Devlin's Light (11 page)

“Ry, can I borrow some of your records?”

“Don’t you have a lot of these on cassette?”
he would ask, knowing full well that she did.

“Yes, but it’s not the same,”
she would plead, and he would give in with a smile, knowing she was right, that it wasn’t the same.

“Just don’t scratch them, okay?”
he’d remind her as he handed over whichever she had her heart set on listening to that night.

“I won’t, Ry,” she whispered to the night breeze. “I promise.”

Aunt August’s New England Clam Chowder

½ pound bacon, cut into small pieces

2 medium onions, chopped

2 stalks celery, finely chopped

2 8-oz bottles of clam juice

1½ A cups water

2-3 pounds of potatoes, peeled and chopped

3 6½-oz cans chopped clams

1/4 teaspoon thyme

2 cups heavy cream (light cream or half and half may be substituted)

salt to taste

freshly ground pepper to taste

2 tablespoons softened butter

1/2 cup parsley, chopped

Over medium heat, sauté bacon in large Dutch oven until light brown. Drain off fat, leaving just enough to saute the onions and celery. Add onion and celery to bacon, saute until onions are soft (about 5 minutes). Add clam juice, water and potatoes. Bring to a boil. Simmer over low heat until the potatoes are tender (20-25 minutes). Add clams, stir in thyme and continue to simmer. Heat the cream separately, almost to the boiling point, then pour it slowly into the clam mixture. Add the salt and pepper and stir in butter. Sprinkle with parsley before serving.

Serves six.

Chapter 7

“Miss Devlin?” The pert, dark-haired young woman stuck her head into the hallway from the noisy classroom. “I’m Marilyn Millet, Corri’s teacher. If you have just a minute to chat, I’ll get the children started, then we can talk for a few…”

India watched through the open door as Miss Millet organized the class of some twenty six-year-olds into early morning independent activities and returned in a flash.

“I was hoping to meet you.” The young woman smiled as she returned, stationing herself in the doorway to keep one eye on the class while seemingly giving India her undivided attention. “Corri talks about you all the time. I have, of course, met your aunt—she’s a lovely woman, we all adore her, including the children—but I think it’s clear that Corri is beginning to see you as her ‘parent’ figure.”

“Corri has had a very difficult two years, Miss Millet.”

“So I understand. First her mother, now her stepfather.” The teacher shook her head slowly. “It’s more loss than many adults could reasonably cope with. And Corri is so young.”

“Is she doing well in class?”

“Scholastically? She’s a wonderful student. She’s bright, curious, spontaneous.” She smiled and added, “Sometimes
maybe a bit too spontaneous. I have to remind her to watch her chattering, but all in all, she’s an asset to the class. Personally, I love her dearly. She’s a darling child. And she is coping well, under the circumstances.”

“But…” India sensed there was something more the teacher wanted to say.

“But I think she is developing little habits that I think are indicative of anxiety.”

“Such as?” India frowned.

“Biting her nails, going off on her own sometimes for no apparent reason—Excuse me, Miss Devlin. Courtney,” she called to a child in the back row, “please get a pencil out of the box on my desk and stop pestering Allison. … Sorry.” She turned back to India with a smile.

“Going off where by herself?”

“I’ve found her all by herself in the corner of the playground, just sitting quietly in the grass. Sometimes she stares out the window, and I can tell she’s far away.”

“Is that so unusual for a child?” India recalled many a time she herself had been caught staring out a classroom window, many a recess when she might have opted for solitude rather than a game of kickball.

“No, of course not. And first-graders have short attention spans. But sometimes it’s more than just daydreaming. I guess you’d have to see her face. I think that inside, she is a scared and lonely little girl. Let me show you a drawing she did the first week of school.”

Miss Millet went back into the classroom and stopped to speak to several children on her way to her desk, where she opened a drawer and removed a folder. Returning to the doorway, she passed the folder, open to the white construction paper that lay inside, into India’s hands.

“I told the children to draw a picture of themselves,” Miss Millet explained.

