Hold Fast - Part Seven
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
It takes a while for me to get the full story.
Not because Maggie is reluctant to tell it again. Mostly because I keep freezing in shock, and when this happens she pauses, gives me time to recover, then goes on. Also because a few times Maggie strays off-topic to reflect on other things. I have to gently interrupt her in the middle of an unflattering assessment of her dad’s intelligence more than once to get us back on track.
But we get there, piece by piece.
Maggie and her dad, she explains, typically move after spending a couple of months in a place at most. But the Port Sitka campground has been different, because the landslides closed off all the roads. Right as they were packing up to leave, they got stuck here.
There’s that boat Robin found behind the keeper’s cabin, but they couldn’t use it to leave. It belongs to the campground. It’s meant for quick trips up and down the inlet to check on campers, or pick them up if they need help. It’s not designed for any substantial trip out on the ocean. It couldn’t even get Bruce and Maggie to Port Sitka, much less anywhere else.
“So we wait to hear that the roads will be cleared. Instead we hear that they might be left closed for a long time. The government doesn’t want to fix them yet. They are waiting, because the scientists say there will be more landslides. And when my dad gets this news he is very angry, because now we stay here longer.”
“But I don’t get… why does he always have you moving? Every few months? That’s so often.”
“I think because he never does any work. You have seen how he looks after the campground, yes? Whoever hires him will probably want their money back eventually. I think this is why we leave everywhere in such a hurry.”
Whatever the real reason, Bruce was furious that they couldn’t leave, according to Maggie. But there was nothing he could do.
It strikes me that there actually was something he could do. He could have gotten in touch with his boss, told them he was quitting, and had himself and Maggie picked up in a boat dispatched to come get them. If he didn’t want to involve his boss, he could have hired someone else to come pick them up and bring them back to Port Sitka. I have to wonder why he didn’t do that.
But it sounds like ultimately other things caught up his attention. Because a little while after they got the news about the roads -
“A boat came here in the middle of the night, and tied up at the dock. A bigger boat than this one. A man brought it here, and he knew my dad. My dad says they are old friends.”
Based on Maggie’s puzzled, mistrustful expression, she’s never known her dad to have any of those before now.
“My dad tells me the man’s name is Nigel, and that he was in Port Sitka to get back some ‘lost property’ of his. I don’t like him right away. He has a nasty smile, and a bad shirt, and a bad mustache! He is a pig.”
It would seem that pig is another clear-cut category in Maggie’s mind that people she meets can be sorted into. Based on her tone and the way she crinkles her nose up in disgust, that category sits squarely on the opposite end of the scale from warrior.
Nigel had his boat about where Moondancer is right now, and Bruce told Maggie that she wasn’t to go anywhere near it.
“Which made me suspicious. Everything about the way they were behaving! Something broke in the engine of Nigel’s boat, he said. And they are in this big rush to fix it. I hear my dad say that some piece was ‘torn clean out’, but Nigel says they can fix it. My dad helped him work on it all day, like it’s his own boat or something! They’re both very angry they couldn’t get it done before nighttime. It took all day to fix it. And when my dad comes back to the cabin he tells me again I can’t go near it.”
Which, naturally, caused Maggie to decide on sneaking out for a peek at it. Really demonstrates Bruce’s lack of knowledge about teenagers. Do you want to come check out Nigel’s boat with me? would have been ten times more likely to deter her from doing it, in this case.
But she did sneak out, in the middle of the night, and snuck onto Nigel’s boat. Unfortunately Nigel was right there in the cockpit, where he caught her immediately. He started shouting at Maggie, screaming for her to get off the boat. A piece of information she conveys with such blazing outrage that I can only imagine the scene that instantly erupted.
Maggie, in the middle of that high-volume argument, thought she saw someone peeking at her through the window in the door that led below decks.
“The pig-man was going crazy for me to leave, and I was tired of listening to him. I went off the boat onto the dock again, but I wondered about who I saw through the window. My dad hadn’t said there was anyone else. And I thought, maybe this person tore the piece out of the engine.”
So she snuck back up close to the boat, laying low until she could get to a window into one of the cabins and peek in. And through the window…
“I saw a woman!”
