by R M Wild
I threw open the heavy door and marched into the foyer.
“Mother, where were you? I had to risk my life with a creepy kidnapper!”
But Amy wasn’t there. Instead, Robert was sitting on the stairs, his head in his hands. A vase was broken, the shards scattered all over the marble floor. Among the broken pieces, was a stick with a bubble of golden resin on the end. Frozen in the amber bubble was a prehistoric flower. I called it the lollipop fossil. According to their story, after only dating for two weeks, Robert had taken Amy on a week-long trip to London. He had seen the preserved flower in the gift shop at the British Museum and bought it for her.
If you live with me, you’ll stay young and perfect until the end of days, he had said.
I’m pretty sure Count Dracula had said the same thing.
My foster father looked up and dragged his fingers down his cheeks. His skin didn’t snap back immediately, but left long grooves beneath his eyes.
I braced myself for a lecture about taking rides from strangers.
“Where were you?” Robert said.
“At the hearing. Remember? I waited at the courthouse for four hours. Amy never came to get me.”
“Don’t call her that.”
“Well she sure as heck didn’t act like a mother tonight. Where is she? I want to yell at her myself.”
“I don’t know,” Robert said quietly. His eyes were bloodshot.
“Did you hear what I said? I had to take a ride home from a stranger. I could have been killed. Like Chrissy.”
“Good for you,” he mumbled.
“What? What kind of a parent are you?”
“Watch your mouth,” he said half-heartedly.
“Where did Amy go? Is she upstairs? Is she drunk again?”
Robert Slate gritted his teeth. “I said I don’t know.”
“If I had a cellphone, I could have called. You let Chrissy have a cellphone.”
“And look what good it did her.”
I sniffled. “Look, my nose is as red as Rudolph’s. I’ll probably get sick and have to miss a week of school.”
“Fine,” Robert said.
I made a fist. “Hello? Aren’t you supposed to be my caretaker? I almost died out there tonight.”
His phone rang. He yanked it from his pocket and with his thumb, flipped open the screen.
“Amy, thank God. Where are you?”
“Let me talk to her,” I said.
Robert ignored me and stood up from the stairs and walked right past me. “Where are you?” he demanded. “Are you coming home?”
“I want to talk to her,” I said again.
“You’re joking.”
“Please, let me talk to her,” I said.
“Go upstairs, Rosemary,” Robert said.
“But she left me on the curb.”
Robert lowered the phone. “GO UPSTAIRS.”
I shrank. He rarely raised his voice. I slogged for the stairs and climbed slowly, each step a slog. Beneath me, he kept pacing, his voice getting louder and louder, the shards from the broken vase crunching underfoot.
“How dare me? After all I’ve given you, this is how you repay me? No, you’re right. It’s not about repayment. No, I’m not keeping track. And obviously neither are you. It’s supposed to be about LOVE. Do I have to spell it out for you? No. I don’t care. I had no choice. You don’t understand. I had to take her in. I made a promise. Stop it. This is not about her.”
I knew exactly where that conversation was going. Whatever anger I was feeling had retreated into the dark recesses of my heart and all I wanted to do was find a cave and crawl into it. I had lived under Robert’s roof for over two years now, but had never seen him this angry, not when Chrissy brought home bad grades, not when she brought home boys with tattoos, not even when Robert came home to see three brand new purses sitting on the kitchen counter.
In my room, I plopped onto my bed. My room (previously the guest room) was right over the foyer and I winced and shrank with every curse and exhalation coming from down below. I wanted to go hide in the closet and pull my clothes over my ears, but Robert was getting so loud, even piling my books like sandbags in front of the crack under the door wouldn’t muffle the shouting.
Chrissy’s old room was at the far end of the hall, directly over the family room. I figured it would be quieter than mine, so I went down the hallway. Her room was still the way she had left it when she disappeared a few months ago. Thinking that she would grow tired of the game and come back home, Robert had refused to touch anything. It was still her room, he had said. And no, I was not allowed to have any of her clothes.
