by Barbara Ross
“Why is this important?” Binder asked.
I explained where I’d found the camera—which meant I had to explain Cabe had been living in the playhouse. A little spot began to pulse on Detective Flynn’s neck as I talked. I stepped back from the table in case he blew. Then I told them what I’d seen on the camera.
“You looked at it?” Flynn was furious.
“I hoped it would help us find Cabe . . .” My voice trailed off. I had no excuse.
“Us?” Flynn said. “There is no ‘us.’ There’s you, apparently doing whatever you want. And there’s us, the state police.”
Binder put on gloves and turned the camera on, examining its display. “What’s this?”
“My foot.” I’d thought about deleting the photo, but figured I was in deep enough already. If they had a professional look at the camera and he told them I’d deleted an image, I’d be in even bigger trouble.
Silently, Binder scrolled through the rest of the photos with Flynn peering around his shoulder, so close they could have been embracing. There had to be more than a hundred pictures. When they were finished, Binder put the camera down on the table.
“Thanks for bringing this in, Ms. Snowden. Come in tomorrow and we’ll take a formal statement as to where you found it and fingerprint you so we can eliminate your prints and see what’s left. That way, when we bring your young friend in, and believe me, we will, soon, we can match the prints on this camera to his. We’ll take it from here.”
I was dismissed.
Chris and I walked from the police station across the town common. He listened sympathetically as I told him what had happened at the station. He knew how hard it was for me to turn in evidence that looked bad for Cabe.
We sat down on a wooden bench halfway across the common. There were people around, strolling along with ice cream cones from Small’s, but the bench felt private. The feel of Chris next to me was intoxicating—his power, his rock steadiness, his certainty about who he was, who I was. I breathed it in, savoring our closeness in the moment before the conversation to come.
“About those elephants,” I joked. “Where did you go last night?”
“I took my boat out. I had to clear my head. Figure out what I wanted to say to you.”
If what he said was true, then I had hurt him, just as I’d feared. But somewhere in my gut, I didn’t believe him. He wasn’t telling the truth, or at least he wasn’t telling all of it.
He sensed my doubt. “Julia. I went for a sail. You trust me, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I answered. “Of course I do.” But did I?
“My turn,” Chris said. “I love you.”
Even the ten seconds I hesitated was too long. It felt like a million years, a million miles.
“What can come of it?” I asked.
“What do you mean? We’ll be together. Maybe, someday, we’ll move in together. That’s what people do.” His tone was matter-of-fact, like what he was proposing was the most logical thing in the world. Not in the least bit angry. Not needy. Chris was never needy.
“I never envisioned a future that didn’t involve going back to New York.” When I finally got the words out, my voice was so quiet I was afraid he would ask me to repeat myself, which I didn’t think I could do. I felt like a creature was inside, tearing my guts up. This was the man I had wanted half my life.
“Okay, Julia. I understand. I’m not asking you to commit your life or even think about the future. But in this moment, I need to know. Do you love me?”
I hesitated again. I thought about the look of pure joy on Livvie’s face that afternoon when she told me she was pregnant. I thought about Vee Snuggs telling me to go after passion, not to be an observer of the life that could have been. Then I thought about my mother. She had her one great love, but ended up living a life where she was always viewed as an outsider. I thought about Chris and how I didn’t know where he’d been yesterday, and didn’t believe what he’d told me about it.
I hesitated too long.
My cell phone rang. I looked at it. A blocked number. “Chris, I think this is Cabe.”
“Take it.” He smiled to show he wasn’t angry. I almost wished he were.
I answered the phone. “Cabe, wait one second.”
Chris stood up from the bench and bent to kiss me on the forehead. “I’m sorry things turned out this way,” he said and walked off into the night.
Chapter 35
“Cabe, where are you? Things have gotten really complicated here.” I watched Chris walk away. I wasn’t talking only about Cabe. “You need to come back.”
“I can’t.”
“Then why call me?” I hadn’t asked for this.