The woman was pretty, according to Maggie, and younger than Nigel. She was in the middle of also being yelled at by Nigel. She didn’t seem hurt, but from her eyes Maggie could tell that she had been crying.
She spotted Maggie covertly watching through the window, waited until Nigel turned his back on her -
“Then she did this,” Maggie says, and silently mouths the words: Help me.
Robin snaps to her feet and goes to stand by the window. Hugging herself tightly, carefully keeping her face turned away from the rest of us.
“So what did you do, Maggie?” I ask, after a moment of shaken silence, trying to keep my voice under control.
“What do you think? You can’t leave your fellow woman hanging like that! I rush back to our cabin, and get a bottle from the liquor cabinet, and-”
“Set the boat on fire?” I stammer weakly.
Maggie’s eyes fill with a bright, faraway glow, like she can still see it.
“I’ve never gotten to burn a boat before!” she sighs dreamily, in a dopamine-high voice. “It was so beautiful, when the sail caught!”
Nigel saw the fire rising from the tip of the bow and went rushing to put it out. Maggie seized the opportunity to run below decks, grabbing Nigel’s keys to unlock the door. They were on the helm station, forgotten in the face of the arson emergency.
She got the door open, and the woman came racing out. She and Maggie made it almost to the far end of the dock before Nigel noticed them.
“And he comes running right at us, chasing us! But he didn’t see me, because I was in front. He was catching up to us, and while we were still in the darkness-”
The woman pushed Maggie down into the bushes before Nigel could see her, then kept running, leading Nigel away from Maggie. She ran straight into the forest. Nigel followed her.
“Then my dad comes running to put out the fire on Nigel’s boat. Nigel comes back after a little while, and they have some kind of big argument on the boat. They were both furious. Then my dad went looking for me, and Nigel went back into the forest.”
“And you?”
“I stayed hiding, because I didn’t know what to do. It was very exciting,” she adds, unable to keep a smile from her face. “The fire, the smoke, all the shouting, all the running!”
“Is that your idea of a good time?”
“Oh, yes. Anyways, I decided to stay and see if anything else happened.”
Something else did happen, as it turns out. The woman came bolting out of the forest and sprinted straight down the dock to the boat, which was no longer on fire.
Nigel came running out of the forest after her, just in time to see what happened.
“She stole the boat!” Maggie says admiringly. “She just took it! The pig-man started shouting and running, but she was already away from the dock.”
The boat had been seriously damaged by Maggie and her lighter, so the woman only took it across the inlet, to the far side of the water. She jumped out onto the bank, ran into the forest, and disappeared into the trees.
Nigel and Bruce took the little keeper’s boat over there, where Nigel ran after the woman and Bruce attached a tow line to the big boat. When they came back with the big boat trailing behind them, it was only with two passengers.
She’d gotten a head start while they retrieved their own boat. They couldn’t find her.
“And it’s like this big disaster, I guess,” Maggie goes on, “Because they had another big argument, and at the end I heard the pig-man say to my pig-father that he will patch the boat up good enough to go back to Port Sitka, and come back with a new one. But he hasn’t come back.”
Maggie pauses, then adds irritably - “My dad is very angry with me for burning the boat. It’s not even his!”
I draw in a slow, stammering breath. “What happened to the woman who ran into the forest?”
“I don’t know.” Maggie grows puzzled, her emerald eyes deeply concerned. “She’s gone for weeks now, I think. That’s why I was going to summon the Captain to come here. Before the woman pushed me down into the bushes, she said to me – Get Robin. She’s in Port Sitka. She’ll come save me.”
I look sharply at Robin. She’s standing at the window with her head down, quietly on the verge of tears.
“But I have no phone, no laptop, no radio,” Maggie goes on in frustration. “So I cannot reach anyone to get help, for ages! It’s been horrible to do nothing. Kaden and his brother are the first ones to come here since it happened. That’s why I was going to ask him to get you.”
Maggie pauses, then brightens up considerably.
“And now you’re here, and you will help,” she decides, looking infinitely reassured by that.
