The Storm and the Darkness Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Quote

  Chapter One: Ana

  Chapter Two: Nicolas

  Chapter Three: Ana

  Chapter Four: Finnegan

  Chapter Five: Ana

  Chapter Six: Alex

  Chapter Seven: Jonathan

  Chapter Eight: Ana

  Chapter Nine: Finnegan

  Chapter Ten: Jonathan

  Chapter Eleven: Alex

  Chapter Twelve: Finnegan

  Chapter Thirteen: Ana

  Chapter Fourteen: Jonathan

  Chapter Fifteen: Alex

  Chapter Sixteen: Finnegan

  Chapter Seventeen: Jonathan

  Chapter Eighteen: Nicolas

  Chapter Nineteen: Augustus

  Chapter Twenty: Nicolas

  Chapter Twenty-One: Alex

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Nicolas

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Jonathan

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Ana

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Finnegan

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Jonathan

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Ana

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Nicolas

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Alex

  Chapter Thirty: Augustus

  Chapter Thirty-One: Jonathan

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Finnegan

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Oz

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Ana

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Augustus

  Chapter Thirty-Six: Oz

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: Alex

  Chapter Thirty-Eight: Finnegan

  Chapter Thirty-Nine: Ana

  Chapter Forty: Jonathan

  Chapter Forty-One: Ana

  Chapter Forty-Two: Finnegan

  Chapter Forty-Three: Nicolas

  Chapter Forty-Four: Alex

  Chapter Forty-Five: Oz

  Chapter Forty-Six: Finnegan

  Chapter Forty-Seven: Nicolas

  Chapter Forty-Eight: Jonathan

  Chapter Forty-Nine: Nicolas

  Chapter Fifty: Ana

  Chapter Fifty-One: Alex

  Chapter Fifty-Two: Oz

  Chapter Fifty-Three: Jonathan

  Chapter Fifty-Four: Nicolas

  Chapter Fifty-Five: Ana

  Chapter Fifty-Six: Finnegan

  Chapter Fifty-Seven: Oz

  Chapter Fifty-Eight: Jonathan

  Chapter Fifty-Nine: Nicolas

  Chapter Sixty: Jonathan

  Chapter Sixty-One: Augustus

  Chapter Sixty-Two: Ana

  Epilogue: Ana

  Novels by Sarah M. Cradit

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  The Storm

  and the

  Darkness

  Sarah M. Cradit

  Copyright © 2013 Sarah M. Cradit

  Cover Design by Justin Mikkelsen

  All rights reserved.

  For Laura

  Life could not have afforded me a truer friend

  “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” - Henry David Thoreau

  Chapter One: Ana

  “All I’m saying is, Deliverance was based on a true story.”

  For the past hour, Nicolas had been trying to talk her into coming home to New Orleans. Ana rifled through the fridge, looking for something easy to cook.

  “Mhm,” she said, agreeing with him as she often did when he was rambling on about something idiotic.

  “Anywhere that doesn’t have cell service might as well be Iceland,” Nicolas added.

  Ana laughed. “They have cell phones in Iceland.”

  He dropped his voice low. “I’m talking about the parts without cell service, Ana. Dark places. Places where you can’t even pronounce the name of the village you’re in because it has sixteen consonants and no vowel, and there are more active volcanoes than people.”

  “The more worked up you get, the less you make sense.” Ana sighed. “Anyway, how’s everything at home?”

  Nicolas gave an exaggerated yawn. “Your father is fine, your stepmother is fine, Adrienne is fine, blah blah blah. Would you like to hear about the weather? I could give you the score of the Saints game, if you’re so inclined.”

  “You act like those things aren’t important.”

  “They’re not,” he said simply. Silence on his end for a moment and then he added, “And if you did care so much about how the family is doing, you wouldn’t have abandoned us.”

  “Stop being an ass,” Ana said lightly, but she knew he could hear the slight reprimand in her voice. Nicolas had a way of finding the line and stepping over it. Normally she enjoyed the parry, but the circumstances were different now. Of course, Nicolas had no way of knowing that because, for the first time in her life, she had kept something from him. Quarter-life crisis, she told him when she revealed her plans to move to Maine. He had known better, though; he had seen right through her lie and let her keep lying because he loved her. She didn’t know what had stopped her from telling him.

  That’s a lie. I know why.

  She knew it hurt him that she was lying. It hurt her to do it. He was not just her cousin, but also her closest friend. Telling herself he probably kept things from her all the time didn’t help. The thought was hollow because she knew better.

  “Have you shown anyone your parlor trick yet?” He asked with a snicker.

  “You know I haven’t. They already dislike me. I don’t need them also thinking I’m a freak of nature.”

  “Not a freak of nature, darling. Just a Deschanel.”

  Ana was not the only Deschanel with a special talent, but she might be the only one that wished she didn’t. It was more of a curse than a blessing.

  “How did your family escape it then?” She asked. Not only was Nicolas born without special abilities–benign, the other Deschanels liked to call it–his father and four sisters were also benign.

  “Heathens,” he said casually, as if that explained it.

