The Sea Horse Door

by Gina Rossi

  And Holly? Her head’s in the clouds of paradise with Recycling Centre Man, whose name is really Alan, and has no need of proximity to anyone else right now. As for other friends, and far-flung cousins—including busy-busy-busy Lauren in New York—we keep in touch on Facebook. It’s like I’ve never been away.

  All that said, and getting back to Lucas, there has been a slight shift in our relationship, though it’s hard to define. It’s different. Like we’re starting over, but from another place. He’s still paying me, which on one hand is weird, but on the other is amazing because I am working for it, that’s what we agreed, and I’m throwing chunks of money at my bank debt and, very soon, I’ll be back in control. It’s a good feeling.

  Furthermore, news just in: Seacrest Inn has requested two picnics for later in the week, and one for today, following Beryl’s ecstatic reviews. It seems my picnic has fortified that marriage for the next thirty years at least, and it’s fun to be part of that. Picnics, after all, do matter.

  On the way back from the inn, today’s picnic delivered, I’m cruising along in the Jeep on my way into town, minding my own business when a long, low, black car overtakes me on the blind corner. I tread on the brake as he cuts in front of me, missing an oncoming car by inches.

  “Ooh!” Alice shouts, from her child seat behind me. “Ooh, very fast. I love fast.”

  “That’s too fast, darling,” I tell her, flashing the headlights in anger as the car roars around the next curve. How dare he, when I’ve got Alice in the car! Coming into town, I pass the garage and see the same car, crouching on the forecourt next to one of the fuel pumps.

  Pulling up alongside, nose to tail, I roll down the window and observe. He’s a fat man—with a tattoo of barbed wire around one thick wrist and heavy, silver skull-and-crossbones rings—slotting his credit card into his wallet, car full, bill already paid. “I suppose you use a lot of petrol, driving like that,” I say.

  He looks up at me, chewing on a huge blob of gum like a moron. “Sure do, lil’ lady.” He grins, showing over-white teeth. As far as structural features go, he scores a neat zero. “We call it gas.”

  “People in Lobster Cove don’t drive like that. Besides, I have a child in the car. Please take care.”

  He laughs. “You kiddin’ me? You ain’t from this hick town now, are ya, Queenie? Hey. I’m here for a coupla days. Maybe I’ll see ya around!”

  I bristle, looking down on him, grateful that the Jeep is higher than the car he’s driving.

  “Queenie?” Alice says. “Can we visit Queen—”

  Her words are obliterated by Mr. Manners firing up his missile. He revs the engine to screaming point, and then rockets off onto the road, burning a trail of hot rubber on screeching tires.

  “What is it?” Alice asks.

  “A subhuman creature,” I tell her, smiling at Jay who’s come out of the workshop to see what’s going on.

  “One born every minute,” he says. “Ya looking for an egg, Alice?”

  We go home to Blue Rocks, Alice holding her egg with customary care and attention. While I’m preparing supper, it occurs to me that somehow, in spite of all the unknowns, in spite of my recent encounter with the King of Rude, I’ve never been this happy in my whole life. It’s a strong happiness; something I can build on.

  I’m so happy.

  At least until the following day, until Alice and I are playing with her dolls’ house up in her bedroom.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  It’s windy out. I start to teach Alice how to play French cricket on the grass in front of the house—even though there are only two of us—but the wind steals the plastic ball, tossing it into the battered shrubbery along the front of the house.

  “Come on, let’s go inside,” I say. In her bedroom, I brush the tangles from her hair and replace her hairband.

  “Look at my doll’s house.” She points.

  “I have. It’s lovely.”

  “Can we play?”

  We take cushions from the bed and settle down in front of the house. It’s new, white, tall and narrow, and opens by way of a façade of double doors with windows cut into them. There’s a kitchen on the ground floor, a living room on the second, a bedroom on the third, a bathroom and children’s room on the fourth and a room in the roof under the gable. I’m guessing an expensive present from Daddy, because the house is well-furnished, a little old for Alice, nevertheless beautiful.

  “You be this doll.” Alice points to a man doll, sitting on a sofa in the living room, reading a tiny newspaper. “He is Mr. Lady. I will be Mrs. Lady.” She points to Mrs. Lady, flat on her back in the kitchen, pots and pans awry.

