The Great Escape

Chapter Seventeen

LUCY SNIFFED LIKE A DISAPPROVING aunt. “That was way too perverted for me.”

“I could tell.” Panda tried to remember the last time he’d lost himself like this with a woman. They were wedged in the stuffy berth, their bodies pressed together, their skin sticking to the vinyl cushions, and even though he could feel her, it wasn’t enough. He extracted his arm, rolled to his elbow, and flipped on one of the small, battery-powered lights mounted in the bow.

She lay on her side, the naked line of her shoulder, waist, and hip forming a golden curve, her dragon tattoo alien on the smooth column of her neck. Her small nose, mercifully free of its nostril ring, wrinkled in disdain. “Don’t ever do that again.”

He touched her bottom lip, swollen from his kisses. “Midnight tomorrow?”

“If I don’t have anything better to do.”

“I hate it when a woman plays hard to get.”

She traced a vein that ran down his arm. “Really I just want your food stash. If I have to put out to get to your Cheetos, so what?”

“A pragmatist.”

“Stop using big words. It depresses me.” She bent her arm beneath her head, revealing the rosy side of her breast where his beard had abraded her skin. He wouldn’t hurt her for anything, but his dark side felt a primitive satisfaction in seeing the mark he’d left on her.

Her question shocked him out of his lethargy. “Where did the condoms come from?”

He should have known she’d latch onto that. “My pocket. You want some more chips?”

“You carry condoms around?”

“Not always. Sometimes. Who needs an STD, right?”

She pulled on one of her ratty pink dreadlocks. “So, you carry them in case you and Temple decide to add a little variety to your workouts?”

He hit her full force with his badass sneer, hoping to shut her up. “That’s right.”

“Bull. The two of you would eat nails before you’d screw each other.”

“Nice talk.”

She pinned him with those shrewd eyes. “You didn’t know I was coming down here tonight, yet you were ready for action. That leads me to believe that you actually do carry those things around.”

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but you didn’t say why.”

Shit. He gave up. “Because you drive me out of my mind, that’s why. I never know what the hell you’re going to do next. Or what I’m going to do. Now shut up about it.”

She smiled, lifted her arm, and tugged on a couple of his pain-in-the-ass curls, her expression tender enough to bring him back to cold reality. He was an ex-cop. She was the president’s daughter. He was scrap metal. She was pure gold. Beyond all that, he had a dead zone a mile wide inside him, while she bubbled with life. “Lucy…”

“Oh lord…” She rolled her eyes and flopped to her back. “Here we go. The speech.” She deepened her voice in exaggerated imitation of him. “Before this goes any further, Lucy, I need to make sure you don’t get the wrong idea. I’m a cowboy, wild and free. No little filly can ever tame a man like me.” She sneered. “As if I’d want to.”

“That’s not what I was going to say.” It was exactly what he’d intended to say-not so sarcastically, but she had the general idea.

“Let’s get this straight, Patrick.” The tip of her finger poked his bicep. “I may be screwed up about my future right now, but I know it includes kids. That rules you out, so all the complications your paranoia is conjuring up are a waste of your limited brain power. You’re for entertainment, Mr. Shade. The missing ingredient in my lost summer. And here’s what you need to understand.” She flicked his chest. “When you cease to pleasure me, I’ll find somebody who can. Clear?”

“Pleasure you?”

“I like the sound of it.” Her eyes grew serious. “This is about sex. Nothing else. You’d better be clear about that, or this stops right now.”

“Me?!” It was exactly what he wanted to hear-what he needed her to know-but he didn’t like her attitude. What had happened to the well-bred runaway bride he’d picked up? “When it comes to you, nothing can just be about sex,” he said.

“That’s what you think. I want sex. The dirtier, the better.” Her eyes landed on his crotch. “Got any more licorice?”

He should have flipped her to her back right then and given it to her, but her flippancy irritated him. “I’m tired,” he heard himself say, barely believing those words had come out of his mouth.

“Figures,” she retorted. “You’re a lot older than me.”

“Not a lot.” He sounded like a petulant asshole, but before he could decide what he wanted to do about that, she was sliding out of the berth, her bare skin squeaking against the vinyl.

“Thirty-six and going downhill,” she chirped. “That’s okay. I’ve changed my mind.”

