Luanne Rice (6 page)

“How come
Jessica’s mother didn’t want us to go inside, after we dropped her off?”

“Maybe she
was busy.”

“Jessie
says her family has a mystery.”

“All
families do,” Lily said, stitching slowly.

“Does Dr.
Neill’s?”

“Mmm,” Lily
said. One mystery was why he hadn’t gotten married. Lily had watched him dating
a little—a female ichthyologist from Halifax, a divorcée from Sydney. But Liam
stayed unattached.

“I like
him.”

“Hmm.”

“You don’t,
do you?”

“He’s my
landlord,” Lily said. “I like him fine.”

“But you
don’t act as if you like him. And he’s our friend!”

“I’ll try
harder,” she said, and her heart caught just slightly.

“I want him
to come to my party.”

Lily lifted
her eyes over the rims of her fuchsia half-glasses. Rose was gazing back
gravely—challenge in her green eyes.

“It’s
my
party,” Rose reminded her.

“I know,
but we asked the Nanouk Girls too. We have that no-men rule, you know? We wrote
up that charter, and we all signed it—you too, remember? Our gatherings are
women only.”

“Can’t we
make an exception?
A birthday party exception?”

Lily’s lips
tightened. She really hated saying no to Rose. Her daughter was the least
manipulative child on earth—when she wanted something, she came right out and
asked for it. The unspoken words between them had to do with the upcoming
surgery. Every request from Rose had a shimmer and
a
poignancy
to it: what if Lily said no, and it was Rose’s last request?
She shook her head, reminding herself to be a mother—not a doomsday prophet.

“No, Rose.
It wouldn’t be fair to the other Nanouks. We can save him a slice of birthday
cake. Okay?”

“Not okay,”
Rose said. She kept digging for a while. Then, leaving her pile of weeds on the
grass, she walked up the porch stairs. Lily shielded her needlepoint so Rose
wouldn’t see, but she needn’t have bothered. Her daughter walked straight by
without even a glance, into the house, screen door banging behind her.

Lily took a
deep breath. She thought of her no-lie policy and wondered whether Rose sensed
that it had just gone flying out the proverbial window.
Because
her reasons for not wanting to invite Liam Neill to the party had nothing—or at
least very little—to do with the Nanouk Girls’ charter.

Nothing, in fact.
Lily steadied her hands and just kept
stitching. The wide needle slid in and out of the small white squares, one
after another, as she tried not to think. There was so much not to think about:
her daughter’s surgery next week, whether she’d finish her needlepoint before
the party, Liam Neill. The warm breeze blew, and the sun beat down on Rose’s
garden. Lily kept moving the needle, trying to finish the picture.

Rose went
to her room. At the back of their one-story house, her window overlooked their
yard, the heathery hillside, and the outer curve of the bay. Standing in her
doorway, she took a deep breath. She began to move. She was walking, yes, using
her feet, but in her mind, she was flying, held aloft by invisible wings, as
hard and clear and indestructible as the cicada’s wing she’d found in the
garden last summer. Circling her room, she touched things—her maple bedpost;
the bureau painted by her mother with fish, shells, whales, and dolphins; the
books on her shelf; her collection of carved whales. Here she
paused,
making sure her fingertips brushed each one—whales
carved from wood, soapstone, bone.

She felt
the whales’ power. They were mammals, just like her. They breathed air and
raised their children. Now her wings turned into fins. Rose dived under the
surface, swimming easily with the whales. She felt the water rush over her body
as she swam deeper, deeper … she continued to touch everything in her room, all
the precious things that reminded her of her life, of her mother.

By the time
she reached the wall beside her bed, her eyes were full of salt water. She
blinked the tears away, gazing at the eight framed birthday squares. Her mother
had made her one for every year of her life. Rose stared at them now:

The first
was a country cottage with a black door and pink shutters with four cutout
hearts, a garden filled with lilies and roses.

The second
was a white baby basket carried over the green countryside by a red-and-yellow
hot-air balloon.

The third
was a blue station wagon parked among snow-laden pine trees, with four
golden-eyed owls hidden in the dark branches.

The fourth
was a carousel with whales instead of horses.

The fifth
was fish flying through the sky and birds swimming underwater.

The sixth
was nighttime, with the spruce tree in their backyard decorated for Christmas,
with hearts instead of bulbs, and real stars instead of lights.

The seventh
was the same cottage as the first square, but shrunken down to the size of a
doll’s house … with a blue door instead of a black door … and with a hot-air
balloon lifting it up, carrying it out to sea.