I slowly, silently turn my gaze back to Robin. She hasn’t said a word, not that I blame her. I can’t imagine how she’s feeling right now. She’s standing stock still, keeping her back to us.
I look over at Aiden. He widens his in silent agreement when he sees the thunderstruck expression in mine. Will is leaning back against the wall with his lip caught between his teeth, his eyebrows drawn down low. I can tell that he’s deeply offended, which he confirms when he growls -
“Curse it, I wish I could speak to Bruce and Nigel! Someone should learn them how to treat a lady.”
“Maggie,” I manage, somewhat unsteadily, “Would you, um – would you give us a minute?”
“Okay,” she agrees, but then remains lounging where she is on the bed.
Apparently we’ll be the ones going, then, so I catch Robin’s arm and pull her to the door. Probably for the best that Maggie doesn’t go out on deck, anyways. Bruce is probably still on the prowl.
We step out into the night air, and the soft lapping of the ocean against the boat rises up to greet us. It’s cold, especially without our jackets, but that’s not what I’m worried about right now.
I peer anxiously into Robin’s face. It’s – hard to tell what she’s thinking.
“Faith?” I murmur softly.
Robin nods in confirmation, her voice rasping.
“Yeah. Guess my – my sailing lessons with her took better than I thought. If she knew how to tear up the engine so it wouldn’t work, and also steer across the inlet…”
Robin’s voice trembles, grows rough, and trails to a stop. Will stares at her, his green eyes full of pained sympathy, then looks off towards the cabins.
“I’ll go make sure Bruce isn’t on his way back,” he murmurs.
I give him a grateful nod of agreement, and he shimmers out of visibility. I let Robin have a second before I gently ask the next question.
“Who’s Nigel? Do you know?”
Robin closes her eyes, her hoarse words coming out very quietly.
“Faith’s dad. He’s the main reason why she wanted to get away from her hometown. So he couldn’t control her anymore. Faith was afraid of him tracking her down and showing up. He said if she ever dared to cut all ties and leave, he’d find her and drag her back home, make her ‘see reason’… not in – not in those words. In worse ones, wrong ones. Lost property!” Robin stops, barely able to take a breath through the incandescent rage choking up her voice. “That’s just like him, based on what Faith told me…”
She fades off, then adds, very softly - “But I never thought he’d really track her down. Even if he did, I always promised Faith she’d be – she’d be safe with me around.”
With that Robin falls silent. She drops to sit perfectly still on one of the lounge seats, her head buried in her hands. Aiden and I stare at her in silent, heartsick sympathy.
“How did he find us?” she rasps, in a soft, broken voice.
Aiden and I immediately move to sit down on either side of her, so fast that she startles and looks up, surprised to suddenly find herself sandwiched in.
“Don’t cry, Captain!” I tell her earnestly.
“Yeah, or you’ll start Jamie sympathy crying,” Aiden tells her gravely.
“But much more importantly than that,” I cut back in, reaching around Robin’s shoulders to swat at Aiden, “This means that Faith was here! We’re on the right track! She might still be here, in the forest – actually, she must still be here, because the only way to or from this place is by boat, and she doesn’t have one!”
Robin stares hard at me, holding two tight handfuls of her auburn braid.
I give her a hopeful smile. “This means we finally have a lead!”
I recognize this also means it’s possible that Faith has been alone out in the forest for over two weeks. But it would be unhelpful to point that out right now, and there’s something nicer that can be pointed out, anyways.
“She escaped from Nigel!” I go on, putting a bracing hand on Robin’s arm. “She got away from him. Completely fucked up his plans.”
“Sounds like Maggie completely fucked up whatever plan Bruce had, too,” Aiden murmurs thoughtfully, trailing his fingers over his beard.
Robin draws in a shaky breath, tilting her head back. “Yeah, what – what the fuck is going on there? Faith’s dad and Maggie’s dad are old friends?”
“Oh, I sincerely doubt that!” I jump in. “Maybe they’ve got some kind of history, but does any of this sound like old friends behavior to you? Maggie made it sound like they were arguing the whole time, and not in a fun way. Aiden and I overheard that conversation Bruce was having on the phone, which must have been with Nigel, right? It didn’t sound friendly to me. Sounded more like… two people who don’t like having to work together, and are hating it even more than they expected to.”
