The Lace Reader

by Brunonia Barry

  Rafferty could see the toll it took on May. She was used to girls going back. But May didn’t like losing one of her girls. Especially to the man who started the whole thing, the man who’d ruined May’s family.

  Rafferty gave Angela a ride back to town, but, true to his word, he refused to take her back to the Calvinists. “You shouldn’t stay here,” he said. “Don’t you have friends somewhere?” He knew better than to mention her family.

  She ought to file charges, Rafferty told her. If not against Cal, at least against the women who stoned her. She said she’d think about it.

  He called around, looking for a room for her. But it was late October, and there wasn’t a room anywhere.

  He called Roberta and explained the situation. He told her Angela was pregnant. He said he knew that Roberta was looking for a roommate, someone who could help with the rent. Rafferty said he would cover the first month, while Angela looked for something to do for work.

  “Why would you do that?” Roberta was already suspicious. “It’s not your baby, is it?”

  “Funny,” Rafferty said.

  It didn’t last the month. By the end of the first week, Angela was back with the Calvinists. Not in the women’s tent this time but in the tiny Airstream parked conveniently next to Cal’s RV.

  Rafferty knew that it was only a question of time until she showed. He wasn’t sure whether Cal knew she was pregnant or not. Unless they were going to try to claim a virgin birth, Angela was about to become a major inconvenience to all the Calvinists. And especially to their leader, who had made a small fortune preaching his own set of commandments, the second of which was celibacy.

  No two Readers will ever see the same images in the lace. What is seen is determined entirely by perspective.

  —THE LACE READER’S GUIDE

  Chapter 17

  RAFFERTY’S EYES WERE BEGINNING to sting. He thumbed through the remaining files. Cal’s file was thinner than Eva’s, and older. It went back to the seventies, documenting each reported beating of Emma Boynton, most of them uncorroborated or denied altogether by Emma. Until the broken jaw. When questioned at the hospital, Emma would not say anything about her husband. Only that she had fallen down the stairs. At May’s insistence the emergency-room doctor had called the police. These days it would be a matter of course. HAWC had their posters everywhere, as did the state. It was unusual not to suspect abuse. These days you got a hangnail, they took you into a room with an abuse counselor. A lot of his coworkers thought it excessive. Rafferty wasn’t one of them. He remembered the old days. When everyone pretended not to notice until someone ended up dead.

  In his own way, Rafferty’s views weren’t all that different from May’s, though she’d never believe it. To May, Rafferty was the enemy. In fact, they usually ended up on opposite sides of the law.

  Rafferty radioed ahead to tell her he was coming out to Yellow Dog Island. And why. He stuffed the files into an old sail bag along with his jacket and the rest of his thermos of coffee. He went out the back door and down the steps, leaving the cruiser where it was. Parking spaces near the harbor were hard to come by this time of year, even for a cop.

  He decided to walk. He needed the air. Truth was, he needed every advantage he could get. Especially if he was going to match wits with May Whitney.

  May was waiting for him on the dock. More angry than concerned. It wasn’t a good day for a visit, she told him for the second time.

  “Too bad,” he said.

  Clearly pissed off, she turned and started to walk up the dock.

  “You can cooperate,” he said, “or I can get a warrant.”

  She stopped. She spun to face him. “I told you, Angela Rickey is not here.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “You ought to know. You were here.”

  “And she hasn’t tried to contact you.”

  “No.”

  “And you’d tell me if she had.”

  “Right,” May said.

  “Just like you did the last time.”

  “No comment.”

  “You mind if I look around?”

  “I told you, it’s a bad day.” May was losing patience.

  “I need to look around.”

  “If I were trying to hide Angela Rickey on this island, you wouldn’t find her.”

  “And you haven’t moved her,” Rafferty suggested.

  “What?”

  “You were trying to move someone last night. I saw your signal.”

  “What are you talking about?” Her voice had all the requisite frustration, but her inflection was just a little bit off.

  “Two if by sea,” he said. “I saw your lights.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “If you don’t want the whole world to know what you’re doing out here, you’d better pick a better signal. Given the time and the inclination, any schoolkid could figure that one out.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Detective Rafferty.”

  “Was it Angela Rickey?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I can assure you that we didn’t move anyone.”

  “I know you didn’t. I know it because your driver was passed out in his boat at the Derby Wharf.”

  May stared at him. “I think you’re losing it.”

  “He got into a drunken fight at the Rockmore over a disparaging remark someone made about Towner.”

  That one stopped her. “Is she okay?” She meant it.

  “She’s fine,” he said. “But Jack LaLibertie is a loose cannon. It’s only a question of time before he does something really stupid, and when he does, everyone’s going to know what you’re doing out here.”

  May stared at him.

  “So I’ll ask you one more time. Was it Angela Rickey you were trying to move last night?”

  “No,” May said.

  “You’ll pardon me if I don’t take your word for it.”

  Several worried-looking women had started to gather at the top of the dock.

  “Is everything okay?” one of them yelled down.

  May flashed the okay sign. “Fine!” she yelled back.

