A Charmed Place

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  His gaze drifted from Maddie's blue eyes to Maddie's blue jeans. She filled them out well. She had always filled them out well. He shifted his focus. If she saw him staring, she'd terminate the visit on the spot. He decided, arbitrarily, to admire a hand-thrown mug in the dishrack.

  "Is that new?" he asked, pointing to it. He'd taught a pottery course or two before he began teaching painting, so the question was more or less reasonable.

  Maddie lifted the green-glazed cup from the sink and swung it by its loop. "Is that a hint?" she asked with a wry look. "I was about to put on a pot."

  "Yeah ... thanks. I could use some."

  He pulled out one of the rush-seated chairs and sat down on it. He missed this. Missed the kitchen. Missed the way late-morning sun poured in, washing the pickled-pine cabinets and red country wallpaper in clear, bright light. Some kitchens—this kitchen—begged to be filled with family. He felt right, in this kitchen.

  He drew an imaginary outline of Maddie's face on the tabletop as she moved around the room on automatic, putting together Starbucks and Melitta. They shared that, too, he realized: a love of high-octane coffee.

  While Maddie chatted on about the new head of her department, he decided that they shared—or had shared—a lot of things. Food, sex, a kid, college, Sandy Point, sailing, books, most movies—they'd done them all in their fifteen years of marriage. Trouble was, he'd gone and done a little extra.

  She should've been more forgiving. She's had lovestruck freshmen hanging on her every word in class, too. It comes with the territory. She knows that. Banging a student doesn't mean a thing. If she didn't know that, she should have.

  For Pete's sake—he was an art professor.

  Besides, that was over now. He'd lost his taste for wanton sex—maybe because now he was free to have all the wanton sex he wanted. Or maybe it was the headaches. They seemed to be coming more frequently now, and staying longer. Some days—especially if they'd kept him late at the lab the night before, testing him—he wanted nothing more than to go home, put up his feet, and close his eyes. It was all he could do to make it through his posted office hours, never mind making the effort to seduce a student during them.

  Damned headaches. Seized by a dread of one of them returning, he rubbed his forehead with his fingers and grimaced, baring his teeth in the process.

  "What's wrong, Michael?" she asked, watching him warily. "Headache again?"

  "No, just the fear of one."

  "You should see a doctor about them. You never used to get headaches. Maybe you need glasses."

  "Come on—at my age?"

  She smiled at that. "It's been known to happen, after forty."

  "Well, it's not going to happen to me."

  Her smile turned wary. "Michael, you can be so—"

  "Spare me the 'immature' speech, please! I know it by heart."

  She stiffened, as if he were a stranger who had stepped too quickly into an elevator she was taking, and then she walked deliberately out of the kitchen to the foot of the stairs.

  "Tracey!" she called up. "Your father's here."

  ****

  Michael Regan.

  Christ, he hadn't changed. He was the same fair-haired preppie, straight out of a Lands' End catalog. Christ! Didn't that type ever age?

  Hawke grabbed the binoculars from the bedroom desk and zeroed in on his old classmate. He was wrong: time had made at least some inroads. There was certain puffiness around the jowls, a certain thickness under the pale blue polo shirt. He felt a surge of petty satisfaction seeing it. Nonetheless, Michael Regan was the kind of man that a woman might say was "still good-looking."

  Shit.

  It gave Hawke no pleasure to watch Michael wave to Maddie, hold the door open for the girl, and get behind the wheel of the vintage Beemer.

  Michael would be back. He had visitation rights, obviously, and he would be back. The good news was, Mike and Maddie were divorced. The bad news was, they had a family. They shared common ground.

  Were they divorced? The evidence said yes. Hawke had looked them up in an on-line directory for Sandy Point and found her still listed at Cranberry Lane, but him on Overlook Road. But whether they were divorced or not, his own mission would've been the same: a return to this sacred place, to where it all began.

  Without thinking, Hawke swung the glasses from the Beemer to Maddie. At the same moment, she turned to stare in the direction of the lighthouse—it seemed to him, to stare at the second floor window of the keeper's house.