  “I tell you what, Alice.” I pick up Mrs. Lady and walk her up the stairs. “Mrs. Lady needs a rest while Mr. Lady cooks the dinner.”

  Alice tweaks the newspaper out of his little hands and puts him upright at the stove. Mrs. Lady has her rest and Mr. Lady feeds and bathes the kids—a baby and a toddler I found in the roof—and puts them to bed. Mrs. Lady comes downstairs, they have diner à deux and go to bed. At this stage Alice closes the front of the house and makes me lie on the floor with her, on the cushions, so we can sleep too.

  Within two minutes, it’s morning in the Lady house.

  “The children must go to school,” Alice says.

  “What about the baby?”

  “The baby must stay at home.”

  “With the mummy?”

  “No,” Alice replies. “With the daddy.”

  “Oh. Does the mummy work?”

  “If she wants.”

  Guilty that I’ve been too harsh on poor Mr. Lady, I help him get breakfast and dress the kids. There’s a chest of drawers in the children’s bedroom, the drawers of which are stuck closed.

  “It doesn’t open,” Alice tells me.

  “But there’s stuff inside.” I shake the chest to illustrate my point.

  She shakes her head, and walks Mrs. Lady off to work across the bedroom floor.

  I fiddle and prise, and end up forcing the little drawer with a pair of Alice’s blunt-tipped scissors to satisfy my…

  Hold on a minute. What’s this?

  I look closer at the drawer, open now. There’s a coin, a large green bead, a miniature teacup and…

  And a ring. An adult’s ring that looks very much like a valuable, solitaire diamond set in platinum.

  Can it be—of course not. It’s a toy! I put the drawer back and it slides freely. Had someone glued it shut? What a stupid place to hide something like this.

  A hundred questions fly around my head, and none of the answers are pleasant.

  “Alice?”

  She turns to face me, on her knees.

  “Is this yours?” I hold up the ring.

  She nods.

  “Are you sure?” I ask.

  “No,” comes the answer, and she carries on with what she’s doing.

  Is it real? Alice tells me to hurry up and get the Lady child to school. I do, popping him into the “car”—the abandoned plastic lid of something—along with his dad and androgynous sibling, and sending them on their way.

  I should tell Lucas about this ring. I look at it from every angle, unable to tell if it’s real. Why wouldn’t it be real? But, if it’s real, why hide it here? Is it Bonny’s lost ring? I shiver. Why would she do that? Or him? Or maybe Alice? It’s utterly beautiful. I’m no expert, obviously, but I bet the stone’s flawless.

  Texting Lucas, I change my mind. I’d rather do this face to face, but why? So I can see his reaction? Why must I see his reaction? Don’t I trust him?

  “School’s finished,” Alice cries. “Mrs. Lady is coming home.”

  I fetch the children from school, under the bed, and turf them out at the house, reaching all sorts of conclusions about Lucas. If that ring is real, there are going to be ugly problems. If the ring is a fake—something out of a classy Christmas cracker, maybe?—there’s probably nothing to worry about, but I need to know.

  Mr. and Mrs. La
dy share evening chores and put their children to bed.

  “Alice, how about we drive to town for an ice-cream once Mr. and Mrs. Lady are in bed?”

  She’s enthusiastic, and the Ladys get an early night.

  “We’ll drive down to Bar Harbor,” I say. “Would you like that?”

  “Yes!”

  We’ll go to Bar Harbor because I can’t very well take the ring to a local jeweller, can I? Not in a town as small as Lobster Cove. Who knows how well the staff at Jewels of the Sea know Lucas, or the piece of jewellery in question? I touch the diamond sea horses in my earlobes. They sure wouldn’t forget him in a hurry after he bought these earrings. Even if he bought nothing, even if they didn’t know him, they would remember him. He’s like that. Impossible to forget. I stand on the threshold of the house, one hand on the sea horse handle.

  I hope everything’s going to be all right.

  “Come, I want ice-cream!” Alice is already at the car. I strap her into the child seat, check the ring is in my shirt pocket, get behind the wheel and we’re on our way.

