Chapter One
Sara was tired of the house, having spent so much time inside lately to arrange the furniture and various other things to her liking, and so she took one look at the fine sunny morning outside on the early October Monday, and decided to take a walk.
She had just spent a long moment in the bathroom, looking at herself in the mirror, and she hadn’t liked what she had seen. She hadn’t noticed the glossy black hair that swirled off of her fine forehead to tumble down her shoulders in a cloudy darkness, nor had she particularly paid much attention to the clear quality of her smooth white complexion. She spared only the most cursory of glances for her large hazel eyes that seemed a different colour with every different colour of clothing that she wore. At the moment, her eyes were a deep blue flecked with just a hint of green around the pupil, reflecting the shade of her pullover sweater. They were fringed with long brown lashes that curled slightly on the ends.
She had been busy looking at the tiny wrinkles that radiated from the corner of her eyes to spread like a nearly invisible fan out to the temples. She had taken great care in inspecting the small creases that accompanied her rather generous mouth, one line to each side. To be entirely truthful, one could not see those lines on her face unless one were to peer at the skin from the distance of about three inches (a distance that made her feel like going cross-eyed in the bathroom mirror), but she knew they were there, and suddenly on that quiet Monday morning the knowledge made her feel every one of her twenty-eight years. She didn’t like the feeling. Her energy flow was at low tide at the moment, and this combined with the fear of getting old was a bit much to handle on a Monday.
And so, with a hunted look at the wonderful bright day that had just recently begun, she decided to take that walk. This freedom to take off outside whenever she wanted to was just the sort of thing that she had dreamed about for months. It was for this freedom that she had spent months in a veritable whirlwind of activity, rearranging her work schedule and setting a bruising pace for the final effort on the cutting of her latest music album. She had pushed too hard, perhaps, and it showed in little ways: the slight shake to her hands, the thinness of her figure, the increase of her cigarette smoking to almost two packs a day. Whether the extra strain had been worth it or not, she couldn’t yet say. She was conscious only of a very great tiredness, and an immense relief that the album was at last behind her and the contract completed. Now she had nothing to look forward to except for the empty autumn days that stretched ahead of her, tantalising and free.
No one knew where she was, and that was probably the factor that made everything so enjoyable. Barry, her agent, hadn’t a clue, and in spite of all his protestations and expostulations, she had kept it that way. As she let herself out of her small rented cabin, she hugged the coffee thermos and knapsack to her side with glee. Who in their right mind would guess that Sara Bertelli, one of the brightest and most popular modern singers to hit the top of nationwide music charts, would be tramping about on the shores of Lake Michigan and living just north of an obscure little one-stop-light town named Three Oaks? She flattered herself to think that no one would, and took a great deal of effort to congratulate herself on just that. It had been a good idea, staying not twenty miles away from her home town. It symbolised a trip back to the roots of her personality, which was what she was doing, searching herself and going back to the basics. Her real name was Sara Carmichael, and some deeply rooted instinct, only half conscious, kept her from revealing her true name and birthplace to anyone outside of Barry and his wife Elise. It was something she had considered too private; perhaps something inside her had foreseen the need to get away for a while. She didn’t know.
It had been years since she had been to Michigan, and she had lost contact with the few friends that she had once had as everyone gradually moved away to different cities. For all practical purposes, she was a virtual stranger to the area.
She had rented the cabin under her real name, and had taken care that few people should see her well-known face. Not, she told herself, that anyone would be likely to recognise her. Without the heavy and dramatic make-up that she affected for album covers, photographs and public appearances, she looked almost ordinary. One might look twice and then again one might not, whereas in her professional guise one always looked again. The press went wild over her face, for with the dramatic make-up she looked like a temptress, with a sultry, brooding dark beauty that stared into the camera’s eye with a half sullen, half seductive look. The one part of her that didn’t change when she was not in the public eye was the lustrous, shining quality to her heavy black hair. It was wholly natural, a throwback to several generations earlier in her genealogy when an immigrant Italian beauty had married into the Carmichael family. It was her true claim to beauty.