“I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Of course I’m okay. But you’re not. You’re in real trouble, Cabe, and you’re only making it worse by staying away.”
He didn’t respond, but he didn’t hang up. I tried a different tack. “Cabe, why did you come to Busman’s Harbor in the first place?”
“I was looking for something.”
“Your birth parents.” Emily Draper at Moore House had told me this.
“Yes.”
“Did you find them?”
He let out a long sigh. “One of them. I always knew I was adopted. When I moved to Moore House, I decided to figure out who I was. I’d seen so many kids in the institution, and even in Moore House, who had such terrible families, but I still wanted one. I thought maybe I had a second chance to have parents. When I turned eighteen, I applied for my birth certificate from the state. I kept the birth certificate in a little box in my room at the boarding house. In the box was a photo of me with my parents, the Stones, and their wedding rings. That box was the only thing I’d been able to hold on to through all the moves, the foster families, and the group home. While I was at the boarding house, someone went through it. I could tell because they refolded the birth certificate and left the photo upside down in the box. That’s why I moved to the playhouse on Morrow Island.”
The idea of Cabe, clinging to a tiny box holding a photo of his parents and their rings, stabbed me in the chest. I thought about Page, who’s every significant moment since birth had been recorded, and then about Cabe, who had so little.
“I was born in Busman’s Harbor Hospital,” he continued. “I looked at pictures of the town on the Web and imagined my mom living there in a cottage by the ocean. When I finally got to the harbor this June, it was as beautiful as I’d imagined. I instantly felt like I’d come home.
“The father’s name on my birth certificate was Telford Vincent Noyes. There were tons of articles on the Web about the stock swindle and the trial. I was desperate to find the man, but he’d changed his name after he left prison. It took me a long time working in libraries and Internet cafes to figure out Stevie Noyes of Camp Glooscap in Busman’s Harbor was actually T.V. Noyes. I thought it meant something he’d come back to Busman’s Harbor after prison. Like maybe he hoped I’d find him.”
My mind struggled to keep up. Cabe was T.V. Noyes’s son, but he wasn’t Aaron Crane. Cabe had been given up for adoption as an infant. “How did Stevie react when you told him you were his son?”
“I hadn’t yet. As far as I knew he was a con man and a criminal. I wanted to get to know him, the way he was today before I decided whether to tell him who I am.” Cabe’s voice faltered. “Now I’ll never get the chance.”
We didn’t talk for a moment while he collected himself. I was afraid he would hang up. “Is that why you took all the photos of Stevie?” I asked.
“What photos?”
“Cabe, you didn’t take about a hundred photos of Stevie and leave them in an expensive camera on a shelf in the chimney of the playhouse on Morrow Island?”
“I don’t even own a camera.”
My throat closed a little. I’d just turned over the camera to Binder and Flynn, along with the information that Cabe had lived in the playhouse. “Then how did you get to know Stevie?”
>
“One day, just after I got to Busman’s Harbor, I saw him coming out of the post office. I’d looked at so many photos from the time of his arrest, I was sure it was him. So I spied on him. It was easy. It turned out he had a fairly regular routine. He’d come in every weekday morning about eleven, go to the post office, the hardware store, do whatever he needed to do, and then have lunch at Gus’s.”
“That’s when you started hanging around there.”
“Gus gave me a job, but it was obvious he really didn’t need the help. So he introduced me to you. I was grateful for the job on Morrow Island.”
Maybe not so grateful now. “But you never talked to Stevie?”
“Oh, I talked to him. Casual stuff about the harbor and the campground. I liked him. I was almost ready to tell him who I was. But when I took the job at the clambake, I wasn’t hanging around in the mornings anymore, and once I moved to Morrow Island . . .” His voice trailed off. “I thought there’d be plenty of time in the fall. When the clambake was closed for the season.”
He thought there’d be plenty of time. The poor kid. Even with all his losses, he still had that human belief there’d be more time.
“If you didn’t leave the camera in the playhouse, who do you think did?”
