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“Things happened when Katik was around.”
“Such as?” Clelia asked when he fell silent again.
“Accidents. Bad harvests. Dry fishing seasons. Dead animals. Stillbirths with the sheep and cows.”
Clelia blinked. “Surely you weren’t superstitious enough to blame these things on a little girl?”
“We didn’t. Not at first.”
“What do you mean not at first?”
“There was something else.”
“Erwan, what was it?”
“There were fires.”
It felt like a punch in the stomach. “The stories the fishermen told were true? She could spontaneously start fires?”
Even as she said it and saw the pieces coming together, she didn’t want to believe it. The fires she’d started when she was a child now made sense.
“Things combusted around her when she was angry or sad. Tella and I managed to keep it quiet, hide it from the people, and Tella taught her how to control her emotions until it stopped. It was never an easy road. The villagers don’t forget easily, and they didn’t forget what the Japanese men had said. Integrating her into the community was already tough. We didn’t need for everyone to learn their worst fears were true.
“Besides, Katik didn’t do it maliciously. The firestarting was an involuntary response triggered by a strong emotional reaction. For four years, we practically lived in isolation. Luckily, when she turned ten, the fires disappeared, and we never spoke of it again. The bad omens ceased. Everything went back to normal. We never told a soul.”
“Why didn’t you try to find out what was wrong with her? Why didn’t you try to get help?”
“Tella was worried they’d take Katik away from us. She loved her more than any biological mother could ever love her daughter.”
She covered her face with her hands. For years, she’d managed to ignore the facts even as people reminded her every time they called her a witch, but she couldn’t hide from the truth.
Taking a shaky breath, she asked, “Why are you telling me this after all this time?”
“Joss’s woman is going around the village asking questions about your mother. I wanted to tell you before you heard it from someone else.”
Joss’s woman. She went cold. Shit, she was a cheater. She was a horrible person. The guilt mixing with her anxiety about what Erwan had just told her made her feel sick.
“Why would she want to know about my mother?” Wait. “She thinks there’s a connection between me and the fires.” She stopped breathing. “What does Joss’s girlfriend have to do with it?”
“I don’t know, but if we stay here, we’ll soon find out. She came to the house tonight.”
Her heart jolted. “She spoke to you?”
He shook his head. “I was on the water. I saw her from the boat coming in and anchored in the cove behind the trees.”
“Did she see you?”
“Nay. The dogs made quite a show of protecting the property. She was preoccupied with not getting her throat ripped out.”
She looked around. “Where’s Snow? She didn’t hurt them, did she?”
“Nay.”
“Why did she come?”
“I don’t know. Maybe to ask more questions.”
“You think she’ll come back?”
“I know she will. She left a message on the phone, saying she’ll be back in the morning. From the look of her, I can tell you she’s not someone who’s going to back off.”
She neither wanted to face Joss’s girlfriend, nor talk about her mother. She also didn’t want to go to the police, but there was no other way.
“I have to turn myself in,” she said. “It’s the only way to get to the bottom of this. They can do tests or something, monitor my brain or whatever it is they do to determine if I did it, if I’m capable of doing it.”
“No!” He got to his feet so fast that his chair tipped back and hit the floor with a bang. “If you say anything about what I told you about your mother or what happened when you were just a toddler, you’re signing your death warrant. You didn’t start these fires. Turning yourself in isn’t going to help anything. People fear what they don’t understand. The police don’t know you. They don’t know you’re incapable of hurting a fly. You’ll be blamed, no matter how innocent you are. They’ll take you away. You’ll spend your life in jail or worse, an asylum. They’ll probe your brain and study you like a guinea pig. You don’t deserve that.”
“My mother did it. She started fires. I got it from her. Erwan, it could’ve been me. Without even knowing, I could’ve done it in my sleep. All of those fires were started at night, and we both know we can’t account for me having been in my bed, because I woke up all over the island.”
“I want you to go to Larmor-Baden tomorrow first thing. Take my boat and go to Île aux Moines. Under the big tree by the ruins, there’s a box with money and things you’ll need. I buried it by the protruding roots. You have to disappear for a while. You’ll know what to do when you get the box. You can’t speak to anyone about this. Don’t pack. Don’t take a suitcase that will attract attention and look suspicious. If someone sees you take the boat and asks where you’re going, say I’ve sent you to Port-Blanc for oysters.”