I flipped on the light switch and closed the door behind me. Her room was definitely quieter, my foster-father’s yelling muffled by the woven rug on top of the carpet. But he was still so loud, so caustic, his stomping so heavy, that the Strawberry Shortcake dollhouse on her dresser rattled and Strawberry Shortcake did a little shimmy in the dust toward the cliff at the edge. Even the Strawberry Shortcake Halloween mask hanging on the door jiggled in mockery.
Chrissy’s closet was my only chance for peace. I opened the door, pushed aside her hanging clothing, and sank down against the wall. Thanks to all the clothing, my foster father’s shouting was muffled now, as if he were yelling into a pillow.
It would be even quieter if I closed the closet door. I got up and closed it, cutting off all the light from the room, all except for the crack under the door. I fumbled in the dark for the light switch, found it, and flicked it on.
A figure was standing behind the door.
I jumped backward.
“Oh my God!” I shrieked.
I clawed at the black dresses and black jeans and black shirts to keep from falling. Then I realized there was no one there, just a large plastic garment bag hanging from a hook on the back of the door.
I clutched my chest and took a deep breath. Most of Chrissy’s clothes were black, but this garment bag had a window on the front and I could see a frilly white pattern underneath.
What the heck was this? A new dress? Had she been thinking of next year’s prom already?
I took the bag off the hook, opened the door, and dragged it into the bedroom and laid it down on her bed. My foster father was still yelling, but I was so preoccupied that I could barely hear him.
I unzipped the front of the bag. Inside, there was a deeply plunging neckline with lacy embellishments. I unzipped farther, uncovering the midsection and finally, a long white train.
I swallowed hard.
It was Amy’s wedding dress.
What the heck was it doing in Chrissy’s closet?
Downstairs, the yelling stopped. There was a loud crash and then the house was quiet.
I looked up from the dress. In the full-length mirror, I could see across the front yard, the light from the windows casting long, yellow rectangles all the way up to the iron fence.
That turquoise pickup truck was still parked out front. In the light from Chrissy’s window, I caught a glimpse of the driver’s red beard behind the windshield.
He was looking up at Chrissy’s window.
There were heavy footsteps on the stairs.
“Rosemary? Where are you?”
I zipped up the garment bag and shoved it under the bed.
“I’m in Chrissy’s room,” I said.
My foster father opened her door. He stood in the darkness of the hallway. His hands were bleeding and the cellphone was smashed to pieces.
His voice quavered. “We—we need to talk about your mother.”
I glanced out the window. The pickup truck was gone.
I could see it in his face: Amy had left him. Just like my real mother, she had given up on me.
“Which one?” I said.
1
Present Day
The whole house rocked. One end shot out of the earth and Chrissy’s dolls jumped shipped and leaped like lemmings off the edge of the dresser. The full-length mirror face-planted on the carpet an
d shattered.
Then a split ran down the wall, right between my feet. It raced between Robert’s legs and he braced himself in the doorframe in a pose like Jesus himself.
“Hold onto your tushies!”
“Where the hell is my mother?” I shouted.
“Your mother? She’s below deck, workin the pump, if you know what I mean, yuh salty lemon!”
Robert didn’t have an accent like that.
What was going on?
I blinked awake, my heart pounding. I wasn’t in my foster father’s house on Pine street. His lawn hadn’t been so overwatered that the soil had turned into boiling surf.
I was on a boat.
The Moaning Lisa.
I was lying on my side on the bench near the stern where Captain Herrick stored the life jackets. Across from me, half a dozen tourists were sitting on the coaming. They all wore their loaner orange vests, their fingers gripping the gunwale hard enough to make their knuckles match their white hair.
An hour ago, they had climbed aboard The Moaning Lisa in downtown Dark Haven, first for a tour of the harbor, and then for a glimpse of the entrance to the cave below Taylor’s Bluff before heading back to my inn for an evening of ghost stories by the fire.
