by Barbara Ross
Chris had no such problems. I heard his rhythmic breathing beside me. He, too, had had a challenging day, in no small measure due to my absence.
Le Roi, sensing a restless soul, jumped onto the bed and settled at my side, distracting me from the old warehouse’s sounds with his purring. I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
I awoke instantly, not normal for me, without knowing why. My brain registered that it was pitch dark. Then I heard it. The creak of the door at the bottom of the stairs, followed by one quiet footfall on the first tread. The thief was back! My mind cataloged the available tools to defend myself. I wished for a brief second that, like my father, I slept with a baseball bat under my bed. He had never used it all the years I knew him, but it was there.
The best weapon I could think of was the fire extinguisher in the apartment kitchen, which was all the way across the studio from the bed. Getting there would take me behind the stairwell, which was important. I had no desire to pass in front of the stairs and run smack into the intruder. I slid out of bed and crept across the room. The footsteps kept coming.
I grabbed the fire extinguisher, ran to the top of the stairs, and lifted it over my head, determined to do some damage.
“Julia!” The room lit up and Chris stood at the top of the stairs, hand on the light switch. “It’s me.”
I was panting from the fear and the adrenaline. “I thought it was the murderer.”
“No kidding.” Chris dropped his hand to his side. “Did it maybe occur to you to check the bed next to you? To see if I was there, or to wake me up so I could help you, or maybe even defend myself?”
I stared, shame-faced, at my bare feet. “I am so sorry. I’m a little on edge.”
He took the fire extinguisher from me and walked it back to the kitchen. “Gus and I boarded up the trapdoor this afternoon. We’re not idiots, you know.”
“Why were you downstairs anyway?” I wasn’t taking the blame for almost clobbering him all by myself.
“I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. I figured rather than wake you, I’d go down to the restaurant, eat a sandwich, watch a little TV.”
I had slept through all of this. “Why couldn’t you sleep?”
“Same reason you almost killed me. It doesn’t make sense that this Enid woman drowned and then kept breaking into our home. Unless she’s haunting us.”
“So you agree with me.”
“Of course I agree with you.” He kissed the top of my head. “I always agree with you.”
“Liar.”
He laughed.
“I’m glad you boarded up the trapdoor.”
“Me too. But I’m not sure it matters. You haven’t been all over town today asking people about gift certificates or showing them copies of an old photo. Why would the intruder break in tonight? No bait.”
No bait. But I did have bait—the insurance report. Since Binder, Flynn, and Jamie weren’t back in Busman’s Harbor, no one in town knew about the discovery of Austin Lowe’s study wall and Enid Sparks’s letter. I could use that to my advantage.
Chris turned out the light, and we climbed into bed. I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.
Chapter 26
“We never saw each other again after that night,” Caroline Caswell said. I was seated again at the round glass table, watching the birds at the feeder on the deck. “We knew one of us had left that cigarette smoldering in the couch. We didn’t know who had done it. Every one of us, except Enid, smoked back then. We all feared we’d been the one. We could never look each other in the eye again.”
She put her elbows on the table and leaned toward me. Henry, seated next to her, silently put an arm around her petite shoulders. “The New Year’s Eve party was meant as a reunion of sorts. Right after we posed for that photo at the yacht club dance, we began to grow apart. The world felt like it was spinning faster on its axis, pulling us in different directions.
“Henry dropped out of college and joined the navy. Days after their college graduations, Phil and Sheila married. Phil went to business school and joined the family drug company. Three years later, he left Sheila for Deborah. That was the first explosion.
“Michael went to law school to please his parents, but you could tell his heart wasn’t in it. His politics became more radical. He went on and on about the rights of the oppressed. Barry attended art school as an undergrad. After college, he drifted. His hair grew down to his waist and his beard was enormous.”
I imagined the Barry Walker I knew, with the Bozo-inspired coif, with a beard and hair down to his waist. It was easy to picture.
