The Cottage at Glass Beach (7 page)

How had he ended up there? It was as if the ocean had spat him out. He lay half broken on the rocks, too heavy for her to carry. She couldn't leave him. The waves were rising, driven by storm and tide. They might snatch him back.

“It is a man!” Annie exclaimed. “See—”

“I told you two to stay inside.” Nora whirled around. There were her two daughters in their new slickers and boots, their eyes wide with astonishment. “You shouldn't be here. You could get hurt.”

“We want to help too,” they insisted, in agreement for once.

“He's not dead, is he?” Ella said, apparently regretting her earlier comment.

“No, he's just hurt.”

“Badly?”

“I don't know. If you want to be useful, run and wake Aunt Maire. She'll know what to do,” Nora said. “Hurry!”

They did as she said.

The man opened his eyes. “Where am I?” he asked, his voice deep.

“Glass Beach, on Burke's Island. We need to get help—”

“I'm fine.” He was remarkably calm after what he'd been through. Perhaps he was in shock.

“Clearly, you're not,” she said. “You have a bad cut on your head, for one thing. You're in danger of getting hypothermia, and—”

“I'm not cold.” He stared at her, his gaze disconcerting, his eyes large and nearly black. He touched her hand. “See.”

She drew back. There was something odd in that touch, a warmth, and another quality she couldn't name. “What happened to you? Was there an accident?”

“There must have been.”

“Why were you out in this weather?”

“I can't remember.”

“But your boat—” She scanned the waves and rocks. Nothing. It must have sunk fast, some distance from shore. She supposed he had insurance, still—

“At least I have my life,” he said. “Speaking of hypothermia, it seems you're out here without a coat.”

“I gave it to you,” she said. “Please. Stay still. My aunt should be here in a moment. She has medical training.”

“I told you. I don't need any help.” His tone sharpened. He hoisted himself into a sitting position with a grunt, shrugged the coat from his shoulders, and handed it to her. “I think this fits you better than me. You should put it on. You're shivering.”

Was she? Her hands were so numb she could barely move them. She didn't bother fastening the coat. “Who are you?” Nora asked. “What is your name?”

He frowned. “I don't know.”

The bump on his head must be worse than it looked. She was about to question him further when Maire and the girls appeared.

“We're coming,” Maire called, first-aid kit in hand. The rain drummed steadily on their hoods as they gathered around the man in a semicircle.

He was clearly bemused by the attention. “Maybe I should get shipwrecked more often.”

“There are easier ways to gain a woman's notice,” Maire said. “Now then, let's take a look at you.” She was all business as she checked his eyes, asked questions, and applied pressure to the wound.

So, Nora thought, there was another side to Maire: calm as always, but steely too.

“And what do you see?” he asked Maire.

“A man who's lucky to be alive, after being in weather like this.”

“I was catching the end of the run.”

“And it caught you.”

“I suppose you could say that.”

“He can't remember his name,” Nora said. “I think it might be serious—”

“A concussion, that's all,” he insisted. “I told you not to trouble yourself—”

Maire turned to Nora. “I'll take it from here. Get the girls home. They shouldn't be out on a night like this—and neither should you.”

Chapter Six

T
he next day dawned so clear, Nora wondered if she'd imagined the encounter. Yet there was her torn shirt, ruined now, the cuff missing, seams speckled with blood. Her coat and shoes were crusted with mud, hair stiff with salt, lips tasting of it too, the taste of her childhood. She needed to shower—they had shed their clothes and fallen into bed as soon as they got home last night—but the girls were already headed out the door.

“What are you up to?” she called through the open window as she pulled her hair into a high ponytail. The girls' movements were a mystery these days. She could barely keep up with them.

“We want to see the shipwrecked man.” They paused among the buttercups.

“He's probably at the village clinic by now, or headed home,” Nora said. Wherever that was. “And even if he isn't, we should leave him alone. He's not an animal in a zoo.” There was no place to stay but Maire's, and surely her aunt wouldn't have suggested such an arrangement.

“We know,” Annie replied. “He's a man. He must have visiting hours. Everyone knows there are visiting hours.”

“That's for hospitals,” Nora said. “And besides, I doubt he's there.”

“We want to know what happened after we left,” Ella said. “Don't you?”

She did, but she thought they could have waited until at least after breakfast.

The girls didn't wait for a reply. They made for the trees and Maire's house beyond before she could dissuade them.

Nora yanked on a pair of jeans, nearly tripping in her haste, and a sweater, then jammed her feet into a pair of sneakers. She jogged along the path in their wake, feeling like a child again, the child who'd raced over these very trails, laughing, playing, seeking, crying.

All was quiet at Cliff House. A line of crows perched along the roofline, commentating on the activity below, soot-feathered and gossipy, like some of the women at the last black-tie event she attended with Malcolm, whispering behind her back in the days before the rumors were confirmed. What made him stray. Whether she'd gained weight or aged. If the other woman was younger, smarter, more beautiful. The birds on the roof watched her speculatively, eyes hard and shiny as polished jet beads.

