by Rice, Luanne
Augusta went to the poetry-drama bookcase. Each of the study's four walls had books organized by subject. The largest, by far, contained art books, including twenty or so biographies and picture books of Hugh and his work, and another fifty volumes pertaining more generally to the Black Hall art colony and the artists who had filled its ranks.
Another wall bore history and science books—field guides to the birds, sky, shells, and fish found around Black Hall, as well as more complicated and dense works on the geology and geophysics of the eastern seaboard.
But it was to poetry and drama that Augusta now turned. She adored the erudite; she worshiped the poetic. She reached for her much-thumbed and oft-read copy of the Bard, third shelf up, flush against the right side of the shelf. As Augusta removed the book, a mechanism clicked, and the shelf swung outward to reveal a secret safe.
Hurrying, knowing that Tara would soon reach the room for its weekly cleaning, Augusta spun the dial. The combination was simple, unforgettable: the months and days of each of her daughters' birthdays.
Once into the safe, Augusta pushed aside a sack of gold doubloons and a small case of Burmese rubies her treasure-hunter son-in-law had given her for safekeeping; a sheaf of bearer bonds, a stack of cash, vintage Harry Winston bracelets and necklaces of platinum, diamonds, and sapphires. The Vuarnet emerald earrings.
Augusta sought one single piece of paper. Correspondence from her bank, received that very month. Hurriedly removing it, then slamming shut the safe, Augusta returned Shakespeare to his rightly spot, then settled herself at the desk. Long white hair pulled back from her face, she reached for her calculator, and, staring with fierce concentration at the paper, began to add things up.
TARA WHIPPED THROUGH THE RENWICK MANSE. SHE HAD just one other house to clean that day, a working artist's small cottage on the banks of the Ibis River. Cake, compared to Firefly Hill. The main thing was, she wanted to get back to Hubbard's Point as soon as she could. Bay was meeting with Dan Connolly at two, and Tara wanted to be there—half to give moral support, half because she was dying of curiosity.
Doing the downstairs with her dust mop and damp cloth, she had saved the study for last. She always did. It was her favorite room in the whole house, snug and inviting, filled with books and family photos. Wheeling around the corner, she was startled to come upon Augusta Renwick sitting at the big mahogany desk.
“Oh, Mrs. Renwick!” she exclaimed. “I thought you were outside, on the porch.”
“No, Tara,” the matriarch said, staring at a paper on the desk. “I'm too worried to be outside.”
“I'm sorry. Should I do this room later?”
Augusta pushed the paper aside, looking up at Tara over tortoiseshell half-glasses. “You knew him very well. Didn't you?”
“Who?” Tara asked, her stomach flipping.
“Sean McCabe. Let's not be coy with each other. He's the one who recommended you to me. I needed a cleaning lady, he told me his wife's best friend had a house-cleaning business, I hired you.”
“Yes, I knew him very well,” Tara said, staring Augusta right in the eye.
“Tell me about him,” Augusta said, gesturing at the cracked leather chair across the desk. Tara took a breath. She was on thin ice right now; she wanted to be loyal to Bay, yet she didn't want to be rude to her employer. Eyeing Augusta, she carefully sat down on the edge of the seat.
“He was a good friend,” Tara said. “A very good friend. We grew up together, summering at Hubbard's Point.”
“The Irish Riviera,” Augusta said.
Tara smiled politely. The WASPs called Hubbard's Point “the Irish Riviera of Connecticut.” Her grandmother had always told her it was because they were jealous.
“Go on,” Augusta prompted. “Tell me more about Sean.”
“Well, he went to St. Thomas Aquinas High School in New Britain, then Boston College. He played varsity basketball both places; he had an MBA from UConn. He married a girl from the beach. Then he became a banker at Shoreline Bank and Trust.”
Augusta waved her hand impatiently. “I could get that from his resume,” she said. “Those things don't interest me.” She tapped the paper on the desk, running her fingernail down the page. “This interests me.”