“That’s just it, Julia. A few days before Founder’s Weekend, somebody went through my things at the playhouse. They took the box with the rings, the photo, and my birth certificate in it. It freaked me out so much, I planned to move again.”
“That’s why you emptied out the playhouse and brought all your stuff to Busman’s Harbor that evening.”
“I thought about trying to move back to the boarding house, but once I stayed one night, I knew I couldn’t do it. It was like the group home only without Emily there to kick butt.”
“Cabe, Stevie was your father. Who did your birth certificate say your mother was?”
“I never got far in looking for her. I only know her name.”
When he told me the name, I didn’t recognize it, though it didn’t really matter. I was sure I knew who she was.
“Julia, I can’t thank you enough for trying to help me. I know how bad my situation looks.”
Help him? I’d just turned over a damning piece of evidence to the state police. “Of course, I want to help you, Cabe. I know you didn’t kill Stevie. Besides, you saved my life.”
“No, Julia. I didn’t. I put your life in danger. That car was aimed at me.”
“Cabe, what are you saying?”
But he was gone.
Chapter 36
I walked home, but didn’t go directly to bed. I was too restless and roiled and sad. The look on Chris’s face after he’d kissed me on the forehead haunted me. Why hadn’t I grabbed his hand so he couldn’t walk away?
The abrupt end of my conversation with Cabe frustrated me to the point where I wanted to scream in the night. What had he meant, the vehicle that had almost run me down was aimed at him? Did Cabe honestly believe he was in danger?
If he did, it explained a lot. Why he’d moved out to Morrow Island. Why he’d been too afraid to sleep out in the open on the town pier with the Claminator the night of Stevie’s murder. Why the guy at the boarding house said he was paranoid. And why he’d cleared out his things on Morrow Island, intending to move again or even leave town.
Who would want to intimidate Cabe, a poor young man with no connections to the town? Was Stevie’s entire murder a setup intended to hurt Cabe?
It made no sense. Stevie, a liar who’d swindled thousands of people, was a much more obvious target than Cabe.
I climbed the stairs to the second floor. My mother’s door was closed, her room dark. But a thin line of light showed out from under Richelle’s door.
I knocked and pushed the door open slowly. Richelle sat up in bed, a book propped on her knees, though she didn’t seem to be reading. She stared off into space.
“Richelle?” I spoke softly, hoping not to startle her. When she turned toward me, I saw her face was streaked with tears. I said, “I think it’s time you told me the truth.”
She gave into the tears. “Oh Julia, I’ve made such a mess of things.”
I sat on the bed and handed her tissues from a box on the nightstand. She was ten years older than me, and ten inches taller, but, with her child-colored, corn silk hair, she looked young and vulnerable in the pink princess bed decorated for a nine-year-old.
“Would it be easier if I say it?” I asked.
She nodded, wiping her tears.
“Cabe Stone is your son. Your son with Stevie Noyes. The reason it was so traumatic for you to testify against Stevie wasn’t just because he was your beloved boss. He was your lover, and you were pregnant with his child.”
“He was married. It was wrong. I regret it every day.”
“You and his wife were pregnant at the same time?”
“Her son was born six months before mine. When T.V. was arrested and their whole lives came crashing down, she threw him out. She sat behind him every day of the trial, but their marriage was over. When he was out on bail, he lived with me. That’s when I conceived Cabe.” She stopped, too overcome with emotion to go on.
I waited. It was her story to tell.
“One day, early in my pregnancy, federal agents arrested me as I left our apartment. They offered me a deal. They’d drop the charges if I testified against T.V. I hadn’t even told T.V. I was pregnant. That night I did, and we agreed that I should take the deal. We both cried. In the morning, he moved out. Sitting in the witness stand testifying against my lover, my friend, the father of my unborn child, was the second hardest thing I’d ever done. The hardest was giving our baby up for adoption.”