  They stood unconvinced, watching the police boat.

  “Come with me,” she said to Rafferty.

  She started up the dock toward the island. He followed. At the top of the pier, she turned left toward the far end of the island, past the Boynton house, all boarded up now. They crossed the baseball field and walked in silence toward the stone kennel.

  “Watch out for the rabbit holes, Detective,” May said as they approached the old building. “You could easily break your leg.”

  Rafferty was extra careful as he walked down the path. Just like her Aunt Eva, May had powers beyond the normal, even if she didn’t care to admit it. “Watch out for rabbit holes” might sound like a warning about furry creatures and sprained ankles. But if Eva had been alive, she would have called it better. May had just fired the proverbial shot across his bow.

  Rafferty took in the details: the stone kennel with its blue door, the picnic table outside where two children sat. A worried-looking woman, obviously their mother, watched.

  “I’m going to introduce you as a friend,” May said. “Not a cop. You think you can pull that off?”

  “I’ll give it my best shot.”

  “Make it work,” May said. “She’s been through enough already.”

  He could see that.

  “This is my friend John Rafferty,” May said to the woman. “John, this is Mary Segee.”

  Rafferty waited. The woman nodded to him but did not extend her hand. He could see the scars on her wrist. Cigarette burn marks. Bent and broken nose. She saw him looking. He looked away. Packed bags. An old suitcase in a corner. He turned his attention to the two children.

  “And who might you be?” Rafferty held out his hand to the girl.

  “I might be Rebecca,” the girl said.

  “She might be, but she’s not,” M
ay said. “Her name is Susan.” The little girl remembered herself, looking scared for just an instant. “We were playing a game,” she said. “That’s my brother, Timothy.” The little boy didn’t look up.

  “Nice to meet you both,” Rafferty said. Now the boy looked up, then at his mother, then down again.

  “Going on a trip, are you?” Rafferty said.

  “We’re going to Canada,” the little girl said before the mother was able to stop her.

  “Canada is beautiful this time of year,” Rafferty said.

  “I’m going to have my own bike,” the boy said.

  “That’s great,” Rafferty said. “Fantastic.”

  “Mr. Rafferty has to go now,” May said. “He just wanted to say hello.”

  “You’re not going to Canada, are you?” the girl said, glancing toward his boat.

  “I’m afraid I’m only going to town,” Rafferty said, and shook her hand again. “You have a nice time up there, okay?”

  “Okay,” the girl said.

  Rafferty walked behind May to the dock. He was glad for the ruts in the road. Glad for the silence. Grass matted in tangles. Gulls overhead. Up by the baseball diamond, some kids had started playing softball with some of the women. Others worked the garden. A cow grazed at the far end of the field. A couple of cows. And some sheep. And the dogs. Everywhere the dogs. He watched as one of them stalked and killed a rabbit. It was violent, but it wasn’t personal, unlike the kind of violence that had happened to the human inhabitants of Yellow Dog Island.

  They stopped at the top of the dock. “Satisfied?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t really think she’d come back here, did you?”

  “No,” he said.

  “You think Cal killed her?”

  “I don’t know what I think.”

  “You think he killed Eva?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Everybody else thinks so.”

  “Good,” Rafferty said.

  The Reader must be certain, as she asks the question, that the Seeker is prepared to receive the answer.

  —THE LACE READER’S GUIDE

  Chapter 18

  RAFFERTY HAD BEEN FIGHTING a headache all afternoon. He’d stopped by the old Chinese acupuncturist down by the docks and had some needles put in, but then he’d gotten a call and had to cut the session short. He didn’t realize it was a migraine until he was bringing the boat around.

  He was late. Well, what else was new?

  Towner was waiting for him on the wharf. The sun had just dropped behind the Custom House, lighting up the sky behind her with every shade of color, intensifying the aura that began over the city and carried all the way outside the harbor over the open ocean, until the sky and the water became indistinguishable, cut only on the vertical by Towner herself and the halo of light that played around her.

  To say that she was a vision would be accurate, but not in any normal sense. Ethereal glow yes, but that was from the sunset and the migraine aura that was short-circuiting his brain cells.

  As the boat moved past her and came toward the dock, the shimmering light show shifted. Now he had to focus his eyes and concentrate just to see her, and in this new half-light his cop’s mind filed the images he saw. Cutoffs, bare feet. The same T-shirt he’d seen her in at Red’s. Another of Eva’s old sweaters draped around her shoulders and clipped with a granny chain.

  “I was beginning to think you stood me up,” she said.

  “Sorry.” He pulled in.

  The beginnings of a migraine were odd for Rafferty. Sounds echoed. His cotton shirt scraped his skin like sandpaper. He felt as if he could see nothing and everything all at the same time. He couldn’t focus on her face at all, but he could see the tracing line of the tan she’d gotten in the garden today, the shadow under the fingernails where she couldn’t quite scrub away the dirt from the garden.

  Something told him to go home. To call this off. He’d talked her into it, hadn’t he? It wasn’t something she’d wanted.

