Final Settlement (2 page)

She took a deep breath and looked toward the lighthouse. Calm was replacing the recollections, spreading across her in a soothing puddle, much like maple syrup down a stack of pancakes.
I can control this,
she thought
. I can be just like other people. Normal people.
She took another deep breath of cold winter air, rubbed her gloved hands together, and resumed walking.

Lorraine strode the Manatuck Breakwater in every season, but winter was the time she considered the most special. She was almost always alone, for one. Out of habit she glanced back toward the shore and her silver Subaru, noting that her vehicle was still the sole car in the lot. Along with the solitude, winter brought a kind of frozen tableau in which she was one of the few creatures alive. Outside of a gull or the occasional duck, Lorraine was the only living thing for what seemed like miles.

She stepped resolutely over the thick granite blocks. Quarried from the city of Manatuck, as well as Hurricane Harbor and some of the surrounding islands, the speckled stone seawall was assembled in the late 1800s to afford some protection to the harbor. Lorraine knew that the Breakwater had been an instant tourist destination. She’d seen photos of men and women coming to the jetty to picnic, dressed in old-fashioned garb, the women sporting bonnets and carrying parasols and wicker baskets. How quaint it all seemed, and yet, here she was, more than a century later, enjoying the same view and activity.

She paused for a moment to readjust her scarf. The wind was calmer now, and Lorraine was feeling quite comfortable with all her layers. She pulled a tube of lip balm out of her parka’s pocket and coated her lips with a quick swipe. She shoved it back in her pocket and looked up.

The lighthouse loomed ahead. In the last few decades, the structure had fallen into disrepair; the paint sloughing off the weathered clapboards in great flakes, like a burn victim’s blistered skin. Complaints reached the Manatuck Police Station of teens partying in the wood-framed “keeper’s house,” leaving beer cans, cigarette butts, and busted windows in their wake. Lorraine leaned close to one of the windows now, her breath frosty on the jagged glass. The charred remains of a small fire scarred the old wooden planks.

Lorraine left the window and turned toward the attached tower, craning upward to see all twenty-five feet. Once the brick structure had cradled an expensive Fresnel lens, but now it was crumbling. She thought about the Coast Guard’s plans to demolish the tower, and the resulting outcry from local residents. A small sign tacked on the brick announced the formation of “Friends of the Mana-tuck Breakwater,” as well as a campaign to rehabilitate the historic 1903 lighthouse.

That’s all well and good,
thought Lorraine. There were certainly plenty of people in the area with enough money to save the lighthouse. They were really preserving a symbol: a beacon of hope and of safety, a welcome glow on a stormy night to sailors lost at sea. Of course, she knew that a lighthouse could also represent danger, giving a vessel no time to change course, until the flashing light became synonymous with certain death …

Lorraine shivered and pulled her fleece scarf back over her mouth. The air was becoming colder, and her heated body was beginning
to cool down. She shivered again, stomping her boots against the rough granite. It was too cold to contemplate anything.
Time to finish up and walk back to the warmth of the car.

It was also growing darker. A storm was not predicted until the weekend, but quick snow squalls could crop up without much notice. She sighed. There was just one thing to do, one thing to complete her ritual, before turning around.

Lorraine clutched the iron railing of the lighthouse tower and hoisted herself up onto the large boulder at the jetty’s very end. Gingerly, she tested it for slipperiness. Her boots gripped the slick rocks, giving her assurance that she was in no danger of falling.

Slowly she eased herself out to the edge of the rock where it met the sea. The raw power of the ocean threatened to wash her away, and yet she felt completely safe. She took a deep cleansing breath, closing her eyes, waiting only seconds for the familiar calming sensation. She opened her eyes, took in the slate gray water, the pewter sky, and the clean, crisp air.
This is my peace
, she thought.
Thank you, thank you.
She turned slowly and carefully around, ready to depart.

A bulky figure stood before her, wearing a black ski mask, puffy black jacket, and sunglasses.

Lorraine screamed.

The person—for she couldn’t discern whether it was male or female—raised a black gloved finger to its mouth, as if to say they shared a secret, and took a step forward.

Lorraine jerked her head to the right and the left. There was no space on the boulder for her to maneuver past. “Back up,” she yelled. “There’s not enough room!”

The bulky figure said nothing. Slowly it took another step closer.

“Back up!” Lorraine screeched, glancing behind her. There were only inches between her body and the boulder’s edge. What was this maniac doing?

“Let me get past you!”

An instant after yelling the words, her mind flashed to the possibility that she was in danger. She lunged to the figure’s left, grazing the side of the puffy black parka with her shoulder. In the air, leaping, Lorraine was a creature in flight, hoping to propel herself beyond the person and to safety.

She felt a hard shove. She flailed her arms, grabbed at emptiness, and then spun toward the water.

The sole of her hiking boot grazed, and then caught, on a rock. Somehow she used the strength of her leg muscles to hold on. She craned her neck and met the sunglass-covered eyes of the bulky figure, imploring him or her to reach out and help as she dangled over the edge.

The figure came forward and held out a hand.

Lorraine felt a rush of gratitude as she struggled to stretch.
Just an inch or two,
she thought … and then she felt another shove. She hurtled backward, her body sailing through space. A second later, she slammed into the ocean.

Dark, icy seawater engulfed her entirely. A moment passed and she bobbed back to the surface, the water streaming over her hat and down her face. Lorraine gasped, her lungs already seeming to freeze with the shock of inhalation. She thrust her arms upward in a survival position, feeling the current surging her toward the jetty.

Lorraine’s weakened limbs groped for something,
anything
. Her body was heavy, heavy, a sodden mass of wet winter clothing, but somehow she managed to hit the edge of a boulder and grab on.