He didn’t want her to change her mind, but she was already humming a happy little tune and pulling on what passed for her clothes. First, she tugged that skimpy white top over her head. The hem caught on one rosy nipple, hung there for a moment, then sprang free. Next, she took way too much time wiggling into the bottoms. When she reached the door of the cabin, she turned back to him.

“Get some rest, lover boy. I have big plans for you. Let’s see if you’re man enough to keep up.”

He smiled as she disappeared-happy, if only for the moment.

LUCY SKIPPED UP THE STEPS, so full of herself she could hardly stand it. The rain had cleared, and a sliver of moonlight tried to cut through the clouds. She’d never talked to a man like she’d talked to Panda. She’d laid out her terms, said exactly what she wanted to, and hadn’t cared a bit how he felt about it.

She dashed across the lawn, this time giving the horseshoe stake a wide berth. She couldn’t imagine Ted ever doing to her what Panda had done. Although she could imagine him doing it to Meg. Not that she wanted to. She grimaced and shook off the image.

She and Panda… Two mismatched people… One vasectomy… This was exactly what she wanted from her lost summer. A chance to be really bad.

As she stepped up on the deck, she thought about how people made bucket lists-everything they wanted to accomplish before they died. It occurred to her that she was working her way through a kind of reverse bucket list, doing things she would already have gotten out of her system if she’d been part of another family. Crazy hair, unsuitable clothes, tattoos. She’d dumped the perfect boyfriend, dropped out, and now she’d taken an unacceptable lover. She’d thought she didn’t believe in meaningless hookups, but had she only convinced herself of that because meaningless hookups were unrealistic for the president’s daughter? No wild monkey sex for Lucy Jorik.

Until now.

Could this be the key? What if doing all the things she’d missed was precisely what she needed before she could move on with the next part of her life?

She locked the sliding doors behind her, changed into dry clothes, and climbed into bed, but she was too worked up to sleep. A reverse bucket list…

She got out of bed and grabbed her yellow pad. This time she had no trouble finding the right words, and before she was done, she had a perfect list. This was exactly what she needed.

She flipped off the light and smiled to herself. Then she thought of the licorice whip and shivered. She turned into the pillow, got out of bed again, and unlocked the sliders.

No doubt about it. She’d gone bad. And it felt so good.

“READING TIME,” BREE SAID, OPENING the door to the cottage’s small front porch just as she’d been doing for the past two weeks, ever since she’d made up her mind about this.

“It’s summer,” Toby protested. “I’m not supposed to read books in the summer.” But even as he complained, he got off the living room carpet and followed her outside.

The porch was only big enough for a pair of ancient brown wicker chairs and a small wooden table. She’d set up a lamp from her bedroom so she could read after Toby went to bed, but she was so tired by the end of the day that she generally dozed off first. She had better luck keeping up with her new adult reading list between breaks from molding candles, painting note cards, or experimenting with a new beeswax furniture polish.

As she opened the book they’d been reading, she asked herself once again why she was putting herself through all this. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have enough to worry about. It was mid-July. She wouldn’t be able to begin harvesting this year’s honey until early August, if she was lucky, and as always, she was frantic about money. She’d been trying to create new products, but that took a financial investment for materials, and how many of her products would actually sell? At least she’d begun to see tiny cracks in Toby’s dislike of her, the same cracks that had formed in her own resentment toward him.

The wicker armchair creaked as he pulled his grubby bare feet up on the edge of the cushion. “I can read good. You don’t have to read to me like I’m a kid.”

“I like reading aloud,” she said. “That way, I can learn at the same time as you.”

“I already know all this stuff.”

That was total crap. He knew even less than she did, although she was learning more every day.

With the help of the island librarian, she’d located a few books on transracial child rearing only to discover they focused primarily on whether or not it was right for white families to adopt black children. Hardly helpful. Most of the rest of what she’d been able to discover didn’t go much further than an explanation of hair care, something Toby was handling just fine for himself. Not one of them answered her most fundamental question-how was a pale white woman like herself supposed to instill a sense of racial pride and identity in this golden-brown child?

She was working on instinct.

He slung one leg over the chair arm, waiting for her to begin. So far, he’d finished short, kid-friendly biographies of Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and Martin Luther King, along with the story of the Negro Baseball League. He’d rebelled when she’d found a book about the abolitionist Sojourner Truth, so she’d begun reading it aloud to herself. Within a few pages, he’d forgotten his prejudice against “books about girls,” and when she’d reached the end of the first chapter, he’d pestered her to keep going.

