A Charmed Place (42 page)

For a moment Maddie went absolutely blank. Twice? Twice in one lifetime? "I can't do that, Michael," she whispered. "Please don't ask me."

"Oh, Maddie—of course you can!" he said cheerfully. "It would please Tracey, who's had a grudge against him ever since the tower. It would please Sarah; we know how far back
her
grudge goes. And George; it would please him no end. But most
of all
—it would please
me,
Maddie. It would please me.
"

Her breath was coming shallow and fast; she rocked back and forth in her chair out of sheer nervous agony. "But if Dan can't have me and you can't either—I don't understand, Michael," she said, closing her eyes, trying to will him away. "What's the point?"

"You're
the point, bitch!" he said with sudden savagery.

She understood, then, that he didn't want to humiliate. He wanted only to inflict pain.

"So what's it gonna be, hmmm?"

Give him what he wants; he has a hostage.
That thought, and that thought alone, drove Maddie to say, "All right. All right. I'll end it. Just
... bring her back. Right now. Tonight."

"How am I supposed to do that?" he asked, sounding genuinely baffled. "You know the bridges are closed."

Obvio
u
sly he knew it,
too. "
Yes
... no, of course
... I know that. Take her to my mother, then!" she said suddenly.

"Now? It's nearly midnight." His voice became suspicious and hostile again. "What's the matter? Don't you trust me with our own daughter? For c
r
issake, Maddie, you know I'd cut off my painting arm for her!"

"No, of course, I trust you. It's just that I thought—I don't know. I wasn't thinking. Can I talk to her, please? Just for a minute?" Maddie was begging him now. "It's getting really bad out," she said as another blast of wind rocked the house. "I don't know how much longer I'll have a phone connection. Please, Michael."

"
Yeah, okay. We have an agreement, though—right?''

She assured him that they did.

"If it was anyone else but you—but I trust you, Maddie. You hear me? I'm taking you at your word. If you break it, I'll know. Believe me. I'll know. Do
...
not
...
break your word."

"Yes. Please
... let me say good night to her."

It took a wrenching moment before Maddie heard her daughter mumble sleepily, "Mom? What?"

"Hi, honey. Um
... we have some big, big stuff to talk about, but it's late and you're asleep. The hurricane is going to come ashore soon, and you know what that means: no
electricity. We might lose the phone, too, so—"

"Hurricane?" she said, her voice wavering higher. "I thought it was just a storm."

"It is, really, just a biggish storm. But I wanted to say good night. I wanted to tell you that I'll be up th—"

No. He might take off with her. Better not to say.

Completely unnerved with second-guessing herself, Maddie said, "Good night, Tracey. I love you."

She heard her daughter hesitate and then say simply, "G'night."

No
I love you. 
It was a blow, but Maddie hardly had time to feel the pain from it. There was too much to think about, too much to plan. Overwhelmed by the horrible combination of circumstances, she tore off the sweltering vinyl jacket, then drank down a tall glass of water, fighting the urge to throw it all up. Sick with apprehension, she slapped both hands over her mouth and circled the phone, her mind racing in circles of its own. Who to call? Her mother, the police, George, anyone at all?

Was he dangerous? That was the first thing.
Was he dangerous.
Yes, obviously—but to Tracey? Maddie honestly couldn't say yes to that one.

But it didn't stop her from calling the
Boston
police.

She was put through to the officer on duty in the Fourth District and quickly explained the situation. The officer was less than enthusiastic about intervening—exactly the reaction she'd feared.

"He's not in violation of the custody agreement," the officer said. "He hasn't done or said anything that you consider a threat to your daughter's safety. He has attempted, you say, to blackmail you, but again, what goes on between ex-spouses isn't always pretty. Let me ask you: did he in any way prevent you from talking to your daughter?"

The answer, most dismally, was no.

"Did he indicate that he was going to bring your daughter back down to the
Cape
tomorrow? Which, by the way, might be difficult if not impossible."

"Yes, he's going to bring her—but only if I give up the man I'm involved with!" Maddie said, exasperated by the officer's calm manner.

"Whatever. Until he's actually in violation of your agreement, I'm afraid there's nothing we can do. At that time—if he does go into violation—then you would come down and file a police report, which would be referred to court. I wish I could help you, ma'am."

Maddie hung up more frustrated than ever.

Where was Dan?

The hurricane was lapping at the edges of
Sandy
Point
. Outside, a gust of wind attacked with a vindictive shriek, shaking the house to its rafters. The rain had arrived as well: it came in sporadic, battering squalls, swinging wildly in its fury, then easing long enough for Maddie to see another broken limb lying in the yard, another layer of tom-away leaves covering the ground. The house was shuddering nonstop now. It was old. It knew all about hurricanes, and it feared them more as it grew more frail.

Maddie was staring out the kitchen windows—from a safe distance back—when the power went out, plunging the house and the spotlit yard into murk. She'd been expecting it, and yet when it happened she let out a sob of despair. She picked up the phone: dead.
A line was down somewhere. 
She was apart from the ones she loved, and trapped in a rose-covered tomb.

Where was Dan
? He couldn't possibly be on the water still. If they hadn't been able to free up the sailboat, then that boat was as good as lost. Surely its owner and crew had abandoned it by now. Quickly she lit a kerosene lamp, stumbling with the match in the pitch-black house.

I can't stay here any longer; I can't
, she realized. The waiting, the uncertainty, the horrifying scenarios that seemed much too willing to play out in the theater of her imagination—all of it made her want to run screaming into the night.

