Beloved (19 page)

Buster came over with a sad-eyed, sympathetic look and laid his massive black head in her lap. She rubbed his floppy ears and sighed.
"
I think if someone walked in off the street right now and made an offer, any offer, on Lilac Cottage, I
'
d jump at it. Every time someone gives me an estimate for something, I go into shock,
"
she said, thinking of McKenzie
'
s tree-moving quote.
"
Condo dwellers are used to fixed-price living.
"

Cissy snapped a Tupperware lid on a container she
'
d filled with ground coffee for Jane.
"
You
'
re just tired, that
'
s
all. But the days are getting longer, and the coldest weather
'
s over, and things will get better, you
'
ll see.
"

Jane remembered that McKenzie had given her the name of a contractor.
"
Can I use your phone while I
'
m here? Mine won
'
t be installed until next week.
"

Cissy said to go ahead, and Jane made a call to a pleasant and eager-sounding young man who said he
'
d be by the next day to look at the job.

It was a quick call, but Cissy seemed to spend it staring at the big quartz clock that hung impressively on the opposite wall. Aware that the girl was carefully made up and dressed a little provocatively in tights, a short skirt, and a plunging Lycra top, Jane said,
"
Am I keeping you from something?
"
Lunch at the Espresso with her pals,
was Jane
'
s offhand thought.

"
Yes, you are!
"
Cissy blurted.
"
I
'
m in love!
"

"
In
love? Really?
"

"Yes!"
Cissy said, hugging herself with quick little rocks of joy.
"
I can
'
t tell you who it
'
s with, he
'
s forbidden me to say
—
he
'
s a really private person
—
but he
'
s just so
wonderful
and a fantastic lover and I never
dreamed
this could happen. You know how unhappy I was about being here all alone on the island and yet here he was, under my nose! I think I
'
ve been confused
—
emotionally
—
and he just seems to understand all of that so well! He
'
s so deep. He takes everything so seriously. I think that
'
s why before he met me he was so miserable. Oh, Jane, I
'
m
so
happy.
"

"
I can tell,
"
said Jane, laughing at her sheer ebullience. Cissy looked truly radiant. She was young and hadn
'
t yet learned how to dress with any sophistication, but it didn
'
t matter at all. With her glowing cheeks and her hands dancing expressively and her voice ringing with happiness, she was the prettiest thing on the island and, very possibly, earth.
It
'
s true what they say,
Jane decided.
Everyone loves a lover.

"
You
'
re not going to tell me who it is?
"
she asked, fishing shamelessly.

Cissy shook her head resolutely.

"
He
'
s not
married,
is he?
"

"
Not anymore.
"

"
Ah, but what if Phillip finds out?
"
Jane teased, remembering Cissy
'
s recent crush.
"
Won
'
t he be jealous?
"

"
Ohh-h,
"
said Cissy with a distressed look; apparently she
'
d forgotten all about Phillip.

"
I was kidding. Don
'
t worry about Phillip,
"
Jane said softly.
"
Just follow your heart. Anything that makes you look this good can
'
t be all bad.
"

So much for my flu-symptom theory,
Jane realized. Love at first sight looked pretty good. Dammit.

"
You haven
'
t known him very long, I take it,
"
Jane added, almost wistfully.

Cissy whispered,
"
It seems like all my life.
"
The words fluttered through the air like a butterfly in a garden, and Jane was left with a sense of awe and of great, great deprivation.

****

That night Jane dreamed not of thorns and blood, but that she was eight years old again, on a sweet, warm summer
'
s day on
Nantucket
. In the dream she was weaving a coronet out of daisies and purple clematis, but behind her she was hearing a sound, monotonous and droning. It was very bothersome; she couldn
'
t concentrate on her task, although it seemed critical that she finish it. She tried and tried, but the relentless noise was making it impossible.

Jane woke up. The relentless sound was of Buster, barking. Over and over again, the same pattern repeated itself: three woofs and a growl, three woofs and a growl. Bizarrely, it sounded like it
w
as coming from deep in the house, in her basement. Jane lay there for a half-conscious moment, and when it didn
'
t stop she dragged herself out of bed and put on her heavy chamois robe and camp shoes and staggered downstairs into the kitchen. She flipped on the basement light switch at the top of the missing stairs, then forced herself out into the night air, which was surprisingly mild, and around to the outside bulkhead doors.

The doors were wide open.

