Siren

by Tricia Rayburn

  “That’s not—”

  “Vanessa. There you are.”

  The blood draining from my face, I turned around to see Raina standing behind me, holding a long white sundress. “Mrs.—Miss—Marchand. Sorry for disappearing. I actually remembered that I was going to borrow a book from Paige. I’ve been reading a lot, it being summer vacation and all, and Paige told me she had a really great book that I had to read.”

  “Which one?” Raina asked.

  “The Complete History of Winter Harbor,” Paige said. “It’s on the top shelf, to the right.”

  I froze at the title, then managed to shoot her a grateful look over my shoulder. When I turned back, Raina tucked the dress under one arm and held the book toward me. “Thank you,” I said, taking the book.

  “I assume Paige shared the good news.”

  “Don’t be mad,” Paige said. “I was just so excited to tell someone, and Vanessa’s a great friend. She won’t say anything.”

  “I hope that’s true.” She looked at me, and her smile was gone. “This is a very important time for Paige and our family. An important, personal, private time. You can understand a mother wanting to protect her daughter. Your mother would do the same for her daughters, wouldn’t she?”

  “Of course.” My face burned as I looked down.

  “People will obviously find out in time,” Paige added, “but we want to keep it quiet for a while. It would take all of three minutes for news like this to spread through Winter Harbor. Plus, Jonathan doesn’t know yet, and I don’t really know how to tell him.”

  “Paige, sweetie, we talked about this.”

  I looked from Paige to Raina. The stern disapproval in her voice was gone; she sounded loving, almost motherly.

  “Jonathan doesn’t need to know anything.” Raina crossed the room and sat on the bed. “You two have such a wonderful relationship right now. Why let something like this get in the way?”

  “Something like this wouldn’t get in the way,” Paige insisted, pulling away when Raina tried to take her hand.

  “What about when he leaves for college in a few months?” Raina asked. “And every year for the next four years? He’s not going to give up everything to stay in Winter Harbor and be a young father.”

  “He wouldn’t be giving up everything,” Paige said, her voice wavering. “He could take night classes somewhere. And besides, he wouldn’t think about it like that. He’d think that whatever he was giving up didn’t compare to all that he was gaining.”

  “Would his parents agree? You know his family isn’t like our family.”

  Paige stared at her mother, then pulled the blankets to her chin and turned toward the open window behind the bed. “Just because Dad disappeared doesn’t mean Jonathan will do the same.”

  “You’ll feel better after a nice bath,” Raina said, as if she hadn’t heard Paige’s jab. She looked at me. “I trust you can show yourself out?”

  I nodded.

  “Thanks, Vanessa,” Paige said, offering a small smile. “I’ll call you later.”

  My heart drummed in my ears as I stepped into the hallway and closed the door gently behind me.

  Vanessa …

  I hurried down the hall, ignoring Justine’s voice above me. Now wasn’t the time. I’d taken a chance. I’d tried to find out more about Zara from Paige. It didn’t work, and now it was time to move on to Plan B, whatever that was.

  “Vanessa?”

  I stumbled forward. I probably shouldn’t have been more alarmed by a living person saying my name than I was by my deceased sister saying my name, but Betty wasn’t just any person.

  Please, Nessa … She can help….

  My chest tightened as I reached the stairs. I didn’t know what Betty could say that wouldn’t just raise more questions … but maybe the questions could lead to clues.

  “Good morning, Vanessa,” she said when I was in her room with the door closed.

  She rested her hands on the needlepoint in her lap and seemed to wait for me to speak. I, in turn, waited for Justine to speak. If I was supposed to help Betty help me, I didn’t know where to start.

  “Doing some reading?” she asked finally.

  “What?”

  “Paige gave you a book.”

  “Oh.” I looked down at my hands, which gripped Paige’s copy of The Complete History of Winter Harbor. “Right. She did.”

  “Paige is a good girl.” Betty said that as if she thought I doubted it. “She’s young. She’ll make mistakes, just like her sister and her mother before her. But she doesn’t mean anyone harm.”

