When the Stars Sang

by Caren J. Werlinger

  Her teeth chattered again as she stepped out of the tub into the cold bathroom. She toweled off as quickly as she could and got dressed before drying her hair.

  Back in the bedroom, she hurriedly made the bed, smiling as she touched a finger to the chipped white cast iron bedframe—the same bed she’d slept in as a girl. Everything was the same. Nanna hadn’t changed a thing. Even the quilted comforter was the same—shells and starfish.

  Down the hall was Bryan’s room, overlooking the front porch. That summer, he’d figured out how to climb out the window and shimmy down an overhanging tree to sneak out with the island boys. He’d made Kathleen promise not to tell, but maybe if she had…

  Last night, she’d gone into Nanna’s room. On the bedside table were framed photos—her father and aunt when he was about sixteen and she maybe fourteen, another of her parents proudly holding baby Bryan, and one taken that last summer of her and Bryan sitting with Nanna on the front porch of this cottage. She couldn’t recall who would have taken it. Bryan at fifteen was already handsome, tan and lean, with a carefree grin. She looked almost the same as now, except Molly was right, her hair had been redder. But the blue eyes behind her glasses and the freckles were the same. Nanna was beaming, an arm around each of them.

  It was a larger bed and room, but Kathleen couldn’t bring herself to sleep there. Not yet.

  Downstairs, she realized with something of a shock that there was no coffee maker, only Nanna’s old percolator.

  She groaned and then remembered the hotel diner. The clock showed just shy of six a.m. She shrugged into her jacket and grabbed her keys.

  Outside, a heavy blanket of fog covered the island, forcing her to drive slowly. Her car was just barely warming up by the time she had driven the few miles down into town and parked. Inside the diner, the same people she’d seen yesterday nodded in her direction. Apparently, breakfast at the diner was part of the daily routine for them.

  “Good morning,” sang Wilma, automatically bringing a cup of coffee to her table. “All settled in?”

  “Getting there,” Kathleen said. “No coffee maker.”

  Wilma chortled. “Miranda and Tim can take care of that. You can do pretty much all your marketing there.”

  Kathleen tilted her head. “I thought it was John’s Market.”

  “That was her great-grandfather. Miranda has the store now. Corned beef hash and eggs?”

  “Yes, please.” Kathleen closed her eyes and sipped her coffee, letting the hot liquid warm her from the inside. She figured she’d have to find a way to kill a couple of hours before she could do her shopping.

  When Wilma brought her breakfast, Kathleen asked, “What time does the market open?”

  “Land sakes, they’re already open.” Wilma refilled her coffee. “Most everybody on the island gets an early start to the day. Early to bed and early to rise. That’s us.”

  “This is so good,” Kathleen said, pointing at her breakfast with her fork.

  Wilma beamed. “That’s because the eggs are all fresh from the island. Mostly Miranda and Tim’s chickens.”

  Kathleen ate quickly and paid for her breakfast. She moved the car to the market’s lot and went inside.

  This, too, was familiar. It was like stepping back in time twenty-some years. She remembered the candy counter, a tall, old-fashioned thing made of oak, with a glass front. She supposed that’s where she’d spent all her time, because the rest of the market was crammed with things she’d never really noticed: tools, building supplies, groceries, household items. Just about everything anyone could need was somewhere in here.

  “Good morning,” whispered the woman behind the counter. She pointed to a baby asleep in a bassinet on the floor.

  “Hi,” Kathleen whispered back.

  The woman wasn’t much taller than the candy counter. Her blonde hair caught the light as she came around to shake Kathleen’s hand.

  “You must be Maisie’s granddaughter.”

  “Kathleen.” She nodded. “The house is kind of empty. Need to get a few things.”

  “I’ll bet you do. I’m Miranda Shannahan. My husband, Tim, is around here somewhere.” Miranda reached for a small cart, pushing it toward Kathleen. “I’ll let you look around. Just holler if you need any help.” She glanced at the sleeping baby. “Well, whisper if you need help.”

