A Charmed Place

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  "Then you don't think Michael's crazy?" she asked, taking comfort from Dan's mild reaction.

  For an answer, Dan took her by both hands and pulled her up into his arms. He held her there a long time without saying anything. Finally he murmured, "I think we should go for a walk on the beach."

  ****

  The morning had undergone a mood swing of its own. The sun was nowhere in evidence, hazed over by gray, muggy air sulking over a listless sea. Brooding: the ocean was bothered by something. They could see it in the way its shoulders lifted and fell in a series of heavy sighs as it rolled onto the beach and then slid back, dragging at the sand on its way out.

  "There's a storm offshore," Maddie said uneasily as they walked barefoot along the tide line. "I wonder how bad it is. I haven't watched a forecast since the Fourth when it mattered so much."

  Dan skimmed a pebble over the rolling swells; it bounced once before diving into the murky depth. "You're right," he said. "I generally get four or five skips out of a stone."

  They resumed their slow amble along the beach. Most of the people there had begun to pack up, convinced that the sun was done for the day. Soon the two of them would have the beach—their beach—to themselves.

  "You asked me if I thought Michael was crazy," Dan said, slapping his shoes against his thigh as he walked. "I never answered your question."

  "I thought you did," she said, looking at him quickly.

  "Nope."

  They walked a little farther along in silence before Dan began again. "There was a time when I would've said, hell, yes, the guy's mad as a hatter. I would've said, astral projection? Get real! But that was before Afghanistan. Maddie, something happened to me that I still can't explain. I've told nobody this," he said, picking up another stone. "Not even my sister."

  He rubbed the stone between his fingers, gauging its flatness, and then sent it hurtling across the sea. Two skips this time.

  He was definitely stalling, but she didn't know why.

  "Okay, here's the thing," he said, looking somehow embarrassed. "I've told you how I was wounded in Afghanistan, and how the old crone told me to go back to where it all began. What I haven't told you is ... that I did."

  "Did what?" she asked, prompting him when he seemed to run out of steam again.

  He cleared his throat. "When I was in that old woman's hovel, I ... ah ... I would have to say ... that ... well, I left my body. Okay? I left my body physically, left it behind, and I came here."

  She stopped and stared at him. "Here? How?"

  "Well, that's the part that's a little hard to explain. My guess is that I flew. You know, like this," he said, making an arc with his arm. "From Afghanistan to Sandy Point. Nonstop. Non-airplane."

  "You mean that you dreamed you flew."

  "Oh, no, I don't think so. I flew. I mean, I've told myself that I was delirious—that it was from the tea. Or maybe from the mushrooms in the stew. From loss of blood. From stark raving fear that the Taliban were going to find me after all."

  He kicked away a strand of seaweed that had wrapped itself around his ankle in a receding wave and said, "Don't you think I'd rather have a rational explanation than a freaky-flyer one? But Maddie, no kidding, this was the genuine article, an out-of-body experience."

  He was antsy and wanted to walk; she fell in beside him again.

  "It was nothing like some long tunnel ending in white light and a heavenly chorus welcoming me," he explained. "There was no bliss in it at all. It was more like a feeling of, 'Well, so this is where I screwed up, and this is what I have to do to make it right, okay, I got that, the lighthouse, okay, that's doable.' And then I reentered my body and got on with it. I started mending; I rejoined the insurgents; and I got hooked back up, through them, with my camera crew. Then I flew back to Atlanta—on a plane this time—closed up my apartment, took a leave from my job, and moved into the lighthouse. Where, as you know, I suffered a temporary but complete form of paralysis before I got the guts to approach you in your cottage."

  She stopped again. "So it all came down to the lighthouse?" she asked, openmouthed. "What if it had been rented?"

  "It wasn't."

  "What if we'd sold Rosedale?"

  "You hadn't."

  "What if I were still married?"

  "I'd have done my best to break it up," he confessed. "Or should I be keeping that to myself?"

  Dazed, she said, "Why start now?"

