The Ice Cradle

by Mary Ann Winkowski

  “Especially in summer,” I said, my heart in my throat. “It feels cooler.” In my peripheral vision, I could see the figures of the two little spirits hovering at the edge of the light. I couldn’t look directly at them. I couldn’t alert Emilia to what was happening, no matter how much pain I might cause her. Those children deserved to be with their parents! If Vivi was ready to go, and to take Jamey with her, I wasn’t going to get in the way.

  Then Henry shouted, “Mama!” He flew to his feet and pointed at Vivi and Jamey.

  “Go!” I shouted at Vivi. “Now!” Vivi appeared to hesitate for just a moment, then she swept Jamey up in her arms and carried him right through the doorway. In a matter of seconds, they were gone.

  Henry looked over, baffled and scared.

  “It’s okay, honey,” I said. “Don’t be afraid.”

  His outburst had drawn Emilia’s attention. She turned around quickly, confusion and a trace of panic in her eyes.

  “He’s fine!” I said. “Don’t worry. He’s just gone over there.” I pointed to the light. “I can see him.”

  She visibly relaxed. “He’s like quicksilver! Always getting away.”

  I watched as she hurried over to the light and looked right through the gleaming doorway.

  It wasn’t just relief that appeared on her face, it was something akin to rapture. A cry escaped from somewhere deep and primal in her being, but she hesitated hardly a moment. She looked back at me with surprise and joy, and then she disappeared.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  HENRY BEGAN TO wail, and when I picked him up, he was shaking.

  “It’s okay, honey.”

  I carried him over to the steps that led up to the house, and he clung to me like paper to a wall. We sat down together and he scrambled up onto my lap. He seemed to want as much surface-to-surface contact as he could get, and I had the impression that if he could have crawled inside me, he would have. I’d felt just the same way at his age, the first time I watched someone leave this life, and I’d already been clued in to what was going to happen.

  Sitting there in the dark, I held him tight while he cried. It wasn’t the moment to ask questions. He was probably sad, scared, angry, and surprised—everything all at once. I’m not proud to admit it, but these days I welcome the moments when Henry seems to need me as much as he did when he was a helpless infant. I took a deep breath of the cool sea air and waited for the crying to subside.

  Finally, it did. From his position on my lap, he pulled back and looked at me. I didn’t say anything.

  “Vivi went away,” he said.

  “I know.”

  He hiccupped an errant sob. “Why?”

  “Why? Well, because it was time for them to go. They seemed kind of happy, didn’t you think?”

  “But they weren’t old.”

  “No,” I said quietly, “but sometimes young people die, honey. They get sick, they have accidents.”

  “I know,” he said, apparently beginning to feel a little better.

  “You do?”

  “Chloe’s sister,” he said insistently.

  The eight-year-old sister of one of his nursery school classmates, Chloe Barsamian, had drowned in a freak accident, while on vacation in Maine with her family. As Madeline had also attended the school, several years earlier, the kids, parents, and teachers had all been rocked by the tragedy.

  Suddenly, I felt a wave of unease. All week long, I’d been rolling around in my mind the consequences of Henry’s sharing my gifts. But what if our abilities weren’t the same? What if he could see and do things that I couldn’t? What if he could see into the white light and beyond it, capabilities I absolutely did not have. What if he had been frightened not by the sudden departure of his pal, but by something else, something terrifying and soul-shattering?

  What if there was nothing on the other side? What if Henry had watched the three of them step into the light and then—evaporate? Or float off into the endless darkness that was the universe, met by no one and nothing, no mother, no father, no God, no—eternal anything? I felt a growing sense of dread. I wanted to ask him, but now I was the one who was beginning to tremble. Did I really want to know? What if this was all there was? What if what really lay on the other side of the light was not a joyous reunion with those we loved, and those who loved us, but simple and final oblivion?

  And what if Henry had seen that and would have to go through life, alone among the human race, with absolute personal knowledge that the soul did not live on, but flickered out like a candle in a breeze. Plenty of people believed that, of course, but no one really knew. How would that singular knowledge affect Henry’s life?