  It took no time at all to fill the little cart with a coffee maker and electric blanket. Kathleen got a second cart for groceries.

  “I don’t mean to pry,” Miranda said, passing her with a case of toilet paper to restock, “but there may be a few tools you’ll need, too. A hammer, some nails and screws, grease and household oil. Maisie probably had all of those things. Check her closets and cupboards. Anything you can’t find, we’ll have. Oh, I set you up with a post box and I connected your phone to the switchboard. Hope that was okay.”

  By the time Kathleen got everything loaded in the car, the sun was scrubbing the fog away. She drove back to the cottage and put everything where it belonged. Once the bed was remade with the electric blanket, she folded the extra quilts and blankets and shoved them back into the linen closet.

  With the house clean and the initial shopping done, she looked around. Her computer and monitors sat idly on the dining table. She had backed up and downloaded enough work to keep her busy for a while until she could figure out an Internet solution, but the sun glinting off the trees called to her.

  She went outside, locking the door behind her, and out to the road, deciding to walk rather than drive. The road wound, with driveways and some smaller trails forking off into the trees every so often. She took one trail that climbed in elevation to a bluff that gave her a wonderful view of the ocean. The trail looped around and began to descend back toward the road. She passed other houses. The few people she saw all waved and wished her a good morning. She figured they all knew who the stranger on the island was by now.

  The last of the fog burned away under the autumn sun as she came to the island’s cemetery. Situated in a sheltered copse of oaks and pines, the weathered granite grave markers stood among the cemetery’s trees.

  She hesitated a moment and then wandered in. Acorns crunched underfoot, and squirrels raced about, gathering as many as they could. She perused the names and dates on the tombstones, searching for Nanna. Expecting to find a grave that looked newer than the others around it, she was surprised to find it covered over with green grass and planted with a few small geraniums and a tiny rose bush with fragrant pink blossoms, still blooming in the reflected warmth from the granite. She had to remind herself it had been nearly a year.

  Next-door was Kathleen’s grandfather’s grave. She had no memory of him at all. He’d died of a heart attack when she was a baby.

  She knelt down and picked up a few scattered sticks that had blown across Nanna’s grave.

  “I’m so sorry I never came back to see you,” she whispered. “I should have.”

  There were so many things she should have done. She should have stood up to her father. She should have come to see her grandmother while she was alive. She should have left Susannah long ago.

  The wind murmured through the pine trees. It sounded like a voice, saying things she didn’t want to hear.

  Coward. You were never brave enough to stand up to any of them. You didn’t tell Mom or Dad where you are. When you left Susannah, you snuck away without facing her. Coward.

  Even as those thoughts ran through her head, she wondered how long it would be before her parents realized she was no longer in Philly.

  She pushed to her feet. It was suddenly too crowded here in this lonely spot on a little island in the middle of the ocean.

  Chapter 3

  THE SUN WASN’T YET up as Molly swapped her ladder for her rowing scull. She secured it to her roof rack and slid the oars in through the tailgate. She drove carefully along the rocky track that took her down to the island’s east side and parked.

  A few minutes later, the scull was in the o
cean and she was pulling with long, steady strokes. Her breathing settled into a rhythm that matched her rowing, and she quickly warmed up. Behind her, the sun peeked over the edge of the horizon so that she was watching her elongated shadow rippling over her wake. The chill of night gave way to the sun’s warmth on her back. The swells were gentle, the air still. Overhead, gulls circled, hoping to steal a fish from the terns who were arrowing into the water. She rowed out for thirty minutes, and then turned the scull to head back. She was about halfway when she suddenly found herself surrounded by a pod of dolphins.

  Grinning, she pulled her oars up and watched them watching her. They lolled sideways in the water, smiling back at her. A few flipped some water in her direction. She reached down and slapped some water at them. That seemed to be the signal for tail splashes and leaps that soaked her. As quickly as they had come, the dolphins disappeared.

