The Haunting of Brynn Wilder: A Novel

by Wendy Webb

  He snorted and went on. “It started as an easy, fast, and cheap way to feed a crowd of people, like the loggers and fishermen who worked these shores. Now people think of it as a regional delicacy, which is sort of funny. It’s turned into something of an event at resorts in this area of the lake and in Michigan, too.”

  “What kind of fish are we talking about here?” Dominic asked as he sliced.

  “It’s whitefish—Lake Superior whitefish caught today and delivered half an hour ago. We boil ’em up with potatoes and corn on the cob in a pot. We serve it all with coleslaw and bread. And voilà, fish boil! We do it here every Friday during the high season. The timing of the boiling really is an art, which I have perfected, if I may say so myself.”

  LuAnn popped into the kitchen. “Is he bragging on how he’s the master of the fish boil again?”

  Dominic and I chuckled at this. “Sounds like he has rights on this one,” he said.

  “I don’t mean to sound disrespectful of a tradition or anything,” I began, “but it sounds kind of . . . well, disgusting is an ugly word . . .”

  LuAnn cackled. “Oh, you’ve stepped in it now,” she said, wiping her eyes.

  “Disgusting?” Gary repeated. “Oh, my dear girl. My dear delusional girl.”

  “But it’s all boiled together? Doesn’t everything taste like fish?”

  “Aha!” Gary pointed at me. “You have hit on the magic of the fish boil. No, for your information, Julia Child, everything does not taste like fish. And when we’re ready to do the boiling, you’ll see why.”

  LuAnn stepped back outside to check on the gathering crowd as Dominic and I finished with the potatoes and shucked a few dozen ears of corn, cutting each one in half as directed by our taskmaster. Gary was clattering around in the cupboard, retrieving a massive well-used silver basket shaped like the cauldron.

  “Okay,” he said. “It’s showtime!”

  He handed Dominic the basket and picked up the huge bowl of potatoes, tucking a box of salt under his arm just as LuAnn reappeared in the kitchen.

  “People are starting to arrive,” LuAnn said to Gary. “How are we doing?”

  “We are doing just fine,” Gary said. “Did you get everyone’s drink orders?”

  “They’re beered and wined,” LuAnn reported.

  “Great. Can you melt the butter without burning the whole place down?” Gary asked her.

  “Doubtful,” she said, pulling a saucepan out of the cupboard. “But I’ve got insurance, so we’re good.”

  Dominic and I followed Gary out the back door and saw that the picnic tables were filled with people.

  “Hey, folks,” Gary called to them. “Let’s get this party started!”

  He instructed Dominic to place the basket into the cauldron of boiling water and poured the potatoes into it, generously salting the water.

  “Why we cut off just the top of the potato,” Gary said to me, loud enough for the crowd to hear, “is for the salt to get in there and flavor the inside of the spud. It cooks up nice and creamy in its own skin.”

  I nodded. Made sense.

  “We do this thing in stages. When the spuds are half-done, we add the corn,” he explained to everyone. This was a theatrical production, and he was at center stage, enjoying every minute of it. “When the corn’s half-done, we add the fish. When that’s done, we have the boil over.”

  “What’s the boil over?” Dominic asked.

  “The main event!” Gary smiled broadly. “It’s what everybody waits for, buddy. You’ll see.”

  While the potatoes were boiling, we helped Gary set out plates, silverware, and napkins. LuAnn came from the kitchen with wide platters and serving utensils. On Gary’s word, Dominic dropped the corn into the boiling cauldron. I helped LuAnn carry out big bowls of coleslaw, one for each table, platters of sliced lemons, the melted butter, and baskets of bread.

  I took a moment to appreciate the scene around me. I’d always loved entertaining big groups of friends, and hadn’t done much of it in the previous few years, and none at all after my mom’s illness progressed. Now here I was, with this group of relative strangers—Gary, LuAnn, and Dominic—who were somehow already beginning to feel like family, putting on this spread for the crowd. Gratitude coursed through me.

  “Fish!” Gary called, and in a minute, Dominic came through the back door carrying the platter of whitefish.

