Safe Harbor

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  Ivy, whose lithe, blond figure looked good in anything, threw on a boxy, shapeless sundress that would have made Holly look like a fire hydrant. As for Holly, she wore black, she didn't know why. It wasn't her best color, but it wasn't her worst, and she liked the way the rayon fabric flowed when she moved. It reminded her of the sea.

  Charlotte Anderson fussed as well, emerging from her bedroom in a flattering sundress of cream linen printed all over with the outlines of tiny seashells. Her mood was upbeat, and that made everyone glad.

  The weather was warm and muggy and iffy enough that Charlotte ran back for umbrellas and threw them in the Volvo before the women set off for Oak Bluffs. Traffic was a predictable nightmare; the fact that Renata Nevin had parking for two cars was itself cause for celebration. Eventually the Volvo was snugged behind the widow's brand-new Volkswagen bug, and six women, no men, gathered under Japanese lanterns hanging from every open piece of gaily painted gingerbread on Mrs. Nevin's Gothic confection.

  Painted pink and lavender and ivory and you-would-have-to-call-it purple, Wren House was only a little more exuberant than its neighbor to the right, painted green and blue and mauve and rust, and far less adventurous than its neighbor to the left, whose gingerbread alone was painted three shades of red.

  Holly and Ivy left their mother and her old friend to entertain the stream of visitors stopping by, and they went off with the children to the sing-along.

  The two big and two little sisters wandered among the milling crowd, enthralled like everyone else by the village of Hansel-and-Gretel cottages built often no more than an arm's length away from what originally had been neighboring tent sites. The Camp Ground was a fairyland of intricate scrollwork highlighting turrets and eaves, teeny balconies and tiny verandas, steep-gabled roofs and fish-scale shingles, all of it a-twinkle with thousands of Japanese lanterns. This was no commercial, made-for-admission Disney fantasy, but century-old enchantment in its original form. Every year, at least once, the Vineyard got it exactly right.

  Holly said to her sister, "I feel a little as if we're fairy-people, and this is our magical ground, and the paper lanterns are stars from the sky, and something wonderful is happening here. You feel it, too, the spell."

  Smiling, Ivy said, "Yes, I do. Even I."

  "Nothing bad can happen here; we're enchanted, at least for tonight."

  The women strolled serenely while the girls darted in and around them, all of them whispering sisterly secrets and forming bonds that would carry them into their old ages. Strains of "Cruising Down the River" made them linger at the crowd's edge to join in; everyone knew the words to that one.

  Ivy spotted an old friend. "I haven't seen Eva in years! Keep an eye on the kids for me, would you? I'll be right back."

  The songleader launched another old-fashioned crowd pleaser, "Shine On, Harvest Moon," and Holly and the children stayed to sing those lyrics, too. Holly had her arms around Cissy, snuggled in front of her, as they swayed to the old-fashioned tune. Sally, it was true, seemed more fascinated by two nearby girls wearing midriff tops over low-slung jeans, and bangles that jangled when they fluttered their hands—but even Sally was singing along.

  The crowd loved the song. Holly could almost see a little white ball bouncing across the top of the words.

  I ain't had no lov-in' ...

  Since August twenty-first around six-thirty a.m., she realized, substituting her own sad version for the lyric.

  The simple truth was that there would be no moon tonight—harvest or otherwise. The sky was threatening; there was rain in the air. Still, for the length of the lyrics, the life of the song, Holly truly believed that love was a simple emotion that led, inevitably, to a happy ending.

  ****

  Sam stood alongside and a little behind her, aware that he should keep moving, unable to do it. She looked so completely lovely, swaying slightly to the song, her hair swept up off her neck, her arms dropped over the shoulders of a young girl, undoubtedly a niece. He could hear Holly clearly above the crowd; she had a beautiful singing voice, something else he hadn't known about her. And she knew the lyrics. They all knew the lyrics. What kind of people were these?

  For me and my ... ga-a-a-l.

  The song ended; it was time to move on. Sam was pushing himself to leave, and she must have noticed the struggle, because she turned to him with surprise and wonder in her face, as if he'd suddenly materialized from another century.