“What is it?” Tara asked.
“My bank balance. For one small account. I had almost forgotten about it. Sean encouraged me to set it up years ago. He had some CDs for sale at a favorable rate. I remember that he called me one snowy morning, in his infectious way—you know how he could be.”
Tara nodded. She knew so well; she could almost hear him: “Hello, Augusta, top of the morning to you! How's the snowy scene out your window? As beautiful as it is here in town? I'll bet your husband could do a great painting of it . . .”
“Sean had a talent for knowing people,” Tara said. “And liking them.”
“Liking them enough to steal from them?” Augusta asked sharply.
“No one can understand that,” Tara said.
“Did the family need money?” Augusta asked. “One of the children, perhaps? For school? Or were there health problems?”
“The children are fine. Everyone is healthy,” Tara said evenly.
“The wife, then? Did she wish for a grander lifestyle? Was—is—she very demanding?”
Tara stared at the old woman. She took in Augusta's black pearls, worth more than most of the houses in this wealthy seaside town. The white hair had once been black, perhaps as dark as Tara's own; she could tell by Augusta's stately eyebrows, arched over violet eyes. Tara was just the cleaning lady, and Augusta was the grand dame, but Tara stared her down.
“Bay isn't demanding,” Tara said, picturing her friend, barefooted, wind blowing her red hair, clothespins in her mouth as she hung out the wash.
“Surely something must have compelled him to do what he did,” Augusta said.
“You're right. We just don't know what it is.”
“Another woman?” Augusta asked. “Is that it?”
Tara sat still, expressionless, knowing there was no way on earth she would ever say one word about that.
“Loyalty is to be admired,” Augusta said, squinting at Tara. “It is a fine quality.”
“Thank you.”
“I had expected it of Sean.”
We all did, Tara thought.
“What will his wife do now? Does she work?”
“She works very hard,” Tara said. “Raising their kids.”
“How many are there?”
“Three.”
“Just like our family,” Augusta said, softening, sounding suddenly wistful. “Three children without a father. My girls lost their father too young as well.”
“For what it's worth, Mrs. Renwick,” Tara said. “I'm very sorry for what Sean did to you. Would you feel more comfortable if I quit? I'd understand completely if you did, considering that he recommended me to you.”
“God, no,” Augusta said, sounding aghast. “Tara, I need you more than ever. Although the amount of money he took was small, the damage he did to me is large. I loathe being taken advantage of. I am old, Tara, and society utterly discounts and disrespects the old. They patronize us, and they think we're too dotty to notice we've been fleeced.”
“You're anything but dotty, Mrs. Renwick.” Tara smiled. “You're one of the sharpest people I've ever met.”
“I'd like to think you're right,” Augusta said, drawing herself up haughtily. “And I had thought Sean felt the same way. That is why this is so devastating. My trust in humanity is shattered. It's happened before; wealthy old women are particularly vulnerable. Remember that when you're elderly and the fruits of your work have multiplied—You do save your money, don't you?”
“Yes,” Tara said. “My mother taught me to be frugal. My biggest expense is my garden—”
“Your garden?”
“Yes,” Tara said. “My pride and joy. I buy too many plants . . . and I can't resist soft leather gardening gloves, and copper watering cans, an
d the newest, sharpest trowels . . .”
“Ah, the Irish are superb with flowers and soil. Hugh used to have a gardener from Wicklow. That was back in the days when Firefly Hill was a showplace. He wanted beautiful gardens to paint. Now all I have are the old herb garden out back and all those dry brown geraniums. I have a black thumb.”
“Water, water, water.” Tara smiled, thinking of Bay. “That's the only secret.”
Augusta thumped her black thorn stick on the floor, then flexed her weakened right hand. “Can't drag a hose around the way I used to. Or lug a watering can. And my daughters are all busy with their own lives—trop occupé, as Caroline would say, now that she lives in France, to help their old mother water her garden—and also, come to think of it, a bit too far away.”
