Beloved (62 page)

The truck was filled to capacity, but it was still only half the total load to be delivered. Jane assumed that they
'
d be making a second trip and went into the house to use the bathroom. When she came back outside she saw that Mac had stripped down to his pants and was hosing off his arms. She tried to look away, to pay attention instead to the beautiful waterview. But the view a few feet from her was far more riveting: a man with a smooth, powerful torso, deeply bronzed and
gym
-free. Mac was so completely at ease with his body. It was obvious in every move he made that he
'
d got his strength the old-fashioned way:
with hard work.

He threw the hose to the ground and dried his arms quickly with a towel that hung on an outside hook, then grabbed his shirt and shot his arms through it in that strangely efficient way men have with shirts.
"
All set?
"
he asked, buttoning it hurriedly. His mind seemed to be co
m
pletely on the delivery now.

Jane wondered what he
'
d do if she walked up to him and tore the shirt off. But she wouldn
'
t dream now of taking the risk, and so she climbed dutifully into the front seat for the delivery. It wasn
'
t until Mac stopped the truck in front of her house that she realized he had other plans for her.

"
There are four generations of men over there,
"
he said.
"
I should be able to draft a couple of
'
em for the second load. If I can
'
t find any volunteers I
'
ll give a holler
—
unless you
'
ve had all the fun you can stand by now,
"
he added dryly.

"
Sure,
"
she said without looking at him. But she knew she didn
'
t have a snowball
'
s chance in hell of being needed by him.

And she was right. A couple of hours later she heard his truck go roaring by, and the sound of young men
'
s laughter inside.

T
hey had three days of sun followed by three days of fog. On the good days Jane and Billy painted from dawn to dusk. On the bad days, Jane wandered around in a fog of her own.

Billy was winding down at Lilac Cottage. He
'
d lined up a nice renovation job which would pay his bills for the next ten weeks. As for Bing, he
'
d gone back to work in the City; he was giving her time to regroup. Phillip was off the island, too. He
'
d gone from Grand Cayman directly to
Minneapolis
, where he was helping his aunt and uncle clean up their affairs. When Phillip called to find out whether Jane had made a decision, she told him she
'
d accept the offer after all. Phillip said his aunt and uncle would be thrilled.

They weren
'
t the only ones. Jane
'
s mother was ecstatic when she heard the news. She ran to put Jane
'
s father on an extension phone.

"
Nice work, lambkins,
"
Neal Drew said, thoroughly impressed.
"
That
'
s a damn sight higher than they told me you could get. With that start, the world
'
s your oyster. You
'
ll be hanging out your own shingle in no time. I
'
m proud of you, honey.
"

Jane couldn
'
t have asked for higher praise.

There was, however, one little thing: Jane never did tell Mac that she
'
d had an offer from Phillip, much less that she
'
d accepted it. Paranoid or not, Mac deserved to be told. The question was how. Jane tried doing it in a note. She tore it up. She tried calling Mac, but hung up at the sound of his voice. She got halfway down the lane to his house, then turned around when she heard the tractor. Phillip wasn
'
t due back for two whole days. She had time.

In the meantime she wandered around the island, brooding over her imminent departure, trying to absorb the moors, the beaches, the cobbled streets, and the crooked lanes into her permanent consciousness. It was devastating to her to think she
'
d soon be leaving all of it.

She was leaving, but the summer colony was arriving, in force. Like Mac, Jane wanted to send them all packing on the first boat out. What did
they
know about
Nantucket
'
s winter moods and rich history? She and Mac had shared that, if nothing else. Mac had two centuries of
Nantucket
in his blood; Jane, in her soul.

And yet her connection to it all was growing fainter. Judith seemed to have abandoned Lilac Cottage. Not since the night of Uncle Easy
'
s party had Jane had any sign from her. The gravesite was equally quiet. The buds on the rugosa rose were bursting into fragrant bloom
—
Jane had some of them in a vase in the fireplace room right now
— but that was all.

That left the house on
Pine Street
. Jane went back to it several times. Whatever there was left for her to know, Jane felt certain she would know it there. She became something of a loiterer, admiring an arrangement in a flower box, bending over a picket fence for a closer look at a delphinium, pausing before a door painted an especially subtle color.

The neighborhood began to wonder about her: Jane heard a mother say sharply through an open window,
"
Timothy, go play in the
back
yard, right now.
"

Through it all, no Judith. No anyone, in fact. The house on Pine was still shuttered tight, despite the fact that its south-facing roses, warmed and coddled by the house itself, were in full bloom.
What a waste,
Jane thought. Granted, passersby like her could admire the colorful blooms. But one or two of the shrubs were old-garden roses; undoubtedly, they would have a seductive fragrance.

