The Ebony Swan

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  TWO MONTHS LATER

  Peter had borrowed a boat from a friend in order to take Susan to the island. It was late afternoon when they docked. All the tourists were gone, so the islanders once more possessed their bit of land. Someone had said that in the hours after the boats were gone, Tangier came to life like Brigadoon. Susan found that it was like that now.

  Children rode their bicycles freely along narrow lanes, and women strolled and talked together of island doings. The tourist shops had closed, and grocery stores were busy. With the sun no longer high, an October wind felt chill, hinting of what was to come. Susan had known she must make this trip before the “freezing fire” of the winter that still lay ahead.

  The circus the media had made of the Montoro story had been as terrible as Emily had predicted. Alex had been besieged for weeks. Only recently had interest turned elsewhere, so they could breathe freely again. Susan had known then what she must do. Out of all the tumult and distress, one good thing had emerged. Peter had been completely cleared. He had reopened his office and was seeing the patients who needed him. Very soon Susan would begin working as his nurse—history repeating itself! While there were no longer barriers between them, she knew that Peter needed time to heal. That was fine—she wasn’t going anywhere, and she could wait.

  Hallie was at home—still recovering—and not yet her former self. Peter said this would take time—and a lot of forgiveness and affection.

  Emily’s body had been recovered on a Tidewater beach. And when that horror subsided, all Alex wanted was to shut out the painful past from her life.

  Susan had said, “But John Gower is still part of the present.”

  “Not the John I knew.” Her grandmother was curt. “If you want to see him, it’s up to you.”

  For a time Susan had not been certain that she could risk such a meeting. John had disconnected his phone and cut himself off, protected by his island friends. He’d wanted to see no one, Fred Parks reported. She hadn’t sent him word that she was coming, lest he refuse to see her.

  The need in her to visit the island again and see this man who was her grandfather, had grown in determination. Tangier was part of her own heritage. She even had relatives there! All the island’s strangeness was part of her own heritage, her very bloodline, and she knew it was time to establish contact.

  When she left Peter with the boat at the dock, she’d taken one of the island golf carts. The driver’s curiosity was evident, though no questions had been asked or answered. Near the house, Susan left the cart to approach on foot. John was sitting in a chair on the wide porch.

  He bore little resemblance to the man she had met a few months earlier. His hair seemed even more white, and new, deep lines marked his face. When he heard her come through the gate and looked up, she managed a smile. He merely stared at her, as though he waited. For what? Blame? Rejection? But surely he knew she wouldn’t have come for those!

  She tried out the word tentatively. “Grandfather?”

  Nothing changed in his face, and she went on matter-of-factly. “May I sit down for a minute?”

  He nodded, all his defenses clearly in place. His wounding had gone deep—far deeper than Hallie’s physical wound.

  She had thought about what she wanted to tell him, but she began hesitantly. “When I was a little girl growing up in New Mexico I used to dream about boats. With desert and mountains all around, I had an obsession with water and boats. Where other kids wanted horses, I wanted my own boat. My father and stepmother thought I was a little touched. Perhaps I was. But something in me seemed to yearn for the freedom of water, being on water.”

  At least he was listening, though no line in his face had shifted.

  Somehow she went on in spite of his impassive gaze. “Of course I don’t really know anything about boats. But I must have loved them when I was very small.”

  The island silence seemed more complete than any she’d ever experienced—it was broken only by the occasional laughter of children from somewhere beyond those crowded tombstones. It seemed forever before he spoke.

  “Can you ride a bicycle, Susan?”

  “That I can manage.”

  “Good. Then let’s go visit some boats.”

  He held out his hand and she felt the rough callouses from all his years of work around ropes and shipyards and fishing boats. As she moved beside him he seemed so much taller than when he’d slumped in his chair, and in a moment of perception she glimpsed something in this man that her grandmother must once have seen all those years ago when they were both young.

  “First,” she said, “can we go pick up Peter Macklin? He brought me here today. I’m going to marry him and I’d like you to meet him.”

  John Gower had the most wonderful, warming smile, and Susan knew that something had begun for her that had nothing to do with Alex Montoro.

  Gracie and Alex were working late in the evening in the tower storeroom. Gracie had carried up box after box of photographs and other objects that Alex had decided to put away. Her dancing was history. Anyone who wanted to know about it could come up here and look through her collection if they wished.

  The one bit of knowledge that might have comforted her was that the memory of Dolores as her own loving daughter had been restored. But that was not enough. Not even Dolores’s daughter could bring Alex back to life. She had gone dutifully to see Hallie in the hospital and had only pretended to be alive. Emily’s revenge had been far more complete than she could have dreamed.

  What she really felt now was a chilling numbness. All power to feel any real emotion had been shattered as though by a storm of hurricane force. Only by doing active, seemingly purposeful tasks could she keep afloat for a little while longer. Nothing would ever be the same again since the firing of Juan Gabriel’s silver pistol.

  She had lost him forever—lost all that he had stood for in her life. For years she had lived in a swamp of lies. Even her youthful love was gone; she had seen John and he was an old man. She had been foolish to keep the young John alive in her heart.