  There she was in his field of view: close enough to touch. It gave Hawke a jolt; he put down the glasses and retreated farther into shadow. He had vowed not to use the binoculars on her. He had vowed to let her have at least an iota of privacy.

  For now.

  ****

  From the brick patio they had a perfect view of the setting sun. The scene was textbook New England: a faded sky dissolving into a cauldron of liquid amber behind a brooding sea. Overhead, half a dozen sea gulls arched, their graceful flight at odds with their shrill, warlike calls.

  Between the sea gulls and the sea, between Maddie and the setting sun, stood the keeper's house and its attached lighthouse, topped by a darkened lantern that no longer warned mariners away from the shallow, treacherous run of coast.

  Was Dan home? Maddie had no idea; she could see only a bit of the lighthouse itself from the patio, and not the keeper's house to which it was attached.

  She fingered the condensation on the glass of her rum punch and tried to seem enthusiastic about Norah's latest find: a Tiffany bronze and favrile crocus lamp, poised on display in the middle of the HMS Bliss table. Norah owned a contemporary house on the water, sparingly furnished. But she collected Tiffanies the way some women collected Hummels, and she was especially pleased with this one.

  Joan hadn't come back empty-handed, either. She held on her lap a Ruskin Pottery stoneware vase glazed in a mottled oatmeal color. It was plain, it was chipped, but it was something. She'd come back with something, and that's what mattered to her. She propped the vase on her knees, much the way she would a year-old baby, and made cooing sounds of pleasure while Norah held forth on the exploding value of Tiffany art.

  Sundowners at Rosedale. It should've been fun. But Maddie's thoughts were somewhere else entirely.

  He's in there now. I know he is. I can almost feel his presence. The keeper's house has had tenants before; that's nothing new. But it's not the same. I've never felt such fear before, such apprehension.

  The hair on the back of her neck was literally standing on end. Earlier in the day, as Michael was loading Tracey into his BMW, Maddie had felt a tremendous, almost preternatural pull in the direction of the lightkeeper's house. Against her will she'd found herself staring at one of the second-floor windows, though she knew that the room behind it, the shabbiest in the house, had always been used for storage. It was the other two bedrooms that had the spectacular views. So why was she so convinced that Dan Hawke had been in the one that looked back at her cottage?

  Because my heart began beating in a new rhythm altogether, she told herself. For no more reason than that.

  Her thoughts were sliced abruptly in half by a single, knifelike word: lighthouse. Norah was talking about it.

  "It's painful to watch. One or two more hurricanes," Norah was saying, "and the house and tower will be swept out to sea like a box and a styrofoam cup."

  Joan stirred the grenadine at the bottom of her rum punch; the drink turned from the colors of the sunset to a solid, garish pink. "Don't be silly. It's been there a hundred years."

  "And we're losing beachfront at an average rate of half a foot a year, even without hurricanes. Look where it's standing even as we speak. Do the math, Joannie."

  "I teach history, not algebra. You do the math."

  "I have," said Norah. "And I say the lighthouse is doomed, unless..."

  Maddie was grateful that the talk was of the lighthouse and not its tenant. "Unless what?"

  "We save it
. You and Joan and I, and others who love it as much as we do. We have to save it. Let's face it: the owner's not going to. He doesn't have the money. Very few people do, and the ones that do aren't about to throw it into what is basically a hole in the ocean."

  "So how do you propose we save it?" asked Joan. "Pile sandbags in front of it?"

  "Très amusant. No, we do what everybody else does when their local lighthouse is at risk: we form a nonprofit foundation. We'll call it Friends of Sandy Point Light, and we'll raise the funds to move the house and tower inland a few hundred yards. Simple."

  Norah leaned back and drummed her fingertips on the shop-shingle tabletop. Napoleon had probably struck a similar pose when he decided to move his army across Russia.

  "Wow. Move the lighthouse. Wow." Joan, at least, was impressed.

  Maddie, not so much. "Oh, sure, just like that," she said with a breezy snap of her fingers. She cocked her head appraisingly and added, "But let me ask you, Norah: why now?"

