by Rice, Luanne
“I know,” Tara said. “And they killed Eliza's mother.”
“And they almost killed Eliza. Oh, Tara . . . what were we living with? In the midst, on the edge of all that, and I didn't know . . .”
March was just too soon for any understanding to emerge. The darkness that had finally almost engulfed them that November night, when Eliza had nearly died, was taking a long time to chase away. All of the children had nightmares. Eliza was, of course, the most affected. But Bay's kids were cut to the bone by everything that had happened. The crimes their father had committed, the one he had tried to prevent, the letter he had written to them through Annie.
Danny spent many nights and most weekends in Massachusetts, where Eliza had been readmitted to Banquo Hospital. Bay drove Annie up for a few visits, and as the girls' friendship deepened, and as Eliza made good progress, Bay and Dan found themselves so firmly entrenched in their parental roles, they rarely had any time alone.
It was probably for the best, Bay thought. Her kids needed her so much, wanted her home every second, and that's where she wanted to be. She immersed herself completely in them, as together they all felt their way through the dark months. Billy and Peggy were full of questions about their father, and what he had done, and how he had tried to help Eliza. Bay sensed them needing to turn their father into a hero, and she was surprised to hear Annie speaking to them one day.
“He wasn't a bad man, was he?” Peggy asked.
“No, he wasn't—it's right there in the letter,” Billy said. “He wasn't going to let anything happen to Eliza.”
“He loved us,” Annie said. “We know that for sure. And the dad we knew wasn't a bad man.”
“But is it still okay to love him?” Peggy asked, starting to cry. “If he did those things?”
“It's fine to love him,” Bay said. “And it's also fine to be mad at him. You can feel both ways.”
“The thing I'm maddest about,” Billy said, “is that he's not here anymore. That's what SUCKS. I almost hate him for it.”
Bay hugged her kids, and tried not to talk them into or out of any one feeling. She remembered a poem from long ago, about “the dark unknowability” of another person. What did that mean? She had been young, she had grown up in the Connecticut suburbs, the sun was shining. Or, if it wasn't one day, it would be the next. Good things happened to good people.
She had married Sean McCabe, a boy she'd known her whole life. His pictures, all through their house, showed the open, smiling, friendly face of the most popular kid at the beach, in school. A man his friends and clients had loved, had trusted with their money.
A crook.
In the end, though, Sean had turned back into Sean the good man, full of fire, who would put someone else's well-being, her life, above his own selfish desires. Bay had read Sean's letter to Annie over and over; she was pretty sure, from everything he said, that he had been prepared to go to jail to save Eliza's life.
Sometimes she wanted to call Danny, to talk it all over with him. But there was no getting past the fact that her husband had been involved with the people who had killed his wife and tried to kill Eliza. And right now, his daughter needed all of his attention.
As Bay's kids needed hers. Still, every crescent moon, she would look out the window, and wonder whether Danny could see the moon from wherever he was, and her heart would go out to him and Eliza.
Tara was always there for the family. Now that the case was over, she had started spending time with Joe Holmes. Since Bay was going to be a witness in the trial against the Bolands, he couldn't really get to know Tara's best friend yet—a fact that riled Tara no end.
“How can I know what I truly feel about him,” Tara asked, “if I can't get you to check him out?”
“I think you already know what you truly feel about him.” Bay smiled, watching Tara blush.
“It's the most amazing thing,” Tara said. “Who would have thought, in the midst of the worst time of our lives, that I'd find myself falling in love with the man investigating my best friend's husband? Oh, Bay—will you always have bad feelings and memories when you see me with Joe?”
Bay shook her head, smiling. “Not if he's making you happy,” she said, hugging Tara.
“I want you to be happy, too,” Tara said, hugging her back. “I want you to make it through the rest of this awful winter, Bay. I want you to feel the sunlight again. I promise it's coming . . .”
“I'll hold you to that,” Bay said, looking out at the brown garden and gray skies.
