“No, they don’t.”
“Actually, we’re all family out on Big Sister. Evan, our son, lives in the old lighthouse-keeper’s cottage with his friend Jamie. The two of them have an antique store up in Hadlyme. And the big summer cottage belongs to Dolly’s brother Redfield and his wife, Bitsy. We’re not used to having strangers out there. That’s why I’d rather she had rented the carriage house to someone we know. But she accepted your deposit and your references check out, so here we are…”
“Yes, here we are.” Mitch reached for a pen.
Bud hesitated, glancing uncertainly down at the lease on his desk. “Unless, that is, you wish to reconsider. Dolly would gladly refund your deposit.”
“Not a chance.” Mitch signed it with a happy flourish. He didn’t give a damn whether Dolly Seymour’s ex-husband wanted him there or not.
Bud let out a long sigh. “Well, I sincerely hope you won’t have reason to regret this.”
“Why would I?”
Bud Havenhurst didn’t answer. And Mitch wondered why the man had said it. It was, he reflected, a very odd thing to say.
Dolly had assured Mitch the little house would be scrubbed and painted, and it was. A local handyman in overalls named Tuck Weems came out to do the work. Weems was a big, strapping man in his fifties with unruly blond hair and every appearance of a substance-abuse problem. He definitely had the shakes. Could not seem to shave without cutting himself. Bits of toilet paper were stuck to different parts of his chin and neck every morning. And his electric-blue eyes were lit by drugs or drink. He was not a friendly native. His face was a tight mask of anger. Twice Mitch tried to strike up a conversation with him. Twice the man walked away without responding. But Weems was a steady and capable worker. He repaired the windows, replaced the rotted shingles and sills, cut back the shrubbery that was threatening to engulf the little house. Within two weeks, it qualified as habitable.
Wheels were a necessity. Happily, Dolly had an old pickup she was willing to part with for a song provided Mitch was willing to make the occasional dump run for her. Not a problem, he assured her. As a result Mitch became the proud owner of a rust-free, plum-colored 1956 Studebaker half-ton with a V-8 engine and three-speed overdrive transmission. It was an uncommonly bulbous-looking vehicle compared to the aerodynamic styling of everything else on the road. And it did have 186,000 miles on it. But it ran like a champ. And he didn’t intend to drive it back and forth to New York. Only as far as Old Saybrook, the neighboring town across the river, which had an Amtrak station.
He did drive it into the city once to gather up some things and put in an appearance at the paper. The Sunday Travel editor had been very happy with the Weekend Getaway piece Mitch had filed on Dorset. She’d especially liked Mitch’s one-on-one interview with the cow. And Lacy took it as a very positive sign that he had rented himself a place there. Although she was a bit surprised.
“I have trouble picturing you there,” she said, when he stopped by her elegantly appointed office to see her.
“Why is that?”
“Have you ever actually lived in a village before, Mitch?”
“Not unless you count Greenwich Village. Why?”
“Because I have. And it’s way different, believe me.”
“I’ll say it is,” Mitch exclaimed. “People smile at each other. They say please and thank you. They don’t park in the handicapped spaces unless they are genuinely handicapped. It’s utterly remarkable.”
“And utterly fake,” she argued. “They carry sharp knives, Mitch. Everyone is into everyone else’s business. It’s what they do for amusement. There’s no privacy. And no secrets. Village life is one big soap opera.”
“I have nothing against soap operas.”
“You will when you discover you’ve become a character in one.”
Since the advance screenings for the first big wave of summer film releases had already crested, Mitch informed Lacy that he intended to spend most of his summer out there. He would come in for any screenings as they arose but it figured to be pretty quiet until the studios started gearing up again for fall. She agreed that this would be fine, and wished him luck. There was no more talk from her about where Mitch’s life was heading.
“I just want to be left alone to work on my book, Lacy,” he explained.
“Good luck. But that won’t happen, Mitch.”
“Yes, it will,” he insisted. “Why wouldn’t it?”
