"So they say," she said with a sad little grimace. She took another sip of champagne. Maybe it was the bubbles; maybe it was finally admitting she resented being downsized. But the words were coming more easily now.
"The problem is, my family is very stiff-upper-lip. You know what I mean: bad form to blubber at funerals, that sort of thing. If life isn't going so well, just keep it to yourself, thank you very much. So I've been ... reeling now, for months — and even as I tell you all this, I feel guilty for admitting it. It sounds so whiny."
"Don't feel guilty, dope."
"It's also true that I haven't had ..."
She stared at the bubbles rising from the tulip of her glass with a rather fierce expression. I'm tipsy, she realized, amazed by the fact. I almost told him I have no love life.
"So ... are you seeing anyone in Connecticut?" Bing asked softly.
"No," she said, suppressing a hiccup. "I have no love life."
That made him smile. "We can change all that," he said. He cocked his head at her. "Are you okay?"
The hiccup came out anyway. "Oh, sure," she said breezily. "It's been a while, that's all."
"Since you've had a love life?"
"Since I've had champagne," she said and began giggling uncontrollably.
The escargots, thank God, made their appearance and Jane brought herself back under control. With a wary expression the waiter laid the plate of snails before her.
"I just forgot I remembered to eat lunch," she said, looking up at the waiter in abject apology. "I mean ... I just remember I forgot to eat lunch."
The waiter pretended his eardrums were shattered and left. Jane took a deep breath and plowed on. "Champagne always hits me hard. Hits my stomach hard. Hits us both hard. I'll be fine. I just need some" — she put the palms of both hands on the table and studied her plate — "of these things."
Bing was doing a very poor job of not smiling, which she thoroughly resented. She was not a child, after all. Just because she had no job and just because she had no love life did not mean she could not hold her liquor.
"Did the dish ever come back with the spoon?" Bing asked her pleasantly.
Jane stared blankly at her table setting. "What? They're both here."
"No, I meant, did you ever find the missing spoon from your aunt's display rack?"
Jane shook her head, which made her see little starry bubbles sweeping back and forth across the snails.
Bing said, "There haven't been any more mysteries at Lilac Cottage, have there?" He took his pick and inserted it with a surgeon's precision into the snail shell. A stab, a twist, and out came the rubbery contents.
"Uh-h-hn. Maybe I'll just pass for now," she said, nudging her escargots ever so slightly away. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath to knock back her queasiness. Really, she was being absurd. Her mother would not approve. What was the question? "Oh. Mysteries at Lilac," she said aloud. "Yes, there's been one ... other. Someone opened the storm doors to the basement last night."
"Are you sure you didn't leave the doors open yourself?"
"Pretty sure. But don't worry. The steps up to the kitchen are gone; the intruders couldn't get very far. Unless they're ghosts, of course," she added in a studiedly cheerful voice. "I'm not sure how ghosts get around on Nantucket. I read somewhere that they travel in great big bubbles."
"Let's be rational about this," Bing said, smiling. "With all due respect, there's absolutely nothing worth stealing in Lilac Cottage. That leaves you. Now, granted, you're the kind of woman who might tempt a man to a criminal act, but that's not Nantucket. So what're we left with?" He answered his own question: "Mischief makers. Doesn't that seem more logical?"
For the first time since she'd known him, Jane saw him step back from her emotionally. He thinks I'm a nut, she realized. He thinks I'm making this up. Her cheeks flamed. There was no way, in that case, that she'd tell him about the strange phenomena she'd experienced at Judith Brightman's grave. She herself was unsure of that part. But not about the bookcase, the spoon, and the bulkhead doors.
"I agree," she said guardedly, "that someone wants me out of there." She placed her hand over the stemmed glass he was trying to fill and said darkly, "We both know that off-islanders aren't that welcome here. Haven't you felt that?"
"Not very much," he admitted. "But you're in a different category from me. I suppose you're seen almost as a real estate speculator. Don't expect any sympathy from me," he added in a lighter tone. "All you have to do is stay, and the problem's solved."