  "All right; I know this is—this is hard for you, especially after Michael. I can't tell you how depressed I was when you told me that he's into this stuff. Well, all I can say is, I'm not. I just did this one ... this one trip. But man, I truly was airborne. I hovered over that lighthouse like a spaceship. I saw the rock that I used to sit on to have a smoke—I saw the water at its new high level!—and I saw Rosedale down the road. I saw you, Maddie. You were as real and as tangible and as ... as of the earth as you could be. You were in your garden, on your knees, planting something in a big hole. You were wearing jeans and a heavy sweater, a blue one. I saw you from my perch in the sky and I knew; I knew that I loved you in a way I would never love another human being in this lifetime, or any other, for that matter."

  Maddie gaped at him. "Oh, Dan—oh my God," she said. "I did wear jeans and a blue sweater—in April! I came down alone to plant a rose; it was to commemorate my father's death."

  "I know that," Dan said with supreme confidence, dropping his shoes on the sand and taking her in his arms again. "It was on April 6—three days after I was shot."

  She reached up behind his head and touched her fingers to the narrow scar where the bullet had grazed him.

  "But what does it all mean?" she said, overwhelmed.

  "It means that I'm not gonna be the one to call Michael crazy," Dan said in a wry voice. "I'll leave that to someone more grounded—so to speak—than I am."

  Hands linked, they fell back in step, walking the thin line where eternal sea met ephemeral sand. They were silent for a while, and then Maddie said in a musing tone, "Do you know the name of the rose that I planted?"

  Dan chuckled softly and said, "Sorry, I couldn't read the label from up there."

  "Celestial," said Maddie with a timorous smile.

  "Huh. Now that's funny."

  Chapter 27

  By the end of the weekend it was obvious to Maddie just how much she'd lost touch with the elements. A tropical storm spinning over a wide spiral and packing fifty to sixty knot winds was expected to slam into the south shore of the Cape—from the southwest—in the predawn hours on Monday.

  The outer Cape lived in fear of winds from the east, but it was winds from the south that made the Sandy Point waterfront cringe. Those were the winds that sent residents scurrying for food, water, candles, and batteries. Maddie was among them, standing in line at the small general store in the center of town.

  "Tropical Storm Dot. It sounds so little," said Trixie Roiters, standing behind her. Her red plastic basket was filled with milk, bread, and M&M's. "How much damage can a storm named Dot do?"

  All Maddie had to say was, "Remember 'Bob?' "

  Trixie winced. "Maybe I should have Henry drag out the plywood and board up the windows. Are you battened down?"

  Maddie nodded. "Dan did the water side for me this morning. He's securing the keeper's house now, working with a couple of contractors."

  The mention of Dan's name brought Trixie's attention front and center. "That poor, poor house. How much more can happen to it? The roof is covered with tarps and the chimney's a pile of rubble. And now this. The keeper's house—is it even habitable?" she asked, obviously fishing to know where Dan was biding his time.

  "It's habitable, more or less," Maddie said vaguely. "At least the phone works and the electricity's back on."

  "Ha. That won't last."

  She was right. Sandy Point lost power at the drop of a thunderbolt. After Hurricane Bob swept through, they'd been without electricity for two weeks.

  Maddie looked over her
own basket, filled with lamp oil and candles. "I just hope the land line stays working," she said, aware that she had a dread of being out of contact with her family, especially now. "Because without power, the cell phone'll become useless fast."

  It was anyone's guess whether Michael would be able to make it across the flood-prone roads to drop Tracey off in the morning. Maddie should've insisted that Tracey come back early; but they had an agreement, and she, at least, was determined to keep her word.

  "How is your mother, by the way?" asked Trixie. "I understand she's gone back to Sudbury already? She didn't stay very long this time; I never even got to say hello."

  "It wasn't much of a visit," Maddie said in an understatement. "I had planned to go up there today, but now with a storm imminent, I'll have to stay here and house-sit."

  The one good thing was that the approaching storm had forced all of them to stay in contact. When Maddie called Claire to find out how she was doing, George actually got on the phone to ask whether she'd boarded up the windows. It wasn't much, but at least he was civil. And Maddie had left a message on her mother's machine asking her the name of the new insurance agent, just in case. Her mother had returned the call and had left a terse answer on Maddie's machine. Again, not much, but ....

