“Yes, ma’am.”
“She was your mother?”
My pulse escalated, and I sat up straighter. “Did you know her?”
“Aye.” She stared at me hard. “But most who knew her are long gone—most but me.”
This woman knew my mother! I leaned forward. “Is she here?”
She set her hand on my shoulder. “Anne Reed died fourteen years ago, come October.”
I shook my head, not willing to accept what she was saying. “She can’t be dead.”
“I’m afraid she is.”
Marcus was silent as he sat across from me, disappointment in the slope of his shoulders.
My chest became heavy with despair. I’d come so far, risking my life, only to discover that my mother was dead. How was I going to find the answers I needed? How would I know why we carried this burden? Or how I could get rid of it?
“What is your name?” Marcus asked the woman.
“Mary Jones,” she said. “I—I knew Anne well.”
“Mayhap you’d like to speak to Mary alone,” Marcus said to me. “I’m sure you have questions for her.”
“Come with me, love,” Mary said.
Without another word, I stood from the table and followed Mary out of the building, toward the beach. The sun was blinding as it reflected off the white sand.
“I ’ave questions of me own,” she said as soon as we stopped near the bones of a forgotten ship. Her gaze penetrated mine. “Anne had a daughter—not a son.”
Nodding, I said, “My name is Caroline Reed. I dressed as a boy to find passage to Nassau.”
“You’ve done a convincing job, but I can see you beneath the costume. You look like your mum.”
“Do I?” I searched her face, seeking answers. Something to hold, to take with me. “I’m desperate to know all I can about her. My grandfather told me very little.”
Mary sighed. “I’m not proud of me past, but my friendship with Anne was something I can hold me head up about. Never did I ’ave a more loyal friend than her.”
“How did you meet? How long did you know her? Did she tell you anything about me or my father? Was she—”
“Hold on, love,” she said as she held up a hand and then motioned to a large piece of driftwood that looked like it had once belonged to a ship. “Let’s ’ave a seat. I think your man will wait.”
“He’s not my man.”
“No?” She smiled. “Now that I know you’re a woman, it makes sense why he looks at you the way he does. He cares for you, love.”
My heart sped at her words, and I glanced back at the restaurant where I’d left him. He had stood and was now leaning against the doorframe, his arms crossed, watching from a distance. His attentive care for me had brought me to this woman who had known my mother, and he was still vigilant to ensure my safety.
Perhaps he did care for me, more than I realized. It was a revelation I had to push to the back of my mind as I sat on the driftwood and faced Mary. I couldn’t contemplate Marcus’s feelings for me when I needed to focus on learning about my mother. “What can you tell me about Anne Reed?”
Mary gazed at the ocean, squinting, as if trying to see into the past. “She was young, much younger than me, but she had an old soul. She came to Nassau with her husband in ’06, I believe. He was a quiet seaman of no consequence—and no match for Anne’s fiery ways. I don’t like to speak ill o’ the dead, but I think he was your mum’s passage out of South Carolina. As soon as she arrived, mayhap the first day, she met and fell in love with a young, reckless pirate of the worst sort named Sam Delaney. He was her match in every way. They were both passionate and stubborn. But he did right by her and purchased a divorce from her husband, then he married her at sea.
“That’s when I met her. I was living much like you, dressed as a man, working as a pirate. There were several women out there living like us, but they hid it well. Still do. Your mum saw through my disguise, though, and we became friends, fighting alongside the men. Plundering ships was our business.” Her pride was evident as she spoke those words. “Back in the day, there was respect for pirates. The colonists saw us attacking their oppressors and taking back what was ours. Being a privateer was legal—if you had permission from the king. You could plunder an enemy’s ship and take what you wanted. But if you didn’t have permission, you were an outlaw. I ask you, what is the difference? Approval from the king? That makes it right or wrong?”
I listened quietly, soaking up all the information. The lives of the pirates weren’t too unlike those of the gangsters in 1927. Whenalcohol was legal, there had been problems with the law, but nothing like the trouble that had started once the government decided alcohol was illegal. Organized crime had skyrocketed and then become so overwhelming, it was paralyzing America. Just as pirating had begun to paralyze Great Britain when the king deemed privateering—the capture of enemy ships—illegal.
I had expected this kind of story about my mother, but it still hurt to know she had left her first husband to take up with a pirate. Yet...
