“I’m sorry. I meant to call sooner, but it’s been hell here. Sophie was badly dehydrated, almost comatose by the time the housekeeper called an ambulance. I’ve been afraid to leave. Christ! I can’t believe we wasted a week with the doctor telling us it was flu. And now they can’t make up their minds if it’s bacterial or viral meningitis. They’re giving her antibiotics, but if it’s the bacterial type it’s extremely serious and—she asked me if she was going to die. My own daughter! I didn’t know what to say.”
“How awful, just awful,” Kathryn murmured, aware of how inadequate her words sounded. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Yes, but . . .”
“What?”
“I know this is going to sound crazy, but here goes.” Alan cleared his throat and told her.
It did sound crazy, but he was desperate, ready to try anything. “I’ll bring it as soon as I can,” she promised, though she had no idea how she would get what he wanted.
There was a rush of air on the line, as if Alan had come to the end of a race. “Is it dark there yet?” he asked. As if they stood on the opposite ends of the earth. In a sense, they did: she was in a house of night-blackened windows, while he was in a fluorescent-lit hospital corridor, shut up in a world where night and day were one and the same, and the only distinction that mattered was between life and death.
“Yes, but I’ve got a flashlight.”
“You won’t find anything. Wait until daybreak.”
“I’ll be out at first light.”
Chapter 18
When Kathryn’s alarm went off at five a.m., she dressed quickly and shouldered her backpack. Inside was a flashlight, a plastic container and a spade she’d found in the garage last night. Amore raised a drowsy, bewhiskered face to look at her then buried his head in the coil of his body.
Outside, mist rose from the pond like steam from a giant cauldron. On the far side, the dim shapes of trees twisted in a devil’s dance. Kathryn felt as if she were entering a netherworld with no Hermes to guide her.
The tangle of brush at the beginning of Gordon’s road looked even more impassable than before, a no man’s land of barbed wire. Steeling herself, she pushed in. Branches snapped back at her; thorns snagged her clothing, pricking the skin underneath and forcing her to stop and disengage herself. The very woods seemed to want to keep her out.
The brush gave way finally to a leaf-strewn path. She trained her flashlight on the ground ahead. The stag had appeared in the area between the last of the fallen logs and the beginning of the tangle of brush. She walked slowly to the first fallen log without finding anything, and then glanced back at the way she’d come. Now her footprints disturbed the leaves. A wave of panic swept over her. She’d never find the stag’s prints. If she didn’t—what? Alan himself doubted the piece of bark with the white stag’s scratch had saved his grandfather from drowning. And did she really believe that because she’d seen a light-colored deer twice in the same day, she and Alan had been spared the crash that had blinded Garth?
She started back toward the tangle of brush. The smell of damp earth and moldering leaves filled her nostrils. Then, to her astonishment, she detected a musky odor. There was a clear patch in the leaves, and in it, a deer track. She knelt to examine it. Alan had explained that buck tracks are larger and more splayed than those of a doe. This one fit that description. She removed the spade from her pack and began to dig.
*****
Alan met her in the lobby of Children’s Hospital in Boston. He wore a hospital mask and plastic gloves. “It’s bacterial meningitis and highly contagious,” he explained, his voice muffled behind the mask. “They’ve put me on antibiotics, because I’ve been in close contact with her. The housekeeper, too.”
“The poor little thing. I’m so sorry. I hope this helps.” She handed him the plastic container of the soil with the white stag’s print.
“I hope to God it does!” Alan’s eyes glistened, behind horned-rimmed glasses. “Thank you. I’ll tell Sophie you came, and that you brought good medicine. There’s a chance you may be exposed through me, so if you feel like you’re coming down with something, promise me you’ll see a doctor immediately.”
“I promise.”
“Will you stay over in Boston, or go back to the Berkshires?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“If you do stay over, we can see each other again in a day or two when I’ve finished with the antibiotics and am no longer contagious. In the meantime, try to get some rest. You must be exhausted.”