So she buried herself in seed catalogues, planning her own and Augusta's gardens for the spring, reading, taking care of her children, waiting for the sunlight Tara had promised.
When Eliza returned home from Banquo, she and Annie resumed their visits to each other. Bay picked Eliza up and dropped her off. She, Annie, and Tara were the first people Eliza wanted to see the day she got her new front teeth, to cap the ones that had been broken during her kidnapping.
All the silver, even the Paul Revere cup, was being held as evidence, but at least it had been recovered. Eliza was thrilled it had been found, and couldn't wait to have it back, for the memories it held. “The best things in life aren't things,” she said, one day when Bay was driving her home. “One thing I learned in the hospital is that I still love my mother, no matter what.”
“Can I tell you something?” Bay asked.
“Sure.”
“You know, that night . . .”
“Yes,” Eliza said. Her voice dropped. The memory of that night was still so traumatic for her, Bay wanted to tread very lightly.
“I felt your mother right there,” Bay said.
Eliza looked across the seat.
“You did?”
Bay nodded. She remembered that feeling of extra strength, knowing that it had come from Sean and Charlie. “I did,” Bay said. “Your mother was with me . . . with you. She was a strong woman, Eliza. Just like her daughter.”
“I survived,” Eliza said. “Thanks to you.”
“Thanks to you,” Bay said, knowing that one could never remind one's own daughter, or one's own self, too often of the power she had within.
THE CASE WAS OVER, OFFICIALLY CLOSED, AND JOE HOLMES was proving to be not only tough and valiant at crime solving, but ineffably tender and gentle as a boyfriend. He held Tara's hand whenever they went walking together, and on nights when she thought of all that had happened, of how close her best friend had come to drowning in an almost-frozen cove, she would sometimes call Joe and he would drive right down Route Nine, to hold her till the sun came up.
One day he took her to the range, to teach her how to shoot his gun.
“I don't believe in guns, you know,” she said.
“What do you think your grandfather would say about that?”
“Well, I believe in them for cops, but not for me,” she said.
“I want you to have protection,” Joe said. “I'm worried about you in that isolated spot all by yourself.”
“Bay's right across the water. And the kids . . .”
“There are bad people out there, too, Tara,” he said. “I can't stand to think of anything happening to you. To any of you.”
“The Bolands turned out to be pretty bad,” she said.
“Yes. The worst.”
“What made them do it?” she asked.
“Greed,” he said. “And competition. In some ways, it was a game to them.”
“All that silver they stole,” Tara said. “Just to have trophies . . . a way for Sean and Mark to one-up each other.”
Joe nodded silently, his brown eyes dark and grave, listening as Tara proved his point.
The Bolands had driven each other, their illicit thrills fueling their marriage. The couple had liked material things, and their tastes had become more expensive with every payday. Mark had worked alone at Anchor Trust, but when he arrived at Shoreline Bank and came to know Sean, his old rival, better, he'd seen a wild man, with a need for casinos and other women
.
Sean had also been more careless, and when he let one money order sneak through to Fiona Mills, the operation was all over. Sean had also taken Charlotte Connolly's silver cup; once she discovered that theft, she became suspicious of all the attention he'd paid to her. She had opened her books, run the numbers, and realized the fraud. Confronting Mark Boland with it had been her undoing.
And the killing began.
Giving Sean drugs had been Alise's idea. And he was so easy to seduce—she'd gotten him high aboard the Aldebaran—set him up for Mark. After the fight with Mark, they'd taken him down that deserted coast road, and he'd been too drugged-up, too badly hurt and bleeding—losing consciousness, unable to perceive the situation—to stop Mark from leaning in to shove the car into gear. They had been so careful about some things, but Alise had dropped the perfume bottle that had held her cocaine. Small details, compared with murder.
The bridge had been Sean's spot to stop and think—he'd showed it to them, met with them there—but the Bolands adopted it as their killing cove, the place to which they'd brought Eliza. If they had killed with the tide too low, her body might have stuck in the reeds. They'd been waiting for the tide to rise and turn; to sweep Eliza's body out to sea.
