The Ice Cradle

by Mary Ann Winkowski

  “What kind of event?”

  “Maybe a lecture or two. An exhibit, probably with a reception.”

  “I’ve never set foot in there, to tell you the truth.”

  “I’m the same way at home. The only time I go to a museum or a monument is when I’ve got company from out of town.”

  “Where do you live?” he asked.

  “Outside of Boston. Cambridge.”

  “I used to live in East Cambridge!”

  “You’re kidding! When?”

  “When I was in high school. My uncle owns a fish market by the courthouse. I used to work the counter during the summers.”

  “And where’d you live the rest of the time? Here?”

  “New Bedford. Aitana, my sister, she married a guy from the island,” he went on. “We really got to like it over here. My—wife and I.”

  I felt my stomach drop. His wife?

  Bert glanced over. “She passed away three years ago.”

  “Oh my God! I’m so sorry. She was—young.”

  “Twenty-eight. She had a heart rhythm disorder. Genetic. She was on medication, but …” He trailed off.

  “Gosh, I don’t know what to say.”

  “There’s nothing to say. It happens.” Then, as though to redirect the conversation as quickly as possible, he added, “You’ve got a nice kid.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “What does your husband do?”

  “I’m not married.”

  Bert seemed to mull this over for a minute. “Divorced?”

  “Nope.” I was torn about what and how much to reveal. I tend to view my situation as one variation of normal, but people don’t always agree. Then again, Bert had just revealed some fairly personal information to me.

  “Henry’s dad is a police officer in Boston,” I began. “We got together when he was separated from his wife. They were thinking about getting a divorce, but then, fortunately, they were able to work everything out.”

  “Fortunately?” Bert asked.

  “For them.”

  Bert burst out laughing, and surprisingly, so did I.

  “Though I did get Henry out of the deal, so I’m not complaining.”

  “Not much, anyway,” Bert quipped.

  “Not out loud,” I added with a grin.

  Aitana’s kitchen was located on Lakeside Drive, on the other side of the island. As we pulled into the driveway, I turned to Bert in disbelief.

  “This is it?”

  He nodded, got out, and walked around to the back of the truck to retrieve the flounder.

  The one-room building looked nothing like a commercial kitchen; it seemed hardly bigger than the maple sugar shacks you see tucked just inside the edges of the Vermont woods. Though tiny, it had all the charm of an antique one-room farmhouse. It was framed with substantial beams and clad in what looked like reclaimed barnboard, and white sheers breezed lazily out of open windows on both sides of the oversized front door.

  “You like?” Bert asked as I closed my door.

  “It’s adorable!”

  “We built it, Peter and I.”

  “You built it?”

  He nodded. “My brother-in-law’s a plumber. It was a crime what Aitana was paying to lease a cooking space, and her in-laws had the land, so we went for it. Come on in.”

  Bert led me around the side of the building and up the wide back steps to a deck that ran the length of the structure. Sliding glass doors opened into the kitchen and afforded the chef a soothing view of the woods out behind. A woman about my age and height, whom I took to be Bert’s sister, was standing at a stainless steel-table rolling out a sheet of piecrust or puff pastry.

  Bert slid the door open. “Hi,” he said, motioning for me to step inside. “We came for lunch.”

  Aitana looked up. It was eerie how much she resembled her brother—same dark chocolate eyes, same black hair, nearly identical wry grin.

  “It wasn’t my idea,” I added quickly. “I’m Anza O’Malley. Nice to meet you. Sorry to drop in so—”

  Aitana attempted to wipe her floury hands on her white apron. They were covered with sticky dough, though, so she just said, “Sorry! Nice to meet you, too.”

  “You’re on your own,” she announced to Bert. “And make some for me, too. All I’ve had today is coffee.”

  “What have you got?” Bert asked, scanning the contents of one of the two refrigerators that spanned the entire side wall.

  “You’ve got eyes in your head, don’t you?” she shot back.

  “Mmmm! Quiche!”

