The Ice Cradle (20 page)

“You intended to confront her? That might have been dangerous. Like the dog.” He smiled.

I could hardly believe it. Humor without bite? Maybe we were getting somewhere.

“The car was green or gray, a small wagon. I thought if I could find out where she was staying …”

“Perhaps you may locate the car. But you still may not know if the two are related.”

“No. But if this woman and her boyfriend have the right kind of car, it might contain traces of accelerant.”

“This is true,” he said.

“She isn’t from the island, as far as I know. She said she’s only here for a few days. But I can’t help wondering what she was doing at the party.”

“Was she alone?”

I shook my head. “She was with a man. They weren’t very dressed up and I didn’t see them talking to anyone else—they didn’t seem to
know
anyone else. So how did they get onto the senator’s guest list?”

“There is no way to know. Perhaps the senator knows her family, or the young man’s. Does the senator have children?”

“I don’t know,” I answered.

“What is his age?”

“Close to sixty, I’d say.”

“They may be friends of his children,” Baden suggested.

“I suppose.”

“But you believe they are staying back there.” Baden indicated the road back to our left, where I had seen Elsa and the man turn in.

I nodded. “Do you know who owns those houses?”

“I do not. My only knowledge is of the next street, where we met.” He wore a nervous look, as though fearing he had opened the door to further questions.

He was right. I stopped and looked at him. I kept looking at him. I didn’t intend to stop looking until he told me more about himself.

“You knew someone who lived on that street,” I guessed.

He nodded.

I guessed again. “At the time your brother lived here.”

He looked away and then let out the most surprising and pitiful moan. He covered his face with his hands and his shoulders began to shake.

Now
that
was a secret he’d been keeping for a very long time.

“A woman,” I guessed.

He nodded almost imperceptibly.

“Who was—not your wife,” I said quietly.

He took his hands away from his eyes, and what I saw was both grief and relief. Someone finally knew. The Catholic Church has gotten a lot of things wrong, grandly and tragically wrong, but it sure has an appreciation for the relief that follows confession.

It would have been cruel to press him for details. I knew enough, or at least I could imagine enough. He’d probably had an affair with a woman who lived here, and when the
Larchmont
went down, he found his spirit marooned on the very island
where his lover still lived. Perhaps this was why he didn’t cross over when he could, and for all I knew, Baden spent the rest of his lover’s life watching her and loving her and being by her side. It might have been enough for him, even if she didn’t know he was there.

Trapped in his own personal circle of Dante’s hell, he may not have wanted to leave. But when she finally died, he had no
way
to leave. Or maybe he harbored just the tiniest fear that there
would
be an afterlife, and his furious wife would be waiting for him! They might both be there!
Then
what would he do?

I couldn’t say any of this, of course. Nor did I have the heart to probe the matter any further. I would have taken his arm if I could have, but you can’t take a ghost by the arm. Slowly and quietly, we walked toward the lights of the town.

H
ENRY WAS WIRED
. His evening had involved Coca-Cola, apparently unlimited access to M&Ms, and a trampoline—how had I managed to miss
that
in the backyard?—and within minutes of picking him up, I knew that it would be at least two hours before his buzz wore off. To complicate matters further, Vivi was waiting for us on the front steps of the Grand View. She flew excitedly toward us the minute we came into view.

“Where did you
go
?” she asked Henry accusingly.

“My friends’,” he answered, a little smugly.

“Who?” she demanded.

“Kara and Louisa,” he replied. “They’re sisters.”

The woebegone look that appeared on Vivi’s face made me feel like giving my son a good clip. He was being mean on purpose, and enjoying it.

In moments like this, my father would fix us with a stony stare and intone, slowly, “I ought to give you a good …” Once in a while, he’d draw his hand back as though
this time
, he really
was
going to give somebody a good … But the threat was usually enough to stop misbehavior in its tracks.

On the rare occasion that it wasn’t, Dad would add, “Go ahead. Keep it up.” The unspoken end of this sentence was
and you’re going to be really, really sorry
. Not even Jay, the boldest of the three of us, ever dared to cross this line.

“Yes, well, the playdate’s over now,” I said curtly. “And how are you today, Vivi?”

“
They
have a trampoline,” Henry added.

I turned and gave him a flinty look. “Knock it off.”

“What?” His expression said,
I’m not doing anything! What’s your problem?

“You know
what,”
I answered.

He made a face. I decided to let it go. My mind was racing ahead to what the next two hours were going to be like. I had hoped to get him to bed as soon as possible so I could call Aitana with my news, but that wasn’t going to happen, not with Henry this jazzed up. I had to wear him out a little. Abruptly, I made a decision.

“You guys want to take a midnight walk on the beach?” I asked. It wasn’t anywhere near midnight, but I knew that the word would add excitement to the idea.

“Yeah!” Henry shouted.

“Yeah!” Vivi echoed.

“Okay,” I said. “Can I trust you to wait right here on the steps while I run upstairs and change? I’ll be back in
one minute.”

“Okay,” Henry said.

“Right
here? I mean it.”

“Yeessss,”
he said. “But hurry up.”

“I just want to get jackets.”

“I’m not cold.”