Even though she was tired from a day that had begun too early, she read for nearly an hour. When she finally closed the book, Toby started picking at his big toe. “Did you get another movie for us to watch this weekend?”

“When We Were Kings.” She made a face. “It’s about boxing, a famous match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman.”

He forgot about his toe as his face lit up. “Really?”

“I know. Disgusting. Let’s watch The Princess Diaries instead.”

“No way!”

He grinned at her-a real grin-and one more loop in the snarl of negative feelings that resided inside her loosened its grip. Sometimes-not often, but sometimes-he smiled at her the same way he did at Lucy.

“Don’t take any crap from him,” Lucy had advised. “At the same time, look for chances to touch him. He’ll pull away. Do it, anyway.”

Bree had tried resting her hand on his shoulder when he was sitting at the kitchen table, but it felt forced, and as Lucy had predicted, he wiggled away, so she’d stopped. She wasn’t giving up the rest, however. An uncharacteristic stubbornness had taken hold of her. He was going to learn about the heritage he’d received from his father whether he wanted to or not.

He dropped his feet to the floor and scratched his ankle with his toe. “You don’t have to watch the movie with me. You can go work on your painting or something.”

Right now, that “something” included waiting for a dozen nonreturnable glass bumblebee Christmas ornaments to arrive. Every time she thought about the Internet order she’d placed over the library computer she felt sick. She was getting more customers every day, but who knew if any of them would want to buy Christmas ornaments in the summer?

“We always watch movies together,” she said.

“Yeah, I guess you should probably watch. Being white and everything, you’ve got a lot to learn.”

She did her best to imitate Lucy’s sarcastic looks. “Like you know so much, Mr. Brown Man.”

He liked being called a man, and he grinned. She smiled back at him, and he kept smiling until he realized what he was doing and exchanged the smile for a scowl. “Me and Big Mike are going horseback riding tomorrow.”

She still couldn’t believe Mike had befriended Toby out of the goodness of his heart. On the other hand, he’d kept his word, and the only times he’d spoken to her since they’d all gone to church two weeks earlier had been during a few brief telephone exchanges when he’d made arrangements to pick Toby up.

Toby scowled at her. “If you weren’t so mean to him, he’d let you go with us.”

“I can’t get away from the farm stand.”

“You could get away if you wanted to. Lucy would watch it for you.”

Toby had been calling Lucy by her real name ever since he’d overheard Bree call her that, but since daughters of past presidents weren’t on his twelve-year-old radar screen, he’d only commented that he’d known all along Viper couldn’t be her real name.

Bree’s growing friendship with Lucy meant even more to her than the help Lucy offered. She watched the farm stand so Bree could have a break. Together, they’d figured out how to reattach the big wooden doors on the storage shed that jutted off the back of the farm stand. Now she could lock up at night instead of having to haul her goods back and forth from the house. Bree also appreciated Lucy’s lack of judgment as she watched Bree try to deal with Toby.

Toby slouched farther into the wicker chair. “Mike told me to see if it was okay for him to take me to church again this week, but I don’t want to go. Church is boring.”

Bree had loved the service at the Episcopal church and yearned to go back, but she didn’t want to run into Mike. She toyed with the cover of the Sojourner Truth book. “Maybe we need to find a church that’s not boring.”

“All church is boring.”

“You don’t know that for sure. I’ve been thinking we should try a new church.”

“I don’t want to try a new church. I’ll go to the old one with Big Mike.”

“Not this week.” Bree had been dubious when Lucy introduced the idea, but now she made up her mind. “On Sunday, we’re going to Heart of Charity.”

His eyes widened in outrage. “We can’t do that. That’s the black people’s church!”

So much for all the books they’d been reading. And, really, what was the point? If claiming his father’s heritage wasn’t important to Toby, why should it matter to her?

Because it did.

LUCY SMELLED OF THE ALMOND oil she’d used to help Bree make hand cream. It masked the scent of the fresh loaf of bread in the sack dangling from her handlebars. She visited the cottage daily to spell Bree at the farm stand and take another stab at perfecting honey-based caramels. Once she was satisfied with the results, she’d try dipping them in chocolate and topping them with sea salt. So far, her efforts weren’t going well, but she had hopes. She also baked bread in Bree’s kitchen, using the excuse that the stove at the house wouldn’t keep true temperature. She was willing to trust Bree with her own secrets, but Temple’s weren’t hers to share.