“And this is how Corri sees herself?” India’s heart nearly broke at the image, the small drawing of the child, all drawn in grays and blacks, at the very center of the paper. She had drawn nothing else.

“Here are some of the other children’s drawings.” Miss Millet opened a second folder and extracted several sheets of paper. Wordlessly, India looked through them. Whereas
Corri’s drawing held a single figure done in somber tones, the other children had drawn whole families and had dressed them in bright colors. Some had dogs or cats. Many had siblings. All had at least one parent depicted. All but Corri.

“I see,” India said softly.

“I will tell you she’s been different the past two days since you’ve been here.”

“How so?”

“She’s played more with the other children at recess. She’s clearly more focused—just watch her for a minute.” Miss Millet gestured with her head for India to observe the child, who was working diligently at her desk in the front of the third row. “I put her up front so that I could keep an eye on her. I have to reel her back so frequently. But this week she’s been fine. She made a big announcement this morning, by the way. I wanted to mention it to you because I think it is very significant.”

“What was that?”

“Corri has been refusing to use a last name. She’s registered as Corrine Devlin, which is how your brother registered her last year. But when she returned to school last month, she refused to use a last name. When I talked to her about it, she said she didn’t know how to make a capital
D
or a capital
S
, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know how to make either letter.”

“D
for
’Devlin,’ S
for ‘Steele,’ her mother’s name.”

“So I understand.” Miss Millet smiled and turned back to the classroom. “Corri, would you come here please and show us what you are working on?”

Corri beamed and bounced from her seat, a tiny munch-kin in a blackwatch plaid jumper and a short-sleeved navy turtleneck shirt.

“It’s my numbers, see? One, two, three… I’m still working on the four,” she explained earnestly.

At the top of the paper, in childish scrawl, was printed her name.
Corri D.

India’s throat tightened. “You’re doing a great job. Those are handsome numbers, Corri.”

“You may go back to your seat now.” Miss Millet patted Corri on the back.

“Looks like she’s decided who she is.” India cleared her throat of the obstructing lump.

“She tells me you’ll be leaving in a few days,” the teacher said pointedly.

“I have to get back to Paloma. I work for the district attorney’s office, and I’ll be starting a new trial the week after next.”

“No chance of taking some time off?”

“Not right now, I’m afraid. The trial that I’m assigned to is an especially important one.”

“Corri’s an important child.” The retort had been sharper than the teacher had intended, and she reddened quickly. “I’m sorry, I had no right…”

“Of course you do.” India sighed. “And of course, you are right. She is very important. I will tell you very honestly I do not know the best way to resolve this, Miss Millet. I have commitments in Paloma that I have to see through right now. As far as Corri is concerned, I really don’t know what’s best for her in the long run. I don’t know whether I should take her with me and put her in school in Paloma.”

Frustrated and defensive, India’s normally cool facade began to disintegrate rapidly.

“Perhaps you might work out an arrangement to spend some time with her on the weekends. If she knew she could count on that time with you, maybe it would be enough for now. And let’s not lose sight of the fact that Devlin’s Light is her home. She has friends here and, of course, she adores your aunt. This is all that is familiar to her. Given the fact that there has been so little security in Corri’s life, I don’t know that removing her from Devlin’s Light would be a particularly good thing.”

“So what you’re saying is that she needs me and she needs the stability of her surroundings.” The suggestion had a familiar ring, India noted wryly, having been proposed twice now in less than twenty-four hours.

“That pretty much sums it up.” Miss Millet offered India her hand as she prepared to return to her classroom, her point having been made. “Ideally, I think the best thing for Corri would be to live with you in Devlin’s Light, but of course, that’s a decision only you can make.”

With a smile that left no doubt in India’s mind that Miss Millet clearly felt there was no real decision, she closed the door, leaving India standing alone in the hallway to contemplate her choices.

