Blood Kin (21 page)

Daniel went to the sink and rinsed out the thermos and cap, then set them upside down to drain. “Let me start at the beginning. Back in the fifties, Beth's mother, Anne, was seeing Will before she broke off the relationship and married his brother, Owen.”

“Forest told me that Owen Tawes was my grandfather. I didn't ask my grandmother's name. Anne. I like that,” she said thoughtfully.

“Will was the firstborn, but he was something of a disappointment to his family. He had a reputation for being wild, even then. People said it was the Tawes Indian blood coming out. He spent his time roaming the marsh and woods, hunting, trapping. He liked to fish well enough, according to my mother, but Will wasn't a
man for settling down to work from dawn to dusk on a crabbing boat or a farm.”

“And Owen, I suppose, followed tradition?”

Daniel nodded. “Exactly. Owen was as solid as the church cornerstone. A real go-getter. He would milk cows before dawn, take the boat out, and be back in the fields plowing by noon. And the two brothers didn't get along too well either. According to custom, Will should have inherited the farm, but Owen was the man working it.”

“Cain and Abel?”

“Aunt Birdy said Will was more fey than lazy. He was always whittling birds or painting pictures of otters on the walls of his father's barn when he should have been cutting hay or putting up fence. Will was the artistic type back when there was no such thing. I suppose the neighbors would have been hinting that he was gay if he hadn't been so popular with all the girls. Emma said she can remember him when he was handsome as the devil and just as ornery.”

“So Beth's mother was his girlfriend?”

“Crazy-mad for him, according to Aunt Birdy.”

Bailey drained her cup and set it on the table. “And did he seem to return her feelings?” She picked a twig out of her hair.

“Yes, but Anne's parents were against the match. They'd forbidden her to see Will, but nobody could stop him when he made up his mind to do something. Once Will came to church during services, and the next thing my father knew, the two of them had climbed out the Sunday-school window and ran off together. Anne didn't get home until almost dawn the following morning.”

“But she didn't marry him. She chose his brother.”

“They'd had a fight, as Aunt Birdy tells it, but Will thought he could soft-talk Anne out of being angry, the way he always had. And the next thing anyone knew, Anne and Owen were standing in front of the congregation taking wedding vows.”

“What did Will think of it?”

Daniel returned to stand near her. “He didn't say, and no one had nerve enough to ask him. But years later, when his brother and Anne drowned in a storm, he took Beth to raise.”

“And neither of the grandparents protested?”

“Will and Owen's parents were dead by then, and Anne's mother was an invalid. She and her husband had raised six daughters and didn't want to fight Will over Beth's custody.”

“But if he had strong feelings for Anne . . . he might have seen the same thing in his niece.” A chill passed through Bailey. “What if the gossip is true and the father I've been looking for was Beth's uncle?” She shivered, glancing away. “Not much of an incentive for me to have children, is there? No telling what interesting genes I have floating around in my genetic soup.”

Daniel crouched down on his heels in front of her. “Look at me, Bailey. Please.” He touched her chin with two fingers, gently tilting her face up. “I don't believe it. I've known Will all my life, and I think I'm a pretty good judge of people. I wouldn't have lasted long in my last job if I weren't.”

“You didn't know my uncle then. You couldn't have been more than a kid yourself.”

“No, that's true. I wasn't born until three years after he went to prison.” He took her hands and gripped them. “But I've known him since I was six years old. He
isn't the kind of man who would molest a child or beat one to death because she became pregnant.”

“Then why did his sister believe it? She must have.”

“I asked Matthew that once. He said that Elizabeth came to our father for counseling after Will was arrested, and that he overheard them talking in the sanctuary. As I said, Elizabeth wanted to keep you herself, but our father convinced her that you couldn't have a normal life here—that people would always whisper behind your back. I suppose she took his advice.”

“So that was it. She sent me away to protect me from the rumors, not because she didn't want me.”

Daniel stood and pulled her to her feet. “It's a nasty charge, but where's the proof? They didn't do DNA testing in those days.”

