Luanne Rice Read online

  Patrick was different. Maeve had taught school for fifty years, and if she had ever had Patrick Murphy in her class, she knew that she would never have pegged him to be a police officer. Not that he hadn’t done a thorough investigation—if anyone could find Mara, Maeve knew it would be Patrick. But there was something in his makeup that reminded Maeve of Johnny Moore, an Irish poet she had once known.

  She had seen it the day he had come here to Maeve’s house, held her hand as they sat in rockers on the porch, and told her about the blood they had found on Mara’s kitchen floor. Maeve’s heart had frozen. It really had. She had felt her heart freeze and constrict, felt the muscle shrink, pulling all her blood back from her face and hands, so that her head had dropped down on her chest.

  And when she’d come to, just a second or two later, Patrick was kneeling in front of her, with tears in his eyes because he was thinking the same thing she had so often feared would happen—that Mara was dead, the baby was dead, that Edward had killed them both.

  Maeve had only to think of the tears in Patrick Murphy’s blue eyes to feel her heart twist now, again, as she snipped away at the tangled rosebushes. She knew that he would come by—sometime in the next week or so—to check on her.

  Maeve held the green plastic-handled garden shears in her pink-gloved hand, clipping her rosebushes. Cutting far enough down, right to the place where new life in the form of tiny green leaves emerged from the stem. Her arthritis was acting up.

  She could almost feel the photographers wanting to ask her to go get the yellow boots and watering can, stage the yard as it had been that day nine years ago tomorrow.

  “Hello, Maeve.”

  Looking up, she saw her neighbor and lifelong best friend, Clara Littlefield, coming through the side yard. Clara carried a wicker picnic basket overflowing with French bread, grapes, Brie, saucisson, and a bottle of wine.

  “Hi, Clara,” Maeve said. The two women bumped straw hats as they kissed.

  “The roses look so beautiful this year,” Clara said.

  “Thank you … look at Mara’s beach roses—they’ve really come into their own, haven’t they?”

  “They have,” Clara said, and the two women admired the full bushes, lush with pink blooms, planted by Mara the year her parents drowned. So many years ago, meant to cherish her parents’ memory, and now they were all Maeve had of Mara herself. Maeve’s eyes filled with tears, and she felt Clara’s arm slip around her.

  “You brought us a picnic?” Maeve asked.

  “Of course. I can’t come to stay at your house without bringing food. It’s like those sleepovers we had sixty years ago, when we’d take turns providing the s’mores.”

  “The sleepovers continue,” Maeve said, smiling. “No matter how old we are …”

  Clara laughed, hugging her again, almost making Maeve forget the reason for this particular sleepover, this picnic. Every June for the last eight years, Maeve’s best friend had come over to stay, to spend the night before that day when Mara put down the green garden hose and yellow watering can, slipped off her yellow boots, and walked out of her grandmother’s yard forever.

  Forever was such a long time.

  But, Maeve thought, holding Clara’s hand as they walked into the kitchen to delve into the picnic basket, it went by just a little easier when you had a best friend by your side.

  Chapter 2

  The two girls had missed the bus, so they walked home from school, kicking a pebble ahead of them on the bumpy road high above the Gulf of St. Lawrence. They took turns. First Jessica would give it a good smack with her sneaker, send it bouncing along. When they caught up to the stone, Rose would take her shot. In between kicks, they walked and talked.

  “Favorite color,” Rose said.

  “Blue. Favorite animal,” Jessica said.

  “Cats. Favorite book.”

  “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.”

  “Mine too.” Rose laughed as she kicked the pebble and got air, sending it in a long arc down the middle of the road. “Did you see that?”

  “Okay, you get the gold medal,” Jessica said. “Back to Question Time.”

  “We’ve played this before,” Rose said. “We already know the answers to all the questions.”

  “Not all the questions,” Jessica said mysteriously. “We’ve only been friends since I moved here in April. I’ll bet you don’t even know where I’m from.”

  “Boston,” Rose said.