  It saddened her that all they had in common at the moment was an old house. But then, some estranged families didn't even have that.

  "Maddie, you look like your cat's been run over," said Trixie, laying her hand on Maddie's arm. "What's wrong, dear?"

  Her voice was so achingly sympathetic that Maddie wanted to blurt, "My family's disowned me and my ex is a nut." But none of it, apparently, was true, so she said, "Oh, you know how it is when a storm's barreling down: hurry, hurry, wait, wait."

  Trixie said, "That reminds me—a radio battery. Not that there's a chance in Hades that they'll have one here."

  She turned on her heel and dove back into the crowded aisle anyway, and Maddie let her mind obsess on the trivia of her own checklist. Take in the lawn furniture, fill up the tub, fill up the rainbarrel, fill up the car, turn up the fridge—Pringles!

  She dropped out of the line and headed for the snack food aisle.

  ****

  By nightfall they could feel the first sharp gusts of wind from the south-southwest slicing through the oppressive calm like labor pains well in advance of a painful birth. The storm had been bumped up to possible hurricane status; everyone was waiting for the nine o'clock report. Although few of the houses on Maddie's side of Cranberry Lane were boarded up, most of the ones across the lane that faced the ocean were shuttered tight.

  Maddie took a portable radio with her on her walk to the lighthouse to check on Dan's progress there. He and the contractors had decided that the blue plastic tarp covering the burned-out roof would never hold up to the forecast winds, and so they'd spent the day furiously sheathing and shingling the damaged section.

  Maddie had brought them supper earlier in the evening. Dan, like the other two men, had been drenched in sweat, filthy, smelly—and pumped. Like most men, he was more than willing to take on Mother Nature in hand-to-hand combat. The three had been in crisis mode, working feverishly and enjoying every minute of it.

  "We'll have the roof buttoned up by dark," Dan had told her as he wolfed a monster-sized sandwich in half a dozen chomps, then washed it down with a quart of milk from the carton. "If the winds don't come in any worse than forecast, we should be okay."

  But now it was dark and as she approached, she could still hear faint hammering mixed with the sound of curling, breaking seas a hundred yards out from the beach. Already, she was forced to walk above the normal high-water mark to keep her sandals dry, not a good sign. The storm was expected to come ashore on an astronomically high tide—more bad news.

  The lighthouse has stood here for a hundred years, she reminded herself.

  The problem was, there used to be a decent-sized beach between it and the ocean.

  Rosedale, too, was closer to the sea than ever. Her father used to joke that if he lived long enough, he could be the owner of waterfront property yet. It hadn't happened that way, but Maddie was beginning to wonder whether she wouldn't see the day.

  She hurried along, chilled by the gusts that seemed to whoosh out of nowhere, sending up sand in her eyes. The beach was peopled with the usual stormwatchers: inland folks, out for a thrill, and those who who lived close enough to make it home quickly as soon as the weather turned truly foul.

  Ahead of her, standing apart from a group of teens hanging together and flirting with one another, Maddie spied her daughter's star-crossed love. Kevin had his hands in his hip pockets and was staring out at the water, reveling in the imminence of the storm. Was he attracted to the beauty of it or the violence of it? she wondered. Probably both.

  She passed close to him with a "Hello, there," wondering whether he'd acknowledge her. He didn't—until she'd gone by.

  "Mrs. Regan!" she heard him call.

  She stopped and turned.

  "I just wanted to say, uh, thanks. For not tellin' my old man about the tower."

  It would've been pointless. The boy's father would've screamed at him and maybe beat him, and then gone back to the tube and his bottle. Maddie had tried a different strategy: talking to Kevin herself when she'd seen him in town. She'd kept a firm grip on the handlebars of his bike as she laid out a vision of his future that covered the spectrum from rosy to bleak. Had any of her pep talk sunk in? Hard to tell; he'd stared at the clock on the village green the whole time.

  Now, she thought that maybe it had. The boy did seem grateful.

