The Wishing Tide (8 page)

Lane

L
ane closed her eyes briefly as she washed up Michael’s breakfast dishes, her cheeks warming at the memory of last night’s dinner conversation. Two glasses of Chianti and she’d poured out her life story to a veritable stranger. Jesus, maybe Mary was right. Maybe she did wear her scars on her sleeve.

She had risen early to get her morning walk out of the way, then manufactured an excuse to skip breakfast with Michael. He hadn’t seemed to mind. In fact, she might even have detected relief in his coolly distracted nod when she told him she was having breakfast with a friend later on. And it was mostly true, if you counted blueberry scones as breakfast, and Mary as her friend. Besides, she hadn’t been the only one making free with personal details last night. She suspected Michael might be feeling a little sheepish, too. The good news was that in a few months they’d never see each other again.

The front door buzzer interrupted her thoughts. It would be Dally. A moment later came the scrape of a key in the lock, followed by Dahlia Morgan’s signature greeting.

“Hey-howdy!”

“Back here in the kitchen,” Lane hollered.

Dahlia Morgan bounced into the room with her usual burst of twentysomething energy, fueled in part by the enormous cup of Stop-N-Go coffee she never seemed to be without. Lane couldn’t blame her, though. For a single mom juggling three jobs, not to mention online classes to become a massage therapist and something called a Reiki practitioner, it was probably the only way she managed to keep all the balls in the air. Still, even with megadoses of caffeine and a mother who helped out with Skye, Dally’s four-year-old daughter, Lane honestly didn’t see how she kept going.

Skye was just one of the reasons Lane kept Dally on during the off-season, though with no guests she usually cut her back from four days to one. The other reason, and perhaps the real one, was that Dally had been there for her from the beginning. She had lived next door to the cottage Lane briefly rented during early renovations. Skye’s father had been abusive, and while Bruce had never laid a hand on Lane, Dally had had no trouble recognizing a woman who’d lost her confidence and needed to get her feet back under her.

She’d introduced Lane to yoga, and had nearly drowned her with herbal tea, but more important, she had listened and understood. Not to mention, when it came to keeping up with local affairs, her weekly visits were better than a subscription to the
Islander Dispatch
. She had a talent for picking up every scrap of Starry Point gossip worth knowing, and even a few that weren’t.

Dally doffed her lime green jacket and draped it over a chair. “I haven’t been by since Penny, but it looks like you fared pretty well. I saw the big tree all cut up out by the road, though. It didn’t do any damage, did it?”

“No. It fell across the driveway. How about your place?”

“Not bad. The landlord came by and boarded us up. Mom was terrified, but Skye slept through the whole thing. The worst of it was going three days without power.”

“And the Village Mart’s still pretty bare, which makes meals a bit of a challenge.”

Dally grinned as she snuck a scone out of the basket on the counter and nibbled off one of the corners. “Long as I can boil water, we’re fine over at my place. We’re plenty used to ramen and Kraft mac and cheese.”

Lane refilled her mug, then crossed the kitchen, scowling at Dally as she dropped into a chair. “You do know that child’s going to end up with rickets one of these days, right? Just because you think broccoli’s some sort of government plot doesn’t mean Skye can’t eat a green bean every once in a while. I swear, for an earth-mother type you’re the most unhealthy eater I know.”

“Lord, now you sound just like Mama.”

“Your mother’s a smart woman.”

The floorboards creaked briefly as Michael appeared in the doorway. “Who in the world are you talking—” He broke off, his face suddenly sheepish. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize . . .”

“Michael, this is Dally Morgan. Dally, Michael Forrester.”

Michael nodded politely as he backed out of the doorway. “I forgot you said you had a friend coming by. Excuse me.”

His footsteps had barely receded when Dally pounced. “Who. Was. That?”

“A guest.”

Dally folded her arms, her dark brows arched skeptically. “In November? Since when?”

“Since he knocked on my door in the middle of tropical storm Penny.”

“And you let him stay? Well, of course you did. I mean, look at him. He must be seven feet tall.”

“I promise you his height had nothing to do with it. He’s a college professor on sabbatical. He needed somewhere to finish researching a book he’s working on.”

“So he’s a writer, too? And no ring. How perfect!”

“It’s not—” Lane glanced at the doorway, then dropped her voice. “It’s not perfect at all. In fact, it’s a bit inconvenient.”

“Having a smart, hunky guy stay with you? Yeah, I can see how that would be a real hardship.”

Lane shot her a look of exasperation. “Maybe it’s me, but twenty-eight seems a little old to still be boy-crazy.”

