“Good morning!” Mary said loudly, bursting through the door. She was smiling, fresh-faced, and full of energy, all directed at Eli.
“Good morning, Mary,” he said. “You’re in high spirits.”
Anna mumbled something too low to hear.
“How are you, Mr. Bauer?” Mary asked, putting her hands on the back of the chair opposite from him. She pushed her full lips together and cocked her head to the right. Her color was high in her cheeks. She was a natural beauty, not strange or out of the ordinary. Elizabeth liked to say men married girls who were pretty and uncomplicated, and I thought now she must have meant girls like Mary.
“Call me Eli,” he told her.
“All right, Eli,” she said, her voice catching in a short pleased laugh.
“Are you leaving?” Eli asked when I stood.
“Taking a walk,” I said, bringing my plate to Anna, who was washing dishes at the sink. Mary gave me a cat’s smile as she settled down next to Eli.
Going out the back door, it was my intention to stay as far away from the graveyard as I could today. I took the path toward the docks but then, at its fork, went to the north end of the island, toward the old village. I was almost out of the trees where the island flattened back out for a short stretch.
“Miss Cross!”
I turned to see Eli coming toward me. “Are you following me again?”
“No, I’m asking if I can come along.”
We were at a crooked turn of the path in a copse of low trees. I looked over my shoulder down the path and then back at Eli.
“I’d like to see more of the island,” he explained.
I pointed at his feet. “Fancy shoes for a walk.”
He looked sheepish. “I can change into boots.”
“Okay, you run along and do that.”
His mouth turned up in a half smile. “I can walk in these.”
“Well, come on, then,” I said, gesturing for him to join me.
He nodded in surprise.
“Mary must’ve been disappointed that you left,” I said, slipping him a smile as we fell into step with each other.
“What?” he asked, meeting my eyes, then breaking into an embarrassed smile. He shook his head and glanced down the path. “Are you headed anywhere in particular, or just walking?”
“There’s an old village on the island, long abandoned. My sister and cousin and I played there as children.”
“Winship Island is so remote,” Eli said. “It’s different here—like going back in time.”
“I didn’t realize that until I left,” I confessed. “We used to make trips into Lady Cliffs, of course.” I didn’t tell him that I’d always been uncomfortable with the way the townspeople looked at me there. “But that’s a small place compared to a city like Bangor.”
“Did you visit Bangor often while you were away at school?”
“Oh, no,” I said. “But we would occasionally take day-trips. The first time I saw it—that was like a different time to me. What a surprise! With its trolley cars and automobiles and tall buildings. And shops.”
The island village was very small, with no pattern, no main road running through it. Cottages—put up wherever was thought to be a good place—were huddled together against the harsh arctic wind the sea brought us.
The homes were very old, made of stone from the island, rock that endured. Still, they seemed to sag into the earth, lonely and forgotten.
We wandered through my favorite cottage, where I used to imagine I lived, just one room with a large fireplace with its single pot that the owners used for cooking. Tess chose one as well, and Ben said he’d just live with me.
“Not much bigger than the house I grew up in,” Eli said.
“Really?” I asked as I opened the lid on the pot and peered in. “Dirt for dinner.”
“We had a few rooms, but they were much smaller than this one,” he said. “But we didn’t have dirt for dinner.”
We went back outside and sat on a stone step by the village well. I thought about asking him about his family. I wondered what they were like, if he was the oldest. I picked up a stick and broke it into two pieces.
“Open your hand,” I said.
He looked surprised, but wiped his dusty hand on his pants and put out a palm.
I laid a stick in his hand. “Me.” I was about to place the next one down, but after inspecting it, I broke it in half and put it in his hand alongside the other one. “Little child.”
“Boy or girl?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
I put the last one down. “Mystery man.”
He laughed, looking me right in the eyes. Pleased, I nodded at him and, without thinking, ran my fingers over the sticks, feeling how cool and tender his palm was as my finger slipped and touched his skin.
“Your stick family,” he said, joining me in twirling the sticks.
“Tess was the one who wanted the big family.”
“Not you?”
“I’m not sure I’d mind having a lot of kids, but I can’t see beyond the first one.”
“And the mystery man?” he asked in a teasing voice.
I felt a smile tickling my lips, against my will.
“Tell me, what is he like?” he asked.
I thought for a moment. “The best kind of friend.”
He watched me, quiet. Then he looked back at the sticks. “Yes, I think that’s it, isn’t it?”
I took the sticks out of his hand and threw them one at a time at a cracked stone step, missing every time. “What do you think of the village?”
“Eerie,” he said finally. “All of these abandoned homes.”
“Yes, but also a haven from the big house for little children.”
“When did they all leave?” Eli asked. “The villagers.”
“In 1918. I think.”
He laughed. “That’s an exact guess.”
Hearing a noise, I stood and looked at the woods behind us. I thought I saw someone in the trees, a bit of cloth of a shirt maybe. But then it was gone.
“What is it?” Eli asked.
