The Glory Hand (8 page)

The waves blurred, the blinding glare of the surf suddenly a cascade of flame. Cassie tried to move, but it was all she could do to support her weight on the rim of the kitchen sink with her hands. Her elbows locked against her stomach to keep her knees from buckling, and she could smell smoke, feel heat singeing the hair on her arms. It was more than a memory. The smoke billowed, and she started coughing uncontrollably.

A hand gripped her shoulder, a man's arms held her tightly and she opened her eyes. The smoke was coming from the oven beside her. In one quick movement, her father pulled out the pan and dumped the charred lobsters into the sink.

'I ruined them!' Cassie's chest was heaving, sobs buffeting her in waves. 'I ruined everything!' Tears suffocated her, blocked off the words before she could say them:
She's dead and I wanted to take care of you the way she did, but I can't... I can't!

He pressed her to him, his beard wet and shaggy against her face, but she squirmed out of his arms and ran into the hall.

'Cassie!'

She clattered up the stairs, her hand, wet with tears, slipping on the bannister. For a moment it felt like the railing on the
Pandora
the night of the . . .

Or
was
it the scaffolding at Woods Hole the morning her mother. . .?

She stumbled, then scrambled back to her feet, running upstairs on blind instinct.

Cassie had no idea where she was until she slammed the door behind her and wiped the tears from her eyes. The windows smothered with velvet drapes, the mirrored walls . . . She switched on an old whale-oil lamp that had been converted to electricity, but it did little to relieve the gloom. Her reflection echoed between the two mirrored walls into infinity, as if she were chasing herself in a hopeless pursuit.

The studio . . . Cassie hadn't danced since the morning her mother had dragged her out of here to Woods Hole. She doubted she would ever dance again. Her body felt leaden, too heavy to spin across the floor, burdened with a weight that kept her from transforming her feelings into movement. She stared into the mirror and felt as if she were teetering over a deep reflecting pool where she might drown.

She forced herself to study the figure in the mirror. The skirt strained at her hips; whatever curves she had begun to acquire had disappeared with the ten pounds she had gained since her mother's death. The hem of her batik skirt - Ann's skirt - brushed the floor. Face it, she brooded, coming here with your father, trying to cook for him, trying to take care of him - you were just a little girl playing dress-up.

She slumped to the floor. Why had she run away from her father when she wanted so desperately to please him? Because she knew she couldn't give him what he needed?

Her eyes escaped her gaze in the mirror, drawn to the piano in the corner, remembering the afternoons her mother had played the Baldwin upright while she danced. But the scuff marks on the dusty floor were all that was left of the dancing, and the piano that had once been brought to life by her mother's touch was shrouded in shadows, like a black jack-in-the-box that concealed a frightening surprise. She walked over and ran a finger along the keys. The notes had gone flat.

On top of the piano . . . What was it? A leotard? An old pair of leg-warmers?

A purse. The purse her mother had forgotten to take with her on the helicopter. Cassie picked it up cautiously, uneasy with a reminder of the day she wanted to forget. But the suppleness of the black calfskin under her fingers was strangely inviting. She opened the gold clasp. Greedy for something she couldn't put into words, she slipped her hand inside.

The hairbrush, the art noveau antique backed in silver that her mother had been looking for that day on the helicopter . . . Strands of her mother's hair were still trapped in the bristles, and as Cassie carefully pulled them out, she remembered how her mother had brushed her hair that last night, crackling blue sparks in the darkness. She set the hairbrush down on the dusty piano top.

Deeper inside the purse, a lipstick, the neutral shade her mother had used to soften her lips, rather than to color them; a champagne cork, for good luck . . .

And a letter.

It was addressed in her mother's flowing handwriting with the broad strokes of her gold-tipped Mont Blanc pen. The name, 'Miss Grace,' was one Cassie had never heard her mother mention, nor did she recognize the rural address in Maine. A stamp had been attached, but the envelope was unsealed, as if her mother had meant to read it one more time before she mailed it. And then she'd forgotten her purse . . .