  I focused on keeping my breathing steady.

  “She doesn’t know about you.”

  I tightened my hold on the book when it started to slip.

  “She doesn’t know about Justine.”

  My eyes watched hers; they were aimed above my head, flicking back and forth.

  “And she doesn’t know about your mother.”

  “My mother?” I whispered.

  She lowered her eyes slowly until they locked on mine. A dim light glowed behind the clouds. “But then, of course, neither do you.”

  I held my breath, unable to move.

  “Your mother and Paige’s mother were once very close.”

  I stepped back. My hip hit a small table, sending a pitcher of iced tea to the floor.

  Betty paused before picking up her needlepoint. “There are towels in the bathroom.”

  I placed the book on a chair and hurried to the room behind her, grateful for the break. I yanked a towel from the shelf above the toilet and turned on the water in the sink. As I dunked and wrung out the towel, the smell of salt was so strong, I wanted to gag. It wasn’t until the towel was damp but not dripping that I was able to turn back to the sink and see that the water from the faucet wasn’t clear.

  It was a light, murky green. Kind of like the ocean.

  “That’s a very good book,” Betty said as I came back into the room. She slid a needle in and out of her latest project, apparently done talking about Paige, me, and our mothers. “An old friend of mine wrote it. I read it once, a long time ago.”

  Anxious to get out of there, I dropped to my knees and started scrubbing the carpet. “What book?” I asked, hoping my voice sounded casual.

  “The one you borrowed from Paige. The Complete History of Winter Harbor.”

  “Betty …” I stopped scrubbing and glanced over my shoulder. The book still sat on the chair, untouched. I turned back to her. “Can you see?”

  “I haven’t seen anything in seven hundred and thirty-three days.”

  “Then how did you know what book Paige gave me? Or that I even had a book at all?”

  She shifted the project in her lap and started on another corner. “Page forty-seven.”

  I looked at her, then stood up and took the book from the chair. It was old and had obviously been read many times. The brown cover was worn and frayed at both ends, and the pages were yellowing—some had even pulled away from the spine and slid out as I flipped through. Pages thirty-three through thirty-eight drifted to the floor, bringing with them a small handwritten note.

  For my beautiful Bettina. May Winter Harbor’s brightness always drown out the darkness. Eternally yours, Oliver.

  “Is it there?”

  I looked away from the note and turned to page forty-seven, where there was a single lily, preserved perfectly in the crease.

  “Can you smell it?”

  The dead flower had lost its scent long ago, but I lifted the book and held my nose to the pages anyway. It smelled stale, like the Winter Harbor library. “No,” I said.

  “Well.” She looked at me, her eyes clearer than I’d ever seen them. “I can.”

  CHAPTER 17

  “OLIVER SAVAGE?” Caleb said as we drove toward town ten minutes later. “That cranky old man is the love of Betty Marchand’s life?”

  “I thought Betty was sick?” Simon said. “And too weak to talk?”

  “That�
��s just what Raina wants everyone to believe to avoid questions,” I said. “Betty’s not completely well, but she’s well enough to talk to me every time I see her.”

  “How many times is that?” Caleb said.

  I didn’t answer. My head—and stomach—reeled from everything I’d just learned, and it took all my energy to stay focused. As we pulled into the library parking lot, I grabbed the books that Oliver had wanted—and that I hadn’t had a chance to look at since borrowing them—and opened the door before Simon put the car in park.

  “No offense,” Caleb said, “but do we really have time for this?”

  I looked at him through the open space between the two front seats. “We agree that somehow, some way, Zara had something to do with Justine’s death.”

  His face flushed. “Yes.”

  “And that a lot of people have died, and many more might follow if we don’t do something to save them.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “We need to find out as much as we can about the Marchands without them knowing. If Oliver is the love of Betty’s life, he knows her better than anyone else does.”

