ONE
“Beware of a man who gives you pearls.
He will one day make you cry.”
Tobagonian saying
The mid-sized twin-engine plane shuddered as it hit an air pocket, sending a chorus of murmurs through its passengers and a tremor of disquiet through Sarita. She clutched the arm of her seat, nails sinking into the yielding upholstery, a sharp cry of surprise escaping her lips.
“Nervous?” The kindly minister in the next seat smiled, teeth as white as the collar encircling his throat. (As if embarking on a fraudulent mission were not enough, she’d groaned to herself as she boarded, she was going to spend the entire five-hour flight from Miami seated next to a man of the cloth!) Would that make her more or less vulnerable to divine judgment?
She shook her head, sleek black page haircut swinging in emphasis. “I’m not afraid to fly. It’s just that I—er—I’m not too sure what I’m going to meet when I get there. I don’t think I’m nervous, though.”
The minister smiled again, pale gray eyes crinkling. His overlong salt-and-pepper hair stuck up in shocks all over his head, and the rosy hue of his leathery face made him look more like an elderly outdoorsman than a man of religion. “Well, you feel nervous to me,” he said. He pointed with his free hand to the arm that lay along the armrest between them. She realized that the ‘soft upholstery’ she’d been so anxiously clutching with her well-manicured nails was the poor man’s forearm. She let him go as if she’d touched hot metal.
She felt like an idiot. “Oh God—,” she began to apologize, then slapped her hand over her mouth. “I mean, oh my!” Now she sounded like an idiot!
The minister grinned as though he’d heard that blunder before.
She covered up her embarrassment by voicing her concern. “Is your arm okay?”
He dismissed her anxiety with an amused wave of his richly freckled hand. “Glad I could be there for you to lean on. Part of the job.”
She smiled gratefully at his attempt to put her at ease. She hadn’t exactly been “leaning on” his arm; it was more painful than that. But he did look grandfatherly, not the type to hold a grudge, and besides, clawing a minister’s arm to shreds probably didn’t rank high on the celestial hierarchy of sins.
At least, not as high as lying.
Sarita was bad at lying, which is why she didn’t do it often. The last time she’d attempted it she’d failed miserably, winding up with a lasting reminder that accused her every time she looked in the mirror. The intervening years hadn’t been enough to blur the memory, and the fact that she had, in a moment of insanity, broken her usual rule of ‘truth until it hurt’, brought the shadow of the experience back with all the pleasantness of a toothache.
It’d been a common enough story: a teenage girl breaking curfew, sneaking out to a party she’d been forbidden to attend—promised her devout Baptist parents she wouldn’t attend—and trying later to cover up her crime by clambering up the apple tree and into her bedroom window at two in the morning. A slip, a fumble, a moment’s panic and the next thing she’d become aware of was waking up in her bedroom in broad daylight faced with two angry parents and the discovery that her fall had left her with a permanent scar across her upper lip.
At seventeen she’d learned the hard way that lying led to trouble—very bad trouble—and that it was an activity for people made of sterner stuff than she. Which is why fifteen years later, airborne aboard flight 337 from Miami to an island she’d heard much about but had never seen, she wasn’t exactly calm.
Sarita wasn’t afraid of visiting strange countries. What made her nervous was the knowledge that she’d made up for many years of chronic truthfulness by telling a whopper, one that couldn’t help but lead to trouble. The consequences of her actions would be waiting for her when she landed.
Those consequences wouldn’t be pretty but she’d come this far and wasn’t backing down now, nerves or no nerves. Get a grip, she reminded herself. You’ve got a right to be here. You were part of this project from the start. It was your baby, too, as much as it was … his. Nothing he said or did could change that. That reassurance stiffened her spine and she felt her nervousness ebb.
The minister leaned closer, still smiling. “So, tell me what brings you to Tobago. It’s a gorgeous island; I’ve been guest-pastoring in churches there for years. Let me guess. Vacation, right?”
