Trevor heard me as he returned. “He was always scared of water. But nobody could swim in what’s out there now. And there’s no possible way to bring him up without machinery.”
In the front seat Chris clung to me and now there was nothing to keep me from putting my arms about him and holding him close.
We waited for a little while longer, and then Trevor drove back to the octagonal house, where Gwen Bruen sat on the steps, waiting for us helplessly.
By sunset the storm had cleared. Trevor and I stood on the upper deck of his house, looking out toward Belle Isle. There would be no more fires. It was all over now, except the aftermath. Perhaps Maggie, her fear for Eric behind her, would paint something less tortured in her canvases. Giff I didn’t know about. His struggle with his father would probably go on. Eric himself had never really been touched or deeply aware of all that was happening. Certainly not of his wife’s fears.
The day just past seemed confused and crowded in memory. When we could get over the causeway we drove to where Maggie had left my car. Then I’d come back to the house with Chris and Maggie, while Trevor went for the police, taking Gwen with him. In the afternoon David’s car was brought up from the lake bottom, his body taken in charge by the police. The questions, the explanations, were endless, and they weren’t over yet. Unexpectedly Gwen Bruen pulled herself together and helped more than anyone else. I could only hope that she would get off with a light sentence. Her mistake had lain in loving David—as that had been Lori’s mistake too. And mine, for deceiving myself. There would be difficult days ahead for all of us, but we would face them together, Trevor and Chris and I.
For me, David had died weeks ago and had been buried. I had been able to grieve then for a life wastefully lost. Now I felt nothing but shock over what the man who had been my husband had done. Only in these sunset moments, standing at the rail on the deck of his house, with Trevor’s arm about me, could I come to life a little.
“I’m going to finish Belle Isle,” he promised and I heard new hope in his voice. “I want to take you down there soon—I want to show you my plans.”
I would go with him gladly, but I would not soon forget all that had happened on the island. Nor, I knew very well, would he.
Chris had come to stand beside us, and he smiled at me with love. There was so much we had shared. So much more than we’d had time to absorb and fully understand. Yet I knew that this was the beginning of a family—the three of us. I loved them both, even as a new aching began in me, and sorrow for wasted lives. David, Joe Bruen, Lori. Even Gwen. We who were left must now fight our way toward peace and healing.
For me I could only hope that when enough time had passed I would be able to close my eyes on quiet darkness in which no glass flame would ever burn again. For a long time I would want no lighted tapers in the rooms of any house in which I happened to live.
I leaned closer to Trevor and his arm tightened about me, as mine tightened about Chris. Belle Isle was fading to a dark shadow out there beneath the mountains, with only a last glow of sunset shining on the lake.
Like the shining of fire.
A Biography of Phyllis A. Whitney
Phyllis Ayame Whitney (1903–2008) was a prolific author of seventy-six adult and children’s novels. Over fifty million copies of her books were sold worldwide during the course of her sixty-year writing career, establishing her as one of the most successful mystery and romantic suspense writers of the twentieth century. Whitney’s dedication to the craft and quality of writing earned her three lifetime achievement awards and the title “The Queen of the American Gothics.”
Whitney was born in Yokohama, Japan, on September 9, 1903, to American parents, Mary Lillian (Lilly) Mandeville and Charles (Charlie) Whitney. Charles worked for an American shipping line. When Whitney was a child, her family moved to Manila in the Philippines, and eventually settled in Hankow, China.
Whitney began writing stories as a teenager but focused most of her artistic attention on her other passion: dance. When her father passed away in China in 1918, Whitney and her mother took a ten-day journey across the Pacific Ocean to America, and they settled in Berkley, California. Later they moved to San Antonio, Texas. Lilly continued to be an avid supporter of Whitney’s dancing, creating beautiful costumes for her performances. While in high school, her mother passed away, and Whitney moved in with her aunt in Chicago, Illinois. After graduating from high school in 1924, Whitney turned her attention to writing, nabbing her first major publication in the Chicago Daily News. She made a small income from writing stories at the start of her career, and would eventually go on to publish around one hundred short stories in pulp magazines by the 1930s.
In 1925, Whitney married George A. Garner, and nine years later gave birth to their daughter, Georgia. During this time, she also worked in the children’s room in the Chicago Public Library (1942–1946) and at the Philadelphia Inquirer (1947–1948).
