As it turned out, though, the hardest part of getting the moped running again was extricating it from the carriage house. After an hour of shoving furniture around in the cramped space I finally managed to make a narrow pathway to the door. Then, with some difficulty I pushed the little bike into the sunshine on its flat tires and wiped it off with an old beach towel.
Outside in the daylight, the tires, though slightly worn, appeared to be free of cracks or splits. So I searched the carriage house for a pump but couldn’t find one. Then I remembered the Fix-A-Flat can in the emergency kit that Bobby had bought for the Volvo, which I often drive to country auctions in out-of-the-way places.
In the trunk of the car I found the flat repair kit, which turned out to contain nothing more than a can of compressed air laced with some sticky substance. I shot a long blast into each of the moped’s tires which, to my great surprise, both instantly fattened up and held.
Relieved of the dirt and cobwebs and with its tires inflated the bike looked almost as good as new. The gas tank, however, was empty. Then I vaguely recalled that each year before going away to school I had always drained the gas, along with the water from the cigarette-pack-sized battery. A few more minutes of rummaging in the carriage house produced half a can of the gas used for the lawn mower and a plastic bottle of oil. And the partially full bottle of mineral water that I’d left in the Volvo’s front seat was more than enough to fill the tiny battery case to overflowing.
Having accomplished all of that, I stood back to admire my handiwork. My nails were split and greasy, my clothes were stained with sweat and my hair a dusty tangle. But it suddenly occurred to me that I was enjoying myself immensely. And I wondered if I could actually get the motor started.
Feeling more than a little foolish, for I was sure the old engine must need a complete overhaul after so many years in storage, I climbed aboard, switched on the gas and ignition and awkwardly pedaled down the drive for all I was worth.
To my utter delight and astonishment, after only a few yards the engine sputtered twice. That encouraged me to pedal even harder. Just as I reached the street the moped coughed once more and spat a cloud of viscous blue smoke from its little chrome tailpipe. Then, with a noise like a nest of vengeful killer bees, the motor surged instantly to life.
I laughed aloud, twisted the throttle hard and turned onto the street, heading out onto the stone causeway that connected Maidenstone Island to the mainland. With the fresh sea air whipping my hair into my eyes and filling my nostrils I suddenly felt wonderful. Still laughing, I brushed away the tangle and glanced down at the speedometer. It was hovering at thirty miles per hour—which on a moped feels more like sixty—and the engine was purring beneath my tingling bottom like a happy kitten.
I rode the two miles to the island without once slowing. Then it was a case of either stopping at the parking lot beside the lighthouse or plunging straight ahead into the chilly waters of the Atlantic.
So I stopped and just stood there, straddling the softly idling bike and drinking in the glorious view.
The Maidenstone Lighthouse—which is one of the few 19th-century coastal lights still in active service—is an old-fashioned structure that looks like an artist’s idealized conception of a traditional New England lighthouse. The tall white tower poised on the huge gray rocks beside its quaint clapboard lightkeeper’s cottage is possibly the most painted and photographed landmark in this part of the country.
As a result, during the summer tourist season the island is usually crawling with visitors. They walk down to the small rocky beach to photograph one another with the graceful white tower looming in the background, then line up by the dozen to make the daunting hundred-foot climb up a winding iron stairway to the tiny glass room on top. There they marvel at the gigantic hand-cast lenses that nightly beam lifesaving rays thirty miles out to sea, just as they did in the days when great sailing ships passed up and down this treacherous coast.
The visitors’ fascination is easy to understand. For though those ships are no more and today’s giant tankers and cargo carriers rely primarily on satellites and radar to warn them off the deadly rocks, the lighthouse carries on. Because satellite signals may be interrupted by solar flares and radar sets can break down, and frequently do. But the Maidenstone Light has never once failed in its entire one-hundred-and-sixty-year history. And though the beacon itself has been automated and the lightkeeper’s cottage turned into a museum, the beauty and romance of the noble old lighthouse holds a special place in the hearts of all who have ever dreamed of faraway places and sailing ships and the sea.