  “No! Do not touch those!”

  “What about the—what is that, onion pizza?”

  She paused in her rolling and gave him a long look. “Pissaladière,” she corrected. “And that’s off-limits, too. It’s for tomorrow night.”

  “What’s the flounder for?” I asked.

  Bert snapped his fingers and said, “Lunch.” He must have seen me look at my watch because he added, “Don’t worry. You’ll be back by two thirty.”

  Twenty minutes later, we were seated on tall stools at the far end of the steel table, tucking into poached flounder with butter sauce, roasted green beans and parsnips left over from a thank-you luncheon Aitana had catered for the library volunteers, and French bread plucked from the freezer and tossed into a hot oven. I’d been dismayed to witness Bert’s ease at the stove and the comfortable teasing he gave and took. A secret infatuation was one thing, but here we were with his sister, laughing like old friends over an impromptu lunch. I needed to find something not to like about him, and quick.

  “You can have some cookies,” Aitana announced grandly, sliding off her stool as Bert scooped up our plates and placed them in the sink.

  “Gee, thanks,” he shot back. “Coffee?” he asked me.

  I nodded. Aitana retrieved two huge plastic Tupperware boxes from a high shelf and pried off their lids. They were filled with dozens and dozens of tiny cookies, all laid out on sheets of parchment paper: shortbread drops with chocolate chips, crumbly squares with layers of jam, rounds of pastry topped with pecans, shards of chocolate-topped toffee, and thumbprint cookies emblazoned with glazed apricots.

  “We can’t eat these!” I said.

  “Why not?” Aitana replied.

  “They’re too beautiful!”

  “Trust me,” Bert teased, “they look better than they taste.”

  “Very funny,” Aitana shot back.

  I helped myself to two. Aitana put a couple more on my plate.

  As we waited for the coffee to brew, I fought an urge to ask Aitana about the events of Tuesday night. I must have withdrawn and gone quiet all of a sudden, preoccupied with thoughts of Vivi and the fire and the pain I’d heard in Lauren’s voice as she tried to puzzle out who might hate them and why.

  “What’s up?” I heard Bert say.

  “What? Oh, sorry! I was just—thinking about the other night.”

  “The fire?” Aitana asked.

  I nodded, and before I could stop myself, I said, “I heard you—might have seen someone …!”

  “I’ve been looking high and low for that car!” Aitana said. “I went out on my bike first thing this morning, before it was even really light out. I took all the back roads and peeked in people’s garages.”

  “Aitana!” Bert said.

  “I don’t care!” she replied.

  “Well I do!” said Bert.

  “That son of a b—pardon my French—practically ran me over!”

  “You leave that to the police,” Bert said sternly. “They’ve got all these guys in from North Kingston, and they don’t need you poking around.”

  “So you didn’t really see them?” I asked.

  “It was a man and a woman, I know that.”

  “I heard that, too,” I admitted, then immediately wanted to strangle myself for opening my big mouth before thinking it through.

  “From whom?” Bert asked quickly, eyes wide.

  “Lauren,” I blurted out, cov
ering my tracks. If there was one thing that could stop a budding romance dead in its tracks, it was a badly botched version of my ghost disclosure. I’d learned that the hard way.

  Aha! I thought. Wouldn’t Dr. Freud have something to say about this! I had thoughtlessly blurted out a detail I might have to explain, if I were being truthful, as something a ghost had told me, just moments after realizing that I was falling for Bert and had better find something to dislike about him. Soon.

  Or—maybe something he might dislike about me.

  He lived here. I lived in Cambridge. And guys who seemed to be too good to be true usually were.

  “Okay,” I said. “You’re both probably going to think I’m totally bonkers, but—well, here it is: I have the ability to see ghosts. And talk to them. I always could, ever since I was little.”

  Bert’s smile faded a little.

  “And?” Aitana prompted.

  “And … there’s a ghost at the Grand View. A little girl. She saw the people who set the fire, and she said it was a man and a woman.”