She stared at him blankly. "Wa-a-ait a minute. Let's run that through one more time. Someone's trying to drive me out because I don't want to stay. But if I stay, they'll stop trying to drive me out? Is that what you're saying?"
"I know it sounds crazy."
"Sheesh."
They drifted off the topic of mischief makers without reaching any conclusion and went on, during the course of dinner, to talk about a lot of things: politics (Bing was a liberal, she a moderate); sex (Bing was a liberal, she a moderate); and even sports (neither had a position).
By the time they drove back to Lilac Cottage, Jane felt as if she'd known Bing half her life. The man was charming her socks off; she began to feel he might not stop there. He was so easy to talk to; he understood her thoughts almost before she spoke them.
The subject of siblings came up. Bing told Jane what she already knew: that his parents had died in a car accident, and that he'd assumed complete responsibility for raising his little sister. It hadn't been easy, he said — not because Cissy was so headstrong, but because she was so very submissive. She was forever letting men assume control over her.
"Sometimes I wonder if I'm one of them," he said thoughtfully. "Maybe it's inevitable. I'm sixteen years older; she looks on me as a father figure." His voice trailed off into a sigh. "How about your sister? Is she older, or younger?"
"Lisa's younger than I am," Jane said. "I'm anything but the guiding light in her life. Unlike me, Lisa knew what she wanted from day one, and now she's got it all: perfect husband, big house, and a bright-eyed prodigy with another prodigy on the way. All, I might add, within an easy commute of the doting grandparents."
"Hmm," said Bing. "I suppose your sister the princess is married to a heart surgeon in San Francisco?"
"Plastic; in Sausalito."
"Hmm. You jealous?"
Jane laughed. "You betcha. Sometimes, anyway. I mean, her life is so settled. There's never any question of, will things turn out? Will I be happy? Things have turned out. She is happy. She made it look so easy."
"Hey, different strokes for different folks. The only standard you have to measure up to is your own. Besides, I don't think you're ready to settle down yet."
Oh, sure, she thought with a sideways glance as he expertly downshifted his little red sports car. You hope. It had to be so much more convenient for bachelors like him when the women they dated were dead set on independence.
They were at Lilac Cottage now. Bing reached out to stroke her cheek in a feathery touch. "The only question you have to answer is, ‘Am I doing what I want to be doing?' Besides, I don't want you moving out to the West Coast," he admitted with his boyish grin. "Connecticut is far enough. If you're going to please someone else besides yourself, I'd rather it was me."
"I didn't say —"
Bing slipped his hand behind her neck, pulling her toward him in a deep, silencing kiss. The whole evening had been leading up to this moment: his glancing caresses, the warmth in his voice, the innuendo. And yet, when the moment came, she was surprised. Maybe she expected to be able to resist him; after all, she knew what he was.
But when he released her with a low murmur, she kissed him back. She did it without thinking, without wondering how he'd take it or what it meant. She just ... kissed him back. His mouth was silvery-sweet and delicious, and she wanted to taste it again. It seemed reason enough.
"Jane ... I ... you're irresistible to me, you know that," he murmured i
nto her hair. "What do I do now?"
"I don't know," she whispered, because she wasn't sure how he meant it. Her eyes were closed, her breath a little ragged. It was hard to think.
He kissed her very gently on her lips and then got out of the car and walked around to her side. The brace of night air that wafted in and around her seemed to restore her, but only briefly, because when he helped her out of the low-slung seat, the gesture became an embrace, the embrace a kiss, the kiss a return kiss, and she was left even more dazed than after their first embrace.
They strolled hand in hand to the front door, up the battered steps that she'd stood on the day before with Mac McKenzie, arguing about the oversized hollies. She could hear Mac's voice now, serious and condescending. "A holly grows very slowly," Mac had said.
And then it becomes irreplaceable.
Should it be the same with a relationship? If you invest time in it, and nurture it along, and try not to rush things, will it end up having a value that's irreplaceable? Did the rules of gardening apply to the dating game?