“I could do it for you,” Tara said, suddenly getting an idea. “Or . . .”
“Or what?”
“You could hire a gardener.”
11
JUST BEFORE TWO, BAY PULLED HER OLD BIKE OUT OF the garage. Shoved into a corner with Sean's golf clubs and basketball, it was covered with spiderwebs, and she dusted it off.
Riding past the men in their dark car, she felt like a gangster in a movie, taunting the law. They pulled out and followed her down the road, but she took a shortcut through the green marsh, over a series of narrow planks laid down in the mud by her son to facilitate bike-riding and blue-crabbing—a trail no Ford LTD would dare to follow.
Focusing on the ground, she kept her bike tires on the boards. One false move, and she'd fall into the marshy, decomposing, black mud. Her body was tense, not knowing what to expect when she saw Danny. What did he have to tell her, and how would she feel? She had already exposed too much of herself to him, and she wished she could take it back.
Then out of the swamp, up the hidden Mute Swan Road, a road so isolated most Hubbard's Point residents didn't even know it was there, past the house where the Hubbard's Point winter security guard lived, the blue lights atop his green car camouflaged in the shadow of the woods all around.
Finally onto the main road and into the sandy parking lot of Foley's store—a green barnlike structure, the beach's general store. Bay glanced at the cars, saw Danny's truck. Her pulse kicked; after all these years, she still felt the ancient excitement at seeing him. She climbed off her bike, and then, conscious of the presence of police in her life, parked it out of sight, beneath the store's wide porch.
Walking into the big, airy store, she saw the three aisles were empty—too hot to shop—but she found Danny in back, sitting at a table. Spotting her instantly, he stood up to wave and pull out her chair. As she sat down, she ran her hand, as always, over the scarred tabletop. Generations of Hubbard's Point kids had carved their initials into the wood: SP+DM, ML+EE, ZM+RL, AE+PC. There, off to the side, were Bay and Sean's: BC+SM.
“A long time ago,” Bay said as she caught Dan watching her, a serious expression in his blue eyes.
“I know what you mean,” he said, relaxing into a smile that overtook his face. “Thanks for coming.”
She nodded, smiling back. Danny Connolly had always had the nicest, warmest smile, one of the things she had liked about him most. Looking at him now, she remembered why: It was one of the truest smiles in the world; it touched every part of his face. When Allie Grayson—a beach girl, in her first summer job—walked over, they both ordered lemonade.
“So, what did you want to tell me?” she asked.
The smile went away. “I've been getting a lot of phone calls. Hang-ups, you know? At first I thought it was a wrong number. Or someone trying to send a fax but getting my phone line instead. But finally I picked up, and the person at the other end asked if I had spoken to Sean McCabe, if I had seen him. For about half a second, I thought it was you.”
“Me?”
“It was a woman,” he said.
“Really?”
“Yes. I knew it wasn't you, of course, but I couldn't figure out who else could know Sean had been to see me. And what difference it could make.”
“What did she sound like?” Bay asked.
“Careful,” Dan said. “She sounded very cautious, as if she wanted to make sure she didn't say too much.”
“Do you have caller ID?”
Dan smiled again, and shook his head. “No. I'm not big on electronics. Eliza keeps telling me to enter the modern age—maybe it's the wooden boat mentality. I don't like things that take the mystery out of life.”
Bay shrugged, perplexed. “I have no idea who it could be. Did you call the police?”
He paused. Allie delivered the lemonades, and he waited for her to walk away. He traced the moisture on the glass with his finger. Then he looked up, holding Bay's gaze with his own. “No,” he said. “I didn't, because of you.”
“Me? What do you mean?”
He squinted slightly, then smiled. “Because try as I might, I can't stop feeling protective toward you.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I could use a little of that.”
“I'm glad you see it that way. I know you're all grown up now, a great mom, super competent . . . It's just,” he said, trying to keep his expression neutral, but his smile taking over, “It's just that in my mind you're still that skinny kid who kept getting underfoot while I was trying to build the boardwalk.”