  She was in the boat before he had a chance to say it. He was still a few feet from the dock. Planning the perfect landing, showing off a little, maybe. He expected her to grab the side of the boat; instead she jumped in. He reached his hand up, and she grabbed it to steady herself, but her aim was dead-on and she didn’t need him. This was a woman who was comfortable at sea. Maybe only at sea, he thought. Well, she came by that naturally, didn’t she? As soon as he had the thought, he tried to erase it. The last thing he wanted to think about tonight was her family.

  “A 110,” she said, admiring the boat. Old, wooden. Painted brown. It looked like a chocolate cigar with its tapered ends. “My first boat was a 110.”

  “You’re kidding me,” he said.

  He realized he was already heading out toward open ocean, away from the lights of town. It just happened. Any question he’d had of turning back was gone.

  “Did you race her?” Again Rafferty realized that it was a question he already knew the answer to. He’d seen a photo of Towner as a kid, racing at the Pleon Yacht Club in Marblehead. The photo was on Eva’s wall.

  She seemed to think about it for a long moment before answering. “No,” she said finally. “I never raced.”

  It stopped him.

  “Gaps” was the way Eva had put it. Towner had gaps in memory. He hadn’t been too thrown by that. Who didn’t have gaps? In AA they called them blackouts. He liked Eva’s word better.

  Tonight there were gaps in Rafferty’s vision, he noticed, holes and empty spaces that were getting larger. The glow was gone, but the sky was too clearly divided. Too sharp. For a minute it was a tiny knife cutting through his vision, slicing it almost perfectly in half before the blade went into his scalp. He wasn’t going to avoid the headache this time. Sometimes he did. But it was coming. He pulled the sheet in tighter, had to move the boat faster to keep the nausea at bay.

  “Do you mind if we don’t talk for a few minutes?” he asked.

  Towner seemed relieved not to have to make conversation. Instead she sat in the bow, hands holding the sides. She was turned away from him, looking ahead, north toward the black water, never back at where they’d been.

  It might have angered another woman. The not-talking thing. But she seemed comfortable with it.

  They fell into the rhythm. The wind. The swells. There was something hypnotic about it, and something in the moving air that made it easier to breathe.

  He knew she felt it, too. This date was already better than the one last night. It was better when they didn’t try to talk.

  Somewhere past Manchester he lost all vision. Partly it was the darkness. At first he thought they were off course, much farther out to sea than they were. But then he heard the gulls and knew they were near land. He had never before lost his vision so completely. Usually it was just one side or the other, and you could see nothing by directly looking at it; you had to look past to see what was right in front of you.

  He didn’t know if it was the darkness or the migraine. All he knew was that he couldn’t see. Postphasic, he thought. Usually the visuals came first. They had come first in this case. Then gone away as the headache came on. But then the visuals returned. The worst he’d ever experienced.

  “Are you all right?” He heard her voice.

  “Migraine,” he said. “I can’t see. You’re going to have to take over.”

  He stayed low in the boat as they traded places. He was dizzy.

  “You want to head back?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  Twenty minutes, he thought. Twenty minutes to a half hour. That’s how long the visuals lasted. He would time it. If it went on any longer, he’d think it might be something worse—a stroke, maybe.

  Rafferty sat facing her, his back pressed into the bow.

  “You get a lot of migraines?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  She sailed easily. The wind was against them on the return trip, but she wa
s skilled. They weren’t moving as fast as coming out, but she was keeping a good clip.

  “You take anything for them?” she asked.

  “Sometimes,” he said.

  He found himself counting. Realized it was silly. By the time they passed Beverly Harbor, he took his hands down. It was fading. He could see the lights along the shore—intermittent and ringed, but there. He made himself breathe.

  “I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night,” he said when he could speak again. “And I drank too much coffee.” He said it aloud as much for himself as for her. The sound of his voice seemed stupid. He wished he hadn’t said anything.

  By the time they reached Salem, his vision was back. The pain was mostly on the right side.

  “You’re better,” she said.

  He wasn’t sure how she knew. He hadn’t moved much.

  “Yeah,” he said. He leaned forward, rubbing his neck.

  “Do you want to sail her in?”

  “No,” Rafferty said, pointing. “Take her in toward Shetland Park. The mooring’s back there.”

  She nodded.

  He sat in the stern and watched her sail. The harbor was full, a slalom course of boats. She moved among them like a skier, confident enough to cut it close.

  “You sail in California?” he asked.

  “Not even once,” she admitted.

  He could see it surprised her. How familiar and easy it seemed.

  “Like riding a bicycle,” he said, and she smiled.

  He kept his eyes leveled. She would have been embarrassed if she thought he could see, but she wasn’t. He watched her shift. He watched the muscles in her arms.

  It occurred to Rafferty that his senses had never been this acute. He could smell the air. Smell the citrus on her. From Eva’s sweater. Her hair moved independently in the breeze. Some things in it. Shapes. A shell, a sea horse. Migraine images. Phosphorescence trailed behind the boat, marking their course.

  “Which one’s your mooring?” she asked as they got close.