May: Daughters of the Sea #2 (18 page)

“May, I don’t think you’ve heard a single thing I’ve said about these trigonometric functions in the last five minutes.” They were in the library and Hugh had been helping her learn advanced trigonometry. May’s
recent research had revealed that the wreck had drifted either in a southwesterly or a northeasterly direction depending on the combination of currents and wind, which meant that it was either near Nantucket Shoals or Georges Bank. Once she knew this, she could go back to Maury and study the current diagrams and truly focus in on a likely location within a single region.

“Oh, I am so sorry. Yes. I know I’ve been distracted.”

“Is it something at home?” May knew Hugh found it odd that she never spoke about her family. She had once described them as “queer folk” he wouldn’t understand. Whenever he asked questions, May tried to change the subject, but she could sense Hugh growing suspicious. “Why do you even want to learn trigonometry, May? I’ve never actually understood your interest in Maury.”

“I told you the first day I met you. I’m interested in currents,” she replied.

“Ah, yes, the shipwreck off Egg Rock last winter. But it seems more than that to me.”

“Does it now!” she shot back. She felt a panic rising within her.

“May!” Hugh was taken aback by the tone of her voice.

She knew she had gone too far, but she couldn’t help it. “Look, there are certain things I—I just can’t explain, that you can’t ask me about. I’m sure you have things, too, that I shouldn’t ask you about.”

“Nothing, May, absolutely nothing.” His face was crestfallen. There was no trace of those wonderful creases that normally bracketed his smiling eyes.

May felt terrible.

She looked up at him. There was a graveness in his expression that she had never seen before. May pressed her lips together. She would tell him a little, just a bit, but nothing about her secret life. “Not just that wreck—I am very interested in a shipwreck that happened fifteen, almost sixteen years ago. It was off of Georges Bank.”

Hugh raised an eyebrow, and his wonderful smile threatened to break across his face. His next remark gave her a delightful out.

“And you think there is gold to be found?”

“Yes!” she replied gleefully, grateful for the escape. “And with it we can run away, and I’ll be so rich I can build you an observatory just like the one at Harvard.”

He laughed. “But tell me now, really, why are you so interested?”

May looked down at her hands. “I just am,” she said simply. “And I am interested in how currents and drift could perhaps have affected it.”

“How did you find out about this wreck?”

“I found a newspaper clipping someplace.”

“What’s the name of the ship?”

“HMS
Resolute.
“

“Would you like me to look into it when I go down to Boston next week?”

May was taken aback. It was, of course, very generous of him, but it was frightening, too. It would put him in a position of possibly finding out more than she wanted him to know. She wasn’t sure how to handle this.

“Well … ,” she said slowly. “I—I’m not sure it’s such a good idea, really.”

Hugh blinked and looked at her hard. “May,
what is it?” He paused and gave a rather mirthless chuckle. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those covetous scholars who hoards information so you can claim all the glory.”

“Don’t make fun of me. I’d just rather do this myself.”

“Rather do it yourself,” he repeated abstractly.

“Yes, in my own way.”

“You never even thanked me for offering, May.”

“I’m—I’m sorry. Thank you. It was very kind of you. I was just surprised, that’s all.”

“Surprised that someone who really cares about you offered to help you with your secret research? What is the secret, May?” An edge was creeping into his voice.

She realized she would have to tell him something. If she didn’t it would only make things worse. The secret would loom too large in his mind. She sighed. “I can tell you what little I already know.”

“And what is that?”

May proceeded to tell him the longitude and latitude where the letter from the Newport Revenue

Cutter Service had reported finding drifting wreckage, and that the captain was Walter Lawrence.

“I suppose I could take an extra day to go down to Newport on my next trip to Boston and talk to the people at the station there.”

May seemed not to hear him.

“May!” he blurted out. “Sometimes it feels as if you’re not even here.”

“Whatever do you mean? I’m right here in front of you, silly.” Her tone maddened him.

“But you’re keeping things from me. If—if —” he stammered. She had never heard Hugh stammer in the time she had known him. “If there is someone else, I’ll — I’ll try to understand.”