  At the end of the drive, I look left and right, and—

  Why is that police car there? It’s that pleasant young officer, Nate Harris, who dismantled Agat’s mini-cross display, and one other, parked outside the Blue Rocks’ gate.

  Are they waiting for me? I look, again, for approaching traffic on the deserted road, make sure my indicator’s on and turn toward town. Driving slowly and checking my mirrors I see the blue and white car sway onto the road behind me. Am I being followed? Why?

  At the end of the road I turn left down Main and the police car follows. Are they going to tail me all the way to Bar Harbor? Because guess what? I’m not going there any more. I cruise down Main, check my mirrors again and see the car swing a right onto Maple. Phew. I touch my pocket where that ring, for some reason, is burning a hole. Why do I feel so guilty? I haven’t stolen it, have I? Am I being watched? Absolutely not. Nate Harris, parked outside Blue Rocks in that big cruiser is the least subtle method on the planet of “watching” somebody.

  And, yes, I feel guilty because I’m doing something really silly! I turn right onto Oak and right again onto First.

  “Why are we going back?” Alice asks.

  “To buy ice-cream at the grocery mart.”

  “But this is not Far Harbor!”

  “Maybe, just maybe, the ice-cream is better here in Lobster Cove.”

  She’s not convinced. Oh, and there’s Nate Harris again, parked outside the grocery mart, leaning against the car, impassive behind his Ray-Bans.

  I park right next to him. I mean, what else can I do?

  “Hello,” I say, getting out of the car, smiling. “Is it just me, or does everyone feel they’ve done something wrong when a police officer follows them?”

  He greets me, smiles back, polite. “Sometimes, seeing a police officer in the vicinity makes folks think twice about breaking the law.”

  What does he mean by that? “Well, I’m sure glad I haven’t done that,” I say firmly, getting Alice out of the car. Why am talking like an American?

  “We had a call this morning from one of caretakers up on Hidden Cove Drive about a pedigree shih tzu that had escaped the perimeter fence.”

  “That’s a dog, right?”

  “Sure is, and a real pretty one too.” He grins.

  I shrug, backing off. “Never a dull moment!”

  “You have a nice day, now.”

  The relief is exquisite, and it rinses me clean. I have no idea why. On the trip back to Blue Rocks, I think about it. I’m not guilty about having the ring, not at all, but rather about sneaking around behind Lucas’s back. It’s not right.

  “I love my blue ice cream,” Alice tells me, from the back seat.

  “Actually it’s red, Alice. Raspberry. A kind of pinky-red. Does daddy let you eat ice cream in the car?”

  “No.”

  Whoops. “Don’t mess then, see?”

  “I won’t.”

  She won’t. There’s not a molecule of that ice-cream going to waste.

  I smile. “What colour is the sea, Alice?”

  “Green.” She’s not far off.

  “And the sky?” I glance at her in the rear view mirror. She’s gazing up through the car window, smiling.

  After a while, she says, “It’s bluetiful.”

  Even Ruth Pick couldn’t argue with that.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  At home, I do what I should have done all along. I take a photo of the ring and send it to Lucas: Lucas, I found this in Alice’s room. Can she play with it, or should I keep it somewhere safe? L.

  That covers all the bases. I look at the message for a few moments, and add an X. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

  Lucas gets back to me: Sure she can play with it.

  Hm. Okay thanks X. Enough now.

  The next morning, seconds before I leave the school car park after delivering Alice, I get a message from Lucas: 2nd thought better not. Pse keep ring safe.

  I drive to Blue Rocks, fetch the ring and go straight to Bar Harbor.

  “I’d like to know what the stone is, please.” I ask the clerk in the first jewellery store I see. He calls the jeweller—a qualified gemmologist no less, lucky me—and the jeweller takes the ring into a little lab at the back of the shop. He looks at it for a long time before he comes back.

  “It’s an artificial diamond. An excellent replica of, I would say, a Tiffany design.”

  “Thank you. That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.”

  He gives me an odd look, speculating.

  There’s no charge, but I’m feeling expansive so I buy a black leather ring box with a gold mermaid stamped onto the lid. That’ll keep it safe.

