Authors: Nevada Barr
Leaning against the tile wall for support, hot water pouring through her salt-encrusted hair, Anna began to feel slightly more human. Most of the night and the day before were a blur. She remembered going to bed. She remembered seeing the toes of her boots. She remembered plastic sticking to her face. She remembered someone saying she was a lobster.
Four memories that didn’t add up to anything. Caked in salt, contusions on her butt and heel, a knot on her forehead, a small hole that ached in her left arm, up by the shoulder, probably a needle stick: drugged, dragged, and dumped into saltwater. Without the aid of memory, logic dictated that much. Since she was not dead, one could assume she had subsequently been fished out of the saltwater. Heath and Wily had found her naked, tied to the cargo ring on the lift, shortly before sunrise.
Again, since she wasn’t dead, logic suggested she was put there by the fisher-of-out, either so she would receive help or as a warning to the island’s residents. E, as a stalkee, being the most obvious.
Both theories were absurd.
That didn’t make them untrue.
“Are you still alive?” Elizabeth asked from the other side of the shower curtain.
“Getting there,” Anna said. She could see the girl’s shadow where she sat on the commode, standing by in case Anna fell or drowned.
“Let me know when you’re ready to do your back,” E said.
Elizabeth’s comfort with her own and other people’s bodies was a wonder to Anna. Nudity, injury, snot, puke, washing hair, clipping toenails—E did these things for other people as casually as she did them for herself. Maybe loving someone who occasionally required personal assistance had given her these skills. More likely she was born with them, and loving Heath had brought them to flower.
John Donne said no man was an island. He didn’t say anything about women. Anna keenly felt her physical isolation from the rest of the human race, with the exception of her husband, Paul, an isolation she preferred. Every woman in her own skin, every mind in its own cranium.
Until she couldn’t take care of her own skin or trust her own mind.
“I’m ready,” Anna said.
“Incoming,” Elizabeth replied cheerfully as she opened the shower curtain. Anna braced both hands against the opposite wall, holding herself up, while Elizabeth carefully washed the scrapes on her buttocks.
“Not as bad as we thought,” E said. “Sort of like a skinned knee, but all over. Not so much bleeding as oozing. Some bleeding on your bottom, but nothing as bad as your heel. Aunt Gwen did that up while you were out cold. Now that the bandage is wet, she’ll have to redress it. She said your heel is pretty much like hamburger. Nothing broken, though. She didn’t want to mess with your back until you’d slept. We took a look at it. Heath and I thought we should put you out of your misery, but Aunt Gwen said it wasn’t too bad, and it isn’t.”
Whoever had dragged her across the pavement must not have dragged her far, Anna decided. A protracted trip would have left her skinned alive.
“Where is Gwen?” Anna asked, mostly to keep Elizabeth chattering. Unlike the prattle of other people, the prattle of her goddaughter was soothing, like rain on a tin roof. Usually Anna listened for clues of what was happening in E’s world, and heart, and mind. Sometimes, like now, she just rode the flow of words, enjoying the murmur of a happy life burbling past her ears, a sweet cacophony more soothing to the soul than silence.
“Aunt Gwen is in Bar Harbor meeting Dez Hammond—one of the old ladies who lived here—for coffee. Aunt Gwen felt guilty about abandoning you, but she said it was very important. An errand for Chris Zuckerberg, the other lady, the one that’s sick. Some sort of meeting Ms. Zuckerberg was too sick to go to.
“Aunt Gwen took her medical bag. She said she was going to get a DNA sample or something. She had a glass tube and Q-tips and everything. Very
CSI
. Of course she wouldn’t tell us what it’s about since it’s a doctor thing.”
Anna’s knees were growing weak. Her arms, bracing her against the shower wall, were tiring. “Are you about done?” she asked.
“Done,” E said. Anna felt a towel being draped over her shoulders. Pulling her aching arms away from the wall, she noticed a red mark on the inside of her arm at the elbow. “Another needle stick,” she said, turning to show Elizabeth the way a little girl might show her mother a splinter.
“That was Aunt Gwen. She took blood while you slept. You didn’t even move an eyelid,” Elizabeth said with obvious pride in her aunt’s needlework.
“Took blood?” Anna echoed stupidly.
“
CSI
on every channel today. She’s getting it tested for drugs,” E said matter-of-factly.
“She’s not in law enforcement,” Anna said.
