I’d turned away a man who kissed like that? Who could make me throb down to my toes with one soul-piercing, heart-stopping, blood-warming kiss? A genuine hero who was kind, besides? That was crazier than talking to insects from an alien world.
I couldn’t muster up one good reason why I shouldn’t be naked in his bed when he came back. This wouldn’t be recreational sex, remorse in the morning. I liked Piet. I liked him a lot.
I could hear my cousin saying, “Go for it. Life is too short.”
I could hear my mother saying, “I didn’t raise a tramp. Show some self-respect.”
I could hear my father saying, “Trust your instincts.”
I could hear Matt saying, “Maybe when he’s gone.”
I could hear Elladaire whimpering. Now that I could handle. Less than a week and I had enough confidence that she wouldn’t set the place on fire, and that I could solve most of her problems, if none of my own.
Elladaire was sleeping soundly when I got to her crib. “Wait, kiddo, in a few years you’ll have to make all kinds of moral decisions. You don’t want to cheapen yourself, or hold yourself too high to enjoy what life has to offer. Get your rest now, because you’ve got decades of second-guessing ahead of you.”
I went to bed. With Little Red. In a ratty sleep shirt. And I slept like a baby.
Usually I woke up to dog breath in my face. That morning I woke up to a man’s bare, hard chest under my cheek. I jerked up so fast I almost got whiplash.
“Morning, sunshine,” Piet drawled.
“What are you doing here? Did we . . . ?”
“Hey, lady, if we did, you would remember, I promise. Maybe you dreamed about me, though? We could take up where your dream left off.”
He wore a half-smile and no shirt. I didn’t know what was under the covers. Cross that out. I knew exactly what was under the sheet—I’d been lying right on top of it!—just not why it was here.
“A dog was asleep in my bed, and I thought I could keep a better eye on the house and the baby and you from here. Focused defense, they call it. Not splitting the zone of protection.”
I remembered all the threats. “Did you hear anything in the night?”
“A couple of snores, a murmur or two. Not my name, no matter how hard I listened. Speaking of hard . . .”
“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to get a new mattress.”
He smiled and got off the bed, wearing silk boxers with chili peppers on them. Hot.
“C’mon, get up. The kid’ll be wanting breakfast and a change, and we’ve got a lot to do. Ever been on a snipe hunt?”
Half asleep, I was half turned on by the view of his lean, firm body with a strip of pale hair trailing down his chest to the peppers. I liked how he wasn’t all musclebound like a body-building weight lifter, but didn’t have an ounce of fat. He turned to pull on his jeans. Nice butt, too.
“Stop ogling. Snipe, remember.”
“I wasn’t—”
He cleared his throat.
“Um, never heard of one.”
“The relatives used to send us kids on one every summer. To get rid of us, I realized years later. We had to wear boots and hats and carry nets and canteens and whistles to signal if we spotted one, but they never said what it looked like, or if it’d be in the trees or on the ground in the woods near our house. We spent hours searching for a creature I didn’t think existed. The whole thing was like something out of Alice in Wonderland.”
“Did it? Exist, I mean?”
“Snipes do. They’re birds, I found out later, but we never caught sight of one. I don’t know if they hang out in that part of the country at all.”
“Is that what you think about the creature in the ditch? That it doesn’t exist? That searching for Mama is a fool’s errand?”
“I think we have to go find out. Do you have a whistle?”
“What do we need a whistle for?” Panic stuck a finger in my stomach. “You’re not going far away from me out there, are you? What happened to keeping the cone of protection or whatever, together?”
“Cell phones don’t work out there. No tower.”
No answer, either. My God, what if he took me out there and left me, payback for my leaving him unsatisfied?
Piet would never do such a thing. And if I repeated that enough times, I might believe it.
We couldn’t go right away, naturally, not until we made arrangements for Elladaire. I called Janie at the hair salon to find out when her last appointment was. We could wait that long.