“Someone else! There is no one else.” She inhaled sharply. “Not—not really.” She was the one stammering now. There
was
someone else. There was Hannah, and she knew there was another sister. But it was not the same thing. They were sisters, not boyfriends. Not like Hugh. It wasn’t romantic. How could he say such a thing?

“Not really? Now, what the devil do you mean by
that? You’re considering? Hedging your bets?” The blade of his sarcasm ripped through her.

May’s mouth dropped open. She couldn’t stand this. “That is hateful! I’m leaving right now.”

“May! May!” he protested. “I am not hateful. I am not!” There was not a trace of the sarcasm. “May! May! I am sorry I spoke that way.”

Her face turned stormy, and her green eyes glittered fiercely. “Well, I’m not sorry you did. Now I know who you really are.”

He appeared suddenly very weary. He looked straight at May. “But, May, that’s the problem exactly. I don’t think I know who
you
are.”

Her face turned chalky white—whiter than the moon. “I’m going back. Going back right this minute.” She ignored the sadness and confusion on his face and left.

“I hear’d them folks up at Gladrock have hired a whole orchestra from New York City to come up and play for their picture party.”

“A pastry chef, too. Pearl Haskell says that the regular cook is in a dither over that. Feels she can make cakes as good as any Frenchie from New York.”

One could not walk through the village of Bar Harbor these days without hearing about the ball that was to be held at Gladrock, the estate of the Hawley family. The party was planned in celebration of the unveiling of a portrait that had been painted by the renowned artist Stannish Whitman Wheeler. That was how May found out the name of the man who had come up to her in the lane that day. There was other talk, too, concerning the party, or rather one of the Hawley daughters, a girl name Lila, who was said to have a delicate temperament. Or as May heard one day when she was in Bee’s, “Downright loony is what she is!”

“Yep, she just got out of the loony bin,” spoke up another lobsterman, in high rubber boots, who had come in.

“Sanitarium,” Mrs. Bee said from behind the counter. She didn’t like people gossiping about the summer
folk. It wasn’t good for business. They could gossip all they wanted to during the winter but not in the summertime, during high season.

“Loony bin,” muttered the lobsterman, sliding his eyes away from Mrs. Bee.

T
HE NEXT DAY
May took Hepzibah into the village for an appointment with Dr. Holmes. May was still reeling from her fight with Hugh. She regretted what she had said and she wondered if she had driven Hugh off for good.

When they went into the doctor’s office, his wife greeted them with an agitated expression.

“I am so sorry, Mrs. Plum, but Doctor Holmes was called away on an emergency over at Gladrock.” Fear leaped up in May.

“Oh—oh, I hope —” she stammered. “I hope it’s nothing with that lovely little girl, Ettie.”

“No, it’s an unfortunate situation with the eldest daughter. I believe her name is Lila.”

“Well, do you know when this ‘unfortunate situation’ will be fixed?” Hepzibah snapped.

“It’s an emergency, Mother.” It was the first time in months that May had called Zeeba Mother.

“But I’ve come all the way in here. I don’t leave Egg Rock much. I’m not up to it.”

“Well, you are welcome to stay here as long as you like and wait for Doctor Holmes to return.”

Hepzibah gave a little sniff. “Thank you.” She set herself down on the oak bench. “Might you fetch me a pillow for my back? This bench is rather hard. And perhaps a cup of tea? It might settle my stomach. That’s why I’m here.”

As soon as Mrs. Holmes left the room, May turned and looked coldly at Hepzibah. “I’m going out for a bit. I’ll be back.”

“Suit yourself.”

May headed directly for Gladrock, but as she walked through the village she heard other news. “It ain’t just the crazy girl. They say one of the servants done disappeared as well.”

“What? What’s that?” May stopped short by the post office.

“Oh, hello, May.” It was Carrie Welles, wife of the postmaster and also probably the snoopiest woman in the village. She feasted on gossip. And if gossip could make one plump it had done so for Carrie Welles. She was perfectly round. One got the impression that if bumped, she might roll down the street right into the harbor. “Yes, that servant girl who everyone says is the spitting image of you. She got into some kind of tussle with the eldest daughter, Lila. And they say she just took off.”