He brought out the brown corduroy love seat that was crammed into the corner of his study, collecting newspapers and dust. He brought out his Stratocaster and stack, figuring he now had the perfect setup for playing as loudly as he wanted. He brought out two pieces of art, some dishes and pots and pans, bedding and linens, the stereo and television that they’d bought for Fire Island. Mitch’s super gladly helped him load it all into the Studey. He liked Mitch. Mitch was the only tenant who gave him free tickets to Broadway musicals.
Mitch needed a bed. He bought one from a mattress outlet in Westbrook. The rest he scavenged. He found a rocker and kitchen table in Dolly’s barn. A beat-up little rowboat worked as a coffee table with a storm window fitted atop it. A steamer trunk served as a nightstand. He bought a comfortably worn armchair for ten dollars at a tag sale in town. Also a set of gallantly hideous bright yellow kitchen chairs.
At the town dump he found a fine old raised panel oak door which he mounted on sawhorses to serve as his desk. Actually, the dump was a picker’s paradise. He almost always came back from there with more than he took in-a pair of shell-back aluminum garden chairs, lamps, bookcases. And he was generally in very good company. Mitch rubbed shoulders with a former mayor of New York City, a Tony Award-winning actress and a bestselling author of children’s books at the dump. They, too, were picking.
He put in long, hard days outfitting his new cottage. For nourishment he feasted on prodigious quantities of his famous American Chop Suey. His recipe was a closely guarded secret: one large jar of Ragu, one pound of ground beef, one box of spaghetti, an onion, a green pepper and a package of frozen mixed vegetables. Garlic salt to taste. Maisie had pronounced it dog food and refused to eat it. Mitch could survive on it for several days straight. The nights were still cool on Big Sister. After dinner, he would make a fire in the fireplace and stretch out with a pint of Haagen-Dazs Vanilla Swiss Almond and a spoon, gazing at it. He would fall into bed early, lulled to sleep by the hard work and the rhythm of the water slapping gently against the rocks outside his little cottage. He had not slept so soundly in months. The bright morning sunlight would awaken him well before seven. The Fisher’s Island Ferry was already making its return trip to New London. The fishermen and sailors were already out. He would stand at the living room window, breathing in the clean sea air and watching them, the slanted early-morning light on the water reminding him of Edward Hopper’s Maine seacoast paintings.
He liked to walk the island’s rocky little beach in the morning, particularly when the tide was out. He rolled up his pants and slogged his way barefoot through the tidal pools, marveling at the diversity of life forms to be found there. Sargassum, Irish moss, bright green sea lettuce. Crabs and oysters. Orange-beaked oyster catchers, terns and cormorants. Geese flew right overhead in V-formation, honking loudly.
And he liked to observe his fellow islanders as they went about their lives of vigorous and accomplished leisure. Frequently, as dusk approached, he would sit out on a lawn chair and watch them-competing on the island’s tennis court or returning home to the dock from a sail, sunburned and exhilarated. For Mitch, watching from his front-row seat, these bluebloods were as exotic as the characters in a Merchant-Ivory movie. There was handsome young Evan, Dolly and Bud’s son, who drove a Porsche 911 and shared the stone lighthouse-keeper’s cottage with Jamie, an older man. Those two spent a lot of time together on their boat. There was Bud and his very hot young wife, Mandy, a tall, athletic blonde with good legs who drove a vintage MGA and regularly destroyed the lawyer on the tennis cou
rt. One afternoon, they had a croquet party on their lawn. Their guests arrived in white flannels. The men wore straw boaters on their heads. The sounds of laughter and the clinking of glasses wafted across the island toward Mitch like bubbles on a current of warm air. There was Dolly’s mysterious brother, Redfield, who left for work before dawn and was regularly gone for days at a time. Mitch didn’t know what he did for work, but he decided he had to be in the CIA. His wife, Bitsy, was a chubby hausfrau who spent endless hours in her garden, where she grew flowers and vegetables with spectacular success.
Mitch they utterly ignored. No one welcomed him. No one invited him over for a drink. He was sharing the island with them, but he was not one of them.