  “There are plenty of powerful heathens in this family,” she laughed. “But I suppose you do set that bar rather high.”

  After dinner, she wandered out to her front porch, which faced Casco Bay, an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean. She shielded her eyes from the vibrant orange hues of the setting sun, and looked out across the sparkling water. From where her house sat, on the eastern shore, she could not see the mainland, but she could make out the traces of some of the smaller, barren islands to the East. Alex had told her that in the winter the view would disappear completely and the island would be shrouded in blinding fog. She wondered again if she had done the right thing in coming there.

  What was my father thinking when he bought this place? It had been a gift to her mother Catherine. She died giving birth to Ana, and never had a chance to visit. Yet another failure. A healer who killed her own mother.

  Ana caught the view of a fishing trawler in her peripheral, off to the West. Her gaze shifted from the sunset to the man captaining the vessel. He had come back to shore every day at the same time, all week. Alex told her that some of the fishermen told time by the sun. She wondered if Finnegan St. Andrews was one of them.

  As he dropped anchor, a small boy hopped off and started tethering the boat to a series of poles. Moments later, Finn joined him, and helped finish securing the boat. Together they carried the traps from the boat to the boathouse at the upper end of the dock.

  Finn placed several of the live lobster into an ice chest for the child, and then watched him scamper up the beach, toward a path leading to the main ro
ad.

  Finn stretched his strong shoulders as if shrugging off a tremendous burden. As his arms came down, he put his hand over his eyes to shield them from the sun. He caught sight of Ana on her porch, and he waved. She waved back.

  This had been a daily tradition during the seven days she had been on the island. Finn was the closest thing she had to a friend, next to Alex, but they had never actually met. She knew it would be simple enough to introduce herself. She might not even have to say much, since everyone in town already seemed to know everything about her anyway.

  She knew that she wouldn’t, though. Waving was safer.

  Ana set a bowl of milk on the porch next to an old comforter. Cocoa would not be back until later in the evening, most likely. Ana wondered if the cat had been someone’s pet once, for she had immediately warmed up to Ana.

  Ana never had any pets of her own back home. Growing up, her stepmother, Barbara, had been allergic to almost everything, and then when Ana left home, her focus on education left little room for anything else. She spent four years in undergraduate studies, and then another four for her double masters. She would have continued as a student forever, if her favorite professor hadn’t offered her a job teaching English at Tulane. It was an unlikely career choice for an introvert, but it made her happy to feel useful.

  Then she had left. Left the job, her family, her hometown, Nicolas; all of it.

  She hadn’t known anything about Summer Island, Maine before her arrival a week earlier. She knew about the old home she inherited from her mother, but she had never been there, and had never even seen a picture of it. All she knew–and all that mattered–was that it was far from New Orleans, both in distance and similarity.

  The recorded population of Summer Island was 250, but Alex told her that it was actually 204 if you subtracted the families who only had weekend or summer homes. Although it was only 2.2 square miles in size, the town was relatively self-sufficient, having most of the basics. The only thing they seemed to be missing was a medical facility but, surprisingly, there was a veterinary clinic. The vet was one of her neighbors–the lobster fisherman’s brother, in fact–but his standoffish behavior made Ana think twice about striking up a conversation. Meeting new people was hard enough already.

  The island was a sixty-minute ferry ride on the Casco Bay Ferry Lines to Portland. Geographically, Summer Island was the furthest east from the mainland of the islands that had residents. Alex said there were a handful of folks who commuted daily into Portland, but the restaurants, bars, post office, grocery store, and other businesses were all run by islanders.

  “It makes it easier in the winter,” he told her. “That way people don’t miss work when it snows.”

  “People actually miss work when it snows?”

  “Ya. The ferries close down for a spell each winter, sometimes more’n once.”

  “So how do you get off the island if there are emergencies?”

  He shrugged. “Ya don’t.”

  Alex didn’t seem the least bit concerned about that, but the thought unsettled her. Ana took living in a big city for granted, being near everything she could ever need. There wasn’t even a medical clinic on the island! Every bit of information he eagerly shared left her with a dozen more questions, but she left them unasked. She disliked feeling silly, or like an outsider, and her lack of knowledge made her feel like both.

  As caretaker, Alex Whitman knew the house better than anyone. The conditions of his charge had brought him out once a week for the past twenty years, and he had done his job unfailingly. By the time Ana arrived, he had already winterized the house, and he was excited to show her how he had covered the exterior faucets, turned off some of the valves, and other stuff Ana had never worried about in New Orleans. His eyes widened and his hands took to the air animatedly as he proudly described the amount of care and caution he put into his job. He was thorough and passionate, and it was clear the old four-bedroom Victorian had been in good hands all these years, despite having no permanent mistress.

  His enthusiasm was catching, if not a little strange. He was so excited about his job that she wondered what he actually did for fun. She smiled and made a mental note to tell her father that their money had not gone to waste with Alex.