What she hadn’t been doing was writing. She couldn’t seem to figure out where to start. Nealy was one of the most fascinating women in the world, but Lucy ended up throwing out whatever she wrote about her after a few sentences. Her father wanted a personal account, not a Wikipedia entry. Something was very wrong, but she had no idea what.

When she wasn’t trying to write or helping out at the farm stand, she was thinking about her reverse bucket list. Just that morning she’d slept late, and before she lost her nerve, she’d prank-called two people. “This is a recording. I’m confirming your order for one hundred pounds of fresh manure. If you want it dumped anyplace except your driveway, call us back immediately. Our number is-” And she’d hung up.

Totally juvenile. Moderately satisfying. Especially since she’d used Panda’s phone to make the calls in case they got traced.

As she pulled up to the house, she saw Temple pass by the upstairs windows. Last week Toby had appeared unannounced and seen Temple running up and down the steps to the dock carrying ten-pound weights. Temple was predictably upset-first because she’d been spotted and second because Toby had no idea who she was.

“He’s twelve,” Lucy had told her.

“That’s the way it starts out. First a kid doesn’t know your name. The next thing you know, it’s a forty-year-old soccer mom, and your career is over.”

“You’re a lunatic,” Viper told her. “A fruitcake for the ages.” And then, more kindly, “You’ve already lost at least fifteen pounds, and-”

“Barely fourteen.”

“-and despite what you want to believe, you look fantastic.” She ignored Temple’s derisive snort. “You’re doing what you came here to do, and you should be on top of the world. Instead, you’re meaner than ever. How do you expect to handle real food once you don’t have Panda policing you?”

“Things’ll be different. I’ll handle it.” She’d stormed off.

Lucy knew a lot of women ate their way through breakups, and although Temple hardly ever mentioned Max, their split had to be at the root of her troubles.

Panda’s car was just turning into the drive. He’d begun leaving Temple alone for short periods of time, generally going for a run or taking the kayak out. More recently, he’d made two brief trips into town. She climbed off her bike and watched him step from the car.

The muscles underneath his tight-fitting gray T-shirt were out of control, and although his abs were temporarily covered up, she happened to know they were extraordinary. She, on the other hand, had gained back another five pounds. After a lifetime of never thinking about her weight, she’d been brought low by living in a house full of diet food. Once she was around the real stuff, such as her failed honey caramels, she lost control.

Her weight gain, however, hadn’t affected her current choice of outfit, a trashy blue and black tie-dyed bra top that showed more boob-age than a bathing suit and shorts that didn’t even start until the top of her hip bones. She might as well show them off while they were still visible.

As Panda sauntered toward her, he took in her outfit, from trashy top to platform flip-flops. He cocked his head toward the garage. “Let’s go.”

“Go?” She casually unclipped her nose ring and slipped it in her pocket.

“You know the routine.”

“That doesn’t mean I have to go along with it.”

“I have a job to do.”

She tilted her head and tugged on one of her dreads. “Screw your job.”

“Big mistake.” He caught her arm and forcibly steered her through the shadows at the side of the house toward the garage. When they reached the warped side door, he kicked it open. “Inside.”

“I don’t want to go inside. I want-”

“I don’t care what you want.” He slammed the door behind them.

Murky rays of afternoon light struggled to ooze through a cobweb-draped window. The cluttered garage held old furniture, boxes, broken beach chairs, and a leaky canoe. The air smelled of dust and motor oil, while Panda smelled of blueberries and heat. He turned her and, settling his hand between her shoulders, pressed her to the wall. “Spread those legs.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“Good.”

“I have no contraband on me. I swear.”

He gave her his nastiest, most intimidating snarl. “Then you don’t have anything to worry about.”

“I- I guess not.” She set her palms against the rough boards but kept her legs together.

He kicked them apart. “Don’t play ignorant. You know the drill.” His breath ruffled the hair brushing her ears, and his voice was a soft rasp. “I don’t like it any better than you.”

Not much, you don’t.

