Firefly Beach

by Luanne Rice

  After the inquest, they drove home. They climbed into the station wagon, solemn but relieved. Everyone rallied around Skye. She had just been cleared of homicide. Augusta was at Firefly Hill, waiting to greet them. But Caroline was—as always—the surrogate mother. She wrapped Skye in a plaid blanket. She settled her in the backseat and Clea sat beside her. Caroline rode in front with their father.

  The way-back was for Homer. They stopped by the pound to pick him up. Walking into the concrete building, they could hear the heartbroken howling. Handing Hugh papers to sign, the attendant went to get the dog. Caroline was sick with anticipation. She was afraid he would see his master’s killers and bare his teeth. But at the sight of her, Homer stopped his noise.

  Clea had the rear hatch up to let the dog into the way-back. She had made him a bed with an old beach blanket. But walking over to the car, Hugh shut the hatch door. He looked at Caroline.

  “He likes you,” he said.

  “I don’t know why,” she said, looking away. “I was there when—”

  “You’re helping him, Caroline,” Hugh said. “Let him ride in front with you. It’ll make him feel safe.” Her father’s expression was unfamiliar, and looking back, Caroline realized she was seeing the first signs of agonized sorrow.

  Homer traveled the whole way to Connecticut with his head on Caroline’s thigh. He whimpered at first, but then he stopped. Clea had her earphones on, and she recited her French dialogue to herself. Skye, Caroline, and Hugh didn’t speak at all. But every so often Hugh would reach across the seat to pat Homer’s head. To look at Caroline and try to read her eyes. To pretend to smile.

  Extraordinary ways.

  Joe Connor stood in the Meteor’s cabin, watching the calm water. The wind had been steady all day, making waves that churned up the sea column. It had died at six, and now that it was too dark to dive, the surface was glass. He gazed forward as the line of the bow tilted up to meet the sky, then settled down. Overhead the sky was a jumble of stars. Joe looked back on his day, wishing he could have done more.

  Strong currents had kept his crew away from the wreck. A weather system off Hatteras was making big waves offshore, creating a dangerous undertow. Joe had sent divers down every hour, had gone down himself in the morning, and again just before dark. But the water had been moving too fast to attempt much of anything.

  Yet in the short time they had been on-site, they had moved forward. They had charted the wreck, cleared mud and sand. They had taken underwater photos, analyzed the timbers, examined the ship’s construction. Their consensus was that the ship had been built in England before 1800, probably before 1750. Based on Caroline’s letter written to Joe in 1971, he knew they had located the Cambria.

  Caroline’s letter and the gold.

  They were beginning to uncover gold coins. The sea bottom was treacherous, a forest of broken spars: the vessel’s splintered masts and yards. The jagged wood could snag a diver’s air hose or slice through his wetsuit to the skin. Getting through the wreckage took care and concentration, like cutting a path through dense woods. But along the way they were finding treasure.

  It cost a fortune to find a treasure. Joe was paying out of his own pocket, and he hated to see a day pass without real progress. He wanted to finish this project fast. A bunch of the guys had gone ashore to carouse at the Catspaw Tavern, and he was beginning to think he should have gone with them.

  One of the launches was coming back. He heard the drone of the engine getting closer. He watched it circle the Meteor once, then tie up to the stern. Dan climbed aboard.

  “Hey, skipper,” Dan called, coming into the wheelhouse.

  “Forget something?”

  “No, I just don’t feel like going out. Tired of everyone, I guess.”

  “I know what you mean,” Joe said. The crew got cranky on days when they couldn’t dive much. Too much togetherness, hearing each other complain. Everyone began to miss their shore lives, their wives and children or girlfriends or whomever they cared about, and it began to show. Joe, who had never really made himself a shore life, missed having one at all.

  “These came for you,” Dan said, tossing some letters and a big brown envelope on the chart table. “The dockmaster asked me to deliver them.”