The eighth
showed a group of girls and women, all wearing hats and heavy coats, warming
their hands by a fire on the snowy, rocky shoreline while a white whale
frolicked in the foreground; there were Rose and her mother, Cindy, Marlena,
Nanny, and all the Nanouk Girls of the Frozen North. Rose recognized all the
figures except two women off to the side … her mother had told her that they
were her grandmother and great-grandmother.

The ninth …
well, Rose knew that her mother was busy stitching the ninth one right now.
Rose closed her eyes, wishing
… .
She knew how terribly
much her mother loved her. Even though she was only almost nine, she knew that
her mother sometimes hurt with loving her so much. Having such a fragile heart
made Rose feel certain things more than normal. Her skin would tingle, as if a
cool breeze were starting to blow, and she’d be filled with other people’s
dreams and words, as if their hearts were talking directly to hers.

Not
everyone, but some.
Nanny, for instance.
Rose had
always been able to read Nanny’s mind. She could feel her joy and curiosity,
her power and strength. And Rose’s mother; Rose always knew when her mother was
happy or sad, tired or, especially, worried—worried about Rose. Like now,
waiting for her surgery, planning the trip to Boston—it was almost all her
mother could think about, even with the birthday square to finish and the party
to get ready for. But Rose wasn’t tuned in to either of them, or even to
Jessica, another kindred heart spirit.

Dr. Neill.
She couldn’t stop thinking of him. It was funny. At bad times, whenever she
needed him, there he was. He had knelt with her down by the stone fisherman,
holding her hand and letting her know she wasn’t alone. Rose knew that if she
had a father, that’s what he would have done. He would have stayed with her and
held her. He would take care of her.

Dr. Neill
was so big. He had put his arm around her for a minute, when she was the most
scared, when she felt the most unable to breathe. Rose closed her eyes and
almost swooned. She wanted a father to hold and love her. All her friends had
fathers—even Jessica, whose father was a stepfather; it didn’t matter.

Rose felt
her heart beating through her green T-shirt. She wished and wished for her
heart to be whole again. She had a mother who loved her; if only she had a
father too. All the birthday squares, all the parties, all the surgeries in the
world couldn’t do for her what that would do.

Why
wouldn’t her mother let Dr. Neill come to her party? Even if she didn’t like
him—and Rose wasn’t dumb, she knew that her mother
did
like him, deep down—shouldn’t Rose be allowed to invite him
anyway? Even though the other kids were scared of his artificial arm, even
though they called him Captain Hook, Rose loved him. She knew that if she had a
father, he would be just like Dr. Neill.

He would
love whales, dolphins, and even sharks. He would not give up, just because one
part of his body didn’t work right. And he would always stop, no matter what he
was doing, to help a little girl having heart pains at the foot of the stone
fisherman.

He would,
he would …

Chapter 5

S
ecret Agent’s desk was his flying machine. When
he sat in his Aeron chair and hunkered down at his Dell laptop, he could be in
Anywhere, USA. He could be on the wireless network, sailing on a cruise ship in
the Caribbean or the Atlantic or the Indian Ocean for that matter. He could be
in Paris, France.
Or Akron, Ohio; Hartford, Connecticut;
Phoenix, Arizona; or Walla Walla, Washington.
He could be in Vancouver
or Toronto. He could be at the South Pole. In reality, he was located in
Boston’s North End, above a café that smelled like espresso all day.

The apartment
was small, but no one need know. It could be a penthouse on Park Avenue in
Manhattan, a ranch in Montana, a beach house at the Jersey Shore with the
Atlantic out one window and Barnegat Bay out another—or maybe a place near
South Beach, not far from where that psycho had killed Gianni Versace a few
years back. Or it could just be the house-next-door, where he was just a
regular guy trying to bring home the bacon and keep everyone happy.

He was
hungry. Before getting started, he grabbed a root beer and microwaved two beef
burritos. Set the plate down on his desk, booted up,
got
ready to take off. Really hungry—ate one burrito in three bites.
Waited for the machine to stop clicking, logged on.
Where to
go today? Where should the flying machine touch down this evening? It was
Friday night
… .

His
favorite sites: scrolled down the list, looking. He had his ladies’ sites, his
playtime sites, his sports sites, his business sites. First and foremost in his
mind was always the search: he was looking for someone, and he knew the kinds
of Internet sites she liked to go. It was a full-time job, trying to find her.
But he had other irons in the fire as well; might as well make some money while
looking for his girl—the bitch formally known as his wife. Today, looking at
the list, he focused on his “doing business” sites. The bank account was
getting a little dry. One of his most fruitful and profitable Internet
destinations had lately been SpiritTown.com.
A fan site for
the followers of the band Spirit.