“Madeleine arranged the New Year’s Eve party,” Caroline continued. “She thought enough time had gone by for Sheila to be over the divorce, and persuaded her to come. It was meant to be a peacemaking, a healing moment for all of us. Barry and Enid announced their engagement at dinner. We toasted them and cheered. Madeleine was the perfect hostess. She smiled and laughed all evening. It made her so happy we were all together. I was happy too.” Caroline’s voice thickened. “My beautiful friend.
“That night must have been so difficult for Sheila. She and Phil had been together as a summer couple, well, always. We were all friends, but I can’t remember a time, even when we were quite young, when it wasn’t understood that Phil and Sheila’s relationship was special.” She paused, considering how to go on. “I think once Phil became a rising star in business, he needed a more glamorous wife. Deborah was always the most beautiful of us. Dan had been dead for three years by then, and she was in Manhattan. Sheila had no idea, but Phil found Deborah and wooed her. He left Sheila and married Deborah the day his divorce was final.”
“And then Sheila married Michael?”
“Yes, stole him right out from under Fran. Sheila started working on Michael at the New Year’s Eve party. She got stumbling drunk, elbowed Fran out of the way, and kissed him, open-mouthed, on the lips on the stroke of midnight.” Caroline stopped talking and looked at me, as if she was still shocked by Sheila’s behavior. “I knew Sheila and Michael had married,” she continued. “She sent me a wedding invitation, but Henry was deployed, and I didn’t have the heart, or the nerve, to go alone. I wasn’t ready to see any of those people again. Later, she wrote me that none of us had come.”
“You told me the first time I came that you stopped sending Christmas cards to Sheila because her life was so sad, but it sounds to me more like Sheila got what she wanted and Fran was left out.”
“You might think so,” Henry answered for Caroline. “But Michael wasn’t his father. He was never going to work in his dad’s Wall Street law firm. Michael became a public defender. According to Sheila’s letters, they lived in a roach-infested coldwater flat in the East Village.”
“But mostly,” Caroline took up the tale, “Sheila was brokenhearted because she couldn’t have children. Henry and I had three daughters in six years. I couldn’t stand to rub her face in our happiness any longer. I stopped the correspondence, and our last tie to the Rabble Point set was gone.”
“As for Fran,” Henry finished, “we never saw her after that New Year’s Eve. Sheila reported she was living at a commune on a farm outside Belfast, Maine. I couldn’t have been more surprised when she walked through the door of your restaurant with Barry Walker.”
“I went out to Rabble Point,” I told them.
“Sad, isn’t it? After Mr. Lowe bulldozed the cottages, any hope that we would ever get over the trauma of Howell and Madeleine’s deaths and be friends again disappeared along with Rabble Point,” Caroline said. “It was like being cast out of Eden. I always believed that if those of us who were left had kept going to Rabble Point in the summer, if our children had grown up together, we would still be friends today.” She sighed, lost in the what-ifs. “I have no idea who owns the land now.”
“I know,” I said. “The Bennetts own it. They live in the Lowes’ old house. They’ve renovated it extensively. Even moved the front door so it faces Eastclaw Point Ro
ad, instead of Rabble Point, but it’s the same house.”
“Isn’t that something?” Caroline’s eyes were wide. “I’ve longed for Rabble Point ever since my last summer day there. Henry left the navy to finish college and go to medical school. He thought that was what he wanted, and I pictured myself as a physician’s wife, settled in some suburban town. But he missed the navy terribly, and after med school he reenlisted and stayed in for twenty years until he went to Johns Hopkins Hospital.” She took a deep breath, fighting off tears. Henry patted her shoulder and she continued.
“During the navy years, I got quite good at setting up our house and making new friends. But I never got over longing for Rabble Point, and for the friends who knew me when I was young and unformed, and anything was possible.” Tears cascaded down her cheeks, tracing rivulets through powder. “I miss my old home. I miss my friends. I have never again felt as surrounded by people who cared about me. I have never felt as known.”
Henry gave her his handkerchief. His pain at seeing her pain was obvious in his eyes.
