The Secret Hour (14 page)

 
“Who are they, Katy?” Willa had asked, trying to decide.

 
“Read their biographies, and then you’ll know.”

 
“But who will I like most?”

 
“You won’t know till you read them.”

 
Willa had laughed, and Kate had smiled. “You know me, Katy. Who do
you
think I’ll like most?”

 
“I think…Amelia Earhart.”

 
“Because you like her, right?”

 
“Yes, I do.”

 
“Who was she?”

 
Kate, opening the little orange book, had flipped through, read one of Amelia’s quotes: “‘Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.’”

 
“Tell me, Katy!”

 
“She was a woman pilot, one of the first. She had a really strong, wonderful spirit, and she proved that women can do anything.”

 
“Like what?”

 
“Like, read the book, and you’ll find out…” Kate had teased.

 
Willa was riveted to the orange volume, reading it straight through. Fascinated by the little red airplane that had first captivated Amelia, she had also been torn apart by Amelia’s loss.

 
“Wasn’t she brave?” Kate had asked, tucking her sister in that night. “Did you like how she challenged all those prejudices people used to have, about women not flying?”

 
Willa had nodded, huddled under her covers with the book. Kate had sat down on the edge of her bed; she had an ulterior motive for asking. Having finished her master’s in molecular biology from Georgetown, she had gotten her first job with the National Maritime Fisheries. Her duties included checking shellfish beds from the Chesapeake to Penobscot Bay, and she’d been thinking about getting a pilot’s license to make it easier to get them home to Chincoteague.

 
“Where did Amelia go?” Willa had asked. “Why can’t they find her?”

 
“She disappeared,” Kate had replied. “It’s a mystery.”

 
“Her plane crashed?”

 
“They think so. No one is sure.”

 
“
Someone
must have seen her…
Someone
must know where she went.”

 
“The Pacific is a huge ocean,” Kate had said, stroking her sister’s silky hair.

 
“And it swallowed her up?” Willa had asked, captivated and grief-stricken.

 
“I don’t know, Willie. Maybe she landed on an island…a beautiful desert island with palm trees and freshwater lagoons…filled with oysters for her to eat and pearls for her to wear.”

 
“And pink sand on the beach…”

 
“And rare birds in the trees…”

 
“A magical place,” Willa had whispered, her voice breaking.

 
“Like Narnia or Oz,” Kate had whispered back. She had read her sister the books of C. S. Lewis and L. Frank Baum, and she found herself conjuring up the places the authors had created, wanting to soothe Willa.

 
“I hope so,” Willa had said, starting to sob. “Katy, I hope Amelia’s on a wonderful, enchanted island with a lagoon.”

 
“She’d be very old, if she were still alive.”

 
“That’s okay…I want her to be old.” Willa had wept. “Everyone should get to be old…”

 
Had she been thinking of their own parents, taken from them so young? Kate wasn’t sure, but she had held her little sister, deciding for the moment not to mention flying lessons. Although she wound up taking them—getting her pilot’s license and sharing a chartered plane with several other scientists—that night she just rocked Willa to sleep, mourning with her for the loss of their parents and Amelia.

 
Death had been so familiar to them; they were orphans, after all. But disappearance had seemed impossible, too horrifying to contemplate. Thinking of Amelia Earhart just falling out of the sky, swallowed up by the sea, had seemed so terrible that the Harris sisters had had to invent a beautiful island of pink sand and rare birds just to accept her loss.

 
Willa had started sketching, then painting: panels of color and line, telling the rich, emotional story of Amelia Earhart. She had layered truth and myth, imagination and reality, creating a story and a world of what might have happened, learning to be an artist in the process.

 
“Willa,” Kate said out loud in her car in front of the O’Rourkes’ house, holding tight to the steering wheel.

 
If only her sister could be on a desert island, a magical place; if only there were some explanation for the six months she had been gone; if only she would walk through the wardrobe door, or click her heels three times to come home; if only she had ruby slippers; if only she had gone off painting somewhere; if only she weren’t missing.

 
“Willa,” Kate said again, but this time the name became a wail. She heard it echoing in the car, her voice reverberating in her ears.

 
All Kate’s praying, wishing, cursing, begging with the forces of the universe, and bargaining with the fates, should have brought her sister back. The many nights of sitting still, staring at the stars, wondering whether she had somehow caused Willa to stay away, to be too afraid of Kate’s anger to come home.

 
And all those nights of hating Andrew—despising her husband for hiring Willa as his intern, for having her work late, for preying on her and getting her to fall in love with him…And—for Kate couldn’t, after six months of soul-searching, deny this part—hating Willa.

 
She had watched her sister grow up. Willa had always been shy and beautiful, more comfortable painting alone on the dunes than being with other people, especially men. When she turned twenty-one, something changed. Her inner grace began to radiate outwards. She wasn’t so withdrawn; she began to go out more. Andrew noticed, joking to Kate, “I think we’ve got a heartbreaker on our hands.” And Kate had joked back, “As long as her heart’s not the one being broken.”

 
She’d spent so many nights awake, wondering: How had the affair started? Who had initiated it? Where had they gone together? Had Willa pleased Andrew more than Kate did? Kate—she couldn’t pretend this part wasn’t true—had wanted to attack her sister. Willa’s heart hadn’t been broken: Kate’s had.

 
Six months, Kate thought, holding the steering wheel. A six-month-long time of darkness and despair.