The sound of the girls' voices brought her focus back to the present. She came upon them talking with—or rather interrogating—Maire, who was planting tomato bushes, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred the night before, the trowel chinking against a buried stone as she spaded the earth.

“Where is he?” Annie asked.

“Who?” Maire shaded her eyes with a gloved hand, a smudge of dirt on her cheek.

“You know—the man on the beach,” Annie said. “The guy Ella thought was a seal.”

“I said he
might
have been a seal,” Ella protested.

“He was a bit bruised and battered and needed a butterfly bandage or two—that wound wasn't as deep as we thought—but he'll be as good as new before you know it, once he gets over that bump on the head and regains his full memory. He's made of sturdy stuff, that one.” Maire patted the dirt with a nod of satisfaction.

“His memory?” Nora asked. So the effects were lingering. “I hope he's being seen by a doctor.”

“Didn't want one,” she replied, turning to Ella. “Funny you thought he was a seal.”

“It was dark.”

“Is he here?” Annie stood on tiptoe.

“Yes, is he?” Ella echoed.

“He didn't want to impose. I offered him the fishing shack near the point as a compromise. To say it's rustic is an understatement, but it seems to suit him fine.”

“For how long?” Ella asked. Things were apparently starting to get interesting.

To Nora, they were getting complicated. She shooed the girls off to pick flowers in the meadow. “I thought you were going to call for help and get him settled in the village,” she began once they were out of earshot.

“The phones were down, and I don't have a cell—darn things can be more trouble than they're worth, if you ask me, but then I'm not much for technology—so I figured I shouldn't waste time driving into town until I knew his condition. And in the end, he didn't want to put anyone to the trouble. He's a considerate sort. A rare breed these days.” She set down the trowel and she looked up at Nora. “My instincts tell me he's all right.”

“Next you'll be reading tea leaves.”

“Sometimes I do. But I don't take them too seriously. People have a tendency to see what they want to see. It skews the results,” she said, half joking. “Polly says even the type of tea can influence the process. Earl Grey is better for cautious sorts; jasmine for the adventurous; white for the pure. Keep that in mind if she offers you tea. I suspect you didn't have much exposure to such things when you were young.”

“No,” Nora said. “My father didn't put much stock in the occult. And my mother?”

“She looked for signs. She liked the drama, the mystery.”

“I wish I could remember.”

“Perhaps you know more than you realize. The subconscious is key,” Maire said. “It's most active in dreams. I had a dream he came to us. Our visitor. I have an active dream life, don't you?”

“Mostly nightmares, lately.” And from childhood too, a recurring dream of being on the ocean, struggling to keep her head above water, the waves frothing, pulling her mother away; dreams in which she feels as if she's drowning, the last gulps of air squeezed out of her lungs, before she manages to save herself at the last minute. She always saved herself. Her mother's fate unknown. “And did your dream reveal exactly who he is?” Nora asked.

“No.” She shrugged. “He told me himself. His name is Owen Kavanagh. He could remember that much at least, after I got him down to the fishing shack. We have a long tradition of aiding the shipwrecked on the island. It goes back to the time of the founding. When we were out there on the rocks last night, did you feel the pull of the past?”

More than she'd like to admit. More than she understood.

“I'm not about to break with tradition now.” Maire tamped the soil down firmly. “Besides, if we don't like him”—she smiled as she flicked a weed into a bucket—“we can always pitch him back into the sea.”

T
he girls stole over to the rocks near the fishing shack. The clapboards of the one-room structure had bleached gray, the shingles gap-toothed along the fringes, the door slightly off its hinges. It didn't look as if it could withstand the violent storms that battered the island many months of the year, and yet it had.

“I'm glad we're not staying here,” Ella said. “It makes the cottage look like the Plaza.” They'd gone to New York and stayed there for her tenth birthday. She'd loved the Eloise books then. She wasn't that girl anymore, too old for such stories. She gravitated to serious books now, with darker themes, reading far beyond grade level.

“It's not so bad . . .” Annie's voice trailed off. Even she had trouble finding something kind to say about the place. “Are those bones?” She indicated a pile of spined ribs, whitened by the sun, near the southeast corner, with a shaky finger.

“Fish bones, silly. It's a fishing shack, remember?”

“Are they from ancient times?”

“I doubt it. They'd have turned to dust by now if they were.”

“I don't want to turn to dust.”

“Everyone does, eventually.”

“What about our grandmother? Do you think she turned to dust? It's weird no one knows what happened to her.”

“Maybe she left. People do sometimes.”

Like their father. They didn't say his name, but it hung in the air between them. How Annie kept setting a place for him at the table at home, thinking he'd show up. How Ella would find herself listening for the slam of his car door, the sinking disappointment every time she realized it was only Mr. Livingston, next door, arriving home from work, home, to his family. How she'd watched for her father from the stage of her final school play—she'd had the lead in
Alice in Wonderland
—another chair left unfilled, row D, number 3. Her mother sitting in seat number 2 at every performance, her face tight from smiling encouragingly, smiling enough for both of them, when really it only made it all the more apparent he wasn't there.

