The Whiskey Tide (29 page)

     
Frustration drove her hands against the table where the dominoes sat, rocking it and sending them tumbling. Aggie turned to stare at her outburst.

     
"Kate...." Theo couldn't get beyond her name. Feelings he hadn't voiced since the day of her father's funeral shone on his face, and Kate realized in dismay that Aggie must see them.

     
"They're coming," Aggie warned suddenly in a low tone. While Kate stood immobilized by hopelessness, her sister slid to the table and into a chair. "You're such a rotten loser, Kate," she said as their mother and Aunt Helène came in.

     
Theo bent with effort, retrieving a handful of dominoes. "It's your fault for teasing," he chided.

     
Their words sounded exactly like the quibbling of their early years. But Theo would never stand again without his cane, and Aggie could race hell bent toward her own destruction as carelessly as she had raced to help just now, and all that remained of the childhood the three of them had shared was echoes.

     
Theo returned his handful of dominoes to the table, no longer the compliant cousin whose level head could always be depended on to extract them from scrapes. Aggie's expression mirrored Kate's disappointment.

     
Theo gave a sunny smile in which there was a hint of weariness, avoiding her eyes.

     
"Now then, Aunt Ginny, what's this about you wanting to sell the
Folly
when Kate's nearly got a buyer lined up herself?"

     
Kate heard her own indrawn breath. She sought Theo's gaze and met in it total caring. Her mother was looking at her in surprise.

     
"Or didn't she tell you the people she took out last week want sailing lessons from her with an eye to buying it?" Theo pursued smoothly.

     
"Oh!" Her mother sounded faintly apologetic.

     
"I didn't have a chance to tell you," Kate murmured.

     
"Who are these people, dear?" inquired Aunt Helène. "Would I know them?"

     
"Putnam. From up near Rockland." Kate hoped fervently she'd chosen a spot enough removed that her aunt had no acquaintances there. "They... they want a schooner, but they want to make sure they can handle it first. They're keen on lessons yet this season, if the weather holds. And they've put down five hundred dollars in earnest money."

     
"That part of Maine's quite well-to-do. I hope you'll humor them." Aunt Helène rationed a smile. She had never been fond of Kate.

     
Mrs. Hinshaw looked at her hands. "Of course if you can sell it, that's wonderful, Kate. It's one less thing your uncle will need to do for us."

***

     
"Not going out?" Sebastian preened in front of the mirror.

     
Joe shook his head, stretched comfortably on top of his bed in the attic room which they shared with Drake.

     
"Cora's got a cousin who's a real knockout. If Rita's busy."

     
"Don't know about Rita." Joe turned a page of Conrad's
Heart of Darkness
. The book was balanced on his waist at a perfect distance for reading. "Just felt like staying in tonight."

     
"To read?" Sebastian made a face.

     
"It's a good book."

     
"It's one thing, reading when you're in school. Isn't natural when you're grown and could be out with girls." Sebastian smacked him playfully with his cap. "And a book on engines?" His cousin pointed to another book on Joe's dresser. "What's to say about engines that could fill a whole book?"

     
"Lots of pictures," Joe said. He grinned. "Just your kind. No clothes."

     
Sebastian snorted. "I'd be turning handsprings if Rita took an interest in me. You've got a screw loose."

     
Joe read until he had to go two flights down to the bathroom, then returned to sit on the edge of his bed and confront his thoughts. He had stayed in not only to finish Conrad's novel, but because he wasn't in a mood for laughing and flirting. Kate's injury had shaken him. Something he was mixed up in could have ended in tragedy. Billy said she was doing okay, had even walked outside today, but the plain fact was, she could just as easily be dead.

     
Nearly as sobering to him, though, was the dawning realization of his own changed status. His bank account now held just over three thousand dollars. By the standards of almost anyone he knew, he was wealthy. It meant he could do things. For himself. For his close-knit family.

     
The problem was, he'd never expected to be or do anything beyond what he'd been and done all his life. Even when he was at Boston College he hadn't seriously expected it to change his life in any way.

     
Or had he?

     
Joe blew between his hands. Was that, as much as the war, the reason why, after only a year, he'd left a way of life that was strange to him? Maybe he'd been afraid, deep down, that finishing college would lead to too many choices.

     
None of the Santaynas had been anything but fishermen. Pete, his cousin, worked the docks, but that was almost the same. If Joe became anything else, he'd be distanced from them. They'd tolerated his studies because he was one of them and because they supported each other. But they were proud, and overly suspicious that those with more than they had looked down on them. They accepted Joe’s dressing up and doing things with his Irish aunties because that, too, was family. They wanted him and his cousins to get ahead. Yet Joe was painfully sure that venturing outside the narrow world of his family and their friends risked alienation.

