When the Stars Sang

by Caren J. Werlinger

  Jenny laid a hand on her sister’s arm and said gently, “He’s suing us for ownership of Maisie’s cottage.”

  “And for access to all of our real estate records,” Rebecca said.

  “But…” Kathleen’s mind churned but no words came.

  Molly took her hand protectively. “He’s probably angry that we found a way around his little oil embargo, and he’s looking for another way to make trouble.”

  “How do we respond?” Louisa asked. “We’ve had other offlanders ask about this sort of thing in the past, whether they could inherit a family house, but no one has ever gone so far as to sue us.”

  “We’ll probably have to hire an attorney to represent us,” Joe said.

  Louisa tsked. “But that might mean having to divulge everything.”

  “If I’d gone on to law school—” Molly said.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Rebecca said. “You’d have been miserable as a lawyer.”

  “How… how does the island pay for an attorney?” Kathleen asked timidly. “Do we take up a collection? I’ve got some money in savings.”

  “We won’t need to go that far, but thank you, Kathleen.” Jenny patted her hand.

  “Then how…?”

  A heavy silence filled the room. Kathleen looked from one of them to another as they all glanced around as if waiting to see who would speak first.

  “What is it?” she asked. “What did Miss Louisa mean, ‘divulge everything’?”

  Rebecca stared hard at her. “What we’re about to tell you cannot go any further. Your word on that.”

  Kathleen nodded. “My word.”

  Molly squeezed Kathleen’s hand. “When the ship wrecked, it wasn’t just carrying Irish peasants. It was carrying a heavy load of treasure.”

  “Treasure.” Kathleen’s mouth quirked into a disbelieving grin.

  But no one around the table was sharing the joke with her.

  “You’re serious,” she said faintly.

  Rebecca and the others stood. Kathleen shuffled her chair back, and Blossom jumped out of the way as they picked the table up and moved it to the wall. The rug underneath, woven in a primitive pattern of trees and animals that Kathleen had never noticed before, was rolled aside.

  Joe pulled an old iron tool out of his pocket and slid it between two floorboards. Up popped a trap door so cleverly built into the floor that, until its clasp was triggered, it was impossible to see.

  Rebecca took the oil lamp and led the way down a set of wooden stairs into a yawning chasm below. The others followed. Kathleen found herself standing in a kind of cavern—half rock, half dirt—supported by stout timbers.

  “In the years after the shipwreck,” Louisa said, “the First Ones, who were excellent swimmers and divers, brought up all of this, piece by piece.”

  Kathleen’s mouth gaped at the array of old wooden tables covered with stacks of dishes—gold and silver and bone china glazed in intricate patterns. There were a couple dozen or more leather sacks sitting about, and gilded frames stacked against the wall. Leather cases held heavy silverware and serving pieces.

  “This weight probably helped sink the ship,” Rebecca said. “Of course, the Irish knew nothing about it until the ship went down.”

  “These are full of coins and jewels,” Molly said, untying one of the sacks and reaching inside to pull out a handful of stamped gold coins.

  “The island has been sitting on this, all this time?” Kathleen asked.

  “We’ve been its protectors, all this time,” Rebecca corrected.

  Something clicked in Kathleen’s mind. “This is why Molly was gone for hours, isn’t it? You were trying to decide whether I could be trusted with this.”

  Joe shuffled his feet and Jenny looked abashed, but Rebecca frowned. “Can you blame us?”

  “No. I don’t blame you at all. Especially considering what my father is trying to do.”

  She swept a hand around at the accumulated wealth. “What do you do with this?”

  “A few pieces were sold long ago, and the money invested,” Rebecca said. “That’s what pays Molly’s and my small salaries. It pays for regular upkeep on things we all use, like the power station. The rest we keep secret and safe for the day when it’s needed. I’m not just the Keeper of the Record. I’m Treasure Keeper as well.”

  “A few people are always designated guardians,” Jenny said. “As a safeguard, we keep the investment records and pay the sheriff and the Keeper from an island account so no single person is the only one dealing with it.”

