Safe Harbor

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  It wasn't unusual. Charlotte Anderson was an early riser and walked all over the island for exercise. It wasn't unusual—but for days now, Holly had been watching with dread as her mother sank like a waterlogged hat into a sea of deepening despair. Instead of pedalling back to her barn, Holly decided on the spot to track down her missing mother.

  Her search took her out of Vineyard Haven and onto Beach Road, which she followed at a fairly fast clip right through Oak Bluffs. She zipped past the town beach with hardly a glance: her mother preferred the more desolate stretches. Once outside of Oak Bluffs, Holly jogged onto the bicycle path that ran side by side with Beach Road down the eastern end of the island, scanning constantly for her mother's car.

  She was halfway to Edgartown before she discovered the white Volvo that so clearly was her mother's. (It was the only car on the island with an angel whirligig suction-cupped to its roof, ready to spin its wings if the car ever got up to a speed of, say, a hundred miles an hour. The guardian angel—a disastrous design—had been a welcome-summer gift from Holly to her mother. The most successful thing about it was that in over two months it hadn't been pinched.)

  Holly streaked across the road and dumped her bike alongside the car, then peered up and down the long, narrow expanse of white sand being wetted by a gray and sullen sea. The beach was still deserted. She saw a couple with two young children who, sun or no sun, had set up camp on a blanket, and another couple deep in conversation as they walked along the water's edge—but there was no sign of a sixty-year-old woman walking along with arms folded and head bowed, wondering what had become of her world.

  Holly's heart, which had slowed after the ride, began to pound all over again. How long had the Volvo been abandoned there? She stared left, stared right, strained to see ...

  "Holly! Where did you come from?"

  She whirled around to see her mother crossing the road from the bicycle path. She was dressed in khaki shorts and a pink cotton shirt and she didn't look desperate at all.

  Relieved, Holly said, "I went to the house; you weren't there."

  ''So you tracked me all the way out here?"

  "Well, what did you expect? I'm worried about you."

  "You should be," her mother said bluntly. "I've had another premonition."

  The admission sent a wave of cold across Holly's consciousness. She had learned, over the years, not to take her mother's premonitions lightly.

  They fell in together and began walking along the beach. "What was this one?" Holly asked, but she knew the answer beforehand.

  "Same thing: Eden, dying. The terrible thing is that this time she was dying in my arms. I was holding her; we were near water, just as you and I are now. I could have saved her—the feeling was very strong that I could have saved her—but I was choosing not to. And then I woke up. I don't know whether I woke myself up to stop myself from letting her die, or to stop myself from saving her life."

  "Mom, it was just a dream," Holly said. She tried to laugh off her fears. "Don't be so Freudian. How are you feeling, by the way?" she asked, concerned at the furrows in her mother's brow. "Is your migraine gone?"

  "It lurks at the edges," her mother said grimly.

  "I'm amazed you're out, then. Shouldn't you be lying down?"

  "Come home with me. There's something I want you to see."

  Charlotte refused to say more than that, so Holly loaded her bike into the back of the car and they drove home with Holly doing the talking. She related word-for-word and look-for-look all that had happened between her and Sam Steadman on the preceding day, but all she got from her mother was the occasional nod.

  The sun had begun to burn away the night's rain and the morning's gray haze; by the time they pulled into the grassy drive, the flattened daisies that lined the walk were starting to lift their heads again. Holly fell in behind her mother on the curving brick path and followed her through the side French doors into the kitchen.

  Dumping her straw carryall on the marble countertop, Charlotte marched down the hall over an Oriental hall runner worn thin from generations of sandy shoes.

  She stopped at the white-panelled door that led to her husband's study. "Look what I've done," she said simply.

  Holly stepped inside and stared in shock at the panelled and shuttered room.