His sleeping loft was not wired for electricity. In order to read in bed, Mitch found it necessary to buy an oil lamp at the village’s magnificently cluttered hardware store. Dennis, the jovial, applecheeked owner, assured him it would also come in plenty handy during hurricane season. Having established that Mitch was a new resident, Dennis insisted on opening an account for him. And when Mitch gave him his address he was treated to quite some reaction.
For one thing, the name Niles Seymour did not go down too well around the tubby shopkeeper. “He still owes me two hundred bucks, the cheap bastard,” Dennis snarled, his round cheeks reddening. “You’d think he could settle his accounts with the poor local business people before he flies the coop on her.” For another, the man seemed genuinely startled by the news that Dolly had rented out her carriage house. “You are a brave man moving into that place,” he confided to Mitch over the counter in a low, husky voice. “Me, I don’t think I’d have the nerve.”
Dennis did not elaborate. And Mitch did not have the slightest idea what he meant. But he did wonder-same as he had wondered when Bud Havenhurst said he hoped Mitch wouldn’t have any reason to feel sorry.
Mitch was toodling home on the Old Shore Road in his truck, puzzling over this, when a state trooper in a gray cruiser came up on his tail, flashing his lights at him. Mitch pulled over onto the shoulder and waited. Out climbed a tall, broad-shouldered figure in his fifties wearing a trimly tailored uniform and a wide-brimmed Smokey the Bear hat. His sideburns were a bristly gray, face square and leathery, posture erect, stomach flat. One look at him and Mitch immediately thought of Randolph Scott in A Lawless Street.
“Was I speeding?” Mitch asked him incredulously through his open window. “I didn’t think I could even go fifty without a strong tail wind.”
“No, sir, nothing like that,” the trooper said politely. “I recognized the old truck. Didn’t recognize the man behind the wheel. I figured you must be Mr. Berger.”
“That’s right…”
“Just wanted to say hello. I like to get to know folks. Answer any questions they might have.” He stuck a big brown hand through the window. “I’m Tal Bliss, the resident trooper.”
Mitch shook it. “So you’re the welcome wagon?”
Bliss smiled at him. “Yessir. Something like that.”
“That’s very nice of you. I appreciate it.” Mitch decided it would be more neighborly if he got out and joined him. He did so-and immediately felt utterly dwarfed. Tal Bliss was at least six foot four, and that was without the big hat. With it, the lawman was a calm, soft-spoken giant.
“You’re a good deal younger than I imagined,” he said to Mitch, waving at two old characters in a Jeep as they passed by. “When I heard you were a widower I was expecting an older gentleman.”
“Believe me, it came as something of a surprise to me, too.”
“I lost a lot of my friends-and myself-in ’Nam,” Bliss said quietly. “Never did think I’d heal. The hardest part was being patient.” His eyes drifted over to the nearby salt marsh, where an osprey was wafting on the breeze, circling. “This is a good place for it. You picked a good place.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” said Mitch, who was not expecting to have this conversation with this particular stranger.
“Dolly’s an old, old friend, you know.” Bliss kicked at the hard dirt with the toe of his boot. “We grew up together.”
“She seems very nice.”
“She is,” Bliss affirmed, coloring slightly. “She’s about the nicest person I’ve ever known.”
“How well do you know Bud Havenhurst?”
“Quite well,” he replied. “Why?”
“Because I do have a question that you might be able to answer.”
The rugged trooper peered at him intently. “Sure thing.”
“When I was signing the lease, he said he hoped I wouldn’t be sorry. And Dennis at the hardware store said that I was a brave man. Is there something about Big Sister that I should know?”
Bliss took off his big hat and turned it over in his hands, examining it for a long moment before he leveled his eyes at Mitch. “You might want to ask Dolly about this.”
“I’m asking you.”
Bliss puffed out his cheeks. “Very well. Maybe it is better this way. Have you met a fellow named Tuck Weems?”
“Kind of. I said hello, he didn’t.”