  Gracie’s voice brought her out of her unhappy reverie.

  “Do you want to keep these old dance shoes, Miss Alex?”

  The box held two pairs of ballet slippers—one pair white satin, the other black. Both were frayed at the box tips, as could happen in a single performance. The last time she had danced Swan Lake she’d worn those shoes. She pulled out a white satin ribbon and wound it absently about one finger, then tucked it back into the box.

  “Put the shoes away, Gracie. The girl they belonged to has been gone for a long time. I can hardly remember her.”

  Gracie looked sad, her eyes searching Alex’s face. “Did you know Miss Susan went over to Tangier Island today? Mr. Peter got a boat and took her across.”

  That this had happened seemed no more real or significant than anything else. “I know, Gracie. It doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters. You gotta come back, Miss Alex. That place you’ve dug for you ain’t no good.”

  “There’s no place else, Gracie.”

  Gracie looked about the storeroom, still searching. As her eyes lighted on something she had almost forgotten, she spoke with a new animation.

  “You remember that old cape Mr. Juan Gabriel brought here when you first came? You remember how good he looked in it?”

  “I remember.” But she didn’t want to remember.

  “Bet you forgot that you didn’t want to give that cape away after Mr. Juan Gabriel died. You told me to put it away up here. Somewhere that moths wouldn’t get to it.”

  Alex heard her with the same deep indifference she gave to all matters these days. What did the cape matter now?

  Gracie went to a cedar chest that stood at the far end of this quarter-moon room. She opened it and took out the cape.

  In spite of herself Alex’s attention was caught. She remembered
too well, and remembrance stabbed deeply.

  Juan Gabriel had possessed a theatrical side, and he had reveled in that cape. Gracie held it up so that its great folds floated free. It had been woven from a special llama wool and dyed a rich, soft gray. Its high-standing collar, buckled with silver, had lent an impressive quality when his strong chin jutted from its frame. The lining—of his own choice—was a dark burgundy satin. When Juan Gabriel had mounted the lecture platform to read from his books, he always wore that cape. As he approached the lectern he discarded it carelessly in ripples of gray and dark red into the hands of some assistant. By the time he stepped to the podium the audience was prepared for the drama of what would be a performance.

  Suddenly she wanted to touch the cape. “Give it to me, Gracie.”

  Gracie went a step farther. She carried the heavy folds to place them around Alex’s shoulders—and it was as though Juan Gabriel’s arms once more supported her. She slipped her hands through the slanted openings and swung the cape around her, so that the folds swirled and settled.

  Somewhere inside she heard a crackle of paper. When she reached into a concealed pocket she found something there—an envelope. She drew it out to examine—an addressed, stamped envelope that had never been mailed. With a gesture not unlike Juan Gabriel’s she flung the cape into Gracie’s quick hands and sat down in the old armchair.

  “It’s a letter to Juan Gabriel’s editor in New York,” she told Gracie.

  When she slit open the flap, she drew out a page of her husband’s strong handwriting and read the few lines—slightly stilted, as his letter-writing manner had always been.

  My dear Frederick:

  I very much appreciate your wanting to reissue a special edition of the American translation of The Black Swan. I thank you most sincerely, but I fear I must oppose this.

  That is the one book of mine that I have been glad to see go out of print. It was written long ago in a time of anger and its publication may have hurt someone whom I hold very dear. I will not repeat that wounding. I believe that you understand, my good friend.

  Yours,

  Juan Gabriel Montoro

  The date at the top of the letter was two days before Juan Gabriel’s stroke.

  Alex sat with the sheet in her hand while tears came into her eyes and spilled over her cheeks. The thawing had begun. With those few words Juan Gabriel had reached into her darkness with love and reassurance.

  How ironic that after he was ill and couldn’t talk with her, she had followed through on the reissuing of the new edition of The Black Swan—because she had believed this was what he would have wanted—no matter how much she’d hated that book.

  She handed the letter to Gracie to read, and Gracie’s hand shook as she followed the lines, understanding very well.

  “We had to come up here today, didn’t we, Miss Alex? It was time to take out that cape.”

  Yes—it was time.

  A miracle had occurred. For the first time in months Alex felt wonderfully alive, filled with a new, astonishing energy.

  “Can you finish up here, Gracie? I want to be ready when Susan returns.”

  As she reached the top of the stairs, the doorbell rang. That couldn’t be Susan—she would let herself in.

  Alex brushed back untidy locks of hair and untied her apron. She really didn’t care whether she was suitably dressed for visitors or not, she was gowned in her own happy radiance. So let whoever it was take her unadorned. She turned on the outside lights and opened the door.

  John Gower stood on the porch steps, with Susan and Peter on the walk below him. He spoke quickly, as though he feared she might close the door in his face.

  “I’ve brought you something, Alex. A small gift.”

  On the palm of his extended hand rested a perfect little pink shell—from the beach on Tangier, she knew.

  She hesitated only a moment, and then took the shell from him, understanding. This was a gift from a friend.

  Dusty memories hadn’t merely been swept away—they had been blown off in a storm that left a new clarity of vision that belonged to the present. Now the good memories were there to nurture and support.

