Provocation: Recompense, #6

By Michelle Isenhoff

No body, no evidence, no motive. Only my guilt remains.

 

Opal Parnell has grown up on the rocky shores of Tidbury Bay, where winds and waves and freezing winters have carved the world into something wild and beautiful. It's so far out of the way that strangers need a reason to come here. But beyond her safe harbor, the North American Republic has been plagued by an epidemic of disappearances. There are no crime scenes. No bodies, no evidence, no motives. Thousands have gone missing without a trace. And eventually, tragedy finds Tidbury.

 

Plagued by guilt for the part she played in her sister's vanishing, Opal sets out to find her and stumbles onto evidence that suggests the disappearances aren't as mysterious as the media would have her believe. Meanwhile, the crisis causes power shifts and corruption that reach into the upper echelons of government. Beneath Opal's feet, Tidbury is changing forever.

 

What's happened to the missing? Who's covering up the truth? And will the Republic survive the upheaval?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michelle Isenhoff
• Release date: Feb 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215673263

Michelle Isenhoff

MICHELLE ISENHOFF's work has been reader-nominated for a Cybils Award, the Great Michigan Read, and the Maine Student Book Award. She's also placed as a semi-finalist in the Kindle Book Review Book Awards, a finalist in the Wishing Shelf Book Awards, and earned multiple Readers' Favorite 5 Star seals of approval. A former teacher and longtime homeschooler, Michelle has written extensively in the children's genre and been lauded by the education community for the literary quality of her work. These days, she writes full time in the adult historical fiction and speculative fiction genres. To keep up with new releases, sign up for her newsletter at http://hyperurl.co/new-release-list.

Book preview

Table of Contents

PROVOCATION

PROLOGUE

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

EPILOGUE

RECOMPENSE

ONE

TWO

THREE

Subscribe

Also by Michelle Isenhoff

About Michelle

PROVOCATION

A RECOMPENSE PREQUEL NOVELLA

Michelle Isenhoff

PROVOCATION. Copyright © 2018 by Michelle Isenhoff. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Edited by Amy Nemecek.

All rights reserved.

Candle Star Press

www.michelleisenhoff.com

PROLOGUE

I awoke this morning with a strong sense of expectancy.

A single light burned in the window of a cabin set a hundred paces back from a rugged stretch of coastline. The night lay deep and dreaming. Tendrils of fog shredded against the twisted bayberries that stood watch along the shore while a circle of hardwoods held back the forest. No other buildings crowded the muted clearing. The cabin sat alone.

Inside the window, a woman wrapped a woolen shawl about her shoulders and eased herself onto a kitchen chair. Stoop-shouldered and gray, she’d seen fewer than seventy winters, yet anyone looking on might have mistaken her for eighty. She tugged a journal from her apron pocket, set it beside a chipped teacup, and opened to the first page.

Grasping a pen with arthritic fingers, the woman began to write:

Dearest One,

It is uncanny how events play off each other. How they smash into one another like a row of tiles set on end, each propelling the next into motion. When the sequence ends in some unexpected happiness, how quick we are to credit God for leading us to that moment. But when tragedy strikes, we spend years looking back, wondering if one tiny altered detail might have caused life to veer onto a different course. It’s possible to lose oneself in a never-ending game of What if…?

I should know.

For thirty-nine years, I have regretted the part I played in toppling that first tile. I’ve suffered guilt. I’ve attempted to make amends. But once they shatter, nothing can set those tiles back in place.

Had I known that mild June night would be the last time I ever saw my sister, I would have done so many things differently…

ONE

I can’t say what caused it, exactly. Maybe the hush outside my window in the wee hours before dawn. At Granddad’s, the sighing of waves upon the shore sounds like the breath of another person in the room. It’s a constant companion. When that familiar rhythm falls silent, it’s almost like a loved one has gone away.

Maybe I’m keyed up from knowing that this was the last morning I’ll ever wake Ruby for school. But the uneasiness has stayed with me. I watched my sister walk across the stage and receive her diploma an hour ago, and I’m still holding my breath. Still checking behind me like whatever I’m waiting for hasn’t caught up to me yet.

Then again, maybe it’s just nerves. One can never get away from talk of the disappearances anymore. I hear about them in the store, at church, during my shift at the cannery. The vanishing of thousands has the whole country in a panic. Still, nobody’s gone missing in Tidbury. And the odds that anything sinister will visit our tiny coastal community are minute. I probably have a better chance of getting struck by lightning.

The present moment holds enough real danger for me to worry about. After the ceremony, Ruby and her friend Georgina invited me to walk out to the lighthouse ruins with them. Now I am squinting up at the sky and choking on terror as I watch my sister scale the outside of the tower. Don’t you fall to your death on your graduation night! I shout up to her.

Foolish girl.

Ruby throws a leg over the top railing and grins down at me. Come on up! It’s easy.

You’re crazy, Ruby Parnell! I call back. I’m taking the stairs.

You can’t, Opal. You have to scale the outside. It’s tradition.

It doesn’t apply to me. I didn’t just graduate.

You’re two years overdue. Come on!

No, thank you.