Out on the island on this unseasonably warm October afternoon, however, the little museum was closed and there was not a single tourist in sight. Except for a battered Toyota pickup that looked as if it might have been abandoned by high school beer drinkers the night before, I was utterly alone.
I parked the Vespa on its stand in the shadow of the tower and sat down on one of the white-painted boulders that separate the parking area from the beach. Fumbling in the pocket of my jeans, I found a rubber band and gathered my hair into an untidy knot. Then I turned my face up to the sky and watched a pair of gulls gliding around the lighthouse.
It would be pleasant, I was thinking, to come out here, as I used to, with just a picnic lunch and my sketchbook. And that thought led back to Bobby. This was the place he had come so I could be alone with Aunt Ellen on that awful morning three years earlier. Now I feared that his memory of this beautiful spot had been spoiled when he’d returned to find me screeching at my poor auntie that day.
God how I missed them both, longed to see them for just one moment.
Grief, according to Laura, is not the most painful of human emotions. Regret has got it beat hands down.
I was pulled from my sad reverie by the sound of footsteps approaching close behind me. Jumping to my feet, I whirled to face the tall stranger who had just come up from the beach. The sun was at his back, lighting his light hair and casting his face into deep shadow. And my expectant heart jumped into my throat, as it had so many times in recent months.
“Nice view, huh?”
The sound of his voice broke the momentary spell and he looked up at the lighthouse, revealing a deeply tanned face that was, while handsome in its own way, nothing at all like Bobby’s face.
“Yes,” I stammered. “I haven’t been out here in years, but it’s just as beautiful as I remembered.”
The stranger wore faded cutoffs and a paint-spattered T-shirt that was stretched tight over his heavily muscled chest and shoulders. He frowned at my words and I sensed a subdued air of menace about him that was accentuated by the dark tattoos that circled his biceps like two jagged chains. Suddenly I felt uneasy and very vulnerable in this isolated spot, so I casually began edging back toward the moped.
“I guess you know you’re asking for trouble,” he said, moving to block my way.
“I really have to go now,” I breathed, deliberately stepping around him.
He shrugged harmlessly and let me pass. “Okay, but if Harvey Peabody catches you riding that thing around here without a helmet, you’re going to get a ticket.”
I turned around and stared at him. “Harvey Peabody is still the town cop? My God, he must be almost seventy by now.”
All feelings of menace vanished as the stranger smiled, showing a line of strong white teeth. “Seventy-two, come next spring,” he said. “Old Harvey is as permanent as the rocks on the breakwater. He busted me for skateboarding into Shelly’s Victorian Gifts when I was in the seventh grade and he’s still going strong. Most people around here just figure he’ll last forever.”
There was something vaguely familiar about the stranger, and I took a closer look at him.
“Danny!” I exclaimed. “You’re Danny Freedman!”
“Guilty as charged,” he replied. “Except that nobody calls me Danny anymore. Dan sounds better, don’t you think?”
“I know that skateboard story,” I cried del
ightedly. “You sped into Shelly’s Victorian Gifts chasing another kid and crashed right into a big display of imported crystal or something—”
“It was a very small glass case of Lladro figurines,” he corrected. “About $3,000 worth. Or at least that was what Shelly claimed at the time. She ended up settling for $1,200 after my dad made her show him her invoices. And I spent the next two summers working off the debt with a lawn mower and rake.”
“You were thirteen and you had a bad reputation.” I laughed. “I remember because I was only eleven and my aunt used to make me stay up on the porch when you came to cut the grass.” I lowered my voice to a conspiratorial tone. “She said you smoked cigarettes.”
“I’m afraid it was true,” he admitted with a wry smile. “But then I was under a lot of pressure for a thirteen-year-old. It was never easy being the only juvenile delinquent in a town this size.”