“Alright, so what do we know? Nigel snatched Faith from her apartment, then snuck away from Port Sitka on his boat.” Aiden’s deep, slow voice is so soothingly warm and calm that Robin gets through that sentence with only a little flinch. “He made it to the campground, but Faith sabotaged the engine so he couldn’t leave again. Temporarily stopped Nigel’s post-kidnapping journey home. For some reason Bruce was seriously pissed about that.”
“And then Maggie rescued Faith, and torched the boat… and Bruce was furious again,” I point out.
“But it’s not his boat or his kid, not his problem. So if there’s no love lost between Bruce and Nigel, then-” Aiden’s blue eyes narrow in bewilderment. “Why does Bruce even care?”
“Yeah, he doesn’t strike me as the type to give a damn about the problems of others,” Robin says dryly.
“Which reminds me!” I widen my eyes at Aiden in indignant confusion. “What the hell is Bruce doing, forcing Maggie to move this often? Obviously it’s so normal to her by now that she’s stopped wondering about it, but I wonder about it. What’s the point in doing all that?”
“I don’t like it one bit,” Robin growls, then suddenly grows furious, her light brown eyes blazing. “And I don’t like that man one bit, either! He’s an appalling father, just like Nigel! Someone has to take Maggie away from him, someone just has to! Or we have to do something!”
Aiden winces unhappily. “Sure, but what? She’s sixteen, a minor, and Bruce is her dad. If we just take her and run off-”
“That would be great!” Robin agrees vehemently, nodding very fast.
“-that would be kidnapping,” Aiden finishes at the same time, then pauses in alarm. “No, Robin – we’ll just get ourselves in huge trouble, and the cops will give Maggie right back to Bruce. I hate to say it, but we have no right. Not legally speaking, anyways.”
Robin flexes the muscles in her jaw, her eyes molten with frustration that I’m feeling myself. Even knowing that Aiden is right, I can’t help arguing.
“But we have to do something! Ralph said we need to make sure that Maggie doesn’t get hurt, and that Bruce doesn’t take off with her!”
“Ralph is right!” Robin agrees instantly, despite not really knowing who Ralph is or why he would say that. “That man can’t be allowed-”
“That man has custody of Maggie,” Aiden cuts in gently, then picks up speed in alarm when Robin surges to her feet. “No, I’m not saying we shouldn’t do something! We should! I’m just saying that we need to be careful about what course of action to take here. We can’t spring Maggie and then go looking for Faith right across the inlet from where Bruce lives. You know we can’t. He’ll come after her, just like he does every time.”
“Ugh, I hate that you’re right!” Robin flings herself back down onto the lounge seat, tilting her head back in exasperation. “I don’t see why he’s so hell-bent on not letting her get away from him! He doesn’t treat her like he cares about her.”
No, he doesn’t… and unless he secretly does care about her – not the impression I got, personally – then there must be some other reason why he won’t let Maggie escape him, even for a few minutes to chat with some strangers. Afraid of what she knows, what she might say? Presumably he didn’t want her telling anyone about Nigel, and the shady chaos that followed his arrival. But it can’t just be that, right? It sounds like Bruce’s weird behavior started ages ago. Way before now.
I’m trying to remember something from a long time ago, Ralph said on the phone.
“We need to go looking for Faith,” Robin says suddenly. She gets to her feet so quickly that Aiden and I both sit back in surprise. “She’s here! She’s here…”
Through the daze of processing all the new information, I think this just now, finally sank in for Robin. She turns her hopeful eyes to the far bank of the inlet, where the trees grow thickly together, and the towering mountains glint at their peaks in the moonlight.
I’m trying not to think about the likelihood of someone surviving in the forest, alone, with no gear or supplies, for over two weeks.
The odds don’t matter, I tell myself fiercely. Aiden is with us. Anything can happen.
“Yeah, this is great news! But wait a sec – Robin, we can’t go over there and start looking for her right now!”
