Caroline turned, looking into her mother’s face. For a moment, Nicole’s eyes were soft, and then she bent to kiss Caroline on the cheek.
Caroline froze, silent, neither welcoming nor resisting. Nicole’s lips were light, fleeting.
Her mother stood, walked away. To Caroline’s surprise, she stopped, turning in the doorway.
“I’m sorry,” she said simply, and left.
Four
Caroline waited up for her.
She could not help this, could not sleep. She imagined her mother’s evening, prayed that her father would not call. The house was dark and still.
At one o’clock, her mother had not returned.
Caroline went outside, stood on the bluffs, listened to the slow, deep surge of the purple waters against the cliff. The night was black, moonless.
The wind in her face was stiff. Caroline felt a chill; folded her arms against the cold; listened, vainly, for the sound of tires on gravel, the white Porsche that Nicole treasured and Channing found ostentatious.
Nothing.
Caroline tried to envision her mother, found it painful. Perhaps, she told herself, Nicole had drunk a little more than normal, forgotten her promise to return. Perhaps they had made love more than once.
The luminous dial of her wristwatch read one-thirty.
At two, Caroline promised herself, she would do something. What, she did not know; it was as if by setting a deadline she could induce Nicole’s return.
Sometimes her mother drank too much.
She said this to herself, curtly and baldly, as she had not before. It made her feel the change in her, the clear-eyed sorrow.
Yet she shrank from calling Nerheim.
Deeply lonely, Caroline returned to the house.
She went to the kitchen. In the pale light, she gazed at the schoolroom-style clock.
She would hate it, Caroline told herself, if her parents ever did this to her, keeping watch. The thought of her parents made her sad again.
Damn Paul Nerheim. He had no right.
Yet at two o’clock, she found that she could not call him.
There was nothing magic about two, she told herself. How would she feel if she interrupted them from lovemaking, like a child with her face pressed against the window? Worse, a child who could not understand the world of adults, who simply needed their attention…
Caroline made herself tea.
There was a noise outside. Caroline stood, walked quickly to the front door, cracked it open so that her mother could not see her.
The drive was empty.
Caroline closed the door, leaning against it. Then she went to the kitchen and opened the telephone book.
For long minutes, she stared at Nerheim’s number, until she knew it by heart. Then she stood, forcing herself to turn the dial.
“Hello?”
It was Nerheim, dull-voiced, puzzled. Caroline drew a breath. “Is my mother there?”
“Caroline?”
“Yes.”
A moment’s silence. “She left.” Nerheim’s voice was clear now. “Hours ago.”
Caroline felt her chest constrict. “When?”
“A little before twelve.” His tone was oddly kind. “She wanted to get home to you.”
Caroline felt her eyes close. Quietly, she said, “She’s not here.”
Nerheim’s silence seemed endless now. When he spoke again, his voice was low; Caroline heard both concern and efficiency. “I’ll call the Chilmark police. And the state police.”
Caroline was silent; it took her a moment to realize why she did not wish him to do this.
“No,” she said. “I will.”
An hour later, the telephone rang. Caroline jumped up to snatch it.
“Miss Masters?”
Caroline sagged with disappointment. “Yes?”
The man’s voice was quiet and level, with a distinct Massachusetts accent. “This is Sergeant Mannion of the state police. The locals say your mother may be missing. Or at least that you don’t know where she is.”
“No. No one does.”
He seemed to hear the despair in her voice. “They told me she was leaving Windy Gates in Chilmark. Is that right?”
“Yes.” Caroline paused. “She was visiting a friend.”
“Do you know where else she’d go?”
“No. Just here.”
A tentative note entered his voice. “Is your father there?”
“He’s in New Hampshire.” Defensively, she added, “At our home.”
“I see.” His voice was careful, neutral. “She hasn’t been gone that long—”
“Please,” Caroline interrupted. “Can you just look for her? I’m afraid she’s had an accident….”
Saying this, Caroline felt her stomach wrench. Wished to tell him, If it weren’t for me, my mother would be home.
He could not have known this. But when he spoke again, more gently, it was as if he had heard her. “What does she drive?”
“A white Porsche.”
Caroline heard the quiet of thought. “All right,” he said at last. “I’ll look for her. By the time you hear from me, she’ll probably be home.”
For two hours, the telephone did not ring and no car came. Caroline wandered through the empty house, defenseless against her imaginings. She had never felt so alone.
A little before five, the first thin dawn turned the darkness of the ocean blue gray. Gazing out the window, Caroline realized that night had kept her hopes alive. In the chill light of morning, she knew that her mother would not return.
Caroline heard the spit and crunch of gravel, tires stopping on the drive.
Filled with sudden excitement, she ran to the door. In her mind, Nicole Masters was alive again, stepping from her low-slung Porsche as Caroline opened the door.
When she saw the black patrol car, Caroline froze.
A uniformed man emerged. As he came closer, part of Caroline registered his reddish hair, pink scalded face, mild blue eyes. He was slightly pigeon-toed, she noticed; perhaps that was why he seemed to walk so slowly.
“You’re Caroline, aren’t you.”
It was the voice of the state policeman, softer now. She nodded, numb.
