IN Swan Quarter Vi boarded the last ferry of the day. Once the vessel had cleared the pilings, she grabbed the loaf of moldy bread Max had suggested she take and stepped out of the Cherokee.
She strolled back to the stern where a flock of chatty gulls tailed the boat. As the wharf and timber pylons diminished in the wake, Vi untwined the twist tie and pinched off a chunk of bread. The moment she extended her arm a fat gull swooped down and grabbed her offering in its beak.
As she fed the birds and watched the coastal plain of North Carolina shrink into a fiber of green, she thanked God for the people she loved. She prayed for Max, for her parents, for strength, and lastly for her sergeant’s recovery.
Barry Mullins had taken his son, Patrick, out for barbecue after winning the cross-country championship last night. They were both in the hospital this morning with food poisoning so Vi would be interviewing the Kites on her own.
A little boy came and stood beside her. She noticed him watching and asked if he’d like to feed the seagulls. When he nodded she handed him a piece of bread.
“Just lift it up like this. They’ll come right down and steal it.”
The boy lifted the fuzzy-blue bread and gasped when a gull snatched it. He looked up at Vi and grinned. She gave him the rest of the loaf and walked to the bow.
It was near dusk now and when she looked west she could no longer see the mainland. Eastward, the Pamlico Sound stretched on into a horizon of gray chop with no indication of the barrier islands that lay ahead.
Again she thought of the woman who’d been hanged at the Bodie Island Lighthouse. The image had been with her all day thanks to a tasteless photograph she’d seen on the front page of a tabloid. She wondered if praying for the dead made any difference.
Clutching the railing, she stared down at the water racing beneath the boat.
The engine clatter, the cry of the gulls, the briny stench of the sound engulfed her. On the assumption that prayer was retroactive, she closed her eyes and prayed for the fifth time that day that the woman hadn’t suffered.
The sun sank into the sound.
Vi checked her watch, saw that she’d been on the water now for more than two hours. The village couldn’t be far. As the sky and sound turned the same sunless shade of slate, she imagined Max or even Sgt. Mullins standing here beside her in the mild headwind. She wouldn’t mind her sergeant’s patronization right now and she thought, I was doing fine until the sun went down. Just like staying with Mamaw and Papaw when I was ten and the homesickness that set in after dark and the crying on the phone begging Daddy to come get me and him saying no baby you’ll feel better in the morning.
A light winked on in the east-the Ocracoke Light.
Vi turned away and walked back to the Jeep.
In her briefcase in the backseat there were photographs to memorize-bearded, bald, fat, skinny, mustached, and cleanshaven-the mugs of Luther Kite and Andrew Thomas.