A Face at the Window

by Sarah Graves

  The harmless chatter of his children, and Clarissa's gentle concern, would only be fresh torture, reminding her of Ellie and Lee; if she could, she'd have crawled down into a hole much deeper than the one in the sidewalk, pulled the cool, dark earth in over herself, and wept.

  But she couldn't. She had to stay calm, keep her mind clear for when Campbell called again.

  Which he would. Otherwise, what was the point to him having done so in the first place? She had to figure out what came next, too, Bob's order to sit tight and do nothing being sensible, but impossible to obey.

  At the moment, though, all she knew how to do was work. So she forced herself to continue on with the sidewalk project while her cell phone kept ringing, each time making her throat close with anxiety and each time not being Campbell.

  As if triggered by her thought, it rang once more. "Ma, d'you want me to come home?" Sam asked when she'd told him what was happening. "I can be up there in a couple of hours. I could help with the…"

  Search. Half of Eastport was already out knocking on doors, stomping through bushes, and peering into sheds and boat-houses, while the other half made sandwiches and brewed coffee. She'd have been, as well, but she needed to stay near the house phone, not just her cell, in case…

  "No, Sam, thanks for asking." His new place in Portland was a tiny apartment near the water where he would share a small yard and a big dog with the woman who owned the house.

  "I'm fine," she lied, hoping he wouldn't get bored and decide to find someplace livelier. He was in a sober phase, now. But that could change any minute.

  "Why don't you just go on doing what you're doing? That way you'd be fresh if they ended up—"

  Needing you. But from the remainder of this thought her mind recoiled. Surely they'd be found soon. "And when your grandfather and Bella call later, I know they'll decide to…"

  Come home. For a moment she allowed herself to imagine the comfort it would bring, having Sam around. But—"I won't be alone for long. Gramps and Bella will want to get back right away when they hear. And it helps, knowing you'd come if I did ask."

  "Okay," he said reluctantly, and when they'd hung up she turned back to the concrete mix bag. If the hole you were fixing was small, you were to clear it thoroughly, then wet its edges. But this one was a crater, big enough to swallow a dog or cat. Or a small child…No. Don't think that.

  She considered calling Sandy O’Neill again, but she'd tried several times already and gotten either a busy signal or the infernal voice mail. She'd tried Ellie and George's cell, too, but either it wasn't working or they'd turned it off.

  Kneeling, Jake dug away more soil and stones. The concrete bag's instructions echoed Tom Godley's advice to make the hole a lot wider at the bottom than at the top…

  Her phone rang again. "Hey."

  "Wade…" At the sound of his voice, even distant and tinny sounding as it was over the Comsat system the freighters used to communicate ship-to-shore, she felt her resolve buckle.

  "… anything?" The connection was crackly

  "No." Any hint of panic from her and he'd be here right away, never mind what kind of emergency anyone else was having; she straightened, gripping the phone. "Everyone's looking. Cops from all over the state are here. Bob's going to try to get hold of Ellie and George; I can't seem to. Wade, this is all…"

  My fault. But it wasn't, and anyway that was another thing that if she said it, he would come home despite the freighter out there wallowing helplessly.

  "I miss you," she told him instead. "But I'm all right."

  Much more of this and her pants would catch fire. She pictured him high up on the freighter's comm deck, the other men waiting for him to get back to work.

  "… you…" The connection was breaking up.

  "I love you, too." Static in reply; reluctantly she pressed Disconnect, as another wave of fright hit her hard. Where are they? But that way lay disaster; if something happened she had to be ready for it.

  Which meant she should eat something, whether she wanted to or not. Inside, the afternoon light slanted through the kitchen's tall, bare windows, brightening the jar of red dahlias she'd picked and placed there only that morning. As she was putting a slice of cheese onto a slice of dry bread, the phone rang again; this time it was the cordless in the phone alcove, not her cell.

  "Jake? You okay?" Another crackly connection.

  "Yes, I'm fine," she said as her heart rate slowed.