  “Drop ’em in!” Gary directed, and Dominic slipped the fish into the roiling, bubbling cauldron, which smoked and sizzled.

  “Okay,” Gary addressed the crowd. “We’ve got some fish-boil newbies here.” He cocked his head in our direction. “Anybody else a first-timer?”

  A couple of hands went up. Gary talked about the origin of the fish boil before asking, “Who can tell me why we salt the water?”

  “For flavor?” someone called out.

  “Yep, but there’s something else, and it’s important,” Gary said. “Anyone?”

  “The salt makes it so the fish oil rises to the top,” an elderly woman said, her voice thin. I guessed she had been to a few fish boils in her time.

  “Exactly right!” Gary said. “It’s a chemistry lesson, kids. The salt raises the gravity of the water, whatever the hell that means. But what it does is, it sends the fish oil right to the top. See those foamy suds on the surface? Come on up if you want to get a look.”

  Several people—me included—gingerly approached the cauldron. Sure enough, I saw foam bubbling on the surface of the water.

  “That’s the fish oil. We don’t want that oil, so we do the boil over. That’s why the whole thing doesn’t taste fishy. No fish oil.” He looked pointedly at me.

  “And now’s the time for the main event, people!” Gary went on. A couple of kids in the crowd cheered as Gary looked around here and there. “Where’s my kerosene can?”

  Dominic and I exchanged a worried glance. “Kerosene?” he mouthed.

  “This is the dramatic part, and I want everyone to stay back.” Gary scanned the crowd. “You’ll all get to see it, but nobody come up here too close. Got it?”

  “Got it!” somebody in the crowd called out.

  “That means you, too,” Gary said to us, brandishing a can of kerosene.

  “You are seriously not going to put kerosene on that fire,” Dominic said, eliciting chuckles from the crowd.

  “Newbie,” Gary said, eliciting more laughter. “Stay back, everybody!”

  He carefully splashed some kerosene on the fire logs. Whoosh, a tall eruption of orange flame engulfed the pot, sending the foamy suds boiling over and down the sides, which further ignited the flames. I jumped back, clutching Dominic’s arm.

  In a flash, it was over, and the flames died down.

  I exhaled the breath I didn’t even know I was holding. The look of horror on Dominic’s face caused me to burst out laughing.

  “They do not mess around here on Lake Superior,” he said, his eyes wide. “That was some serious business right there.”

  “Come on, big man,” Gary said to him. “Help me get this basket out of the water.”

  “Now?” Dominic said. “Are you sure that thing isn’t going to erupt with the fires of hell again?”

  Gary chuckled, as did many in the crowd, and he threaded a long pole through the basket’s handle. “Here,” he said to Dominic. “You take the other end.”

  Together, they lifted the basket out of the cauldron, pausing for a moment to let the excess water drain out before carrying it over to the buffet table. They worked to carefully scoop the potatoes, corn, and fish out of the basket onto waiting platters. A line of diners was already forming.

  “Come and get it, people!” Gary called out as he filled two plates, one for Dominic and one for me. “Thanks for all of your help, kids. Make sure you get some slaw, too.”

  All of the tables were full, so Dominic and I settled into a couple of Adirondack chairs under the big oak tree in the backyard. LuAnn came over and set some drinks on the armrests
for us. She kissed me on the forehead and leaned over and did the same to Dominic.

  “You two are the best,” she said to us. “Thank you for all the help.”

  “No trouble at all,” I said to her. “It was fun.”

  “Agreed,” Dominic said.

  “You’re welcome to be our extra hands again any time you feel like it.”

  And then she circled off through the crowd, taking drink orders, making sure everyone had what they needed.

  I took my first bite of fish. To my astonishment, it was flaky and delicate and didn’t have any hint of a fishy taste.

  “This is delicious,” I said. “I thought it was going to be mushy or gelatinous or otherwise gross because it was boiled.”

  “I know!” he said. “Have you tried the potatoes? They don’t taste like fish at all.”