  Chaos. Her father's "nautical" shelves had been cleared of all of their books, whose ripped-out pages lay strewn about like torn-away leaves from a hurricane. His beloved, antique sextant had been used as a blunt weapon to smash everything of his that was breakable, including the crystal golfing trophy that lay in pieces under its twisted arc. The wedding photo of a smiling Eric and a radiant Charlotte had been smashed in—not a disaster, because everyone had copies—but the World's Greatest Father mug, that was gone forever, and so was the collection of children's mementos that Holly, her brother, and her sister had presented to their father over the years.

  Holly stepped over the wreckage with far more apprehension than when, at the innocent age of seven, she had stepped over the mess in her parents' ransacked, burglarized house in Providence. Her fear this time was not of evil forces without, but of terrible forces within.

  "Mom," she whispered, stunned into speechlessness.

  Her mother was standing stiff as a flagpole. Her arms were folded across her chest and a look of burning defiance glittered in her green eyes: there were no tears there, none that Holly could see.

  "I burned all of his Admiralty charts, too," said Charlotte. "He had charts for the entire Bahamas chain, and the Caribbean, and God knows what else. Look over there. In the fireplace. I burned them all. They cost him forty to sixty dollars apiece. I remember how he muttered about the cost every time he invested in one. Now they're ashes. What do you think about that? she asked Holly in a brittle, high-pitched voice.

  She went on. "He told me he'd be back for all of this stuff, you know. I can hardly wait. He said he didn't want anything out of this marriage except his boat things." She looked around her and let out a short shrill laugh. "Really: I can hardly wait."

  Holly picked up a recent photograph, also smashed in, of her brother and sister and her sitting on the bow of the Vixen. It occurred to her for the first time that the three of them—but especially her blond, blue-eyed brother and sister—were walking, breathing reminders of Eric Anderson.

  She laid the frame gently down on the desk, hoping that it was the boat and not the children that had been the butt of her mother's fury.

  "When did you do this?" she murmured.

  "Late last night, after you phoned. It's Marjory Betson's fault," her mother explained with a lift of her chin. "She called about an hour before you did to tell me—she was so concerned; she would be, the bitch—she called to tell me that when she and Mark sailed into Onset, they saw the Vixen, all snugged down at anchor. Eric and Eden were in the cockpit, carrying on. Naturally, Marjory had pretended not to see the boat.

  "I lay in bed, thinking about that—it was so easy for me to picture them, you know?—and then sometime after midnight, I came in here and started ... just started ... smashing things. It felt, I don't know—good. I was sure it would get rid of the migraine," she added with a sudden, pitiable smile. She took the lone book that remained on the built-in shelves that flanked the fireplace and stood it carefully on end again, as if to prove how reasonable she really had been.

  "And did it get rid of the migraine?" Holly asked.

  "I told you," her mother said, turning to face her. "It lurks at the edges."

  "So then ... how do you feel about—" Holly lifted her arms, palms up, and gestured around her.

  This time her mother's smile was no more than a small, pained twitch at the corners of her mouth. "You want me to admit how sorry I feel; how I came to my senses and was horrified when I walked in here this morning," she said.

  Holly sighed and nodded hopefully.

  Charlotte turned back to the bookshelves and took down the book she had just propped up, a paperback cruising guide th
at looked brand-new. She opened it wide over her knee and bent its halves over her thighs until the spine let out a fatal, cracking sound. Without a glance at Holly, she walked over to the fireplace and tossed the fractured book on the grate.

  "I feel no more regret than he does," she muttered, and she walked out of the room.

  In the hallway she stopped and turned back to her daughter. "You're a naive little fool, Holly," she said bitterly. "Grow up."

  ****

  Holly tried to work that morning, but it wasn't easy; her brain was far too addled after being knocked around by so many different emotions.

  Dominant among them was fear for her mother. Depression was one thing, dementia another: the image of a scarily boastful Charlotte Anderson standing in the middle of her husband's demolished study was one that Holly would never forget.

  She had offered right away to clean up the mess, but her mother wouldn't let her. "Let it be," she had insisted. "I want him to feel this when he comes back, and he will. I want him to feel every last cut, every last blow."