“Your friends are here,” I said. “You can call them. Visit them.” I thought of Sheila Smith, so obviously in need of friends, and Deborah Bennett, living her isolated life out on the point.
Caroline shook her head. “I can’t. Ever since that New Year’s Eve . . . I just can’t.” She dabbed at her eyes with Henry’s white hanky.
I wanted to go. I felt terrible that I stirred up so many deeply unhappy memories for Caroline, but I had to bait the hook. “While I was in Guilford, I met with the Lowes’ insurance agent,” I said. “He gave me the insurance company’s report on the fire.”
“Does it come to any conclusion?” Henry asked. He didn’t seem rattled or fearful.
“I don’t know,” I lied. “I haven’t looked. The agent gave me his original in a sealed manila envelope. I don’t want to disturb it. It’s evidence. I’m handing it over to Lieutenant Binder tomorrow when he’s expected back in town.”
Caroline looked at me. “I want to know what it says, but I’m afraid to know.”
“The police will know what’s in it soon enough,” I said.
I said my good-byes, and Henry saw me out. “What does the report say?” he asked as we stood on the front stoop.
“Honestly, I don’t know.” People always say “honestly” when they are being anything but, and I was no exception.
Henry’s bright blue eyes held mine. “Caroline thinks of Rabble Point as home. That’s why I brought her back here. Through all the years of moving and deployments, all I ever thought about was her. Wherever she and the girls were, that was home. I was an angry, sullen young man. Caroline, with her common sense and her generous heart, turned me into a better human being. Everything I have in my life, I have because of her. I would do anything in my power to make her happy. Anything.”
I wondered as I walked toward the Caprice: Anything?
* * *
I saw Fran’s car parked at the curbside when I pulled up at Walker’s Art Supplies and Frame Shop. I hoped that meant both Fran and Barry were in the store.
The little bell tinkled as I walked in. Barry was at work on a painting in the far corner of the store. Fran was behind the cash register. She looked up as soon as I entered, while Barry continued to work. I cleared my throat loudly. When he didn’t turn around, I shouted, “Barry!” just a little too loud.
“What? What? Julia, you scared me.”
“I’d like to speak with you both.”
Fran stepped quickly from behind the counter. “Certainly, dear. What’s the matter?”
I walked to the high framing table and waited for Barry to join us. He reluctantly scraped the knife he was using to apply the thick paint on his palate, then put it down.
“I went to Guilford, Connecticut, yesterday,” I said. Better to get straight to it. Both of them looked at me expectantly, like they knew that couldn’t be all my news. “I know about the fire.”
Barry stepped closer to Fran, though he didn’t touch her. “That was such a tragic part of our lives,” he said. “We try not to dwell on it.”
Fran shook her head in agreement. “Not a happy time.”
“No,” I said. “I’m sure it was very stressful. Even more stressful for you, Fran, because you were pregnant when it happened. Quinn is Michael Smith’s daughter.”
Fran sat heavily on a stool. “How did you guess?”
“It took a long time,” I admitted. “Something bugged me about that yacht club photo. It wasn’t until I saw Quinn here in the store on Wednesday that I saw the resemblance and the pieces fell into place.”
“If you’d known Michael when he was younger, you’d see it even more clearly,” Barry said.
“Does Michael know about Quinn?” I asked.
Fran shook her head. “I was living in Maine. Michael was in Connecticut. We’d been drifting apart for a while, but our bond had been so strong, and our relationship gone on for so long, neither of us had the strength to break it. Or so I thought.” She paused, gathering herself. “I planned to tell him I was pregnant that New Year’s weekend. Instead, I watched him spend the evening flirting with a drunken Sheila. As we drove back from Madeleine and Howell’s house to his apartment in New Haven, Michael told me it was over. I was so upset, I made him take me straight to the train station. I was on the first train to Boston at four that morning. I didn’t hear about the fire until Michael called me the next day.”
“Yet you still didn’t tell him about the pregnancy.”