We took the three dogs and the baby in her stroller for a walk up to Grandma Eve’s farm. The stand was doing good business for an off-season weekend. People still wanted fresh herbs and the sweet pale yellow corn the field workers had just picked that morning.
My grandmother offered us iced tea and muffins spread with the beach plum jelly she’d made this week, a new experience for Piet and Elladaire. I wouldn’t touch the stuff, still remembering the head-to-toe poison ivy I got picking the damn things before someone remembered to teach the city kid about leaves of three, let it be.
Janie was waiting for us in front of my house with Joe the plumber in his pickup truck.
“I don’t have room for all her stuff in my car,” she explained. “And Joe doesn’t think the baby and I should be alone right now.”
Good guy, Joe. So I asked him to look again for Mama. He looked around, then spotted a dog bowl. He filled it from the garden hose and stared into it. I didn’t see anything but dog hair floating on up but Joe said, “Just like before. Whatever it is, it’s stuck tight.”
I touched the bracelet on my wrist. “But she’s still alive?”
He scratched his head. “I’ve never found a deader. Can’t recall looking, though.”
Joe and I carried out baby paraphernalia, what Janie’d left with me, what I managed to accumulate afterward. Piet unbuckled the car seat from my Outback, then started to take the portable crib apart.
Janie hugged and kissed the baby as if she hadn’t seen her in a week. She also checked her top to bottom in case I’d damaged something.
“Are you sure she won’t start any more fires?”
“She hasn’t since she’s been here.”
“Since he’s been here, you mean.” Janie tilted her head toward Piet, who was bent over the crib.
I stepped into her line of sight. Let her admire Joe’s plumber pants and half-moon rising, not Piet’s butt. “He thinks she’s fine.”
“But what if she’s not? How will I know?”
“You’ll know the first time she cries.”
“Then what am I supposed to do when Joe’s truck catches on fire or my hair?”
Janie’s hair was long and curly this week. I handed her one of my fire extinguishers.
Piet gave her his card. “Call me.”
I swear she batted her fake eyelashes at him.
I reminded Piet we were going out to the marshes. “You told me there’s no cell reception out there.”
Now Janie looked stricken. She glanced at me, then at the baby.
“She’ll be fine. And we absolutely have to go.”
Piet had the crib all folded up and in its carry case. “We can wait a couple of hours.”
No, we could not. I glared at all of them. “We’ve waited too long as is.”
Janie glared back. She picked up Elladaire, but handed her to Piet. She pulled some papers out of her purse. “Maybe you’ll have time to make a poster for the benefit for Mary, like you agreed. I brought a picture of her and Elladaire, and all the details. The printer agreed to run them off for us for free. We’re aiming for next Saturday, if you can fit that into your busy schedule.”
No thank you for taking care of her grandniece; no consideration that my life had been turned upside down, too; no appreciation that I was hurtling into the scary, swampy unknown without a seatbelt—to help her town.
“I’ll get to it as soon as we come home.”
Now she did take the baby from Piet, which
did not sit well with Elladaire. Maybe she’d picked up on the tension in the room, or saw her toys and books being taken away. “Pipi!” she wailed, holding her hands out to him.
I went to kiss her good-bye, and got as much affection as I’d gotten from Janie. “I’ll come visit, sweetie, I promise.”
She wasn’t consoled. Little Red started barking at the uproar. I picked him up before he bit someone, most likely me.
“Well, at least you’ll believe she’s safe now, as soon as you get to the end of the dirt road.”
Joe hitched up his pants and ran his hand over the hood of his truck, as if he was saying good-bye to it.
Jane strapped the baby into her seat. Elladaire was crying, leaving Piet. So was Janie.
I brushed tears off my cheeks, too. I’d miss the kid. And I’d miss Piet when he left.
CHAPTER 28
“LET’S GO.
“I promised her two hours.”
I promised the beetles days ago. I remembered how nervous I was with the burning baby at first, though, so I tried to control my impatience. I ate Elladaire’s leftover graham crackers that I forgot to pack.