  Her scull had drifted sideways to the island. The sun was fully up now, glinting off the rocky outcroppings of the bluff. The island’s little harbor was luckily situated on its northern exposure. The Head, on the western end, was mostly granite, scrubbed down to bare rock by the constant wind and relentless storms. But it sheltered the interior of the island from the worst of the weather. Here, on the east side, was the island’s only beach, a narrow ribbon of sand that filled the gap between the rocky sea wall and the water.

  She squinted at the sole person walking along that skinny stretch of beach. She couldn’t have said why, but she was certain it was Kathleen. She looked like a sandpiper, Molly decided, her arms wrapped tightly around her against the morning’s chill, her head down and her legs churning along as if she had to be someplace in a hurry.

  Aidan had reacted as Molly had feared he would to the news that she was here on the island. He’d been drunk nearly every night since. She had received a phone call every one of those nights from some person or other seeing her brother staggering toward his truck, and she’d gone out to pick him up before he could do something stupid.

  You mean something stupider than what he’s already done, Molly thought.

  Bobbing in the water, she watched the source of her brother’s pain. The fact that it wasn’t Kathleen’s fault only made her angrier. She was tired of being loyal, tired of picking up the drunken pieces of her brother’s life.

  Her other brothers told her to leave him be. “He’ll work things out on his own,” they’d said when she went to them. Joey and Matty helped her when he was falling down drunk and she couldn’t lift him herself, but mostly, they left him alone to deal with his demons. She wasn’t stupid enough to think her parents didn’t know Aidan was drinking again, but nobody talked about it. And now, here was Kathleen Halloran, walking around like some fragile, wounded bird—

  That thought startled Molly like a slap across the face. She watched Kathleen disappear from view, wondering where in the world that image had come from. Scowling, she hauled her scull around with one oar and rowed back out to sea.

  KATHLEEN PACED WITH A cup of coffee. Between Molly Cooper banging on the furnace down in the cellar and the satellite guy stomping around on the roof, it sounded as if the cottage was going to fall down around her. Next to the satellite guy’s van, the oil truck—not much more than a modified pickup truck—was parked in the drive. With the tank filled, Molly had given her a curt nod and carried her toolbox to the wooden door leading to the cellar, disappearing down below.

  From out the living room window, Kathleen saw the satellite installer climbing down his ladder. He knocked and came inside.

  “Where’s the TV?”

  “Don’t have one.” Kathleen pointed at the two computer monitors set up on the dining room table. “Just need Internet.”

  He nodded and got to work connecting cables and routers and modems. “Lucky you called when you did. This is a hard island to get to.”

  “Hey!” came Molly’s voice from below. “Turn up the thermostat.”

  Kathleen looked around and found the thermostat on the wall. She turned the dial and heard a muffled roar from the cellar.

  A few minutes later, the satellite guy said, “Try that.”

  She powered up her computer, and he stayed until she had set up her password and accessed various accounts.

  “You’re good to go now,” he said, reaching for his tool bucket.

  By the time he had packed up and left, Molly was letting the cellar door slam shut.

  She, too, knocked, but waited for Kathleen to answer the door before entering.

  “The furnace is clean and running fine,” she said. She went to the thermostat and turned it down. “Radiators will be warm soon. This should get you through Christmas.”

  “Only through Christmas?”

  Molly shrugged. “Depends how warm you keep it. It’s but early October. We’ve plenty of cold weather coming. My advice is to keep this as low as you can stand it, especially during the day. Might want to keep an electric blanket on the bed.”

  “I already bought one.”

  “Makes the nights more comfortable.” Molly pointed upward. “You might also want to check on the insulation in this cottage. I doubt Maisie ever upgraded it.”

  “Thank you.” Kathleen lifted her cup. “Would you like some coffee?”

  Molly eyed her for a moment. “Sure.”

  She followed Kathleen into the kitchen, pausing in the dining room to stare at the computer setup.

  “Are you doing surveillance? Spying on Canada?”