“I’m twenty-seven,” Dally shot back as she pushed another bite of scone into her mouth. “So, how long is Mr. Tall, Dark, and Hunky staying?”

Lane stifled a groan, knowing what would come next. “He’ll be here through the off-season.”

“Through February?” Dally counted off on her fingers. “That’s four and a half months. Eighteen weeks.”

“I’m glad to see those online courses are helping sharpen your math skills. And yes, I know how many weeks it is. I also know where you’re going with this, and you can stop.”

Dally blinked wide brown eyes at her. “What?”

A grin threatened but Lane swallowed it, replacing it with her best stern face. “Don’t play dumb, Dally. You stink at it. He’s a guest—a
paying
guest.”

“Okay, fine. But what’s the big deal? He’s here. You’re here. What’s wrong with mixing business with pleasure?”

“Nothing’s wrong with it. I’m just not interested.”

Dally slouched sulkily in her chair. “Suit yourself, but I’ve worked for you for over four years now, and unless you’ve been holding out on me, you haven’t had so much as a date. Don’t you think it’s time?”

“For what?”

“Oh, for crying out loud. Now who’s playing dumb? To get back on the horse, silly. Think of it as one of those no-risk ninety-day trials.”

Lane set her cup down with a firm shake of the head. “No, thanks. I’m still chafed from my last ride. I’m not looking for a new set of saddle sores. Michael is here because with all the break-ins around town I thought it might be a good idea to have a man around.”

“Hmmm.” The eyebrow notched up again. “You never struck me as the nervous type.”

Lane ignored the sarcasm. “The other night I was looking out front. I think I saw a light in the house across the street.”

Dally suddenly sat up straight. “The Rourke place?”

“It looked like a flashlight, but whatever it was I can tell you it made me nervous. The worst part is the police don’t seem one bit interested. In fact, I’m pretty sure they don’t even believe me.”

“Wow . . . creepy.”

“I know what I saw, Dally. Someone was in that house.”

Dally fingered the crystal amulet around her neck. “Maybe there’s some truth to all those rumors—the banker back in the twenties, and then that poor little boy. Sounds like some pretty negative energy to me.”

Lane made a face. “I know you believe in that stuff, but I’m pretty sure this light was man-made.”

Dally shrugged. “Well, the good news is there haven’t been any new break-ins since right before the storm. Maybe the culprit left the island.”

“I’d love to believe that. But even if it’s true I’m afraid I’m stuck with Michael Forrester until March.”

Dally rose, carrying her empty Stop-N-Go cup to the trash on her way to the stairs. “Honey, all I can say is I’d love to have your problems. Now, if you’ll tell me which room the professor is staying in, I’ll go up and change his sheets and towels.”

“I put him in the Tower Suite.”

“Wonderful. I’ll rifle the nightstand to make sure there aren’t any
pictures of a girlfriend lying around—just in case you change your mind between now and March.”

Lane rolled her eyes, calling after Dally as she disappeared up the stairs, “You know I only put up with you because I can’t stand doing laundry.”

Dally’s voice drifted back down. “I do. And you know I’m only here for the baked goods.”

L
ane grimaced as she filled a thermos with tea, then bagged up several scones. She could hear Dally clomping around upstairs, hauling fresh linens from the supply closet, dragging out her mop and cleaning rags. Finally, the vacuum cleaner switched on, its muffled whir mingling with the gutsy strains of “Before He Cheats,” belted out in Dally’s typical wide-open, off-key fashion. Lane shot a glance toward the ceiling, hoping the racket wasn’t bleeding into the den. Somehow Michael didn’t strike her as a country music fan, not that Dally’s rusty voice bore the slightest resemblance to Carrie Underwood’s—or to anything like music, for that matter. She should probably check before she headed out to the dunes, and maybe ask Dally to postpone the concert.

Padding through the parlor, she stepped to the doorway of the den and delicately cleared her throat. Michael’s head snapped up, a vaguely uneasy expression on his face as his hand shot out to lower the screen on his laptop. Lane frowned. Maybe he was one of those very private writers, or maybe in the world of academia you had to be careful about letting anyone see your work. She’d heard it could be dog-eat-dog.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sneak up on you. I was just wondering
if Dally working upstairs was bothering you. She’s not particularly quiet, and she . . . uh . . . likes to sing while she vacuums.”

Michael cocked his head briefly to one side, then shook his head. “I didn’t even notice until you said something, so I guess not.” His eyes scanned the length of her, lingering on her jacket and duck boots. “You’re going back out? I thought you’d already been for your walk.”