“They almost got away with it,” Tara said.
“No, they didn't,” Joe said. “They didn't almost get away with it; they maintained their cover for a relatively long time, but there was never a chance we wouldn't have caught them. They were greedy and stupid, Tara. Good does triumph over evil. Thanks to you finding the slip of paper with the account number in Annie's model boat, the money from all their offshore accounts is coming back this week—we'll try to redistribute it to the people they stole it from.”
“Then why do I need to learn how to shoot?”
“So you can triumph over evil,” he said, laughing, holding her from behind as he helped her grip the 10mm, as he helped her straighten her arms and raise them, aiming for the target.
“I'll tell you what,” Tara said. “I'll do this, just to prove that I have my grandfather's genes . . . that I can hit the target. But then that's the end of it.”
“End of what?”
“End of my shooting career.”
“On one condition,” Joe said, his mouth against her ear as she raised the gun and squinted toward the target.
“What's that?”
“You let me take you dancing this weekend, to make up for the Pumpkin Ball.”
“What was wrong with the Pumpkin Ball?” Tara asked. “I had a wonderful time.”
“So did I,” Joe said, kissing her neck. “But we were both working that night.”
Tara aimed, cocked, and shot. She hit the bull's-eye, felt the recoil in her arms and shoulders, and handed Joe back his gun. He holstered it, never taking his eyes off her.
“Well,” she said, stepping into his arms. “You might have been working, but I had the time of my life. The best time of my life.”
“Don't tell the FBI,” Joe said. “But so did I.”
And he folded her into those steel arms and kissed her, and as Tara stood on tiptoes to kiss him back, she thought how she was forty-one and he was forty-seven, and how finally, after four whole decades and one extra year, she knew how it felt to be falling in love.
It felt wonderful.
THE VERNAL EQUINOX CAME, AND SUDDENLY IT WAS spring. All the bulbs that Bay had planted last fall came shooting out of the earth. She thought of the words from the liturgy: “faith in that which is seen and unseen.”
Daffodils, jonquils, narcissus, hyacinths, and tulips were everywhere. Bay and Tara called a springtime meeting of the Irish Sisterhood, and inducted Annie and Eliza as members of the new generation. They brewed a pot of tea, put out Granny O'Toole's linen napkins and Granny Clarke's silver spoons. Lighting a candle, they invoked the spirits of the beloveds.
Putting their hands together in the middle of the circle, Bay and Tara locked eyes. They had been together forever, as had their grandmothers before them. Now came Annie and Eliza, so excited but solemn, clasping hands beneath theirs, part of the unending and unbroken circle of Irish sisterhood.
“Thick and thin,” Tara said.
“Faugh a ballagh,” Bay said, invoking the grannies' Gaelic battle cry.
“Fog-on-baylick,” Annie said, repeating slowly.
“What does it mean?” Eliza asked.
“‘Clear the way!' ” Tara translated.
“Because we're coming?” Annie said.
“Exactly,” Bay said, overwhelmed with love for her daughter and Eliza. “Because we're forces to be reckoned with.”
“The sisterhood,” Eliza said. “I've never had real sisters before!”
“None of us has,” Bay said, “except Annie.”
“Some sisters,” Tara said, “are truer than blood.”
“That's how it already seems to me,” Eliza said.
Annie nodded happily, looking around from Eliza to Tara and, finally, to her mother. “When Pegeen turns twelve, we'll have to induct her, too.”
“We'll be waiting for her,” Bay said, smiling back.
ONE SATURDAY MORNING, BAY WAS HANGING WASH outside; Eliza had slept over the night before, and Joe and Tara had taken all the kids mini-golfing at Pirate's Cove. The sunlight had burst forth, as Tara had promised. It warmed Bay's head and bare arms as she soaked it up, savoring the delight of late spring, slowly shaking out the wet clothes and pinning them to the line.