After the release of her first novel, A Place for Ann (1941), a career story for girls, Whitney turned her eye toward publishing full-time, taking a job as the children’s book editor at the Chicago Sun-Times and releasing three more novels in the next three years, including A Star for Ginny. She also began teaching juvenile fiction writing courses at Northwestern University. Whitney began her career writing young adult novels and first found success in the adult market with the 1943 publication of Red Is for Murder, also known by the alternative title The Red Carnelian.
In 1946, Whitney moved to Staten Island, New York, and taught juvenile fiction writing at New York University. She divorced in 1948 and married her second husband, Lovell F. Jahnke, in 1950. They lived on Staten Island for twenty years before relocating to Northern New Jersey. Whitney traveled around the world, visiting every single setting of her novels, with the exception of Newport, Rhode Island, due to a health emergency. She would exhaustively research the land, culture, and history, making it a custom to write from the viewpoint of an American visiting these exotic locations for the first time. She imbued the cultural, physical, and emotional facets of each country to transport her readers to places they’ve never been.
Whitney wrote one to two books a year with grand commercial success, and by the mid-1960s, she had published thirty-seven novels. She had reached international acclaim, leading Time magazine to hail her as “one of the best genre writers.” Her work was especially popular in Britain and throughout Europe.
Whitney won the Edgar Award for Mystery of the Haunted Pool (1961) and Mystery of the Hidden Hand (1964), and was shortlisted three more times for Secret of the Tiger’s Eye (1962), Secret of the Missing Footprint (1971), and Mystery of the Scowling Boy (1974). She received three lifetime achievement awards: the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award in 1985, the Agatha in 1989, and the lifetime achievement award from the Society of Midland Authors in 1995.
Whitney continued writing throughout the rest of her life, still traveling to the locations for each of her novels until she was ninety-four years old. She released her final novel, the touching and thrilling Amethyst Dreams, in 1997. Whitney was working on her autobiography at the time of her passing at the age of 104. She left behind a vibrant catalog of seventy-six titles that continue to inspire, setting an unparalleled precedent for mystery writing.
A young Whitney playing with her doll in Japan.
Whitney with her family in Japan, where they lived for approximately six years. From left: Lillian (Lilly) Whitney, Charles (Charlie) Whitney, Phyllis Whitney, and Philip (Whitney’s half-brother).
Thirteen-year-old Whitney dancing in the Philippines.
Twenty-one-year-old Whitney at her graduation from McKinley High School in 1924.
Whitney worked at the World’s Fair in Chicago, Illinois, in 1933. She was pregnant with her daughter, Georgia, at the time.
Frederick Nelson Litten, Whitney’s mentor in writing and teaching, in Chicago, 1935.
Whitney’s first publicity photo for A Place for Ann, 1941.
Whitney, forty-eight, in her first study in Fort Hill Circle at her Staten Island house, where she lived with second husband Lovell Jahnke, 1951.
Whitney at sixty-nine years old with Jahnke in their home in Hope, New Jersey, 1972. Behind them hangs a Japanese embroidery made by Whitney’s mother.
Whitney at seventy-one years of age with Pat Myer, her long time editor, and Mable Houvenagle, her sister-in-law, at her house on Chapel Ave in Brookhaven, Long Island, New York, 1974. After her husband died in 1973, she lived close to her daughter, Georgia, on Long Island.
Whitney at eighty-one years old on a helicopter ride over Maui, Hawaii, to research the backdrop for her novel Silversword, 1984.
Whitney giving her acceptance speech for her Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award in 1985.
Whitney rode in a hot-air balloon in 1988 to use the experience for her novel Rainbow in the Mist.
Whitney ascending in the hot-air balloon, 1988.
Whitney in her study in Virginia in 1996 at ninety-three years old, looking over her “Awards Corner,” which included three Edgars, the Agatha, and the Society of Midland Authors Award.
Whitney at ninety-six years old with her family in her house in Virgina, 1999. From left: Michael Jahnke (grandson), Georgia Pearson (daughter), Matthew Celentano (great-grandson), Whitney, and Danny Celentano (great-grandson).
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1978 by Phyllis A. Whitney
Cover design by Mimi Bark
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4387-8
This edition published in 2017 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
180 Maiden Lane
New York, NY 10038
www.openroadmedia.com
PHYLLIS A. WHITNEY
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