  Behind me, the wipers shot across the windshield. I could hardly hear their quick rhythm over the rain pelting the roof. The sky had darkened and the clouds thickened during our drive, and it was only a matter of time before the lightning show started.

  “She’s right, Caleb,” Simon said. “And if we’re doing this, we have to do it now.”

  I was ready to leave him in the car, but Caleb finally sat up and rubbed his eyes.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  The rain pummeled us as we sprinted for the library entrance. By the time we entered the lobby ten seconds later, we looked like we’d just jumped in the harbor fully dressed.

  We found Oliver in the library’s designated reading area. He sat in an armchair by a fireplace, surrounded by open books. They were everywhere—on the table next to him, on the window seat behind him, on the mantel, on the floor, propped against potted plants. But he wasn’t reading.

  He was looking right at me.

  “Oliver?” Simon said when Oliver didn’t speak or look away. “I don’t know if you remember us, but I’m Simon Carmichael, and this is my brother, Caleb. Our family lives on Lake Kantaka?”

  The rain grew louder overhead. A log shifted in the fireplace, sending sparks through the metal screen.

  “I don’t think he can hear you.” Caleb didn’t bother whispering as he tilted his chin toward the table by Oliver’s chair. A small brown hearing aid sat on top of the stack of open books.

  “I know who you are,” Oliver said, his voice gruff but calm. “And I can hear you. I heard you when you were in the parking lot.”

  I felt Simon tense next to me.

  “Vanessa Sands,” Oliver said, “I believe you have something of mine.”

  I blinked, suddenly remembering I hugged Paige’s copy of The Complete History of Winter Harbor to my chest. I started to hand the book to him … but stopped when his eyes dropped to the canvas bag draped over my shoulder.

  “This morning, per library policy, I brought back other books I needed so that I could borrow those. Mary informed me that someone else had taken them out.” His eyes shifted back to mine. “For some strange reason, out of the thousands of volumes in the library, young Vanessa Sands wanted the same five books I did. What are the odds?”

  “Slim.” I shrugged the bag off my shoulder and placed it on the floor near his other books. “The odds are slim.”

  He looked down at the bag, surprised I’d given up so easily.

  “Oliver … we need your help.”

  His eyes softened when he raised them to mine. I guessed it had been a while since anyone had asked cranky Oliver Savage for anything.

  “Terrible things are happening in Winter Harbor. And you know some very important information that no one else knows.” I held out the book he’d written. He sat back and covered his mouth with one shaky hand. After a moment, he reached forward to take the book. “It’s still there. Page forty-seven.”

  He removed the lily and stared at it, awed, like it was still vibrant and alive after so much time. “Where did you get this?” he asked, slowly twirling the thin stem between his pointer finger and thumb.

  “Paige loaned it to me.”

  “Oliver,” Simon said, “if there’s anything at all you can tell us about Betty or the Marchands that might help stop what’s been going on, we’d really appreciate it.”

  Oliver replaced the lily, then turned to the back of the book. After a moment, he started reading aloud.

  “‘Winter Harbor’s waters teem with life, and countless restaurateurs have tried to turn this natural bounty into financial gain over the years. However, none has been nearly as successful as Bettina Marchand, a Canadian transplant who opened the immediately popular Betty’s Chowder House in 1965. A chef and businesswoman at just twenty-four years old, Miss Marchand admits to having had ‘less than the proper training’ for such a venture but, through hard work and her ‘deeply rooted understanding of and respect for the sea,’ has managed to create and sustain what is already a Winter Harbor institution.’”

  “That’s it?” Caleb asked. “No offense, but you didn’t just tell us anything we couldn’t have learned from a Winter Harbor visitor brochure.”

  “Exactly.” Oliver patted the book. “What’s in here is all Betty was willing to share. The restaurant was already a local legend while I was working on this history, and as such, I thought it deserved an entire chapter. But—one paragraph. That’s all she’d let me write.”

  “Why?” Simon asked. “Was she uncomfortable with her unexpected success?”