“She’s a doctor. They do all that blood stuff.”
Of course. “I’m not thinking straight,” Anna admitted.
“Duh,” E said, holding out a second towel for Anna’s hair. “Sit.”
Obediently, Anna sat on the lid of the commode and let Elizabeth towel-dry her hair. Gray splotches floated in the corners of her eyes, as amorphous and will-o’-the-wisp as her recollections of the previous night. The shower had washed away the salt, the blood, and the last of the anger she’d brought with her from the other side. Without the anger, her brain was a cold and sluggish thing, thoughts being forced out like the last of the toothpaste from the tube.
“Was I raped?” she asked, before her brain had time to mention that might not be an appropriate question to ask a sixteen-year-old girl, and one’s goddaughter at that.
“Nope,” E said as if it were the most obvious question in the world—and it was. “Aunt Gwen said there was no evidence to indicate any kind of sexual trauma. She did a rape kit anyway. Don’t worry. The rest of us, even Wily, were banished from the entire house while she did her exam.”
Anna was absurdly relieved. Bad enough if E and Heath had seen that sort of thing, but if Wily had, she’d have had to resign from the pack in shame.
Three taps sounded on the door. “Are you guys about done?” Heath asked. “E, your visitor has finally seen fit to come, so make sure Anna has something decent on.”
Both caught the sour emphasis Heath put on the word “visitor.” Anna raised an eyebrow.
Turning to take a terrycloth robe from a hook on the back of the bathroom door, Elizabeth said, “It’s my friend.”
“The one with the boat,” Anna said.
“Yes.”
“What made you decide to blow Boat Boy’s cover?” Anna asked.
“Before, he needed you not to know more than you needed to know. It’s the other way around now,” Elizabeth said as she held out a thick yellow chenille bathrobe.
Anna snorted. Now she was on a need-to-know basis with her goddaughter. Elizabeth had grown from a skinny little kid into an entire human being, and Anna had seen every bit of it, a terrifying miracle.
“Are you going to arrest him?” Elizabeth asked.
Anna stood and let her goddaughter help her into the robe.
“I sure as hell feel like arresting somebody,” she said.
The shower worked wonders. Anna was fairly steady on her feet. Her mind was clear enough for minor calculations. The mirror proved unkind. There was a nasty bruise on her forehead, her skin was pasty, and her eyes had dark circles beneath and red rims around. No beauty contests would be won today.
As she walked from the bath into the room around the tower, the lift bell rang.
“That will be Aunt Gwen,” E said, hovering behind Anna’s right shoulder. “She wanted to be in on this, and her meeting with Mrs. Hammond was over.”
Elizabeth settled Anna on the sofa with so little fuss, Anna didn’t even mind. Heath rolled in from the kitchen to hand Anna a mug of steaming cream of tomato soup. Tears stung the corners of Anna’s eyes. Tomato soup was just the thing, the only thing, her stomach wanted. When she was growing up it was the food for ailing children. Dotted with chicken pox, she and Molly had sat across from each other at the scarred old kitchen table spooning soup with oyster crackers. Later it had been mumps and tomato soup and ginger ale. Then measles. Because of tomato soup, she and her sister had lived to adulthood.
She sipped, sighed, and silently blessed Heath with a smile. “Where’s Boat Boy?” she asked.
“He went to meet the lift,” Heath said, rolling over to one of the wide windows. “Seems Gwen decided John Whitman should be here.”
Despite the healing magic of soup, Anna wasn’t up for a party. “Why?”
“Boat Boy is named Walter. Walter is John’s grandson,” Elizabeth said.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Anna said. Then, “Walter Whitman? As in
Leaves of Grass
? A poet, no less?”
Evidently E hadn’t heard of Walt Whitman. Anna would fix that another day. She took another fortifying slurp of soup.
Gwen, John, and Walter Whitman came in from the patio.
Boat Boy was so handsome Anna scowled. Light brown hair waved back off a square brow in what had been called a surfer cut when she was in college. Shoulders were broad and arms muscled—from rowing boats with muffled oars, no doubt. Lips were chiseled, eyes wide set and a deep rich hazel. The plaid shirt straining across his chest was almost a cliché in its woodsy perfection.
Unless John had more than one son, Boat Boy Walter was the son of the lobsterman shot for poaching, the boy accused of being an accomplice.
Gorgeous, an orphan, and a fugitive.