“Well you might be in a few minutes. And I want to put my jeans on.”

“Would you
go
?” he said freshly. One more flip answer and I would have to crack down.

I dashed inside. Lauren was nowhere in sight, and as I passed the window in the upstairs hall, I caught a glimpse of her and Mark out back by the barn, illuminated by the glow of the back porch light. I closed the door of our room behind me, pulled off my boots, and peeled off my sweater and dress. I grabbed my jeans from the back of the chair, slid them on, stepped into my running shoes—Running! Ha!—and pulled a heavy turtleneck out of my suitcase. I could hear the kids on the front porch, whooping and shrieking about something, so I sat on the edge of the bed for a second, sifting through the binding materials that had arrived earlier.

The rich, heavy paper ranged in color and texture from the tone and feel of a supermarket bag to the creamy, polished vellum of formal stationery. I was eager to open the various packets and pore over the fliers for boxes and mats, and I suddenly regretted having offered to take the kids for a walk. The room was warm and the bed intoxicatingly inviting. I lay back against the pile of pillows and closed my eyes, dreading the prospect of going back outside. But it was too late now.

I know I didn’t fall asleep. I couldn’t have had my eyes closed for more than fifteen or twenty seconds.

But suddenly, I sat up. Something was wrong.

I couldn’t hear the kids.

My heart thumping wildly, I raced down the hall and down the stairs. I purposely called up images of Vivi and Henry sitting right there on the steps, whispering confidentially, or waiting patiently in the Adirondack chairs in the side yard. But I already
knew I wouldn’t see them, and the minute I stepped outside onto the porch, my intuition was confirmed.

“Henry!” I shouted, trying not to panic. “Henry!”

He was nowhere to be seen, and neither was Vivi.

My first thought was that Mark or Lauren had come around the side of the house, and the kids had followed them out back. I sprinted across the front lawn, peering toward the barn. But in the shadow of the side trees, which all but blocked the pale light offered by the moon and the stars, I couldn’t see anything or anybody.

I’d had moments like this before, of course. Every parent has. Your child is right there beside you, and then, in the blink of an eye, he’s gone. Panic rises like a tsunami, and horrible images fly through your mind. He’s in the back of a stranger’s van, having been spirited away while you were chatting with another mother at the playground. He’s lying somewhere, unconscious and bleeding profusely, perhaps in the street, as a car speeds away, or under the branch of a tree he was climbing. And then, after a hallucinatory moment or two, you find him: playing in the little clubhouse under the climbing structure, or absorbed in a drama involving stick swords, oblivious to the sound of your voice.

Tonight, though, I wasn’t finding him. But as I ran toward the back of the house, I heard a far-off little shriek. I stopped in my tracks, breathing raggedly.

I heard it again. It was Henry. And it was coming from the direction of the beach.

I turned and raced toward the road, a winding boulevard that encircles the island and echoes the shape of the coastline. I couldn’t see Henry, or Vivi, for that matter, but I could hear him now, and the sounds he was making were chilling.

I raced across the street and scrambled up onto the breakwater. There he was, down in the water, splashing through the shallow waves as fast as his legs would carry him. Vivi was right there with him, chasing him and swooping around, flying right at him in a way that caused him to dart and stumble in the water, covering his face with his hands.

“Henry!” I screamed. “Stop!”

“Mama!” he shrieked as Vivi let out a ferocious laugh, a sound that startled even me. It was shrill and sharp and otherworldly, like a ghostly hyena braying before its intended victim. Henry regained his footing and started to run. Vivi flew right behind him. She was chasing him in the direction of the rocks.

“No!” I screamed. “Stop! Vivi! Henry!”

I jumped down from the wall and tried to run in the sand. Henry was only a few hundred feet away from me, but he was nearing the black and no doubt slippery rocks, and I felt the way you feel in a dream, when the normal motions of walking or running just don’t move you forward the way they do in life. I made a diagonal dash for the water’s edge, seeking the compacted sand.

Henry had reached the rocks by now, and I saw him lean over and use a hand to steady his progress. He began to scale the middling rocks that led to the shiny boulders stretching out into the sea.

“Vivi!” I screamed. “Stop it! Right now!”

Henry turned at the sound of my voice, and the motion caused him to slip sideways and go thumping down onto one of the rocks. He let out a little cry as Vivi alighted on a nearby boulder. Perhaps shocked into stillness by the sudden awareness that the game had gotten out of control and her playmate—or
prey—could really hurt himself, Vivi stood still and silent. But as though a switch had been thrown in a primitive neurological center governing self-preservation, Henry continued to scramble upward and toward the water. She might have stopped, but he was getting away. As far away as possible.

I knew he wouldn’t listen, couldn’t listen, even to me. So as I neared the rocks, I watched in terror as he scrambled farther and farther out over the crashing black sea. Twice, he slipped, landing, sliding on his bottom before scrambling once again to his feet and heading farther into the darkness. I could barely see him. There were stars in the sky, but clouds had covered the fingernail moon.

“Henry! Stop!” I said anyway. “Mama’s here! It’s all right.”

He wheeled around.

“Get out of here!” I growled at Vivi. “Go! Now!”

I must have sounded a like a monster myself, because she disappeared immediately.