Cassie slipped the letter from the envelope, and unfolded the cream-colored stationery monogrammed ACB.

'Dear Miss Grace,

I hesitate to write at this late date, and I hope you will forgive me for my tardiness. But then, I'm sure you will remember that I was always the artistic one, that planning ahead was never my strong point. I'm writing because I realized that you were right, of course - just like you were right when I would come to you with problems at Casmaran. My daughter is precious to me, but I've been selfish. She's on the verge of becoming a woman, and she doesn't need me in the way she used to - the way I admit I wish she still did. It feels as if she's been slipping away from me this past year, and yet, as you warned once, trying to.hold on to her hasn't been healthy for either of us. As you said years ago, there comes a time when mothers and daughters - all women -must share a bond based on mutual love, rather than dependence. That's something I learned at Casmaran, of course, but I guess I'd forgotten.'

Cassie glanced up at herself in the mirror, then looked quickly away. Her mother had understood all along what she had been feeling. Why hadn't they been able to talk about it?

7 know it may be impossible, so close to opening day, to find Cassie a bunk.'
Bunk? Cassie looked again at the address on the envelope: Maine. Casmaran had to be a summer camp. But why hadn't her mother mentioned going there?
'She's really quite special, and I'm sure she would be an asset to any cabin. I know how much it would mean to her if she could experience what I treasured at Casmaran: the endless fields of flowers, dancing near the lake, meeting lifelong friends. And getting to know you, Miss Grace. Casmaran changed me more than I can say - I know I haven't been a very loyal daughter of Casmaran all these years, but if you could find a spot for Cassie I would be forever in your debt. And I know that Cassie would be, too. Because whatever happens, this is her summer, Miss Grace. It has to be.

Love

Ann.' i

Cassie's eyes strayed away from the letter to her face in the mirror. Her expression startled her, The despair had left her eyes, replaced by a serenity, a calm she would have thought impossible when she had run up the stairs a moment before. Her mother had understood. She had understood that another summer together at Cliffs Edge would only have made Cassie resent her more. And, Cassie realized, it had been just as wrong to come here without her. She would only be trying to take her mother's place, and that would be a burden she could never bear, a burden neither her mother nor her father expected of her.

'Whatever happens,'
Ann had written. Cassie wondered if her mother had suspected (could she have
known?)
that she was going to die that day. This letter . . . was it her mother's last wish for her? She slipped the letter back into the envelope, feeling (
but how could it be?)
that her mother
hadn't
forgotten the purse that morning, that she had deliberately left it here, where she knew Cassie would discover it, a clue to how to survive the ache of her death.

As Cassie raised the envelope to her lips, licked the seal, then smoothed it firmly shut, the door to the studio creaked open behind her. The shadowy silhouette of a woman hovered at the threshold, and Cassie was seized by a giddy panic that her mother had been summoned here by her reading the letter. She shoved it quickly into the purse, is if she had been caught stealing.

'CassieT

It was Robin.

For a moment, neither of them moved. They were painted on the mirror, caught in an uneasy balance. Then Robin rushed over to her.

'Cassie, I'm sorry.'

'Sorry for what?' Cassie hugged her.

'I wanted to write you . . . about your mother. It must have been so terrible for you. But I couldn't make it sounc right. You're so good about putting your feelings into words, but I . . .'

it's okay.'

'I thought you'd never forgive me . . . for not coming to the funeral. I've been such a lousy friend.'

'You're a good friend,' Cassie said.

i'm really glad you came back.' Cassie didn't reply. 'Aren't you?'

'I don't know. Maybe I thought that being here would make everything the way it used to be.' Cassie shook her head. 'Or maybe I thought I could take her place.'

'What matters is, you're here.'

Cassie ran her foot along a scuff mark on the floor. 'I shouldn't have come.'

'Why not? We can be together all summer. You, me . . . Todd.'

'No, it won't work for me here anymore. Even if my mother were alive, it wouldn't have worked.'