“I have. I’m just heading out to the dunes for a bit.”

“A bit chilly for a day at the beach, isn’t it?”

“I won’t be long. I’m just meeting a friend. There’s fresh coffee in the kitchen if you want it, and blueberry scones on the counter.”

“I’m fine, really,” he said, with another of his cool nods. “Low maintenance, remember?”

Before she could step away he had retrieved the pencil from behind his ear and was already scribbling in the margins of a crowded yellow legal pad. Lane was glad. She didn’t feel like explaining Mary to him, perhaps because she had no idea how or where to begin. Sooner or later, though, if the visits continued, he was going to wonder where she went every morning, and then she was going to have to find a way to explain her fascination with a perplexing and perhaps troubled old woman she knew less than nothing about.

At the back gate she paused to admire the way the day was shaping up. This morning’s chilly mist had finally burned away, leaving behind a sky of sharp, cloudless blue. Beyond the dunes the sea lay as smooth and shiny as quicksilver, the air scrubbed clean of everything but salt. It was hard to believe only a week ago Penny had been bearing down on them.

Mary was perched in her usual place, wearing a lightweight jacket instead of the orange scarf and lumpy peacoat Lane had grown used to. Her shoulders were squared and slightly stiff, signaling that she was aware of Lane as she picked her way up the vine-covered dune.

“I brought tea this time,” Lane announced cheerfully.

Mary nodded, cool but noncommittal. Lane knew better than to wait for an invitation to sit, so she dropped down onto the sand. Producing the pair of paper cups from her jacket pocket, she carefully filled one and passed it to Mary, then held out the bag of scones.

Mary peered inside with a delicate sniff. “Blueberries?”

“Blueberry scones, yes.”

Mary pulled a scone from the bag and ventured a small bite. “I used to pick blueberries when I was a girl . . . a millennium ago.”

The words felt thin and wistful, as though they had traveled across many years and many miles. Lane let them be, content with imagining the woman beside her, weathered now and life-weary, as a young and carefree girl. The vision came with surprising ease. She saw bright aqua eyes, cheeks that were lineless and dewy, a face as fresh as a summer peach. Her hair, cropped now and leached of color, restored to its original gold, tumbling past slender shoulders in thick wayward waves. It was only the mouth that gave her trouble. No matter how hard she pressed her imagination, the mouth simply refused to smile.

Had Mary ever been happy? It was just one of the things she longed to know. She wanted to know if the woman had a last name, if she had family, or at least someone to look after her. She wanted to know where she had come from so suddenly, and where she pedaled off to each afternoon when she left the dunes. Mary was unlike anyone she’d ever known, an erratic blend of wisdom and confusion, a woman who spoke in riddles and knew things she had no business knowing. In a word, she was fascinating. But it was much too soon to go charging headlong into the woman’s life. Her questions would have to wait.

For a while they sipped their tea in silence, listening to the soft tumble of the sea, washing in and pulling back, trailing ruffles of lacy foam on the packed wet sand. Lane feigned fascination in the brown-and-white pattern of a turkey wing shell. Finally, she felt compelled to break the silence.

“So . . . ,” she said, dragging the word out, hoping to make it sound nonchalant. “You’re new to Starry Point.”

It was a kind of compromise, a question that wasn’t
really
a question, which meant it didn’t necessarily count as prying. Mary took her time, sipping her tea while she followed the drunken progress of a ghost crab zigzagging along the sand. Finally, her head swiveled, her eyes leveled keenly on Lane.

“And what about you, my girl? You’re not from here, I think.”

Lane blinked twice, then pressed her lips together to suppress a smile. The sly old thing hadn’t batted an eye as she neatly turned the question around. “No. Chicago. I bought the inn five years ago.”

“Chased all the little gray doves away, did you, with their beads and their crosses?”

Lane’s brow wrinkled briefly until she realized Mary must be talking about the order of nuns who had once lived at the Cloister, though she seemed a little mixed up about the timeline.

“The sisters were long gone by the time I came. In fact, the place had been vacant for years. Before that it was a record storage facility.”

“And in between there were the boys.”

“Yes, the boys’ home, which was run by the nuns. But that’s still going way back. I believe the nuns relocated to the mainland sometime in the late eighties so they could build a more modern facility.”

Mary’s eyes kindled suddenly. “How terribly charitable of them.”

“You don’t like nuns?” It seemed a ridiculous thing to ask, but there was really no other way to interpret Mary’s statement, or the tone she’d used when she made it.