Sarita shook her head, finding it hard to drag herself from her internal pep talk. If she tried to explain the long and convoluted story that had set her en route to the island, she wondered, and to a minister to boot, would a bolt from the blue strike them out of the sky?
He didn’t seem the type to need a response in order to keep up a conversation. “Visiting family? Migrating?” His eyes flickered over her left hand, to the fourth finger, and instinctively she shoved it out of sight to protect her wedding ring from exposure. “I’d guess honeymoon, but if that were the case, you’d be sitting next to someone other than me.”
She nearly grinned at that one. Traveling alone, being alone, had become second nature. She almost didn’t notice it. “None of the above.” He really was charming and the last thing she wanted to do was offend such a gentle seatmate. But, gentle as he was, he was also persistent. The in-flight movie wasn’t holding his interest; he found her more intriguing.
He went on, enjoying his little guessing game. “Buying land? Selling land? Meeting an old love?”
Ouch. That hit home—or near enough. ‘Meeting an old love’ wasn’t what she’d call it. More like catapulting headlong into a hurricane of emotions with nothing to protect her but a wish, a prayer, and stubborn determination to do the job she’d come to do before it was too late.
The minister’s quick eyes saw her flush and he registered his victory with a slight incline of his graying head. Before he could probe any further into the uncomfortable truth onto which he had stumbled, Sarita rushed to divert him. “Actually, I’m a marine biologist. I’m flying in to join a small team that’s studying the reefs there.”
He recognized the red herring and graciously let the issue slide. “Ah, my dear, then you’ve come to the right place. Tobago has some of the most stunning reefs in the Caribbean—perhaps the world.” He turned briefly to peer out of the window. They were nearing the end of the flight and already the decreased altitude was allowing them to see the brilliance of the jeweled water beneath. “I try to visit them at least once every time I make a trip there.”
She nodded, trying not to think of him wading into the deep blue in baggy shorts and snorkels, because that image might make her laugh out loud. He looked like he’d be the first man into the water and the last man out. Glad that his attention had been diverted from her personal life, she said, “The reefs are stunning, I’m told, but they’re in trouble. I am—the team I’m joining is—especially interested in Buccoo Reef. It’s one of the best known in the region, but it’s dying.”
He frowned. “Dying?”
She nodded sadly. “It’s been suffering for years, through poaching, pollution, siltation and, of course, the hundreds of thousands of clumsy tourist feet tramping over it every year. I know the islanders haven’t got much of a choice; most people earn their living from tourism, but that has taken its toll and the reef is gasping its dying breath. Or will, if someone doesn’t do something.”
His eyes were fixed on her, no glint of their former mischief left, but deep contemplation. “And you think you’re that someone?”
“I know I am,” she declared simply.
The minister gave her a cool, evaluating look that made Sarita shift in her seat. She lifted her eyes to meet the piercing gaze with as much honesty as she could, and more than she’d ever have thought of allowing a stranger. After a long moment, he spoke again. “You just might be. You have the passion for it. A person can dream all they want and have the best of intentions, but unless they believe in their heart they’re destined to achieve something, they fall short.”
He looked away and Sarita felt like a mealworm being let off a hook. He fished about in his bulging black briefcase, shoving aside a mass of crinkling candy wrappers—“Got to give those up,” he grinned apologetically—and sliding his hand behind a worn Bible before withdrawing a white business card.
“Here,” he said, handing it over. “My name’s Reverend Colin Constantine. I’ll be in Tobago for the next six weeks, mainly ministering out of the Mount Moriah Moravian Church—”
Her brow wrinkled. “Moravian?”
“First cousin to the Lutherans,” he explained. “I’m a Lutheran myself, but we have a good relationship with the Moravian Church. Many Tobagonians are Moravians, so I get lots of invitations to preach whenever I’m in town. If you feel like you want to come in out of the reef for a few hours,” he smiled again, “drop by and tell me how you’re getting along.”