Sara shook the mass of darkness away from her face now without a single thought for its thick vitality, and stepped down the beckoning footpath that led practically up to her back door. She surmised that it should lead her straight to the lake, judging by the direction it was heading, and as this was her goal she decided to see where the path went.
The beach was very easy to find. The path was rather straight to the point, and after about five minutes Sara caught a whiff of something cool and fresh on the carrying breeze, and her head raised like that of a scenting hound’s, her fine nostrils widening and her eyes searching. Then as she rounded a bend in the path, she saw a patch of blue. Soon the hard-packed earth underneath her feet became loose and shifty and the treeline broke open to harsh grasses rising from rippling dunes. She rounded yet another bend in the path and found herself out on an open beach with a deep blue expanse that travelled as far as the eye could see.
The sound of the waves hitting the shore, the overhead cry of birds, and the incredible fresh quality to the breeze that hit her so gently made her close her eyes for a moment and sigh deeply in appreciation and contentment. She walked out of the protection of the trees and towards the water. Away from the obstruction of the treeline, she took stock of the shoreline from both the northern direction and the southern, resting her knapsack and camera bag at her feet as she surveyed the area with a hand shading her eyes from the noon sun. To the south, which was left of her, off in the misty blue distance she saw the Cook’s nuclear power plant at the edge of the water, and farther from that several small bright patches of colour that proclaimed late season swimmers taking advantage of the unusually warm weather. To the right she saw some distance to a rather high jutting shoreline that dropped some thirty feet into the water and effectively cut the other side off from her sight. It was sufficiently intriguing for her to set off in that direction, her small knapsack and camera bag bumping her knee as she trod along.
Photography had been an interest of hers for years, and now she fully intended to take the time to indulge her hobby. She wanted to get some pictures of the shoreline, and to possibly come back that evening to shoot the sunset on the waters of Lake Michigan. Sara climbed the rise in the shoreline and stood at the top of the small cliff. She stared down at the other side, disappointed. Just at the bottom of the rise, “No Trespassing” signs were posted. After staring at the sign for some minutes and thinking of the people sure to be populating the beach in the other direction, she made up her mind. Chances were that the person who owned the property wouldn’t catch her just this once on the land, and the barren sight of the empty expanse that stretched ahead was just too much to resist. She climbed down the other side of the cliff and continued the way she had originally headed. After a time, reveling in the seclusion of the sandy beach—and knowing full well that a large measure of her enjoyment was derived from the forbidden nature of her jaunt—Sara had an attractive idea. She slid her burden down to the ground and after rolling up her jeans, dr
opped to her knees in the sand and started to scoop up handfuls in a decisive way. Soon she was engrossed in the makings of a fine sand castle, so reminiscent of the ones from her childhood. She stopped once to look around for a few pieces of wood and a couple of sticks to dig with, and she soon had a deep hole with high, even sides all around. As she worked, the golden sun and fresh air, the interminable sound of lapping waves and incessant cry of wild birds, the pervading quiet under all of the surface sounds, all made her gradually relax. The tension in her neck and shoulder muscles melted away. Her lips began to smile slightly as the wind whipped her dark hair around her neck and into her eyes. She earnestly started on taking out regular block chunks from the top of the wall to make a credible rampart, when a shadow fell across her handiwork.
To the man watching, Sara seemed to be no bigger than a child crouching at play. Her slender legs shone white in the afternoon sunlight, and delicate blue veins wove a tapestry in her small feet. Her long thin fingers moved rapidly and gracefully, the blue veins apparent also on the back of her hands. The dark hair was tangled on her neck.
