“Where did you get this?” she asked.
“The convenience store. Just down the road. As far as I can tell, it’s the only place in Vandemere that sells coffee. It’s probably not as good as what you had Friday morning, though.”
He watched her as she took the cup and sat beside him. “Did you sleep okay?”
“Yes,” she said. “And you?”
“Not really.” He shrugged slightly before turning away, focusing on the flowers again. “The rain finally stopped,” he commented.
“I noticed.”
“I should probably wash the car when I get it back to Tuck’s,” he said. “I can call Morgan Tanner if you want me to.”
“I’ll call him,” she said. “I’m sure we’ll be talking, anyway.” Amanda knew the meaningless chatter was simply a way to avoid talking about the obvious. “You’re not okay, are you?”
His shoulders drooped, but he said nothing.
“You’re upset,” she whispered, feeling sick at heart.
“No,” he answered, surprising her. He slipped his arm around her. “Not at all. Why would I be upset?” He leaned over then, kissing her tenderly before slowly drawing back.
“Look,” she started, “about last night—”
“Do you know what I found?” he interrupted. “While I was sitting out here?”
She shook her head, mystified.
“I found a four-leaf clover,” he said. “By the steps here, just before you came out. Poking out of the ground in plain sight.” He presented her with the delicate green wisp, sandwiched in the folds of a piece of scrap paper. “It’s supposed to be lucky, and I’ve been thinking a lot about that this morning.”
Amanda heard something troubled in his voice, and she felt a flash of foreboding. “What are you talking about, Dawson?” she asked quietly.
“Luck,” he said. “Ghosts. Fate.”
His words did nothing to ease her confusion and she watched as he took another sip of coffee. He lowered the cup and stared into the distance. “I almost died,” he said finally. “I don’t know. I probably should have died. The fall alone should have killed me. Or the explosion. Hell, I probably should have died two days ago…”
He trailed off, lost in thought.
“You’re scaring me,” she finally said.
Dawson straightened, coming back to her. “There was a fire on the rig in the spring,” he began. He told her everything: the fire turning into an inferno on the deck; how he’d hit the water and seen the dark-haired man; how the stranger had led him to the life preserver; how he’d reappeared with a blue windbreaker, then suddenly vanished in the supply ship afterward. He told her all that had happened over the next few weeks—the feeling that he was being watched, and how he’d seen the man again at the marina. Finally, he described his encounter with Ted on Friday, including the dark-haired man’s inexplicable appearance and disappearance in the woods.
By the time he finished, Amanda could feel her heart racing as she tried to comprehend it. “Are you saying that Ted tried to kill you? That he went to Tuck’s place with a gun to hunt you down, and you didn’t feel the need to even mention this yesterday?”
Dawson shook his head in apparent indifference. “It was over. I took care of it.”
She could hear her voice rising. “You dump his body back at the old homestead and call Abee? You take his gun and dump it? That’s taking care of it?”
He sounded too tired to argue. “It’s my family,” he said. “That’s how we handle things.”
“You’re not like them.”
“I’ve always been one of them,” he said. “I’m a Cole, remember? They come, we fight, they come again. It’s what we do.”
“So what are you saying? That it’s not over?”
“Not to them.”
“Then what are you going to do?”
“Same thing I’ve been doing. Try my best to stay out of sight, keep out of their way as much as possible. It shouldn’t be too hard. Other than cleaning up the car and maybe swinging by the cemetery again, I’ve got no reason to stick around.”
A sudden thought, liquid and blurry at first, began to crystallize in her mind, one that led to the first stirrings of panic. “Is that why we didn’t go back last night?” she demanded. “Because you thought they might be at Tuck’s?”
“I’m sure they were,” he said. “But no, that’s not the reason we’re here. I didn’t think about them at all yesterday. I had a perfect day with you instead.”