  “We’ve also used it a few times when someone had a fire or bad storm damage that wasn’t covered by insurance, to help them rebuild,” Joe said.

  “I take it the other islanders don’t know about this?” Kathleen asked.

  “They know there’s a fund somewhere,” Jenny said. “As much as we trust and rely on one another, this would strain the relationship we have with the ones who leave.”

  “Prodigals,” Kathleen murmured.

  “Exactly.” Jenny nodded. “They would ask for their share of the island inheritance, when it’s not ours to give them.”

  “My father certainly would.”

  “If he knew about it,” Rebecca said. “Which he cannot ever know.”

  “No.” Kathleen glanced around at all of them again. They had trusted her, despite all, and it meant everything. “He can’t.”

  LYING IN BED LATER that night, Molly heard Kathleen huff as she tugged on the covers.

  “Can’t sleep?”

  Kathleen rolled to face her. “You, either?”

  “No.” Molly reached for Kathleen’s hand. “What’s wrong?”

  Kathleen snorted. “Everything is wrong. My father is doing his best to injure this island and everyone on it.”

  They were quiet for a moment.

  “I should call him. Try to talk to him. Why didn’t they ask me to do that?”

  “They talked about it,” Molly said.

  “When you were all trying to decide whether you could trust me with the knowledge of the treasure?”

  Molly bit her lip.

  “What did you want to do?”

  Molly squeezed her hand. “That’s a silly question. You know I trust you.”

  “I’m sorry.” Kathleen shifted to rest her cheek against Molly’s shoulder. “I do know that.”

  Molly pressed a kiss to Kathleen’s forehead.

  “What about the others? Rebecca didn’t want to tell me, did she?”

  “It wasn’t Rebecca.”

  Kathleen lifted her head. “Who, then?”

  “Louisa.”

  Kathleen sat up in bed. “Louisa doesn’t trust me?”

  “Louisa doesn’t trust your father,” Molly corrected. “She remembers what he was like with Maisie. And she’s afraid there’s something that’s keeping you from confronting him. Even my mom agreed. Not that we shouldn’t trust you, but that Michael will try to manipulate you. She and my dad and my aunt said he was pretty ruthless. They’re not sure you’ll be able to defy him face to face.”

  Molly couldn’t read Kathleen’s features in the dark but, after a moment, Kathleen lay back down beside her.

  “Maybe they know my father better than I do.”

  Molly wrapped an arm around her. “But I know you.”

  “DAD, YOU NEED TO drop this lawsuit.”

  Kathleen knelt in the garden, trowel in one hand, a clump of weeds in the other, as she rehearsed how to confront her father.

  The soil, black and enriched by a winter’s worth of compost, was yielding a wide array of produce: three kinds of beans, carrots, turnips, tomatoes, onions, beets, radishes, potatoes, strawberries. Only the strawberries were ready to be picked, but everything was coming up. At least the parts the rabbits and squirrels hadn’t eaten.

  Nearly every time Blossom went out, he managed to chase a couple of critters out of the garden. It had become his favorite sport.

  Kathleen moved along the row, digging more weeds,
trying to figure out how to address this issue.

  Rebecca had contacted an attorney to draft a response, but no one knew if the islanders might have to actually appear in court.

  “Who does own the houses?” Kathleen had asked in the library the night they showed her the treasure.

  “A trust,” Rebecca told her. “That’s why you signed a lease when you came here. You’ll never own that cottage or the land it sits on. None of us do. It’s what protects us from someone like—”

  She’d stopped abruptly.

  “It’s okay,” Kathleen said. “You can say, ‘like Michael’. It’s true.”

  “Okay. Someone like Michael deciding he wants to sell to an offlander. If we allowed that, we would have been like Big Sister long ago. And none of us would be able to afford to live here now.”

  “I wonder if he knows that, though,” Jenny had said.

  “What do you mean?” Kathleen asked.

