You Don't Want To Know - By Lisa Jackson Page 0,16
the sun-spangled water effortlessly. A few recreational boats were chugging their way from the marina to the open sea.
Instinctively she looked back at the dock, listing in the water, its weathered boards drying in the sun. Nothing looked out of place today; there wasn’t a hint of anything amiss, no physical reminders of her boy in his little red sweatshirt and jeans. No one standing at the misty dock’s edge.
“You’re losing it,” she whispered. Just like they think.
She turned to try to catch a glimpse of the stable and the apartment where Austin Dern now resided, but of course she couldn’t see it from this angle.
Get a move on.
Turning, she spied her morning meds, three cherry-colored pills placed in a cut glass holder the size of an espresso cup sitting next to a glass of water.
Someone, Wyatt probably, had brought them in this morning while she slept. She hadn’t heard the person arrive. A chill slid down her spine as she thought of what anyone could do while she slept so soundly. She didn’t want to swallow anything that might dull her mind, but Wyatt and McPherson insisted she needed the meds.
“Bull,” she muttered under her breath, carrying the glass into the bathroom, tossing the brightly colored pills into the toilet, and flushing them away.
The water was still running in the old pipes when she returned to the room and replaced the medication glass on the nightstand.
Throwing on a pair of jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt, she rummaged in her closet for a pair of beat-up tennis shoes and a green fleece pullover, the pullover something she’d worn for years that now was at least a size too big.
Spying the sweater she’d worn the night before, she scrounged around in the right pocket and slipped out the key that had been left inside.
“Where do you fit?” she wondered aloud, staring at the jagged, worn notches in the blade of the key. There were no identifiable markings on it, nothing to indicate what it unlocked, but she slipped the slim bit of metal into the front pocket of her jeans, just in case she figured it out.
Walking out of her room, she thought she might trip over Jewel-Anne, but her cousin was far too clever to be caught spying and had whizzed away. If she’d really been outside Ava’s door at all.
In the kitchen, Ava found the coffeepot and poured herself a dose of whatever blend Virginia had brewed, then grabbed a napkin and a slice of some apple coffee cake that was already cut and left to cool on the counter. The house was quiet for once, not even Graciela’s off-key humming or Jewel-Anne’s wheelchair disturbing the silence.
Odd, she thought, but then what wasn’t? Her entire life seemed surreal these days. She walked through the back door and across the porch to the outside where the autumn air was brisk, a few dry leaves skittering over the lawn, the smell of the sea ever present. Today, in the sunlight, the island seemed peaceful and serene, no hint of the evil that seemed to ooze over the hillsides and seep through the walls of Neptune’s Gate at night.
All in your mind, sweetie. All in your mind.
Looking over the bay, she sat on the porch swing and slowly rocked.
The coffee was strong and hot, burning a path down her throat and taking the edge off her headache. Virginia’s coffee cake was still slightly warm and filled with cinnamon and cooked apples, probably from the twisted trees in the orchard that still bore fruit.
So what the hell are you doing? Waiting for something to happen? That’s not you, Ava. Never has been. You were—make that are—a take-charge woman. Remember? Didn’t you graduate from college in a little over three years? Weren’t you an entrepreneur who started her own advertising business, making a fortune on e-marketing before you sold the company? Didn’t you parlay a nice inheritance into a fortune that allowed you to buy out your cousins and siblings so that you would eventually own most of this island? If it weren’t for Jewel-Anne holding out, Neptune’s Gate would be yours alone and wasn’t that your dream? She bit the edge of her lip and thought. What had become of the woman she’d once been, the one who had set her sights on Wyatt Garrison and never let go? Where was the athlete who’d once run marathons? What had happened to the person who had shrewdly bought out most of her relatives so that