Piet put the TV on to the Weather Channel: forest fires in the west, tinder-dry conditions through the midlands, lightning strikes in Texas. Damnation.
He didn’t say anything, but he switched to CNN to read the scrolls along the bottom of the screen.
“Will they want you to go to one of those places?”
He shrugged. “I couldn’t get to all of them, no matter what, and some will take weeks to put out entirely, they’re so big, with so much kindling. They’ll call if they want me. But DUE has its own priorities, like Paumanok Harbor. They also have scores of prognosticators like your father on their staff. They’ll know where I’m needed most.”
I prayed their seers were better than mine. Heaven knew where Dad would send Piet, if not to Saks. It suddenly occurred to me that ancient soothsayers used entrails to predict the future. Did the people from Royce do that also? The idea of sacrificing a chicken when I was trying to save a swarm of beetles did not make sense. Surely the modern sibyls were wiser than that.
While Piet watched and listened, wondering if he should pack up his truck, for all I knew, I stuffed a sketch pad into a backpack, along with sunscreen, water, a first aid kit, and granola bars. I put the bug spray back on the shelf, with regrets, but found plastic gloves and two carpenter’s face masks my mother had for when she refinished furniture. “Is it time?”
“It’s been fifteen minutes.”
“I’m sorry. I’m being selfish, I know. Janie needs the security of having you nearby. It’s just that I’m worried. You heard what Joe said. Mama’s stuck.”
“I didn’t see anything in the dog bowl except a floating leaf. Did you?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean anything. Joe saw it.”
“If what he saw was your unknown creature stuck in the mud, then she’s not going anywhere for the next couple of hours.”
“It’ll take us almost twenty minutes to get to the marsh. We’ll be in cell phone range for most of that.”
“Two hours.” He flipped back to the Weather Channel.
One hour and forty-five minutes, I calculated, but kept it to myself. To fill the time, I decided to brush the dogs. They’d taken second place to the baby and looked neglected. The two big dogs were no problem. They liked the attention. Little Red had knots the brush pulled on. I took the Band-Aids out of my backpack.
The weather commentator was talking about the lack of rain in New England and the fear of a catastrophic fire season unless a fall hurricane dropped a lot of rain in the area.
“Great, something else to worry about,” I said, giving the dogs biscuits and putting away the brush. “A hurricane can flood the whole of the salt marsh. If Mama is trapped there . . .” I couldn’t complete the thought. “We’ve really got to go soon.”
“There are no hurricanes on the weather map, and you’ve got to learn to relax. Go with the flow. Take things as they come.”
Things like trolls and flaming flies? Or floods and wildfires? If he thought I’d sit back and put my feet up when the world—or my world, anyway—was in danger, he didn’t know me at all. I was a worrier. It was in my DNA. Look at Dad. He dreamed of disasters. And my mother fretted over every lost dog in the country.
Or was he still thinking about sex, that I should stop overthinking the issue and accept the current that flew between us? For all I knew, putting out fires and making love were relaxing for him. Why not? There was no pressure involved with either. He was a wizard in at least one of the fields, most likely both. I only stopped worrying when—
Before I could recall the last time I’d been at ease, his phone rang.
I wanted to shout at him not to answer it, that Elladaire didn’t cry sparks, that his beeper would go off in a real emergency. Unless the emergency was in California or Texas or at Janie’s house. Or his family needed him. I bit my lip.
He let “Come on, Baby, Light My Fire” play through while he checked the caller ID.
“It’s Chief Haversmith.”
At least it wasn’t Joe the plumber, calling from the hospital. “If the police are calling and it’s not poker night, you better answer.”
He listened, went, “Uh-huh” a couple of times, then asked if they had cell reception there.
My hopes sank.
“I’ll meet you at the fire station.”
And drowned.
“They didn’t sound the alarm or beep the volunteers.”