“Why the hell not?” Robin shakes my hand off of her arm and breathlessly strides over to the helm station. “She’s there, right now, she could be-”
“We’re not going to find her in the middle of the night when we’re this wiped out!” I protest, following her in alarm. “You’re forgetting the day we had! We saved Christian and Demir just this morning, we’ve barely slept at all-”
“We’ll start at dawn, Captain,” Aiden promises quietly, in his deep, reassuring voice. “And that’s only a few hours away.”
Robin stares hard at us, then shakes her head and turns to the helm station, about to start Moondancer’s engine up.
I hover behind her anxiously, then blurt out - “We can’t help Faith if we’re all stupid with exhaustion, feeling around in the dark. We might trample right over something that could lead us to her. We need to sleep, Robin, you need to sleep. You know you do.”
Robin stops, holding tight to the helm station, her shoulders all tensed up. She doesn’t answer, only hangs her head. But she knows we’re right, I can tell. I put a consoling hand on her back.
“In the meantime we need to decide what to do about Maggie.” Aiden gets to his feet, crossing his powerful arms over his chest, his blue eyes worried. “Ralph is looking into it, but until we hear from him… how do we help her?”
“If we can make sure she just stays here, and stays safe until we track Faith down,” I begin uncertainly, “Then maybe-”
I break off mid-sentence, having caught a glimpse of a little silhouette at the bottom of the steps leading below decks.
“Maggie,” I call softly. “Are you eavesdropping?”
She shakes her dark hair out of her face, then steps out from the shadows and comes out into the lounge. Her chin is tilted up, her emerald eyes completely unabashed.
“If you are speaking about me, I will hear it,” she informs us primly, then sits down in a lounge seat and delicately rearranges her too-big jacket. “Captain, sit with me.”
Robin, who was still clinging to the helm station like she was thinking about just starting Moondancer and taking us directly across the inlet, finally lets it go. She automatically comes over to sit down at Maggie’s side.
I think she’s still reeling from everything we’ve learned. Her expression has gone blank again. She looks very far away, until Maggie startles her back into the present by taking her hand.
“That woman I saw, the one the pig-man had locked up?” Maggie asks softly. “She is your fiancée? Faith?”
Robin bites her lip, then nods silently.
“And she forgave you for those curtains?” Maggie asks, astonished, her eyes opening very wide. “Wow. Renmen se yon bèl bagay.”
Robin lets out a startled laugh, tilting her head back helplessly. “I don’t know what that last part meant, but given it’s about my choice of curtains I suppose I shouldn’t be flattered.”
“No, not flattered,” Maggie agrees, to a sputter of indignation from Robin. “Happy, though, because she loves you. And you will rescue her, yes?”
She asks it like a question, but she’s radiating the message that it’s an order, a non-negotiable. It makes Robin finally break into a weak smile. Something about how small Maggie is, while being so adamant. She sits there with stately grace, as if the matter has been decided by royal order. She seems to think that if she commanded Robin to do it, it will have to be done.
In fact, she seems to think that matter is closed for now, because she turns to level her piercing green gaze on me and Aiden instead.
“Now, why were you all talking about me? Explica lá.”
“We weren’t, we just-” Aiden breaks off, seeing in Maggie’s stubborn eyes that she’s not going to be deflected. “We, um…”
He trails off, then glances uncertainly at me, rubbing his elbow. We didn’t get time to discuss how much we’d say to Maggie.
I guess it might be better to keep her in the dark for now. We haven’t got the full story yet. And we don’t know what she might do with any information we give her. Sixteen-year-olds are famously unpredictable, and this particular one has that quality in extreme amounts.
Then again – maybe that’s not our decision to make? I don’t know, I kind of feel like Maggie deserves to know what’s going on… and I seriously doubt that I’m going to scare her by telling her the truth. She doesn’t seem afraid of anything.
I hesitate for one more moment, fidgeting with my malachite necklace, carefully choosing my words.
“Maggie… we think that maybe your situation… isn’t what it seems.”
She tips her head to one side, her green eyes narrowing in curiosity. “What do you mean by that?”
“We don’t trust your father-”
She nods her head wisely. “You should not. He is also a pig-man.”
