The Secret Hour (39 page)

 
Perhaps it was some material used to repair the lighthouse. She glanced up. The edifice was thick and sturdy, white brick and mortar constructed to withstand the strongest gales. Could it be limestone? Knowing that lime wasn’t good for dogs, she did her best to brush the powder off.

 
Then, clipping Bonnie’s leash back on, she began to pull her in the opposite direction, away from the lighthouse. As she walked, feeling the cold air sear her lungs, one thing became clear.

 
She had come north for Thanksgiving.

 
Here in Silver Bay, she was closest to Willa. Wherever Willa might have gone, Kate felt her presence right here. Walking along the headland, Kate knew exactly why her sister had been drawn here: the crashing waves, the golden grasses, the prim lighthouse. Kate didn’t want her sister to be alone.

 
Teddy would understand. Maggie, too.

 
She found herself wishing, as she walked east along the rocky promontory, that their father had had siblings. That John could somehow know the incredible, piercing, ineffable bond of having been born of the same parents, of having grown up in the same place.

 
When she had stopped by his house and spoken to his father, she had gotten the idea that something was wrong. John was home, but he couldn’t come to the door. Or maybe he’d decided he shouldn’t talk to Kate anymore—he had called her in Washington to give her the news about the girl’s death, but he had ethical obligations, and now he had to back away.

 
The thought of it made her feel colder, made her pull her coat a little tighter as she walked into the wind. She hadn’t realized how much she’d been hoping to see him till he hadn’t answered the door. Head down to keep the cold from stinging her eyes, she felt the wind pick up. A burst came across the water, and the sound’s smooth surface skittered into a flurry of small choppy waves.

 
In the next moment, Bonnie began to bark. She tugged on her leash hard, yanking Kate’s shoulder; Kate looked up, startled, and what she saw made her take in a deep breath. Watching Bonnie race across the field, she began to smile, and the smile grew wider.

 
On his way to the East Wind Inn, John beeped the psychiatrist and left a message that he would be late getting to the prison. Then he took the lighthouse road and saw two figures walking the path along the bluff. One was tall and one was very short, low to the ground. Kate and Bonnie.

 
Parking in the sandy turnaround, where in summer and early fall the fishermen parked their trucks to clamber over the dunes and try their luck at bluefish and striped bass, he let Brainer out of the car, and it was all over.

 
The dogs said it all. Barking madly, running toward each other, tumbling through the tall brown grass. If John could have translated, he would have said, “Joy.”

 
Strange, but seeing Kate Harris made him feel the same thing. They walked toward each other through the knee-high salt hay, and John felt himself smiling as he hadn’t in days or weeks. When they came together, he saw that her cheeks were windburned, her eyes bright and shining. Amazing to him was her smile: She looked as happy to greet him as he was to see her.

 
“Hi,” she said.

 
“I found you.”

 
“Was it hard?”

 
“Well, I was on my way to the East Wind. Dad said you’re staying there again.”

 
“I am. I had to come up from Washington.”

 
He nodded. She had to see about the case; he understood. It often happened this way; family members connected to one crime could be retraumatized by another similar in nature.

 
“Because of Amanda Martin?”

 
“Yes,” she said. “I bought a local paper and read about her…the girl who loved boats.”

 
“Yes, that’s what they say,” John said, watching her eyes.

 
“Has there been any other news?” she asked.

 
He hesitated, peering down the coast. The cold wind stung his eyes. He thought of the case’s latest details, his last meeting with Merrill, the glimmer in his client’s eyes when he had first looked at Willa’s picture. Looking past the lighthouse, he saw the Point Heron breakwater—just a thin black line from here. News of the case…it filled his head, but he blinked and pushed it away. He heard his father’s parting words and knew they were about Kate: “What are you going to do about it?”

 
“Yes,” he said, his father’s voice echoing in his head.

 
“Tell me.”

 
“Brainer’s a mess again,” he said.

 
“Really?”

 
“Yes. Bad tangles. Lots of burrs and sticks.”

 
“Time for another bath?” she asked, a slow smile coming to her face, as if she was relieved by the sudden lightness.

 
“Yep.”

 
“Funny, so could Bonnie. She’s got white stuff all over her paws and skirts…looks like lime or plaster dust, and I know that’s not good for her. Are they building something up there?”

 
John glanced down at Bonnie, and then smiled reassuringly. “Oh, were you just up at the lighthouse?”

 
“Close to it.”

 
“Then that’s nothing to worry about. There’s been some repair work up there recently, so it could be plaster dust, but I have a feeling it’s something else: ground-up clamshells.”

 
“Really?”

 
“Yes. A long time ago, when the lighthouse was manned, the road used to get pretty muddy. The Coast Guard had a whole truckload of stones and shells delivered, dumped on the road, to give their vehicles some traction.”

 
“Clam shell dust,” Kate said, smiling, thinking of the mountain of oyster shells at her brother’s, of all the dust their broken pieces made. Feeling at home. “I should have known.”

 
“So—our dogs need a bath,” he said.

 
“The car wash?” Kate asked.

 
John paused. His heart was racing, and he felt like a teenage boy. This morning, lying on his bed, he had felt depression closing in. Right now, he felt like he could fly. What was happening to him, anyway? Kate smiled up, making the answer very clear, but he didn’t feel like analyzing it.

 
“Our house is right over there,” he said, nodding at the headland, at the white saltbox that he and his family had left unoccupied this last month.