  Not Campbell. "Who is this?" she began, annoyed. But then with a guilty start she realized. "Dad. Hey, sorry about that."

  He'd planned to fix the sidewalk himself; doing it without telling him made her feel suddenly like a naughty child. "You heard about Lee and Helen?"

  "Yes." Around here, news traveled almost as fast between islands as on them. "Mail boat came, fellow runnin’ it had the story. Listen, I don't like your being there alone."

  If anyone understood Ozzie Campbell, it was Jacob Tiptree. The two had been longtime friends until one blasted the other's life to bits. "I'm fine, Dad," she said.

  For an instant it was as if he were right there with her, smelling of Old Spice, brick dust, and Tom's of Maine toothpaste while planning how to attack the hole in the concrete.

  The ferry could have him and Bella home tonight but his next words dashed this hope. "Ferry's down. Repairs. To morrow, too."

  Her heart sank. "Oh. That's too bad." She forced confidence into her voice. "But look, you and Bella don't have to rush home. There's nothing to do but wait."

  The back door stood open, and while she was talking a squad car zoomed by, driven by a uniform cop but carrying men in suits.

  "How's Bella?" she asked. Keeping her voice even; she hadn't known how much she had been counting on their return until the prospect was snatched away.

  "She's fine." He chuckled drily. "Gave the poor fellow at the ferry dock the wet-hen treatment when she found out the boat wasn't going, but that didn't do any good."

  Jake imagined Bella Diamond dressing down the unfortunate ticket agent. With her big, bad teeth, her grape-green bulging eyes, and her bony face twisted into the variety of outraged scowl only she could really produce properly, no doubt she'd gone right up one side of that poor ferry guy and down the other.

  Still, when there was no ferry, there was no ferry. For an emergency, a helicopter could be summoned, but…

  " ‘Copter's in St. John with a sick kid," Jacob Tiptree said as if reading her thought. "And for light air traffic it's a tad breezy. Gale flags're up."

  Those storms coming tonight, she remembered. And the remote, windswept isle of Grand Manan where her dad and Bella had gone was no kiddy ride by propeller-driven plane, even in the best of weather. Not that he'd have been able to get Bella onto any such damn-fool gizmo, as she'd have called it.

  "Anyway, she's got our room in the motel spic and span, and if I don't go grab her she'll be starting on the lobby area."

  "I can see it," she said, managing a weak chuckle. But then the horror of what had happened came over her again. "Dad…"

  "I'll take her on a tour," he said, not seeming to notice.

  But he had. It was a sort of good-news, bad-news feature of their relationship that even after many years of no communication between them at all, he could still read her so clearly.

  "Did you know," he went on in the deep, gravelly voice she used to hear in her dreams all the while he'd been on the run, "that New Brunswick was set up by Canada as a refuge for British Loyalists from America, after the Revolution?"

  Tears prickled her eyes. "No," she said lightly through the tightness in her throat. "I didn't know that."

  His ancestors, and hers, had taken great glee in picking off the hated redcoats with flintlock muskets, the equivalent of 12-gauge shotguns, from their hiding places in the Kentucky hills.

  Another squad car went by, this one with its lights flashing although no siren was on. "Dad, I've got to go. Somebody might be trying to…"

  Call. But she did
n't want to discuss that with him. He was fully capable of commandeering a fishing boat to get back here if he had to, and even the suggestion that his old nemesis Campbell was behind this—

  "All right," he said. And then, "You remind me of your mom, d'you know that?" A rush of feeling washed over her; despite the long separation they'd had, his approval was important to her.

  Or perhaps because of it, as if they were making up for lost time. "Not just because you look just like her, either," he said.

  The spitting image, actually, although her mother had been barely out of her teens when she died. Same dark hair, lean face, and alert expression…sometimes it seemed Jake had inherited all her physical features from her mother, and none from her dad.

  "She had your nerve," he finished almost tenderly, and Jake could almost see him reminiscently touching the ruby earring in his ear. He'd asked Bella if she wanted him to take it out, to which the housekeeper had replied Of course not, you fool, and meant it.