I almost asked him if he’d heard the noise too, but I kept my thoughts to myself this time. “Nothing,” I said, telling myself it was nothing, refusing to let it spoil my day. “I’d like to go exploring. It’s been so long since I’ve seen the island. Do you want to go for a hike?”
He pointed at his shoes, giving me a quirky smile. “In these?”
I hid my smile from him. “They’ll have to do, I guess.”
“Lead the way.”
I tromped north, both of us quiet as we walked through the woods. It was so beautiful and still. How I’d missed my island.
When we reached the flat rocks of the northern tip, I sat down, gesturing for Eli to sit beside me. He took a deep breath of the cold salty air. “It is stunningly beautiful. A bit of paradise.”
“Captain Winship chose his spot well.”
“I wonder,” Eli said, “why he didn’t build Sanctuary to face the east and the sunrise and the open sea.”
“Maybe he wanted to see people coming from the mainland so he could blow their heads off.”
“What about ships coming from the sea?”
“Good point. I’m surprised he didn’t have cannons mounted on the back terraces of Sanctuary.”
“What was it like growing up in that old manor?”
“For a long stretch, it was happy.” Then I was quiet, remembering what came after.
“I grew up,” Eli said, “with not a lot of money, especially once the Depression hit. We were all crammed into our small home, sharing beds, living on top of one another.”
“That surprises me. Your manner and education … you don’t seem to be someone with that background.”
He looked at me. “You’re a little bit of a high hat, aren’t you?”
“What’s a high hat?” I asked.
“A snob, darling,” he said jokingly.
“Don’t call me that.”
/> “All right,” he said cautiously.
“Darling. Don’t call me darling,” I told him, remembering my mother saying the endearment to me. “Anyway, I’m not a high hat,” I said quietly. “Do you teach at the university? I thought professors were old and serious. But you’re … not that.”
He chewed on his lip as if something bothered him. “I graduated from high school early, and finished my undergraduate and graduate work fairly quickly.”
I nodded. His presence was calming, almost lulling. I wanted to sink into it and let the sea wash away all the tragedy of my family. How fortunate he was to have a normal family, filled with all his brothers and sisters, alive and loved.
“What does your father do?” I asked him.
“He’s a potato farmer, struggling to pay his mortgage now that potato prices have plummeted. A decade ago, he got two dollars per bushel.” He paused. “It’s not that anymore.”
“You send them money, don’t you?”
“Sure. Papa was disappointed when I didn’t stay to work the farm. I hope he sees now that wasn’t the path for me.” He laughed, but as if his heart wasn’t in it. “He probably doesn’t.”
“But he’s grateful for the money, I’m sure,” I said, trying to cheer him.
“He’s proud and doesn’t want to be supported by his son. He doesn’t see that I want to help.” His face was open and earnest as he talked. “They are very good people, my parents. I have been very lucky in my life.”
“I imagine they feel lucky as well.”
He smiled, but with uncertainty.
“To have such an honest, decent person as you,” I said, feeling how much I’d misjudged him yesterday, “for a son.”
Something passed over his eyes then that I couldn’t figure out, a slight hesitation. “I’m not sure I deserve that, but thank you.”
He was quiet again. Finally, he said, “Well, anyway, to see this place, your uncle’s estate; it’s different than what I knew. So I wondered what it was like growing up here.”
“It was … well, it was all I knew. We children had a lot of freedom and ran the island like it was our playground.” I shut my eyes, breathing in the warmth of the sun. “But it grew lonely,” I said, thinking how things changed.
He hesitated. “Are you unhappy?”
“Oh, no,” I said, “I don’t think I am. Just trying to find my way.”
“Why did you come back here?”
When I didn’t answer, he continued, “The world has a lot to offer. You could attend college, or live in New York City, or travel to Hollywood to see where movies are being made. The world’s a fascinating place.”
“Have you traveled a lot?” I asked, trying to change the subject.
“Much of the United States, and in Europe too.” He paused. “Although that’s all changing, isn’t it?”
“You think America will join the war?” I asked him.
“Yes, I do … Cecilia, why did you come back to Sanctuary?” he pressed, not willing to let the subject go. He gave me a careful look. “Are you so attached to it?”
“All those things you’re talking about doing—traveling to Europe, for example—would be wonderful. I’d enjoy seeing the homes of great poets and writers … ,” I said, thinking about John Keats’s home on the Spanish Steps in Rome, “and places in America’s West seem magical … the Grand Canyon must be a sight to see, but …”—I shrugged—“I don’t have any money.” I knew that wasn’t all there was to it, but I could only tell him that much.
“Your parents didn’t have any money?”
“My father lost his family’s wealth in ’29, along with the rest of the country. I was very young, but things changed after that. No more parties on the sea lawn.”
“Your aunt didn’t leave you anything?”
I looked at him in surprise. “Well, I don’t know. Uncle hasn’t said. But she wouldn’t have had money. This is Uncle’s house,” I said, not able to keep the bitterness out of my voice, “as he likes to remind everyone.”
Eli appeared distracted, deep in thought. “Are you all right, all in all?”
I opened my mouth to say I was fine, but I couldn’t get the word out of my mouth.