Past the tourists, the pink light from the lighthouse on the cliff cut through the foggy night. Since going electric, the lamp looked more like a cheesy Christmas tree than a beacon that warned people of imminent danger.
A large wave exploded against the side of the boat and sprayed the tourists’ hair.
Captain Herrick turned from the wheel. “We got some weather comin in! It’s best we cut this tour short and dock for some cocoa. What do you say, Miss Casket? Time to take her in?”
I rubbed my cheeks. The salty spray had beaded on my glasses. I had been so tired, I hadn’t even realized I how wet I had gotten.
“That’s fine with me,” I said.
There were a few grumbles among the tourists. “I thought we’d get to see inside the cave tonight,” one said.
“I heard there are more cages in there than Alcatraz,” another one said.
“Sorry folks,” Captain Herrick said. “By order of the mayor, this is the closest we’re allowed to get to the bluff. In lousy weather, that means no peek inside. Ain’t that right, Miss Casket?”
Why did he always have to make me the bad guy? “Captain Herrick is right. With no one manning the lighthouse, they made it illegal to sail within a hundred yards of Taylor’s Bluff.”
“Lousy bureaucrats,” one of the tourists said.
“They’re protecting you from the severity of the tide, but the best—and only—way to learn about the history of Taylor’s Bluff and the secret cave is to hear it from the lighthouse keeper himself.”
One of the little old ladies fanned her face and turned to the woman sitting next to her. “She’s talking about Stanley Eldritch.”
“I heard he saved seventeen people during one nor’easter,” another tourist said.
“I heard he climbed that cliff with a woman strapped to his back,” another one said. “Is that true?”
“You’re looking at her,” I said.
Their eyes widened.
“But my lips are sealed,” I said with a yawn. “If you want more details, you’ll have to hear it directly from Eldritch.”
Captain Herrick pointed over their heads. “If you turn port, you can get a good view of the old inn.”
They all turned. Indeed, about a hundred yards away, the Queen Anne Victorian I had inherited from my mother stood tall and crooked between two forests.
“Please, put away your cameras,” I said. “The surf is too rough tonight for a good selfie, but you can pick up a postcard at the inn if you’d like.”
They groaned and put away their cameras.
I lay back down, shut my eyes, and tried to get another five minutes of rest before docking. This afternoon, I had gone downtown to visit my foster father’s law firm to finalize the language in our liability waiver, but instead of driving back to the house, I had decided to hitch a ride across the harbor. That way, I figured I could grab a few minutes of shut-eye before we docked. After the feature in Marie Claire had put my inn on the map, I had gotten so busy that every waking minute had been spent trying to keep my business afloat.
I was right on the verge of another cat nap and more nightmares about the past when another hard wave rocked the boat. A glass bottle escaped the standing shelter from between Captain Herrick’s galoshes, rolled across the deck, and slammed into the bench under me.
I opened my eyes. It was an empty bottle of liquor. The label was a skull and crossbones, the skull sporting a long red beard, a deep scar in the forehead.
Red Rum.
My face caught fire. I had told that stupid Herrick a billion times that drinking on the clock was not acceptable. I grabbed the bottle and marched wide-legged across the deck.
“What the heck is this?” I demanded. “Are you on the bottle again?”
Captain Herrick didn’t flinch. “I ain’t a baby.”
“And this isn’t a baby bottle.”
Herrick kept his hands on the wheel, grinned at the tourists, and spoke out the side of his mouth. “That is an empty bottle, Miss Casket. They’re collector’s items now.”
My foster father and I had cleared Peter Hardgrave of murder charges, but since his liquor license had been seized by the town, he wasn’t producing any more Red Rum in the tavern basement.
“You promised me you’d stop drinking on the job,” I whispered. “Believe it or not, I know a thing or two about self-medication, and it causes problems. I can’t continue to be in business with someone who’s sloshed all the time.”