“No, this fire is out. It was a cabin where an old summer camp used to be. Off a place or a road called Three Mile Harbor. I didn’t ask which. The chief said he’d drive, so I don’t have to know.”
Most likely the old Blue Bay property or Boys Harbor. “If the fire is out, why do you have to go?”
“People reported fireworks out there, but the local fire department found no spent shells or evidence of rockets. I need to look for dead bugs. The arson squad wouldn’t think to look for them, which is lucky for us. If I find them, we can still keep Paumanok Harbor and the fireflies—and you—out of the investigation. Let’s hope your friend Barry isn’t checking, too.”
I wondered how the lightning bugs got so far away, and why. If their mother was near the Harbor, and they tended to stick near her or me, then maybe someone took them out to Springs. Someone who knew both areas were isolated and untended. Someone like Roy Ruskin.
Piet nodded when I told him my theory, but he wasn’t convinced. “If I don’t find any beetles, it’s plain arson. If I find hurt ones, someone is using them. But if they are setting fires themselves, they’ve got to be dealt with.”
I did not ask how. With dread I imagined the police and the fire department spread out in the marsh and my backyard. Piet could turn the bugs off, the troops could net them or spray them or gas them while they were disoriented and helpless.
“No! It’s not them, it’s Roy. Or some other freak playing with matches. And we can get them to leave if we free Mama, I’m sure.”
“I should be back in a couple of hours. We’ll go looking then.”
That would be too late if the chief decided the beetles were guilty. He never minded taking the law into his own hands, or a miscreant. Paumanok Harbor was always his first priority, and to hell with civil liberties and endangered species. He’d declare an emergency security risk and worry about the results later.
Piet would side with him, I knew. He lived to put out fires, permanently, if possible. I stepped back before he could kiss me good-bye.
I couldn’t stay here safe at home. I couldn’t go searching by myself. Aside from the fact that I had a yellow stripe down my back, my front, and everywhere in between, I didn’t have a boat. No canoe, kayak, rowboat, or inflatable raft. The reason I didn’t have a seaworthy craft was I didn’t like the sea. Water had crabs and eels and leeches and undertows and sometimes no ground beneath your feet. And waves. I got seasick.
The alternative, hiking hours and miles through that dismal wet wasteland again, was worse. So I called Rick Stamfield at the marina and asked if he’d ferry me out to the marshes, then lower a dinghy to get ashore. And come with me. Mostly come with me. I had a copy of Piet’s map of the grid. “I know where to go.”
“That’ll be a nice change.” Rick wished he could take me out of the harbor and drown me, but that’s not what he said. He told me he had to wait for the insurance examiners to come to the marina, again. He also told me to do something, now.
“I’m trying, damn it. I have to get there first.”
Martin Armbruster had a boat. And hell would freeze over before I led him to Mama.
My friend Louisa’s husband Dante had a couple of boats. He used to live on the big one, but he kept a smaller outboard for fishing in the bay. I called the arts center, but the woman who answered Louisa’s phone said the whole family had gone west to visit with Mrs. Rivera’s family for the weekend.
Susan knew a lot of guys with boats, but then she’d want to come. I’d rather face ten swamp monsters and a tidal wave than my family’s wrath if I dragged Susan into danger.
Her father had a small cabin cruiser. He’d bought it from my father when Dad moved full time to Florida, for day trips when he wasn’t working at Grandma Eve’s farm. Unfortunately, Uncle Roger told me, the boat never got out of dry dock this year. Uncle Roger’d had Lyme disease so bad he’d spent time in the hospital, time the boat needed. “Next year, Willy.”
Next week might be too late. The Lucifers fretted about time. The fire department wanted the flare-ups gone yesterday.
I gave up on private boats and called the Bay Constable. Leonard was too busy keeping boats away from the area. Besides, his orders were to keep anyone from going ashore in the marsh until the water analysis came back and the air quality improved.
Fire Works in the Hamptons : A Willow Tate Novel (9781101547649) Page 20