Galen’s sigh was long and drawn out. “I knew it.”
“I don’t know that it was my mother,” I hedged “I … well, it’s been brought to my attention that perhaps I’m projecting.”
Gertie bobbed her head. “You’ve only ever heard stories aboutyour mother. A child will always be desperate to know where she came from.”
“The thing is, the stories my father told are vastly different from the ones Wesley and May told me,” I said. “She sounds as if she were two different people. A wild child here, a respectable wife and mother on the mainland.”
“People mature,” Gertie noted. “These guys haven’t.” She gestured to Booker and Galen. “This one has matured into a fantastic adult.” She smiled at Aurora.
Lilac raised her chin and harrumphed.
Gertie didn’t look at her, instead training her eyes back on me. “You don’t have to apologize for wanting that to be your mother.”
Galen protested. “I just want her to be realistic.”
“Why do you get to decide what’s realistic?” Gertie challenged.
“I’m not trying to dictate to her.”
“Not on purpose,” Gertie agreed. “You are, however, trying to tell her what to feel in a vain attempt to mitigate her hopes.” She leaned forward. “You can’t stop her from getting hurt by demanding she not believe.”
Galen closed his eyes and the strain of the last few days showed on his face.
“You love her with everything you have,” Gertie continued. “You have to love her through the good and the bad. We don’t know that this is going to turn bad. If it does, she’ll have you. Maybe hope is the best thing for her at this point.”
When Galen opened his eyes again, he was resigned. “I don’t ever want to steal her hope.”
Gertie patted his shoulder. “Maybe you are finally maturing after all.”
“Does that mean I’m your favorite?” Galen asked hopefully.
“Nope.” Gertie winked at Aurora, then turned back to me. “Have you worked out how it could be your mother?”
I was rueful. “That’s the part I struggle with most. My mother died thirty years ago on the mainland. Declan Wilkes disappearedfrom this plane, this island, twenty years ago. He only arrived on the island a few years before that. He couldn’t have known my mother.”
Gertie did the math in her head. “He wouldn’t,” she agreed. “She went to college on the mainland. I don’t even remember her coming back for holidays there at the end. She would have been gone long before Declan came here, so why would her soul be on that plane?”
“That’s only one of the questions we have,” Galen confirmed.
“Okay. Prioritize your questions,” Gertie suggested.
“The biggest, at present, is what happened to Wesley. Did he leave the ranch voluntarily? Was he lured away? Hadley was lured to the plane door. Maybe Wesley was lured in the same manner.”
“To what end?” Booker asked. “What good does luring Wesley to town and locking him in the cemetery do?”
“We don’t think he was there the whole time,” I said.
“I have confirmation on that,” Galen added. “The grounds crew was in there yesterday. They were in the building. Wesley wasn’t there.”
“Then he was moved there after the grounds crew left yesterday,” Booker said. “What time was that?”
“About two o’clock in the afternoon.”
“That means he was somewhere else from the time he disappeared until after dark yesterday,” Aurora said. “Where?”
“The other plane,” Lilac assumed.
“Hadley’s mother had no idea he was over there,” Booker argued. “She seemed to know that Hadley was coming. Why wouldn’t she know the same about Wesley?”