  “That’s just what we tell people,” Jessica said. She had a pretend-scary look on her freckled face. “But there are secrets that even my best friend won’t know—until she asks me …”

  Rose giggled. She and Jessica were almost nine, and it felt delicious to imagine that her new friend had deep dark secrets—and to know that to find out about them, all she had to do was ask. Mulling that over, she walked in silence. Off to the left, the Gulf of St. Lawrence stretched on forever. It was very calm and bright blue, with just the finest of haze spread like a silk scarf over its surface. Rose knew, when she saw haze like that, summer was almost here. She scanned the bay, in search of Nanny … when summer came, so did Nanny.

  Jessica mis-kicked the pebble into the weeds, so she started over with a new one. Rose inched a little way down the bank to find the old stone; something made her want to keep it, so she put it in her pocket. By the time she looked up, Jessica had disappeared around the bend. Rose skipped a few steps. When she broke into a run, her heart fluttered like a trapped bird.

  “Don’t you want to know?” Jessica asked, dribbling the pebble the way she did a soccer ball on the field.

  “Sure,” Rose said.

  “Then ask,” Jessica teased. “Go on—I’ll give you a clue. Ask me my real name.”

  “I know it—it’s Jessica Taylor.”

  “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Maybe Taylor is my stepfather’s name, or maybe we decided to name ourselves after James Taylor. We love his music.”

  “So do my mother and I!”

  “My real father saw him in a concert once. At Tanglewood.”

  “Your real father?” Rose asked. She wanted to ask more, but something about the look on Jessica’s face made her hold back. Stress pulled her eyes tight and made her jaw square. It only lasted a moment, was gone in a flash, but Rose had seen. The words “your real father” slashed between them; Rose felt them in her heart, like another trapped bird.

  “The air sure is clean up here,” Jessica said, changing the subject as they started walking again. “It’s the reason we moved to Cape Hawk, so far from pollution and junk in the air. Or, at least, that’s what my mother tells everyone. But maybe …”

  “Maybe what?” Rose asked.

  “Maybe the real reason we moved here is another scary secret!” Jessica said. She tugged on one of Rose’s braids, then pointed up at the mansion on the hill. Deer tracks led through the thick brush, into the pine forest surrounding the great big stone house where the oceanographer lived. “Let’s go up there and spy on Captain Hook.”

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Rose said, feeling the strange flutter again. “Considering he’s our friend and my mother has her store right next to his office.”

  “Yes, but that’s way down at the dock,” Jessica said. “She probably has no idea what goes on inside his big, crazy house. What if he’s a mad scientist and we have to save her? What if he’s a real pirate, with a name like Captain Hook?”

  “His name is Dr. Neill,” Rose said. She knew the kids called him Captain Hook, but she never did. Rose knew that people were different, in all sorts of ways. She loved the things she and Dr. Neill had in common, and it made her sad when kids made fun of him. He was so tall and quiet, with that dark hair and deep-set eyes, and a thin mouth that never smiled. Except when he was near Rose and her mother.

  “I feel bad that your mother’s beautiful shop has to be right next door to him,” Jessica said. “Any one-arm guy who spends his life chasing sharks …” She shivered. “When
the rest of his family is so nice, with their whale-watch boats.”

  “My birthday party’s going to be a whale watch,” Rose said.

  “I know, I can’t wait. Because it’s my birthday too.”

  “No! You’re kidding!”

  “Maybe I am … and maybe I’m not.”

  Rose pictured their classroom, with one bulletin board decorated with colorful squares, showing all her classmates’ birthdays. Jessica’s was in August.

  “You are kidding,” Rose said. “Because it’s August 4—right up there on the board.”

  Jessica smiled. “You caught me. Well, only one of us gets to celebrate on Saturday. You, lucky girl!”

  “I just hope Nanny’s back by then. She’s always here for my birthday.”

  “Who’s Nanny?”

  “You’ll meet her.”

  “Will we really see whales?”

  “Yes,” Rose said. “They come back here every summer. This is their home, just like it’s ours.”

  “Is that why the Neill family is so rich? Because they have all those whale-watching boats?”