She swallowed. “So now what do I do with all this?”

“First thing you do is come up to the attic with me. I was inspecting the underside of the roof, looking for leaks, and I found an old trunk.” He offered his hand to her. “There are some things in it that you might want to see.”

She looked into his eyes. “What kind of things?”

“A sketchbook, for one. It has Beth's name on it.”

Although the cover was unstained, the pages inside were slightly damp, as though moisture in the air had seeped into the trunk. Holding the sketchbook, Bailey experienced such a surge of emotion that she began to weep all over again. She wasn't sure how long she sat there, crying like a baby, but when the storm passed she felt infinitely better.

Fortunately, she was alone in the attic. After Daniel had turned on the lights and led her upstairs to show
her the location of the trunk, he'd made the excuse that he needed to get back to his repairs on an outside shutter. She'd guessed that it was his way of allowing her privacy as she went through her birth mother's belongings, and she was glad he'd thought to be so considerate.

She laid the sketchbook on the dusty floor beside her and looked to see what else was in the trunk. She carefully lifted out worn copies of
The Red Fairy Book
,
The Yellow Fairy Book
, and
The Blue Fairy Book,
and wedged under that she discovered a photo album. After carefully replacing the storybooks, she carried the sketchbook and the photo album downstairs and out onto the porch, where the light was better.

Daniel, true to his word, was mending the shutter—within sight, but far enough away not to intrude.

Beth's drawings were sketched and painted in the form of stylized cartoons. There were images of castles, kings and queens, unicorns and fairies. Beautiful costumes graced the pages, and she seemed to be developing a comic strip set in an imaginary kingdom, with a story line that gave evidence of a lively wit and a vivid imagination. The inscription in the front of the book showed that the sketchbook was a fourteenth-birthday gift from Elizabeth. From the dates beside the images, Beth had started her drawings soon afterward and continued on until a week before her death.

Bailey shed more tears as she looked through the pages. If her mother had lived, they would have found so much in common. The book was a tribute to a dreamy personality and a budding artist's passion for her craft. But there was something disturbing about the pictures as well. Most of the book was filled with bright colors, flags snapping in the wind from the top
of castle walls, and dashing knights and beautiful ladies, but the last quarter of the pages grew steadily darker, with twisted trees, threatening ogres, and monstrous eyes staring from the forest.

Uncertain as to what the changes in Beth's style meant, Bailey set the sketchbook aside and began to thumb through the photo album. The black-and-white snapshots showed a laughing little girl who—except for the fifties clothing—looked strikingly similar to her own childhood pictures. There were images of Beth on a pony, Beth and an attractive young woman fishing off a dock, Beth dressed in what appeared to be a mermaid costume, and one photo of Beth and a much younger Will with a basket of puppies.

The pictures showed no trace of a strained relationship between Beth and her uncle, and they offered no obvious explanation for the dark drawings of stormy skies and twisted trees that filled the end of her sketchbook.

Puzzled, Bailey carried the album to Daniel. “Did you look at these?”

He shook his head. “No. As soon as I saw that there were pictures inside, I closed it. It belongs to you.”

“I don't know what to think. She looks like a happy child . . . a child who went to bed knowing she was safe and loved, not a little girl haunted by a real monster. It makes no sense, unless the abuse didn't start until she was much older.”

Daniel gave the screw a final turn, tucked the screwdriver into his tool belt, and moved the shutter experimentally back and forth. “There. That should hold for a few years.”

“You do good work.”

“No sense doing it if you don't do it right.” He looked
at her. “There's more stuff up there, toys and clothing that must have belonged to Beth. Elizabeth went to some trouble to preserve them. I'd say Beth was certainly a much-loved child.”

