The Pirate Queen by Patricia Hickman Read Free Book Online Page B

father once said of Turner. He had passed away two years earlier, leaving her mother, Daisy, a content widow. Saphora wondered if all the women in her family were happier alone.
    She had not confessed to Bender her secret pleasure in knowing that Turner had found happiness in simple living. He liked his city flat, his Saturday night gathering of buddies at Ri-Ra in uptown Charlotte. Of her three children, she envied Turner the most.
    Gwennie was her daddy’s greatest source of boasting. But Gwennie possessed a nervous anxiety, a continual heaviness hanging over her that seemed to take the joy out of her journey. Ramsey was not happy in his job as an insurance adjustor, but his wife, Celeste, had a deep need for a bigger house and a nicer car. From the moment she had seen where Ramsey grew up, she imagined him being as big a success as his daddy. But the son of a surgeon hardly ever becomes a surgeon.
    Bender pulled a tarp off some things they had stored right after they’d bought the place and stocked it for summer vacations. “Here are the deck chairs.” He carted one out the open garage door. He returned and kept doing that until he appeared with one large blue dolphin chair.
    “Where did we get that?” asked Saphora.
    It was a heavy thing, and he had to use all of his strength to lift it. “I bought it for a song from a beach shop down in Wilmington. It is my chair, if anyone asks.” He carted it out.
    Eddie dropped the bag of shells onto the garage floor and ran into the laundry room.
    “I’ll get the bedroom ready first if you need to rest,” said Saphora to Bender.
    “I’ve got too many calls to make. Can you quiet Eddie down?”
    The boy was singing in an elevated falsetto.
    “He’ll respond just as well to you,” she said. She popped open the trunk. “Eddie, there’s a garden outside. Go see if the birdbath needs water.” She knew it would, and that would keep Eddie busy playing with the water hose.
    Eddie disappeared into the house. He yelled out tribal noises from outside over a tire swing strung from the tree house. Saphora imagined once he got his bearings around the beach home he would spend most of his time out back.
    “Don’t get the luggage. I’ll do it,” said Bender. He was just about to pull out the largest piece when he slumped against the car.
    “Bender, I’ll do it!” said Saphora. She tried to help him, but he resisted and stood up on his own. He walked into the house, mad, muttering, but not so Saphora could understand. She was too tired to translate anyway.
    Bender did not take to Saphora fussing over him. Even as a boy, his mother once said years before she passed on, if he had a fever he would get frustrated if she hovered. But he had always found comfort in allowing a hired servant to pay him all the attention he needed.
    Saphora wheeled the luggage into the laundry room and then through the kitchen. The house had a dumbwaiter right next to the butler’s pantry. She tucked it all into the elevator and sent it upstairs.
    She opened the pantry. Sherry had not beaten them to the house after all. It wasn’t like Sherry not to show up or call.
    Bender had set up shop on the sofa and coffee table. “Let’s don’t go out for dinner, how about? All I need is coffee and a pastry. I don’t want people talking about this all over town yet.”
    “Like anyone knows us, hon.”
    “There’s still more testing, so what’s the use anyway until I know more?”
    “Aren’t you supposed to radically change your diet?”
    “Coffee and a pastry are therapeutic. Here’s cash. Go down to that grocer’s and get me some croissants and a bag of coffee.” He pulled out his BlackBerry and started phoning his assistant, Nalia. He made sure she understood she was to expertly hand off his surgeries for the next two weeks to his partner, Sam Werther.
    Before Saphora left again, she said, “Does that mean we’re only staying here two weeks?”
    He was already engaged in his business with