“-and we’re concerned that maybe there’s more going on with him than you know about,” I finish. “Might be that he’s caught up in something shady. I’m sorry, I know that’s not clear, but I can’t really explain it more than that at the moment. We’re having a friend of ours look into it right now, but we don’t have any answers yet.”
Maggie stares hard at me, her dark eyebrows drawn together into a puzzled furrow.
“Have you ever seen him do something illegal, Maggie?” Aiden asks. “Something that might explain why he’s skipping from country to country this often, dragging you along?”
“No… unless it’s like I said, it’s his sloppy lazy work, when he bothers to do it at all. He always takes a random job far away from everything, and then not really do it. Maybe people want their money back.”
“Sounds like a reason to skip town, not skip the whole country,” Aiden answers.
Maggie stares at him in mounting confusion.
“It’s just – what we do,” she explains uncertainly. “Ever since I can remember.”
“Okay…” I hesitate, then ask – “Do you mind that we’re looking into your dad, trying to figure out what’s happening with him?”
“No,” Maggie says firmly, without a second of hesitation. “I want to know, too.”
“Even if it might get him in trouble?”
She lets out a scoffing laugh, widening her eyes at me like I’m being ridiculous. “I don’t care if he gets in trouble! Serves him right!”
“It might take us some time to sort it out,” Aiden warns Maggie.
She nods, like she expected as much.
“Do you maybe have any other family we can call?” I ask hopefully, turning the heist ring around my knuckle. “Someone who would want you to come live with them?”
“No.” Maggie is visibly bummed out by the fact. “No other family, or I would have tried to go to them long ago. There’s just him.”
Shit. Goddamnit. “Okay, no problem at all! We’ll – figure something else out. In the meantime we need you to not talk to Bruce about any of this, please.”
Maggie gasps in indignation at the mere suggestion. “I would not, I would never!”
“And we need you to stay here while we go look for Faith,” Aiden goes on firmly. “Even if Bruce suddenly decides he feels like leaving. We can’t have him taking off with you again, understood?”
“He has no boat that could do it,” Maggie points out.
“Yes, but things could change.”
Maggie considers, then nods calmly. “True. Then I will not let him.”
I let my worried eyes linger on Maggie’s face. “Your dad wouldn’t hurt you, would he? We have to go looking for Faith, but we won’t leave you here if-”
“I would kill him if he ever dared to try!” she flashes back, her eyes blazing with sudden fire.
“Oh!” I draw back in alarm, putting a hand to my heart. “Okay, hopefully it doesn’t come to that!”
“There’s always the police,” Robin points out, since Maggie seems to have jumped straight to the decision to handle it herself, presumably using only a tent stake and whatever flammables are on hand.
“The police!” she answers scornfully, with a dismissive flick of her hand. “Let him call them if he wants. They will not be able to rescue him from me. I will kill him.”
“Oh, boy,” Aiden murmurs beneath his breath, rubbing his eyebrow.
“I’d say we should give you one of our phones,” Robin tells Maggie, apparently unconcerned, “But there’s only reception at the campground, so it wouldn’t help you reach us.”
I lift my head, struck with a sudden idea.
“If you need us, Maggie, just say ‘Will’, like you want to talk to someone named Will. We’ll figure it out from there.”
Maggie stares at me curiously.
“Will,” she repeats, testing it out. “How does that…?”
“Don’t worry, it’ll work.” I glance fondly at Will, who just materialized on deck and is now standing protectively at Maggie’s shoulder. “Trust us.”
“Okay…” Maggie shrugs her shoulders, baffled but amused. “I’ll do that.”
She gets to her feet, stretching her arms over her head, then adds – “That means I must go back for now, yes? Before he finds me here.”
I nod at her regretfully, and she lets out a soft, unhappy sigh.
She turns to look at the moonlit dock, the forested path back to the cabins. She’s unhesitating about most things, but for a second she just stands there. Like she can’t convince her feet to take her where she needs to go.
“I’ll come with you,” I offer, coming over to join her.
“We’ll all go,” Robin decides firmly.
“Is Bruce anywhere near the dock?” I whisper to Will.
“No, he’s checking the tent campground again.”