Bing stood at the door, tall and lanky and beguilingly handsome, waiting for her to open it. Jane reached into the pocket of her coat for her key and slipped it in the lock. It's been so long, she heard an inner voice whimper. I want this relationship. I want it now. Don't worry about whether it's irreplaceable or not. This is the age of Bic pens and disposable cameras; everything's replaceable. Nothing lasts.
But something — guilt, maybe, or a compulsion to second-guess — made Jane turn to him with an apologetic smile.
"I think ... maybe ... it's been a wonderful evening," she said, falling back on a well-used phrase of dismissal.
She could see that he was caught off guard by her turnabout. "Something I said?" he asked mildly; but his look was troubled.
She raked back the hair that had fallen over her forehead. "No, not at all. I think I've had a bit too much to drink, that's all. I don't trust myself."
"Woman," he groaned. "Why don't you just smear Krazy Glue on my shoes? Do you really think I'll be able to walk away after a confession like that?"
"I know you can," she said with a relieved grin. This was a man she could grow fond of fast. "That's why I told you."
He sucked in a lungful of air, raised his eyes heavenward, and sent it whistling through his nose. "Don't you dare start having a good opinion of me, Jane Drew. It won't work, I'm telling you. It won't work." He smiled helplessly, a lopsided, goofy smile, and then he cradled her face in both his hands and kissed her tenderly good night.
He left and Jane turned the key and let herself in, still smiling at the thought of him. "Okay, so he's never been married," she found herself murmuring. "There's always a first time."
****
The next morning, her shoulder ached. Jane had assumed that that chapter of her life was over; she was bitterly disappointed to see that she hadn't turned the last page on it. She got out of bed, rubbing her shoulder with a viciousness that only the infirm and arthritic can understand, and wandered out to her kitchen-in-progress to make coffee. It was just past dawn, but she knew from recent experience that when her shoulder was on the fritz, sleep would not come.
The hot water was halfway through the Melitta filter when she idled over to the window to see what kind of day it was going to be. That's when she remembered that she had to take in the laundry, and that's when she saw that it was no longer on the clothesline. It was on the ground, all of it: the sheets, the pillowcases, the towels. Shocked, Jane ran out in her robe and pajamas for a closer look.
She couldn't believe it. Every piece was on the ground, damp and muddy. Clothespins were scattered everywhere. And yet the clothesline itself was intact; even the forked clothesline pole she'd used to keep the line from sagging was still in place. She walked around the pieces of laundry, studying them. The sheets looked as though they'd been rubbed in the muddy grass deliberately; a sense almost of violation hung over the scene. It was a vindictive, furious thing for someone to do, and it frightened her in a way that the bookcase, the spoon, and the bulkhead doors had not.
She began scooping up the linens in her arms, ashamed somehow that she'd slept right through the attack on her laundry. She had no real idea what to do. Report it all to the police? Jane could see the crime log now: transient reports missing spoon and dirty laundry. Hire a detective? Even funnier, considering the state of her wallet. Alert the neighbors? She had alerted the one neighbor who could've seen it, and look where it got her: He'd slept through it, too.
Unless Bing Andrews himself was the perpetrator.
No. Jane slammed the door on that closet right after she opened it. She refused even to think back whether he'd been on the island for each of the other occurrences. It was absurd to suspect Bing, who was no more likely than ... than McKenzie, or Phillip, or Dorothy Crate, for that matter. But there was one thing Jane felt sure of now: it wasn't the work of kids. There was something too adult — too symbolic almost — in this last act.
Shivering from the cold, she brought in her bundle and threw it almost feverishly into the washing machine; she wanted to erase any trace of the fury that someone — or something — was feeling for her. She turned the setting to hot wash, hot rinse, and poured half a box of Tide into the machine. Then she closed the cover and leaned on it with both arms while the washer filled, as if whatever evil was in there might still seep out, might still blight her with its malevolence.
And yet, despite her efforts, the malevolence seemed to have escaped anyway: the stabbing pain in her shoulder suddenly became a white-hot sword through her flesh.
