He locked eyes with Caroline, who seemed baffled. “That’s nonsense. He would have told me.”
“Are you certain?” he pressed.
“Gray!” she said in exasperation. “We all know how you berated him for the past eight years over getting kicked out of school. He hated it. He would have done anything to make you proud of him, and if he somehow managed to finagle forgiveness and a diploma out of the Naval Academy, he would have run it up a flagpole for all to see.”
He clenched his fists, wishing he could take back every harsh word he’d ever said to Luke about getting kicked out of school. His brother was sweltering in a prison cell and probably would be for the rest of his life. This odd bit of gossip from Annabelle was the only sliver of hope that there might be more to the story than Gray assumed, and Caroline’s wholesale dismissal of it hurt.
He turned his attention to the others. “Otis? Did you ever notice Luke meeting with people from the navy? Or hitting the books for no apparent reason?”
Otis shook his head. “He hit the taverns and bars of Washington, but I never noticed any studying.”
Captain Haig was a little less certain. “Getting kicked out of the Naval Academy was always a bur under his saddle. He acted like he didn’t care, but that was typical Luke. That boy always hid whatever bothered him the most. Covered it over and made jokes about it.”
It was true. Gray once brought a parrot back from French Polynesia as a pet for Luke, who doted on the bird. He trained the parrot to say a few words and let it ride on his shoulder as he walked around town. When Luke was twelve, the parrot died,and he tried to pretend he didn’t care. He joked throughout the makeshift funeral he’d arranged in their backyard, but that evening Gray heard Luke bawling in his bedroom. If Luke was hurting, he’d make a joke before admitting it.
“What about Philip Ransom?” Otis asked. “Does he have an opinion on this?”
Of anyone, Luke’s old college roommate might know enough about the Naval Academy’s internal workings to shed insight.
“I haven’t talked to him,” Gray said. “I came straight to the three of you first.”
Caroline plopped onto a stool, the fight draining out of her. “I’d give anything to believe it might be true, even though it doesn’t sound like Luke. I’ll track down Philip Ransom. If he knows anything, I’ll wring it out of him.”
Gray nodded, grateful for her help but equally skeptical that Philip would have useful insight. The only thing he knew for sure was that Luke was far more adept at covering his tracks than any of them had given him credit for.
“Where did you hear about this?” Caroline asked.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters,” she said. “If I can pin this rumor on a reliable source, Philip is less likely to wriggle off the hook if there’s any truth to it.”
Gray shifted uncomfortably. Annabelle was the last person he wanted to bring into this conversation, but the daisy chain of connections that ultimately led to the War Department was a detail that might help.
“A secretary at the War Department saw the diploma and was charged with getting it delivered to Luke.”
“The secretary’s name?” Caroline queried.
There was no avoiding it. He confessed he didn’t know and that the secretary was the wife of Annabelle’s coworker at the Department of Agriculture. “Annabelle tracked me down at the vanilla distillery to pass it on,” he admitted.
Caroline bristled, but the other two men looked amused.
“And how is the other half of our ‘thoroughly modern couple’?” Captain Haig asked, holding back his laughter.
“Still sharpening her knives to stab more people in the back?” Caroline asked tightly.
Gray ignored the comment. “She’s fine. Still working at Ag. She heard the rumor and thought I needed to know.” He skewered Caroline with a pointed glare. “That’s all. I don’t want you nagging me over this.”
There was little else to be said. He and Caroline left thePelicanand headed toward the dock. Twilight was beginning to fall. Artists called this time “the blue hour,” that transcendent time of evening just after the sun slipped below the horizon but night hadn’t quite arrived. It had always been Gray’s favorite time of day. He paused beside the rope line to admire the harbor. Most of the ships in port were steamships, but an old-fashioned, two-masted schooner was heading toward port, its white sail gently billowing in the wind.
“What a pretty ship,” Caroline said as it drew closer.
Gray leaned forward, squinting for a better look, and could just make out the elegant lettering on the side of the ship. “It’s theEastern Wind,” he said quietly.
“The what?”
Caroline couldn’t be expected to know. They’d lost everything during the war, but Gray remembered every one of their ships. His earliest memory was of riding on his father’s shoulders as they strode on the deck of theEastern Wind. As a boy, Gray had been dazzled by how loud it sounded as the canvas sails snapped and billowed in the breeze. TheEastern Windwas one of their four merchant vessels confiscated by the government during the war. None of them had ever been returned. They were a forfeiture of war.
“It was one of Dad’s ships,” he said, determined not to let it get under his skin. The loss of their ships was the past. They’drebuilt their fortune. It was time to move forward and quit obsessing over—
