The Letter Keeper Read online

  I keep promising to write the good folks at Whaler a letter in appreciation but just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

  Summer and Angel fussed over my bandages and then made comments about my butt, which were good-natured and helped mask the severity of what almost happened. Gunner watched with an entertained, tail-wagging grin. He was no dummy. He knew if he hung around long enough, he’d get some food out of this.

  Given that small movements exhausted me, I dozed while Summer cooked breakfast. In my haze of sleep, the slideshow of my life returned on repeat behind my eyelids. A seamless mixture of both dream and memory. Faces of the lost and found. The living and the dead. Joy and pain. I wasn’t sure how to understand what my body was telling me other than it was tired. It was true the explosion had forced my convalescence, but I’d been in need of triage for much longer. After months and years on the road, my soul and body were spent. Empty.

  Every dreamy slideshow ended with a strange picture of me. One I’d never seen. Dream and memory were difficult to differentiate.

  I lay faceup in the snow, which was soaked crimson given the hole in my side. My breathing had slowed and my muscles were no longer tense, which meant the fight was over. Won or lost, I did not know. My breath exited my lungs and turned to smoke in the air above me. My right hand clutched an old single-shot buffalo gun. Smoke spiraled out of the long, octagonal barrel. Gunner lay across my legs. Unharmed. For which I was glad. Around my neck was a scarf that smelled like Summer and in my heart was a longing. The dream always ended the same: Me staring down on me. Watching me. Unaffected by whatever had just happened. I was peaceful. As my breath turned to smoke, I faded upward like a hot air balloon until I could no longer see me. My body down there. Me up here. Where the air was quiet and the sun was warm on my face.

  I did not mind at all.

  Bones’s voice woke me. “Freetown policy prohibits fraternization with the nursing staff.”

  “Make new policy.”

  “Have to take that up with the governing board.”

  “I intend to just as soon as I peel myself off these sheets.”

  He laughed, sat on the stool, and tapped the bag being filled by my catheter. “At least you don’t have to get out of bed to pee. It’s the little things.”

  I spoke through heavy lids. “Who blew up my boat?”

  He shook his head. “No trace. Which means they know what they’re doing.” He busied his hands by flattening a sheet beneath my arm. “Given your history, it could be anyone.”

  “How’d they find me?”

  Another shake before he crossed his legs. “Good question. I’m working on it. But Gone Fiction is not all they blew up.”

  My eyes moved but not my head.

  “They razed your island to the ground.”

  We sat in the silence. He knew I wanted more, so he patted my leg. “Another time.” He stood when Summer walked in carrying a steaming plate. Before he left, he set a pen and a pad of paper on the bed next to me. “Rest up.”

  Chapter 8

  Casey had come a long way from the steam-filled shower in which her captors had left her to die in Miami, little more than discarded refuse. Casey’s recovery had been rough. She’d walked out of hell only to reenter by another door. Detox nearly killed her, as did the memories and the PTSD.

  Of all the girls, her story hurt the most. Abandoned from birth, abused by almost everyone, forgotten, told she was nothing and always would be, she was sold into trafficking by foster parents before puberty. While she still believed the tooth fairy was real. In the years that followed, she routinely checked her mind out of her body for months on end so she didn’t have to live in it while so many did what they wanted to her.

  Her recovery had been slow, but she had taken to Freetown, and especially Angel. And me. By her own admission, I was the first man in her life who did not want something from her. Who told her she was of great value. And worth rescue. Words that were, to her, unbelievable. Given that, I said them often.

  Recovering in my room, I woke one morning to find her staring at me. She was rubbing her hands together. Saying nothing.

  I sat up, which hurt. “You okay?”

  Her lip trembled. She waved her hand across me. Her style of communicating was terse because all the small talk had been beaten out of her. “Am I responsible for this?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Bad men did this. Not you. You’ve got nothing to do with it.”

  She didn’t look convinced. A minute passed. When she tapped her chest, I didn’t know she was changing the subject. She didn’t look at me when she asked, “What do I do with the pain?”

  I rubbed my eyes and tried to focus. Waiting. We were now several feet beneath the surface. Down where our ears were starting to pop.

  Unable to speak, she extended her index finger and pointed at her heart.

  Finally, I understood. I pointed at my books on the shelf. Books that, by now, she’d read several times. “I wrote mine down.”

  She stared at them. “You teach me how?”

  The next morning we met for coffee. “I have a few simple rules. Maybe they’ll work for you. First, books don’t write themselves. Every day we show up to a white page. Which means you’ve got to put in the time. If your butt is not in the seat, then you’re probably more enamored with being called a writer than actually being one. There’s a difference. Second, I sweat my books more than write them, and I’m a better rewriter than writer. So just get it on paper. Sounds gross but just vomit it out. You can edit later. But you can’t edit what’s not there. Third, honesty trumps intelligence. So tell the truth and don’t use words you don’t understand. Readers can spot a fake a mile away.”

  She laughed. “Don’t worry.”

  “Last, you are the only you on planet earth. Out of seven billion people, you’re the only one who sounds like Casey. No one else has your voice. So find it and use it.”