“Let's look inside,” Annie said.

“We don't know where he is. This needs to be a covert operation.”

There were no windows on the sides of the structure, only on the front, its back set into the surrounding rock, as if it sprang from the earth itself. The girls crept closer, their knees stained green, and ducked down behind a tangle of nets and floats, the plastic worn and cracked. The stoop was swept clean of sand. He must have intended to stay for a while.

The seals barked from the beach below. Ella put a finger to her lips. “Look. There he is.”

He was swimming in the cove, the seals with him. He was an excellent swimmer, clearly at ease in the water, unafraid of the animals.

“Does he have any clothes on?” Annie asked.

“I can't tell,” Ella said. “I'm not sure if I want to.”

Annie stood taller, to get a better look.

“Get down!” Ella warned.

He turned, the water swirling at his waist, eyes seeming to meet theirs across the expanse, though he was too far away to say for certain.

Annie took another peek. “He's heading for shore. Do you think he's mad at us for spying on him?”

“Run!” Ella said, not wanting to find out.

They scrambled back to Glass Beach, crouching and darting through the grass. Their beach. Theirs. They would say they'd been there the whole time. They would say—

“Is he following us?” Annie gasped.

Ella looked over her shoulder, nearly tripping over a stone. “I don't see him. I think we're in the clear.”

“That doesn't mean he isn't there. He might be hiding, like we were.”

“He's a grown-up. He doesn't have to hide.” She paused, thinking of her father, who seemed to be hiding quite a lot lately—from the reporters, even from them. Too many questions he didn't want to answer.
Why are you leaving? Where are you going? Is it true? What they're saying? Why can't you tell me? Why can't you stay? Do you love her more than us?
His eyes shiny with tears before he turned away abruptly, the car gliding into the night.

“We're not going to get in trouble, are we?”

“No,” Ella said, though she didn't know for sure. “We didn't do anything. It's not as if there was a No Trespassing sign. The shack is Aunt Maire's. She's didn't tell us we couldn't go there.”

“Just because someone doesn't say so specifically doesn't mean—”

“Stop worrying. Let's check on the boat, okay?” Ella said.

Annie brightened. The coracle was her favorite subject. She climbed in, ready to navigate imaginary seas. “Today we're traveling along the horn of Africa.”

“Better set a new course. We don't want to risk being taken by pirates.”

“I
am
a pirate.”

“You weren't yesterday.”

“Well, I am now. Look out. Cannons!” She held fast against the onslaught.

“It's not the same as being on the water,” Ella said. “It would be better if we had paddles, if we could go out there.” The ocean shimmered.

“We could ask Mama to get paddles at Scanlon's. Or maybe Aunt Maire has some.”

“If we told them, it wouldn't be a secret anymore, would it? They wouldn't let us go on the water. At least Mama wouldn't. She'd want to come along.”

They heard footsteps. “Hide!” Ella whispered.

They lay flat and held their breath.

Too late. The shipwrecked man peered down at them. “Permission to come aboard,” he said. He wore a pair of baggy shorts and a T-shirt that didn't suit him, from the shack, perhaps. The material stuck to his back, his skin still wet. A piece of seaweed clung to his neck.

“Granted.” Annie scooted over to make room.

“Denied.” Ella frowned. “There isn't room.” He was a stranger, and a strange one at that. “I'm the captain.”

“You run a tight ship.”

“I have to.” Somebody had to keep an eye on things.

“You're well suited to the job.”

Was he making fun of her? She couldn't tell.

“My name is Owen Kavanagh,” he said. “We haven't been formally introduced.”

“You remembered your name.”

“I did, and little else.”

“I'm Annie, and this is my sister, Ella.”

“Thank you for helping me last night.”

“Are you feeling better?” Annie asked.

“My head still hurts a bit.”

“And yet you're up and about.” Ella regarded him closely. Something wasn't adding up.

“I am. It's hard to stay down in such a beautiful place as this. I'm about to go fishing; it's one of the best spots.” He indicated the rocks.

“You can tell already?” Annie asked.

“I have a sense for these things,” he replied. “You heading out?”

“We don't have any paddles,” Annie said.

“There are a couple at the fishing shack. I could get them for you, if you want,” he offered.

Ella hesitated. She didn't want him to do her any favors, but the temptation was too great. “Okay,” she said, grudgingly.

“You have experience?”

“Of course,” Ella replied, as if there were any question. “We're McGanns, aren't we?” She thought of how she'd canoed at Camp Miniwaka last summer. Her team won first place in the race between the docks. She had a badge at home to prove it. She would have been there this summer too, if she were still friends with Sophie, and her mother hadn't decided to go to Burke's Island.

“Yes,” he said. “You are.”