The Wicked Redhead. Beatriz Williams

I bring my good left hand up to cover his jaw and his ear. “Just stay with us, where we’re safe. A nice, quiet life.”

      “Is that what you want? A quiet life? You, Ginger?”

      “I’m done. I’m done.”

      “Shh. It’s all right. You’re shaking.”

      “Of course I’m shaking, you damn fool. Nearly died out there, the two of us, out there on the ocean. What’s my sister going to do, if we’re killed?”

      “It’s over, it’s done. We’re safe. Won’t happen again, I promise.”

      “Won’t it?”

      He is silent for some time, resting his left hand upon my hip, his right hand up around my head, inside my hair. He’s bathed and shaved, I can smell the soap of him, and also the faint reek of antiseptic. I guess the doctor saw to him. Clean and dry and warm, bursting with bone and muscle and adventure. Pitching villains into the ocean one minute, carrying my baby sister tenderly in his arms the next.

      “Just let me clear my name,” he says. “That’s all I want.”

      “Why? Why does it matter?”

      “It just does. So we can live honestly. No shadows behind us.”

      “I’ve got news for you, bub. It’s too late for that. Why do you think I came down here tonight?”

      “I don’t know. Why?”

      I start to answer him, but my throat hurts when I try to make words. So I just breathe, breathe him in, breathe his soap, breathe the faint note of antiseptic and the particular scent of a warm bed and a warm man inside, like no other smell in the world. My heart slows. “I had this dream,” I whisper.

      “What kind of dream?”

      “Last night. Just before I woke. Dreamt I was trying to find you, and you were on a ship. A ghost ship, nobody on board until I went below decks. And then I found you, and you were dead. Everybody was dead.”

      He sighs. “I see. Is that what all this is about? Some dream?”

      “Wasn’t just a dream. Too real for that. Back home, we would have called it a vision.”

      “A vision? You mean like a premonition?”

      “I mean a vision, Anson, a glimpse of some future scene. A prophecy.”

      “You don’t really believe that?”

      “Don’t I?”

      “Ginger, it’s a dream, it’s nothing more. You’ve never believed in that kind of thing. It’s a figment of your imagination, that’s all.”

      “Why, you think I’m neurotic, don’t you?”

      “No, I don’t. I think you’re exhausted, you’re—you’re full of nerves. Look at you, you’re shaking. It’s because of what happened in Maryland. Naturally you’re having nightmares. God knows I am. But it’s not real. There’s no such thing as visions, second sight, all that magical nonsense.”

      “Isn’t there? Those men liketa murdered us tonight, out there on that damned ship, and you think it’s just a coincidence?”

      “But we weren’t murdered. I’m alive, and so are you.”

      “So maybe we got lucky. Maybe it’s a warning, I don’t know. What I do know is someone’s trying to tell me something. Someone’s trying to make me listen up.”

      “Who, exactly?”

      “Doesn’t matter.”

      “Well, what, then? You want me to hide forever, just because of some foreboding?”

      “Yes!”

      “Ginger.” He shakes his head. Strokes my hip. “Ginger.”

      I lift my face, so our lips nearly touch as I move them. “You’re going to keep going out there, aren’t you, and I can’t go with you. I’m done. I can’t follow you anymore. I’ve got my sister to rear up. I’ve got to love her and keep her safe.”

      “Don’t say I, Ginger. Say we. We will love her and keep her safe.”

      “We? There is no we, Anson. Not so long as your heart is out there on that ocean, out there on those highways at night. This fight, it’s in your blood, like Patsy and I could never be.”

      “That’s not true. You’re in my blood. You are my blood. Heart and bone and everything else. You have no idea, Ginger, no idea how much I—”

      I lay my hand quick over his mouth. “Don’t say it.”

      Anson reaches up and picks my fingers away. Holds them inside his palm. “Tell me what you want.”

      “You tell me first.”

      “I want you. That’s all.”

      “Really? What about the rest of it? Family, kids, house in the country? Dog lying on the hearthstone?”

      “Is that what you want? No more city life?”

      “Doesn’t matter what I want. I want what’s best for Patsy, I guess. She shouldn’t have to lie scared in her bed at night, waiting for me to come home.”

      “I shouldn’t have taken you with me.”

      “And if you hadn’t, you’d be dead. We neither of us should have gone out on that water.”

      “Maybe not.”

      “Maybe’s not enough, Anson. Not anymore. You need to decide what the future’s going to look like. You need to decide what you can take or not take, when it comes to me and Patsy.”

      “I will take whatever comes with you, Ginger. Whatever comes.”

      I lower my face back to the pillow and close my eyes. Listen to some faint, slow drum that I realize is not the ocean but Anson’s heart. Drop one hand to rest against this organ, and the slight movement of its contraction contains more soporific power than all the lavender, all the waves, all the salt breeze in the world.

      “Beats for you,” he says softly.

      My lips are too tired to move. I move them anyway, because this is important.

      “If it stops, I’ll kill you.”