It was almost ten o’clock when India set the thermos of coffee in the bottom of the rowboat and dug her heels into the sand for that first big push toward the bay. Once she had the boat off the dune and moving, it was easier to pull it by the rope tied to the bow than to push it across the sandy beach. She reached the edge of the bay gratefully and stepped into the water, smooth stones and rough-edged pieces of shell beneath her feet, and pulled the small boat out to where the sand dropped off a few feet in depth. Maneuvering the boat around, she climbed in, her shorts heavy with bay water, her wet shirt sticking to her abdomen, and locked the oars in place. With steady and deliberate strokes, she headed toward the mouth of the inlet and the lighthouse that served as its guardian.

India and Ry had shared a love of the structure that had seemed almost inborn. Ry once joked that their love for the bay, like their love for the lighthouse, could probably be found in their DNA, along with hair color and body type. India had laughed and wondered aloud if perhaps that might be true. Now she pulled in the oars slightly, resting them across her knees, and let the rowboat drift for a few moments, riding the swells. She loved being on the bay, loved the smell of its brackish green-blue water and loved its inhabitants. Leaning slightly to one side, she watched a large lion’s mane jelly fish, a translucent mass of floating goo, bobbing up and down in the gentle waves, riding the tide toward the shore, where it was certain to be stranded. She leaned a little closer, watching the long waving arms of seaweed ripple right below the surface of the water. The storm of the night before had left the bay churned up, so where on another day she would be able to see clear to the bottom, where the large blue-clawed crabs hunted for food, today she could see only seaweed.

Thinking about the crabs made her think of Maris. It was on a day much like this one, she recalled, that Maris had
dragged a rowboat to the edge of the bay and pushed it in, much as India had herself done minutes earlier, and headed out past the lighthouse to crab. The storm that had sent the waves crashing and drawn the small boat out to sea had, apparently, come from nowhere. Why Maris had taken the boat into the uncertain waters beyond the lighthouse was a mystery to India. The crabbing was just as good in the inlet, maybe better, since these shallow waters allowed the crabs to be scooped up by a net, as opposed to the more tedious means of dangling a baited string over the side of the boat and waiting for a bite, a method India had never had much patience with. Ry said that Maris had often taken the boat into the bay, though everyone knew—surely everyone
told
her—that the currents were unpredictable.

I guess some people have to learn the hard way
, India thought as she slid the oars back into the water and began to steer toward the lighthouse, now in view.

India never grew tired of that first view of it from the water as she rounded a bend in the cove and cleared the stand of pines that graced the dunes almost to the shoreline. She loved the structure of it, loved the way the tower rose from the little Victorian-styled house and lifted toward the clouds. The small boat rose and fell with the waves, India rocking from side to side as she drifted with the tide toward the shore. With a sigh, she dug in the oars and guided the boat to shore, careful to avoid the rocks close to the front of the lighthouse, seeking the clear passage to the deeper waters on the bay side, where she would navigate past the jetty without danger of scraping the bottom of her boat.

Once she was within ten feet of the shore, she hopped out, tugging at the rope to pull the boat along until she reached the beach, where she pushed the small vessel onto the sand. The trip across had taken her a leisurely twenty minutes, though she had on many occasions made it in much less time. How long had it taken Nick Enright to make the trip across that night, she wondered, unconsciously looking across to the opposite side of the cove where the old crabbers cabin stood facing the bay.

India climbed upon the rocks, her back to the lighthouse, to get a better view across the inlet. A new deck wrapped around the cabin, which no longer appeared as primitive as
it had the last time she had been there. But that had been some years before, and Nick’s mother had made “a few renovations” since then. Shielding her eyes from the mid-morning sun, India grinned. New cedar siding, light tan now but which would in time weather gray, covered the outside walls; and if she wasn’t mistaken, that was a new dock right there off the deck, where a rowboat was tied to the new pilings. She watched the slow faint curl of smoke make its way from the top of the stone chimney and tried to remember if the little house had in its previous life had a fireplace. She wondered what other changes might have been made inside the dwelling. She tried to bring to mind its interior as it had appeared the last time she had been inside, but it had been too many years since she’d been there. All she could imagine when she closed her eyes was the cabin’s inhabitant, and she couldn’t help but wonder what he was doing on this fine Indian summer morning.