  "I meant what I said about giving you a second chance, Kevin. You're welcome to stop by our house anytime."

  Kevin looked away at the sea. It had a greater hold on him than she did, that was certain.

  A fisherman or maybe the Coast Guard, she thought, if he straightened out in time.

  "Yeah, well, I ain't seen her around, anyway. She's not on the beach tonight," he said offhandedly.

  "No, she's with her father in Boston."

  "Like I said. She ain't around."

  Maddie smiled and said, "You can stop by anyway, Kevin. Especially if you need to make a little extra cash. All the shutters need sanding and painting. Let me know if you're interested."

  "Yeah. Maybe I will."

  They parted on better terms than they had in the village green. Justifiably or not, Maddie felt uplifted from the encounter, which showed how tenuous her faith in herself as a parent had become. All Kevin had to do was refrain from out-and-out mugging her, and she was able to walk away feeling like Mother Teresa.

  She arrived at the lighthouse in time to see the contractors taking the ladder down by the light of their truck's headlights. Dan hailed her as she came near. He was still exhilarated—and drenched with sweat.

  "We had a change in the game plan," he explained. "Matt was walking across the roof after supper and poked his leg through another hole, this one from rot. Lucky for us, the guys had extra material in the truck."

  "You could use a good hose-down," she said, wrinkling her nose as she lifted a lock of his dripping hair.

  He laughed. "Yeah, I'll shower and then come over to Rosedale later. I have a few things more to do inside, and after that the house and tower are in God's hands."

  Another gust, this one sharper than any of the others, flattened his sweat-stained tank top against his chest. Maddie felt the wind at her back and told herself that she'd experienced far worse, but a feeling of dread had her locked in its grip.

  "I don't like this, Dan. I don't know if it's me or Dot, but something feels wrong. This doesn't feel like a garden-variety tropical storm."

  "We'll see what the weather update has to say. Hey! You two want a beer before you go?'' he asked the other men.

  Young and muscular, the men decided to pass in favor of a local hangout. Dan tipped them a hundred dollars and they threw their big-wheeled truck into a U-turn, deftly avoiding Dan's Jeep as th
ey took off at regulation contractors' speed of ninety miles an hour.

  "Look at 'em," Dan said, grinning. "They worked twice as hard as I did, and now they're gonna go off and party all night. Geez, I wish I was young again. We could party all night."

  Maddie shook her head. "I'm telling you, this doesn't feel like that kind of storm."

  Something in her voice made Dan say quietly, "Turn on the radio, then. It's time for an update."

  The NOAA forecast was a surprise to Dan but not to her: a sharp increase in the average wind speed, a sharp drop in barometric pressure, and a shift in direction which, if the eye came ashore as predicted, would put Sandy Point in the dangerous semicircle of what was now Hurricane Dot.

  "Whoa, Cassandra," Dan said lightly, "see if I make fun of you again."

  "They're going to want us to evacuate," said Maddie. "I've been through this before."

  "Are you going to?"

  "I don't think so," she confessed. "It's still a minimal hurricane. The house is very sturdy, and it has a low profile. Cape Cod houses are designed the way they are for a reason."

  "And Dot's the reason?" he said in a gentle pun, then added more seriously, "Are you sure you want to stay? I waited out a typhoon once in Bangladesh, Maddie. It scared the pants off me."

  "I know, but ... somehow I just don't want to evacuate this time." She knew what the reason was—proximity to a phone—but she was too embarrassed to tell Dan that.

  "Okay," he said with a smile. "But make the popcorn early, just in case we lose juice."

  He kissed her lightly and they parted company. By the time Maddie made it back to Rosedale, the gusts were coming at quicker intervals—those labor pains again. If Dot were actually about to have a baby, they'd be putting her toothbrush in the suitcase and thinking about calling a cab.

  Inside the cottage, Maddie hooked both screen doors to keep them from ripping off their hinges later, but she kept the inside doors wide open to allow a breeze to move through. She had another reason for keeping them open as long as she could. The truth was, she got claustrophobic whenever the south windows were boarded up; it felt too much like an entombment.