“My mother did it. She started fires. I got it from her. Erwan, it could’ve been me. Without even knowing, I could’ve done it in my sleep. All of those fires were started at night, and we both know we can’t account for me having been in my bed, because I woke up all over the island.”
“I want you to go to Larmor-Baden tomorrow first thing. Take my boat and go to Île aux Moines. Under the big tree by the ruins, there’s a box with money and things you’ll need. I buried it by the protruding roots. You have to disappear for a while. You’ll know what to do when you get the box. You can’t speak to anyone about this. Don’t pack. Don’t take a suitcase that will attract attention and look suspicious. If someone sees you take the boat and asks where you’re going, say I’ve sent you to Port-Blanc for oysters.”
“You’re scaring me.” She jumped up and started pacing the room. “If I go, you go too. I won’t leave without you.”
“I can’t go with you. No matter what happens, I want you to get to that island.”
“What will become of you?” she exclaimed. “I can’t run like a coward and leave you to fend for yourself. We have to go to the police. Surely they’ll see reason. We’ll handle this together. We’ll get a lawyer.”
Erwan rested his hands on the table, his shoulders hunched. “It’s not just them I’m worried about.”
Dread made her feel heavy. “I don’t understand.”
“There’s another part of the story about your mother that I haven’t told you.” He searched her eyes. “It’s about your father.”
“You said my mother had a holiday romance with an Italian tourist and fell pregnant, but he left her when the summer was over.”
“Yes,” he said, nodding, “but that isn’t entirely true. He was a tourist, and he was Italian, but they didn’t have a holiday romance.”
“What then? A one-night stand?”
“He violated her.”
“What?” She sat down again as the strength left her legs.
“Katik went for a swim at the cove and spent the afternoon on the deserted beach. When she walked home early that evening, she was assaulted in the woods. The man waited for her and surprised her.”
It took her a few seconds to find her voice again. “Did the police catch him?”
Erwan picked his chair up from the floor and sat down with a groan. “We didn’t know. She didn’t tell us. Not at first. She only confessed what happened when she found out she was pregnant.”
She felt nauseous. She was the product of rape, an unwanted baby, and the cause of her mother’s death. “How could you not tell me this before?”
“I didn’t want you to grow up feeling unwanted. I wanted you to know you were loved. Are loved.” He looked at her with a new intensity burning in his tired eyes. “When Katik was three months pregnant, I came home one afternoon and found a man standing on the beach. I’d never seen him before, so I thought he was just another foreigner, a holidaymaker. But he watched me as I anchored my boat, and by the time I had my nets on land, I knew he wasn’t an accidental traveler. He was waiting for me.
“Ay, he was waiting, all right. The devil of a man told me he was your father, and that one day he’d be back for you. He came to tell me if we harmed his baby in any way, he’d kill us all. He said he came to tell me to take care of his child, to raise it until the day he’d come for it. There was this thing in his eyes, this darkness. I knew he meant every word. He was pure evil. I could feel it in my bones. I wanted to kill him, and God is my witness, I tried,” he said, his hands trembling, “but he was too strong. He just laughed, and as he walked away, he turned and told me to be waiting. He said he’d be back to claim you when the fires started. I didn’t believe it. I pushed it out of my mind. Ay, I wrote it off to madness. I looked for him for days, high and low, but it was as if he’d simply vanished. God forgive me for not having enough strength to keep my vengeance alive, but I was glad. I wanted him to disappear and for the whole thing to vanish from my memory. I never told Katik or Tella about that day on the beach. Not a soul. I tried to never think of it again. Until now.”
She stared at her grandfather, her mind unable to form words.
He got up and placed a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry it had to come to this. I tried hard to forget about that day, and for all the years of your life that you’ve made Tella and me the happiest grandparents alive, I did. I forgot about it the minute you were born and I laid my eyes on you. You’ve made our lives worth living. I haven’t raised you for a jail or an asylum. Or your father. You have to go away.”
A tear slipped free and rolled down her cheek. “What about you?”
“I know how to take care of myself. I’m too old to go with you. I’ll only slow you down. Get the box, and then leave. It’ll break my heart if you stay.”
“When will I see you again?” When he just stared at her, his silence his answer, she gripped his hand. “Give me a date. Give me something concrete. I won’t leave unless you give me that much.”
“I can’t give you a date,” he said with regret in his tone, gently freeing his hand.
“We won’t see each other again, will we? You’re not asking me to hide. You’re asking me to run, to—” A sob choked the rest of her words.
“You’re a strong woman. You’ll be fine. Now get some sleep. You have to leave at first light, before Joss’s woman comes back.”
“What will you do?”
“You know what they say. There are as many islands in the Gulf as days in the year. How many of those are inhabited?”
She blinked. “Forty.”
“Exactly. I know how to feed myself with fish.”
She understood his plan. “I won’t watch you become a fugitive because of me. Someone must be able to help us.”
“No one can help us but ourselves.”
She grasped at straws, anything to change his mind. “It won’t work. We can’t just disappear. People will wonder what happened to us.”
“I’ve already told Tristan you wanted to go to Paris for the summer and I bought you a train ticket. I’ve told the men I’m going to work on a fish trawler for a few months. A lot of them do it.”
“Not at your age.”
“I’m not your average fisherman.” He smiled bravely.
“The animals—”
“Call Rigual in the morning. Tell him to take care of them. He’s a good man. He’ll see to them.”
She’d exhausted all her arguments. “I can’t leave you,” she said, crying quietly.
He only laid his hand on her shoulder again and said, “Ken ar wech all, may we meet again,” before he shuffled through the door in the direction of the beach.
Watching him go, her heart crumpled in her chest. She didn’t want to leave him, but he was right. Staying only put him in more danger. She didn’t have a choice but to heed the message of her dream. She had to run.
Chapter 4
It rained that night. By early morning, there was no sunlight, only the drizzle that washed over the panels of Clelia’s roof window. Looking outside, she couldn’t distinguish between the clouds and the sea. The two elements flowed into each other like watercolors.