  “Well, he left here when he was young. Maisie still lived in the house. I assume he didn’t discuss what would happen to it when she died. And after Bryan… well, he never talked to Maisie again. Maybe he honestly doesn’t know how things are done here.”

  Rebecca’s mouth had tightened. “He’s about to find out.”

  Kathleen finished her weeding. She put her tools away and sat on the back porch with a glass of iced tea. Blossom came to lie down beside her, his chin resting on her thigh. Out on the road, there was more noise as cars and trucks drove by in both directions. Ever since Memorial Day weekend, as Molly had predicted, there were a lot more tourists.

  Plus all of the island’s school-aged children were now home for the summer. Most of the island businesses—Wilma and Nels, Miranda and Tim, Siobhan—had hired teenage help for the summer.

  Kathleen had made a habit of doing her errands early and then staying home, but Molly had to be visible. Plus, her fix-it work didn’t take a holiday, though most of that work now consisted of installing solar panels for the island houses and working with the crew who were constructing the wind turbines.

  Up on her own roof, the new solar panels gleamed—“so we’re not the last ones,” she’d teased—providing all of the energy for the hot water and the house’s electricity. It felt good to know the island would be in better shape this coming winter, no matter what happened with her father and this lawsuit.

  She knew the islanders didn’t exactly blame her, but she still felt self-conscious when she stepped into the diner or the market and conversation ceased. It wasn’t hard to guess they’d been talking about her dad. She understood and was grateful that they were able to separate her from him, and she was determined to prove herself an islander, no matter what.

  “Well,” she said to Blossom. “If I’m going to talk to him, I might as well get it over with.”

  She went inside and lifted the handset off the hook. She had no idea if he was at the office or at home. Taking a deep breath, she dialed his cell phone.

  “Dad,” she said when he answered.

  “Thought I recognized that number,” he said.

  Long seconds ticked by as they both fell silent.

  “Why are you doing this?” Kathleen blurted at last.

  “Because those bastards deserve it.”

  “You can’t win.”

  He laughed. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t have to win. All I have to do is tie this case up in the courts for years, cost them so much in attorney fees that I’ll break them. I’ll break that damned island and every single person who lives there. Every last one who ruined my life, who took the life of my son.”

  “You might want to remember you have a daughter, too,” Kathleen longed to retort, but the words stuck in her throat.

  She paused and tried a different tack. “You grew up here. You knew these people. All our family comes from here. You used to want Bryan and me to have a good time.” She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping that appealing to his childhood memories on Little Sister would work.

  “I hated that goddamned place when I was a kid,” he snapped, immediately dashing her hopes. “Stuck on that tiny rock in the middle of the ocean, nothing to look forward to except a life of smelling like fish guts or working for pennies catering to tourists. Being there for a summer was one thing. Living there was another.”

  Kathleen pressed her fingers to her forehead and paced, the phone cord trailing behind her. “Okay, so you didn’t like it. You got away. Made a life for yourself. You don’t have to do this.”

  A pregnant pause hummed over the telephone line.

  “Leave. And I’ll drop it.”

  Kathleen’s knees buckled, and she fell into a kitchen chair, feeling as if someone had knocked the air from her lungs. “What?”

  “I said, if you leave Little Sister and never go back, I’ll drop all this.”

  “Why would you ask me to do that?”

  “Because I’ll never let them have anything else that is mine!” His voice was almost a snarl. He waited a beat. “Think about it, Kathleen.”

  He hung up. Kathleen stared at the receiver in her hand.

  Chapter 20

  THE WIND TURBINES WHIRLED, looking deceptively slow from a distance, but up close, Molly heard the huge whoosh the blades made as they swept by, driven by the ever-present wind on the island. The island’s power grid was now being supplied more than fifty percent by the turbines. In the off-season, when the electric usage fell again, the percentage would be higher, but for now, with the tourist demand, it wasn’t quite enough. Next year, when the solar installation was hopefully complete and they could get started on hydroelectric as well, things would be even better.

