I thought this story too long to read in one go so I broke it down into two chapters. I would like to thank southPacific for his editing this chapter, a truly great job as always.
*****
I had just finished touring the house, saving what I thought to be the best till last. The view across the bay was staggering, and I did wonder how I was ever going to get any work done once I looked out of those windows. Becky knew she had the sale; she couldn't hide her smile, either.
"Didn't I tell you? It ticks every box you asked for, Mr. Thompson."
"Damn, Becky: if you weren't married, I would hug you! Thank you SO much." It still took me a moment to pull my eyes away from the scene that entranced me. Finally, with a sigh of contentment, I looked again at Becky. "I have to return to Houston in an hour. Please get all the paperwork ready; my lawyer will be in touch."
Becky gave me a quick tour of the town while we waited for the ferry. She pointed out the diner and general store, as well as reciting both the town and island's history, before we got on the ferry back to the mainland. She did get her hug when she dropped me alongside my own car before I headed back to the airport. The sale of the house took ten days, and within a month I was all settled in.
In my down time I did my own research on the island. Herbert Parker pretty much owned everything in this area back in the day. He married twice, although the history books got really vague about what happened to them. He was a realist though, and knew he couldn't take it with him, so he broke his wealth down. He parceled up his land and gave it to families that had always been loyal to him. Jonas Beckman was given the island, and he turned a section of it into a town so that the island wouldn't be heavily dependent on anything from the mainland.
The town council had tried a few names over the years. None ever stuck, so they kept Parker's Island, and it thrived. The island itself had twenty eight shops and industrial warehouses of varying usages, plus the ferry dock and one hundred and twelve houses. To me this was perfect, and the thank you letter and personal bonus check I sent to Becky showed how much I appreciated her efforts in finding what I needed.
What didn't occur to me until I had moved in was just how many of those houses were summer retreats. On my walks around the island I figured that just over a quarter of the total were, including the one closest to mine. My routine was the diner for breakfast, a stroll along the pier in time to watch the ferry come in, and then shop. The locals were in the main friendly, but to them I was the outsider.
Curiosity being what it is, the locals also had one question that none of them ever got an answer to. I didn't bring a family with me, and yet I now lived at what used to be Meredith Cavendish's place, which everyone knew had three bedrooms. It seemed that, in my eagerness to hide myself away from the world, the townsfolk took to watching me, wondering why I was here.
That conclusion was confirmed three months after my arrival. With breakfast over, I had walked from the diner down to the ferry dock. It was a lovely sunny day, and the temperature was just comfortable enough to sit and not burn. The ferry discharged its usual cargo of people, plus a truck and six cars. The one that made me raise an eyebrow was the Sheriff's car that drove off as well.
It pulled into the car park by the ferry office and sat there. I shrugged to myself, and went back to watching the sea of humanity come and go around the ferry dock. As the crowd diminished and the contents of my coffee cup came close to empty, the sun got blocked out. When I looked up, one of the local deputies was looking down at me. She smiled and sat on the seat next to me, looking out at the ferry and the last remaining person to leave.
"You've become a talking point, Mr. Thompson."
At least I had anticipated this conversation was coming.
"Am I under arrest, officer?"
"Nope. I don't plan to take my night stick to you either, so how about a coffee? And you're paying."
"Wouldn't that be considered a bribe?"
She giggled, forced herself not to smile and continued.
"Doubt it. Mind you, me taking my night stick to you wouldn't be called assault either; falling down steps maybe."
This time I smiled. We both stood and walked towards the diner, neither one of us saying anything. The girl at the counter had two coffees ready for us by the time we reached her; I collected mine and sat by the window that overlooked the ferry dock. The Deputy took off her sunglasses and hat before she sat down. She looked cute.
"So, Mr. Thompson, who are you? I've talked to Becky, and all she knows about you is that all business with you is done through some fancy law firm in Houston. Oh - and you tip real well."
"Oh come now, Deputy, don't disappoint me! There is much more, so please continue."
This time she pinched her lips together and stared real hard. Her cup came to her lips twice before her stare shifted to the window and she spoke again.
"I checked the fancy law firm out. It has two Thompson's listed as senior partners and one amongst the workers bees, but none with your first name. So I got to thinking and looked again at the senior partners; husband and wife it seems. Two children; Alison, the aforementioned worker bee, and Isaac. Seems the son turned his back on law. That must have rubbed his folks up the wrong way?"