  "It's pretty much now or never," Norah said, surprisingly serious. "I have a friend who was involved in the effort to move Southeast Light on Block Island. He thinks we've waited too long as it is. You can't decide to go ahead when the waves are lapping at the tower. I mean, look at the rock out there—the one all by itself in the water. They tell me that that rock was once high and dry on the sand, and not all that long ago, either."

  "It was about twenty years ago," Maddie said quietly. She knew the rock like the back of her hand. It had a hollow on the top of it where a man could sit and smoke a cigarette, if he were so inclined.

  And he had been inclined. No matter how much she'd teased and chided and coaxed, he had been inclined. He hadn't stopped smoking for her. She'd never really had that much influence over him; she realized that now. She'd thought for a while there ... when he had seemed to respond so positively to her poetry readings, to life's quieter pleasures .... But it hadn't lasted. He was a firebrand and a hothead, and he had ruined a family with his impulsiveness.

  A whole family.

  "Maddie, c'mon! It's not that bad an idea," Joan said, coming to Norah's defense. "You look as if you've just been asked to mail a letter bomb."

  "No, no, not at all," Maddie said, rallying what enthusiasm she could. "It's just that ... Norah, a foundation? The only foundations I know about have cement in them."

  "No-o problem." Norah hooked a sandaled foot under a nearby wicker ottoman and pulled it toward her. Crossing her ankles demurely on it, she locked her hands together in front of her and stretched her arms out full length. Her private smile became a quiet boast as she fastened her Caribbean-blue gaze on Maddie.

  "I have a gentleman friend," she explained.

  That's all she had to say. Maddie and Joan exchanged looks. Norah had a gentleman friend for every conceivable situation. If you needed a stone wall built, an airtight will drawn up, tickets to a Patriots' game, or a man's legs broken, Norah had a gentleman friend who could do the job, and probably gratis. God only knew how she enslaved such a wide variety of talent, but enslaved they were. In Norah's mind, at least, the lighthouse and the keeper's house were as good as moved.

  "It won't be easy," she admitted. "We'll need everyone's cooperation. Old man Mendoza will have to sell it for a song—which is a song more than he'll have if the whole property washes out to sea. And we'll have to get variances from the planning board. That shouldn't be hard. We have a dearth of tourist attractions—one, to be precise—and this is it."

  Warming to the concept, Joan said, "Maybe we can get the town to buy it outright?"

  "Probably not. This town hasn't been able to float a bond since Admiral Nelson went to sea. No, what we need is a single fat contribution to establish credibility, and all the rest will follow. Leave it to me."

  With a mixture of interest and dismay, Maddie had been watching Norah gather steam. Now she said bluntly, "Okay, Norah. What's your agenda?" Because everyone knew that Norah always, always had an agenda.

  Norah favored her with a bland look. "I have no idea what you mean."

  Maddie wasn't fooled. Norah loved power, money, and men. Saving the lighthouse with Dan Hawke still in it combined all three.

  After a pause, Norah said, "Someone will have to approach Dan Hawke about the relocation effort, once the time is right. We don't want the landlord being the one to tell him. Mr. Mendoza isn't the most congenial man, and Mr. Hawke might refuse to cooperate, depending on his lease, I suppose."

  "You can persuade him if anyone can," Joan said.

  Norah batted her lashes once or twice and said, "I may have to do that."

  Dan Hawke and Norah Mills: they were a daunting thought. Well, it couldn't be helped, Maddie decided. Sooner or later they were bound to find one another. Reckless meets Abandon—they were a match made in romance novels.

  Think about something else, she told herself, shutting her eyes against the image of them together. Someone else. Anyone else.

  Maddie stood up and said, "You know what? I'm going to have to leave you two to finish off the pitcher on your own. If I don't get a bed moved into my father's office by the time my mother arrives, I'll be the one untangling bats from my hair."

  The mention of her father struck a sober chord. The two women decided to pack up their treasures and shove off, leaving Maddie to ponder a whole new set of concerns.

  Save the lighthouse from being washed away? She was still trying to save herself and family from being washed away. Who had time to go door to door selling raffle tickets and chocolate bars? And if she did get involved, what then? There was simply no way that she'd be able to avoid Dan.