“No. His parents had never accepted me, the cleaner’s daughter, in all the years we’d been together. I’d always feared he’d cave in to their pressure and settle with someone more appropriate. Sheila was back in his life and available. I could imagine what his parents were going to say when they found out I was expecting. Poor girl traps rich guy by getting knocked up. Why would I put myself in that situation?
“I couldn’t stay here in town, either. My mother had been expecting disaster the whole time I was with Michael. She predicted—well, exactly what happened is what she predicted. That he would marry a college-educated girl who knew what fork to use at a dinner party and I would end up alone and pregnant. So I did what any other self-respecting person did at the time. I joined a commune.”
Fran smiled, and the mood in the room lightened. “What idiots we were. We were going back to the land—in a place with more rocks than soil in the ground and the shortest growing season ever. Still, it was a good place for Quinnie to spend her early years. Lots of fresh air and a house full of caring adults and children to play with. It took the sting out of being the only child of a single mother.”
“But, how did Barry . . . ?”
“Barry showed up three years later. He’d called my mother to find out where I was. He was a natural for the commune. He moved in on his first visit. When the commune finally went belly-up, we were among the last to leave.”
“Enid and I had announced our engagement at the New Year’s Eve party,” Barry said, unaware I already knew. “But after everything that happened, it was clear she was going to devote her life to that little boy. On top of everything else, she was broke. Austin’s grandfather had left everything in trust until he turned twenty-one. Old Mr. Lowe never anticipated the kid’s parents would die so young, and then he died himself before he changed his will. I tried to stick with Enid, to support her, but I didn’t have two nickels to rub together, and fewer prospects. She finally told me she needed to focus only on Austin. I was heartbroken, but I understood.
“After we broke up, eventually, I wondered why I was hanging around in Connecticut. My heart was in Maine. When I arrived in town, I called Fran’s mother. I expected to hear that Fran and Michael were married. Instead I got an earful about boys From Away who use local girls then shirk their responsibilities. But she did relent and tell me how to find Fran. From ten minutes after I walked into that drafty, rickety commune farmhouse, I wondered why I hadn’t been with Fran all along. And Quin
n . . .”
Fran put her hand over mine. “Those days after the fire were the darkest of my life. I was alone, traumatized, broke, pregnant, and cut off from my friends. But now, when I look back on it, everything turned out the way it should have. Michael was an immature man, dominated by his parents and rebelling in unproductive ways. I couldn’t see it then, but I see it clearly now. He used to complain to me about how hard his life was. His life! With his prep school and his Ivy League education. The crazy part is, I fell for it. I was head over heels for him.” She released my hand and turned both of hers hands palm up, as if willing me to believe. “Barry is ten times the man Michael Smith could ever be. Ten times the father. Ten times the husband to me.”
“Aw, luv.” Barry kissed the top of her head, pulling more strands of hair out of her bun. I doubted he heard sentiments like that very often from his acerbic, Mainer-to-the-bone wife.
“Does Quinn know?” I asked.
“She knows Barry isn’t her biological father. She could handle it if we told her. But Michael . . .” Fran shivered. “I don’t fear Michael. I fear the wrath of Sheila.”
“Which is what makes it so scary that someone else knows. Right, Barry?” I asked.
Barry studied a crack in the table, tracing it with his finger.
“Tell her,” Fran said. “She’s already guessed.”
“When Phil came into the store that first time, Quinn was here. He recognized her resemblance to Michael instantly. He’s a portraitist, after all.” Barry sighed at the inevitability of this collision. “The second time, when Phil and I went to lunch together, he asked me flat out if Michael knew. I said neither Fran nor I had heard from Michael in decades.”
“I had heard some people named Smith bought the Fogged Inn,” Fran added. “But it’s such a common name. I didn’t think anything of it.”
“Phil felt strongly that Michael should know,” Barry continued. “That’s when he told me that Michael had married Sheila and they were here in the harbor. They’d been unable to have children. Phil swore he hadn’t seen Michael in years, but he seemed to know an awful lot about how Michael and Sheila’s lives had gone. It struck me as curious at the time. As if he’d been keeping tabs on them all these years.”