  Alex was middle-aged; in his forties or fifties, Ana guessed. There was nothing remarkable about him, from his growing baldness to his nondescript nose, mouth, and chin. She would not have been able to pull him out of a crowd if they were back in New Orleans. The only thing that stood out to Ana were his eyes: they were a radiant blue with a flashing intensity in them when he talked, as if he channeled every drop of his emotion through them. They took on a special excitement when he talked about his job.

  “I have overseer duties for yer father’s house and about ten o’er homes on the island. Summer folk. Ya know, they say coastal Maine is the new Cape Cod,” he told her, beaming. There was no end to the things he had to say about the island and the homes he looked after, but about his personal life he would only say that he lived alone.

  “Actually it’s my house,” she corrected him. Of course they thought it was her father’s. His office paid the bills, and it wasn’t as if Ana had bothered to visit.

  “Well, I reckon I stand corrected,” Alex said with a blush.

  Though he was peculiar, Ana appreciated him, and she didn’t realize just how much until after she had been on the island for a week. She ventured into town daily, exploring before heading home with groceries. She noticed that everyone took the time to wave at each other, or flash a welcoming smile to their fellow islanders. Many stopped to chitchat, and share stories about their children, or the weather; with dark clouds looming on the horizon, everyone’s thoughts turned to the timing of the first big storm. Ana felt as if she were watching one large, ongoing family reunion. Her heart ached for New Orleans, and her own people.

  She tried to embrace her new home with enthusiasm, waving at the same people she saw waving at others. But they did not wave back, and most of them dropped their eyes, pretending not to see. No matter where she went–the grocery store, the library, restaurants–the reception was the same. The lack of returned smiles, and the downturned eyes, left a sinking feeling in her stomach. She was unwelcome here.

  When she told Alex about her experiences, a blush rose in his cheeks. “Miss Deschanel-”

  “Alex, you can call me Ana.” With a laugh, she added, “You might be my only friend here.”

  “O’right, Ana then. Forgive me for just coming out and sayin’ it, but everyone knows who ya are.”

  “What does that mean?” Her eyes narrowed. It was just not possible that anyone here knew anything about the reason she had left New Orleans. She had told no one.

  “Your father, Miss,” Alex said with a guilty look. “It’s just, being locals and all and not having the money that yer family has…it sometimes rubs people the wrong way when people see their town as a vacation home. It isn’t to say...I mean...that, you know, yer family has done nothing wrong, exactly...oh geez, listen to me....”

  He kept rambling and stumbling over his own words to correct himself, but Ana got the general idea. Ana’s father was Augustus Deschanel, of the Deschanel Media Group, and there were very few people who didn’t know that name. He was a local legend in New Orleans for having started his media business on money he earned from a summer job, which was a remarkable accomplishment since he came from a family of millionaires who could have funded it without a second thought. Augustus had wanted to do it alone, though, and the business turned into an international empire within ten years. I wanted to prove that the talent brings the money, and not the other way around, he was famous for saying. While the people of New Orleans were proud of Augustus for his humble start and work ethic, the rest of the world just saw him as another money-hungry businessman. It never occurred to her to consider that the islanders might have an opinion of the distant family who owned the stately house on the bend of Heron Hollow Road.

  As Al
ex showed her how to use the generator–trust me, you’ll use it, he had said–he assured her he would talk to people and that things would get better. “They’re good folk,” he kept saying. “Truly they mean no harm.”

  Ana thought then of Nicolas. Her students at Tulane. Of late nights in the Quarter, the singing of cicadas, and sunrise on the Mississippi River. Her father. The homesickness flooded her and a sinking flutter rose to her chest as she realized all she had left behind.

  How long am I going to do this? When will things be fixed? How will I even know? And how long will it take?

  “As long as it takes,” she whispered, and waved at Alex as he drove away.

  Chapter Two: Nicolas

  People always said it was difficult to startle Nicolas Deschanel; that he was not easily unnerved. He had been through more craziness in thirty years than most see in an entire lifetime, and for the most part, he was always calm.

  He lived alone in the old plantation of Ophélie, just outside New Orleans. There was not much left of it anymore. There was the Big House; that giant Greek Revival monster with columns running two stories high. Beyond that, there were some buildings that had fallen into disrepair, including the old slave cabins that now overlooked miles of oil fields which backed the property. He’d never lived anywhere else, unless you counted his random, extended disappearances over the years.

  The plantation was big, and it was lonely, and Nicolas Deschanel was exactly the opposite of big and lonely.

  He was loud, foul-mouthed, and obnoxious, spending most of his time surrounding himself with people just like him. He loved the French Quarter, and still spent many nights enjoying its debauchery and enticements. He was slender of build, but could drink as much as someone double his size. He was fair of face, but the first thing people noticed when they met him was his overwhelming personality. At thirty years of age, Nicolas was still, always, the life of the party.

  He was unmarried, and never planned to be otherwise. It did not take more than a few nights–a few weeks at most–before he would tire of a girl. He had sampled a variety of them: sexy, smart, dimwitted, adventurous, boring. There always came a point where Nicolas realized that the specific charms of the specific girl were no longer so specific or charming.