The owner should be here, filling up his house with their scent,
she told herself.
It
'
s a sin not to.

Which is how Jane rationalized the nipping of a dozen or so blooms with the pruning shears she just happened to have with her, and tucking them into a canvas shoulder bag she just happened to be carrying.

****

The next day it was foggy again. By now Jane was wild from the constraint of not having anything constructive to do. She wanted to finish painting the house so that she could begin distancing herself from it emotionally. But Jane wasn
'
t deluding herself: She knew she was edgy because she hadn
'
t yet told Mac about selling Lilac Cottage to his lifelong enemy. She knew it, but she seemed helpless to do anything about it. And in the meantime Phillip was due back that night, expecting to pick up the signed agreement waiting on the table near the new front door.

Late that afternoon Jane was rearranging her stolen roses into smaller vases for no other reason than to burn off excess energy. She was as jumpy as a cat; even Wicky was staying out of her way. When the knock on the door came, Jane let out a startled cry and promptly knocked over the vase she
'
d been setting up on the mantelpiece. She grabbed unthinkingly at the thorny stems at the same time that water from the vase went flying over the mantel
'
s edge, landing on the brick hearth and scaring the cat, who ran scrambling from the room with his fur on end.

"
Oh, for pity
'
s sake!
"
she said angrily.

She
'
d pierced her middle finger. Annoyed, she squeezed a tiny droplet of blood from it as she went to answer the knock. She swung the door open sharply, as if it
were
the door
'
s fault that she was smarting.

It was Mac. Standing there in the fog, dressed as he was in jeans, a dark blue turtleneck, and a dark blue wind
breaker, he looked almost more sinister than brooding. She hesitated whether to ask him in; she
'
d never seen him look that way before.

He saw that she was rubbing the tip of her finger.
"
Thorn,
"
she explained briefly, holding it up for his inspection.
"
I don
'
t know why I can
'
t just pi
ck daisies like everyone else. W
ould you like to come in?
"
she asked suddenly.

So much for hesitating. It was no use; she could no more act indifferent to him than she could ignore the act of breathing.

Mac nodded and walked in ahead of her, straight to the fireplace room. She couldn
'
t begin to imagine why he
'
d come; that
'
s how much of a mystery he still was to her. He went up to the window that looked out at Bing
'
s house, the window from which she
'
d once seen him lurking in the shadows outside, and stared into the fog-darkened twilight. His hands were on his hips; she heard him sigh and saw his shoulders droop a little, as if he didn
'
t have the heart for what he was about to do. It threw a perfect chill around her soul.

"
I
'
d rather say this to almost anyone else on the island than to you,
"
he began.
"
I know they
'
d understand.
"

Here they were at the eleventh hour and he was still at it, putting her in a separate box from his friends and relations. Anger rushed in, replacing the chill he
'
d made her feel.

"
Suppose you try me, just this once,
"
she said with obvious resentment.

Mac turned around, surprised by her tone.
"
I
'
m sorry,
"
he said.
"
You think I
'
m patronizing you. I
'
m not. But you
'
ve laughed at my warnings so many times before
—
"

"
Oh, for crying out loud. Is this about
Philip
again?
"
she said, disappointed.

His cheeks, ruddy from the cold and fog, turned a deeper hue.
"
I hate to be a bore,
"
he answered.
"
But yes. It is.
Harrow
'
s due on the island late tonight. That
'
s why I
'm here ..
. against my better judgment.
"

She wanted to say,
"
Your judgment
stinks.
"
Instead she simply said,
"
Go ahead. I
'
m listening.
"

One thing about Mac McKenzie: He got straight to the point.
"
First of all, let me say I don
'
t think your life
'
s in danger
—
"

"
What?
"

"
But then I didn
'
t think Cissy
'
s was, either.
"

"
What?
"

"
Her death wasn
'
t premeditated, but it wasn
'
t exactly an accident,
"
Mac said quietly.
"
The footbridge was sabotaged. The handrail was rigged to give way; I found the bolt for it a few feet away, in the gully. It couldn
'
t have fallen there.
You
were meant to get a dousing, Jane; but that
'
s all. It was just rotten luck that Cissy slipped and fell hard on the rock.
"

"
Oh, this time you
'
ve taken your paranoia too far, Mac,
"
Jane said seriously.
"
I saw Phillip
'
s face; he was horrified when we found her.
"