A Charmed Place

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  "You dumped him," ventured Norah. "As you should have."

  Again Maddie shrugged. "It was mutual."

  At least, that's what she used to tell herself. Dan had not said a word in his defense as she railed against him after the fire. When he walked away, it was forever.

  Until now.

  "I'm sorry," said Maddie. "I didn't mean to rain on our parade this morning."

  "That's all right; you didn't get anything wet," Norah reassured her. "It's over. Ancient history. You all moved on with your lives."

  "I feel so bad," Joan admitted.

  "Sorry," said Maddie with another wan smile.

  "Don't be sorry, Maddie. And don't look back."

  ****

  Confession was supposed to be good for the soul, but Maddie's soul was unconvinced. Dragging out her relationship with Dan and dusting it off for her friends to see only made the loss of it that much worse. The initials on the tree, for example. She had almost forgotten about them.

  She tried to forget them again, as she worked on the new curriculum for the fall semester. When the phone rang, she reached for it almost absently.

  But Tracey had picked it up before her. She heard Tracey's teenage voice, bored and brief, say, " 'Lo?"

  "Is this Tracey?"

  Very definitely, it was a man's voice, friendly and casual. Maddie held her breath, eavesdropping without a second's worth of guilt.

  "Yes, this is Tracey."

  "Tracey, you don't know me—" he began.

  "Tracey, get off the phone! Right now!" Maddie blurted, rearing up to protect her child. Immediately the caller hung up. Maddie ran down the stairs to find her daughter, who was sitting in front of the television with the receiver still in her hand, a baffled look on her face.

  "What did you do that for?" she asked her mother.

  "Did you recognize the man's voice at all?"

  "How could I? You interrupted him right away."

  "This isn't a joke, Tracey. I mean it: did you recognize his voice at all?"

  Tracey rolled her eyes and hung up the phone. "No, Mother. I did not recognize his voice at all."

  Maddie had no reason not to believe Tracey, who seemed to have little interest in either the caller or her mother's concern. Nonetheless, she sat down on the spot and read her daughter chapter and verse of the dangers of having anything at all to do with strange men.

  "If he calls again, I want you to tell me immediately. Better yet, let me answer the phone from now on."

  That brought a look of outrage from which Maddie quickly backed down. "All right, you don't have to do that. But you do have to tell me if he calls again. Or if you notice anyone—anytime—watching you. Anywhere. Are we clear on this?"

  "Yes, Mother. We're clear on this."

  Maddie hated having to provoke the "mother" treatment, but she had no choice. There were strange and twisted men out there.

  Chapter 10

  Jittery and demoralized, Hawke paced the bedroom in an endless loop. He knew enough about his smoking habit—and his previous attempts to stop that habit—to know that he was in the acute stage of nicotine withdrawal. Add to that the fact that he'd seen Maddie go off with some jerk in a Corvette that afternoon, and he was ready to spit nails.

  Was she back yet? Who the hell knew? He'd purposely moved out of the bedroom that faced her cottage and into the one that faced the sea, telling himself ... telling himself what? That he was going to respect her space? Respect her sincere wish never to see him again? That he was going to do his best to get over her?

  Screw that, he thought for the thousandth time since the Corvette. Nothing and no one was going to dictate to him, and that included her.

  On fire with jealousy and filled with self-loathing, he decided that he needed another bottle of sparkling water. The gum hadn't worked and neither had the hard candy. Sipping seltzer seemed to be helping, although he'd already drunk enough of it to float his bladder up around his tonsils.

  Shit! If this didn't work, he was going to be forced to go on the patch. Beholden to some doctor for a nicotine fix—he detested the thought of it. Worse yet, chewing nicotine gum. Either way, he'd stay hooked on the stuff.

  His mechanic had told him just that morning that he'd kicked his own cigarette habit by sipping seltzer. The guy had a bottle of Poland Spring, its label grimy with oil, sitting on his littered desk even as he spoke. He was big, burly, a smoker for thirty-five years. And sissy seltzer had worked for him.