She stared at the square shadow in front of her with some amusement before addressing it. “You’re probably the owner, aren’t you, or someone vastly important like the sole caretaker in complete charge and authority?” she asked calmly. “Now you’ve spoiled the fun. You were supposed to find my mysterious footprints and a splendid sand castle erected to guard the empty expanse of land from the mischievous and malicious water nymphs who steal babies and pick all the wild flowers…” Just at that moment, a section of her castle wall began to cave in towards the hole, and she scrabbled over frantically. “Yipe! Oh—shoot, it took me forever to get it right, and I haven’t a picture of it yet…oh, thanks!” This last was said as, after an apparent hesitation, the large shadow dropped beside her and two large and deeply tanned hands came alongside hers to firmly press the crumbling sand into place.
A low, pleasantly smooth voice with a curiously hard undertone reached her ears. “I suppose you’ve decided to be hanged as much for a sheep as for a lamb?”
She relaxed slightly, hands hovering overhead as she backed up from the defective wall a little, refraining from looking at the man by her side. What kind of face would go with a voice like that? She wondered in a pleasantly idle speculation. “Something like that,” she laughed softly, the sound of it coming from her throat like a rich purr. She picked up her stick and started again on the uniform blocks on the top of the wall with a great deal of care and precision.
“My mother always told me I should have been an engineer. I was forever nailing things with my blocks and playing with the neighbour boy’s construction set instead of with my dolls.” When she had things to her satisfaction, she slid back in the sand to look at it thoughtfully. Then she turned with a smile to face the stranger. “But I’m sure you don’t want to hear about me.”
His gaze was not directed towards the sand castle but was shot piercingly at her. She let her own mild gaze roam over hard, irregular features set in what she took to be a very bitter expression. Sitting back on her heels, she took more time to assess this unknown person. Her first impression held; lines running down the sides of the man’s mouth were scored deeply, and the firm mouth was held in a way that seemed to be at once stern and unhappy. The eyes that were watching her so speculatively were a dark brown, and they were the hardest eyes that she had ever seen. They hid something inside, repelling her scrutiny like a brick wall. The man appeared to be bulky, but his heavy sweater and jeans as he squatted on his heels might account for that. As she watched him, a light breeze stirred his dark hair into his eyes and a shapely, strong-looking hand swept it back impatiently.
The mutual perusal took a few moments for each of them. Neither had spoken since she had. The strange man was still watching her, and she smiled again at him suddenly, the white flash of her teeth brilliant and surprising. “Do you have a Kleenex, or a handkerchief, or something like that?” she asked him conversationally, digging into her own jeans pocket as she talked. “No, forget it, thanks. I’ve got a folded Kleenex.” She shook it out carefully, took the slender stick that had once served as her digging tool and gently poked the stick through several times, back and forth, through the end of the tissue. Then she stuck it gingerly at the top of the wall. The wall deigned to hold up. “What’s the forfeit for a picture?”
A glance at him found the man strangely tense, watching her with a harsh, mocking light in his eyes that uncomfortably reminded her of a bird of prey watching its victim. “It depends on what you plan on taking a picture of,” was his silky reply, and she stared at him in confoundment.
Her reply was snappy, since she hadn’t liked the tone of his voice. “You couldn’t suppose me to want a picture of you, could you? Heavens, you don’t look a bit photogenic—would you mind stepping back so I can get a clear shot of my castle?” She reached for her camera bag and dug out her Minolta, looking at his still outline as he stood in the sun. “Look, you have every earthly right to throw me off your land, but I want a picture of this castle. It took me ages to finish, and I’m going to get a picture of it whether you move or not.” She added with a touch of childish petulance that was not wholly put on, as she took off the camera lens cover, “You’ll very likely ruin the shot, too, glowering at me like that!”