  ****

  There, nothing’s changed. Although, something has changed. It’s a small change, but I actually get a message from Lucas telling me when he’ll be back from the Middle East. Cryptic communication, but still: Back Tues night late L X. At least I know. And there’s an X, oh yes there is. That’s new. Venturing from both sides, then.

  He’s not late: he’s early. The sea horse doorbell chimes around nine. When I open up I see, not Lucas, but Nate Harris.

  My heart stands still.

  Harris fills the doorway, but when he turns to the side, to acknowledge the person with him, I see that it’s Lucas, and I can breathe again. “Hello,” I say. “Is there a problem?”

  Lucas is drunk, and angry. I’d go as far as to say his eyes are murderous. He pushes past me into the house, colliding with the single piece of furniture in the hallway—the table near the bottom of the stairs—leaving me to face Nate who’s got an expression like a depressed undertaker.

  “What happened?” I step outside onto the porch, glancing behind me, hoping Lucas doesn’t lock me out of the house.

  “Some guy from out of town cast aspersions on the good folk of Lobster Cove.”

  “How?”

  He lets that go. “Hu tells me Lucas shoved him around sooner rather than later. He should have let it go.”

  I’m alarmed. “Has this happened before?”

  “No. And while the out-of-town gentleman in question is not—”

  “Gentleman?”

  “—is not the sort of person we’d like to encourage in Lobster Cove, Lucas cannot take the law into his own hands.” He glares at me, eyes cold and hard as coffin nails.

  “Yes, Officer.”

  “Lucas needs to put a lid on that temper of his, before things get outta hand.”

  “He doesn’t have a temper, but it’s a difficult time—”

  “Keep an eye on him, d’you hear?”

  “Yes, Officer.”

  He drives off, and I feel like the mother of a delinquent teenager, berated by a teenager.

  Inside, the house is quiet. Alice is fast asleep and Lucas must have gone to bed. I stand in the hall, not sure what to do. Lucas needs help, and I know of only one person who’s capable of giving it. I hope. It
’s not too late, so I call Lucas’s brother, John. He’s on voicemail. I leave a message for him to call me in the morning.

  I switch off lights, catch up on emails in my bedroom and go to bed myself. Lights off, I crack open the shutters and look out onto the sea. There’s a bright silver sickle moon—and a figure on the lawn, cold in the sharp cut of the early autumn night, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched, standing by the gate at the top of the steps to the cove. It has to be Lucas and, to make sure, I go down the passage to his room. The door’s open, and it’s empty. I go back to my bedroom and stand at the window again. He’s still there, gazing at the sea. What’s he thinking?

  Are Lucas and I actually friends? The reason I’m wondering is because I’m unsure what to do. Do I go outside and talk to him? What do I talk about? I can imagine the conversation. This is exactly how it would go:

  “Lucas, do you want to talk?”

  “No.”

  Does he need company? Comfort? To be left alone? I’m no good at fixing broken wings; I’m not sure it works. Has Lucas got broken wings, or is he soldiering on through a trauma, taking forever to get to the other side? The thing is, he asked me to stay; he started this new phase of my life. He came after me, at the airport, after we’d said goodbye, cancelled my flight and brought me back to Blue Rocks—not because I’m this amazing child-minder, but because…

  Because what? There’s a herd of elephants in the room that need to be ring-fenced and airlifted somewhere else, and the queen of them all is Bonny. She stands between us in a way that she might as well be physically present. Is Lucas aware of that? Does he feel that? I have to talk to him about her, but when? He’s drunk right now, but not very. Not like last time. If I put this off, keep putting it off, will there ever be a right time?

  Do I go outside, or do I go to bed and lie awake for hours waiting to see what happens next?

  I go outside.

  “Lucas?” Standing next to him in the cold, I hold his arm. Motionless, he stares at the dark beach, where the pale surf breaks like torn lace across the pebbles. The tide is high, and the water close, too close. Waves must surely break right up here, on the grass, during the fierce winter storms about which I’ve heard so much. I stand alongside Lucas and stare too, because I don’t know what else to do. After a while, he turns his back on the water and folds his arms around me.