Anna had to admit, had she been sixteen and marooned on an island with annoying adults, she would have jumped ship with this boy in a heartbeat.
“This is my grandson Walter,” John said.
Anna opened her mouth to introduce herself. What came out was “I’m not a lobster.” Clapping her mouth shut, she frowned. Kaleidoscope fashion, parts of her lost night were spinning through her gray matter.
“A lobster trap,” Walter said apologetically. “I thought you were a lobster trap. It was wicked hard gettin’ you out of the drink.”
“Lobster” was pronounced
lobstah;
“hard” was
hahd.
Coming from the Apollo-meets-Ralph-Lauren vision, the hard New England accent sounded out of place, yet it, too, was charming. Anna reminded herself that often as not, Prince Charming turned out to be just another clown.
“Let’s all sit,” Gwen said sensibly. “This may take a while.”
Walter and his grandfather sat on the outer edge of the chairs, elbows on knees, hands clasped, the way Anna remembered the hired hands sitting when she was a kid. Comfortable, assured, but not wanting to be seen to be taking the boss’s hospitality for granted.
“You saved my life,” Anna said to Walter. “Let’s start there and work our way back. That way I’ll be in a more forgiving mood when we get to the kidnapping of my goddaughter.”
Anna had been shooting for a spot of humor, a little levity to ease the proceedings. Through a furry brain and a swollen lip, the words came out more like a threat. John started a low grumble in his throat. Wily echoed it from the cold hearth, where he lay watching the proceedings with interest.
“Her bark is worse than her bite,” she heard E whisper.
“She bites?” Walter whispered back, then caught Anna’s eye and grinned sheepishly. “No disrespect meant,” he apologized.
“I do bite,” Anna admitted with a sigh. “But I’m not rabid, so, if it happens, you’ll survive.”
“Tell the woman your story,” John said, jutting his chin in Anna’s direction.
“You’ll know by now, it was my dad was shot by Billy Gomer. Killed for poaching,” Walter began uncertainly.
“I didn’t know the shooter’s name, but I’d heard,” Anna said. It had been two, maybe three weeks since this boy’s father was murdered. Walter’s words—and, to give him credit, tone of voice—were matter-of-fact. The eyes and the small muscles around his mouth told Anna of the grief and strain. “You were accused of doing the same,” she said before sympathy could get the better of her.
“That’s right. But we were no poachers. Neither my dad nor me. It was about a patch of good fishing that was being fought over and we won. We were taking forty to fifty percent more lobsters out than Gomer ever did, so he starts saying we were taking from his line. He and my dad got into it, and Gomer shot Dad. Killed him right there.” Walter clamped his lips together and stared at the floor. These were not men who wore their hearts on their sleeves. Pain was not for public consumption.
“Is this Gomer fellow in jail?” Anna asked.
Walter’s grandfather barked a bitter laugh. “Billy is goin’ on eighty. Twelve kids, nine of them boys, and all got a patch and a vote. There won’t be any goin’ to jail for Billy Gomer.”
“Mr. Gomer is mean to the soles of his boots,” Walter said, shaking his head. “But he’s known to be honest. I think he believed me and Dad were poaching because he couldn’t believe the truth, which is we’re better fisherman than he ever was.”
“I’d say that’s about right,” John added. “I’d say old Gomer believes himself. Since he’s sworn he’ll shoot Walter if he gets a chance, I don’t much care what he believes or doesn’t believe.” The older man’s jaw set in a concrete square. Anna would not want John Whitman as an enemy.
“I don’t think he will,” Walter said. “The fight was always between him and Dad. Much as I’d like to see it, I don’t think there’s any good to be had by lockin’ Mr. Gomer up. He’s sure to die in a few years anyway.”
Another day Anna might have been fascinated with the ins and outs of lobster fishing in Maine. At present her head was heavy and her face hurt her, and undoubtedly hurt them to look at. “I’m sorry about your dad,” she said as kindly as she could manage. The soup had helped. She almost liked herself.
Her well-meant words started to eat away at Walter’s stoicism, so she went on. “But how does this relate to saving my life and kidnapping my goddaughter?”
John Whitman stood abruptly. “There was no kidnapping.” His scarred hands were balled into fists. Suddenly he wasn’t quaint or colorful.
“It’s okay, John,” Gwen said quickly. “Ranger humor.”
“I don’t have much use for park rangers,” John grumbled.
“They grow on you eventually,” Heath said dryly.