  She stepped back from the doorway, her smile young and beautiful to those who watched, and let the three of them in.

  Acknowledgments

  My thanks to Virginia Adcock and the volunteer staff of the Lancaster County Library in Kilmarnock for as warm and helpful a reception as I’ve ever received.

  Ann L. Burrows, of the Mary Ball Washington Museum in Lancaster, helped to launch me on my journey of discovery when I visited Virginia’s Northern Neck—that peninsula that reaches down the map for a hundred miles between the Rappahannock and Potomac rivers, with its toe in Chesapeake Bay. My thanks as well to F. W. Jenkins, Jr., director of research at the museum, for reading my novel in manuscript and helping me with local details.

  Mimi Beckwith, executive director of the Foundation for Historic Christ Church, and a number of docents at the Carter Reception Center, were helpful in introducing me to that remarkable edifice, which so affected me that it became a powerful influence in my story.

  I am grateful to Stanley Shelton, Louise Denegre, and Katharine Dunton for showing me their beautiful homes, so that I could “build” the Montoro house in my story and give it a proper setting.

  Eleanor Friede, a gifted freelance editor and my good friend and neighbor, first told me of Tangier Island and set me off on my search. I first visited the island—that speck of land out on the Chesapeake between the two shores of Virginia—by tourist boat. Months later, Eleanor (herself a flyer) arranged for friends to take me back to Tangier by small plane. My thanks to James and Heidi Kramer for flying me there in their wonderful “bamboo bomber,” so that I could further explore the island. By that time I had met my characters and knew what they were doing there.

  I am indebted to Bette Nohe, of Hilda Crockett’s Chesapeake House on Tangier, for inviting me into her hundred-and-fifty-year-old home, and answering my many questions about the island.

  Tanya Dickenson, of the Rappahannock Record, not only interviewed me for her paper, but supplied me with clippings that provided endless sources of information about the Northern Neck and Tangier Island. All of this provided me with a setting like no other I’ve ever found for one of my novels.

  My deepest thanks go to Dr. Robert Atkins for his radio programs and books, which have helped me to better health, and have given me a basis for what is said by the young doctor in my story.

  A BIOGRAPHY OF PHYLLIS A. WHITNEY

  Phyllis Ayame Whitney (1903–2008) was a prolific author of seventy-six adult and children’s novels. Over fifty million copies of her books were sold worldwide during the course of her sixty-year writing career, establishing her as one of the most successful mystery and romantic suspense writers of the twentieth century. Whitney’s dedication to the craft and quality of writing earned her three lifetime achievement awards and the title “The Queen of the American Gothics.”

  Whitney was born in Yokohama, Japan, on September 9, 1903, to American parents, Mary Lillian (Lilly) Mandeville and Charles (Charlie) Whitney. Charles worked for an American shipping line. When Whitney was a child, her family moved to Manila in the Philippines, and eventually settled in Hankow, China.

  Whitney began writing stories as a teenager but focused most of her artistic attention on her other passion: dance. When her father passed away in China in 1918, Whitney and her mother took a ten-day journey across the Pacific Ocean to America, and they settled in Berkley, California. Later they moved to San Antonio, Texas. Lilly continued to be an avid supporter of Whitney’s dancing, creating beautiful costumes for her performances. While in high school, her mother passed away, and Whitney moved in with her aunt in Chicago, Illinois. After graduating from high school in 1924, Whitney turned her attention to writing, nabbing her first major publication in the Chicag
o Daily News. She made a small income from writing stories at the start of her career, and would eventually go on to publish around one hundred short stories in pulp magazines by the 1930s.

  In 1925, Whitney married George A. Garner, and nine years later gave birth to their daughter, Georgia. During this time, she also worked in the children’s room in the Chicago Public Library (1942–1946) and at the Philadelphia Inquirer (1947–1948).

  After the release of her first novel, A Place for Ann (1941), a career story for girls, Whitney turned her eye toward publishing full-time, taking a job as the children’s book editor at the Chicago Sun-Times and releasing three more novels in the next three years, including A Star for Ginny. She also began teaching juvenile fiction writing courses at Northwestern University. Whitney began her career writing young adult novels and first found success in the adult market with the 1943 publication of Red Is for Murder, also known by the alternative title The Red Carnelian.

  In 1946, Whitney moved to Staten Island, New York, and taught juvenile fiction writing at New York University. She divorced in 1948 and married her second husband, Lovell F. Jahnke, in 1950. They lived on Staten Island for twenty years before relocating to Northern New Jersey. Whitney traveled around the world, visiting every single setting of her novels, with the exception of Newport, Rhode Island, due to a health emergency. She would exhaustively research the land, culture, and history, making it a custom to write from the viewpoint of an American visiting these exotic locations for the first time. She imbued the cultural, physical, and emotional facets of each country to transport her readers to places they’ve never been.

  Whitney wrote one to two books a year with grand commercial success, and by the mid-1960s, she had published thirty-seven novels. She had reached international acclaim, leading Time magazine to hail her as “one of the best genre writers.” Her work was especially popular in Britain and throughout Europe.