The doors had very definitely
not
been open that afternoon. She
'
d made a point of closing them, because the forecast had been for rain. The ground was wet but
even in the dark she could see that
the clouds were parting; the rain had come and gone. Jane crouched low and peeked down through the open inner door into the dimly lit basement. It was Buster, all right, on the loose again. When he heard his name, he stopped barking immediately, lowered his head, and came shuffling meekly toward her, his big tail wagging apologetically.

"
C
'
mere, boy,
"
she said, reassuring him with some pats on his rump.
"
Whatsamatter? Racoons again? Is
that
who opened the doors? Yeah
...
people say they
'
re clever with their hands.
"
She paused to consider what she was saying, and to whom she was saying it.

Yikes. This place is getting to you, Jane Drew.

She circled the basement warily, keeping alert for just about anything
—
racoon, Wicky, snakes, owls, lions, tigers.

Nothing would surprise her. The basement was small; the search did not take long. Jane found nothing, which somehow bothered her more than Wicky or snakes would have. She began to second-guess whether she
'
d left the bulkhead doors open, after all.

She led Buster out of the basement, holding on to his collar so that he wouldn
'
t run away
—
although for one evil second, she toyed with the idea of letting him loose to wake up McKenzie again. Obviously she couldn
'
t take Buster over to Cissy in the middle of the night
—
Cissy might not even be home
—
so she brought the dog into the house and waited a moment to see if he
'
d settle down. He did, quite contentedly, in front of the fireplace.

"
How dumb can you get, dog? There
'
s no fire. There
'
s not even any wood.
"
She laughed softly and turned to go and Buster, realizing his
faux pas,
got up and followed her sheepishly into her bedroom.

He stretched out on the floor beside her bed, which was fine with Jane. So far she
'
d been trying hard to be blasé about the goings-on around Lilac Cottage; no doubt they were pranks by local kids. She even thought she knew who the ringleaders
were:
surely the two she
'
d seen at her aunt
'
s wake. One thing was
sure.  Whether they were kids,
adults, or phantoms, someone was trying to frighten her and doing a damn good job of it. That
'
s where Buster came in handy. He might not be the brightest dog, but he had a bark fierce enou
gh to peel paint from a picket.

She pulled the covers up over her and turned onto her left side, favoring her right shoulder. It had been a long, strange day, and it didn
'
t seem to want to end. She remembered that her shoulder hadn
'
t hurt so much when she was by the grave, and that worried her. Her shoulder
....

Judith
Brightman?

Jane sat bolt upright in her bed and Buster lifted his head, alert for he didn
'
t know what.
How did McKenzie know Judith's last name was Brightman?
He
'
d tossed it off so casually that it hadn
'
t sunk in at the time. The woman couldn
'
t possibly have been a friend of his; the stone was too old. An ancestor, then? That
'
d be logical, except that if the burying ground were a family plot, there should have been a McKenzie tucked here or there
—
unless McKenzie
'
s mother was an only heir, and his father had married into the family. Or maybe
  ....

She slumped forward, hair drooping over her eyes. Who cared, anyway? Why was it so important to know who Judith
—
Brightman, Schmightman, whatever
—
was?

Because she wants me to know,
was Jane's sleepy, illogical thought
. She hunkered back down and pulled the comforter over her aching shoulder.
She won
'
t let me forget.

****

Jane awakened the next morning to the sound of heavy breathing. She opened her eyes to see Buster sitting next to her bed and panting happily, waiting to be fed for a job well done.

"
Okay, okay,
"
she said, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and running her fingers sleepily through her
tumbled
hair.
"
What does something like you eat for breakfast? A roast pig?
"

She padded out to the kitchen and searched through her cupboards and fridge for something suitable, but the pickings were slim. Now that she looked at Buster, she wasn
'
t even sure it was food he wanted. Maybe his morning constitutional? Was that why he was sitting by the door? Dogs were another subject she didn
'
t know much about; her father had kept his family on the move too much for her ever to own anything more demanding than a turtle.

She dressed in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt and hauled Buster over to Bing
'
s house. If Cissy wasn
'
t up yet
—
too damn bad. She remembered McKenzie
'
s black mood the day she met him and sympathized belatedly.

After a little detour Jane got the dog to sit alongside her on the front steps. She rang the bell and waited. It was Bing who opened the door, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

"
Hey hey!
"
he said with a surprised grin.
"
Treats on my doorstep!
"