Silent Fall

turned and saw her standing a few feet away. He beckoned her forward. "I’m all right."
    "How could you be?"
    He smiled, surprising both of them.
    "Are you sure you heard what I said earlier?" she queried.
    "He’s not my father. That’s the best news I’ve received in the past twenty-three years. He’s not my father. I can’t stop saying it."
    "I thought you’d be hurt."
    "That I’m not related to a bully? Not for a second. I’m incredibly relieved."
    "Well, then I’m glad I told you," she said, smiling back at him. "I can’t believe in all the years that passed your grandmother never said anything. Especially when you tried to tell her that your father was hitting you. She must have known why he picked on you and not on Jake. Why didn’t she do something? Quite frankly, I’m annoyed with her. If she weren’t in a rest home, I’d tell her so."
    "I’m sure you would."
    "She was a grown woman and you were a child, and she should have protected you, even if it meant turning on her own son."
    "I guess she didn’t want to see it," Dylan said. "Love is blind."
    "Real love isn’t blind. It’s honest, accepting, generous."
    "I don’t know what real love is. I sure as hell haven’t seen it in my life. And I don’t think you have either, have you?"
    She hesitated for a second too long. "No, I guess not."
    Catherine was lying to him, but he didn’t want to call her on it. Like his grandmother, sometimes he preferred to stick his head in the sand. "Well, I don’t have the energy or the time to be angry with my grandmother anymore. I can’t change the past. However, I would like to know what happened to my mother after she left, and who my real father is. Do you know?"
    "No, there was nothing else in the journal. I’m sorry."
    He was disappointed, but he would find out what happened before this was all over. He was determined to uncover every last secret. He glanced at the island that was getting bigger as they drew closer. "I have the strangest feeling she’s there, and that’s why we’re on this ferry. You feel it, too, don’t you, Catherine?" She looked away from him, a sure sign she didn’t want him to see what she was thinking. "What’s wrong? What are you trying to hide from me?"
    She sighed. "Nothing, really. I think I heard your mother’s voice in my dreams last night. She said to stay away, that it’s not who you think, it’s never who you think. I didn’t know what she meant, or really if it was even her. Usually the visions are longer, more vivid; this was just a voice. It could have been Erica’s voice or someone else’s. Or it could have just been my imagination."
    He didn’t know what to make of her latest prophecy, but her words left him uneasy. "It’s too late to turn back now."
    "Is it? We don’t have to get off the boat. We could go back to Anacortes and never set foot on that island."
    "You know me better than that. I don’t run away. I’m going to face whatever or whoever is on that island if it’s the last thing I do."
    "Then I will, too," she said, moving over to join him at the rail. "But let’s not make it the last thing either one of us does, okay?"

Chapter Eighteen

    Thirty minutes later Dylan felt unexpectedly nervous as they got into their car and waited to drive off the ferry. He rarely thought about the past, because it usually pissed him off. Now he had a lot more to consider, and his instincts told him that while he might not find all the answers he was seeking on this island, he would find at least a few. This was where his mother had brought them every summer. They’d spent long days on the beach, summer nights barbecuing. He could hear the sounds of his childhood in his head, the adults talking as the kids roasted marshmallows or chased the dogs into the water. He remembered his mother playing music late into the night while he tried to fall asleep in the twin bed next to his brother.
    Sometimes he’d gotten up, crept to the door, and watched his mother rocking back and forth in the porch swing, staring out at the ocean. Sometimes he’d gone out to join her, curling up in her lap while she stroked his hair and told him stories. God! An ache settled in his stomach that grew into a knot as he thought about her. He’d pushed all those good times away, but now they were storming back.
    And what about those