“You came to Busman’s Harbor to stay with your great-aunt during your pregnancy.” I’d assumed, when Richelle said she’d spent one summer here, it had been when she was a child. But Gus had recognized her, which meant she was probably older. And Cabe had been born at Busman’s Harbor Hospital.
“I thought I was giving my baby a good life,” she wept. “I was young, jobless, penniless, disgraced. I didn’t know if I’d ever work again. His father was in prison.”
“You did give your baby a good life,” I said. “At least at first. Cabe had a happy childhood. The Stones were good parents. Even later, after all the awful things that happened to him, Cabe had a reservoir of resilience left from his early years. By the time he got to the group home, he’d focused on what he’d had, not what he’d lost.”
Richelle nodded and even managed a tiny smile, like she wanted to believe me.
“Did you know Stevie was in Busman’s Harbor? Is that why you came here so often?”
“Not for years. I’d moved on with my life put my affair, the trial, and Cabe’s birth behind me. I’d moved to Portland, became a tour guide. I came to Busman’s Harbor, believe or it or not, because those months when I lived here with Aunt Georgette, waiting for my baby to come, were my happiest in that whole period. The trial was over, T.V. was in federal prison for ten years. I know it sounds crazy, but by then, I could only look forward. I didn’t look for Stevie, as you call him, at all, anywhere, ever.”
“But then you saw him.”
“Early this spring. I was on a research trip, investigating new places to take our tours. Through the window of a shop on Main Street, I saw him walk by. I would have known him anywhere.”
“Did you approach him?”
“No, but I began to consider the possibility. All those years I wasn’t with him, and didn’t even know where he was, it didn’t bother me. I had a happy life. But once the possibility of T.V. existed again, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. He was the great love of my life. I wasn’t sure how he would react to me. I did some research and found out he’d never married again, was completely unattached, just like me. I began to fantasize about our reunion.”
Richelle sighed and looked down, picking at the bedspread. “I built it up so much in my mind, made it so romantic and idealized,
I kept chickening out. I knew reality would never come close to the scene in my head. But whenever I came to Busman’s Harbor with a tour, when my groups had free time, I would be on the lookout for him” She looked up from the bedspread. “I discovered he had quite a reliable routine.”
The same thing Cabe had said. “You realized you weren’t the only person watching him.”
“Once, in the spring, when I brought a group to town, I saw a young man following T.V. I wish I could say I recognized him, that there was some instant, magical connection with my son, but there wasn’t. I saw him again, the next time I came. I followed T.V. to Gus’s and lingered in a shop across the street, pretending I was interested in marine fittings.” She laughed at herself. “T.V. came out Gus’s front door and seconds later, a young man wearing a white apron came out the kitchen door and watched T.V. walk away. That’s when it clicked. I asked around about the young man, looked into his history.”
“You went to the place where he lived.”
“He was the right age and from Maine. His housemates said he’d told them his parents were dead. I figured it had to be him. I thought he looked a little like us.”
I hadn’t thought of Cabe as the physical combination of Richelle and Stevie. He didn’t look like either of them, but he had Stevie’s slight frame combined with most, if not all of Richelle’s height. And his light blue eyes somehow mirrored Richelle’s darker ones.
“You didn’t tell either of them what you knew?” I was skeptical. How could she hold it inside?
“If I wasn’t sure how T.V. would greet me, I was even more worried about Cabe. T.V. and I had agreed about everything I’d done, even my testifying against him. But Cabe hadn’t asked for any of it. That’s the reason I asked you about Cabe when we were standing on the pier at the Founders Weekend celebration. I wanted you to introduce us.”
“It’s also why you fainted.”
“I heard you talking to that lady about Stevie Noyes not turning up for the ceremonies and how odd that was. I could tell you were concerned about his absence. When I saw Cabe running away, I thought he must have hurt T.V. because he was so angry about what we’d done to him. I didn’t really see the body in the fire. I knew T.V. was missing; there was a big kerfuffle around the clambake fire. Then I saw Cabe run away. I put the ideas together and panicked.”