  If this was the ball game, I didn’t really want to know. On the other hand, if this was the ball game, and Henry knew it, then I really had to know, because my main job in life is to be his mom, and I had to be able to help him, if there was any way I could.

  I took a deep breath. “What did you see?” I asked. “In the light.”

  He had gotten up from my lap and was walking toward the road. He seemed to have pulled himself together in the last couple of moments, and the barking of a dog rang out in the stillness.

  “A lady and a man,” he answered.

  A lady and a man?

  “You mean Emilia?” I asked.

  “No! Another lady.”

  “And a man?” I asked, but this time he didn’t answer. The barking of the dog was getting closer, and it was a happy bark, the bark of a cheerful pet being taken out for a late-night walk.

  Henry astonished me by skipping toward the street. Hadn’t he just been disconsolate not a minute and a half ago?

  I took in one of the deepest breaths of my life. We could take this up again at another time. He would let me know when he was ready, and until then, the nugget of information he had imparted was quite enough for me—someone seemed to have been there for Vivi and Jamey.

  I quickly got up and followed Henry out onto the main road, the one that encircles the island. There wasn’t a car in sight. I dug in my pocket and found my cell phone. I pulled up my contacts, located Bert’s number, and hit Send.

  The dog came into sight just as Bert picked up the phone. It was a gangly puppy, all legs, a retriever of some kind, maybe a year old. It loped toward Henry with all the abandon of a twin recognizing its twin, from whom it was separated at birth.

  “Hi,” I said, when Bert picked up. I hurried toward the road, where the puppy was now jumping up on Henry. “Can you pick me up in forty-five minutes?”

  I didn’t hear his answer, because the wildly friendly dog had knocked Henry onto the ground and was now on top of him.

  “Henry!” I shouted, dropping the phone as I raced over to help. “No!” I yelled sharply, watching the nipping and barking grow increasingly aggressive. The dog had gained dominance and he knew it. He was really giving Henry the business. Where was this bad boy’s owner?

  “No!” I screamed again. The dog nipped at my foot as I tried to kick him away, and then I remembered advice I’d gotten from a surgeon once, while he was stitching up my hand after I’d tried to help a friend’s puppy that was caught up in a nasty fight. “Pull the dog’s tail,” the doctor had said.

  I grabbed the dog’s tail and pulled it as hard as I could.

  He yelped in pain and let go. Henry scrambled backward into a thicket of brambles as two men, one of them presumably the owner of the dog, hurried in our direction. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the taller of the men snap a leash onto the puppy’s collar. Henry was crying again, so I picked him up, trying to discern if he had been hurt or was just scared and scraped up.

  “Did he bite you?” I asked.

  Henry needed all his lung power to produce the volume of sound that was shattering the calm; he didn’t have any air with which to answer my question. I set him down on the grass and began to inspect his arms and legs.

  The man with the dog hurried over, and I instinctively shouted, “Get away! Get that dog awa
y!”

  I was shocked at the ferocity of my own voice. Fortunately, I wasn’t finding any puncture wounds; no streams of blood were trickling down Henry’s limbs.

  “He’s all right,” the man said.

  He’s all right? How did this stranger know that? And even if it were true, despite the owner’s clear lack of caution, was that all he had to say after his dog had knocked the daylights out of my child?

  I stood up and glared at him. It was Senator Rawlings, out for a midnight stroll with another man, who seemed to be in his twenties. I remembered seeing him at the party. I wondered now if he might be the senator’s son.

  I was brought up to respect people in authority. My father would have been horrified at how I behaved next, but my protective parent’s switch had been thrown, and I couldn’t control the effects of the adrenaline.

  “I think the proper thing to say,” I snapped, “would be ‘I’m very sorry.’ ”

  The senator made a face, taken aback by my lack of bowing and scraping in his presence.

