do you do?” Cork stood up and offered his hand. Her palm and the pads of her fingers were callused. A woman used to hard physical labor, Cork thought. There was something in her face as well, something hard and solid, that spoke of an acceptance of travail and an abundance of grit to face it.
“You would be Gabriel and Josh’s mother?”
“I am. I hope you gentlemen are okay with tea. It’s herbal, my own creation, a little sweet. I think you’ll find it energizing. Most folks do.” She glanced around the great hall. “I thought there was a young man with you.”
“My son,” Cork said. “He’s using your restroom.”
“Ah,” she said with a smile, as if she understood perfectly.
The door opened yet again, and a third woman appeared and shuffled toward the table. She was bent, as if from age, though Cork thought she couldn’t have been more than a few years past twenty. She had mouse brown hair cut very short and wore a plain yellow dress and white sandals. If there’d been any life in her face, she might have been pretty.
“Mary,” Abigail said with a little surprise and a lot of irritation.
The shuffling woman looked up and seemed astonished to see them all there.
“They killed my son,” she said.
The hall fell silent. Cork heard the high whine of a saw cutting metal outside. It came from the direction of the radio tower and reminded him of the sound of cicadas.
“Joshua,” Abigail snapped. “Come and take care of your wife.”
Before the younger Hornett could move, his wife said again, “They killed my son.”
“Yes, we know, Mary,” Gabriel Hornett said gently. “They crucified him. But remember, he died for our sins. Josh?”
The younger Hornett leaned his rifle against the wall and walked stiffly to Mary. Without a word, he turned her roughly and, with a firm grip on her arm, urged her back into the kitchen.
Abigail said to the men, “Will you excuse us? Esther, we still have work to do. Come along.”
The two women vanished into the kitchen, where Mary and her husband had gone.
A moment later, Joshua Hornett returned, drifted back to his place near the front door, and took up his rifle again.
Stephen came from using the restroom and sat down and looked at the bread and tea on the table, which had appeared in his absence.
“You should try some of Esther’s date nut bread,” Gabriel Hornett said. “She’s rather well known for it.” He picked up a slice for himself, took a bite, then spoke to Cork and Kretsch. “Josh’s wife has suffered for years from the delusion that she’s the Virgin Mary. We tolerate her delusion and pray daily for her to be cured. In the meantime, we all help Josh care for her.”
Cork said, “You took in Lily Smalldog and took care of her, too, is that right?”
“We tried. She was really a sweet girl. But we couldn’t watch her every minute of every day, and her brother and that other Indian, they . . .” He paused and shook his head as if he couldn’t find exactly the right words for what the two men had done.
“Took advantage of her?”
Hornett looked at Stephen and seemed to decide that Cork’s delicate characterization was appropriate. “Exactly.”
“Did you ever actually see them?”
“We caught sight of them on occasion, but we never actually caught them.”
“They sneaked onto the island?”
“It’s a big island, Cork. We can’t watch every inch.”
“Why did they have to sneak onto the island? Didn’t you allow Lily visitors?”
“This isn’t a prison. She wasn’t a prisoner. At first, we welcomed Smalldog and Chickaway. But when we found out what they were doing to that poor, sweet thing, we banned them absolutely from coming here.”
“How did you find out what they were doing?”
“Lily told us.”
“She just came right out with it?”
“Not in so many words. She didn’t really understand what they were doing, what sexual relations were about. They brought her little gifts and filled her head with stories, and she told us the stories. It wasn’t hard to understand what the visits from those two men were really about.”
“How old was Lily?”
“She’d just turned eighteen when she disappeared.”
“So she was a minor, or at least a vulnerable adult, when these men were abusing her. Did you call Tom?”
“We complained, of course.”
“Tom, did you investigate?”
“I talked to Lily, but she wouldn’t say anything to me,” Kretsch said.
“And nobody had her examined to confirm that she’d been abused?”
“We knew,” Hornett said. “We didn’t need to have her examined.”