We both laughed and he sat down on one of the painted boulders and gazed at me for a long moment. Then he grinned and pointed a finger at me. “You’re Susan Marks,” he declared. “Summer Susan we called you because you didn’t go to school here.” He paused just a moment. “Everyone said you were stuck-up.”
“That’s not fair. I didn’t really know very many people here.”
“I suspect that’s why they thought you were stuck-up.”
Suddenly I found myself defending my childhood as I rushed to tell my story. “Aunt Ellen had very definite ideas about who my friends could be.” Without taking a breath, I continued, “I wanted to go to school here but Daddy thought private school would give me a more proper education.”
Dan Freedman rolled his eyes. “Proper education?”
I shrugged. “I don’t think Daddy knew what to do with me so he sent me to an all-girls school. He thought that with Mom gone I needed female supervision and guidance. It’s why I came here for the summers—he hoped Aunt Ellen’s staid, upright attitudes would help make me more ladylike and keep me in check.”
Dan smiled a sad smile and reached out, covering my hand with his. “I was sorry to hear of your aunt’s passing. She was always kind and fair to me…despite my wild reputation.”
I nodded thoughtfully. “Thanks.”
Pulling his hand away he asked with a smile, “Why did you need to be kept in check? I don’t remember you ever getting in trouble.”
His sharp green eyes twinkled merrily and he regarded the moped parked nearby. “Wait! Unless memory fails me, you had a run-in of your own with old Harvey Peabody.” He wrinkled his brow, pretending to think. “I seem to recall having heard a rumor about you driving that little putt-putt down Commodore Milton Lane buck-naked one night…”
I flushed bright red. “And that’s all it was, a vicious, small-town rumor,” I said ruefully. “Actually, I was wearing a T-shirt and shorts. But a slightly tipsy teenage boy had just thrown me off the town wharf and I was a little…damp. So I was trying to get home to change.”
I suddenly found myself giggling like a teenager as I remembered that awful night. “Harvey did stop me in his police car,” I explained. “But when he got a look at my, uh, wet T-shirt he was so flustered he just ordered me to go straight home. And whatever I did, he said, I was not to mention the incident to my aunt.”
Dan laughed. “The poor old guy was probably afraid she’d have a stroke.”
“She would have,” I agreed. “And I would have been grounded for the rest of my natural life.”
“Well, you seem to have turned out okay,” he offered.
We sat quietly for a short time and watched a strange little pelican eat the remains of what, more than likely, had been a picnic for a group of teenagers who’d left French fries and hamburger buns on the beach.
We looked at each other and laughed. Then Dan asked, “So, are you back in Freedman’s Cove for good, or just visiting? I seem to have heard somewhere that you’d made it very big on the antiques scene in New York.”
My smile faded as I remembered the real reason I had returned to Freedman’s Cove, and I immediately felt terribly guilty. Guilty for sitting there in the bright October sunshine, laughing with Dan Freedman. Guilty just for being alive on such a fine day.
Guilt is painful, too. In fact it ranks right up there on the pain charts with grief and regret.
More useless but expensive advice from Laura.
“I needed some time away from the city,” I responded truthfully. “So I decided to come up here and do a few things to the old house,” I lied. I didn’t want to have to explain about Bobby or my near breakdown to Dan, or to anyone else, for that matter. Not now.
“Well,” he said, getting to his feet and extending a callused hand to me, “I’ve got to go now, but it’s been really good seeing you, Sue. Maybe we’ll run into each other again while you’re here.”
“I hope so,” I said, realizing that I sincerely meant it. I took his big hand in mine and gripped it tightly, not wanting to let go. Because Dan Freedman was the first human being in months with whom I’d managed to carry on a normal conversation. The normality felt damned good and I didn’t want it to stop. But there was more to it than that.
I was also curious to know more about him.