A wheezing sound broke the silence as Lorraine gulped for air. Her extremities were numb, as was her face, and she sensed that extreme hypothermia would soon set in. Already her thoughts bobbed about, unmoored and dangerously cloudy. The shiny black parka and the threat it represented was a distant memory—she focused only on survival.

Get out of the water
, she told herself. Her torso convulsed and her grip on the rock nearly slipped. Using her last remaining ounce of strength, she pushed up with pulsing arms until her hips were level with the boulder, and then wriggled onto the jetty, gasping with pain.

A siren wailed in the distance, growing more insistent as the seconds passed. Lorraine lifted her head, the effort sending shoots of pain up her spine. A feeling of fatigue was poised to swamp her like a rogue wave, and she was nearly ready to surrender.

Out of the corner of her eye a black shape moved toward her head. Before she could react, the object connected with her skull, thrusting her whole body back toward the frigid bay as if she were a rag doll. She was airborne, and then she hit the ocean, the momentum of the blow driving her down, down, into the inky depths.

Lorraine gasped for air. Her lungs filled with icy water, and she gasped again, tasting brine and bile.
So this will be my last memory
Darkness swirled inside her brain, then all was black as she descended toward the rock-strewn bottom and her death.

ONE

H
IS BODY INSULATED AGAINST
the cold in layer upon layer of thermal clothing, Donny Pease forced his stiff fingers to untie the line tethering his boat to the Manatuck City dock. Quickly he pulled his gloves back on and shifted into gear. He heard the engine’s thunk of protest, and then a steady chugging sound as he steered the boat away from land.

He gave a rapid scan of the sky, a habit that was as much a part of him as his daily bowl of lumpy oatmeal. Even though he was only headed across the harbor on this brisk Thursday morning, more to keep his boat in use than anything else, Donny assessed the weather, noting steely gray clouds clumped like wet wool in the distance. Snow on the way—but not for a day or two, he predicted. He stomped his feet and steered toward the
Curtis T
, a red lobster boat bobbing just past the Breakwater.

Donny slowed the motor as the
Curtis T
came in sight. A short, plump figure dressed in orange waders peered up from the boat’s transom, frowning, a long hooked stick called a gaff clutched in her hands.

“What the hell you doing here, Pease?” The woman barking out the question had the wizened brown face of someone who’d spent decades exposed to the sun, salt, and sea breezes, all of which had combined to transform her skin into something resembling ancient leather. “Thought I told you to leave me alone.”

Donny gave an easy grin. “Now Carlene, you know I’m out here anyway.” Donny ran a water taxi, mostly in the good weather months, managed several island properties for absentee owners, and worked as a general handyman for the Hurricane Harbor Inn.

“Thought I’d see if you needed a hand.”

“I don’t need a hand, and I most certainly don’t want yours.” She spat off the side of the
Curtis T
for emphasis. “I wouldn’t trust a Pease if my life depended on it. You just want to see what I’m bringing over the rail is all.” Her grandfather, Moses Ross, and Donny’s great-uncle, Thaddeus Pease, had fought over a piece of land on Hurricane Harbor forty years earlier, and Carlene Ross was in no way ready to call a truce. She narrowed her beady black eyes and shook the gaff at him. “Go on home to your skinny bitch of a bride, Pease!”

Donny nearly chuckled at Carlene’s description of Tina, his fiancée, who was indeed on the thin side and known to have her grumpy spells. Instead he kept his face expressionless, watching as his distant cousin reached over the side of the boat with the gaff. He slid his boat into neutral.

Carlene hooked the line of a striped red and black lobster buoy—her unique color scheme—and pulled it toward the boat. She held tight to the line and began hauling it up, her stout body surprisingly strong for its size.

Unlike the other lobstermen in the harbor, Carlene rejected the ease of modern hydraulics. She was just stubborn enough to prefer the old method of hauling traps by hand. Donny saw the rusty square metal cage lurch to the surface, streaming with water, before Carlene hoisted it up and into the boat. It landed with a thump on the deck, the pungent odor of bait filling the air.

A grunt of satisfaction escaped Carlene’s chapped lips. She opened the trap and extracted two squirming lobsters, both of which she carefully measured. Nodding, she secured rubber bands to their claws and placed them gently into a live-tank. Checking the trap for bait, she closed it and heaved it once more over the side.

“Go on, now, get away from my boat.” Her voice was quieter, her relief at capturing a few crustaceans having cooled her anger. She tugged on her wool hat with two hands, jerking it down over her reddened ears. “Let’s hope you got better things to do than spending your Thursday watching me fish.”

Donny shrugged. “Hoping I can get you to catch some for me for tomorrow’s supper,” he said. “We need ten or so.”

She looked up at him with annoyance, but Donny thought he detected a bit of interest as well. “Let’s see what I find in the next trap before I go promising anything,” she muttered.

Carlene slammed the
Curtis T
into gear and sped 100 yards away toward another red and black buoy. Donny followed at a slower pace. He came alongside the weathered lobster boat and tied a loose line to keep the vessels together.

Carlene bent over the side of the
Curtis T.
Donny saw her powerful body grasp the line and tug to bring up the trap. She yanked once more on the line and snorted in anger.

“Damn thing.” She heaved hard on the line, yielding nothing.

Donny checked to be sure he was idling before hopping over the side of his boat and into Carlene’s. “Lemme help.”

She scowled but allowed him to grab the line as well. Together they pulled on the thick rope, but again it did not budge.

“Ledge, most likely,” muttered Carlene. Donny realized it was the first thing she’d ever said to him that was not an epithet.

“Put her in gear and ease forward,” he suggested. “I’ll hang on and jerk it free.”

Carlene gave a curt nod and shuffled in her waders to the controls. The engine clunked as she coaxed it to move slowly, her eyes on Donny as he yanked on the line.