  Never mind that the presence of gas fumes all around should've been more than enough of a deterrent to lighting up. If seltzer worked for Richie, then why the hell shouldn't it work for Danny?

  Hawke stomped down the worn wood steps to the dismal kitchen and flung the fridge door open with enough force to rip it off its hinges. One bottle left. And he wouldn't have his car until late the next morning. And he'd thrown out his Marlboroughs in town in a burst of heroism. And if this wasn't the dumbest, stupidest, most shit-headed predicament he'd ever put himself in. He was on the verge of hysteria because he was running out of seltzer, for pity's sake. ...

  He twisted the cap, jumpy with anticipation. Already he was becoming addicted to this new thing, this pathetic substitute for the tobacco drug. He'd come to depend on the feel of the plastic cap tearing from its seal; the sound of carbonation fizzing out of the bottle; the wave of bubbles flushing down his throat.

  Forget the sipping shit—he drank long and hard, a series of swallows without air. After draining half of it, he let out a belch a frat man would be proud to call his own. One more "sip" like that and he'd be officially out of everything.

  He glanced at his watch: 9:00 p.m. The damn town was rolling up its lone sidewalk right about now. And no car to get to the Store 24. Now what?

  He could wander over to her cottage for the second time since his arrival. He mulled that one over. She might be home. He didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of bumming a cigarette off her, needless to say, but maybe, who knew, she'd have a bottle of seltzer to lend him. He pictured himself, cap in hand, at her back door and laughed out loud—a short, bitter, thoroughly savage laugh.

  She's going to punish me until the day I die.

  And the hell of it was, he deserved it.

  He prowled his kitchen in bare feet, clutching the bottle like a wino, trying to find some way through his misery.

  He was sick of his self-imposed confinement in the lighthouse. He'd arrived without a plan, stayed without a plan, and would no doubt vacate without a plan.

  Maddie. She was the plan. It was as simple as that. After Afghanistan, after his overwhelming experience in Afghanistan, he'd hightailed it back to the States and straight to her. He wanted, needed, couldn't not be with, her. Her. Her.

  Ah, Maddie. God! Can't you see that?

  Amazingly, he felt his eyes sting over with tears. He staggered back as if someone had thrown acid at his face. Cry? Him?

  Oh, great. Why not just shoot me?

  He snorted again. In Afghanistan someone had done exactly that. And the bullet had turned his spiritual world upside down and then right side up again, like a little snow globe, with Maddie appearing smack in the middle of it. So here he was, because he had no choice. He had come for Maddie. Destiny had decreed it.

  The crone who had rescued him and patched him up in her country hovel had said it best: This is not your fight. Go home. Start over. There is still time.

  At least, that's what he thought she'd said; his command of Tirahi was iffy at best. Often since then he wondered whether he'd simply heard what he wanted to hear, or whether the tea had been drugged, or—

  A sharp sound from the adjacent lighthouse got his attention. Coming on the heels of his flashback, it sounded ominous. Hawke's mind was still full of snipers and random fire, and it occurred to him that he hadn't been making a habit of locking the door to the tower at night.

  He slipped barefoot into a pair of deck shoes sitting by the entrance to the breezeway that connected the keeper'
s house and the tower, then took up a heavy metal flashlight to use as a billy club. Granted, if it was a raccoon, he was going to feel mighty silly; but if it wasn't some cute furry thing ....

  He crept through the breezeway, which was lined with old wooden trunks that held old iron tools, and with utmost care he laid his hand on the doorknob to the tower. Silently he turned it, then threw the steel door open as he flipped on a switch, filling the tower with bleary light.

  Aha! Not a cute furry thing at all—but not a sniper, either. Four teenagers, standing on various treads of the open metal staircase that spiraled from the base of the tower to the lantern room at the top, turned as one to stare at him. The smell of pot wafted up his newly sensitive nostrils at about the same time that he noticed an array of airline-size bottles of booze on the bottom stair. They even had a lantern. He was impressed. They were well-equipped little delinquents.