  “I guess so.” Rose’s fingers began to feel numb. She felt prickles race across her lips. The road inched upward, toward the eastern curve. Once they got to the top, they could start down. They were almost to the pinnacle.

  “My stepfather says whales are just overgrown fish and people who pay good money to see them are suckers. He had an ancestor who got rich from whaling.”

  “Whales are mammals,” Rose said, concentrating on every step. “They breathe air, just like us.”

  Tall rock cliffs ringed the town—from behind the big white hotel out to headlands jutting into the protected bay, which led into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The icy Lyndhurst River flowed down, cutting a jagged path through the steep rock and forming a fjord. Rose had learned in school that this whole area had been formed by the Ice Age—that the rocks were from the glacier, and that the river flowing into the bay attracted fish and was the reason this spot was so popular with whales and seals.

  “Come on,” Jessica said suddenly, grabbing Rose’s hand, tugging her toward a deer track leading up to Dr. Neill’s house. Rose lifted her eyes. The sturdy Nova Scotia pines seemed to somehow elevate the stone house, hold it up above their branches toward the sky—sunshine glanced off the vast slate roof. She heard songbirds—just back from their long migration to the south—singing in the trees. Even with the glinting sunlight and the birdsong, and the hope of seeing Dr. Neill, the path was just too steep.

  “Are you coming?” Jessica prodded.

  Rose leaned forward, hands on her knees, resting a little. “Let’s go down to my mother’s shop instead, okay? She’ll give us a snack, and maybe she’ll teach you how to needlepoint your initials.”

  “You’re just chicken!” Jessica said. But Rose noticed that Jessica actually looked relieved that they didn’t have to go up the dark and spooky hillside. Rose shrugged, pretending to agree. She stayed there, leaning on her knees, conserving her strength.

  “Okay, then,” Jessica said. “We’re soccer players. I’ll pass you the ball, and let’s see you take it down the field.”

  Jessica kicked the pebble her way, expecting her to dribble it the way she had. Rose started, but the walk home had been so long, and the trapped-bird feeling was getting worse. She glanced down at her hands, and saw Jessica follow her gaze. Her fingers were blue, and the expression on Jessica’s face was pure shock.

  “Rose!”

  “I’m just cold,” Rose said. “That’s all.”

  “But it’s hot out!”

  Feeling panicked, Rose kicked the stone into the bushes—as if by accident. Jessica whooped with disbelief, then began to run down the hill toward the harbor.

  “Come on,” she called.

  Rose wanted to sit down, but she couldn’t bear for Jessica to see. Jessica was her new friend, and she didn’t know… . It’s all downhill, she told herself. I can do it… . She scanned the harbor town, fixed her eyes on her mother’s store. Then she took a deep breath and began to walk.

  Cape Hawk was not the sort of fishing town lined with elegant houses once occupied by sea captains. Its sidewalks were not of brick and they were not shaded by graceful elms. These wharves were not magnets for long white yachts and the people who sailed them. There was one beautiful hotel and a small campground for travelers. The nicest houses in town were owned by one family, the same people who ran the hotel and owned all the whale-watching boats.

  This small northern outpost of Nova Scotia’s herring fleet had four roads, called Church Street, School Street, Water Street, and Front Street. Frost heaves kept buckling the sidewalks, and the sea winds were so constant and relentless that only the sturdiest pines and scrub oaks could withstand the battering. No sea captain but one had ever made enough real money from the hard life in these waters to build houses worth commenting on, and he had built three—for himself and his children. That man was Tecumseh Neill.

  This particular house, down by the quai, had been built in 1842, after Captain Neill’s third voyage around the Horn aboard his ship, the Pinnacle. Town legend had it that he had been in pursuit of a single whale during the last years of his life, but three trips previously he had successfully caught whales and sold their oil in New Bedford and Halifax before building his house in Cape Hawk.

  Glistening white clapboard with black shutters and a red door, his “downtown” house rose three stories to a widow’s walk overlooking the Gulf of St. Lawrence. This structure, like the others he had built, had never left Captain Neill’s family, having been passed down through the generations. For two centuries it had been occupied by his descendants, but this generation had split it up and rented it out—the top two floors being apartments, and the ground floor divided in half for commercial space. The house had wide granite steps, a wide front porch with white railings, and a red door.

