“Why can’t we catch them?” she had asked.
“Because they’re not there,” Mark said. “It’s only the reflection of the sun’s rays.”
“But I see them, I see them with my own eyes!”
“It’s an illusion.”
“But . . .”
“See that one right now beside the maple tree? When we get to the tree we’ll stop and you can get out and look.”
She got out and looked, and there was no puddle. She picked a maple leaf off the ground to take home and wax, as a souvenir.
“There isn’t any island,” she said in a hard tight little voice.
“Jessie, I’ve told you . . .”
“It’s like the puddles. I looked and they weren’t really there.”
“I don’t understand. Jessie dear, listen . . .”
She climbed over the seat and put her arms coaxingly around the resisting child. Then she saw, not more than fifty yards behind the raft, Mr. Roma and Mark in the old rowboat. “Perhaps you’re right,” she said harshly. “There isn’t any island.”
“It was all pretend?”
“Yes.”
“And we can go home?”
“Yes.”
“You shouldn’t play jokes like that on people,” Jessie said righteously. “It isn’t nice.”
“I see that now.”
“You won’t do it anymore?”
“No, Jessie. Never.”
“That’s a promise.”
“Look. Look behind you. Your father and Mr. Roma have come to—to meet us.”
“My father!” Jessie swung around, and there, her eyes told her, was her father, and Mr. Roma, and the rowboat. There was no island, but her father was real, and so was the rowboat, and the realest of all was Mr. Roma. He’d taken off his hat and was waving it furiously. His face was all squeezed up with smiles, and he kept nodding and shaking his head so hard it seemed that his neck had come loose.
Jessie screamed with laughter and shouted to him though he couldn’t hear her: “Mr. Roma! Hey, there isn’t any island! It’s just a joke!”
Mrs. Wakefield put out the sea-anchor. She sat in silence until the rowboat pulled up alongside and Mark grabbed the rope that was tied to the sides of the raft.
“Ahoy, ahoy,” Jessie yelled, and Mr. Roma yelled back, “Ahoy!”
“Hey, Mr. Roma! Do you know what? There isn’t any island.”
“Fancy that,” said Mr. Roma, sniffing and wiping his eyes on his shirtsleeve. “Fancy that now.”
“Daddy, did you know that?”
“No,” Mark said. “Here. I’ll help you over. You’re going back with us.”
“But why?”
“Be a good girl and don’t ask questions. Step right here now, in the middle.”
He held her as she clambered over the side. Mr. Roma wrapped her in a blanket like a cocoon and she sat pressed tight against his side, rocking back and forth with the motion of the boat.
Mark turned to Mrs. Wakefield, his face cold with anger. “Are you coming?”
“No.”
“Pulling a crazy stunt like this—you must be out of your mind. Now get in here.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You’re going to, anyway.”
“You’re only wasting time,” Mrs. Wakefield said. “Jessie should be taken home. Her clothes are wet.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I?” She blinked. “I’ll—I’ll be back in a little while.”
“The wind’s against you, and it looks as if it’s going to storm.”
“We never have summer storms here.”
“For Christ’s sake, Janet, stop arguing. Haven’t you been foolish enough for one day? I can’t leave you out here like this, and I’ve got to get Jessie home.”
“Take her then. I don’t want to go back just—just yet. In a little while. I’ll be there in a little while.”
“Janet—Janet, please. Act sensible.”
“Leave her be,” said Mr. Roma, and Mrs. Wakefield looked across at him, gratefully.
“What about the storm?” Mark shouted.
“Storm? Like Mrs. Wakefield told you, we never have a summer storm.”
“Thank you, Carl,” she said.
It began to rain before they reached shore.
Mr. Roma said that Mrs. Wakefield had gone on a long journey, and Evelyn said she didn’t know . . . “Hush now, Jessie. No one knows. There’s no use asking any more questions.”
But Luisa, whispering from her window across the dark wet driveway, said she knew. “She’s at the bottom of the sea. The sharks are eating her.”
“No!”
“They are so, I bet.”
“Mr. Roma said . . .”
“You’re such a baby they don’t tell you things. I happen to know they found the raft two days ago. The Coast Guard found it in a tide cave on the island.”
“What island?”
“The island, silly.”
“You’re a stinking liar,” Jessie said and closed her window tight and put her fingers in her ears so she couldn’t hear the trees crying in the dark outside her window, drip, drip, drip.
It was nearly a week before the rain stopped and the sun came out and it was all right to go into the woods again.
She shuffled down the path wearing an old pair of ladies’ rubber boots that Mr. Roma had found in the garage and brushed the cobwebs out of. (“Whose are they, Mr. Roma?” “No one’s.” “They must belong to someone.” “Hush, no more questions.” “Are they Mrs.—?” “Now, now.”)
It wasn’t raining, but the trees still dripped when she shook their branches, or when the hummingbirds darted in and out of the wet leaves. The path had turned to mud that squished, and tugged at the oversize boots trying to pull them off. When she was out of sight of the house she reached down and picked up a handful of the mud to see how it felt; and there, already growing up out of it, was a miniature tree, with delicate lacy leaves like a pepper tree.
She stared down at it, frowning. The little tree reminded her of something, but for a moment she couldn’t think what. She glanced around her more carefully and then she saw that there were other little trees, too, growing all around her feet, and tiny leaves sprouting from twigs and branches that she’d thought were dead. Everything had come to life again like magic. From bare wood little green sprouts had emerged, and buds seemed to be opening right before her eyes. (“Then it began to rain, and the sea filled and everything came to life . . .”)
It was all there, just as it had been there in Mrs. Wakefield’s dream. The orange trees glittered with gold, and the live oaks reached the sky, and the leaves of the peppers hung down like moist green lace.
“I bet she never had a dream,” she said aloud, scornfully. “I bet she just saw it for herself and said it was a dream.”
What a liar Mrs. Wakefield was, making up that story about the island, and what a baby she herself had been to believe it. She was much older now. No one could ever fool her again.
She walked on, crushing the little trees deliberately with the heels of her boots.
About the Author
Margaret Millar (1915-1994) was the author of 27 books and a masterful pioneer of psychological mysteries and thrillers. Born in Kitchener, Ontario, she spent most of her life in Santa Barbara, California, with her husband Ken Millar, who is better known by the nom de plume of Ross MacDonald. Her 1956 novel Beast in View won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel. In 1965 Millar was the recipient of the Los Angeles Times Woman of the Year Award and in 1983 the Mystery Writers of America awarded her the Grand Master Award for Lifetime Achievement. Millar’s cutting wit and superb plotting have left her an enduring legacy as one of the most important crime writers of both her own and subsequent generations.
Margaret Millar, The Cannibal Heart
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