  For some reason—maybe because he was jumpy from nicotine withdrawal, maybe because they were having more fun than he was—he exploded.

  "What the f—hell are you doing in here?" he yelled. His voice bounced and soared up the metal cone, startling him as much as it did them.

  Four deer, trapped in the headlights of his rage: that's what they looked like. One of the boys held a reefer the size of a Cuban cigar in his hand; the other clutched a small bottle that he made a pathetic effort to hide behind his saggy, baggy pants. Two girls—both of them known to Hawke—stood on the stairs between the boys.

  Not a one of 'em said a word.

  "Names, please," he said, stalling for time. What was he going to do with them all?

  For an answer he got four identical sullen stares. He moved in front of the bottom tread, the better to prevent them from flight, and tried again. Zeroing in on the younger of the boys and carefully avoiding the girls, he said, "We can do this nice, or we can do this with cops. Name?"

  The kid hesitated, then opened his mouth to say something, but the older boy said quickly, "You don't have to tell him, Ross."

  All rightee. So the older one wasn't too bright. That was good news and bad news. Hawke shuddered to think what the older kid could do with—or to—a girlfriend. Pray God the girlfriend wasn't Maddie's daughter, who at the moment was sneaking frightened looks at the nincompoop.

  He turned his attention back to the younger boy. "Listen to me, Ross," he growled, "you've got yourself in a whole passel of trouble."

  The older boy snorted in contempt, maybe because of the word passel. Fine. Hawke rephrased. "You're in deep shit, kid. Massachusetts has stiff drug laws; I can't believe you don't know that."

  Actually, Hawke didn't have a clue how the state felt about drugs. At the moment he was only a user of seltzer.

  He noticed that the older boy looked like the younger one; he took a wild shot and said to Ross, "Your brother's a real smartass, but trust me, an ass feels a lot less smart sitting in a chair across from a probation officer. Assuming you're lucky enough to get probation."

  He turned his attention at last to Maddie's daughter, the tallest of the four of them, and said, "What made you think you could camp out in the tower? Did you honestly think I wouldn't hear you?"

  Her answer was a resounding silence. She didn't even give him the courtesy of glaring at him any longer, but simply attempted to look through him.

  Like mother, like daughter. Physically she resembled Michael more than Maddie, but there was something unyielding in her eyes that he recognized. The funny thing was, it made her seem all the more vulnerable.

  Like mother, like daughter.

  He sighed, then immediately realized they'd take it as a sign of weakness, so he put more bluster into his next question. "You," he said, pointing to the girl with the porcelain skin and made-up face. "Would you like to tell me why you chose my lighthouse to flaunt the law in?"

  "She shrugged. "Your car was gone; we thought you weren't home."

  The older boy did it again: "Man, Julie—!"

  Dumb, or just stoned?

  So, okay, they had a Ross and they had a Julie so far. Five more minutes, and he'd know the combinations to their school lockers.

  It never came to that. About the time that Hawke began wishing fervently that they'd all just go away, the older brother suddenly jumped over the railing, dropped down to the floor, did an end-run around Hawke and took off, never bothering to look back. If he had, he'd have seen his kid brother Ross right behind him.

  That left the two girls. Julie eyed the door, then half-started for it.

  Automatically Hawke caught her by the forearm; he didn't want two young girls running around loose on the Cape at night.

  "Touch me and you go to jail," the child said with impressive calm.

  Yikes! What did they teach these kids? Hawke dropped the skinny arm from his grip and said warily, "Come on. I'll walk you both back to Rosedale cottage."

  For the first time, Maddie's daughter spoke up, "We can find it ourselves," she protested.

  He shrugged and said, "Go ahead, but I'll be right behind you. Is your mother home?"

  She didn't want to answer that; but after exchanging some kind of secret signal with Julie, the girl said, "She called to say she'd be late."

  Well, he couldn't exactly blame the kids. As a boy he'd done the same thing when, for a depressing variety of reasons, one or both of his parents would fail to show at night.

  The point was, single mothers were not supposed to go off joyriding in Corvettes.