Her eyes drifted shut as he slid his hands along her sides, from her armpits to her thighs. “I told you,” she said. “I’m clean.”

“Why don’t I believe you?” He reached around her, his hands stopping just under her collarbone. And then he lowered his palms and cupped her breasts.

She looked at him over her shoulder. “Don’t say what you said last time.”

“What was that?” He nuzzled her ear.

“You said, ‘There’s nothing here.’”

He smiled, slipped his thumbs inside her bra cups, and found her nipples. “I was so wrong.”

By the time he stopped tormenting her breasts and moved to new territory, her knees were weak and her skin hot. He made a play of running his hands over her hips and thighs before he found his prime target. “I think I feel something.”

He wasn’t the only one. “This is illegal,” she said, wiggling her hips.

“Resisting arrest.” His hands tugged at the zipper on her shorts. “Now I’ll have to do a body cavity search.”

“Oh, no. Not that.” She couldn’t have sounded less convincing.

“You brought it on yourself.” He kneed her legs together and tugged off her tight shorts along with her panties.

“I try to be a good person, but it’s hard.”

“You have no idea.” He pressed against her to make his point.

It was amazing how many places he found to explore. Enough for her to offer a weak protest. “A candy bar would never fit there.”

“Always a first time,” he said hoarsely, his breath coming as fast as her own.

“Police brutality,” she managed as he fumbled with the front of his shorts.

“This will only hurt for a minute.”

It wouldn’t hurt at all. As for the “minute…” Not likely. Panda had enormous staying power.

“Brace yourself.” He tilted her hips.

“Wait…”

“Too late.” He took her from behind.

His groan drowned out her gasp. He pressed his lips to the nape of her neck. She pushed against him as he braced her body in his big hands. Surrounded by the dust and debris of other people’s lives, they played their game, their bodies locked as they used each other, gave, used again. It was primitive sex. Raw and raunchy. Bad-girl sex. Exactly the way she wanted it.

“DON’T LOOK AT MY STOMACH,” she said as she pulled her panties back on.

He brushed her cheek with his finger. “Because?”

“It’s round.”

“Ah.”

“You don’t have to say it like that.” She shoved her legs in her shorts, sucked in her stomach, and zipped them. She’d started the whole strip-search thing when she’d dragged him into the garage after he’d made a quick trip into town. She’d told him she’d gotten a tip that he was trying to smuggle Slim Jims. He said there was nothing slim about his Jim. She’d backed him against the wall and said that was for her to decide. Eventually she had to concede he was right.

“It’s your fault I’m gaining weight,” she said. “Having nothing but diet fucking food in the house makes me crazy.”

His eyebrow gave a gratifying lift, but he didn’t comment on her obscenity. “What about all that crap I feed you every night in the boat?”

“Exactly,” she said. “If I had decent food, I wouldn’t be gorging myself on your junk food stash.”

“You’re right. It is my fault. I promise. No more chips. No more licorice whips. I’m cleaning up my act.”

“Don’t you dare.”

He laughed and pulled her into his arms, as if he wanted to kiss her. But they only kissed when they were in bed-deep tongue kisses that mimicked what was happening with their bodies. Sex with Panda was like being in a porno movie but without a third party involved. He let her go and wandered over to inspect a pile of junk. His restlessness had returned. Unlike herself, the island’s enforced confinement was chafing at him. He wanted action.

She slipped back into her platform flip-flops as he studied a mirror framed in broken seashells and asked, “Didn’t this used to be in the downstairs bathroom?”

“No.” She loved lying. It was a whole new experience.

“Bull. This was there yesterday.”

“Really, Panda, you have lousy powers of observation for a cop.”

“Hell I do. Stop rearranging my house. And stop messing with my pig.”

“You didn’t like the eye patch? I think it’s-” She broke off as she saw Panda pick up a folded piece of yellow notepad paper from the grubby garage floor. She hurried toward him, hand extended. “Must have fallen out of my pocket when you ripped my shorts off.”

“I didn’t rip- What the hell is this?” Like the suspicious person he was, he’d unfolded the paper and started to read.

“Give that to me!” She tried to grab it from him, but he held it out of reach and read over her head.

“‘Reverse bucket list’?”

“That’s private.”

“I won’t tell a soul.” He scanned the page and grinned. “Frankly, I’d be embarrassed to.”