  “He seems fine, dear. I think you’re overreacting.”

  Dear? Had he just called me dear?

  I took a deep breath, struggling to rein in my impulse to haul off and deck the guy. But I had other weapons at my disposal, and the urge to use them gathered force like a rogue wave. I wanted to hurt this smug, sneaky, selfish stuffed shirt, even at the risk of getting myself into trouble. I wished I didn’t have Henry right here, but I swept him up in my arms, ready to walk proudly off as soon as I dropped my bombshells. Besides, a senator wouldn’t dare threaten a woman with a small child.

  “I’ve got a couple of things to say to you, Senator.”

  “Oh? Well, please,” he answered condescendingly.

  I fired my first volley. “I know what you’re up to.”

  “Up to?” The two men exchanged a bemused glance, which was like pouring lighter fluid onto my coals.

  “I don’t appreciate being used like this.”

  “Used? In what way, might I ask?” The senator’s companion, a lanky cowboy type in jeans and a faded barn jacket, stepped forward protectively. It occurred to me for the first time that he might be more of a bodyguard than a friend. I didn’t care.

  I shifted Henry’s weight and took a deep breath. “Yes, used, in your sneaky effort to block something that’s really, really important not only to this island, but also to the planet. And the future.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t know where you’re getting your information, but—”

  I interrupted him. “I know all about the Lenox Consortium. I know about the Itzkoffs and the McKeenes and their connection to you and all your nearest and dearest at RMI. I know about Elsa Corbett and the OLF, and so does Chief McGill, courtesy of a friend of mine in the Boston Police Department.”

  At this mention, Henry perked up. “Daddy?”

  “The police would be interested to know that Elsa was at your party.”

  I saw some headlights coming toward us, fast, and I was glad, because having said my piece, I was now ready to stomp away. I felt a little relieved to see someone else on the road, because I now understood that this had been a pretty bad idea, spouting off like this on a dark, deserted road, where no one would come to my aid if I needed it.

  The cowboy grabbed me by the arm and tried to whirl me around.

  “Who the hell do you think you are?” he growled. “You don’t know who you’re threatening here.”

  “Ow!” I said. “Let go! You’re hurting me!”

  The dog began to bark as the vehicle disappeared around a bend and then came back into sight. It was almost upon us, racing toward the other side of the island, when I realized it wasn’t a car, but a truck; and not just any old truck, a truck with Bert at the wheel.

  “Bert!” I screamed, and he screeched on the brakes. He reached into the space behind his seat, and when he stepped out of the truck and onto the road, leaving the engine running, I saw what he had in his hand: the harpoon.

  The man let go of my arm. I put Henry down, shouting, “Get in the truck.”

  Holding the harpoon in front of him, Bert swept his gaze across the scene, taking in our faces one by one.

  “Everything okay here?” he asked. I hurried to his side and turned to face Rawlings and his companion.

  “Fine,” Rawlings said evenly. “We’re just out for a breath of fresh air.”

  “You know Senator Rawlings, don’t you, Bert?” I asked.

  “I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure,” said Bert flatly.

  We drove right to the house of Chief McGill, and for the next hour, over a pot of coffee, with Henry dozing on the rec room couch, we filled him in on everything that had happened in the previous half hour, everything Mark had dug up on Rawlings, and everything Dec had told me earlier in the day. McGill had had a message that Declan had called, but the two men hadn’t yet connected.

  How much of this was criminally actionable, McGill didn’t yet know. It wasn’t a crime for a nonprofit foundation to commission an environmental impact study, even if the results were less than objective. Nor was it a crime for Rawlings to invite someone to a cocktail party, even if that someone was later shown to have committed criminal acts. Elsa Corbett had been detained and brought to Providence for questioning, but she might or might not be convicted, depending on whether they could get a fingerprint match. It was one thing to smell the smoke, the chief admitted, and another to find the fire.

  “What about Elsa’s boyfriend?” I asked. “Did you ever find him?”

  McGill shook his head.