Maggie accepts the hand Aiden offers her and touches lightly down on the dock. We automatically form a protective little circle around her before we move off.
Her hands are buried in the long sleeves of Kaden’s jacket, only her fingertips showing as she reaches up to sweep her hair out of her face.
“Where is Kaden now?” she asks casually. “Did he – go very far away, or…?”
A lot of feelings can form in twenty minutes, huh? I laugh silently, speaking to Aiden through our interwoven fingers.
A lot of feelings can form in one second, Keane, he murmurs back, an intimate smile warming me through the connection. I know all about that.
Blushing deeply, I let go of Aiden’s hand and turn to Maggie. Deciding to put in a good, strong word for Kaden.
“He’s back in Port Sitka, acting as base camp for our mission here. He really wants to help you out however he can. Took out a hotel room to be close by. And he’s looking after his cousin, who got hurt in a boating accident this morning.”
Maggie smiles in pleased approval, then turns her face away to look out over the glittering waters of the inlet. Walking as slowly as possible towards the cabins.
She looks thoughtful as she lifts her gaze to Robin again. “Why did the pig-man lock up your fiancée?”
“He’s her dad, and a control freak,” Robin answers briefly, I think in the interest of keeping her voice under control. “And she defied him.”
Maggie falls silent, contemplating that, then eventually answers -
“I have a necklace in my collection with coral beads placed like flower petals around golden centers. Small clusters closer to the neck, bigger by the pendant at the end. Beautifully constructed.” Maggie smiles up at Robin. “When you bring Faith back here, I will give it to her. It will suit her. I want her to have it.”
Robin bites her lip, then lets out a startled laugh when Maggie adds, with a tone of confident finality – “She will wear it for your wedding.”
“You’re bossing around Faith, now?” Robin lets out a ragged laugh, rubbing her eyes. “On her own wedding day?”
“She has to wear it!” Maggie insists fiercely. “It will be perfect, so there is no other choice.”
“You’re willing to give up parts of your collection?” Aiden asks, keeping his voice soft as we draw closer to the cabins.
“Ah, yes,” Maggie sighs. “I love the necklaces I have, but not so much that I won’t give them away when I meet someone they are meant for. I can never afford the ones I want the most. The Boucheron pendant with the wings, or that vintage Lalique I saw when I was fourteen… I still think of that one! The shop had a Lalique perfume bottle that matched the necklace, to make a set. Gorgeous. Sometimes boys in shops will give me things if I ask for them, so I asked.”
I have to suppress a laugh at the notion of smitten shopboys just handing things over to Maggie upon request. “And he didn’t give it to you, this time?”
“He said he wanted to give it to me,” Maggie pouts, with obvious frustration, “But he could not because it cost fifty thousand dollars, so his boss would be angry.”
Aiden chokes on the sip he was taking from his water bottle, and Will’s eyes grow as wide as saucers. Even Robin briefly snaps out of her thoughts to stare incredulously at Maggie.
“What?” I sputter, lifting my fingers to my lips. “Fifty thousand dollars?”
“I know!” Maggie groans, tilting her head back in dismay. “Such a good price, for such a set! It was worth so much more. It would be out of place in my collection, most of my necklaces cost twenty dollars or less, even this one, but still…”
I point to the beautiful necklace she’s wearing, astounded. “This cost less than twenty dollars?”
“Mhm. I bought it from a – a – comment dire? Flea market? Junk – shop.”
Damn. Twenty dollar price range or fifty thousand, it doesn’t matter, I guess. Maggie just has a natural sense for beautiful things, quality things.
“Again, how can you be Bruce’s kid?” I ask, in total disbelief.
“You know, weirdly I believe her about that set being worth the cost?” Aiden says to me and Will, over the top of Maggie’s head. “I trust her taste.”
“Yeah,” Robin agrees tiredly. “I should really have you pick my replacement curtains, Maggie.”
“Naturalmente. I think you want blue ones, with white and orange stitching. Maybe with some little flowers in white thread.”
“Guess this means I should really work on my hot chocolate recipe,” Aiden murmurs, troubled at the thought. “Figure out the right amount of cinnamon.”