 
Her spirit was parched and dry; her bones ached with grief. Her throat was sore, and there were so many unspoken words.
I’m furious with you, why did you do it? I love you more than anyone in the world. I love you like my own child, you broke my heart…

 
The cold New England winds of October whistled through the car; Kate closed her eyes and pictured the alabaster city of Washington. Great white buildings, illuminated, none taller than the graceful domed Capitol glowing like Oz. The green parks and squares, the Mall, the low bridges across the gentle Potomac.

 
That’s what life was like back home: gentle. Washington was a gracious city, less rushed and not as hard as New York or Boston. And the grasslands and marshes and tidal creeks and dunes of Chincoteague and Assateague were softer than the seashore of New England…no rocks or high places, just the gentle cradle of ponies and oysters and motherless girls.

 
But Willa had run away.

 
Kate, closing her eyes tight as the car heat pumped and the chill wind stung her fingers anyway, had had six months to think about it all, to try to understand. Willa had rushed away from herself and what she and Andrew had done. Fearing Kate’s grief and rage—over finally losing her husband, but perhaps even more, over her sister’s betrayal—Willa had fled the jurisdiction.

 
How had she decided on here?

 
With the whole world to choose from, north-southeast-west, how had she spun the globe and pointed to southern New England?

 
Now, rocking herself in her car outside John O’Rourke’s house, Kate knew. Of course she knew; no one understood Willa better.

 
The refuge would have had to be by the sea; it would have had to promise the smell of salt air, the sound of the tides as they rose and fell. There would have had to be museums—places of culture, art, and nature. It would have had to be far enough away from Washington and Chincoteague to define “escape,” but close enough for Kate to reach quickly when the call came.

 
The call had been Willa’s postcard.

 
Kate removed it from her pocket, held it in her hand. It showed the view from the East Wind: the rocky coastline, the lighthouse shining in the distance, the crooked stone breakwater jutting out from the beach, Willa’s handwriting on the back. Willa’s love affair was over; she’d wanted to make things right with her sister so they could get on with their lives.

 
For years, Kate had known her marriage was on the rocks. Her husband was an important man, the chief aide to a prominent senator. He knew his way around Washington as well as anyone. His work kept him out late and, often, away from home. Kate, absorbed in her own busy career and in raising Willa, had turned a blind eye to so much.

 
She had sometimes wondered why she had married him in the first place…

 
But he was so attractive, and he had made her feel so special. That was one of his great gifts, why he’d been such a successful lobbyist in years gone by: because he could sell a person her own car. He had sought Kate out at a Hill cocktail party, celebrating the senator’s bill protecting shellfisheries—Kate had been impressed by Andrew’s behind-the-scenes work, by his unfailing commitment to the environment.

 
“What makes you care about shellfish beds in the Chesapeake?” she asked, impressed and a bit intimidated by his custom-made suit, his elegant manners.

 
“I’m a country boy from way back,” he had said, leaning closer. “I was born and raised in Maine, and I know how fast a little greed can kill a whole lobster population.”

 
She had grinned, sipping her chardonnay. “For me it’s blue crabs and oyster beds.”

 
“Your work is personal?” Andrew asked, trying to be heard over the voices and music.

 
“You can say that—I’m from Chincoteague.”

 
“No kidding! My sisters grew up in love with Misty. So, you obviously love nature. What brought you to the big, bad city?”

 
“College, then my job. I work for the National Academy of Sciences. How about you?”

 
“Wanting to do good,” he said, rolling his eyes and pretending to hit his head against the wall. “As crazy as that sounds.”

 
“I don’t think it sounds crazy,” she said, feeling herself sparkle as she smiled into his eyes.

 
“Got to keep our planet going—for our kids.”

 
“And our little sisters,” Kate had said.

 
At Andrew’s friendly, curious smile, she had told him all about Willa: about their parents’ deaths, about Mart’s life on the water, and about trying to raise a teenaged girl by herself. About being the youngest person chaperoning Willa’s high school dances, starting to teach Willa to drive in the Chevy Chase Safeway parking lot, taking her on trips.

 
“Oh, those shoulders,” Andrew had said, stepping forward, touching the base of Kate’s neck with his hand, concern in his eyes.

 
“What about them?” she’d asked, his unexpected touch and kindness sending a jolt down to her toes.

 
“The weight of the world is on them. You must have been so young when all this fell to you—too young for so much responsibility.”

 
Two senators stood at the bar. There was a presidential aide, a lawyer from the Justice Department, three members of the House of Representatives, several newscasters, and many other players of power. Kate barely noticed. She had eyes only for the kind, understanding Maine country boy as he took her glass from her hand, plunked it on a bookshelf, and led her outside.

 
The Washington night had been sultry, fragrant with wisteria and lilacs. When the valet had brought his car—an old Porsche—they left the fancy party. By the time they’d reached the Tune Inn for a beer, they were holding hands. And once they’d ended up at his Watergate apartment, Kate’s fate was sealed. Little did she know that that was his pattern, not the hallmark of a lasting love.

 
He had taken the world off her shoulders for one night. In the weeks to come, he had promised her love and security. The fatherless girl in her had needed—grabbed for—it all. Willa had been just fifteen at the time. Kate was so emotionally drained from raising her young sister, she had accepted with gratitude Andrew’s seeming desire to take care of them both.