  His voice regained its usual dry forcefulness. "Before I go, though, Jacobia, I wanted to remind you, that broken sidewalk's no amateur project. Don't let your eyes get bigger'n your toolbox."

  Caught. He knew her, all right. And when he called her by her full name, the jig was definitely up. "Uh-huh. I'm aware of that, don't worry. How's your foot?" she changed the subject.

  His fall on the fractured concrete had been so spectacular, it seemed the only one not still horrified over it was the victim himself. "The cast feels like it's made of lead," he groused.

  In the background she heard gulls crying, and a foghorn's two-note hoot. "Soon as I get home," he went on, "I'm going to get a hacksaw, stick my leg out in front of me, and—"

  He'd do it, too; yet another reason it was as well he stayed away. "Look, you just take care of yourself and Bella, okay? I'm fine, I talked to Wade, and Bob and Clarissa have invited me to stay with them. I might, or Sam might come up tonight, so…"

  So she wouldn't be alone. It was only a small lie, she told herself, maybe not even entirely one since whatever he said, you never knew when Sam would show up for a meal and a night in what he still thought of as his own bed.

  Silence from her dad, while he decided whether or not to call her on the fib. Then: "All right," he said finally, and hung up just as a third squad car raced by the house. In its wake came Tom Godley in the pickup truck with Wadsworth's Hardware Store stenciled freshly in white on the new, candy-apple red paint.

  Tom slowed, leaning toward the passenger-side window when he saw her coming out.

  "They've found something," he said.

  She had to get away. And she had to get Lee away, too.

  Helen Nevelson lay half on and half off the wide backseat of the old car they'd bundled her into, trying to think through the blinding pain in her head.

  And the terror in her heart. They were on Route 1, heading toward the town of Calais and the Canadian border just beyond.

  But they couldn't be trying to get out of the country; the border control officer would see her, gagged and tied back here. So they must be going somewhere else, but where?

  Lee was still asleep, her hair fanned out over her smooth, pink cheek. Tears leaked from Helen's eyes; she hadn't protected the little girl. She'd tried, but she hadn't. They'd been too strong. And now, unless she thought of a way out of this, something awful was going to happen.

  The gag in her mouth had compressed between her teeth so it wasn't choking her so much, now. But it wasn't slipping off, and neither were the ropes around her ankles and wrists.

  The guy behind the wheel hummed a tune to himself over and over. By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful…

  Bastard, Helen thought. Evil, cruel…She hiked herself up painfully so she could see out the front window. Cars went by in the opposite direction, coming from Wal-Mart or the Shop ‘n Save. People on errands, not knowing she was in here screaming at them in her head.

  Screaming for help, but there wasn't going to be any, she knew that now. Not unless she did something—and anyway, the best help, her stepfather Jody Pierce always liked to tell her, was the help you gave yourself.

  A sob swelled in her chest as she thought of the look she'd always given him when he said things like that. Stupid Jody, boring Jody. Wanting her to do stupid, boring things, like fishing or hunting. Or hiking around in the woods, where he was always full of useless advice, like what to do if you got lost.

  Yeah, she'd thought, slapping at a mosquito or smearing on more greasy sunscreen lotion. Like that's ever going to happen. Like I'm ever going to be in the woods without you forcing me to go on one of these stupid outings with you.

  Like we're ever going to be friends. Now she'd have given anything to see him again, hear his dumb outdoor safety rules and the routines he made her follow. Such as wearing sturdy shoes or boots instead of sandals when you went out hiking, and right this minute she was barefoot. She hadn't been wearing shoes or socks when these guys burst in, and they wouldn't let her take the time to find some, just started hitting and grabbing.

  More tears…God, she was so scared. But then just ahead she saw a cop car coming toward them in the southbound lane.

  Coming fast. Quickly she slid sideways behind the driver's seat. Then she bent her knees up tightly under her chin. If she shoved both feet hard into the back of the front seat, it might slide forward.