“You look pretty worn out yourself.”
“I can always catch a few winks while I’m with Sophie. I should go back now. See you in a few days, I hope.” Alan pressed gloved fingers to the lower part of the mask and blew her an antiseptic kiss. In the elevator, he stood straight and tall, arms at his sides, head tilted upward like an astronaut at the beginning of a dangerous mission. The door shut and he was gone.
Chapter 19
At last! Kathryn heaved a sigh as she drove up Rattlesnake Hill Road. Making the round trip in one day had been harder than she’d anticipated. Yet in a few minutes, she would be sitting on the patio, gazing at the pond while the peacefulness of the scene flowed into her.
Intent on her goal, she barely noticed the faded red pickup parked by the side of the road. Halfway up the driveway, a pile of gravel brought her to a screeching halt. A front-loader was parked nearby. Apparently, Earl Barker had chosen today to begin work on the driveway. Damn! She ‘d been looking forward to being alone, and now this man, the last person on earth she wanted to see, was not only here, but had left an obstruction in her path. She slammed out of the car and stormed up the driveway, anger giving her a fresh rush of adrenaline.
What she saw on the patio raised her hackles even more. Earl was stretched out in a chaise longue, drinking beer from a pop-top can and staring at the pond, while Amore stalked a fallen leaf on the grass.
“You sure don’t waste any time making yourself at home,” she snapped.
His head turned slowly toward her. “Didn’t expect you back so soon, Starstruck.”
“Obviously not, since you left a load of gravel in the middle of the road.”
“I’ll move it,” he said without budging from the chair.
“Why’s the cat out? He’s not supposed to leave the house.”
“I’m watching him.”
“How did you get in? Did Brandy give you a key?”
“You left a sliding door open.” He put down his beer can, took another from the cooler by his side, popped the top, and started to toss it on the ground. Instead, catching the top in midair, he shoved it in the pocket of his jeans.
Caught in the act. He was the one who had left the mess of pop-tops on the patio. He’d come here when the house was empty, pretending he was lord of the manor when he was just a hired hand. And now, even though she, the house’s legitimate occupant, had returned, he still acted like he was cock of the walk. Her anger boiled over.
“You’ve got some nerve,” she shrilled. To her dismay, she sounded every bit like her grandmother. “It was bad enough your brother nearly ran us off the road. Bad enough my friend’s daughter became seriously ill and I had to drive to Boston to bring her some medicine—without you practically moving in the minute I’m gone. I want you to leave and take your trash with you.”
She’d expected him to get mad back, or at least make some smart-alecky retort. Instead, he held up a hand to placate her, and also, possibly, to protect himself. As if she posed a threat to him.
“I’ll go,” he said evenly, “but first let’s get a few things straight. Sit down, please, and have a beer, if you like.”
Embarrassed about losing it in front of him, she sank into the other chaise longue and accepted his offer of a beer.
“I’m sorry about your friend’s daughter,” Earl said. �
��Is she going to be all right?”
“I don’t know. I hope so.”
“As for my brother running you off the road, that’s not what I heard. Hank said you came on the scene after Garth hit a deer.”
She squirmed, wishing Alan had told the truth. “He did hit a deer, but before that he was tailgating us with his high beams on.”
Earl frowned. “If you were ahead of him, how did you avoid the deer?”
“We were able to pull off the road in time.”
“You saw this deer?”
“Yes. I think it was . . . the white stag.”
“No kidding? That could explain why Hank couldn’t find a trace of it.”
“Do you really think the white stag has magical powers?”
“What about you? You’re the one who saw it.”
“Seeing doesn’t necessarily mean believing.”
A leaf crackled on the grass as Amore pounced on it. Losing interest in this inanimate prey, the cat joined them on the patio. Amore rubbed against Earl’s leg, and Earl scratched him behind the ears. The cat craned his neck toward Earl’s fingers, yellow eyes half-shut with pleasure, purring loudly. Sated at last, he sprawled shamelessly beside Earl’s work boot.