'I don't get it.'

Cassie thought of showing Robin the letter, but realized it would be like giving away a secret her mother had meant only for her. 'My father,' she said. 'I can't give him what he needs. He should be in Washington. The investigation is what he lives for, what keeps him going.'

Robin pulled away from her. 'But you can't leave now. I don't want you to . . .'

'There's always Todd.' It was a bad attempt at a joke, Cassie knew, and neither of them laughed.

'Anyway, what would you do in D.C. all summer? It's the pits.'

Without answering, Cassie took the letter from the purse and tucked it into the pocket of her skirt. 'Look, we'll see each other . . . maybe this fall. I'm sure Dad will be going up to Boston.'

'Sure.'

They hugged again. When Cassie pressed her cheek against Robin's, she could feel that her friend's was wet. Cassie took her arm and they walked down the stairs.

Clay was sitting in the Queen Anne chair in the parlor in his wet jogging;-shorts, his feet propped up on the captain's trunk, next to a glass half-filled with Glenfiddich. The fire in the hearth gleamed in the opalescent eyes of the figurehead over the mantel, and it was as though The Harpy's presence prevented the crackling flames from taking the chill out of the room.

'I guess I'd better go.' Robin brushed her hand across her eyes, then turned abruptly, her rubber zorries slapping against the wood as she ran down the steps. Cassie let out a sigh when the screen door banged shut. Better to part quickly, than face the thought that she might never see Robin again.

When Cassie walked into the parlor and sat down on the arm of her father's chair, she saw that he was twirling a wishbone from the jar in the kitchen. 'Ann liked to save up her wishes,' he said. 'She should never have done that.'

it's not going to work here, is it?'

He looked up, surprised, yet seemingly relieved that she had said it first. 'What do you mean?'

'You should be in Washington. Your work is there. And the investigation . . .'

'But you wanted to come here so much . . .'

She didn't answer. Instead, she took the wishbone from him, and held it by one prong. 'Wish?'

He took hold of the other end and they both closed their eyes and pulled. With a snap, the bone shattered into a dozen pieces. 'It looks like neither of us won,' he said. 'Maybe . . .' She could feel the letter in her pocket. 'Maybe we both did.'

Chapter 6

Todd hovered eight hundred feet up, with nothing between him and the jagged cliffs but air. And that was the joy of it. Lying prone, he moved forward in the harness and pressed on the control bar with both hands, swooping down, the red wings of his hang-glider riding an air current off the sea, his speed building until he hovered in a stiff up-draft. Like a sea bird, he thought. Or an angel.

The cliffs on the remote, desolate north end of Nantucket, near Point Fear, were perfect for soaring. Once he strapped himself into the hang-glider, all it took was a running leap off the granite escarpment and he was airborne. It called for the same talents as sailing, really - the wings of the hang-glider were even sewn from the same Howe and Bainbridge dacron as the sails of his catamaran. And like sailing, you had to know how to read the wind, its whispers and its howls - even its lies - the way a seemingly innocent freshet could betray with its telltale scent of brine that it was really the advance guard of a gale. Sailing on Nantucket Sound had taught Todd how to harness the wind, but this giddy ride was so much freer, so much more exhilarating, than being tied to the water. Up here, you could dive and soar, and the birds accepted you as one of their own.

He glanced at the air-speed gauge attached to one of the aluminium spars: thirty miles per hour. Too risky. He leaned back on the control bar, raised the angle of attack of the wings against the wind, and gaining altitude slowed to 25.

He gazed down at the white strip of beach, the sand dunes,

the scrub pines that formed a ragged windbreak along the shore. Was that his father digging in the rocky soil on the edge of the dunes, trying to uproot the weeds that overran the lawn around the clapboard church? It was a futile task, Todd knew, but he was grateful that at least it would divert his father's eyes from the sky. If Parson Jedediah Stites saw him hang-gliding it would mean the inevitable sermon on his return: '
Remember Lucifer - even angels can fall.'