  Caught.

  Approaching her with a wry smile, he said, "Evenin', ma'am," simply because nothing else occurred to him. At this point, what the hell could he possibly say?

  "Sam...?" She still didn't believe it.

  Sam wasn't sure himself why he'd come, except that he knew that tonight on the island, the Camp Ground was the place to be. He said, "I had some time to kill," and immediately hated himself for saying it that way: the thought seemed unworthy of the fantasy that surrounded them.

  "Oh—well, naturally. I can see how ... how ..." she said, stammering to a halt.

  Holly Anderson, at a loss for words? It was more painful to witness than if she had jammed a knife in his gut and turned it. He could deal with her rage. He just couldn't handle her hurt.

  In a desperate diversion, Sam turned to the two young girls who were watching him curiously and gave them a stiffly smiling "Hello."

  "Oh, I'm sorry," said Holly. "That's Cissy, my niece, and this is her sister Sally. Girls—"

  The little redhead was looking up at her aunt in surprise. "I'm not Sally. I'm Cissy."

  Holly gazed at the girl's earnest face and said, "Did I say Sally? I didn't mean that. Sam, this is my niece Sally."

  "I'm Cissy!"

  "I'm sorry. What did I say? Cissy?"

  "You said Sally! I'm Cissy! Are you just fooling, Aunty Holly?" she asked, turning suddenly plaintive.

  As for Cissy's blond sister, she turned her back on the whole conversational fiasco and simply pretended not to be there.

  Despite the tension, Sam probably would have continued to stand there like a moonstruck servant if it weren't for Holly dismissing him. She half-sighed and said, "I hope you enjoy the time you have left to kill, Sam. When you're done with the loft, just leave the key on the dresser." She stuck out her hand and said, "Goodbye."

  Not good night; goodbye. No questions asked. Sam was so stunned by the finality of it that he didn't think to take her hand. She shrugged and turned away, flanked by her nieces. The last thing he heard was the little redhead—Cissy or Sally, he still didn't know which—asking, "Is that the man who sleeps in his car?"

  He stared at the three until they were joined by a fourth and got swallowed up by the crowd. After that, his world went from color and magic to plain black and white. He didn't see anything except in terms of obstacles to move around as he sought to escape. He circled the huge wrought-iron Tabernacle—historically the stage for so many spiritual revelations and conversions—on his way back to Circuit Avenue. People, trees, the gingerbread houses themselves—all seemed no more than indistinct blurs that got in his way. He wanted out of there; the idea that he was going to find illumination on Illumination Night suddenly seemed laughable.

  He bumped into someone walking too slow, excused himself, got caught in a stroller-laden, slow-moving family, couldn't get around them, clipped the mother's shoulder, excused himself again, turned to detour down one of the cottage-lined spokes of the wheel that was Trinity Park, and found himself face-to-face, for the first time in seven unending, gut-gnawing years, with Eden Walker, who had refused to take the name Steadman when they were married at City Hall, sending Sam a signal as loud and clear as an air raid siren, only he had been too damn stupid to see it.

  Because she was so beautiful. Her beauty had been blinding then, and it was positively awesome now. She was standing at the end of Tabernacle Avenue, actually a short and narrow lane, and she looked as if on this most magical of nights she had been expecting him. The lanterns hanging from every conceivable perch threw a
rainbow of color over her short white dress, a form-fitting thing which reminded him, if he needed reminding, that her legs went on forever and her breasts were high and firm.

  He approached. She met him halfway.

  He was able to see her face: the high, sculpted cheekbones, the Brooke Shields eyebrows, the mane of hair that was no longer blond, as Holly had said, but the color he remembered, a rich, dark auburn. It was straight and shining and bounced as she walked, trailing a cloud of confidence behind her.

  For years he had been convinced that he'd been exaggerating Eden's beauty to himself, but now he knew that he had been wrong. She was all that and more.

  Chapter 28

  "Hello, Sam," she said.

  He remembered now: for all her sophisticated beauty, her voice had a kind of little-girl pitch to it that he had always found off-putting. Funny how he'd forgotten that.