  Just then, I glanced up to the second floor and saw the curtains moving in one of the rooms. Someone had been watching us. I did a quick mental rundown. My room was on the other end of the building. Dominic’s and two guest rooms were facing the other way. Jason and Gil’s suite was at the end, its deck and windows overlooking the street. That left only number five.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  We offered to help LuAnn and Gary with the cleanup, but they wouldn’t hear of it.

  “That’s why we use compostable plates and silverware for the fish boils, kids,” Gary said. “Cleanup’s a breeze. We’re just going to stuff these platters, bowls, and serving utensils into the dishwasher, and boom. We’re good to go.”

  Satisfied that we weren’t needed, Dominic pushed himself out of his Adirondack and held out a hand to me. I grasped it, and he pulled me up. “Care to go for a walk?” he asked me.

  And so, a short while later, we were strolling through the streets of Wharton. As the evening wore on, I noticed lines at the ferry dock dwindling and the ferry running less frequently. I guessed going over to the island was more of a day trip, thinking back on our magical day there. I could still feel Dominic’s arms and legs intertwined with mine as we floated in the water.

  As if sensing what I was thinking, Dominic offered his arm to me, and I threaded mine through it. We walked in companionable silence for a while, watching the shopkeepers shut their doors, turn their “Open” signs to “Closed,” and button their places up tight as the restaurants came to life with activity.

  I toyed with mentioning seeing the curtains sway in number five, and the apparition in my bathroom mirror earlier, but in the end decided not to bring up those things. It felt like strange happenings were piling on, engulfing me since I got here. First the knock in the shower, then Gary’s warnings about ghosts everywhere, the dream or whatever it was with the lady in number five, even the otherworldliness swirling around Alice. Now this. It was getting to be too much already. I wanted to talk about something real.

  “I started thinking about going back to work today,” I told him, finally.

  “Oh? You said you were sort of dreading it.”

  “I was,” I admitted. “I didn’t know if I actually would go back. But today was the first day in a very long time that I found myself looking forward to it.”

  He looked over at me and smiled. “That’s great, Brynn. I’m really glad to hear it.”

  I knew what was unspoken, there, in his comment. It was progress. Me seeing light at the end of the tunnel of my grief. Life was out there. And right where we were. I couldn’t remember the last time I had thought of anything except simply slogging through another day, yet this day, the past few days, in fact, had been filled with joy and mystery and hope and fun, too.

  We found ourselves by the water’s edge and sat down on one of the benches. The lake was shimmering with life. I took a deep breath and drank it in.

  “I was looking for you at happy hour today,” I said, remembering Alice’s comments. It seemed a lifetime ago already.

  “I know,” he said. “I came down a bit late, and everyone was gone. Gary said something happened up at Harrison’s House, and it broke up the party.”

  I nodded. “My friend Kate was here with her husband, the police chief, and her cousin Simon, who owns the inn. Both men got phone calls at the same time as sirens roared up the street. A fire truck and an EMT, I think. So, yeah, something happened up there.”

  Dominic shook his head. “That can’t be good. And you haven’t heard anything more?”

  “No,” I said. “I went to the bookstore after happy hour broke up, but Beth said there was no word yet.”

  He grinned. “Odd, for this town. Word travels fast.”

  “So I’m learning.”

  He eyed me. “We could always walk up there. To Harrison’s House, I mean. I hear they have a bar. We could just be going for an innocent drink.”

  “You’re terrible,” I chuckled. “But I don’t want to intrude. What if somebody had an emergency? I mean, obviously there was an emergency, but we don’t know what it was.”

  “You are the one person alive in Wharton who wants to mind her own business.”

  I knew it was a joke, but something about the way he said it sent a shiver through me. He was wrong. I intensely wanted to know about the emergency at Harrison’s House, and why Dominic was late.

  I cast an eye toward the skies and saw gray clouds moving in.

  “It looks like we’ve got some more rainy weather coming,” I said. “It rolls in quickly here. People say the lake makes its own weather systems. How that works, I have no idea.”

  He chuckled at this. “If that’s the case, Lake Superior is telling us to go back to LuAnn’s and stop thinking about pestering them at Harrison’s House.” Dominic smiled, getting to his feet. “What did you call it? Gitche Gumee?”