She felt almost like a flower herself, coming back to life after a long winter underground. The clothes felt cool to her fingertips; the wooden clothespins clacked as she fixed them to the line. All of her senses were wide awake. Nearly a year had passed since the day Sean disappeared; she had been hanging out wash that day, too. She had felt happy that day—or had she? She remembered loving the summer weather, trying to love her life.
But there had been so much she didn't know. So many secrets covered up with layers and layers of lies. Bay felt so much wiser now. She had spent this past winter healing, helping her children, promising herself to live with her eyes wide open from now on. And it was working, because she felt herself starting to feel joy.
She heard soft splashing in the inlet behind her house. She turned around, and there, coming through the marsh from out in the Sound, she saw a beautiful, classic dory moving through the reeds and the calm, still water.
Dropping the basket of clothes, she ran down to the water's edge, her bare feet sinking into the warm silty mud. Grabbing hold of the bow, she pulled the boat up onto the shore.
“Dan,” she said.
“I had to see you . . . I rowed over from the boatyard.”
“All that way?” she asked, scanning the sparkling horizon.
“I left early,” he said, pulling the oars into the boat, gazing into Bay's eyes. “May I come up for a minute?”
She nodded and he climbed out of the lovely boat. Bay touched her sides, feeling the smooth beauty of the wood, the superb fairing, the finished brightwork. Then she looked up at Dan: He wore jeans and a T-shirt, a sweater tied around his waist, and he looked rugged and tan, with blue eyes so incredibly vulnerable that Bay couldn't stand it.
“Why did you come?” she asked.
“How could I stay away?” he asked, stepping forward.
Bay inched back. Her heart was pounding, and her mouth was dry. The warm sun beat down on her head, and she felt her eyes fill with tears.
“Bay, what's wrong?” he asked.
“I never thought I'd make it through this winter,” she said.
“Neither did I.”
“The whole time, I've wanted to call you,” she said. “I've wanted to.”
“You have?” he asked, his eyes bright.
“So much! But we've been pulling together, just the four of us till now—well, five, with Tara. But getting ourselves back on solid ground.”
“Just like me with Eliza,” he said, nodding.
“And are you there?” she ask
ed. “On solid ground?”
“I think so—better than we've ever been. She's doing so well, and I know a lot of it has been Annie. And you. She loves coming over here. I've wanted to join her.”
“I've wanted you to,” Bay said.
“But I didn't want to confuse the kids,” Danny said, taking a step closer. “Because I knew that once I got here . . . things would start to change.”
“I knew that, too,” Bay said, feeling the heat shimmer between them, rising from the earth and sparkling in the air. They took a step closer.
“I hope it's okay I'm here now,” he said. “Because I really couldn't wait any longer.”
“We've made it through a lot, Danny,” Bay said. “We made it through a very long winter.”
“We did,” Dan said, taking her into his arms.
He held her then, kissing her in the sun, with the summer in and around them, pulling them together. She felt herself unfolding, like a blade of green grass, as new and delicate as the ones springing out of the earth. And she felt Dan's kiss, like the sun, warming her and making her want to come to life again.
They held hands, and Bay found herself leading Dan down to the beach, onto the path up the hill and into the woods. About halfway to Little Beach, they took a right and headed into deeper trees, until they came to a clearing.
“This is where I put the swing,” Dan said, with delight and wonder, looking all around. Black walnut and oak trees grew in thick groves, but in the middle was a soft sandy rise covered with salt hay. Nestled into the grass was the weathered piece of driftwood, carved by the sea into a crescent moon.
Dan picked it up, running his hands over the wood, feeling the two rusted bolts and eyes, where he had tied the ropes to hang it. Looking overhead, he saw the two frayed rope ends, wafting in the breeze.
“It didn't last,” he said.
“It lasted many years,” Bay said. “The sun beats down, and the wind comes off the beach and marsh . . . it lasted many years. I'd swing on it every summer after you were gone, and think of you. And I brought Annie over here, when she was little . . . I'd ask her if she wanted to swing on the moon, and she'd know exactly where we were going. When the ropes broke, we were so sad.”