  "Long time, no see," he managed to say.

  "I told you I'd come back."

  "True," he said, and meanwhile his heart was taking flying leaps at his ribcage. "But you didn't mention that it would be for my parents' engraving."

  She laughed and circled him, which made him feel like livestock at auction. He remembered that, too, about her now: that she looked before she bought. He used to enjoy it. Tonight he was comparing it to Holly's straight-ahead enthusiasm, and he wasn't so impressed. This seemed tired, and somehow nasty. He half-circled Eden himself, so that she wouldn't have the advantage of him.

  He watched as a corner of her mouth lifted in a querulous smile. She rested her shapely behind on the cap of a low picket fence and let him take her all in. And he did, from the perfectly shaped fingernails, so unlike Holly's shop-torn ones, to the curve of her long neck as she watched him watching her.

  "The years have been good to you," he said grudgingly.

  She lifted a bare shoulder. "I play to my strengths."

  "You have them in spades."

  "I—thank you," she said. She cast her gaze downward in a gesture of humility that surprised Sam. She seemed to be waiting out a thought. He decided that he'd wait it out, too. She looked back up at him, and even in the kaleidoscope lighting he could see that her eyes were glazed over with tears.

  "I'm sorry, Sam," she said, her voice catching. She stood up. "It was a huge mistake, leaving you."

  His heart took a big jump. It was a huge mistake: words he had waited seven long years to hear. He savored them, let them roll back and forth in his consciousness like fine brandy.

  And then, amazing himself, he spit them out. All he wanted, he realized now, was the taste of her remorse. He had waited seven endless years to hear her say that she'd made a mistake. The magnitude of his wasted life didn't hit him all at once; it rolled in slowly and in stages, like an incoming tide.

  "There was no baby, of course," he said tersely.

  "No ... there was no baby."

  "But there was a warrant."

  "Yes. I cheated an old woman and I'm sorry for that."

  "And yet you came back to try to cheat another old woman, and her invalid husband."

  She shook her head. "I came back to find out about you, whether you were with anyone. The engraving falling into my hands, that was a detour."

  "An irresistible one."

  "I won't deny it. But it wasn't what I came for, not what I wanted."

  "I don't think you know what you want, Eden!" he said in a burst of frustration.

  "Yes ... I do, Sam," she whispered.

  He was beginning to feel ill. "Besides money, I mean."

  That brought a flash of anger from her. "If it was about money, I'd be with Eric right now."

  Seven years! Sam nodded and said, "Where is the poor sap, anyway?"

  Eden pushed herself off the low fence and said dismissively, "He's showing me how much he trusts me."

  He'll get lots of practice at that, Sam thought, but he didn't say it aloud. What was the point?

  Seven years! There was only one real sap in this scenario.

  "Since we're here," Sam said tiredly, "I suppose I ought to bring up the subject of the money. Sorry," he added, when he saw the look of pained surprise on her face. "I know it's gauche."

  She pressed her hands together in a prayerful pose, the index fingers touching her lips. She had beautiful, long fingers, very talented. But not as talented as Holly's. Holly could make bookcases! The thought was a tonic to the dryness Sam felt inside. Just thinking that the woman he loved could perform such a miracle of carpentry, among other miracles ...

  "No ... no, you're not being gauche," Eden said in a trembly voice. A tear broke loose and rolled down her cheek; she brushed it away with her clasped hands. "I understand, I do, Sam. Why wouldn't you be concerned; a hundred and fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money. Your parents must have been frantic all this time."

  "You know what, Eden? They were."

  Seven years. He was almost dizzy with the thought of the bouts of melancholy, the evenings spent playing the songs he knew she'd loved. If he never heard Phil Collins again, it was going to be way too soon.

  "But Sam, here's the thing," she said with a mournful sigh. "I'm going to have to give it back. All of it."

  "Give it—what—back?"

  "All of the money that I got for the engraving."

  It was like a meltdown at a nuclear power plant: a din of sirens and alarms went off at once, making thought impossible. Sam had to force himself to stay calm. This was Eden he was dealing with; he'd need his wits.