The band
was decent musically and popular enough to still be selling out stadiums and
arenas twenty years after its first album. It could always be counted on to
join all those group lovefests, raising money for good causes. Save the
Rainforest, Free the Unjustly Accused, Women’s Rights, Peace, all that
bleeding-heart liberal stuff. His wife had loved Spirit.
Little
Miss Save-the-World …

Secret
Agent trolled the SpiritTown message boards. The members liked to take their
names from Spirit’s song titles—so
typical,
and so
easy for him to spot the soft touches. The names practically ensured that
they’d give him the money he asked for—PeaceBabe,OneThinDime, Wish23,
Love_or_die, LonesomeDaughter … His wife used to occasionally post here as
“Aurora,” but he had a feeling she’d changed her screen name after their
breakup. He hadn’t seen Aurora here in a long time
… .

He took a
glance at the list of recent topics—about half the threads were discussions of
Spirit music, lyrics, shows, and bootlegs. The rest concerned politics and events
of major interest to Spirit fans. This was sad—he actually chuckled as he
prepared to start typing. These people were practically begging to be
taken—they cared about everyone and everything. “Breast Cancer Awareness,”
“World Hunger,” “Can We Help Kids Who Don’t Have Enough?”

He had
registered as a member of the site six months earlier, and during that time had
posted six thousand times. He had established himself as a huge Spirit fan (not
true), a collector of their CDs (not true), a left-leaning Democrat (totally
not true),
a
divorced father of two (partly true). His
log-on name, Secret Agent, was taken from one of Spirit’s biggest hits, “Spy on
You”: “I look through your windows, I come through your door / I know why
you’re hiding, I know what it’s for / You’re afraid of the world, afraid of its
pain / I’m your Secret Agent, I’ll make you brave again
… .”

He wolfed
down his second burrito and got ready to make some money. He clicked the “New
Topic” button and typed in the heading “Lost in the Hurricane.” His name,
Secret Agent, popped up. Then, in the body of the message, he started: “Hey
everyone—did you read about that big storm, the first hurricane of the year?
Hit South Florida pretty hard. My sister’s family lost everything.
Everything.
Their roof blew off. Jake, my nephew, got hit
with window glass—it’s a nightmare.”

Then he hit
“Send.” “Your message has been posted” appeared on his screen. He clicked
“Return to Forum,” then sat back to wait for replies.

Secret
Agent was still hungry. He walked into the kitchen, threw two more burritos
into the microwave. He predicted that by the time he got back to his desk, he’d
have what he wanted. It was the dinner hour, prime time for all the losers—home
from work, either single or not in the mood to talk to their loving husbands
and wives—to log on and meet up with their friends.

The bell
chimed, and he ate standing up at the counter. This way he could stare at his
refrigerator door: pictures of his wife and Ellie covered every inch.
Individual shots, the two of them, even some with him in the frame—rare,
because he didn’t like having his picture taken. He wiped the burrito grease
from his lips and leaned forward to kiss his wife. The closeness made him
mad—he started to feel the heat rise. How dare she leave him—how the hell dare
she?

He rinsed
his plate and cracked another root beer, cooling off a little. At least he
didn’t have to worry anymore about wiping out the cookies—the temporary
Internet files stored in computers. His nosy wife had figured out how to check
up on him. She’d get in there, snoop around, see what he’d been doing online
for fun and work
… .
By the time he headed back to his
desk, he had what he needed: five quick responses to Lost in the Hurricane.
Secret Agent scrolled down, reading them quickly:

“Secret—that
sucks!”

“Hey,
man—is your nephew gonna be okay?”

“The roof
blew off?
Literally?”

“Where’s
the family going to stay? I read about that hurricane—it’s super-bad. Lots of
people evacuated, and the ones who didn’t go got trapped. Is your nephew badly
hurt?”

And
then—paydirt:

“Secret Agent—what’re friends for?
Let’s set
up a fund on the board. I know everyone will want to help out. You’ve got a
PayRight account—I know, cuz you sent me money for those boots last month.
We’ll send the contributions to
you,
you’ll give it to
your sister.”

Secret
Agent couldn’t help smiling: what a kind bunch of people. His wife had very
good taste in bands and message boards. She’d be proud of her online friends,
to know they’d risen to this occasion. For that matter, she’d probably be proud
of her husband—to think of him caring so much about the people harmed by the
hurricane.