“I’m Frank Mannion.” His tone was muted, but his eyes would not leave her face. “There’s a car been spotted—a white Porsche. I should call your father now.”
Caroline blocked the doorway, as if to keep him from the phone. “Where is it?”
A shadow crossed his face. “On the beach. Below Windy Gates.”
Caroline’s heart stopped, and then she felt herself shudder. “How…?”
He seemed to inhale. “Caroline,” he said, “there’s a body near the car. A woman.”
She felt her eyes shut, her head bend forward. Heard Mannion say, “Please, let me call your father.”
Slowly, eyes still closed, Caroline shook her head.
“Someone should identify her.” His voice was still quiet. “And your father should be here for you.”
Caroline opened her eyes. “No.”
“Caroline, I’m sorry—”
“I won’t give you his number.” Her voice was tight. “I can’t let him find out.”
Mannion shook his head. “He has to know…,” he began, and then something like comprehension appeared in his eyes.
Quietly, Caroline said, “Take me there.”
The ride was impressions. Dawn breaking over the Vineyard, as fresh as creation; the white homes and picket fences of Edgartown; then woods and farmland; telephone poles; stone walls; fields as open as the Scottish moors, rolling toward the sea. As they neared Chilmark, Caroline could feel Mannion’s reluctance, the leaden silence between them.
“Did you always live here?” she asked.
She felt his surprise, a moment’s hesitancy. “No. I’m new. Until me, they never had state police on the island before.”
Caroline was quiet for a time. “Do you like it?”
She felt him turn to
her, as if to appraise what she needed. “The islanders aren’t so sure about me,” he said finally. “They’ve had their own way all this time. But my wife likes it, and it’s good for the kids.”
Caroline nodded. “How many do you have?”
“Three.”
They turned off the road, down the dirt path toward Windy Gates. Caroline could say nothing more.
Trees enveloped them, thick and ancient and overgrown, hanging over the path so that only patches of morning sun dappled the red clay. Caroline felt the tightening in her chest and throat; with sudden clarity, she imagined her mother the night before, dancing with Paul Nerheim on the tennis court to music no one else could hear, their bodies close, a bucket of chilled champagne nearby….
As they neared the fork in the road—one path leading to Nerheim’s estate, the other continuing straight to the water—Mannion slowed the car. His mouth was pressed tight.
Turning, Caroline looked toward the house. Imagined her mother driving down the twisting road, as they had the night Caroline had come with her parents. Saw her mother squinting as the headlights struck the trunks of trees, guiding her on the pitch-dark path until she reached the gnarled tree that marked the fork: toward the ocean, or toward home. Remembered her voice, softly saying to Caroline’s father, “Left…” Saw her in the darkness alone, this time turning toward the water.
Quietly, Caroline murmured, “She knew the way….”
The look Mannion gave her had a touch of superstition, as if he were afraid to speak. And then they passed the fork, rose slowly upward on the twisting path Caroline had walked until she could go no farther.
They went more slowly now. The twists grew more abrupt; there was a chill on Caroline’s skin as the memory came to her, just before they reached it—a final bend to the right, as if to turn a corner, and then a rise breaking from the trees to an open sky….
At the edge of the cliff was an ambulance.
As Mannion stopped the car behind it, Caroline said softly, “They should close this road.”
Mannion could not look at her.
They got out. He stood by the car; alone, Caroline walked to where the road simply vanished, like the end of the world.
She inhaled. And then, by an act of will, she gazed down at the beach, two hundred feet below.
What she saw first was the white Porsche. It was upside down near the water, its nose dug into the tawny sand as glistening waves lapped against the hood. Near the car, the small figures of three men walked in a desultory manner, sometimes gazing at the water like lovers of nature who had awaited the dawn. Swallowing, Caroline watched one of the figures break away and slowly cross the sand.
He stopped, gazing down.
A tiny figure lay there in her mother’s dress, arms outflung, her black hair strewn across the sand like seaweed washed up by the tide. There were patterns in the sand around her, lines and arcs, darker where the crest of the last wave had touched.
Caroline could not breathe. She felt Frank Mannion behind her.
Slowly, Caroline walked from him to the stairs. Saw her mother as she left the earth, free-falling in darkness.
I sent her here, she thought.
Caroline took the last steps to the stairs.
She descended them with her head bowed, Mannion behind her, not looking at the beach. Perhaps it was not her mother, she told herself in silent prayer; from above, the woman looked too small and frail to be the woman Caroline knew. The stairs behind her groaned beneath Mannion’s plodding steps.
She took a tier of stairs, then another and another, until her feet touched sand.
Before her were the scattered ruins of other stairs. She stopped there, looking back up the cliffside. Saw the scarred clay near the bottom where her mother’s car first hit.
Cool water lapped at her feet. The tide was rising, she realized; as she turned again, slowly walking toward the body, the first wave swirled her mother’s hair away from the white face.
Like an automaton, Caroline walked the last few yards to the body of Nicole Masters.