 
“You have a big bathtub?” she asked. “Because Brainer’s a big dog.”

 
“Yes,” he said. “He is. And we do.”

 
“Then let’s go,” Kate said, whistling for Bonnie.

 
He felt his cheeks stretch into a wide smile, and then he felt himself take Kate Harris’s hand. It was small and cold, and he rubbed it a bit to warm it up. His hand must have been just as cold, because he noticed her doing the same thing.

 
Hearing the waves and the pounding of his own heart, he held Kate’s hand and led her toward his house. When they got to the orchard, he jumped over the stream, turning to offer his hand. Smiling, she shook her head and leapt across on her own. He began walking along, when he realized that she had stopped.

 
Turning around, he saw her staring at the water. The brook was a thin trickle right now, frozen a bit along the sides.

 
“You should see it in the spring,” he said. “Then the streambed is really full.”

 
“The brook runs west,” she said, unable to look away. The dogs stopped to drink from the stream, getting their paws muddy.

 
John nodded. He had noticed that many years ago, but had forgotten along the way. “I guess it does.”

 
“A west-running brook is very rare,” she said. “Water always wants to run east, to the sea.”

 
“We have a rare brook,” he said, surprisingly happy that she would notice.

 
“I wonder if Willa saw it,” Kate said, staring. “We had one in Chincoteague…I loved it more than either of them did, Willa or Matt. When things got too much for me, after our parents died, sometimes I’d slip out of the house and go down to the brook.”

 
“By yourself?”

 
Kate nodded. “Just to get away. There was a big rock; I’d climb up on it. From there, I could see the sea, across the dunes. The waves were so powerful, I could hear them crashing on the beach. It sounded so loud…but the brook was quiet and peaceful.”

 
“A different kind of energy,” John said, and suddenly they stopped talking, to listen to the brook. Kate closed her eyes, and he could almost see her back home on her island, listening to the soft music of water playing over the stones. This was where she’d gotten the color of her eyes, he thought. That incredible gray, green, blue: the color of a west-running brook.

 
“It was my secret hour,” she said quietly.

 
“Your time alone,” he said.

 
She nodded, smiling.

 
“I feel like I’m having one right now,” John said, staring into her beautiful eyes. Kate seemed to feel the connection, took a step closer to him. “A secret hour. This is as peaceful as I’ve felt in…a long time.”

 
“Me, too,” she said.

 
John felt suddenly, amazingly, happy. He could have stayed there forever, but he took her hand again, reluctantly leading her away. Their dogs splashed through the water, then tore across the last stretch of field. The white house was right there…They were almost home.

 
When Maggie got to Gramps’s after school, she walked into the front hall and took off her coat. She left the white scarf on, though, because she liked to wear it all the time. It made her feel better somehow, and Maggie needed all the help feeling better she could get. Teddy was going to help her…

 
“Teddy,” she called out. “You home yet?”

 
They were going to make place cards for the Thanksgiving table. It was Maggie’s idea, because she liked to draw and because she thought everyone needed something to cheer them up. They’d take some of their father’s thick stationery, fold it into squares that stood up, and draw pictures of pilgrims, Indians, and turkeys.

 
Walking through the house, Maggie looked for her brother. She knew it was a little early—he had said he wasn’t sure how long practice would be, that she should just be patient and wait till he got home. But she hoped he was here already.

 
She smelled silver polish. Thanksgiving was just two days away. She felt sadness in her heart, missing her mother and their own house. All the big holidays made her feel this way—as if she had a huge hole in her soul that could never be filled.

 
Okay, Teddy wasn’t there. Maggie felt upset and frustrated. She wanted to start on their project right away. Even more, she wanted to be home. At their house, not Gramps’s. She wanted to polish her parents’ wedding silver—the big turkey platter, the gravy boat with their initials entwined together in a swirling monogram. She wanted to wash the crystal glasses in water with a few drops of ammonia in it, and then dry them with newspaper—the best way to make them sparkle.

 
She wanted her own room. She wanted her own things—all her stuffed animals, her books, and her posters. She liked the smell of her house; it was different, somehow, from anywhere else. The salt air came in, bringing with it scents of seaweed, clamshells, and beach grass. Gramps’s house was just enough inland that they didn’t get it.

 
Standing in the hall, she suddenly noticed the envelope on the table. It had her name on it. With a surge of excitement, Maggie tore it open and found a note from Kate.

Dear Maggie,
(she read)

 
Thank you for your letter. It meant a lot to me. I’m so glad you like the white scarf. It’s almost Thanksgiving…one of my favorite holidays! Is it one of yours? I used to tell my sister, when she was your age, that being thankful was the best way to be—all the time, not just in November. We used to make lists of things we were grateful for…some of the things I remember were clouds, birds, the sea, books, the ponies, our brother (he made it onto the list most of the time, but not always!), and each other. One of our Thanksgiving traditions was going out onto the dunes, picking dried grasses and flowers for a centerpiece. Beach grasses are so beautiful in November; have you ever noticed? Golden, brown, silver…something else to be grateful for! Say hi to your family for me.

Best, Kate Harris

 
Maggie read the note twice. She had been feeling so sad when she’d first walked into the house, then so disappointed about Teddy not being there, but now she felt excited. Kate had given her an idea: She could go out to their house, walk down the path to the dunes, and pick a beautiful arrangement of dried grasses—it would look great on the table, and it might make Maggie feel a little closer to Kate.