“I wasn't a kid! I was fifteen.”
“Well, Galway, maybe you're right,” he said, and in that moment, memories came flooding back in a rush. He had called her his deputy; he'd given her his tool belt to wear so she could hand him nails as he'd made his way down the boardwalk, hammering in the boards. He had called her Galway Bay, or just “Galway,” for the famous bay in Ireland, in a mock-gruff way, so teasing and cute that she'd tingled every time she'd heard it—as she did now.
“I was a good assistant,” she protested. “That boardwalk wouldn't have lasted this long if I hadn't done such a fine job helping you out.”
“You weren't too bad,” he said sternly. “For a rank amateur.”
“Handing you the nails?”
“And swinging the hammer. If I remember correctly, you were pretty good.”
“That's right,” she said, smiling. “You taught me. To this day, when I hang a picture, I shorten up on the hammer and keep my eye on the nail—like hitting a baseball . . . don't think about it . . . very Zen—and I never bang my thumb. After I learned the hard way . . .”
“When you hit it, and I had to spend the whole day with you getting stitches at the clinic,” he said, grinning. “I worried that I hadn't done a good job of teaching you.”
“But you had, and I remember still. When the kids were little, at batting practice,” she said, “I used to think of you telling me to shorten up, let the hammer find the nail, to not think about it . . . and I'd tell the kids to choke up on the bat, to let the bat find the ball. It used to drive Sean . . .” She paused, falling silent as she looked down at her knees.
“Why did it drive him crazy?” Dan asked.
“Because he didn't understand it,” she said. “He had such an immediate approach to things. He'd tell the kids to whack the ball, to hit the hell out of it, to send it to the sun.”
“It upsets you to think about that?”
“Thinking of Sean upsets me,” she said. She glanced up. “And not because of what I said to you the other day, after his funeral. I didn't mean that, you know. I don't hate my husband.”
“I didn't think you did, Bay.”
“It's just complicated. I'm angry with him. For what he did, and for dying. Leaving the kids. Lying to me.”
“I know,” Dan said. “I was angry with Charlie for the same things.”
Bay nodded, although she felt surprised to hear him saying he'd felt angry at Charlie for anything. Had she lied to him? Or was he just referring to the hole a person's death left in their family's lives?
“Since we're speaking about Sean,” she said. “There's something I've been meaning to talk to you about. You know our letters?”
>
“Sure, Galway. The ones you sent me nonstop the winter after that summer of the boardwalk.”
“You sent a few back, as I recall,” Bay said.
“Only because I didn't want you to forget the basics . . . and to let you know I was still paying attention to the moon.” He grinned again, as if relenting. “But, that I did, didn't I? Sent a few back . . .”
“So long ago,” Bay said, feeling embarrassed because she didn't want him to get the wrong idea. “I saved them.”
Surprise flashed across his eyes; of course he would have thrown hers away years ago.
“I save everything,” she explained. “I have a whole chest full of old letters, pictures, yearbooks . . . locks of the kids' hair . . .”
“So, you're saying I shouldn't think I'm too special. Don't worry about that—I don't. You probably wanted to preserve my ramblings about rare woods, the properties of mahogany versus teak—right?”
“Something like that,” she said, glad to be joking, but suddenly unable to laugh about it.
“What, then? What is it?”
“They really were buried in that chest; I haven't looked at them in years. But I found one on Sean's boat.”
“You left it there?” he asked, looking confused.
“No. Sean must have. I hadn't even known he knew about them. And I can't really imagine why he'd care. Or if he did care, why he didn't talk to me about it. It seems as if he just dug them out, and decided to track you down on his own.”
“Well, I'm sure Sean just decided he wanted a boat for your daughter. And he knew that's what I do, build boats.”
“But there must be lots of other boatbuilders around,” Bay said. “With all the harbors and marinas on the shoreline . . .”
Dan didn't say anything, but in the three-second silence Bay sensed that he was uncomfortable, talking about this.