The Wishing Tide (27 page)

Lane

“I
won’t go back. I’d rather die first.”

The words rang in Lane’s head as she opened her eyes. Mary’s words, delivered in the throes of hysteria, perhaps, but what if she meant them? Given her past—the wrists webbed with scars—it was a question worth asking.

It was raining again, Lane saw as she padded to the window and peered out: a steady drizzle and a sky the color of steel. No sign of Mary, nor was there likely to be. Not in this weather. At least she wanted to believe it was the weather that was keeping her away. Deep down, though, she knew better. She had stepped over the line yesterday, way over, in fact. That it had been unintentional didn’t matter. She needed to make it right. The sooner the better.

After a quick shower, she booted up the laptop to check her e-mail. Nothing from R&C Limited, and not much more from her mother, just a few lines saying Robert had drafted a very official-looking letter on his firm’s stationery and hoped to receive a response soon.
Damn.
She could do with a bit of good news. Time was slipping away, and she was no closer to finding an ally in her quest to save Hope House.

Downstairs, Lane found a freshly brewed pot of coffee but no sign
of Michael. That he was keeping his distance didn’t surprise her. If she weren’t obligated to play hostess, she’d be doing precisely the same thing. As it was, seclusion wasn’t an option. After filling a mug with coffee, she started breakfast, popping a batch of orange-cranberry muffins into the oven, then scrambling eggs for an omelet.

She found him in the library. He glanced up when she entered with the breakfast tray, offered an awkward, fleeting smile. “You didn’t have to.”

“Ah, but I did,” she answered lightly, as if he were just another guest, and not someone she’d made love to twenty-four hours ago. “The Cloister’s a bed-and-breakfast. Take away the breakfast and all I’d have to offer is—”

A bed.

The word dangled unspoken in the charged air. Lane looked away. Michael shifted uncomfortably. Finally, she found her voice. “I didn’t . . . I wasn’t—” Whatever she meant to say evaporated when she spotted the carton of books on the desk. He was packing, so he’d be ready to go the minute the weather cleared. She set down the breakfast tray and turned to go.

Capturing her hand, he pulled her back to face him. “Is something wrong?”

Lane blinked at him, mildly stunned.
Is something wrong?
Was he really that dense, or was it just easier to pretend he hadn’t hurt her? “It’s nothing,” she answered stiffly. “Mary had a sort of episode yesterday, a pretty bad one, and this morning she didn’t show. It’s got me worried.”

“Did it have to do with the meeting?”

“No. Something else. I need to talk to her.”

“You can’t go running after the woman every time she throws a tantrum. She’ll get over it. And when she does, she’ll be back.”

Lane tilted her chin up at him. “You don’t know anything about her.”

It seemed it was Michael’s turn to look stunned. “Were you not
paying attention last night? I know how this works, Lane. This isn’t the first time she’s pulled a disappearing act, and if you go chasing after her I can promise you it won’t be the last. She needs to learn to cope with things instead of running away. That’ll never happen if you keep rewarding her.”

“Rewarding her?” Astonished, Lane glared at him. “She’s not a springer spaniel, Michael. She’s a woman, with feelings. And you have no idea what this is about.”

“Fine. What’s it about?”

Lane opened her mouth, then closed it again, realizing there was no way to explain what had set Mary off without admitting that she’d been prying into his past. “Never mind,” she said, turning to go. “Your omelet’s getting cold.”

“Lane.”

He reached for her again but missed this time, his fingers just grazing her elbow as she moved away. She glanced back when she reached the door, her face a cool, careful blank.

“Yes?”

“I hope she’s okay.”

“Thank you,” she said, because she could see that he meant it.

The rain had picked up by the time she climbed into her car and headed for the south side of the point. As she drove she mentally rehearsed her apology, her thoughts competing with the squeaky-wet slap of wipers. Just past the marina, she turned onto a narrow dirt road that wound back into a scrubby wood of beech, holly, and pine. A mile later, a red metal roof appeared through the trees.