"Why are you doing this, why are you doing this?" she began mumbling, over and over. She was hovering on the edge of hysteria; her thought processes were a jumble of memory fragments and irrational fears. When the fill cycle ended and the washing machine clunked into its agitation cycle, her mind clunked with it, and she broke into sudden, heaving sobs. She stayed bent over her aunt's washing machine, her head buried in her crossed arms, for a long time.
She lifted her head when she heard the heavy pounding of the brass door knocker. It was Sunday, too early for anyone on a civil mission; it must be an emergency. Jane grabbed a dishtowel to blow her nose in, then went to answer the door.
Mac McKenzie, dressed in workclothes, narrowed his eyes when he saw her. "Mornin'," he said laconically. "Thought I saw you outside earlier when I was headed out. I must've been wrong," he said, eyeing her getup.
"No; no you weren't." She glanced at the dishtowel in her hand, then wiped her nose on her sleeve instead. "I was taking in the laundry." She said it almost defiantly, as a kind of test, and waited for his reaction.
"It's probably not a bad idea to hang it in the night," he said in his dry way. "Some of the neighbors think it's unseemly to clutter up their view with longjohns."
"Ha! Well, maybe that explains it, then," she said ambiguously.
She didn't explain, and he didn't ask. It continued to amaze her how difficult it was for them to communicate. I suppose it's because we come from different backgrounds, she told herself. She found the thought depressing somehow.
"So what's up?" she asked, no longer dazzled by the fact that he could outwait her every time in these little wars of silence.
"I thought we'd get an early start on the holly, Jerry and I. Unless you're doing brunch in bed. I'd hate to wreck your concentration for the Sunday Times crossword," he said with a thin smile.
"I'm not the type who spends Sunday in bed," she answered, retying the belt of her robe with great dignity. "And I'm certainly not the type to tell you what type I'm not."
The smile flickered at one end of his mouth, and then it died. "Good. Jerry's on his way with the machinery. Don't mind us. Just do whatever it is," he said evenly, "that you were doing."
Jane pictured her red nose, her unkempt hair, her flannel gown and ratty robe. What did he think she'd been doing? Watching old two-hankie films on TV?
She forced herself to smile, and to close th
e door gently. Then she leaned back on it with her arms folded, her face a study in concentrated annoyance. He was so damnably provoking. She kicked a slippered heel into the door, frustrated beyond measure. How long was he going to punish her for being an heiress and having a career? Couldn't he see that her inheritance was modest and her career was erstwhile?
Ah, the hell with it. Why should she care anyway?
Chapter 10
A shower went a long way toward rinsing away the morning's hysteria. The hot water seemed to ease the hurt in her shoulder, suggesting that maybe there was nothing supernatural about the pain after all. But if that were true, if there were no spirit working its malevolence on and around her, then Bing was right: The nasty tricks could only be the work of someone creeping around Lilac Cottage in the dark.
Some choice, Jane thought grimly as she stirred her coffee. A ghost named Judith or some homegrown pervert.
It occurred to her that she was feeling as tight as an overwound clock. I need to get out more, to do something more aerobic than stripping wallpaper.
Jane was a jogger and had kept it up even after she got fired; but that all stopped the day she stepped off the ferry on Nantucket. She forced herself into a do-it-now mood and went back to her closet and changed into a jogging suit and her running shoes. She'd take a run first, and then come back for breakfast. Maybe by that time Mac and his noisy tractor would be done and gone.
She slipped on a headband, then hesitated on her side of the front door, feeling amazingly inappropriate in her pink and silver jogging tights. The tractor was idling quietly now; Jane wondered whether Mac and Jerry had gone back to the house. But no. Peeking out the window, she saw them tinkering with some big metal contraption, apparently the tree spade, that was attached to the tractor.
"How come she's getting rid of it, Dad?" the boy asked, glancing up at the hollies. "Doesn't she know how much they're worth?"
Jane jumped away from the window, then crept over to the closer one, curious to hear Mac's answer.
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