Georgina pushes past me. I’ll do it.

Georgina’s parents grew up with mine, so our families spent a lot of time together—Ruby and Georgina and me and Billy. But when those two girls pair up, common sense usually flies out the window. This is the reason I didn’t catch a ride with my next door neighbors and accompany my grandfather home after the ceremony. Tonight, half the graduating class will straggle out here to make the crazy climb up the ruins. I tagged along mostly to see that Ruby and Georgina don’t any take unnecessary risks.

A lot of good it’s doing.

Georgina’s already halfway up, finding plenty of holds among the broken and missing bricks. My heart thumps each time she stretches for a fresh grip or shifts her weight to a new position. Within minutes, she’s climbing over the railing beside Ruby. Gulping down my relief, I duck inside the old building, jog up the circular stairway, and emerge through the hatch at the top of the tower.

The electric bulb was removed from the lantern room and the glass knocked out long ago. The building is a remnant of North America’s glory days, before a movement to save the earth curbed the population so sharply that it left too few people to maintain our infrastructure. Before the great Continental War that scrambled our borders and caused a famine that depleted us further. A generation and a half later, we still haven’t fully recovered. But the view from the top of the lighthouse ruins hasn’t changed in a century.

I emerge onto the walkway and lean my elbows against the still-sturdy railing beside my sister. Here at the tip of the northern promontory, the azure waters of Tidbury Bay merge with the Atlantic and stretch out endlessly to the darkening horizon. At the moment, it seems to me a picture of destiny. A representation of the vast unknown. I can’t help a shudder as another burst of apprehension pulses through my limbs.

So, what are the two of you going to do now that you’re both free of academia? I ask my companions.

Ruby sighs in exasperation. You’ve brought this up a dozen times already, Opal, and I haven’t changed my mind.

I don’t mean to be a nag, but she’s not taking her future very seriously. You’re far too bright to waste your life, I argue. With your grades, you could succeed at any profession you chose.

I’ve told you, I’m done with school. There’s a whole world waiting for me. Things I want to do while I’m still young enough to enjoy them. I can attend university later.

I’ve always thought my sister was born with too much spirit for Tidbury. Vivacious is the word that comes to mind. She’s always laughing. Always pushing the limits. Always taking up the latest dare. She lives life faster than I do and with far more zest, but sometimes she forgets the more practical aspects. Money, for instance. And regular meals.

My father used to say that Ruby and I are like two weights on a scale, that we balance each other out, but I think I’m the leash that ties her to the ground. I know Ruby loves me and Granddad, but she’ll never be happy living in our small town. The only thing holding her here now is Billy Wildon, Georgina’s older brother.

I shut down the pang of jealously that rises with the thought. I’ve almost become accustomed to their pairing.

Almost.

The university would only be for four years, I try again. I might as well be talking to the swallows darting around the building’s contours, catching bugs for their evening meal. She’ll never buckle down and do it.

If you’re so keen on college, why don’t you go? she asks, pushing off the rail with a huff and abandoning me for the other side of the tower.

Like that’s ever going to happen. Not even if I were as intellectually gifted as she is. Since our parents died, I’ve been the glue holding our family together. I work the job that keeps us fed and clothed. I care for our aging grandfather. I’m the steady one. The reliable one. Someone like me can’t afford large dreams.

What about you? I say, turning to Georgina. What will you do?

A year of cosmetology school, then Gilbert and I will marry.

Has he asked you already?

No. She smirks. But he will.

Everyone in town knows it’s only a matter of time. Gilbert Sweeny graduated with me. He’s the mayor’s son, handsome and arrogant, with enough ambition to follow in his father’s footsteps but not enough talent to carry him beyond Tidbury. Georgina’s loved him for ages.

I walk around the back of the lighthouse and stop beside my sister. The view from this side overlooks the town nestled in the elbow of the cove. Tidbury isn’t much—a church, the school, a few ballfields, the wharf, and Main Street with its string of shops. Most of the townsmen fish for a living. Hardy, resilient men who battle it out with the elements every day. It’s not an easy existence, where wind and water and ice dictate the rhythm of our lives for so much of the year, but it’s quiet and familiar. I am content.

I only wish Ruby could be.

Lights are beginning to blink on, outlining the grid of neighborhoods. Behind town, a high ridge of land lies black against the sunset, and to the south, I can almost see Granddad’s cabin around the far promontory. I set my elbows on the railing and direct a more neutral question at my sister. If you could go anywhere in the world and do anything you wanted, what would it be?

You want me to pick just one thing? Her skin is tinged pink in the twilight. You’re thinking too small, Opal. I want to travel. I want to take Billy with me and do it all. Mountain climbing, safari, the Outback, the tundra. Everything.

She’s not being practical again. Billy owns a fishing trawler with his father here in town. He’s as tied to Tidbury as I am. As much a part of it as the sand, the trees, and the water.

Georgina has come around to our side of the tower. Oh look! she interrupts. Who is that?

The dusky silhouettes of five individuals stroll up the promontory road. They’re young. I can tell by the way they push each other around. More kids come to climb the lighthouse.

Georgina squeals as