  She glanced through her kitchen window at the lightkeeper's house, dark against a dark sky except for two rectangles of light that issued from it. One of them was from the storage room. That light had gone on and off at regular intervals since her arrival. Like Morse code, it seemed to be blinking a message. Or so she fancied. Her preoccupation with the white gabled structure was making her thoughts just a little on the strange side.

  The Venetian blinds in that window were closed now, but earlier they'd been drawn all the way up. Earlier, she'd assumed that he'd needed good light, maybe to pick through the stored odds and ends that could be found in every house that was rented furnished. Now she wasn't so sure. Why would anyone bother to lower the blinds in a storage room?

  And why on earth should she care? She was obsessing over trivia, acting more like a teenager than any teenager she'd known.

  Idiot! Let it go!

  The phone rang, making it easier to put an end to the idiocy. Maddie answered with a distracted hello.

  After the briefest of pauses, a male voice said, "Tracey?"

  "No, this is her mother. Can I help you?"

  The party quietly hung up, setting off at least one alarm in Maddie's vast array of them. The voice had sounded too old to be a boy Tracey's age, and too ... at ease, somehow, to be a stranger. An older boy from a prep school, maybe? If so, it was an older boy with very bad manners.

  Maddie would certainly ask Tracey about it, but the odds were slim that she'd get an answer.

  Chapter 5

  Surprisingly uneasy about the call, Maddie put away all evidence of her round of sundowners with Joan and Norah—the less drinking paraphernalia that Tracey and her friends were exposed to, the better—and crossed the hall, passing through French doors into her father's snug study. It wasn't the first time she'd been there since her father's death, but it was the first time she'd had no choice but to tackle his papers and personal effects. God knew, no one else was going to do it.

  Sarah Timmons, leveled by grief, had scarcely stepped foot in the room since her husband's murder over a year ago. Looking around, it was easy for Maddie to see why. Grief was an odd and quirky thing. Sarah was able to sleep in her husband's bed and eat on his plates. But look at his handwriting on notes and papers? She simply couldn't do it.

  Maddie's brother hadn't been any more anxious to clear out the study; but then, Ge
orge was a man. Men didn't deal very well with death and loss. Like most men, George was keeping his feelings corked up in a Scotch bottle. He'd been aghast at the thought of counseling, and he'd turned thumbs down on the idea of a one-year memorial. But he brooded a lot, and he sniped at the family.

  George was hurting too.

  Maddie's sister certainly couldn't pack up the study. Suzette lived in France. She had flown over for the funeral, wept with them, and flown back. Suzette loved them all, and they all loved Suzette. They kept in touch. She had visited twice since the funeral. But ... France.

  That left Maddie. Maddie the middle one, caught between an overachieving brother and an underachieving sister. Maddie the loyal. Maddie the sentimental. Maddie the reliable. Maddie the traditional.

  Maddie was closer than either of her siblings to her father. He had meant everything to her, and she was his darling. They had the kind of bond that Kodak was forever portraying in its commercials, and it had lasted until the day of his death.

  She'd followed in his footsteps, taking her degree at the college where he'd taught, then going on to teach at a college herself. She loved Rosedale Cottage as much as he did; that also pleased him. And the lighthouse, too. They shared a lifelong fascination with it. He had made some maudlin paintings of it; she had written some maudlin poems about it.

  The two of them cared equally about Sandy Point. Whenever his wife wouldn't come to Town Meeting, Edward would drag his middle child along instead, teaching her how to be a good little citizen. He'd taught her to stand up for her principles, and always to do the right thing. Everyone had known that Maddie was his favorite, and no one had begrudged it.

  But they did expect her to clear out the study.

  Maddie took one of the empty cardboard boxes left over from her recent unpacking and set it down on the desk, then began emptying drawers. The desk was massively built of mahogany, its top scarred over the years by hundreds of embers that had flown from her father's pipe. She could picture him now, puffing it into life before tackling a pile of term papers or cracking open the spine of a book he had agreed to review. She fingered one of the deeper burn marks, and smiled at the memory of her mother's chronic scolding.