When he finally lowered the paper it was too late. He’d read everything.

REVERSE BUCKET LIST

Run away from home*

Dress like a skank*

Sleep around

Use f-word whenever possible*

Get drunk in public

Make out in public

Smoke a joint

Pick a fight*

Prank call*

Go to bed without taking off makeup*

Swim naked

Sleep late*

Scratch, burp, etc.*

“Go to bed without taking your makeup off.” He blew a long whistle. “That’s living in the danger zone.”

“Do you have any idea what kind of damage that does to your skin?”

“Any time now, I’m sure you’ll work up the nerve.” He jabbed the paper with his finger. “What do all these asterisks mean?”

Good Lucy would have tried to change the subject, but Viper didn’t give a damn what he thought. “The asterisks mark things I’d done by the time I was fourteen but sadly abandoned. I intend to rectify that, and if you think it’s stupid, that’s your problem.”

The corners of his mouth twitched. “Stupid? Make prank calls? Now why would I think prank-calling is stupid?”

“I probably won’t do that one,” she said innocently.

He took in her tie-dyed bra top. “You’ve got ‘dress like a skank’ under control. Not complaining, mind you.”

“Thanks. I had to order a few things off the Internet, but it’s working out for me.”

“Definitely.” He snapped his fingers at the paper. “Smoking pot is illegal.”

“I appreciate your concern, Officer, but I’m sure that didn’t stop you from doing it.”

He scanned further down. “You never swam naked?”

“Sue me.”

“You’ll let me know, won’t you, when you’re ready to try?”

“If I fucking remember.”

“If you’re going to use the word, at least use it at the right time. You sound ridiculous.” He frowned. “‘Make out in public’? Not with me you won’t.”

“S’okay. I’ll find somebody else.”

“Like fucking hell,” he growled. “And you can mark off ‘sleep around,’ since you’re doing that with me.”

“No way. ‘Around’ implies more than one partner.”

“Already forget about Ted?”

“Doesn’t count. He proposed.”

Panda looked like he had something to say about that, but didn’t. Instead he pointed to a doodle she’d made in the margin. “What’s that?”

Damn. She slapped on her new sneer. “Hello Kitty.”

He grinned. “Badass.”

THE BASIL PLANT ON THE baker’s rack was getting a little droopy. She hopped up from the chaise to water it, pulled some dead leaves off the geranium, and then resettled. She wiggled her pen between her fingers and started to write.

My mother’s dedication to children’s causes had its roots in her teenage years when she visited sick children in hospitals and refugee camps…

Something Lucy’s grandfather was writing about in detail and wouldn’t appreciate Lucy duplicating.

She tore up the page, pulled her reverse bucket list from her pocket, and jotted down a new item.

Blow off homework.

Then she added an asterisk.

BREE HAD NEVER FELT MORE out of place. It was fine for African-Americans to attend white churches-it gave white congregations a pleasant feeling of inclusiveness-but being the only white person in the island’s sole black church made her uncomfortable. She’d never enjoyed standing out. She liked to blend. But as the usher led them down the center aisle of the Heart of Charity Missionary Church, she didn’t see another face as pale as her own.

The usher handed them bulletins and gestured toward a pew in the second row. So much for her plans to sit in the back.

After they were seated, her discomfort grew. Was this how it felt to be a black person going solo into the white world? Or maybe her own insecurity was at play, and all her reading had made her more racially conscious than she needed to be.

Heart of Charity Missionary was the second oldest church on the island, a squat, red brick building that would never win points for style, although the airy sanctuary looked as though it had been recently remodeled. The walls were ivory, the high ceiling paneled in blond wood. A purple cloth covered the altar, and three silver crosses hung on the front wall. The congregation was small, and the air smelled of perfume, aftershave, and stargazer lilies.

The people sitting nearby smiled in welcome. The men wore suits, the older women hats, and the younger women bright summer dresses. After the opening hymn, a woman she assumed was the minister, but who turned out to be a deacon, greeted the congregation and announced upcoming events. Bree felt herself flush as the woman looked at her. “We have some visitors today. Would you introduce yourselves?”

Bree hadn’t been prepared for this, and before she found her voice, she heard Toby speak up. “I’m Toby Wheeler,” he said. “And this is Bree.”

“Welcome, Toby and Bree,” the woman said. “God has blessed us bringing you to join us today.”