  “What if no one likes that voice?”

  “We as people can’t stand a counterfeit. But we’re pretty willing to sit up and listen when someone speaks the truth no matter the cost. So just do that.”

  She squinted one eye. “No matter?”

  “John Milton wrote an essay called Areopagitica. Our founding fathers used it to argue the basis for our First Amendment rights. In there, he says something like: ‘Let truth and falsehood grapple. On a field of open encounter, who ever knew truth put to the worse?’”

  She considered this and nodded.

  I slid a Mac laptop across the table. “And save everything. All the time. Save it everywhere. On the cloud. Hard drive. Create several email addresses and email your work to yourself every time you get up and walk away. Don’t ever have just one copy of anything. This will save you some aggravation, time, and hair.”

  “Hair?”

  “Yeah. You won’t be—” I made a tugging gesture toward the top of my head.

  She laughed. “Got it.”

  Chapter 9

  The next few weeks were difficult for me. The pain I could overcome, but having someone do everything for me was not something I adjusted to easily. When Angel called Summer after the explosion, she’d left on the next flight. Never looked back. She exchanged standing in the shower of the pixie dust residue of her dreams for a dirty washcloth, bloody linens, second-degree burns, and a man with limited ability to get what he thought out his mouth.

  An unfair trade.

  But every time I drifted off, she was there. And every time I woke, she had not moved.

  Gunner, too, was never far. And often it was his sniffing muzzle that woke me, checking to see if I was still alive. Come on, old man, let’s get out of here. To entertain him, we began playing a game. I’d hold an article of clothing that belonged to someone—say Ellie, Angel, Summer, Bones, or Casey—and then say, “Find Angel,” or “Find Ellie.” He caught on pretty quick. He’d exit the room and scour Freetown until he found them. When h
e did, he’d bark, or tug gently on their clothing, or run around them in circles until he got their attention and proved he wanted something. Often he would herd them to my room like a sheepdog, where they would laugh and ask, “What do you want now?” Or “May I help you, Your Highness?” They thought it was just me being lazy, which I was, but it was also strategic—and they knew that too. So they played along.

  Bones, in his wisdom, had convinced Ellie to return to boarding school with the caveat that he’d fly her home to Freetown every Thursday evening after class and return her every Monday morning in time for the first bell. Given this, we spent the weekends walking the trails around Freetown, trying to get my strength back. She had ten thousand questions, and given that she was growing into the spitting image of her mother, I did my best to answer them as slowly as possible.

  While my physical body was healing, I still had one problem, and both Bones and Clay could read it on my face. If they, whoever they were, could get to me at my island, they could get to me at Freetown. Despite being tucked high in the Colorado mountains and guarded by a perimeter of well-trained men, my presence here was a danger to everyone. They knew it, and they knew I knew it, and they knew that I knew that they knew. Which didn’t make things any easier, but at least there were no secrets. At least not about that.

  Late one night, Ellie walked in. She sat on the end of my bed and crossed her legs. “Dad?”

  I smiled. “Yes.”

  “Will you teach me how to be tough like you?”

  “You’re assuming I’m tough.”

  She laughed but fumbled with her hands, which suggested she was serious. “I’ve seen what you can do. You’re . . . different from other dads.”

  I sat up, which required more energy than I had. “What’s bothering you?”

  She looked away. “I was just wondering . . .”

  Despite the wounds, the pain, and the drugs, I had a moment of surprising clarity. Fourteen-year-old Ellie was sitting on the end of my bed because she was staring at a big world and afraid of what she saw. I tried to stand, wobbled, and she caught me.

  “Whoa.” She laughed.

  “Told you I wasn’t too tough.”

  She put my arm over her shoulder and wrapped one arm around my waist. She had grown taller. I smelled her hair.

  I smelled Marie.

  I said, “You feel like going for a walk?”

  We walked down the stairs to the basement. I punched in my security code to the vault door, which swung open. She looked curious so I shut it and brought her closer. “When your mom and I were young, she got lost one night in a boat. Washed out into the ocean. I found her, pulled her back to shore. When she asked me why, I said the three words that came to mind. So if you ever need to get into someplace that I locked and there’s a keypad, chances are good the code is ‘Love shows up.’” She smiled and let out the breath she’d been holding since she walked into my room. I motioned to the keypad, she punched in the letters, and the door swung open to the basement where I hid my secrets.

  I pointed at the keypad. “Just between us?”

  She nodded and made a motion with her hand in front of her mouth like she was turning a lock held in her teeth and then throwing away a key.

  The lights clicked on and she walked in while Gunner and I followed. Weaponry covered three walls. Armory might be a better word than basement.

  Her eyes were wide as Oreos. “You know how to use all this?”

  “They’re just tools.”

  “This looks like something out of a movie. What is all this?”

  I waved my hand across one wall. “Those are pistols. Glocks. Sig Sauer. CZ. Wilson. Les Baer. STI. A few others.”

  She looked at me suspiciously. “Does Uncle Bones know about this place?”