  “You think he’s still on the island?” Bert asked.

  “I think he probably is. But he’s not staying in that house. He’s got to be bunking with somebody else.”

  “Do you know what his name is?”

  “Alfred McKeene. Goes by Freddy.”

  “Do you know what he looks like?” I asked.

  “Tall, fair, late twenties. There’s no one by that name who owns property on the island, so he’s got to be staying with a friend. We’ve been watching the ferries. Course he could just sail across, if he had access to the right boat.”

  “Does Rawlings have any kids?” I asked the chief.

  “Two daughters from his first marriage. They’d be, oh, in their thirties by now. I haven’t seen them around.”

  “Does he have any security?”

  McGill shook his head.

  A moment later, he said, “You think that Rawlings is involved in this? Personally involved?”

  “Depends what you mean by ‘personally,’ ” I said. “But you might want to pay him a visit. He had a young guy with him tonight. It might have been Freddy McKeene.”

  We found my cell phone back by the side of the road. Bert had heard it drop, heard me screeching for the dog to get off Henry, heard the dog barking while Henry screamed. The call had never disconnected and Bert had hurried to try to help us.

  The line was still open when I fished the phone out of the brambles.

  “I doubt I’ll be able to sleep,” I said after Bert carried Henry upstairs and we put him to bed. “I never should have drunk all that coffee.”

  Bert smiled. “Plan B?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Lie in the back of the truck and stare up at the stars? Watch the sun come up?”

  I could hardly think of anything nicer. “Think Lauren would mind if I borrowed some blankets?”

  “I’ve got blankets,” Bert said.

  Which was how we came to be lying on the beach just opposite the Grand View at four thirty on Sunday morning. The truck bed was uncomfortable, so we dragged the blankets over to the sand and put one beneath us and one on top. We had been fooling around and talking and laughing and fooling around for quite a long time when, in the quiet broken only by the gentle lapping of the waves, I felt tears gathering in my eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” Bert asked.

  I shook my head, and the tears spilled
over. “I like you,” I whispered.

  “What’s wrong with that? I like you, too.”

  “No, I mean, I really like you.”

  “I really like you, too.”

  I looked over at him. He grinned and nodded.

  “So what are we going to do?” I whined.

  “About liking each other?”

  I nodded and sniffed.

  “Keep doing it?” he suggested.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  SUNDAY

  I NEVER COULD CONVINCE Baden to leave.

  He stood by my side as nearly three dozen earthbound spirits filed, one by one, through the shining doorway to the other side, which I had called up for them on the tower of the Southeast Lighthouse.

  As I watched them go, I tried to connect them to the nightmarish stories I had read earlier in the week. Which of the spirits had died in the lifeboats, and which in their berths? Could the little girl holding the hand of a ghost I assumed to be her mother possibly be the child for whom the birthday cake had been ordered? And there, I assumed, was the man who had slit his throat in the lifeboat, driven mad by the effects of wind and ice. Off to the side, taking the arm of each spirit as he or she approached the brilliant doorway, was certainly one of the ship’s officials. He seemed to have assumed a supervisory role, standing respectfully at attention beside the person next in line to enter the doorway. It was as though having failed to shepherd his passengers safely to New York on that night more than a hundred years ago, he was now determined to escort them graciously from this life.

  It was a strange experience. A heavy fog all but obscured the individual phantoms; they seemed in their ghostly grayness to be part and parcel of the early-morning mists enshrouding the whole of the island, and I suppose, in some dreary and ephemeral way, they were.

  Perhaps it was my lack of sleep, or the feeling of being suspended in time and space that fog on an island induces, but the ghosts seemed not to be crossing over in the way I am accustomed to spirits crossing over. They seemed to be entering the lighthouse tower, and when the last of the phantoms had disappeared, and I had shut down the light and was walking back to the Grand View with Baden, I couldn’t shake the feeling that all of them were trapped in the tower, rather than joyfully experiencing the first, long-awaited moments of their liberation.