“Thanks,
man,” he typed. “My sister will be really thankful. You guys are great … let me
check with her, to make sure. (She wouldn’t want charity.) But I’ll try to talk
her into it—gotta think of my nephew’s medical bills and all
…
.”

Even as he
typed, more responses poured in:

“Any sister
of Secret Agent is a sister of ours!”

“Your
sister has one great brother, you know? I’ll be the first—here’s $100. Wish it
could be more
… .”

So do
I
, Secret
Agent thought. He scanned the member names popping up on the message board.
Looking for Aurora … Where are you? Where did you go? Do you think you can hide
forever?

That would
be his
real
payoff: finding what was
his and bringing it home.

It was
Friday evening, and Liam was working late. He spent too much time at the
office, he knew. Right now, nearly nine P.M., the sky was still light—summer in
the northern latitudes. His mind told him to keep working, but his body was
telling him other things. He was hungry and tired, and he felt an old yearning
that he’d thought was long dead.

He had
piles of data to go through; sharks had been active in local waters this week.
Liam logged onto the “Predator Report,” a website originally designed to track
near-shore sightings or attacks by sharks. Normally it dealt with seals,
schools of bluefish and herring, the occasional dolphin or whale. But yesterday
a man surfing the break just east of Halifax had reported a great white
attacking his board.

Liam read
the account—of course the board was yellow. Shark people referred to yellow
surfboards as “yum-yums.” Sharks would spot them from below, confusing their
oblong shape and pale color with their favorite food—seals. Based on the
fourteen-inch radius of the bloody bite mark, Liam figured the shark to be a
juvenile great white. He read the account:

“I didn’t
see anything before the shark hit. He zoomed straight up and hit my board so
hard, it sent me into space. I looked down from the air and saw a shark with
his head out of the water, my board in his teeth. I landed on his back—smacked
into his dorsal fin—at least eighteen inches high. I rolled off, and he turned
and bumped me—right in the armpit. The impact tore my
wetsuit,
and I thought it was all over—but then the shark just went under and
disappeared into the waves.”

The words
had a force all their own: Liam felt he was right there, seeing the shark break
the surface, watching that huge dorsal fin rise out of the sea. He closed his
eyes; he remembered the first and worst time he’d seen it in person, how the
fin had looked like a black sail on the devil’s boat. With his eyes shut, the
water turned red in his mind … and when he opened them, he looked out at Cape
Hawk harbor to see the darkness finally falling on the water, spreading over
the still surface, making the blood disappear.

Liam took
notes, writing down the guy’s name and address. He checked his clock—maybe he’d
call him, finish his report right now. But it was ten after nine on a Friday,
and he decided against it. Not just out of courtesy, but also because he was
sick of being the geek who worked all the time, sick of being someone so
obsessed with sharks and shark attacks and people who survived predators and
people who didn’t.

He shut off
his computer, stood, and stretched. Turned off the lights, locked the door,
walked out of his office into old Tecumseh Neill’s grand entry hall. The
original chandelier gave off a soft, welcoming light. It bathed the wall
hangings—most of them made by Lily, but a couple of paintings done by Rose.
Liam stood quietly in the light, staring at the needlework. He felt as if this
center hall was the warmest place he knew.
Home
is where the heart is
. He read the words on Lily’s sampler. How strange it
was, to leave work to go home … yet to feel that this hallway—empty except for
the few hangings—really
was
where the
heart was.

As he
stepped outside into the dim twilight, he headed toward his car. Strains of music,
haunting and romantic, issued from the family inn. He hesitated, but the band
was playing, calling him up there. The kitchen would be closing soon, but he
knew he could get something to eat anyway. Besides, he could check up on his
cousin, make sure everything was set for Rose’s party tomorrow
… .

He crossed
the quiet street, followed the music up the stone steps to the walk that curved
across the long, sloping lawn. White Adirondack chairs, arranged in pairs,
faced the harbor; people sat in them, enjoying the sunset and the last light,
watching the stars come out. An owl streaked across the sky, into the pine
forest that rose behind the
inn, that
sheltered Lily’s
house above the town.

The inn
seemed fairly full for a weekend this early in the summer. A placard advertised
Boru, a Celtic band brought in from Prince Edward Island. Standing in the
doorway, he listened to the guitar, fiddle, and pipes. His elderly aunt,
Camille, swept by on her way into dinner. He faded back, not up for a third
degree from the family grande dame.