  "Let's go," he said, signaling the two to precede him.

  Before Hawke left, he stopped to grind the smoldering joint into the floor. He knew his marijuana, knew by the smell of it that this was damn good stuff. God. How did parents cope?

  He let the two girls get a discreet distance ahead of him while he followed them down a sandy footpath under a hazy, half-starry sky and then down the road that led to Cranberry Lane. There was little traffic on Water Street. The night was black and eerily quiet, with only the sound of crickets and the sporadic murmurs of the girls to break the monotonous hiss of flat waves rolling on the beach somewhere behind them.

  It occurred to Hawke, really for the first time, how vulnerable kids were. There could be bogey men, there could be perverts, there could be boys with six-packs in those occasional cars that drove slowly by. He had a sudden, overwhelming urge to stick the two girls in a convent somewhere in the Alps. Anything to keep them sheltered and safe.

  He was surprised when Maddie's daughter pulled up short and let him catch up to her. In the dark she sounded scared and guilty but not necessarily sorry as she said, "You don't have to tell my mother, do you, Mr. Hawke?"

  "You know my name," he answered. "I think I should know yours."

  She sighed in a way that made him feel like a hunchback paying court to a fairy princess. "My name," she said, "is Tracey Regan."

  "Tracey, how do you do?" he said dryly. "As for letting your mother know that you were drinking gin and smoking dope, well, what do you think would be appropriate?''

  "But I didn't get a chance to drink anything!" she said, sounding almost rueful. "And I only took one drag on the doobie, and it was my first time ever, and it made me cough. I didn't like it, really I didn't!"

  Sure, sure. You say that now.

  "I'm sorry, Tracey. Don't think I'm looking forward to this, because I'm not."

  "But you don't understand. My mom doesn't trust me as it is!"

  "Well, duh. I wonder why?''

  "Please, please don't tell, Mr. Hawke!" she begged him. "My father would never tell!"

  That pretty much clinched it for Hawke; now he was damn well going to tell. One way or another, he planned to make sure that Maddie got her daughter under control. How she was going to do that, he had no idea. But he didn't want Tracey turning into a female version of her slick and evasive father. He wanted Tracey to turn out, well, like Maddie. Maddie without the Corvette, anyway.

  Since he hadn't responded to Tracey's last gambit, the girl repeated it. "My father
understands me," she said in a plaintive wail.

  "Yeah, but I'm not your father."

  She sucked in her breath. "No, you're just like my mother!" she cried, and ran ahead to rejoin her friend.

  "Thank you, Tracey," he said into the darkness behind her, and he meant it. In profound ways, he and Maddie were alike. He knew it once; he remembered it now. Their hearts and souls were carved from the same chunk of the cosmos.

  If only he could make Maddie see it.

  He shepherded the two down Cranberry Lane. As they got nearer to Rosedale cottage, he saw that every light in the house was on. There were only two possibilities for that: either Tracey was afraid of the dark, or her mother was afraid of Tracey being out in the dark.

  In the next thirty seconds, he had his answer. Maddie came flying out of the house, leaving the door open behind her, and ran into the street. She was little more than a dark shadow as she stood in the moonless lane, but he was able to hear the tension in her voice as she spied Tracey and Julie and called out to them.

  "Tracey? Is that you?"

  "Yeah, it's me, Mom," the girl said, glancing behind at Hawke as she answered.

  "Why are you outside? Didn't I tell you to—"

  Maddie stopped short. She could see him walking behind the two girls; Hawke had no doubt about that. Whether she recognized him or thought he was a stalker was another question altogether.

  He kept on approaching as she said to her daughter, "Inside. Now. Julie, you too. I'll take you home later."

  And then there were two.

  Chapter 11

  Before he was able to get close, she said, "If you've come for more sugar you're flat out of luck; my daughter's put us on Sweet'n Low."

  He wanted to smile but he did not. He said, "No, it's your daughter I've come about."

  The breeziness in her voice evaporated. "Tracey? Why?"