At this muttered remark, surprisingly, the man threw back his head and laughed. He stepped back a few paces to stand with hands resting lightly on hips, and she eyed him with approval. “You aren’t half bad when you aren’t glowering,” she told him mildly, and turned to focus experimentally on the sand castle. After a second, she clicked the shutter with satisfaction. Then she sat back on her heels to survey the stranger’s tense stance. She reached into her knapsack, still watching the man, and was rewarded with a close, wary scrutiny. What in the world, she wondered curiously, is that man so jumpy about? She held out her pack of cigarettes to him invitingly, but he shook his head in silent refusal. She shrugged, took one herself, and lit up expertly.
“How did you get to this beach?” the man asked her, dropping down on the sand nearby and still favouring her with his unsettling gaze. It was the look of an opponent sizing up the enemy, she thought, but shrugged away the thought with an involuntary grimace. The man sat easily, knees drawn up and arms draped casually on top, with hands loosely laced. His harsh face was expressionless, and again Sara got the strange impression that he was erecting a wall between himself and her. It was not as if she were anyone especially threatening to him, she realised, and she surmised that it must be a characteristic that he exhibited to all strangers. That was perfectly understandable to her. She had learned to be wary of strangers herself. She drew hard on her cigarette, and expelled the smoke appreciatively, and then pointed to the southern shoreline. He spared a brief glance for the direction of her gesture and then returned his keen gaze to her face. “That’s private property too.”
She nodded, regarding him with a faint smile. “I’m one of your neighbours, temporarily at least. I’ve a six-month lease on the cabin that probably sits adjacent to your south border. It’s a small place, one car garage, archaic plumbing and two fireplaces with no firewood! Know of it?”
He nodded in reply, the action making his hair tousle in the breeze. She spared some time appreciating the red glints in the brown hair—hers was so dark there was no doubt that it was one shade only, namely, black as midnight—and then noticed just how closely he was watching her. It was getting on her nerves. “I wasn’t aware that anyone was living there,” was his only response, though.
“I’ve been there only about a week,” she told him, “so I’m fairly new around here.” She put out her cigarette by burying the glowing tip in the sand. Aware of the dark gaze on her actions, she took the dead butt and carefully wrapped it in the castle’s banner before stuffing it into the knapsack. Then, nervous for some reason, she took another and lit up to inhale it in deeply.
After a moment, he asked almost idly,
“Are you in the habit of trespassing on private property?”
“Wince!” she said, and laughed at his expression. She leaned back casually in the soft, inviting sand. “Now the retribution, please show mercy on my poor soul. If I’m missing for more than three years or so, or get behind in my rent, someone may just miss me and become suspicious, so don’t do anything rash, will you?… Actually, a ‘No Trespassing’ sign is so inviting, don’t you think? I came, entertaining half acknowledged hopes of stumbling on to a dead body and a delightfully chilling mystery, or perhaps to meet up with a terrible ogre—are you an ogre?” This last was said with a hopeful glance towards the man’s uncompromising face.
No sign of amusement there, the face was settled into lines of implacable hardness, the eyes like stones. The one sign that perhaps redeemed his face, she thought musingly, was the unhappy curve to that well formed mouth. She watched him with a great deal of interest. His reply was brief, almost a snap. “Some seem to think so.”
A chuckle bubbled forth. “Well, are they right or are they wrong?” He only looked at her with dark, expressionless eyes, and it seemed so terrible to her that she, on impulse, had made an uncharacteristic gesture of friendliness to the man. She finished her cigarette, condemned the butt to a similar fate as the first and asked him, “Would I get perhaps fewer lashes of the whip if I were to bribe my punisher with a cup of coffee?”
He hesitated, obviously, and she thought he was about to refuse when he said carefully, “It depends on what terrible things you’ve doctored your thermos of coffee with.”
Sara smiled involuntarily, tossing her dark hair off from her face, and it settled around her shoulders like a smoky cloud. “Not me, mister. I like my mud straight.” She poured him a cup of the warm liquid into a plastic cup that she had packed and handed it to him cordially, taking her own in the lid of the thermos. He took it after eyeing her with those curiously hard brown eyes.
The Wall Page 1