  There was a letter from his brother Sam. He’d been feeling lonely, restless at sea, and the sight of the letter made him glad. At first glance the big envelope looked official. Probably lab work on the sail and timber fragments he’d sent to Woods Hole, or historical documentation from his friend in the map department at Yale. But then he saw the familiar handwriting. He would have known it anywhere. He wondered why Caroline would be writing to him now. Only one way to find out. Laying the other mail aside, he ripped open the package.

  It contained a thick sheaf of photocopied papers. Joe glanced at them; they were dated 1769, written in small, neat penmanship. Caroline had sent a note on pale blue stationery. He could see by the telltale smudges that she had used a fountain pen, and he remembered that she had sometimes used one when they were kids.

  Dear Joe,

  My niece showed me this diary, and I thought it might interest you. It was written by Clarissa Randall, whose mother was the woman who ran away with the captain of the Cambria. I haven’t read it all the way through, but it tells a little about what life was like living at a lighthouse in the 1700s, having one of your parents run away for the love of someone else and never come back home. Sounds too familiar…

  It made me wonder if that’s why you’re diving on the Cambria. Not that it’s any of my business, of course. I can’t imagine how you’re going to react to getting this from me, but I hope you’ll take it in the spirit of scholarship. I do feel partly responsible for you being here, after all. Visiting my mother at Firefly Hill, I looked out the window and saw your boats. I felt kind of proud, actually.

  The flowers you sent Skye were beautiful.

  Yours,

  Caroline

  Joe glanced at the diary. Starting out, he had control of his feelings. He read the first few entries; it looked like the real thing, a faithfully reproduced handwritten account by a member of the woman’s family. It contained descriptions of the area, a little about her family life. But as the meaning of Caroline’s letter sank in, he felt the heat rising in his neck. Dan was right beside him, and Joe kept his face free of expression.

  “She’s a brave woman,” he said.

  “What?” Dan asked.

  “Nothing,” Joe said. Brave or crazy, he thought. What the hell kind of nerve did she have, making parallels between the Cambria and his family? Death and infidelity. Not exactly the kind of stuff he wanted to think about. Coming up here, he knew he’d have to face complicated emotions connected to his father. But he was a grown man, sober a long time, and he had put the past behind him, regardless of what Caroline Renwick might think.

  Then, to make his night complete, he opened the letter from Sam. Knowing what it said, he read it anyway. He must have groaned, because Dan looked over.

  “The kid still coming?” Dan asked.

  “Yep,” Joe said.

  “He likes shipwrecks, huh? How’s it feel to be a role model?”

  “Fucking wonderful,” Joe said, smiling ruefully.

  “Kid’s got balls, I’ll give him that,” Dan said, chuckling. “You send him packing every time, but he keeps coming back for more.”

  “He’s tough,” Joe said quietly.

  The night was still. The Meteor rocked on the quiet sea. Joe stood at his chart table, staring at the letters. The green-shaded lamp threw soft light, easy on the eyes. Waves slapped the hull. Maybe he should ask Caroline out here so she could see that the excavation was about gold and scholarship, nothing messy and emotional. He wanted daylight, so he could work and dive. He didn’t want to think about the people in his life, the people who could make him feel the way he did inside right now. Sad and angry, and as though he had lost something he couldn’t quite name.

  Caroline stood at
the top of Serendipity Hill and stared out to sea. She was out of breath from climbing the steep and narrow trail. She gazed over the towns of Hawthorne and Black Hall, followed the Ibis River to where it met the Connecticut, then into Long Island Sound. Lights twinkled throughout the area. Caroline counted two lighthouses along the Connecticut coast and four across the Sound, on Long Island. She saw lights on a ship and wondered whether it was the Meteor.

  A nightbird called up the hill. It sounded lonely and beautiful and reminded Caroline of nights on the mountain. She rested for a minute, sitting very still and trying to locate the bird in the trees. Its song was clear, coming from a grove of dark pines. The air smelled spicy. An owl swept through, its wings beating loudly.

  As much as Caroline had hated the hunts, there had been parts of them she loved. The feeling of solitude, hiking up narrow paths that gave onto vistas of sweeping beauty, blue valleys heavy with summer haze. Sleeping outside, the feeling of air moving on her bare arms, had made her feel free. Caroline had always loved nature. She had loved the surprise of hiking, of coming across an animal or bird she hadn’t expected to see. She just hadn’t liked killing them.