  “Far be it from us to disobey the lake,” I said, pushing myself up.

  As we walked back to LuAnn’s, scattered gentle raindrops began to fall, and I thought about how this man made his living helping people in transition. We hadn’t known each other too long, but he was certainly there for me, always with an encouraging word as I made my way through this brave new world.

  He said I wasn’t a client—thank goodness—but I wondered if he was tired of working during his off hours. I knew doctors who hated going to cocktail parties because people would set upon them with stories of their various ailments. Did he feel the same? I made a mental note to keep thoughts of my “transition” to myself and to focus on the here, the now, and the future when we talked of things happening in my life.

  The closer we got to LuAnn’s, the more I was beginning to lament the fact that our evening together was nearly over. But then Dominic surprised me.

  “How about watching a movie?” he said.

  “I’d love that,” I said.

  The restaurant was closed, so Dominic used his key to let us inside the main door. We found the dining room dark, neat, and tidy, ready for the morning rush. No sign of LuAnn or Gary. All was quiet. A sizzle of electricity coursed through me as Dominic led me through the empty dining room and up the stairs.

  When we got to his door, he opened it, but then turned to me.

  “I’m going to get out of my fish-cooking clothes.” He smiled shyly.

  “Oh!” I said. “Good idea. I’ll do the same and meet you back here in five minutes.” That would give me time to freshen up and brush my teeth. Perfect. In my room, I went through my dresser, considering outfits and tossing them aside. What to choose? Pajamas seemed . . . forward. Finally, I settled on black leggings and a soft pink T-shirt and headed into my bathroom.

  I peeled off my clothes and did a quick spot-shower with warm water from the sink and a washcloth to rinse the day off my skin. I washed and moisturized my face, and brushed my teeth and hair. I pulled on my leggings and big shirt and surveyed my image in the mirror. It would have to do. I slid my feet into my slippers and padded back across the hall.

  I gave his door a soft rap and he opened it, inviting me in. He was wearing a white T-shirt and gray sweatpants.

  I hadn�
��t seen his room before, but I shouldn’t have been surprised to find that it was wholly different than the others. Heavy masculine furniture dominated the room. The bed was an enormous four-poster made of cherrywood, covered with an eggplant-colored down comforter and pillows in eggplants and greens and whites lining the headboard. The dresser had a deep-purple marble top and an antique round mirror that was worn, warped, and weathered with age. A mission-style armchair and ottoman sat in the corner by the window.

  Dark wood paneling covered the walls, which were adorned with paintings of tall ships. An old nautical map of Lake Superior hung in a rough-hewn frame that looked to be made of weathered barn wood. A flat-screen television was poised above a gas fireplace, which Dominic switched on. It sparked to life, bathing the room with a flickering soft glow. Outside, thunder rumbled.

  All at once, I found myself grasping for something to say. When in doubt, talk about the weather. “This rain won’t let up today,” I said, peeking out of the window.

  “I love a good thunderstorm,” he said. “Bring it on.”

  I wasn’t sure what to do next. I stood by the window, my hands feeling suddenly awkward. Should I clasp them in front? Put them on my hips? It was as though I had forgotten what people did with their hands when in a room with a ridiculously handsome man.

  Dominic saved me from my descent into angst by settling onto the bed, propping the pillows against the headboard. He patted the spot next to him. “I won’t bite.” He flashed the smile that always took my breath away. “Hard.” He laughed then, a deep, throaty laugh that warmed me from the inside out.

  I slid down next to him, and I could feel my heart beating so hard in my chest I was sure he could hear it. He slung his arm along the back of the pillows, and I snuggled into him, curling up. He looked over at me and smiled.

  We reclined there for a moment, gazing at each other. We were supposed to be watching a movie, but I couldn’t find the words to bring it up. Being this close to him, I couldn’t find any words. All I could do was look at his mouth, longing to feel it on mine again.

  Without quite realizing what I was doing, I reached up and ran a finger along his lips, tracing their perfection. And then I pulled him into me, kissing him with the same sort of intensity with which he’d kissed me. Had it been today? The day before? Time seemed to melt into itself here in this house, especially when I was with him.