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CHAPTER1
Kit Teague preferred the company of strangers. Impersonal greetings and casual farewells kept smiles rising easily to her lips during the day and lulled her racing thoughts at night. Working in a mountain town, amid the cheerful buoyancy of tourists and high panoramic views, had loosened the cold fear that had gripped her heart for the past fifteen years.
But there were no strangers or mountains on the island of Hope Creek, South Carolina. Just the prying eyes of locals, flat ground steeped in salt water, and the pungent scent of decay.
“Can’t take it with you.”
Kit glanced down at the older woman who slumped on the edge of the Hope Creek Water Taxi dock. One of her scrawny legs dangled over a wood plank, her turquoise-polished toenails skimming the water’s surface. A small boat was tied up nearby.
Lou Ann Cragg . . . midfifties by now, with a penchant for bar fights, if Kit recalled correctly.
“That car o’ yours,” Lou Ann clarified, looking up at her. She pointed a crooked finger at Kit’s white sedan, sitting sedately beneath a palmetto tree on the cracked asphalt of the small parking lot. “Can’t take it to the island.” She shook her head. “No, ma’am. No bridge, no causeway. Only way to that island from here this late in the day is on my boat, and it ain’t gonna haul no car.”
Kit slid her hand in her pocket and gripped her keys. Squeezed them tight until the sharp teeth bit into the soft flesh of her palm. “I know.”
And it was a shame, really. Her car had always been the best place to cry.
“Wait, you one of them Teague girls, ain’t you?” Lou Ann lifted a cigarette, burned almost to the butt, took a slow drag, then released a curl of smoke, which escaped on the humid late afternoon wind. “One of them twins, right?”
Kit’s mouth tightened. “Yes.”
Lou Ann narrowed her puffy eyes, studied Kit’s face, shiny hair, unwrinkled dress suit with a two-button jacket and high-heeled shoes—then smirked. “Fancy.” She took another drag. “Well, you ain’t the sorry one, that’s for sure. Must be the one that took off.” She tipped her chin. “Where’d you land?”
Kit bit her tongue and focused on her white sedan. She didn’t remember much about Lou Ann, but she did know Lou Ann had lived a harder life than anyone should have to endure, her only luxuries cold beer and recycled jokes. “Highlands.”
“The who?”
“Highlands. It’s a town in North Carolina, in the southern Appalachians.”
Lou Ann grinned, glee dripping from her stained teeth. “So you done gone from up high right back down to low, huh?”
Mud caked the sedan’s bumper.No surprise, Kit thought, considering the five-hour drive she’d undertaken down the interstate and pot-holed back roads this morning from Highlands to Beaufort County. She’d have the car ferried to the island next week and wash it dow—
“You drag yourself back to bury your mama?”
Stiffening, Kit pinned her gaze to Lou Ann’s hazel eyes. Deep crow’s-feet were carved at the edges, and Lou Ann’s cheeks—once high and full—had sunken in, the ruddy skin drooping toward her angled jaw. “That’s none of your business. Though I will say, I didn’t drive all the way back down here just to listen to you denigrate my family. My sister is a better person than most people will ever be. So was my mother.”
Lou Ann’s lip curled. She touched her tongue to her eyetooth, a flash of admiration momentarily brightening her dull eyes. “Put your back down, girl. I didn’t mean nothing by it. What’re you now? Thirty-eight? I remember you and your sister running around in diapers, and I knew your mama well even then.” She sighed, the heavy exhalation sinking beneath the waves lapping against the dock. “Nobody ought to die like Sylvie did—nobody. But at least you got out, even if you had to leave that high place of yours in order to swoop back down to the Lowcountry for her.” She flicked the cigarette butt onto the dock, scattering a spray of red ash, and her gaze roved outward, over the tidal creeks, which snaked a winding trail through tall cordgrass, toward the horizon as she whispered, “Yes, ma’am. Least you got out the Low, baby girl.”
Waves lapped at the dock pilings, and a blue heron, broad wings flapping against the wind, perched on top of a dock piling several feet away. The lanky bird presented its profile, one wide eye trained on Kit, and craned its neck, taking her in.
“Who found her?” Kit asked.
Lou Ann lifted a brow, expression lit with surprise. “Your people didn’t tell you?”
Other than the phone call she’d received from her dad two days ago? The one lasting all of thirty seconds? Royal Teague’s words, delivered in a clipped monotone, had been the only details:She did it. Out in the creek. You can come home now.
Eyes burning, Kit returned the heron’s stare. “No.”
“Your sister. She took a boat out, found your mama floating facedown—hung up on one of them cages—and hauled her in, from what I hear.”
Kit flinched. The heron squawked, sprang up, and flapped its wings toward the sun lowering in the distance.
Bile rising, she swallowed hard before speaking. “A cage?”
Lou Ann frowned and looked away. She lifted one hip, dug around in her back pocket, and withdrew a crumpled cigarette pack. “You mind? Only got one left, and it tastes better out here. Last ride on a Friday—ain’t no one else coming. And we got time to make it there ’fore dark.” She tilted the pack toward Kit and issued a small smile. “I’ll share.”
Coming from Lou Ann, the offer was a fourteen-karat gold-plated truce. Her best—and only—kindness.