  “I knew it!” Aitana shouted.

  She knew it? No stunned silence? No exchange of awkward looks?

  Bert had turned his back to us and was pouring the coffee, so I couldn’t gauge his reaction to all this.

  “So you believe in ghosts?” I asked her.

  “I sure do,” she replied. “In fact, I’ve seen ghosts. Twice.”

  “You have?” My heart was thumping.

  Bert turned and handed me my coffee.

  “I don’t,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “But you believe I saw them, don’t you?” Aitana pressed.

  “No, as a matter of fact.” He got a container of cream out of the refrigerator. “I think you had one too many margaritas.”

  “I did not!”

  “I could probably convince you,” I said to Bert.

  “Oh, yeah? Well, I’m not very suggestible. People have tried to hypnotize me before and it didn’t work.”

  “This is a little different.” I took a sip of my coffee.

  “How so?”

  “Well, sometimes I’ll see a ghost in the vicinity of a person, hanging around them. If I speak to the spirit, I can usually learn some things about the person that I would have no way of knowing, because the ghost is usually someone the person was close to in life, a relative or close friend.”

  I saw Bert look away quickly, and I was suddenly really sorry I had started down this avenue. He’d just told me that he lost his wife not too long ago.

  “I see,” he said, sipping his coffee. “Any ghosts hanging around me?”

  “Nope,” I was happy to reply.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “CAN WE DRIVE by the lighthouse?” I asked Bert as he pulled the truck out of the driveway. “If you have time, I mean.”

  “I’ve got all the time in the world. Until I get serious about catching some fish, anyway.”

  I had time, too, now that I really thought about it. It was obvious that I wasn’t going to be able to finish the binding and mounting while I was on the island. Caleb and I hadn’t been able to select our final materials; the samples that would allow us to choose them hadn’t even arrived. Feeling sure that Lauren or Mark would almost always be around, I had arranged for the FedEx packages to be delivered to the Grand View rather than the Historical Society. I was hoping they would arrive today, but until they did, and until Caleb and I could sit down together and decide which leathers and stocks of paper would be best, there wasn’t a whole lot more I could do. Besides, Caleb had hired me to complete the project by sometime this summer, not to work nine to five in an office. I might play a little loose with my schedule while I was here, but the project would be done on time.

  “Oh, darn, hold on a sec,” Bert said suddenly, pulling over to the side of the road and shifting into park. “There’s something I meant to pick up. I’ll be right back.”

  “No problem. Take your time.” I watched him cut across the grass toward Aitana’s cabin. I rolled down my window and breathed in the scents of the sea and of pine.

  So he didn’t believe in ghosts. He would one day, if anything ever developed between us, and in the meantime, I would leave the subject of proof to him. If he wanted to put me to a test, I’d be more than happy to take it, but I wasn’t about to force the issue. Bert came back into view, hurrying toward the truck with a brown cardboard box in hand.

  “Sorry!” he said, placing the box in the space behind the seat. “She had a couple of old sconces she wanted me to rewire.”

  I smiled. He was a nice guy. I reached over and touched his hand.

  “You think I’m weird?” I asked, feeling suddenly vulnerable.

  “No! What do you mean?”

  “Ghosts and spirits and everything?”

  He shook his head. “Look, I thought I knew everything until a couple of years ago. Now I realize I don’t know a damn thing.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I knew he was probably talking about how his life had been turned upside down, but I didn’t want to go there, and I didn’t think he did, either.

  So I did something that shocked me even more than I think it shocked him.

  I leaned over and kissed him.

  The kiss turned into two, then three, at which point Bert had the presence of mind to pull the truck down the road a little and into a sheltered turnaround in front of a split-level ranch.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I know the owners. They’re not coming down until June.”

  “Should we be doing this?” I asked, now that the train was on the express track to trouble.

  “Probably not,” he said.

  “You’re right. Sorry.”

  He leaned back against the headrest and took a deep breath. “No apologies necessary.” He looked over. “You just beat me to it.”