“I want to see them, but not now,” she confided. “I need to decide whether I want to pursue questioning my uncle or not.” Another tear spilled down her cheek, and she wiped it away. “I'm sorry. I'm not usually a basket case. It's just that—”

“Shhh, it's all right.” He put his arms around her, gently pulled her against him, and squeezed her. She clung to him for long seconds, not wanting to let him go, but he kissed her gently on the forehead and stepped back. “I should have told you what to expect, but I didn't think you'd be so damned persistent.”

“I thought I was prepared for anything,” she whispered, “but not incest.” She could still feel the heat of his body. It was a good feeling, and for an instant he made her feel that everything would be all right.

Daniel smiled at her. “Hey, don't take this to heart. If I learned anything from government service, it was never to take things at face value. I don't believe Will Tawes is the kind of man who would use violence against a child in his care, and neither does Forest. Just the opposite. Forest represented Will at his trial without charge, and no amount of money could have persuaded him to do that if he didn't think his client was innocent. Will Tawes wouldn't be the first man convicted unjustly.”

“If that's true, if he is innocent, then why is everyone on this island afraid of him? They know him. Why aren't they convinced that he didn't do it?”

Daniel arched a dark eyebrow. “It's complicated.”

She waited.

“Matt said that Will pleaded not-guilty to all the charges. They held the trial over in Easton, because the prosecutor couldn't find enough people on Tawes who weren't related to Will to make up a jury. To make a long story short, the Eastern Shore jurors found him guilty. Later, the jury foreman said he wasn't a hundred percent convinced, but there were no other suspects, and if there was all that smoke, there had to be fire.”

“Circumstantial.”

“Yes, something like that. But the charges were for beating Beth, not for getting her pregnant. The prosecutor kept repeating that Beth's pregnancy shamed Will and he'd lost his temper and started hitting her.”

“But he never admitted it.”

“No. Apparently when Will was sentenced he lost it, shouting that he was innocent, that whoever had fathered her child had attacked her. He threatened to find out who he was, hunt him down like a dog, and put a bullet through his head. He swore he wouldn't stop searching, not if it took the rest of his life.”

Bailey sank down on the grass and cradled the sketchbook against her chest. “But that was so long ago, thirty-five years. It's not reasonable that he'd carry a grudge that long.”

Daniel laughed. “You don't know Tawes as well as you think you do. The Chesapeake used to be a wild place. Blood feuds between families rivaled those of the Hatfields and the McCoys.”

“You've got to be kidding me.”

“Hardly. Just after the Civil War, three Catlin boys shot it out with two Tawes brothers. Only one Catlin survived, and he didn't live out the year. Folks claimed that it was one of the Tawes widows who did him in.”

“Unbelievable.”

“I can show you the headstones in the cemetery. You can still read their names.” Daniel's expression hardened. “Call it vigilante justice if you want, but if the man who caused Beth's pregnancy and death is still alive, he has every reason to fear Will.”

“You believe that?”

“I know it.”

She sighed. “Okay.”

“What do you intend to do?”

“I don't know yet.”

He nodded.

Taking both the sketchbook and the photo album, Bailey went out to Elizabeth's dock and sat there for a long time, watching the tide and the birds and letting the peace of the early evening seep over her. Seeing Beth's artwork and the pictures of her as a child made Bailey all the more determined to discover who had wronged her. She knew what she had to do, but she wasn't certain she could summon the courage to do it.

If only her mother had confided in someone . . . if she'd gone to her aunt or told her secret to a friend, Bailey mused. But, as Emma would say, “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”

If she was to learn anything about the final hours of Beth's life, there was only one place to start. Carrying both books, Bailey retraced her path down the beach and took the overgrown lane that led to her uncle Will's house. She'd gone no more than a few hundred feet into the woods when a rustling of brush brought her to a halt.

Heart thudding, Bailey watched as the boughs of a cedar parted and a doe stepped daintily onto the path. The graceful animal stared at her with huge eyes and, when Bailey didn't move, uttered a small grunt. Seconds
later a spotted fawn leaped out of the tall ferns. The mother nuzzled the little one and then moved away into the trees on the far side of the lane. The fawn made two stiff-legged hops and darted after her.