“No, I don’t think so.” Maggie stops by the campground rules sign, tilting her head all the way back to look up at him. “I changed my mind about that. I see now why it’s so nice this way. The taste the extra cinnamon leaves behind.” She gives him a twinkling smile, a graceful nod of approval. “Your hot chocolate is irreproachable, Aiden.”
Aiden stops in surprise, immensely pleased at the compliment. He flashes me a wide grin, like – did you hear that? I give it right back to him, trying not to laugh at his glowing expression.
“Maggie,” he says, slipping his phone out of his pocket, “We’re gonna get you out of this situation if it kills me.”
“Excellent,” she giggles, with another approving nod.
“Give me a thorough description of Nigel, alright?”
“The pig-man?”
“Um – yeah, the pig-man.”
“He’s tall and thin, with short brown hair and a terrible shirt. And the mustache! God! Jesus! Ce fut indicible. The shirt was very bad, too, did I say that?”
Aiden lets out a deep huff of chuckling laughter, typing into his phone. “Yeah, you mentioned it.”
He’s writing a text to Ralph, taking advantage of the reception that the campground offers us here. Maggie leans over to read it, and I do the same.
Figured out who took Faith, it was her dad. She’s somewhere around here. We’re still looking. The guy’s name is Nigel, tall and skinny with a notable mustache and notably bad taste in shirts. He might be in Port Sitka asking around about buying a boat.
“And he’s a pig-man,” Maggie helpfully reminds Aiden. “Include that.”
Aiden hesitates, debating trying to explain to Maggie the relative usefulness of that, then defeatedly adds: He’s a pig-man.
“You said Ralph can help me?” Maggie asks, suddenly hopeful as Aiden hits send on the text. “About my father?”
“Maybe, yeah. He’s my brother, and he’s smarter than all the rest of us put together. Assuming you don’t include Kasey. Pretty much nothing throws him off, and our other brother is helping him, too, so-”
Dude wtf is a pig-man? Ralph texts back.
Is it like an orc or something? Noah texts Aiden, separately. Take pics, if so.
“I don’t want to make any promises,” Aiden goes on, carefully not acknowledging the notifications on his screen, “But I bet Ralph can figure out what’s going on here. We trust him. You can, too.”
“I don’t know him.” Maggie looks at us long and earnestly. “I trust you.”
“We’ll do our best,” I answer quietly. “That much we can promise.”
Maggie gives me a slow nod, looks around at each of us, then nods again, more briskly.
“You will report back to me soon,” she informs us, starting towards the keeper’s cabin.
“Bossing us around again!” Aiden complains.
“You’ll get her back, Captain,” Maggie calls softly, sternly, reiterating her earlier orders. “Elle est a toi!”
Robin drops her head, breaking into a small, appreciative smile.
“Hey, don’t burn anything while we’re away!” I call back to Maggie. “Not unless it’s incredibly necessary, alright? Super incredibly necessary!”
Maggie makes a face at me over her shoulder, laughing softly. But as she turns around to face the keeper’s cabin her shoulders stiffen up, and her steps grow more and more reluctant.
It’s plainly evident how little she wants to go back to Bruce’s house. It must be a misery for someone as sharp as her to sit around doing nothing in her room all day, with only Bruce for company. And she doesn’t even really have him. He talks to her so rarely that she didn’t even pick up his way of speaking. Instead she had to make her own, using pieces from everyone else.
My heart aches for Maggie as her little silhouette vanishes into the cabin. It goes on aching as we walk down the dark path back to the dock, and as Aiden gently draws our hammock back into existence so we can finally sleep.
It’s going to be hard not to worry about Maggie while we’re on the far side of the inlet. But Faith needs our help, too. Much more urgently.
I’m conflicted about how to feel, knowing what we know now. I’m deeply worried when I think of how much time Faith has spent alone out in the forest, but – she was here. She was unhurt, at least at the time. With Maggie’s help, with her own bit of well-timed engine destruction and boat theft, she got away. She even let Maggie know who to get to come help, and now we’re here.
We’re on the right track.
With that thought in mind, I crawl my exhausted self into the hammock and pass out instantly in Aiden’s arms.
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