  After that there wasn't much that Holly could do or say, so she left, telling herself that time would make things better. The problem was, who had time to wait for time? Her mother's state was incredibly fragile. It was like watching a child playing with a loaded gun.

  Holly's apprehension permeated every brushstroke that she tried to lay down, and the result, after a morning of work, was something that looked like scrambled eggs.

  Some sunset, she thought in disgust. She dumped her paintbrushes into a can of turpentine and wiped off the botched drawer with a solvent-soaked rag. It would take a while to dry, she knew. Best to start on something else.

  But what? She looked around with no enthusiasm. That big new bedroom suite taking up half of the barn—she could clear it out simply by painting the damn border on the bed and chests to match the wallpaper sample, just as she'd been commissioned to do. It was a mindless if lucrative job, but ... nah. The client was a pain and her kid was a brat.

  She looked for something else to do.

  The birdhouses? Half a dozen new ones sat naked in a row, waiting for shingles and picket fences and hollyhocks and little windows with shutters to be painted on them. They would sell like hotcakes. Once she painted them.

  Nah.

  Her design portfolio of country accessories for the home—what about that? It was an ambitious, ongoing project, and Holly had neglected it lately, which was stupid. She had every intention of shopping it around to a variety of furniture manufacturers. The problem was, she wanted it to look overflowing with ideas, and so far it didn't.

  She could just do something simple for it: a design for a dishtowel, maybe, or a working sketch for a canister set. Any little thing, as long it was movement forward. Anything to bring her out of her paralysis.

  Nope. Not today. Can't.

  She chewed on a fingertip as she roamed the barn, looking for something to start that she could finish. She found a forgotten bag of chocolate chips on one of the easels. There was a job she could start and finish. Holly emptied the bag into the palm of her hand and munched the morsels one by one, stuck in a listless trance.

  All the while, at the edges of her vision, ghostly images lurked: her mother, looking devastated. Her mother, looking righteous. Her mother, looking murderous. Those were the faces in Holly's imagination now, not cherry-cheeked kids and slant-eyed cats and sleepy dogs and grazing cows.

  I know what I'll do. I'll shampoo my hair. I'll use that five-minute conditioner, that's what I'll do.

  Whenever Holly felt really drained of inspiration, she hopped into the shower. There was something about standing there under a steady flow, with pencil and sketch pad unavailable, that let ideas break free and run wild.

  She stripped off her shorts and tank top and stepped into her sun-filled shower stall, letting the water run cool and then hot. After shampooing twice, she worked the packet of conditioning oil through her shoulder-length hair and then stood with eyes closed and neck arched, breathing the steamy air. August or no August, she enjoyed the hot flow of water over her body; it melted away the tension, and with it, those appalling images of her mother's agony.

  She tried to free her mind for bright ideas and pretty colors, but inspiration wouldn't come. The best she could do was a sudden, unwanted image of Sam Steadman. She saw him with maddening clarity: brown eyes, brown hair, chipped tooth, full lips, washed-out shirt, khaki pants, sockless in his deck shoes and oh-h-h, so not for her. Cocky, yes, that's what he looked. Like someone with a past who couldn't care less about it.

  Holly shook her head, less willing to face the memory of him than the one of her mother. No, no, no. Think about something else. Someone else. Anyone else.

  But distracting thoughts wouldn't come. Instead, Sam Steadman held full sway over her considerable powers of imagination. Where had he come from? How had he got there? Holly groaned and shut her eyes tight, trying to squeeze out his image. She realized for the first time that she had been fighting thoughts of him for the last twenty-four hours straight. It occurred to her—now, finally, duh—that she'd had dreams of him that night, blushable dreams. Suddenly she remembered them well ... remembered his hands, those well-formed, capable hands ... roaming her body, pausing to cup and tease ... and caress ... roaming everywhere....

  Her own fingers slid down across her soapy skin, on their way to re-capturing the intense pleasure of those dreams. Yes ... yes ... yes yes yes ....

  No! Good grief, no no no! Not him! What are you thinking?

