house had been very modern.
Marion looked up and smiled. “Maybe I should dress for breakfast then. I’ll wear
my diamonds tomorrow, Mr. Moore.” Then she laughed and told Cleo to move over.
Dexter couldn’t see the little dog, but he knew he was sitting in front of the cook top,
waiting for a small morsel to fall of the counter. For such a small dog, he had an
enormous appetite. When Dexter looked to the right, he noticed some of the cabinet doors were open.
They were at the end, near the refrigerator. “Marion,” he said, “why are those doors open
like that?”
Marion didn’t look up at him. She was ready to flip an omelet. “I didn’t notice it,
Mr. Moore. I know all the doors were shut last night when I went to bed.”
Dexter pressed his lips together and lifted an eyebrow. “I see,” he said. He didn’t
want to discuss it in front of Brighton, but he knew by the look on her face that she was
referring to this imaginary ghost. He also knew she’d left the doors open so he’d see them.
“You can close them when you get a chance and we’ll talk about it later.”
Marion lifted the pan, flipped the omelet over and smiled. “Yes, Mr. Moore.”
After breakfast, Brighton wanted to go into town. But Dexter said, “Let’s go up
and check out the widow’s walk first, then we can take a long walk all the way up to the
east end.” In all the years he’d been coming to Provincetown, he’d stayed in guest houses
and rental condos. But he’d never actually been up on a widow’s walk. Now that he had
one of his own, he wanted to check it out first hand.
Brighton tilted her head and said, “What’s the
window’s
walk?”
Marion laughed so hard she dropped a breakfast sausage on the floor and Cleo ran
for it. He scooped it up and ran out of the room as fast as his little legs would take him.
Dexter smiled. He wanted to explain it in simple terms. He said, “It’s not
‘window’s walk,’ sweetie. It’s the
widow’s
walk. It’s like a roof deck at the very top of
the house. A lot of the old houses on Cape Cod have them. When the sailors used to go
away to sea for long stretches of time, their wives used to go up to the top of the house, to
the widow’s walk, and watch for their husbands’ return. They could see all the way out to the ocean for miles and miles.” His lifted his arm and spread it out wide. He didn’t tell
her that most of the time, the women were waiting for men who had died at sea and
would never return.
Brighton jumped off her chair and rubbed her palms together. “I want to see it,
Dad. Let’s go. Maybe we’ll see some boats…or even some whales.” Then she grabbed
his hand and pulled it toward her small body. She was wearing his favorite pink T-shirt
that morning, with a pair of jeans and pink sneakers. The front of the T-shirt read, “Live
Life Like A Butterfly: Always Fly with Gentle, Graceful Wings.”
Dexter stood up. “Okay, sweetie. But we have a new rule here in Provincetown.
You only go up there with me or Marion. You are never to go up there alone.” Then he
turned to Marion. “I’m going to make sure there’s a lock put on the door to the stairwell
this week, just to be sure.” He knew Brighton would listen, but he’d also learned that
with small children you should never assume anything.
“Good idea, Mr. Moore,” Marion said. Then she turned to Brighton and said,
“This is an important new rule, Brighton. Your father is right. You are never to go up
there alone. Do you understand?”
Brighton frowned and stared down at her shoes. She didn’t like restrictions, and
was too young to realize this one was for her own good. “Yes, I understand.” Then she
grabbed Dexter’s hand and said, “Let’s go now, Dad. I want to see where the widows
walked to look for their husbands.”
The entrance to the widow’s walk at Keel Cottage was on the third floor. A
doorway in the center of the hallway led into a narrow stairwell with semi-circular
staircase that had the old-fashioned pie slice steps. When they reached the door, Dexter frowned because as he had predicted, there was no lock. He made a mental note to call a
locksmith that morning to get a good, strong deadbolt put on the door so Brighton
wouldn’t be able to go exploring on her own.
When they reached the top of the steps, they entered a small, square cupola with a
door that led outside. He frowned again; there was no lock on that door either. Evidently,
the former owners hadn’t had children.
Dexter opened the door and they stepped outside onto a gray painted deck that
was surrounded with a glossy white rail. It was a smaller version of the white railing all
over the house. He looked out to the sea and put his hand on his hips. Then he took a
deep breath, inhaled the salt air, and said, “It’s even more beautiful than I thought it
would be.” Beyond the tree tops—in the front, on the left, and on the right—he had ocean
views. “I’ll bet if we wait long enough we’ll see a whale or two.”
While he was staring at the ocean, Brighton stepped forward to get a better look.
Her favorite bedtime story had been about a lost whale who couldn’t find his mother.
When she crossed to the edge, Dexter wasn’t worried. The rail came up to her chest.
First she looked up, then looked down. She pointed to the front yard. “Look down
there, Dad. Marion is walking back from the mailbox at the end of the driveway. Cleo is
with her.” She lifted her arm and waved at Marion, shouting Marion’s name at the top of
her lungs.
Marion looked up and pressed her palm to her throat with one hand and waved
with the other. She shook her head back and forth and shouted. “You be careful up there.
I get chills just looking up at you that high.” Then Cleo ran around in a circle and barked
a few times. “I will,” Brighton shouted. “I’m safe. I’m with Dad.”
Dexter raised his arm and waved. Marion looked small and she seemed so far
away. He could barely see her features or the stack of letters she was carrying. But he
saw she was smiling and that the wind was blowing a loose strand of gray hair next to her
ear.