Earl smiled then his expression turning serious, he said, “I know you’re the tenant here, but I put a lot of work into this place, and sometimes I like to come and look at what I made.”
“Millie said you put in the pond.”
“That’s right.”
“Whose idea was it?”
“Gordon’s.” An edge came into Earl’s voice. “He thought it would look very Italian to have a pond by those tall pines. Even made a drawing to show me how he wanted it. Kidney-shaped like a goddamn swimming pool.” Earl snorted. “With a deep end and a shallow end. But that’s not how you make a pond. You have to hollow out the earth like a bowl, deep in the middle and shallower along the sides. Otherwise, you’ll end up stuck like old Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel in the kid’s story.”
“Gordon must’ve been pleased with the result.”
“He wasn’t even around when I finished.” Earl paused to take a drink of beer. When he spoke again, his face was rapt with memory. “But Diana was. She’d driven up from the city alone to check on the progress of the house. Saw her car when I pulled up in my pickup. It was late on a Sunday afternoon. Millie was off at one of her meetings, the kids were out with friends, and I had some time to myself. I was sitting in my truck, having a beer like now, staring at the hole, which was just starting to fill, when she came out of the house. Climbed right into the cab beside me.” He glanced at Kathryn and seemed surprised to find her there instead of Diana.
His gaze returned to the pond. “Wasn’t much to look at then. Just a hole in the ground with some water in it. She couldn’t have known how quickly it would fill. Or how the water would change from one season to the next, how it would turn green and murky in the summer, clear out come fall, freeze over in the winter. She didn’t know about all the plants and animals this one little pond would draw. How cattails would sink their roots deep into the clay around the sides, how they’d multiply till Gordon was afraid they were taking over and hired my boys to pull ’em out. That’s real grunt work, standing knee-deep in muck under a hot sun with leeches sticking to your legs and deer flies biting your back.”
She wasn’t sure why he was telling her this, unless it was to satisfy some need of his, but she didn’t mind listening and actually enjoyed hearing about the pond’s evolution. Who would have thought this man of few words, and jibes at that, was capable of such extended and eloquent speech?
“Never could get all the cattails out,” he said in his soft baritone. “And those the boys did get were replaced by new ones soon enough. That was fine by Diana. She didn’t want them out in the first place, because then the redwing blackbirds wouldn’t have a place to build their nests, the muskrat wouldn’t have reeds for his house, and there would be no private spaces for the ducks and geese to lay their eggs and raise their young.
“Gordon disagreed. He complained that the cattails were ruining the shape of the pond. Diana didn’t care about that. She cared about the redwings, the muskrats, and the ducks and geese. Frogs, too. Couldn’t wait for the peepers to start up in the spring, a regular symphony, she said. She loved their long, sweet trills on summer nights with the rumble of the bullfrogs breaking in every now and then. Even loved the mosquitoes, the water snakes, and the snapping turtles.
“That afternoon when the pond was just a hole with a little water in it, she didn’t know any of this. Must have seen the possibilities, though, because after we’d sat awhile, she took my hand and said, 'It’s beautiful, Earl. You’ve made something beautiful.’”
Gazing at the pond, its waters tinged a pinkish-orange by the setting sun, Kathryn agreed.
“Diana loved this pond,” Earl said. “Her ashes were scattered here. That’s why I . . . ” His voice trailed off and his face assumed a pensive expression.
So that was it. He’d been in love with Diana, and came to the pond for the same reason others visited the graves of loved ones in cemeteries. She had misjudged him, thinking him crude and unfeeling, as if his vocabulary and emotional range were as limited as his gene pool, when they were not.
The sadness etched in his features reminded her of how Aunt Kit’s companion, Kane, had looked when he’d come on his improbable errand, flying all the way from Hawaii to Boston to bring her the photograph after Aunt Kit’s death. She’d misjudged Kane, too, by accepting her grandmother’s view of him as a houseboy turned gigolo.