Her face was china. There was a delicate line of blood from her mouth, and her neck was strangely angled. Otherwise, she seemed untouched. But the spirit that once animated Nicole Masters had left her; to her daughter, this waxen figure in the sand had ceased to be her mother, the woman whose clean profile she had last seen in the mirror, who had kissed her goodbye.
Tearless, Caroline sat by the body. “Leave her,” she heard Mannion murmur to the others.
Caroline stayed there, gazing at her mother, wishing to unsay the things that would hurt Nicole no longer.
After a time, she felt Mannion standing next to her.
Caroline did not look up. “That’s her,” she told him. “My mother.”
He knelt by her then, empty hands cupped in front of him. Quietly, he said, “She hit the brakes, Caroline. There were skid marks up above.”
Caroline’s eyes shut. Only then did the tears run down her cheeks.
“So,” Mannion said gently. “You see.”
Dully, Caroline nodded. She could not speak.
His voice was still soft. “We need to take her now.”
After a moment, Caroline stood. She drew sea air deep into her lungs, gazed up at the cliff from which her mother had come. At its edge, she saw the figure of Paul Nerheim.
Next to Caroline, Mannion said, “I’ll call your father.”
Caroline still stared at the man above them. “No,” she said. “I will.”
They buried her mother at Masters Hill, some distance from where her husband would someday lie. The service was brief and spare: no one mentioned that she was French, or Jewish, or how she had come here. The details of her death were unspoken.
But Caroline had spared her father nothing. When he had come for her, he put his arms around her and said in a hoarse, gentle voice, “Fathers protect their daughters, not the other way around. Why did you think I needed that from you?”
Caroline could not answer. When she turned from the look on his face, it was no longer to protect him but to protect herself from the knowledge of her father’s pain.
In the days after the funeral, they were alone; at her father’s urging, Betty returned to her interrupted tour of Europe. Her father treated Caroline with haunted kindness.
Once, sleepless, she found him in the music room at midnight.
“Do you want to talk?” she asked.
“No, Caroline.” His voice was harsh. “Not to you.”
In that moment, Caroline felt his solitude, knew that his sternness was directed not at her but at himself. They never spoke of Nicole again.
Nor would he hear of Caroline staying. They had enrolled her in Dana Hall; nothing, Channing insisted, should change their plans. When she thought of leaving him alone, Caroline’s heart ached. She wept for her mother where Channing could not see.
In the weeks remaining, they made themselves the semblance of a life.
Channing’s birthday fell three days before she left. In secret, Caroline picked a present for him; when the morning of his birthday came, she pressed him to take her fishing on Heron Lake.
There were scattered clouds; sunlight sparkled on the lake, vanished, fell again. Caroline faced her father in the rowboat.
“I love it here,” she said. “I wish I weren’t leaving.”
Channing smiled a little. “You’re not leaving, Caroline—this is your home. You’re simply going away.”
Caroline looked at him: the black hair, deep-set black eyes, strong face on which only Caroline could read hurt. Impulsively, she said, “I wish I could take care of you.”
There was a brief wound in his eyes, and then he smiled again: “I’m not nearly old enough, Caroline. You’ll have to wait your time.”
Caroline felt awkward, knew that she should not have acknowledged what she saw. As if to cover this, she told him, “I’ve decided what I want to do.”
“Oh? And what’s that?”
“Be
a lawyer. If you’re not a judge anymore, I can practice law with you.”
He tilted his head. “And after that?”
She hesitated; perhaps it was foolish, but she wanted him to know. “I’d be a judge. Woman or not.”
For a long time, he simply looked at her. “Caroline,” he said in a soft voice, “that would please me greatly.”
Caroline felt a catch in her throat. For a moment, she almost forgot his present.
Awkwardly, she reached into her backpack, pulled out the slim black box with the ribbon she had tied around it.
“What is this?” he asked.
Caroline placed it in his hands. “Happy birthday.”
He gazed at the box with a funny half smile. “Shall I open it?”
“That’s why I brought it.”
Carefully, Channing untied the ribbon. Inside the box was a handsome Cahill fishing knife.
He held it in front of him, admiring the leather sheath, the bone handle, the slender steel blade.
“Caroline…” He paused; at first, Caroline thought he could not finish. And then he said, simply, “It’s the finest knife I’ve ever seen.”
She tried to smile. “It’s so you can fillet a fish without me.”
Channing Masters took her hand and covered it in both of his.
At Thanksgiving, when Caroline returned from school, the knife hung on their rack in the old stable. Her father had kept it spotless.
Part IV
The Witness
One
Caroline stood at the foot of her mother’s grave.
The morning was bright, beginning to warm; only in this corner of the cemetery, shaded by woods, did dew remain on the grass. The edges of Nicole’s headstone were covered with moss.
Two days before her father’s call, bringing her back to Masters Hill, Caroline had returned to where her mother had died. The trail at Windy Gates was overgrown now, fit only for walking; the stone wall was barely visible beneath a tangle of vines and shrubs. At the end of the path was a wooden barrier, and then sheer cliff. One hundred feet or more had been eroded by time; the cliffside seemed to crumble beneath her feet. Staring over the edge, Caroline had been surprised to see no car, no body, so strong had been her memory. She did not walk the beach.
The Final Judgment Page 18