“But where did she take off to?”

Carrie shrugged her plump shoulders. Her double chin quivered. “Who’s to know?”

“I done heard they sent Captain Eaton out in the motor launch for her,” Thad Roberts said as he walked by.

“A boat!” May gasped. “They think she went —” Before she could finish the sentence she began running toward Gladrock.
Could it be
true? Could it have happened? Has Hannah finally crossed over?

This time May stood in the shadows of dark pines that edged the driveway witnessing a strange and eerie tableau. A black city carriage stood in front under the porte cochere of the house. She saw two figures dressed in white nurse uniforms walking on either side of a young woman who appeared to be in a trance. She caught sight of Dr. Holmes just behind the trio and, to one side, Ettie stood next to a girl whom May assumed to be her sister. Suddenly she saw Ettie wrench free from the group. “Hannah!” she screamed, and darted across the lawn.

May heard a crackle in the woods, and not twenty yards from her Hannah Albury, May’s sister, stepped out of the trees. Neither one had seen the other through the dense boughs of the dark pines. The little girl ran to embrace Hannah. Hannah turned her head toward the ocean, which was
obscured now by the trees. Her face was a landscape of devastation and grief at what she had left behind. It only took one look for May to know that, at last, her sister had crossed the border. All May could think was,
It’s happened! At last it’s happened.
And she was joyous.

I
T HAD BEEN THREE NIGHTS
since Hannah had crossed, and May could not find her anywhere. She was growing desperate. Could she have been mistaken? A terrible thought came to her. Could Rudd have done something? Hadn’t he said that he was going to go up to Gladrock and see the scullery girl who was prettier than she was?

May had considered simply walking up to the Hawleys’ house and asking to see Hannah. Or she might write her a note. But it didn’t seem right. It went against some deeply rooted instinct. One did not go on land to seek out mer folk.

Two days later, when she was trimming the lighthouse wick, she heard her father on the steps coming
up to the lantern room. He was back from a trip into the village.

“Barometer’s dropping like a shot. At the post office the telegraph just came through from the weather station down round Portland that there’s a storm intensifying off the Carolinas.”

It didn’t surprise May. There had been a heaviness in the air for a day or so. The wind gusted in an erratic manner. It felt as if she were being slapped by wet, warm rags. But May felt a deep thrill. She loved swimming in storms, the wilder the better. She had learned how to perch tail end on a steep wave to surf down its face on a long angle. She tried to ride each wave as far as possible, just under the curling edge, until the wave collapsed. She wondered if Hannah had learned to do this yet.

She supposed this storm would mean that Hugh would be delayed returning from Boston.
So much the better.
She was mortified every time she thought of their argument. She had actually screamed at him. She was thankful that Miss Lowe had not been there but had gone to the post office. And there
was no guarantee that Hugh would return. Maybe he was done with her. She at least had Hannah to think about—a much more hopeful situation since Hannah had crossed over. True, having a sister was not like having a sweetheart, but at least with Hannah, when they finally met, there would be no secrets.

By the next afternoon the storm had become a hurricane and was moving up the east coast at a fearsome clip. May and her father spent the entire day rigging the hurricane shutters and making the lighthouse as secure as possible. Hepzibah moaned about how the dropping barometric pressure always provoked her complications. She had taken out her new false teeth and put them in a glass of water. “Soon as that barometer goes below twenty-nine my gums swell up on me.”

But she could not get a speck of attention from either Gar or May because they were too busy. “May, if this things hits, I think we’re going to say good-bye
to those chickens unless we bring them in the house. Hurricane wind will just pick up those coops and fly them away.”

“Can’t we fit them in the storehouse between the kerosene kegs?”

“Maybe a few but not all.”

“Okay. I’ll start moving as many as I can there and bring the rest in here.”

“Oh, mercy!” Hepzibah wailed. “That’ll start up my asthma for sure.”

“Well, what do you want me to do, woman?” Gar said with an uncustomary rancor in his voice that made May turn around. “Should we roast them all tonight?” May had never seen her father stand up to Hepzibah in quite this manner.