“I don’t like do-gooders!” she snarled with startling heat. “Nuns or any other kind. People who pretend to care when what they really are is a pack of meddling bitches, peeking in your windows and then whispering behind their hands. Oh yes, they mean well with their prayers and their casseroles. Love thy neighbor, and all that swill. Must look out for the children.”

Lane stiffened, astonished by this sudden outburst, and by the disturbing change that had come over Mary. Angry splotches of color mottled her cheeks. Blue-green eyes, placid as the morning sea only moments ago, were stormy now, narrowed and seething. She had started to tremble.

“Mary?”

Mary jerked her cropped white head around, her expression so fierce Lane couldn’t help flinching. And then, for no reason Lane could fathom, the old woman seemed to wilt, as if the air had suddenly gone out of her.

“Oh dear, I’m sorry. I’ve frightened you, haven’t I?”

Lane was at a loss. She had never handled anger well, not her mother’s and certainly not Bruce’s. But that had been a different kind of anger, the silent, frosty kind, not this thinly veiled brand of fury.

“You didn’t frighten me,” Lane lied. “But all of a sudden you seem . . .”

“Crazy?”

“I was going to say upset.”

Mary shrugged, her eyes fixed once more on the rolling waves. “For me the two are often the same.” She surprised Lane by reaching over and patting her hand. “No worries, though. I’m all right now. Mustn’t regress. What’s past is past.” Her head swiveled back to Lane after a beat. “It is, isn’t it?”

Lane fumbled with the thermos, refilling her cup as she tried to decide how to respond to this inexplicable jumble of words. “Yes,” she said finally, because she could think of nothing else, and because it was true. The past was the past.

“Good,” Mary said. “That’s what I thought.” Her smile turned wistful before fading entirely. “Life is lived in chapters, my girl. Fairy tales and horror stories all strung together like beads on a string. When one chapter ends—when fate conspires to tear us from our own book—we’ve no choice but to begin again, to invent a new
version of ourselves. And we pretend that version is all that has ever been, all that will ever be. We pretend we’re safe. Until the tide comes rushing in again, and we must swim for our lives once more.”

Lane suppressed a shiver. Fairy tales and horror stories? It seemed there was no way of predicting Mary’s mood from one moment to the next. She had no idea what the woman was talking about. She only knew it was unsettling.

“Yesterday, you said you were watching for something,” Lane ventured cautiously. “Something no one else could see. Will you tell me what that something is?”

The silence that stretched between them was a heavy one, thoughtful and weighty. Finally, Mary sighed. “The truth, my girl, is what I wait for. Only the truth.”

Lane released her breath slowly, exasperated but not wanting to show it. “And no one else can see the truth?”

“Not the truth I mean, no. At least they haven’t yet. They’re not likely to, either.”

“And why is that?”

“Because most people can’t see past their noses—or choose not to. They see what they want to, what’s easy. And I suppose it’s just as well for me that they do.”

“Have you . . . you haven’t always been . . . on your own, have you?” It wasn’t what she wanted to ask, but they both knew what she meant.

“You mean have I always been a pratty old bag lady?” She smiled then, her teeth surprisingly white and even. “No, my girl. No one begins this way. It’s a place you arrive at, a bottom you sink to when life pushes you under one too many times. You paddle toward the light for a while, because you want to believe you can save yourself. But then one day you see it all true, and you simply let go. You stop fighting.”

Lane wasn’t sure if Mary’s eagerness to call herself crazy eased the tension or heightened it, but the door was open now and she was too curious not to delve deeper.

“But how did—? What happened?”

“Why, I fell in love, of course. How is it we women always unravel? Always a man, isn’t it? He was a handsome rake who had a way with words, just like in the fairy tales—and in the horror stories. But that’s a story for another time.”

Again, fairy tales and horror stories.

“Tomorrow?” Lane prompted hopefully.

“Perhaps.” Mary pulled back the sleeve of her jacket to glance at a chunky digital watch studded with buttons. “Tacky, isn’t it?” she said, holding it out when she realized Lane was staring. “But what can I do? My Rolex is in the shop and one must stay on schedule when there are pills to be taken. Mustn’t frighten the others.”

Lane did a mental double take. Rolex? Pills? How was she supposed to reconcile those two words? And who were the
others
, and why should they be frightened? Unfortunately, there was no time to ask; Mary was handing back her empty cup, gathering herself to stand.

“Well, I’m off. My turn in the kitchen, and they don’t like it when we’re late.”

Lane stood, too, and walked with her as far as the gate, left to ponder a whole new set of questions as she watched Mary pedal off on her bike.
Late for what?