  Her father had tried to teach his daughters his sport, but you can’t impose blood lust on those who don’t have it. Caroline remembered killing the fox. She had felt like a murderer. It had been December, and that night she had seen the northern lights for the first time. She had held the fox in her arms. Its body had kept her warm.

  Now, alone on her mountain perch, she looked for a star to wish on, in memory of Andrew Lockwood. She always did. Finding one, she shivered, even though the summer night was warm. Then she found one for her father. Thinking of her father wasn’t always easy. But she made herself do it anyway.

  Breathing the sea air, Caroline wondered whether Joe had received her package. She wondered whether her note would anger him, but it didn’t matter. She hadn’t written it for his reaction. Standing on the hilltop, watching the ship she imagined to be Joe’s, Caroline felt a mystical communion with him. He had to love nature to spend so much time at sea.

  Hating to hunt, Caroline was guilty of loving to catch fish. She loved the initial grab, the pull on the line, the tension between her and the fish. When she looked in its eye, she felt a strange kinship with the creature. Usually she let it go. She had spent time trolling Moonstone Reef. Stripers and blues were common in August; tautog and flounder lived on the bottom. She knew the wreck attracted fish, and she wondered whether Joe saw them or whether he had eyes only for the gold.

  Maybe he wouldn’t care about Clarissa’s diary at all. Perhaps he only wanted the treasure, didn’t care about the story behind it. He had run from his own story. By the time Caroline had been ready to tell him her part in it, he had been too angry to hear.

  Or too afraid.

  By the time Caroline walked down the trail, the half-moon had traversed the sky. She heard night creatures rustling in the trees, but she didn’t feel afraid. Her feet were sure on the steep path; she held a walking stick in her hand. She followed the Ibis River to the inn’s grounds, where the guests were having a party. She heard their music, their drunken cries. A group had taken off their clothes and were standing in the shallow water.

  When she got to her cottage, she heard her phone ringing.

  She almost didn’t answer. At this hour it would be her mother. She would have been drinking, and she want to apologize for their unpleasant visit earlier. Caroline stared at the phone. She counted the rings: five, six…

  But what if it were Skye? What if something had happened? Caroline picked up.

  “Hello?” she said.

  No one spoke. The line crackled with static. The call seemed to be coming from a long way away, from halfway around the world, or from another hemisphere, from an airplane over the ocean…

  Or from a boat.

  Caroline imagined she could hear the wind and waves. She listened hard. She could almost hear someone breathing. But no one was there. The call was nothing more than crossed wires. The static buzzed like a ferocious swarm of bees, and then it was gone.

  The line was silent.

  Caroline hung up.

  Early the next morning, Michele teetered on a wooden ladder, starting to hang Japanese lanterns. The ball was days away, but it took time to get the inn ready. The trees were hung with a hundred candelabra, the dance floor was installed. Caroline called it the Firefly Ball, in honor of her parents, and she wanted candlelight to do the night justice. She had ordered beeswax candles from the Bridal Barn, and May Taylor had just brought them over.

  May and her family—three generations of women—ran the Barn, planning weddings for women of the shoreline, making products from their herb garden. May and her five-year-old daughter, Kylie, seemed so excited about the ball, about the fact their wonderful, luminous candles would light every table.

  Thirty round tables were stacked behind the barn, the long white damask tablecloths were expected back from the laundry that afternoon. The Japanese lanterns were bright and fragile; they danced on a wire strung around the perimeter of the inn’s back lawn. She hoped the heat would return, as it always did, every year, for the night of the ball.

  A tropical depression was chugging up from Savannah, bringing muggy air and temperatures in the nineties. Michele knew Caroline wished the night of the ball to be hot and steamy. Caroline loved the look of men without their jackets, their starched white shirts clinging to their sweaty backs; she wanted the women with bare shoulders and bare feet, dancing in the cool grass. The Firefly Ball was a night for artists to be wild and expressive, free of constraints and inhibitions.

