Abby gave her grandfather a wide-eyed look. He was an easier mark than her grandmother. She couldn’t possibly go back to bed—alone. Not yet.
“Come on down. We’ll have a cup of tea, and then we’ll go back to bed. How’s that?”
She managed to nod. And to come running the rest of the way down the stairs.
“Abigail Anderson!” Brenda said sternly. “I told you not to run around barefoot! Glasses do break, my darling, and even when we clean up, you can’t be sure we get all the little slivers.”
“Leave her be right now, Brenda,” Gus suggested.
Brenda wagged a finger at her. “Tonight. Just tonight. You follow the tavern rules—my rules, young lady—or you don’t stay here anymore!”
“Yes, ma’am,” Abby said.
Brenda spun on Gus. “And you! Don’t go putting a shot of whiskey in her tea to calm her down, do you hear me? She’s barely ten.”
“Oh, Brenda, it’s what our parents did for us—”
“And nowadays, it’s considered child abuse. You two behave. I’m going back up.”
She caught Abby’s chin and gave her a kiss on the cheek before she went up the winding staircase.
Gus winked at Abby. “Come into the kitchen,” he said. “We’ll brew some tea.”
In the tavern’s large, modernized kitchen, she sat on a stool and watched Gus place the kettle on a burner and bring out the makings for tea. There was a bottle of whiskey on one of the top shelves. He hesitated, and then shrugged. “One little nip. Cured me of colds, stubbed toes and a broken heart, and I had a wonderful mother, God bless her!” He crossed himself and looked upward. “Now, think you’ll be able to sleep after this?”
She nodded enthusiastically. A few minutes later, he’d made tea—with a “nip” of whiskey in it for the two of them. He brought the cups out front and they sat together beneath the figureheads and other artifacts. She cherished these occasions with him; there weren’t many.
“So, why are you scared?”
“You weren’t there,” she said.
He ruffled her hair. “I wasn’t gone. I’d die before I’d leave you, munchkin, you know that.”
She nodded again and sipped her tea. It was sweet and good with a lot of milk and sugar. Whatever else was in it, she couldn’t tell.
“Something’s bothering you,” he said.
“Well, Gus, of course!” she said. She didn’t know why she called him Gus, since she called her grandmother Nana.
He sighed and turned to her and stroked her face. “A bad man was trying to break in. But we heard him...saw him. Called the police, they came right away and now all is well.”
She bit her lip. She couldn’t get rid of the image of the dead pirate watching her grandparents through the door. Watching her.
“What is it?” Gus persisted.
“How did you know someone was trying to break in, Gus?” she asked him.
He looked away from her quickly. “Ah, just heard him.”
“Gus...”
He studied her, as if trying to read her mind. She was afraid to speak, afraid to say she’d seen a ghost. She was almost ten, and she didn’t want him thinking she was a scaredy-cat baby. Or worse—having mental problems. Benny Adkins had acted weird at school, and they’d taken him out and sent him to some kind of special home for children.
She didn’t have to speak. Gus sipped his tea thoughtfully. Eventually he said, “You saw old Blue, didn’t you?”
Her heart thumped. “What?”
“I guess I was about your age when I saw him for the first time,” Gus said. “Where was he?”
“Blue?” she whispered.
Something about the somber tenderness in her grandfather’s eyes made her believe it was going to be all right. She could admit to him what she’d seen.
“I—I think he was over my bed. I think...maybe he... I think he was making sure I was all right. But I was scared and I jumped out of bed and I came running down the stairs. I saw him standing there...at the entry.”
He didn’t laugh or tell her she was crazy or seeing things. He nodded gravely and smiled at her. “Don’t be afraid of Blue. He’s kind of like a guardian angel for us. Some of us see him—some of us in the family—but the rest of the world? I don’t know. We don’t see him often. I figure we’re very lucky, but also that others wouldn’t understand. So let’s keep it a secret, okay?”
“Did he wake you up, Gus? Is that how you knew the tavern was in danger?”
“He woke me up. Yes. I hadn’t seen him in years and years. Hey, this is between us. Drink that tea now so you can get some sleep.”
“But—”
“Abby,” he said, “don’t tell people that you see Blue. They’ll think you’re some kind of fake or crazy, one or the other. And seeing Blue is...well, it’s special. So, just know that if he’s around, he’s looking after you.”
She nodded.
“We won’t speak about it unless we’re alone, okay?”
“Okay.”
She drank her tea and they went back to bed. She was surprised she fell asleep easily and that she wasn’t afraid.
But she wasn’t. The way her grandfather had explained it...Blue was looking after her.
The next day, although her family tried to keep the facts from her, Abby learned that the man who was trying to get in had broken into a tavern in Charleston a few nights before—and killed the owner. Thanks to her grandparents calling the police so quickly and quietly, they’d never have to find out what their fate might have been had he gotten in. And thanks to them, he’d been apprehended.
Thanks to Blue, she thought.
But she didn’t see the pirate in the tavern again, and as the years went by, she convinced herself that she’d seen him standing there because she knew so much about him, because actors portrayed Blue all the time, and because she’d been so frightened.
Once, when she was thirteen, she talked to Gus about it. “I never saw him after that night,” she said.
And Gus had smiled and put an arm around her shoulders. “He comes when we need him, Abby. He comes when we need him. He made an appearance during the American Revolution when a family member needed to escape after spying on the British. And he came during the Civil War...and he came again when an Anderson was hiding from a fed during prohibition,” Gus admitted dryly. “Blue watches, you know. And he finds the one who sees him, and...well, he’s not on call. God save us all from ghost hunters. I won’t let them in here. Blue isn’t a seance away. Like I said, he comes when he’s needed.”
She saw him the night her mother died of pneumonia, and again two years later when her father died, his heart having given out. Blue stood in the cemetery and watched solemnly as they were buried, and Abby felt his touch on her hair as she sobbed each time.
She thought she saw him at her bedside, occasionally, just watching over her.
But life was busy. Years passed, and her memory of Blue faded and settled back into history, exactly where it belonged.
1
“Mr. Gordon, how were you able to find Joshua Madsen when the police were completely baffled as to where Bradford Stiles was keeping the child?”
That was the first question shouted, but there were dozens of reporters in front of the Richmond police station where Malachi Gordon had just finished the interviews and paperwork that completed the Stiles case as far as he was concerned. They were like a flock of ring-billed seagulls with their microphones.
