Awaken

neighborhood who’d worn the Daddy’s Little Princess T-shirt. I wondered what had happened to her. I looked around for Alex in order to ask him. He had been with my father and the chief of police earlier, but now he seemed to have disappeared.

“What are you two supposed to be?” Chief Santos demanded, his gaze falling on Mr. Liu and Henry, Mr. Liu in his leather and tattoos, and Henry in his silver-buckled shoes and long, nineteenth- century jacket.

On cue, Henry flung his arms around Mr. Liu and began to weep crocodile tears. “Daddy,” he cried. “Don’t let the policeman take me away!”

Mr. Liu laid a massive hand upon Henry’s head and patted his not-particularly clean hair. “He’s adopted,” he said to Chief Santos in his usual laconic fashion.

“I see,” Chief of Police Santos said, not falling for the act for a second. “Okay. Here’s the situation. I got a problem with all of this. And all of you, too.” He made a circle in the air with his pen that seemed to incorporate the whole of the cemetery and everyone sitting on the porch, as well.

All except for Alex, I noticed, who was still gone. I hoped he wasn’t off sulking somewhere over Reed and Chloe clearly being together now.

“My people and I come in here because we hear screaming and we understand from you, Mr. Oliviera, that your daughter is in danger, and what do we find?” Chief Santos went on. “We find your daughter on a horse with the boy who just yesterday you were insisting had kidnapped her, but now we discover you’re dropping that charge —”

“It was all a misunderstanding,” Dad said with a smile and a wave of his hand. “Love the boy like a son.”

John and my father exchanged smiles that wouldn’t have persuaded even the newest rookie on the force that they cared for each other. I knew they were only making a go of it for my sake. Chief Santos looked completely unconvinced but continued.

“And we find folks on the ground all over the place with superficial wounds — some way more serious than that — and no memory whatsoever what they were doing in the cemetery in the first place.”

“Well, I can tell you that,” Mr. Smith said. “They were here cleaning up after the storm, doing a lovely and much-needed job of keeping our cemetery looking well tended, when the sun became too much for them, and they simply succumbed to heatstroke.”

“That,” Chief Santos said, looking the cemetery sexton dead in the eye, “is a load of bull, and you know it. Heatstroke? Fifty to sixty people? All in the course of a few hours? Some of those people have concussions. Some of them are suffering from blunt-force head trauma. Some of them have dog bites. Two of them have horse bites. A couple of them were bitten by humans. All of them have small, oddly shaped burn wounds that are reminiscent of one that a female officer of mine received a few nights ago at Coffin Fest. Now, I want the truth. None of these people is what I would call an upstanding citizen — begging your pardon, Mr. Oliviera, since I know one of them is your mother-in-law. But with the exception of that scumbag, Mike, none of them is a murder suspect, either. So I want you to be straight with me. What happened here?”

Mr. Smith folded his hands in a position I recognized. He was about to give a lecture.

“I’ll tell you what happened, Chief Santos,” the cemetery sexton said. “What happened today was a victory of the Fates over the Furies.”

“What?” Chief Santos said.

I wasn’t sure I understood, either.

“It’s very simple,” Mr. Smith said. “In everyday life, we’re given a choice. Do the right thing, do nothing, or do the wrong thing. All too often, people choose to do nothing. And that’s all right. It’s easier. Sometimes it’s difficult to know what’s right and what’s wrong. But every so often, a few people choose to go out of their way to do the right thing … like your gentleman with the chain saw, Pierce.”

I felt as if a burden had been lifted from my heart. Suddenly, I understood.

“He was a Fate,” I said. “All those people trying to help me today … the man with the chain saw, the woman at the gate — even the little girl. They were Fates.”

“Yes,” Mr. Smith said. “Exactly. Fates are anyone who chooses to be on the side of good. If enough people go out of their way to help someone else, the spirit of kindness eventually breaks through the darkness, the way sunshine breaks through clouds after a storm and allows even more kind acts to follow. My hope has always been that some day kindness will prevail, and there won’t be any Furies for us to fight.”

John stared at Mr. Smith in disbelief, looking, in his own way, as jaded as Chief Santos. These two had more in common than either of them probably knew, each having seen his fair share of hardship; John having lived it, and Chief Santos having arrested it.

“I hope that, too,” I said, because I wanted to believe in Mr. Smith’s version of the Fates, whether or not it was true.

Chloe sighed happily, dropping her head to Reed’s shoulder. “Me, too. That story reminds me of angels. I wish he’d tell it again.”

“Do not tell it again,” Chief Santos said testily. “Something went on today in this cemetery. Something goes on in this cemetery all the time, doesn’t it? Not only during Coffin Week, but all the time. It doesn’t matter if we keep the gates locked; something’s always going on in here. Something no one ever talks about. Something’s wrong with this island, and no one will tell me what it is. Well, I’m going to tell you people, whatever it is” — he jabbed his finger at the ground for emphasis — “it stops right here.”

“Chief Santos.” My father rose from the porch railing, his cell phone in his hand. “I’ve got my wife on the line. She wants to speak to you.”

I’m sure I was the only one who noticed he said wife and not ex- wife, and the only one whose heart gave a happy flip over it.

Chief Santos looked at my father as if he were crazy. “What?”

“My wife,” Dad said, holding his phone towards the police chief. “She has something she wants to tell you. It’s about what’s wrong with this island. It has to do with Nate Rector and the luxury homes he’s building out at Reef Key. Something to do with some bones.”

I sucked in my breath and looked around for Alex. But Alex was still nowhere to be seen.

“Bones?” Chief Santos was beginning to look like he was developing an ulcer. “Could you please tell your wife I’ll call her back? I don’t have time to talk about bones right now.”

“Actually, Chief,” my father said in a voice as cold as ice, “I think you do. My wife is an expert. She has a PhD” — if he said wife again, I was pretty sure my heart was going to fly out of my chest and flutter up to sit next to Hope’s husband — “and knows some pretty important people. They’re flying down from the Smithsonian up in Washington, DC, to look at these bones. I guess they’re pretty old, and Nate Rector’s built his houses right on top of them, and the people in Washington are pretty ticked off —”

Chief Santos took the phone from my dad, holding it as if he expected it to give him an electric shock.

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll be happy to take the call.” His expression said he’d be anything but.

He began following my dad from the porch as they walked to Chief Santos’s car. The last thing Chief Santos said, before raising the phone to his ear, was to John.

“You.” He pointed from John to Alastor, whose reins had been tied to the porch railing. “It’s a violation to keep or ride a horse within city limits, unless of course you’re an officer with the mounted police unit.” He glared at John. “Which you ain’t, kid.”

John nodded. “I know, sir. It will never happen again.”

“It better not,” he said. Then he lifted the phone to his ear. “Dr. Cabrero? Hello, yes, it’s me, Chief Santos. Yes, I was just with your daughter. She’s fine. Your mother? Well, ma’am, she was taken to the hospital for observation, along with a few dozen other people. No, no, she’s going to be fine, superficial injuries to her throat, broken arm, burn mark, seemed a bit disoriented. Well, best I can figure out, ma’am, it’s all from” — he turned as he approached the cemetery gates to shoot Mr. Smith a murderous look — “heatstroke. Now what’s this your husband is telling me about some bones? Is that so? I’ll be very interested to speak to Mr. Rector about that. Tell you what, we’ll swing by his house and pick him up right now.”

As soon as he was out of earshot, Chloe exploded with laughter.