Her mind traveled back to that chill March afternoon when they met in the hotel lobby overlooking Boston Common. She’d been surprised to discover that the plump, laughing, steel-guitar-playing young man she remembered from childhood visits had become middle-aged, gray around the temples, his gaunt face riddled with lines. His manner toward her had been stiff and formal, yet when he spoke of Aunt Kit and what she’d meant to him, Kathryn realized that his grief, like his love, was genuine. Impulsively, she reached over and touched his arm. “I’m so sorry, Kane.”
He recoiled from her touch like a dog suspicious of strangers. “What did you call me?”
Whoa! This wasn’t Kane, but Earl Barker. Still, she owed him an explanation. “Kane. It means ‘man’ in Hawaiian. I called you that because just now you reminded me of someone with that name.”
“Who?”
“He worked for my great-aunt.”
“She called him man?”
“He had another, longer name but she called him Kane because—” She broke off, unwilling to say more.
“What?” he pressed.
“He was her man.”
“Her lover, you mean?” His blue eyes were trained on her with Emily’s laser-like intensity.
“Yes.”
“So your great-aunt had a Hawaiian lover,” he chuckled. “Bet that caused a scandal.”
“No, it didn’t,” she lied. Aunt Kit’s affair had created a scandal with serious consequences for Kathryn. Shocked by her sister’s immoral behavior, her grandmother had forbidden her to make any more visits to Hawaii.
“C’mon now. Taking up with a Hawaiian must be almost as bad as taking up with a hillbilly like me.”
“You’re not a hillbilly. Hillbillies live in Appalachia.”
“Hills here, too, and according to some folks, families like mine who’ve lived in these hills a long time are hillbillies.” Earl removed the pop-top from his pocket, tossed it in the air and caught it. “What did you think when your great-aunt and this Hawaiian guy got together?”
“I was only twelve at the time.”
“Twelve-year-olds have opinions.”
“What does it matter what I thought?”
He shrugged. “Just curious.”
His probing gaze told her othe
rwise. “I think it’s time you moved that gravel. I’d like to get my car before dark.”
“Whatever you say, Starstruck.” He stood, crushed the beer can in his hand and tossed it into the cooler. Then he turned and started down the driveway.
Watching Earl walk away, Kathryn regretted the curt way she’d dismissed him. She was half tempted to call after him and let him know she wouldn’t mind if he came and sat on the patio occasionally. That’s what Aunt Kit would have done, and lately she’d been trying to be more like her beloved great-aunt. But just then an inner voice she’d been struggling for a long time to suppress advised, “Knowledge is power. So keep your cards close to your chest, Missy.” It was the voice of her grandmother: small, mean and distrustful, especially towards men. Much as she’d disliked her grandmother, she still found it difficult not to heed her cautionary words, if only because old habits die hard, and her grandmother rather than Aunt Kit had been the dominant figure of her formative years.
Besides, Earl had passed out of sight by now, so if she wanted to speak to him, she’d have to run after him—something she wasn’t ready to do. Wasn’t it enough that she’d overstepped the boundaries she maintained with most people, including Alan, when she’d told him about Aunt Kit’s taking a Hawaiian lover?
Chapter 20
Earl stepped inside the trailer, taking in the Spartan furnishings: Formica table with two metal chairs, army cot, wooden rocker salvaged from the dump, tree stump table with a reading lamp that also came from the dump, rag rug where he put his boots on cold nights to keep them from freezing to the linoleum floor. “You’d live in a cave if it were up to you,” Mill had said of him. Probably right. The trailer was his cave. It suited him just fine.
Hard to believe he and Mill had once shared this small, spare space. But they’d been young then, just out of high school, newly married, and excited to be on their own. They hadn’t minded roughing it, using the woods as their john and trekking across the road to his parents’ house for showers. Besides, he’d promised Mill the trailer would only be a temporary home. They’d move out as soon as he built her the house she wanted. She had that house now. He had moved back here after they’d split, though he still went to the house for showers, the occasional meal, and sports events on TV.
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