Lane pulled into the crushed-shell lot and cut the engine. She’d been to Hope House once before, the day of the police station fiasco, but it had been dark by the time she dropped Mary off. Now, in the light of day, she saw that it wasn’t at all what she’d expected, more
country retreat than halfway house, with rough-hewn siding and a fieldstone chimney, a wide front porch and a handful of rockers.

A pair of men paused in their rocking to eye her as she stepped out of the car and into the rain. She nodded in greeting. The men nodded in return, expressions shifting from curious to leery as she made a beeline for the door. Was she allowed to be here? She had no idea. Nor did she know how to go about locating Mary once she was inside.

She was surprised when she was able to walk right in; no checkpoint, no third degree, just the turn of a knob. A kind of great room opened up off the entryway, with high timbered ceilings and a large stone fireplace. Every inch of space appeared to have been put to use. Well-stocked bookshelves lined two of the walls. There was a long leather couch, several reading chairs with good lamps nearby, and a handful of game tables offering Scrabble, chess, and checkers.

A woman wearing bedroom slippers and a lavender cardigan stood watching her from across the room, the only person in sight. Lane approached, hand extended. The woman, who carried what looked to be a knitting bag beneath her arm, eyed it with a blend of caution and hostility but made no move to take it. Understandable, Lane supposed, withdrawing the hand.

“My name is Lane Kramer. I’m a friend of Mary’s.”

The woman looked her up and down with narrowed eyes. “What kind of friend?”

“The good kind. I promise. We have tea together some mornings.”

The woman’s posture changed instantly. “You’re the Inn Lady.”

“Yes. I’m the Inn Lady. Do you know where I might find her?”

A shrug. A shake of the head. “Haven’t seen her today. Missed dinner last night, too. But her room’s at the end of that hall if you want to check. Tell her Dana sent you.”

Lane summoned a smile. “Thank you, Dana. I will.”

Hadn’t been seen all day. Lane tried not to contemplate what that
might mean as she moved down the door-lined corridor, the soles of her duck boots squelching damply on the laminate-wood floor. With every step, she expected to be stopped, questioned, but no one seemed to care that she was there.

The indicated door was closed when she reached it. Pausing, she pressed an ear to the panel—nothing. Perhaps she was sleeping.

Please, God, let her be sleeping.

“Mary?” She tapped softly, three times. “It’s Lane. Can we talk?” When she got no response she tapped again, waited a few seconds, then took hold of the knob.

The room was empty.

Feeling every bit the intruder she was, Lane stepped inside, then paused, letting her eyes adjust to the dim interior. It was a small room, sparsely appointed: a single bed, a small table and lamp, a plain, serviceable dresser, and a single window with curtains still drawn. No frills of any kind, unless you counted the shabby, half-peeling wallpaper.

Curious, Lane held aside the curtain to try to make out the pattern, then realized she wasn’t looking at wallpaper at all but sheets of paper neatly taped to every square inch of wall. When she reached for the lamp switch and flicked it on, what she saw made her legs go weak.

A shiver tripped along her spine as she tipped her head back and pivoted in a slow circle, an ice-cold prickle of recognition, of absolute certainty. Sinking down onto the edge of the bed, she tried to wrap her head around what she was seeing—tried to comprehend the incomprehensible. Some of the drawings were in pencil, others in chalk, but there was no denying what she was looking at, the images so familiar she could see them with her eyes closed, on the pages of the sketchbook found in her basement: a golden-haired damsel in her castle tower, a two-masted schooner foundering in a storm, a flame-haired siren luring a boat to its doom.

The shock of it nearly took Lane’s breath away. But how was she seeing them now, here? Sweet Jesus, was it possible? For a moment, she let herself play with the possibility, cobbling bits of story together, trying to make them fit, until she realized she was being absurd. Hannah Rourke was dead, and had been for years.