While he was waving at Marion, Brighton leaned forward and pressed her weight
against the white rail. Dexter heard a quick snap and the rail cracked. When the rail went
forward, Brighton followed. She fell off the roof so fast it seemed like she went down in
slow motion. He reached down to grab Brighton’s pink T-shirt, but he wasn’t fast enough
to keep her from falling.
Cleo barked first, and it sounded like a long, deep howl from the bottom of his gut.
Then Marion dropped the mail on the driveway and pressed her palms to her face. At the
same time she screamed, Dexter reached forward with both arms outstretched and
shouted, “
Brighton!
” His heart stopped beating; his legs became wobbly and he went
down to his knees. For a second, he couldn’t move—the entire world stopped moving. A
force of heat passed through his body and made his ears ring. When he looked up again,
he saw Marion down on the driveway with both arms outstretched and her mouth wide
open. She looked up at him and tried to open her mouth to speak. But nothing came out.
He ran down all three staircases, taking two at a time. When he reached the front
hall, he knocked over a table with a lamp and pushed the screen door open with both
hands. His stomach thumped and his heart raced. The images that ran through his head
were too awful to even consider. Cleo was running in circles on the grass, barking up toward the porch. Marion
was standing on the grass, in front of the porch, reaching up with both arms to the top of
a tall, square shrub. It was a yew, with soft, cushiony evergreens that had been pruned so
many times over the years the flat surface was almost completely solid.
When Marion saw him, she said, “I can’t reach her. I’m going to call an
ambulance.”
“I’m okay,” Brighton said. “I just can’t get up.”
He looked up and saw Brighton on her back against the yew, struggling to move
forward. Without thinking twice, he leaned into the yew and slipped one hand under her
neck and the other under her legs. Then he lifted her body and pulled her to his chest. He
held her as tightly as he could, and tears poured from his eyes and ran down the sides of
his face. When he started to sob, Brighton patted his shoulder and said, “I’m fine, Dad.
Stop crying. I’m not hurt.”
Dexter looked at Marion. She pulled a tissue from her apron and wiped a few
tears away from her eyes. She shrugged her shoulders and said, “I’ve never seen anything
like it, Mr. Moore. When she fell over the side, she didn’t come crashing down. I
couldn’t move, but I saw it all. I’m not imagining this, Mr. Moore. She went down in
slow motion and landed in this shrub, as if something or someone was holding her safely
all the way down.” She wiped her eyes again. “It’s a miracle.”
Dexter kissed Brighton on the cheek and said, “I think we should take her to the
hospital down in Hyannis, Marion. You get the keys to the car and drive and I’ll hold her
in the back seat.” He held her even tighter. He didn’t want to let go of her. But Brighton smiled and said, “Dad. I’m fine. Nothing hurts. Put me down so we
can go for a walk into town now. I want to get my purse in the house.” She’d just started
carrying a purse, and she never went anywhere without it.
Her voice sounded normal, and she seemed to be moving around without a
problem. He looked at Marion, and Marion looked back and shrugged her shoulders.
So he slowly lowered her to the grass. “Don’t move too much, sweetie.
Something could be broken.”
But when her small feet were planted firmly on the ground, she reached back,
brushed a few pieces of yew off her jeans, and sprinted up the front steps. Cleo followed
her into the house.
Marion and Dexter looked at each other. “She seems fine,” Dexter said.
Marion crossed to the steps and shook her head. “I’ll go inside and check her out
just to be safe, Mr. Moore. You never know.”
“Keep her busy for a while, Marion,” he said. “I have to make a few phone calls
before we go into town this morning. I want a lock on that door, I want that railing fixed,
and I want to know why the former owners left it in such disrepair.” He was still thankful
that Brighton hadn’t been harmed. But when he thought about what could have happened
because of the broken rail, he clenched his fists.
While Marion was with Brighton in the kitchen, Dexter went upstairs to the study.
It was the room next to his bedroom, at the far end of the second floor. This room was
part of another three-story turret on the left side of the house. The furniture was dark and
heavy, the walls were imported panels from an English Castle, and there was a huge
telescope that looked out to sea. From what Dexter had been told by his Realtor, this had been Captain Lang’s favorite room in the house. A few of Captain Lang’s books were
still in the bookcases that flanked the fireplace, and a large steering wheel from a ship
was stationed on a platform in front of the telescope.
The first phone call Dexter made was to his Realtor. When he told her about the
rail and what had just happened, he clenched the phone so hard his knuckles turned white.
The real estate agent listened to his anxious voice, in complete shock. Then she quietly
explained that Dexter had voluntarily waived all home inspections and that he’d
purchased the house “as is.” This was a major part of the agreement, and the only way the
former owners would have agreed to sell the house at such a low price. It was all legal,
and Dexter had signed all the papers without thinking twice. There was nothing he could
do now, except be thankful Brighton hadn’t been killed and fix it himself.
The agent gave him the name of a reliable local handyman and a good locksmith.
When he hung up with her, he called them and asked them to come out that day. Getting
a lock on the door that led to the widow’s walk was top priority. After the handyman
fixed the railing, Dexter wanted him to inspect the entire house for anything else that
might be dangerous. He told both the handyman and the locksmith that he’d pay double
to get them in and out as quickly as possible. Dexter was usually more conservative with
money. He knew that if he squandered his savings he’d have to go back to work in show
business, and the thought of doing that made his legs weak. But he wanted these things
fixed as fast as possible for Brighton’s sake.
Chapter Three