  She pulled her hand away from herself, fearful of connecting Sam with conscious pleasure. The thought of that was strictly taboo. Sam had something do with Eden, and Eden had everything to do with her mother's pain. It was as simple, and as complicated, as that.

  Holly sighed in massive frustration. Then she took the loofah brush from its hook and scrubbed her back until it hurt.

  Chapter 6

  After learning from the assistant dockmaster at Vineyard Haven that the Vixen was a forty-four-foot Roamer sloop, Sam hauled his ass off to the library on Main Street to see what a Roamer 44 looked like. In half an hour, he had his answer: it looked like any other forty-four-foot fiberglass sailboat, only a little fancier. How the hell he was going to pick one out from among an anchored fleet—or worse, a sailing fleet—he had no idea.

  Shit. Holly Anderson was right: if this didn't qualify as a search for a needle in a haystack, nothing did. Sam's mood was completely frustrated and equally foul as he considered his next move.

  Holly. Yep, it all came back to her. Holly Anderson knew Eden, knew the boat, and knew the situation as well as anyone. Whatever facts she didn't possess, Sam did; between them, they could surely recover the etching. He wasn't crazy about dragging her into an unholy alliance—she seemed like a sweet enough kid—but catching Eden would take all the forces that he could muster.

  He got into his rental Corolla (slated to do double duty as a room that night) and drove out Main Street, headed for the Lake Tashmoo area on the north side of the island. He knew from their brief encounter that Holly had a house there with a barn out back. How hard could it be to find?

  Pretty damned hard, it turned out. Sam drove from Main to Daggett to the end of Herring Creek Road, where he found a nice little beach but no house with a barn. He had to backtrack to town for better directions, and after one or two false turns down dirt lanes that led either to nowhere or to other dirt lanes, he finally found what he hoped was Holly's place, at the end of an overgrown drive.

  He parked his car and looked around. The Cape Cod house, white and cozy, was surprisingly isolated. Sam could just barely see its red barn behind high scrub and thick trees. Rubbing the bloody scratch he'd got from a branch through the driver's window, Sam made his way to the front door, knocked hard, and waited.

  Holly wasn't home.

  By then Sam was mad and sweaty and deep in the grip of caffeine withdrawal. He let loose with a round of curses at the whole dumb mission. He
considered leaving her a note, then nixed the idea. What would he say? Come fly with me after Eden?

  He dropped sullenly back into the seat of his rented Corolla and threw the car into reverse, backing down the scrub-lined drive. He was steering by mirror and was into the second blind curve when he heard and felt it: the sickening crunch of someone's bumper locking with his.

  Son of a bitch.

  He swung his head around in time to see Holly hanging halfway out of her truck's window and yelling at him.

  Perfect.

  He climbed back out of his car, tearing more skin on yet another bush, and eased his way between the brush and the vehicles, stopping to check the damage on the way. His rental had taken a bigger hit than her old but higher Ford.

  Perfect.

  He saw that she stayed put in her seat, opening and closing her fists around the steering wheel in an apparent attempt to stay calm. What nerve.

  "I wasn't going very fast," he felt obliged to point out.

  "You were going backwards. How smart was that!"

  He went on the offensive. "There's hardly room to swing a cat in front of your house. Why don't you clear out some room there?"

  "Why? So people like you can stop by?"

  "Yeah, well, never mind me; what about your patrons? How the hell do you expect them to find this place?"

  "I don't expect them. This is my home. Clients go directly to the studio in the barn," she said, hanging out the window again. She hooked a thumb over the roof of her truck. "They use the drive over that way, the one that leads to the barn? That's why there's a sign over there and not over here?"

  Ah, those question marks; those hints of contempt. It fueled Sam's growing conviction that despite her sweet face, Holly Anderson was just another garden-variety socialite—this one, a subsidized artiste killing time until the right rich man came along to lift her out of her genteel struggle and drop her into a beachfront house. Which was one thing you had to admit about Eden: she didn't expect anything; she always went out and fought for it.