“Pull your panties out of your teeth,” he said. “It’s just a bottle. Ain’t no one sloshed tonight.”
“I can smell the hooch on your breath.”
“That ain’t no hooch. That’s the finest rum in New England.”
I adjusted my feet to keep my balance. “We talked about this.”
“No, you talked about this. I didn’t say nothin.”
“You agreed.”
“Ayuh, I agreed to keep my end of the deal. Which is ferryin these folks from the wharf to your dock. I don’t tell you how to make the beds, do I? So don’t tell me how to steer my ship.”
“So what happens when you’re so drunk, you run us aground?”
Captain Herrick gave his forehead a knock. “That ain’t happened yet, knock on rocks. That’s why we got the lighthouse.”
“The past does not predict the future,” I said.
“How about you worry about givin these folks a good cuppa cocoa—“
“It’s chocolate,” I whispered.
“Fine. You worry about your fancy chocolate, and I’ll worry about keepin the boat afloat. Sound good, Miss Casket?”
I flipped my hair and marched back to the stern. No wonder Matt Mettle didn’t like him. If Herrick didn’t stop drinking, I was going to have to find someone else to partner with and Herrick could go back to whatever stinking barrel of skate he slopped out of.
I sat down on the bench and was ready to fling the stupid bottle overboard, when the label caught my eye again and I stared hard at the red beard and the scar. Without my performance at the trial, Peter Hardgrave would have been brewing wine from fruit and bread in the prison cafeteria.
One of the old men sitting on the coaming leaned toward me. He was green with seasickness. “The captain’s right, ma’am. People all over Maine go crazy for that rum. You can’t touch stuff aged that good short of old Caribbean pirate hordes. And with no more in production, it’s dryin up. Bottles are starting to go for two hundred dollars a pop.”
I wiped my glasses on my sleeve and looked at the bottle again. “Two hundred dollars?”
“Sometimes more,” the old man said.
“What do you know about this pirate logo?”
“That ain’t a logo. That’s a self-portrait. Peter Hardgrave ain’t grown t
hat beard out since the late nineties.”
I swallowed hard, remembering fragments of my dream. “Peter Hardgrave had a red beard?”
“Ayuh,” the old man said.
My innards rocked. For some reason, I felt uncharacteristically ill. I had always prided myself on not getting motion sickness.
The old man pointed at the bottle in my lap, the neck extending like a naughty appendage. “As the captain says, I’d hold onto that bottle if I was you. The bottle itself is gonna be worth a lot of coin one day. In fact, are there any drops left?”
I held it up to the pink light of the lighthouse. The thick glass at the bottom refracted the light like a Fresnel lens and distorted the reflection of my fiery red hair. The last thing I wanted to see was this old man trying to stick his tongue down the neck for a few drops like a desperate anteater. “No. All empty.”
“Do you mind if I see it?”
For some reason, I turned away from him and protected the bottle as if it were my own. “Like you said, it’s very valuable.”
Then I got up and moved to the other side of the boat. An idea had hit me, one that was likely terrible, given my past demons.
If this rum was really that popular, what if Peter Hardgrave and I teamed up and went into business? What if I gave him the space to brew it again and applied for a liquor license so he could sell it?
And while we were at it, why not limit supply and drive up the prices?
It was the same thing Phyllis Martin had done with her chowder.
Working with an escaped convict couldn’t be worse than working with Captain Herrick, could it?
2
I sat on the coaming, trying to fit the pieces of my fading dream back together.
Would it be wise to partner up with the man whom had actually taken my sister?
After his trial last year, Peter Hardgrave had told my foster father that he had been trying to help Chrissy, that she had gotten involved with the wrong people and he had taken her to meet with a trusted friend who could help her get out of trouble.
But according to Hardgrave, she had disappeared from the mouth of the cave.