“Whatever,” Toby muttered under his breath as the congregation delivered a chorus of “amens.” But unlike her cynical ward, Bree felt herself begin to relax.

The service began in earnest. She was used to cool, cerebral religion, but this was hot religion, loud in supplication and praise. Afterward, she lost count of the number of people who came up to greet her, and not one of them asked what a paleface like herself was doing in their church. A woman talked to Toby about their Sunday school program, and the minister, a man Bree recognized from the gift shop in town, said he hoped they’d come back.

“What do you think?” she asked Toby as they headed back to her used Chevy Cobalt.

“It was okay.” He pulled his shirttail out of his pants. “But my friends are at Big Mike’s church.”

The only friends he talked about were a set of twins who weren’t on the island now. Myra hadn’t done him a service by keeping him so isolated. “Maybe you could make some new friends here,” she said.

“I don’t want to.” He jerked open the car door. “I’m calling Big Mike and telling him I’m going to church with him next week.”

She waited for the familiar weight of defeat to claim her. But it didn’t happen. Instead she grabbed the car door before he could slam it shut and leaned down. “I’m the boss, I like this church, and we’re coming back next week.”

“That’s not fair!”

He tried to wrestle the door away from her, but she held on, and in the same tone she’d heard Lucy use, she staked her ground. “Neither is life. Get used to it.”

“ALL SHE CAN THINK ABOUT is black, black, black,” Toby complained to Lucy, those thickly lashed golden eyes flashing in outrage. “Like that’s all I am. This black kid. Not even me. She’s prejudiced. She’s a ray-shist.”

“Racist,” Bree called out from behind the counter where she was nailing a new set of shelves in place after moving her precious bumblebee Christmas ornaments to safety. They’d been such a success that she’d placed a second order.

“A racist,” he repeated. “Just like Ames in Roots.”

“The sadistic overseer.” Bree popped up long enough to explain.

“Right.” Lucy smiled. Bree had been watching the old miniseries with Toby this week, and it was hard to say which of them was more caught up in it. “Kids need to know about their heritage,” Lucy said. “Being African American is part of your heritage just like it is my brother Andre’s.”

“But what about the white part?” Toby countered. “What about that?”

Bree’s head reappeared. “I told you. Your grandmother’s people were Vermont farmers.”

“Then why don’t we study Vermont farmers?” he retorted. “Why is one part of me more important than the other?”

Bree held her ground. “Not more important. But significant.” She ducked behind the counter again.

Despite their squabbling, Lucy detected a change in their relationship. They looked each other in the eye and talked more frequently, even though their conversation was often adversarial. She’d also noticed changes in Bree. She stood straighter, smoked less, and spoke with more confidence. It was as if the therapeutic powers of her honey were giving her strength.

So far that day, Lucy had tried to convince Temple to stop exercising five hours a day and consider Lucy’s “Good Enough” approach, but not surprisingly, Temple wasn’t buying it. Lucy had more success with the bread she’d baked in Bree’s kitchen. Now she was helping Bree finish painting four old Adirondack chairs in Easter egg colors of periwinkle, light blue, peach, and nursery yellow. They would offer a comfortable place to relax in the shade of the old oak that sheltered the farm stand. Bree also hoped their cheerful colors would attract the attention of drivers passing by.

Maybe the chairs were working because she heard a car stop behind her. She turned and saw a dark gray SUV with Illinois plates. Her heart gave a little leap. As far as she knew, this was the first time Panda had stopped here on any of the sorties he’d made into town since he’d loosened the reins on Temple. Now he got out and ambled toward her. “So this is where you’ve been spending your time.” He nodded at Toby. “Hey, Toby. Lucy make any more bread today?”

Toby had begun to feel at ease with Panda. Last week they’d even gone out on the kayaks together. “Whole wheat. But it’s still good.”

“I know. I like the heels.”

“Me, too.”

“Done.” With one final slam of the hammer, Bree rose from behind the counter. “Oh, sorry,” she said as she spotted Panda. “I was making so much noise I didn’t hear a car. Can I help you?”

Lucy stepped forward. “Bree, this is Patrick Shade, aka Panda. Panda, Bree West.”

“West?” The smile on Panda’s face faded. He grew unnaturally still. He gave a brusque nod and, without another word, got in his car and drove off.