“You’re afraid of something,” he said.
“I’m not,” I said, pushing last night out of my head.
“Something’s wrong, though, isn’t it?”
“You think I’m mad?” I accused, wondering if Uncle had told him about my mother. I was sure he had. That was a secret Uncle would want everyone to know.
Eli looked startled, but I couldn’t tell if it was because of what I’d said or that I’d said it.
“I’m sorry to snap at you,” I said quietly. I was too defensive about my mother.
“No harm done,” he said.
I hesitated. “Do you think madness runs in families?”
“I’m not sure,” he said carefully. “Are you worried because of your mother?”
My eyes went to his. “Uncle told you.”
“I’m sorry.” He looked sheepish, and I wondered what exactly he was sorry for: that my mother was in an asylum or that he was talking about me to my uncle. “It must be very hard for you being the only one in your family left at Sanctuary.”
I picked up a cold rock and turned it over and over in my hand. “I keep thinking of those children … those children in London going off from their homes.”
I stood up then and hurled the rock as far as I could, watching it fly over and into the sea. “Ready to hike?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said, standing. Looking at me, he reached toward me, and I leaned from him instinctively. He smiled with a gentleness in his eyes and put his hand on my arm, holding me in place, and pulled a stick out of my hair. Holding it out for me, he said, “Another child for your family.”
Smiling, I took it.
The coast here was too craggy to be hiked, so I took him on a short trek into the interior before we went back out to the coast.
“Fascinating,” Eli said as we walked past a cliff.
“What is?” I asked, admiring his neck, his chin as he looked up.
“A moraine,” he said. “To think of all that it took to create Maine’s striking coast and islands: glaciers, early volcanoes, the relentless pounding of the sea, rocks tumbling on rocks. See this wall of sediment and rock?” he asked, pointing at the cliff. “This is debris left when the glaciers pulled back twenty thousand years ago.”
I was secretly fascinated, but I asked insouciantly, “Do you know everything?”
His lips curved up just a bit. “Yes, yes I do.”
I smiled, and a light, sweet feeling came over me.
He turned back to the moraine. “Geologists could study this,” he said, waving his arm at the cliff, “and find out things about your island’s history. ‘The present is the key to the past,’ as Hutton said.”
“I tend to think the past is the key to the present,” I said.
He looked at me thoughtfully. “That too.”
“SEE THAT LIGHTHOUSE?” I SAID, POINTING TOWARD A TINY ROCKY ISLAND off the coast of our larger one. “That’s where we’re going.”
“We going to walk across the water?” he asked, nodding toward the sea before us.
I sat down on the rocky beach. “Just wait.”
“Ah,” he said, looking. “A sandbar’s there. I can see it. So when the tide is low—”
“We walk over.”
“What is that noise?” he asked, looking off.
“Gray seals.”
“Spooky sound, reminds me of ghosts,” he said, joining me on the pebbly sand.
I shivered. Sliding a glance at him, I asked him quickly before I changed my mind: “Do you believe in ghosts?”
He kept his eyes on me, so I looked away. “Do you?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Have you seen a ghost?” he asked.
“Every old house has ghosts, doesn’t it? Abandoned souls?”
He
hesitated. “So Sanctuary has ghosts?”
“Ben thinks there is a ghost—a woman—haunting Sanctuary’s graveyard,” I said as indifferently as I could, as if my heart wasn’t pounding in my ears as I spoke of her.
“He does?” he asked, bemused. “Has he seen her?”
“He said he hasn’t.” But maybe he’d seen her and was hiding it, not sure in the day’s light if he had or he hadn’t.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Eli said.
“Maybe you would if you saw one,” I said more coldly than I meant to. “I’m beginning to believe my mother thought she saw the ghost of Amoret,” I continued, softening my tone.
He visibly started, then tried to recover by asking, “Amoret?”
“Amoret was the wife of Captain Winship, a witch-hunter, as you pointed out. If anyone was to haunt Sanctuary, I suppose it would be her.”
“Why do you think your mother saw her?”
What would he think of me if I told him I saw her too? It was safer to hide behind my mother’s madness than to admit things I didn’t yet understand. “Or maybe it was Tess,” I said. “Or both of them.”
“They told you that?”
“I don’t remember,” I said, shrugging. “They could have. They talked about her a lot.”
“What did they say?” he asked.
I tried to think, to recapture their words. “Mother … no, it was Tess. Tess talked about her.” Mother would stand behind my sister, her long fingers on Tess’s shoulder. I’d felt her approval of Tess in that gesture. Or maybe it wasn’t of Tess after all. Could it have been instead of what Tess was saying?
I glanced over to find Eli’s steady eyes on me. I smiled at him tentatively. “I wish I would’ve paid more attention to them now.” I didn’t tell him I’d cared little about Amoret and had just been longing for my mother’s attention. “But they were so possessed.”
“Possessed? What do you mean?”
“No, no, obsessed,” I corrected.
He paused. “Do you think … ?”
“What?”
“Well, that … your mother’s interest in Amoret had something to do with her …”
“Her insanity?”
“Well, yes.”
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