***

     
Mama's face was ashen when she came in with the letter.

     
"The bank has foreclosed," she said tonelessly. "A messenger brought it."

     
Rosalie sprang to her feet and put an arm around her. Kate had just come in from tutoring and was slumped in a chair drinking tea. She set it down. She had heard the words, yet she couldn't believe them.

     
That morning Rosalie had boiled tweezers and her best embroidery scissors and used them to remove Kate's stitches. Aggie had used the occasion to try and get five dollars of their rum-running proceeds for a new dress to wear when she went out with Felix. She'd flounced out in a huff when Kate told her to get a job if she wanted spending money. Now their efforts, their arguments, particularly the stinging in her side, seemed to mock her. It had all been useless.

     
But it couldn't be. This couldn't be happening. She'd been making payments. The last one with a bit more than necessary, to make up for the small one in August.

     
She didn't even realize that she had started toward the door.

     
"Kate?" her mother called weakly. "Kate! Where are you going?"

Twenty-one

     
Kate had never met the banker who'd sent the letter, and the fresh scar in her side ached so from driving the big Buick that she wanted to double over. Nonetheless, when a secretary told her it was late and she should make an appointment to come back the following day, Kate was so unrelenting in her demand to see him for just five minutes that she was ushered in.

     
His office smelled of cigars and leather.

     
"I've come to learn why you're foreclosing on our house when we've been making regular payments," she said without preliminaries.

     
The banker, who'd made all the right comments about her father, hemmed and hawed and sent a clerk scurrying after a file.

     
"You were quite in arrears," he said, tapping it for emphasis. "As your family has no income now, and no hope of making more than another payment at best... er, there's a responsibility to the bank's other customers. Do you see?"

     
His comment concerning another payment seemed so definite that Kate was silent. How could he claim such minute knowledge?

     
"Is that what my uncle told you?" she asked with sudden suspicion.

     
The faint line of pink above his collar gave her his answer. Uncle Finney rubbed elbows with half the town's businessmen. She was staggered, though, that he would stoop so low. He was an opportunist, yes. He'd seen a chance to avoid repaying a debt, even if her family suffered the consequences. But deliberately pushing for their eviction?

     
So angry she could scarcely shape the words, she spoke with care. "My uncle isn't privy to all information concerning our finances. My sister and I both have investments which pay steady dividends — the only type of income which many of your customers — including my uncle — have.

     
"If you try to put us out of our house while we're paying in good faith, I'll take you to court. I'll parade my little brother in his wheelchair and cost you a fortune in legal fees and make you look like villains in the newspaper."

     
The banker's mouth had dropped. Kate stood up.

     
"You'll have the full payment every month. Now telephone my mother and apologize. Tell her the notice you sent was a clerical error. She's not up to the strain of financial matters."

***

     
"Katie! We don't have to leave our house! Not yet, anyway."

     
Woody wheeled his way over the lawn to meet her, his homemade sword in hand. "The bank called. Mama says Uncle Finney must have used his influence. He's inside. He's going to take us all to a restaurant to celebrate."

     
"How splendid," Kate said through her teeth. The hypocrite. She wasn't about to go. "Since it's a celebration, order two desserts," she teased.

     
Woody stared at his lap, his high spirits in eclipse. "I can't eat dessert," he mumbled. "Otherwise we
will
have to move."

     
"Woody! What on earth are you talking about?"

     
"I spied on them, Katie. Last time Uncle Finney was here. He told Mama if I got much bigger the dumbwaiter wouldn't hold me and would crash and hurt me, so we needed a house with a bedroom downstairs. So I'm going to eat less."

     
"
Damn
him!" The words burst from Kate. To use such a tactic on Mama was inexcusable, and for Woody, who ate too little as it was, to hear and be scared by it was an outrage. She had to escape before he saw her tears at his bravery, and the damage that might have been done to his fragile health. "I rode in the dumbwaiter just last week," she said. "On a dare from Aggie. It's strong enough to hold a horse. Now go play and let me be by myself a minute."

     
Aware her harshness bewildered him, she stumbled to the beach stairs, sank down near the top of them, and let the tears come.

***

 
     
Joe saw her folded up like an injured animal nursing its pain as he came up the beach. Lengthening his stride, he closed the gap between them.

     
"Kate? Are you faint? Shall I take you up to the house?"