  The driver guy might lose control and swerve, even if only a little. The cop would see. And then…

  The driver guy glanced at her in the rearview. "You wanna die right now? Want me to put a bullet in your freakin’ head?"

  The cop car sped past. He might have seen her if she hadn't slid down below window level to get her feet up high enough to kick with.

  But she had, so he hadn't. Then: "You ready for later?" the driver guy asked the guy in the passenger seat. His name was Anthony. The driver had said it earlier, dragging the name out sarcastically for some reason she didn't understand.

  "You better be getting it straight in your head," the driver went on to his partner. "Wouldn't hurt, you have another look at the map, there. Make sure you remember the road by the thing, the whaddyacallit."

  "Promontory," said Anthony distractedly. "They got it marked on the tourist flyer I picked up in the hardware store. And those whirlpool signs lead right to it, that we saw on the way there."

  The cliffs, Helen realized; they were talking about the high cliffs back in Eastport at the south end of the island. She knew the area well; it was one of the places the kids went in summer, at night. Boys mostly, but girls, too, when their boyfriends talked them into it. For a while over the summer, Helen had slipped out at night and gone to the cliffs with Tim pretty often.

  Once when she'd been there, a guy visiting from Bangor had clipped his belt to the big steel cable that ran to the survey marker on the rocks out in the water, trying to play Spider Man. There'd been a party there just last night, but she hadn't gone. She'd had to get up early this morning to get ready to take care of Lee, and besides, after hanging out with Tim Barnard for most of the summer she'd had enough beer drinking and pot smoking to last her the rest of her whole life.

  Now she wished she'd gone to the party and gotten stupid on booze-laced energy drinks, the big fad now among kids too young to be drinking at all, then stayed in bed this morning pleading a headache instead of doing what she'd promised to do. Maybe then she wouldn't be in this fix.

  But she was, so now she lay tied up in the backseat of a speeding car, listening hard in hopes of hearing something else that might help her.

  "Yeah, well, make sure you know how to get away from your big fancy word, not just to it," the driver said sourly. "It's the away part we want to be clear on, you dope."

  He hadn't liked it that Anthony knew the word "promontory," Helen could tell. He seemed mean like that, as if he enjoyed getting the chance to make somebody else feel bad. Helen didn't know what his name was, and by now she was pretty certain neither one of them meant to give her the c
hance to find out.

  Not that she cared. But she had to try to listen and find out everything about them so she could tell someone, later. Jody, the police…

  If there was a later. "How far we gotta go?" the driver demanded. "Jeeze, these rural areas go on freakin’ forever."

  "Not far," Anthony said, frowning at the map spread across his knees. "Half a mile, maybe, on the left. Little dirt road; I think we gotta watch for it."

  She hiked herself back up. On either side of Route 1 spread rolling fields full of goldenrod and black-eyed Susans. Here and there long driveways led off through fields of wildflowers to the treed hills on one side, or the sparkling bay on the other.

  The trees were just barely beginning to turn, red and gold flaming amidst the green leaves. A herd of black-and-white cows stood in the shade of a cedar windbreak; on the mainland the sun still got hot in the daytime, although the nights were already bitter previews of the coming winter.

  Half a mile … it passed in the time it took her to realize where they must be going, and then they reached the turn onto the old abandoned logging track that meandered around Money Lake.

  The car bottomed out with a huge bang, then bounced through a series of holes and craters while the driver cursed loudly. He didn't slow down, though, as if he were in a hurry to get deeper into the woods.

  Lee whimpered fretfully in her sleep. "Freakin’ place," the driver commented as they bumped along.

  Nobody maintained this road, which was rarely used by anyone but hunters and, in winter, a few ice fishermen and snow-mobilers. Logging trucks had beaten it into grooves that the weather and an occasional all-terrain vehicle's passage had only deepened.

  But once all the logs were cut and hauled off, the trucks had gone, leaving the rough ruined land littered with stumps and piles of dead branches like blackened miniature mountains.

  "You do that thing okay, with her car?" the driver guy asked his partner.