  He said cautiously, "And why would you do that?"

  She shrugged and gave him a look that he'd have sworn was filled with sympathy. "The engraving was a forgery," she explained with a hapless smile.

  "What?" he shouted. "A forgery? Godalmighty, what next, Eden?"

  "Shh, shh," she said, touching her hand to his lips. "Don't, don't, Sam," she begged.

  She looked around her with something like panic and began dragging him away from their fairly conspicuous spot to a slightly less conspicuous one behind a tree. People were milling everywhere; it was impossible to get out of earshot, but she did the best she could.

  "I sold the engraving to a fairly rough character," she said. "Don't ask me details; you don't want to know, except that I'm sure he's somewhere on the island, which has me terrified out of my wits."

  She sounded nervous enough, but she seemed determined to get out her story. "After your parents gave me the engraving, the first thing I did was track down the lawyer who'd handled their inheritance. I found out that he'd been the gay lover of your parents' bachelor Uncle Henry. I suppose because of the intimacy, the attorney knew that Uncle Henry had been given the engraving by an Allied soldier who'd stolen the painting from a museum in Berlin. I'm assuming that old Uncle Henry had once been lovers with the Allied soldier, but that's neither here nor there."

  Sam was mesmerized. "You managed to find all this out about a long-dead uncle and his now-dead lawyer?"

  "Oh, come on, Sam. How hard was it? The attorney's secretary is in a nursing home and desperately lonely; she was more than willing to reminisce."

  All Sam could think was, What a waste of smarts.

  "I admit," said Eden, "that I was going to keep half the money and lie to your parents about how much I got. But then I fell in with Eric, and I was pretty much resolved to give your parents all—well, nearly all—of the money, because I figured I wouldn't need it and I know they did. I'm sure you don't believe me—you have no reason to believe me—but that's what I had planned."

  "Uh-huh. Keep talking."

  "But then, while I was sailing with Eric on his boat, I got a call on my cell phone from this—" She looked around, then lowered her voice. "This brute I sold the engraving to, and he was furious. He told me he'd had the engraving looked at, and an expert had told him that it was a nineteenth century fake. He threatened to kill me, Sam! I could handle one creep coming after me," she said, "but not two. As it turned out, I'd also pissed off a dealer—but you know how middl
emen are, Sam; everything pisses them off."

  "This would be Stefan Koloman."

  "Stefan, yes. You met him? So you know he means business. All I can say is, he doesn't mean as much business as Hans."

  "And that's why you faked your death to look like a murder: so that each of the men would think the other had done it."

  She looked surprised; surprised and pleased that he was able to keep up. "I've always thought that you and I made the best team, Sam," she said with an irrepressible grin. "Yes, that's what I had planned. I didn't expect poor Eric to be blamed."

  Sam, who knew that she'd told Eric only that she had staged the scene to look like an accident to put off Stefan, said, "Did you care that Eric was suspected?"

  She shrugged. "Not as much as I cared that Hans and Stefan be convinced I was dead. But when Eric came under suspicion, the state police impounded his boat. That, I didn't expect."

  "Or you never would have hidden the money there."

  "I didn't say that," she said, shaking her head. "Just that I was surprised. Eric had wanted to take me on some voyage or other, so I knew I could talk my way back aboard the boat any time I wanted to. He's having a late-life crisis," she added, sounding utterly bored. "He's obsessed with this dream to sail somewhere far. Which is convenient for me: in the Bahamas or in Bora Bora, no one much cares who you are or where you're from."

  Not a bad plan. Sam could see how she'd managed to keep out of jail all these years.

  He said, "And yet Eric suspected that you set up the boat to look like a murder had been committed there. He lied about how the blood got on the deck either to cover for you—or because he was too humiliated to admit that he was out of your loop."

  Again she shrugged, and Sam had to admit, she had the most eloquent shrug he'd ever seen. "He lied because he loves me."

  "Eden, he's such a little fish—hardly worthy of your hook," Sam said softly. "Throw him back to his family. Find someone worthy of your talents."