  Once inside the door, visitors stood in a small common space, the front hall. Captain Neill’s original chandelier hung over the staircase. Lily Malone, the woman who rented one of the two first-floor stores, had tried to make the center hallway welcoming by hanging needlework done by herself and other women from the town. She had also hung some of her daughter Rose’s paintings.

  Lily Malone sat in the back of her shop, finishing up the party favors. She had sixteen pink paper bags lined up under her worktable, hidden from view, in case one of the intended recipients happened to wander in. So far today she had had five customers, three of them Nanouk Girls—members of Lily’s needlepointing, hanging-out, and support club. She had also received two deliveries of thread and yarn, including the much-sought-after French-Persian wool-silk blend that everyone had to have, in rich, wonderful colors ranging from morning clover to sunset mesa.

  Her store, In Stitches, had two big windows overlooking the dock, the whale-watch boats, and Cape Hawk harbor. Needlework was her shop’s focus, and she carried threads for embroidery, cross-stitch, and needlepoint, a garden of colors in cotton, silk, wool-silk, French wool, Persian wool, and metallic fibers. The colors were varied and gorgeous—she had twenty-two shades of pink alone: shell pink, sand pink, lollipop pink, dawn pink, geranium pink, old rose pink, sweet-william pink, and many more.

  On a symbolic level, she liked the idea of stitching things together, making something beautiful one tiny stitch at a time. On a practical level, it put food on the table. This gorgeous place happened to be about a million miles from absolutely anywhere. The women of the region flocked to her door. Some spent money they didn’t even have. Lily let them buy yarn and canvas on credit; she collected big-time in terms of free babysitting and casseroles.

  The hotel was also a great boon for business—at least in the summer months. Lily glanced out the window, up the hill. The sprawling, elegant, three-story white building sparkled in the sun, like a citadel of the northlands. The roof was bright red, topped by an ornate cupola emblazed with the name CAPE HAWK INN. Two rambling wings curved outward around
perfectly manicured gardens of roses, zinnias, marigolds, larkspur, and hollyhocks. Camille Neill knew how to grow flowers—Lily gave her that.

  Just then the school bus rumbled down the wharf. Lily pulled back the lace curtain to watch the last kids get off. She felt a small, almost imperceptible, wash of relief: if the bus was here, it meant Rose was home. It was silly, and she knew it. Rose was almost nine years old, so bright and self-sufficient and constantly reminding Lily that she could take care of herself.

  Suddenly the door opened, and two women walked in. They were regular customers, Nanouk Girls. Marlena was local, but Cindy was from Bristol, forty miles away. Lily smiled and waved.

  “Hi, Cindy, hi, Marlena,” she said. “How are you?”

  “Great, Lily,” Cindy said. “I finished needlepointing my last dining room chair seat, and I’m finally ready to move on!”

  “She’s been at this project now for, what—three years?” Marlena asked.

  “Did you bring one for me to see?” Lily asked. She kept her ears tuned for the phone to ring—either she or Rose always picked up the phone to call each other after school. Cindy dug into her satchel, pulled out two needlepoint squares—elegant bargello patterns, fine flame stitches done in autumn shades of deep red and gold.

  “They match her dining room perfectly,” Marlena said.

  “They’re wonderful,” Lily said, examining the perfect stitches. “I remember when you started the first one, in the club. And you did six of them?”

  “Eight,” Cindy said proudly.

  Lily laid the squares out on the desk. They were skewed slightly out of shape, like all needlepoint worked in hand. The canvas was fine, ten-mesh; the very edges, once white, were slightly gray from months of being handled. No matter how carefully a person washed her hands, skin oils transferred to the work and pulled dirt into the yarn.

  “I know it’s time to wash and block them,” Cindy said. “What do you recommend?”

  “Horse soap,” Lily said, placing a pint jug of equine wash on the desk. “It’s gentle and cheap, and it will do the trick. I’m undercutting the tack and feed store.”