Hadn’t she?

Michael had gotten the news secondhand, but it was hardly the kind of thing lawyers got wrong. Still, something nagged at her, some nebulous detail she couldn’t quite put a finger on. And then suddenly she knew what it was. She’d noticed them before, in the sketchbook: white trumpetlike flowers winding around page borders and up castle walls, inserted in some fashion into every sketch. And they were here, too. Moonflowers. Hannah’s favorite, and the ones Michael had gone to the greenhouse to make a wish on the night of the fire.

It was true, then.

“I killed a boy once.”

The words filled her head suddenly, unbidden and terrible. All that time. All that time, she’d been talking about Peter, about the fire. No wonder she’d come apart at the mention of Hannah. Her questions hadn’t just hit too close to home; they’d struck a bull’s-eye.

Mary’s story. Hannah’s story. The same.

And it was Michael’s story, too.

Almost before thinking it through, Lane yanked one of the sketches from the wall and folded it into the pocket of her jacket. She had to find Mary, to confirm what she already knew, and decide what to do about it. At some point, someone was going to have to tell Michael his mother was still alive.

Dana was still in the great room when Lane emerged, seated snugly by the fire with her knitting. She glanced up, iron gray brows arched inquisitively. “You find her?”

“No. I didn’t. Do you know where else she might be? Where she goes?”

“You mean aside from your place? You could try the library. They let us stay there sometimes when it’s raining, but only when old Mrs. Tilden isn’t on duty. She chases us off. You could check the park, but I don’t think she goes there much anymore since that time with the police. Oh, and there’s St. Mark’s. She goes there when she’s sad.”

Lane frowned. “The church?”

Dana nodded, fingers busy.

Mary had never expressed any kind of religious leanings—quite the opposite, in fact—but there was no accounting for what people did when they were in pain. She’d drive by, just in case. But first she’d try the library.

As she flicked on her wipers and pulled back onto the road, she tried not to dwell on the fact that Dana and the rest of the residents of Hope House might not have a place to live in two weeks. There wasn’t space in her head right now for Landon’s schemes or R&C Limited. There was only space for Mary, and the inexplicable truth she seemed to have stumbled upon, a truth that in retrospect should have been obvious almost from the start.

Now, as she drove through the blowing drizzle, it was all beginning to make sense, thread by inconceivable thread, Mary’s story unraveling, reweaving itself as Hannah’s—the wall plastered with drawings, nearly identical to the ones in the sketchbook, each one a page from Hannah Rourke’s past, told in the only way she could bear to tell it.

It was the book, of course—the thing Michael had come back to Starry Point for, the book of images his mother had created all those years ago. They’d been important to him, were important to him still. And she’d had them all the time.

Her stomach clenched when she thought about what would come next. If her suspicions about Mary proved true—as they almost certainly would—how would he handle the news? He’d never made any bones about his feelings for his mother.

And what of Mary? She had her reasons for burying Hannah, and for wishing her to remain buried. She had lived two lives, Hannah’s and Mary’s, and neither had been happy. What happened when those lives intersected, when fresh grief was suddenly layered upon old?

In her rush to make things right, she hadn’t stopped to think about the potential fallout, of the wounds that would be torn open, the hearts that might bleed in the process. Perhaps she was making a mistake. Perhaps the right thing, the safe thing, was to do nothing at all, to let Mary go on pretending, to the world and herself, that Hannah Rourke was dead, to leave Michael blissfully unaware that his mother was actually alive. But no, that couldn’t be right. Not when there was even the slimmest hope of reconciliation. And there was. He had come back for the book. That meant something.

The trip to the library had proven futile; no one had seen Mary in over a week. The park, too, had been a waste of time. Now, as she reached St. Mark’s, the rain had eased off slightly, though the wind had picked up and the temperature was beginning to drop. Michael’s nor’easter was blowing in right on schedule.