  “Screw you, Michael Halloran,” she muttered, getting back in the Toyota.

  She thought about swinging by the cottage, but the argument she’d had that morning with Kathleen still stung. All Molly had done was to ask her if she wanted anything from the market for supper that evening, and Kathleen had snapped back that she had a huge stack of work to catch up on and that Molly could grab supper for herself at the diner.

  Molly had stormed from the cottage but, thinking back now, it didn’t make sense. Just a few days ago, Kathleen had talked about how she’d gotten caught up on all of her book projects. She wondered if Kathleen could be PMSing, but it wasn’t the right time of the month for that.

  And it wasn’t just this morning. Kathleen had been crabby for the last few days. Just the other day, Molly had seen her out for a walk while she was up on someone’s roof doing a chimney repair. Molly paused to watch her, walking with her head down, legs churning, much as she used to when she first came to Little Sister, back when she reminded Molly of a sandpiper. Back when she was all closed up inside herself.

  It wasn’t like her, Molly realized now. Something was up.

  She drove into town, having to slow down as a group of tourists on bikes clogged the road. They shifted over to single file so she could pass them with a wave.

  “Gotta be friendly,” she reminded herself for the tenth time that day.

  Town was lively. Wilma and Nels had quickly filled the five rooms the wind turbine contractors had vacated after weeks when the construction was happening. Molly went to the marina where her dad was busy fueling a private boat for someone who had decided to make the trip out to Little Sister. She went into the boathouse to inspect her winter project—the rich wood with its spotless varnish, seats newly upholstered in a red that matched the original, gleaming chrome on the rails and gauges, all ready to be delivered. It made her a little sad.

  “Want to take her for a spin?”

  She whirled around to see Aidan coming in behind her. “Hey, you.” Her face split into a wide grin, and she punched him in the arm. “How are things?”

  He nodded. “Things are good.” He pointed to the wooden beauty. “Really. Let’s take her out.”

  “You have time?”

  “Yeah. We don’t shove off for an hour. We’re all loaded with the cargo we’re taking back.”

 
She didn’t need to be asked twice. They unhitched the mooring lines and climbed in. The engine purred as Molly backed the Runabout out of the boathouse. Joe saw them and gave them a wave. Molly sat at the wheel and lowered her sunglasses from the top of her head.

  Aidan sprawled on the bench seat at the back of the boat, his face tilted to the sky, his eyes closed, letting Molly steer them through the harbor and out to the open water. She cranked the throttle, and the sleek boat nearly flew over the water. The wind whipped their hair, and Molly let out a whoop. Behind her, Aidan laughed.

  “God, it’s been so long since I’ve been out on the water in something I wasn’t rowing,” she yelled.

  “That’s something I can’t say,” he hollered back.

  She pulled back the throttle, letting the Runabout cruise at a speed that made for easier talking.

  “So it’s really going well, with Bobby?”

  He sat up. “Yeah. I’m learning loads. I’ve lived on Little Sister my whole life, and I never realized how much stuff has to be hauled back and forth. And believe me, we do way less than other islands.”

  Molly eyed him. “And… everything else? When you’re not working?”

  “You mean, am I drinking?” He shook his head. “No, Mo. I’m not. To be honest, most nights, after working sixteen hours, I’m so tired, all I can do is fall into bed. That’s a good thing.”

  He nodded his head toward the island. “How are things here?”

  “Good. Mostly.”

  She filled him in on the legal shenanigans.

  “That shit,” Aidan said.

  “I don’t really remember him,” Molly said. “But I agree. He is a shit.”

  “How’s Kathleen with all that? Must be hard for her.”

  Molly frowned at the ocean. “I guess.”

  “You guess. What’s up? Trouble in paradise?”

  She started to reply a couple of times, but wasn’t sure what to say.

  “She been acting weird? Kind of distant and angry?”

  Molly turned to face him. “How would you know that?”

  He leaned forward, his elbows braced on his knees, his dark eyes focused intently on her. “Mo, don’t you know what time of year it is?”