Was she losing her mind? Anything seemed possible in the chaotic unraveling of events. One thing Maddie knew: she had to find Dan. Unable to bear a minute more of inaction, she donned the clammy jacket again and made herself wear the pants as well, to protect against flying debris. Dunned by the incessant roar and shriek of wind and rain, she groped her way through the unlit hall to the front door. Not until she had her hand on the doorknob did she realize that the door was pumping in place. She laid her other hand flat against a panel. It was pulsing, like a heart beating wildly in a chest. If she opened the door now, it would break her arm.

She cracked open a couple of windows to relieve the pressure inside the house, then ran to the back door, determined to make a break for it.
Was
she insane? Very possibly. But if she stayed, she had no doubt that she'd break down completely. She got a good grip on the doorknob of the massive Dutch door and pulled it open. It swung away without fuss, giving her hope. It only sounded bad out, she decided. All sound—no fury.

In the yard, in the lee of the house, it wasn't too bad—horrendously noisy and windy, but bearable. Heartened, she felt her way carefully over branches and flattened shrubs until she turned the corner onto the shell-lined drive.

First surprise: her neighbor's maple tree was draped across her Taurus. Second surprise: the wind wanted to tear her face off. Gasping, she turned her back instinctively to the force of it and pulled the drawstrings of her hood more tightly across the front of her chin. Then she turned, leaned into the fury that was Dot, and began plowing forward. Foot by foot by foot, Maddie made her way to the lane, then turned left in the direction of the lighthouse.

Nothing; she could see nothing. If only the tower were lit!

Sheer blind instinct drove her on. She had no idea where the horizon was, where the lane ended, what had happened to the picket fences that used to line its sides. All she knew was that the lighthouse was ahead of her, and where the lighthouse was, Dan was. She drove herself forward, whipping her determination, telling herself that she wasn't crazy, that this was the way to life everlasting, that this was the way to Dan.

Something hurtled past her with the speed of a well-aimed missile. In the next instant, the next missile—sharp, abrasive, a roof shingle?—caught the edge of her hood, searing a path across her cheek. She raised her hand to the pain and felt warmth.
Oh, damn—blood. Another scar.

She plowed on.

The rain came again and still—thick, blinding sheets of it, stinging and brutal and cruel. She hated the rain, she couldn't see through the rain, and yet she knew it was so much kinder than the sea was going to be at high tide. She was completely disoriented now; for all she knew, she could be headed back to the cottage. She raised her head and opened one eye a slit's width, trying to peer ahead and get a bearing.

She staggered back, rocked off balance not by a gust of wind this time, but by the sight of what lay ahead.

The tower was lit: a glowing green luminescence shone feebly through the chaos of rain and wind and swirling atoms of sea. The tower was lit. God in heaven, the tower was lit! She held up her arm to visor her eyes, afraid that she was hallucinating. No. It was lit. She was forced to look back down: salt spray was needling the wound on her cheek and stinging her eyes. Sobbing with determination, she forced herself on. He was there, somewhere, and she would find him.

The sandy beach had disappeared, lost to the continuous roiling seas that piled up one upon another. The fragile, submerged dune grass catching around her ankles was her only reference point; to her left apparently was the road, awash now, with worse to come. She stumbled along with her face down, her clothes drenched and clinging to her body under the vinyl slickers. Her lips were briny with salt. Her eyes burned from it, prompting tears that were helpless to wash it away. Her running shoes caught continuously in the wet, swirling sand. The blackness was impenetrable now: the green light was no longer visible. Cold hard fear wrapped itself around her soul, and yet she staggered on, compelled by a force as powerful as the sea itself.

"Mad-day! Maad-day!"

It was Dan's voice, a faint echo of the howl of the storm. She listened again, heard nothing. She cupped her hands to her mouth and called out his name, and then strained to hear him call hers.

"Mad-day! Maa-a-d-daa-ay!"

"D-a-an! Dan-niel Haw-w-wke!"

She pushed ahead, screaming his name, in agony listening for her own. For a hideous span of time she thought she'd never hear his voice again, and then she saw him just a few feet away. How she found him, she never afterward knew. He was on the beach—what used to be the beach—perhaps halfway between the lighthouse and
Rosedale
, and he was in danger of being dragged into the sea.

He was crawling toward higher ground, but his gear was obviously too sodden, his boots too heavy to let him break free of the ocean's grip. She saw him struggle to his feet, then get knocked back down from behind by a crashing wave that had no business being so high on the beach. The hissing of the retreating sea sounded venomous, diabolical—as if Neptune himself had decided to make an example of Dan and drown him like a junebug.

And then the earsplitting din of the storm fell away and the hurricane became all fury and no sound. All Maddie could hear, all she wanted to hear, was Dan calling out her name. In the total silence of that fierce desire, she staggered through the dune grass and grabbed the shoulders of Dan's jacket while he was still on all fours, trying to stand. Her strength just then was obviously greater than his. With her to anchor him, he was able to resist the pull of the sea and stumble over the low dune and onto the road. There, the water was up to their knees still, but the footing underneath was more sure.

Now the storm, cheated of its prey, rose up in newer, louder fury than before. Maddie felt Dan's weight bear down on her as she struggled to support
him on their way back to
Rose
dale
, but their progress was pitiably slow.

"Your boots
... we have to get them off!" she shouted in his ear. Was he lucid? She couldn't tell. "Your boots!" she shouted again.

"BOOTS!" he shouted back. He nodded in comprehension, then dropped down on his rear end. He was his own little rock in the ocean; the seas swirled around him shoulder high as Maddie struggled t
o pull the open-topped, rubber-
handled monstrosities from his feet.