When I was a teenager, Danny Freedman had been the older guy that all the younger girls whispered about and had secret crushes on. He drove a trashed red Mustang with illegal mufflers and dated flashy blonde Debbie Carver, who waited tables at Krabb’s and was rumored to have had her first abortion at fifteen.
A small incident from my own woefully inexperienced fifteenth year flashed into my mind. I felt my neck growing hot as I recalled the way I had regarded Danny Freedman then: It was a warm night in July and I had been sitting out on the front porch when Danny’s Mustang had rolled slowly down our street. There were two figures in the car and sensual music from the stereo pulsed in time to the deep throbbing of the Mustang’s exhausts.
Of course, I knew why Danny and Debbie Carver were taking the long, narrow causeway to the deserted island. Because Maidenstone was the one place teen lovers could be sure that Harvey Peabody couldn’t sneak up on them.
So I had watched them go. And whether it was the sultry air, the sensual music or only a sudden, painful awareness of my own awakening sexuality, I was intrigued.
Running upstairs to my room, I had watched the taillights on Danny Freedman’s Mustang dwindle to glittering ruby specks, then vanish in the velvety darkness.
I sat by my window, staring at the spot where the lights had been. After a long while, I locked my door and stepped out of my denim shorts and cotton panties and pulled off my halter top. Then, lying naked on my bed with a soft breeze through the open windows caressing my feverish skin, I shut my eyes and fantasized that I was the one out there on Maidenstone Island with Danny Freedman.
Though the details are lost in time, I remember how desperately I had wanted to share the velvet darkness with him that night. To hear his voice whispering in my ear and feel his hands touching me.
Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately, considering the dire consequences that might have ensued—by the time I was old enough to pursue my fantasy, Danny Freedman had left town. Someone said he had joined the marines, which had sounded about right at the time.
“You haven’t told me what you’re doing these days,” I said, pushing away the embarrassing memory and finally releasing my grip on Dan.
“Oh, I do some work…painting, exteriors mostly,” he replied, still looking down at my hand.
“Ah,” I replied brightly. “Well, I guess this is the season for painting around here. You must be very busy right now.”
Dan raised his eyes and gave me an odd look as we began walking toward the old Toyota. “Well, I find that one time’s generally as good as another,” he answered, “unless it rains.”
I nodded vigorously to show that I was really interested. “I can just imagine what a problem that could be,” I said. “What do you do if it starts raining when you only have a house partially fini
shed?”
He opened the creaky door of the truck and climbed in. “Oh, I usually just go have a few beers and then come back again when it stops.” He laughed as he started the engine. “Well, so long now, Sue. And welcome back to Freedman’s Cove.”
“So long, Dan. It was great seeing you.” I stepped away from the truck and waved as he drove off. He tooted the horn and waved back at me.
I watched as his battered truck got farther and farther away, from the lighthouse and me. The guilt that had surfaced earlier returned with the realization that I hadn’t wanted him to leave at all.
How was that possible? How could I be this attracted to someone else when I was madly in love with Bobby and was here only to come to grips with the grief and reality of his loss?
An unsettling thought caused me to shiver as I got on my moped. Damon had once said that I was only in love with the idea of being in love and not with Bobby at all. Of course I’d screamed that he was insane, that Bobby was my life. And for the first time Damon didn’t argue with me about it, he just patted my cheek and said, “Yes, dear,” never mentioning it again.
As I pumped vigorously to push the little bike into action I had to wonder if he hadn’t been right.
Chapter 10
The sun was nearly touching the horizon by the time I got back to the house. The summery breeze had turned positively cold on my return ride and I was shivering uncontrollably as I rolled the moped into the carriage house and shut the door.
Running into the house I stopped just long enough to turn up the thermostat before heading to the bathroom. Steaming water cascaded into the glorious new tub as I stripped off my filthy clothes and glimpsed myself in the long mirror by the door. My wind-burnt features gazed back at me in surprise. There was a long smudge of motorcycle grease across my nose and my dusty, knotted hair was beyond description.
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