  Every year, Caroline chose a different theme—taking cues from various art forms. This year the theme was to be “My Favorite Painting.” People really showed their different styles. Clea and Peter always attended in costume. Last year, for their favorite song, they had dressed as “Rhapsody in Blue,” two lovers wrapped in blue chiffon. Skye and Simon had come straight from their studios in the barn, still in their paint-and-clay–stained work clothes, many of which were strewn, as the night progressed, in various bushes around the property. But Caroline the hostess always simply wore a gown.

  Michele wondered what everyone would wear this year. She and Tim planned to dress as characters from Seurat’s Grande Jatte. Michele had a long white dress and a parasol, and Tim would look adorable in his spats and bowler hat. Caroline always insisted that they attend as her guests—not to work, but to revel.

  Standing halfway up the ladder, a crimson lantern in her hand, Michele spotted Simon Whitford. He was on the inn’s porch, hands on his hips, squinting into the sun. He had that dark artist look to him, one of the brilliant ones who couldn’t be held to the rules of ordinary men. But Simon was trompe l’oeil: a fake trying to be Hugh Renwick.

  Poor Skye, Michele thought. Marrying a man with her father’s fierce moods and none of his tender heart. Michele wondered why he was there. To see Skye, no doubt. Caroline certainly hadn’t invited him to the Firefly Ball. The confrontation was coming: From her perch on the ladder Michele could see Caroline coming out of the inn, straight into Simon’s path. She held on tight, leaning out for a better view.

  Caroline had lain awake too long the previous night. The telephone call with no one there had unsettled her. She had tossed and turned, unable to get comfortable. After midnight, fog had closed in, swaddled the property, and given her a headache. The foghorns had wailed. Caroline had waited for the phone to ring again, but it never did.

  But that morning at work, first thing, Michele had placed a message on her desk. It was from Joe Connor, an invitation to dinner aboard the Meteor. The telephone connection had been terrible, Michele said. So filled with static, it sounded like the ship might be riding out a thunderstorm. Afraid he would lose the transmission, Joe had talked fast, asked Michele to tell Caroline if she wanted to visit the excavation, she should be at the dock at eight on Thursday.

  Bleary and frazzled, Caroline felt co
nfused. He cut her out of his life, and now he wanted to have her over for dinner. Unsure of any of it, she walked down the back steps of the inn, straight into her brother-in-law.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Caroline asked, unable to believe her eyes.

  “Hello to you too, Caroline,” Simon said, grinding out his cigarette on the flagstone step.

  “I don’t want you here,” she said.

  “I’m here to see Skye,” he said. “Where am I supposed to stay? We gave up our place. I’m hardly welcome at your mother’s house.”

  “So you thought you’d stay at my inn? I think I’m safe in assuming you don’t intend to be a paying guest. You lost your brother-in-law privileges when you walked out on my sister.”

  “Let me stay, please, Caroline? I’ll sleep in the barn, in my old studio. I already checked—no one’s using it right now. I need to see Skye. I want to help her.”

  Caroline chewed the end of her pen. She stared at Simon. He was tall and lean with wild black hair and gaunt cheekbones, sunken black eyes with that sexy fire that drove Skye crazy and made Caroline and Clea mistrust him to their bones. He was ingratiating and manipulative. He wore black jeans that rode low on his skinny hips and a clean white tee-shirt with laundry-faded paint stains. He looked malnourished, dissipated, and artistically tormented.

  At her most cynical, Caroline wondered whether he had married Skye to complete the picture.

  “Well. Speak of the faithless devil,” came a voice from across the garden.

  At the sound of Clea’s voice, Caroline looked over her shoulder. Her beautiful sister came sauntering across the lawn, stunning in a salmon-pink sundress and big dark glasses. She circled Simon like a great white shark on a bleeding surfer.

  “Hi, Clea,” Simon said. Caroline didn’t want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but he did sound miserable. Together, she and Clea were his worst nightmare. He had hurt their little sister—hurt her badly—and she wondered how he felt, standing in their midst, bearing the brunt of their scorn and derision.