Bliss smiled faintly. “That’s Tuck, all right. He grew up on Big Sister. Tuck’s father, Roy, was the caretaker. The two of them and Tuck’s mom, Louisa, lived out there in your little carriage house. Right after we got out of high school, when Tuck and I were serving in ’Nam, well, Roy went over the edge. Blew poor Louisa’s head off with his shotgun. And then did the same thing to himself. It happened right there-in your carriage house. And it was Dolly who found them. A horrible, horrible thing for that lovely seventeen-year-old girl to walk in on… Anyway, the house has been vacant ever since. No one has lived there-until now. You’re the first. I suppose Dolly didn’t say anything to you about it because she doesn’t like to dwell on it. You see, Dolly’s extremely delicate. Fragile, you might say. And these are tough times for her. She got hit pretty hard when her new husband pulled up stakes on her.” The trooper paused, his eyes searching Mitch’s face. “I sure do hope you’ll be considerate of her feelings.”
Mitch cocked his head at him curiously. “How do you mean?”
Bliss swallowed uneasily. “I just would hate to see some fellow come to town and take advantage of her again.”
“Again?”
“Niles.” The trooper spat out the name as if it were a dirty word. “He swooped down on her, flattered her, manipulated her, stole her from Bud. And just look how things turned out. She got her poor heart broken. I don’t want to see that happen again. Can you understand that?”
Mitch understood, all right. The trooper was telling him to stay away from Dolly. Not that he was the least bit interested in her. Hell, she was practically old enough to be his mother. What Mitch didn’t understand was in what capacity Bliss was delivering this warning. Was he speaking to him as Dorset’s resident trooper-a public servant empowered to preserve and protect the family’s interests? Or was he speaking to him as a man who happened to be in love with Dolly himself and wanted no rivals for her affections? Mitch didn’t know. But either way, his answer was the same: “You’re making yourself quite clear.”
The trooper’s face creased into a smile. “That’s good. I’m glad we understand each other, Mr. Berger.” Then he tipped his hat at him and strode back to his cruiser and took off, leaving Mitch there with his head spinning.
His dream cottage was a death shack.
As he headed back across the narrow bridge, the island looked different to him now. It wasn’t a carefree Yankee eden. It was sinister. And his little cottage gave him the creeps. He could feel the death in the air the second he walked inside. The ceiling seemed lower, the walls closer together. The quiet was no longer soothing. It was ominous.
Shaken, Mitch grabbed himself a Bass Ale, went back outside and sat on one of his garden chairs in the late-day sun, wondering if he could still be happy here. Could he forget what had happened? Why not? He was trying to cut himself loose from his own past, wasn’t he? Was this not the same thing
? No, it wasn’t, actually. He wasn’t trying to forget that Maisie had ever existed. But he was trying to live in the present, not the past. And that part wasn’t so different, was it?
Mitch didn’t know. He only knew that his feelings about this place would never be the same.
He was still sitting there an hour later when he saw a Ford pickup pull up. Tuck Weems. He had come to mow the lush green expanse of lawn that grew between Dolly’s place and the carriage house. Mitch waved to him. Weems didn’t wave back. Business as usual. As he sat there watching Weems unload his big mower, Mitch saw Dolly coming along the gravel path toward his house, smiling at him shyly. It was not hard for Mitch to picture her as a lovely, light-footed young girl with a tennis racket in her hand and an easy smile on her lips. No, it was not hard at all. She was wearing a pair of trimly tailored gray slacks and a black cashmere sweater with a plunging V-neck. She carried a small jar in one hand, a rusty old horseshoe in the other. As she got nearer, he could smell tart, lemony perfume.
“I’ve brought you a house-warming gift, Mitch,” she said graciously, holding the horseshoe out to him. “It’s an old New England tradition. One hangs it over the front door, pointing upward, and it’s supposed to bring good luck. It’s one of our own shoes-I found it in the barn.”
“Why, thank you,” Mitch said, hefting it in his hand. “Please sit. Can I get you something to drink?”
“Thank you, no,” she said, sliding into his other garden chair. “But you could… That is, I’m having some people in and I simply cannot get these pimientos open.” She pronounced it pim-ee-entos. Mitch had never heard anyone pronounce it that way before. At least not anyone who wasn’t trying to do Noel Coward. “I tried warm water. I tried one of those cursed ergonomically advanced jar openers. Utterly useless. The thing seems cemented shut. Would you please try?”
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