“I’m—uh—Gwen Davis.” She slipped the card into the pocket of the loose cotton dress she was wearing in anticipation of the sweltering Caribbean heat. She felt like a fraud—no, she was a fraud! Giving a man of God a made-up name! But, she rationalized, if she was going to be palming herself off as someone else she’d do well to start practicing. There was little chance of her ever making it to his church anyway. Colin Constantine might be able to read passion and determination off her, but what he couldn’t read was the likelihood that if her reception in Tobago was as catastrophic as she expected, she could be making use of her return ticket on the next available flight.
Negative thoughts, she reminded herself. They weren’t her style. She was staying and that was that. Not even the Devil and a team of dray-horses were dragging her back. She pinched her scarred upper lip, letting the pressure on her flesh force her to focus on what was, not what might be.
Constantine, misinterpreting her reluctance to promise him a visit as a dread of going to church, shook his head sadly and settled back into his seat.
Feeling bad but unable to explain further, Sarita tried to concentrate on the movie, but they were on the last leg of their journey and the film credits were rolling.
There was a painful popping in her ears as the plane began its sharp descent and she swallowed hard to relieve the pressure imbalance. They’d moved swiftly below cloud level and the brilliant sunshine was turning the bright green water into gold. Even from this height, she could see the sparkles winking off the surface and the bug-sized ships dancing on the waves. She craned her neck to see past her seatmate.
Colin Constantine was apparently not the kind who could withdraw from anybody for long. His smiling eyes were on her again. “Want to get a better look? I’ve seen it dozens of times.”
She’d have killed for his window seat, but could only try to inch a little closer and peek around him.
That wasn’t enough for Colin. He leaned toward her and in a dramatic stage whisper hissed in her ear. “Listen, Gwen. We aren’t supposed to do this, but if we move fast we can switch seats. Quick, while the flight attendants aren’t looking!”
This time, she did laugh. His raspy whisper had been loud enough to be heard two rows down. The idea was tempting; the emerald coast was already in view. But the Crown Point airport was so close to the sea that day-trippers who flew in from the sister isle of Trinidad routinely left the airport and literally strolled down to the water’s edge, so before she could take the quirky older man up on his offer, the runway rose to meet them. With a whining of engines and a slight bump, they were on the ground.
Constantine clicked his tongue regretfully. “Too late. You missed quite a view.”
She smiled back at him. He looked genuinely disappointed at having lost out on the chance to play switch-the-seats in mid-air. “Maybe next time,” she offered.
He nodded. There was rising chatter and a chorus of clicks as passengers popped their seatbelts and stood up, glad to be on their feet after a long, cramped flight. Sarita and Colin joined them, squeezing into the corridor and hauling their hand luggage out of the overhead storage bins.
With a pneumatic sigh the airplane doors slid open and passengers began to disembark. The first thing that struck her was the scent of the air: it was perfumed with sea-salt and seaweed, and something else that was indefinable, but clean, sweet, and sent a ripple through her that almost felt like hope.
She stopped short with her heavy bag in her hand, allowing passengers to brush past, her head tilted back, staring up at the awesome blue sky. All the stories she’d heard about Tobago, island of magic and fantasy, of flowers, trees, and endless sea, had become a reality. Tears prickled at her dark brown eyes. She wiped them away with the back of her hand.
Colin was striding ahead but, realizing she hadn’t kept up, stopped. “You okay?”
She nodded mutely.
He didn’t look as if he believed her, and hesitated briefly before saying, “Don’t forget. Mount Moriah Moravian Church. Wherever you’re staying, it won’t be far away. Nothing in Tobago is far from anything else. Pop in if you can. I don’t always preach,” he paused, giving her another shrewd look, “I listen, too.”
Sarita acknowledged him with a wave of the hand, not wanting to make any verbal promises she couldn’t keep, and he disappeared. She followed the huddle of tired travelers across the sunny open tarmac and into the immigration hall.