  I laughed, walked to another door, pushed it open, and clicked on the light, revealing several thousand bottles of wine.

  “How’s he get down here?”

  “That tunnel connects to his house.” Another wave of my hand. “Those are rifles. Carbines. Shotguns.”

  “Why are they different?”

  “Some are for long range. Some are for close quarters.” I pointed to another door. “That room is just for ammunition.”

  She walked to a wall of pistols and pointed. “Can I touch one?”

  We were about to step into some deeper water. I limped to the wall, pulled down the Glock 19, dropped the magazine, cycled the slide, and locked it back, exposing the visual fact that the chamber was empty and the pistol unloaded. I held it between us. “There’s a thing happening in this second that I really need you to understand. I am putting something in your hand that, left alone, is harmless. But the moment you put your hand on it, it becomes something that breathes fire and deals both life and death. We’re not playing with crayons, and this is not a video game.”

  She nodded. “I know.”

  I placed it in her hand where she held it like a seashell. After a minute, she gave it back. Another point. “What’s that one?”

  “Uncle Bones’s favorite.” I lifted it off the wall and handed it to her. “A Sig 220.”

  “It’s heavier.”

  “Yes. It is.”

  Another seashell flat across her palm. She handed it back. “What’s all that?”

  “I call this my piddle table. It’s the stuff I use to clean all this. Tools mostly.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why do you call it that?”

  A chuckle. “’Cause I come down here and piddle.”

  “Can I piddle with you sometime?”

  This was not the question on her mind. I walked down the hallway to a door, pushed it open, and clicked on another light. She squinted down the tunnel. “What is that?”

  “It’s where I shoot all that stuff.”

  “Where do the bullets go?”

  I laughed. “Into the mountain.” I made a shape with my hands. “At the end is something like a mailbox. Stuff goes in but doesn’t come out.”

  “How long is it?”

  “One hundred meters from that bench.”

  “Is it loud?”

  I pointed at the walls. “They’re designed to bounce the sound away from you. Plus”—I held up a set of earmuffs—“these help.”

  She put them on, looking like an airport worker directing planes. “How do you breathe?”

  A perceptive question. “This tunnel was once part of a silver mine, meaning it’s ventilated.” I pointed to a large air handler above us. “That cleans the air.”

  She turned in a circle. Taking it all in. The unconscious turn showed the influence of Summer rubbing off on Ellie. “You come down here often?”

  I considered this. Truth was, I did more than I cared to admit. I nodded.

  Her eyes suggested I’d not answered her first question. “Probably best if we don’t start today.” I raised my arm, exposing the IV port taped to my skin. “Too many drugs still swirling around in my blood, making me foggy. Let me sweat some out first. Okay?”

  She had what she wanted. She smiled and helped me climb the stairs. “Dad?”

  “Yes,” I said, starting to sweat as I reached the fourth stair.

  “I’d say you’re pretty tough.”

  I sat on the stair. Catching my breath. I waved my hand across the basement below us. “Those things don’t make somebody tough. They’re just tools. If you have them, use them. If you have a spoon, use the spoon.” I pointed at her heart. “Tough or not tough comes out of here.”

  Her next question spoke of a lifetime of not being told. “How do you know if you have it?”

  “Time.”

  “Do I have it?”

  I nodded. “You’re one of the toughest kids I’ve ever met. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.”

  “How long have you known?”

  “The moment I first opened the door on the Whaler and found you hiding below.” I pulled myself up on her arm. “And for the record, you get that
from your mother.”

  She smiled wider and placed her shoulder beneath mine. “Dad?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me about Mom.”

  Chapter 10

  Ellie propped me up in bed and made me some oolong tea—something she’d learned from Summer. I didn’t mind the taste. Add enough honey and it’s tolerable.

  Then she climbed up in bed and sat cross-legged in front of me. Waiting. A rose on the verge of bloom. Absent the thorns.

  “You mean you want me to tell you about her right now?”

  “Dad—” She was using a tone of voice that told me I was about to get worked, but I’d like it anyway. “You tell stories read by millions around the world. I want the unedited story of how you met Mom.”

  It was a beautiful ask. And I hoped I could live up to her expectation.

  “Are you comfortable?”

  She nodded enthusiastically.

  So I told her the beginning of the story of us.

  I grew up around the water. Fishing. Swimming. Paddling my skiff. I might have been born on land, but water was home. I lived fifteen miles north of Jacksonville, Florida, on Fort George Island. Only four or five miles around, Fort George was once home to the Timucuan Indians, and it’s covered in live oak and magnolia trees that create a natural canopy and always made me think of Medusa’s hair. With the Intracoastal to the east and a world of creeks and tributaries to the west, I was surrounded by water and adventure. Not to mention shell mounds. From what I could tell, a large portion of the Indians’ diet consisted of oysters, which meant the island was covered in shell mounds—a gold mine to a curious kid. Due to the distance from Jacksonville, and the fact that it wasn’t all that easy to access, the island was sparsely populated. Mostly by retirees. Meaning I had the island to myself and more pretend friends than real.