  “Oh, she was uncomfortable, but her success had nothing to do with it.”

  My head shot up as lightning struck the ground nearby, making the lights flicker overhead. When I lowered my eyes, they locked on Oliver’s.

  “Out of respect for her, I’ve told no one what I’m about to tell you. And I tell you now only because I know you know things, too.” He shifted his gaze to Simon, then Caleb. “Even if you don’t quite realize or understand it, you all know things Betty didn’t want anyone ever to find out.”

  Simon and I sat on the couch opposite Oliver’s chair. Behind us, Caleb leaned against a bookshelf and crossed his arms, willing to listen.

  When Oliver spoke again, his voice was lighter. “When I first met Bettina Marchand, she was doing what she loved to do more than anything: swimming. She was doing the backstroke in a purple swimsuit, and smiling as though she could hear someone dear to her whispering about just how lovely she looked. It was obvious that she wasn’t swimming for exercise or sport, but simply because it felt good.

  “It was July 1965. She was twenty-four, new to town, and getting lots of attention from the local boys. I was twenty-six, Winter Harbor born and raised, and among those taken by her. She’d been in town a few months by that point, but we hadn’t officially met. If she’d had her way, we wouldn’t have met the way we did, either.” He smiled. “But it wasn’t like I was stalking her, or hiding so she couldn’t see me watching her. I was there to swim, too. I tried to leave when I saw her there, to give her privacy … but I couldn’t. She was too beautiful.”

  “Was she mad when she saw you?” Caleb asked.

  “For Betty to have been mad, she would’ve had to have first been aware that I was admiring her. But she wasn’t. She never invited or wanted any of the attention she received.”

  “She found out eventually, though, right?” I asked. “That you admired her?”

  “The only way she wouldn’t have found out was if she’d left town. Fortunately, she was very committed to the restaurant, and that kept her here when she might’ve otherwise fled. The restaurant also made it easy to find her. I started going there on my lunch break every day, hoping for the chance to talk to her. When it was slow, she would sit with me. I did most of the talking, unfortunately—anytime I tried to ask her questions
about anything other than the restaurant, she always changed the topic. And she loved listening to stories about Winter Harbor—she called it the home she’d always wanted—so I told her everything I knew, because it made her happy. When I ran out of material, I dug up more.”

  “Is that why you didn’t talk about any of the unexplained deaths in your books?” I asked, handing him his note about Winter Harbor’s brightness drowning out the darkness. “Because you wanted the stories only to make her happy?”

  Oliver stared at the note, and then placed one hand on the front cover without answering. “After a few months, she finally agreed to go on a real date with me. By that time, it was almost winter, and the lakes had frozen over. We went skating on Lake Kantaka, and afterward, I made her dinner.” He paused. “That was the first night that she told me things about herself and her life that she said she hadn’t told anyone….”

  “Like what?” I asked, my heart racing as his smile faded.

  “She said she was raised by her mother and aunts in an ‘unconventional’ environment. And that she’d left without telling them why or where she was going because she didn’t approve of their lifestyle, and never wanted to be found and made to go back.” He looked at the fire, as if preparing to say what he was about to say next. “She told me, with tears in her eyes, that she spent so much time swimming not just because she liked to, but because she needed to. She physically needed to immerse herself in salt water several times a day.”

  I looked at Simon without turning my head. He was watching Oliver closely.

  “She said if she didn’t … eventually, she wouldn’t be able to breathe.”

  “Why not?” Simon asked after a pause.

  “She wouldn’t explain. And she started acting differently as soon as she said that much—distant, even more guarded. She said she was embarrassed, but I knew it was more than that. She was afraid.”

  The lightning was closer now; the ground rumbled, making the couch vibrate beneath me.

  “I continued to see her every day and share stories about Winter Harbor, if for no other reason than to distract her from her fears. Her trust in me grew, and she seemed to forget how terrible she felt after revealing such personal details of her life. After two years of this, when things seemed almost normal, I asked her to be my bride.”