  “I did?”

  He nodded.

  I leaned back myself and let out a relieved breath.

  “So I guess my secret’s out,” he went on.

  I hoped that I knew which secret he meant—the same secret I intended to keep from him—but I had to be sure. Believing that a spark usually goes both ways, and that you don’t feel it unless the other person does, too, I leapt into the void.

  “You mean our little—frisson?” I asked.

  He gave me a puzzled frown.

  “Frisson. It’s French.”

  He shook his head and shrugged.

  At last, I thought! Something! A gorgeous fisherman who used “whom” correctly, liked my son, got along famously with his sister, and knew how to cook, build cabins, wire sconces, and speak French would have been completely and utterly irresistible.

  It sort of took the frisson out of frisson to have to define the word for him, but this was my fault for trotting it out in the first place.

  “It’s kind of like a—sizzle,” I said.

  “Ah.” He smiled. He pointed to himself, then to me, then back to himself.

  I nodded. He nodded.

  Neither of us spoke for a few minutes. An enormous robin made a rough landing on the grass nearby and proceeded to peck around. Off in the distance, someone took a chain saw to a tree or a log, and the whirring sound reminded me that I had to make a dentist appointment when I got back; one of my back teeth had gotten sensitive to cold. The silence felt companionable for a couple of minutes, but pretty soon it started to feel awkward. Then really awkward. Since I was the one who had made this moment all but inevitable, I figured it was up to me to speak first.

  “I didn’t mean to …” I trailed off. I didn’t mean to—what? Kiss him? Yes I had. I hadn’t meant to make him uncomfortable, though.

  Bert looked over.

  “Sorry if I jumped the gun.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I mean, maybe you’re not ready to …”

  “Make out? Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”

  “Get involved again,” I clarified, though freewheeling tomfoolery was A-OK by me.

&
nbsp; “Now that, I don’t know,” he finally said. “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”

  My heart leapt at the prospect of having the chance to find out. I couldn’t, however, let him glimpse my delight.

  “I guess we will,” I said dryly.

  “Are you seeing anyone?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  He gave me a skeptical look.

  “I’m not!”

  “Since when?”

  “Since—forever! It’s not that easy. I’ve got a kid.” I waited for him to jump in, but when he didn’t, I went on. “Well, I was seeing someone last fall. Briefly.”

  “Why briefly?”

  I shrugged.

  “He didn’t like your having Henry?”

  “No, it wasn’t that. He had a daughter himself. But he had a problem with the ghost stuff.”

  “Really?”

  “I think it freaked him out.”

  Bert nodded. I wondered if he’d take the opportunity to quiz me on the subject, but he just reached over and pushed a lock of hair out of my face.

  “So,” he said.

  “So,” I responded.

  “We could go for it in the back of the truck,” he suggested, deadpan.

  I must have looked kind of shocked, though the idea had instant appeal, because he hastened to add, “I’m kidding.”

  “Damn,” I said, but I couldn’t keep a straight face.

  He hooted at this remark, then leaned over and kissed me like he really meant business.

  “Rain check?” I whispered.

  “Rain check,” he replied.

  I’ve probably seen thousands of ghosts in my lifetime, but the scene by the Southeast Lighthouse unnerved even me. Granted, the sky had abruptly darkened with a low layer of portentous storm clouds, and fat, intermittent raindrops had begun to dot the dust on Bert’s windshield. But even if the sky had been cloudless and the air clear and bright, I would have been struck by the eerie pathos of the dreadful scene.

  It was hard to believe that the lighthouse had been moved to its present location, as Mark had told me it had. To begin with, it was constructed of brick and set on a monumental granite base, and its stolid octagonal form conveyed the distinct impression of permanence. It was attached to a structure twice as wide, a cheery brick edifice that resembled nothing so much as a taut and tidy gingerbread house. Its window frames were painted a brisk shade of azure, and a charming little porch with jigsaw trim was tucked into a sheltered alcove between the lighthouse and one of the walls of the residence.