  Kathleen gave a half-laugh as she poured another cup of coffee. “Nothing that nefarious. I’m a book editor. Come to think of it, my authors might call that nefarious. I also do some cover design and formatting. The wonder of the Internet. You can work from anywhere.”

  “As long as it doesn’t storm.” Molly pointed skyward again. “We always lose satellite reception when it storms.”

  “Milk? Sugar?”

  Molly shook her head. “Black is fine.” She accepted the cup and joined Kathleen at the little table in the kitchen. “So why are you doing your work from here?”

  Kathleen took a sip before saying, “Why not from here?”

  Molly set her cup down and leaned forward, her elbows braced on the table. “You haven’t been here for decades. Neither of Maisie’s kids ever came back here after—”

  Kathleen bit her lip, staring at her coffee.

  “She said Michael blamed her,” Molly said, an accusing edge to her voice.

  “He did,” Kathleen said quietly. “That’s why I was never allowed to come back here again.”

  “Bad things happen,” Molly said, a little more gently. “It wasn’t your grandmother’s fault.”

  “I tried to tell my father that, but he wouldn’t listen.”

  “Okay.” Molly sat back. “That accounts for maybe ten years. Where’ve you been the other fourteen?”

  Kathleen felt the heat rise from her neck to her cheeks. “Why are you interrogating me?”

  “Because the whole island was affected by what happened. Because you didn’t even know your grandmother. Because part of her died that day, too, and none of you ever came back to be with her. Because your coming here has dragged things up. Things the folks here haven’t had to deal with for ages.”

  Kathleen bristled at this assault. “And that’s my fault? That the islanders haven’t dealt with what happened?”

  This time it was Molly’s turn to blush. “You don’t know—”

  She set her cup down and stood abruptly. “Thanks for the coffee. I need to get going.”

  “I still have to pay you,” Kathleen said, carrying the cups to the sink.

  “Pay my father down the marina.”

  She heard Molly’s footsteps and the front door open and close—almost a slam. She went through the pantry and yanked the back door open. Standing on the covered porch, she rubbed her neck where she could feel the tension building up and took a couple of deep breaths.

  She just touched a frayed nerve.

  She might h
ave been able to blame her parents for not bringing her back to Little Sister to spend childhood summers with Nanna after Bryan died, but she had only herself to blame for all the years since.

  A sudden rustling in the bushes near the house startled her. She grabbed a broom propped in the corner and, holding it like a weapon, descended the porch steps. As she neared the bushes, she heard a faint whine and saw the outline of a dog’s partially upright ears.

  “Are you the one I keep seeing?” she asked in a soft voice. “Are you my skunk?”

  The dog whined again and backed away. Kathleen moved slowly around the bushes and saw a skinny brown and black dog, its ears pricked in her direction, the tips flopping. She crouched down and held her hand out, but the dog tucked its tail and refused to come any closer.

  “I’ll bet you’re hungry.”

  She went inside the house and chipped up some turkey she had in the fridge, but by the time she got back outside, the dog had disappeared. She set the plate down near the bushes.

  “It’ll be here when you’re ready.”

  She went back inside to catch up on a couple of weeks’ worth of emails.

  THE CRIES OF GULLS and the soft lapping of the water against the pylons under the boathouse lulled Molly into a meditative state as she sanded. Antique wooden boats and reproductions had become a status symbol for the rich people on Big Sister and a steady source of income for Joe Cooper. Molly helped when she wasn’t busy sheriffing—which was most of the time—or doing handyman jobs around the island. Her brothers were out on the lobster boat and probably wouldn’t be back until after dark.

  Her dad had left her to work on this antique Runabout while he went over to Big Sister to give an estimate on another. If it was seaworthy, he’d tow it back, and they’d have another project to see them through the winter. The boys would be home after they dropped off the day’s catch to the restaurants they supplied. Her mom never knew for sure when they’d be in, so she had learned early on to make vats of soup and stew and things that could be kept warm for hours if need be.