*******
It did more than rub my grandparents up the wrong way; it damn near caused them to disown my folks. When my parents died in a car crash they even found themselves busy the day of the funeral, and at eighteen I stepped up to the plate and looked out for my two sisters. Worked like a dog and, with the aid of what little savings we had, got both of them into college before I decided it was my turn. But then my grandparents showed up and I slammed the door in their faces. My sisters, being rather younger and with no memories of why we were abandoned, let them in.
The charm offensive started straight away, and after an hour of listening to their shit I realized that I had in effect lost my two sisters. They packed a suitcase each and left with the grandparents that same evening. The next day I went to the realtors and let the house out the same week; that afternoon I walked into the recruitment centre and signed up. It was at Basic Training that my knack with computers and puzzles was noticed, and I was summoned to sit in a room with some suit and told to figure this out.
A file was opened, and two pieces of paper slid across the table at me. I set to work with a different piece of paper and a pencil; ten minutes later the suit smiled and left. I never got to see a parade ground again after that day: at twenty two hundred hours two MPs walked into my barracks, switched the lights back on, and told me to pack. One practically stood over me while I did just that. Everyone in that room, including me, thought I was in deep shit.
Two days later saw me in another state, sitting in classrooms talking computer codes and how to make and break them. Someone was even dumb enough to give me an IQ test along the way: I think I ranked in amongst the squirrels and coyotes on the score sheet yet, if you placed a code or computer in front of me, I came out highest in the class. That alone caused a scratched head or two.
Eventually some of them shrugged their shoulders and went with the flow. Others called me street smart and left that as the reason. All of the shrinks had diplomas and an education that was the best that this country could supply, and none of them could give the high-ups a real explanation. So I was given a new heading and file with the heading reading "Freak of nature." Somewhere in the next six and a half years, through two continents and seven countries, the words "Freak of nature" were replaced with one single word: "Asset."
When the Department had to send an asset into a war zone, which wasn't unusual but still made the Department nervous, they were very careful with their toys and didn't want any of them broken. When they were told why, the Department looked and my name slid into the frame as the likeliest candidate. A month before leaving I was assigned a Marine Corporal as a body guard. Carol was built to kill and had the most disgusting sense of humor you could imagine.
We also got on like a house on fire. In the hours and days this woman spent as my shadow I learned her life history and she learned my name. The suits told her that if she was ever to find out anything else about me, then when she left the Corps they would see to it that she would struggle to get a job as a dog catcher.
Carol didn't care. She was my shadow and that was all she cared about, even when the road side blast turned our Humvee into a blood-coated twisted heap of metal. The main point of the blast was on Carol's side of the truck; my head hit the side of the vehicle, causing me to pass out for a few minutes. When I came to, the radio was giving Carol an update as she herself killed anything that came close to the vehicle we were trapped in.
She sensed me awake; the scream of pain I let out may have given her another clue, even over the top of gunfire. The blast had sheared a piece of metal off the floor of the vehicle and through the back of my seat. About six inches of it protruded out the side of my body. Carol had already covered the area around the metal with field dressings and tied them off as best she could, considering both of us were pinned inside the Humvee.
Within minutes an Apache helicopter took up position beside our vehicle and took over from Carol in killing anything that came close enough. It was only when the Apache was spraying death along the ridge that Carol turned to me and I realized the true extent of her wounds. Her smile was as bright and mischievous as always yet her eyes no longer held life's sparkle within them. To Carol, her job was done. With the Apache overhead and the Marine rescue team already taking up defensive positions around our vehicle, it was time for her to leave.
I watched Carol die. The Corps lost a brave Marine that afternoon. I ended up with a private room in the hospital and felt like a fraud being there. While in surgery to remove the piece of metal, the doctor checked around and found that it had thankfully missed all the vital organs, leaving me with only a long rest to allow my wounds to heal. Nearly ten days into my forced stay word came through the Department that Carol was being sent home the next day. I asked, and then insisted, that I got to see Carol one last time before the Marine Corps took her home.
She was the closest I had to a friend, and would have understood the looks we got when two suits and an asset walked onto the Marine Barracks ground and asked permission from the General to say goodbye to one of their own. He knew who I was, and he could have refused, just as he knew that I shouldn't have even been able to stand in front of him while the cane I was still using barely held me up. The relief when he offered me a chair was palpable; the two suits never budged from the door as the General and I talked.
My friend was at peace now. I kissed her forehead and wished her Godspeed to the one place she talked about so much: home.
