He thumbed something in his vest pocket. After a moment he cleared his throat.
“Mother, was she older than you or younger?”
“Who?”
Isobel turned to peer through the tent, her son’s expression warped by the plastic.
“Cathryn.”
“She was younger by a year. Why?”
Thomas shrugged. “Just wondering.”
She was tiring; he had to lean close to hear. “We were a year apart. Her birthday was the day after mine.”
“Do you recall, by any chance, her maiden name?”
“Is this some test?”
Thomas grinned. He could have been Victor sitting there, up to something. She blinked slowly, so slowly he feared she was falling asleep but then she said in a high voice, “Yes. I remember.”
A charred image flickered over Isobel’s closed eyelids: one of Cathryn’s burned traveling trunks, its monogram blistered but still legible. CLM. “Leigh. That was her maiden name. Cathryn Leigh Malley.”
When she opened her eyes, Thomas was slipping a pen and a small notebook into his vest.
~ ~ ~
Although she had promised she would, Isobel didn’t go to Granite Point that day. She dried her hair, wishing she’d never remembered the dream. She marched Louisa to the shop, pulling the girl along for several blocks until Louisa twisted from her grasp and dropped to a shady patch in a stubborn heap. She rubbed her shoulder.
“Momma, you’re pulling me too hard!”
There was a sheen of sweat on Isobel’s brow, and she wiped it away with the back of her hand. She fought her exasperation and crouched at Louisa’s side.
“Was I pulling? I’m sorry, sweetie.”
Isobel fanned herself. “Good Lord, it’s warm.”
“Momma, why are you so angry?”
“Angry? Oh, Louisa, I’m not. It’s just that I’m so hot and, oh, I don’t know… ”
“Upset?”
Isobel looked through the shade toward the lake, a span of sheer glare in the distance. She wondered what Cathryn and Jack would do when noon came and she wasn’t there to sit sentinel. Would they see each other anyway? Would they risk it? She hoped they had enough sense to stay away from each other.
She was tired of worrying for them. Like children, they seemed to have little sense of their own danger.
Louisa tugged her sleeve. “Momma, are you? Upset?”
“I suppose I am. But not with you.”
Isobel helped Louisa to her feet, using a name she hadn’t since the girl was a toddler. “C’mon, Lulu. I’ll make us some iced tea when we get to the shop.”
Isobel lagged behind while Louisa hopped from crack to crack in the sidewalk, leaving impressions from her rubber-soled sandals in the narrow ridges of softened tar.
“Hey, there, what about your mother’s back?”
“Oops. Sorry, Momma.”
Merchants loitered outside their empty stores under the cover of deep awnings. Some fanned themselves with newspapers. A few customers drifted slowly along, sagging with their net bags and parcels. Isobel nodded to them. The sidewalk heat made its way through the soles of her shoes. Turning the key in the lock, she stopped to look the length of the street. She had the vague feeling of being examined.
The shop was stifling, even with the shades drawn. She worked through lunch, her mouth set. She had to wipe her hands continually to avoid getting sweat on the cap she was trimming. The room was still, save the occasional scratch from Louisa’s pencil, the flutter of paper, the constant chik chik of the overhead fan, her own exhalations.
“Momma, can I go home? It’s cooler there.”
“No. Go out to the alley and run cold water on your feet. Or go over to the butcher’s and ask Mrs. Sima for some ice chips.”
“But Momma, why can’t I go home?”
“Because I want you here.”
“Why? It’s boiling! Why do I have to stay here?”
Isobel tugged too hard on her needle and the thread snapped. She slammed her fist on the table. “Because!”
Louisa fell asleep on the floor. The chain of the ceiling fan made a slow pirouette, and Isobel wondered if the room would be more comfortable with it turned off. Heat rises, she reasoned. The warm air seemed only to be pushed back down on them, heavy as a damp hand. The sky had begun to thicken with dark clouds. She raised the shades and opened the front windows in hope of a breeze. But the air was still and mournful, the street deserted. The drone of cicadas joined the dull stutter of the crushers at the mine. She’d hoped Cathryn would come in. They needed to talk. She sat in such a fixed torpor that it didn’t occur to her that the ache in her back was from the edge of shelf she’d been leaning against for the past hour. The hue of grey outside deepened under the hood of clouds. Perhaps the weather was keeping Cathryn in; perhaps she didn’t dare ride her bicycle under skies that promised lightning.
She knew what she needed to say now. Too much had gone unsaid.
She could drive out to Granite Point, she supposed, but she’d hate to take Louisa, could hardly leave the girl to wake up alone in a storm. Just the thought of starting the car and sitting on hot leather seats made her tired.
When the chimes above the door sounded, Isobel was so startled she nearly cried out. Doug Green, the mail-boat operator, stuck his head in, but she didn’t rise to greet him, waving him in instead. He was drenched in sweat and moved slowly as he handed her the note, dimpled between his thick fingers. “Got a message here from Victor, Miz Howard.”
She eased open the damp envelope. The note said only The boys all home Thursday!
Isobel took in a breath and looked at the wall calendar.
“It can’t be.”
Isobel shook her head and Doug tipped his cap.
“Yes, ma’am. I bet you’re anxious, huh?”
A flash of heat lightning suddenly froze the room in a blaze of silver. A quarter minute passed before thunder rumbled in the distance. She looked outside, waiting for the next strike. When she turned again, Doug was backing out the door with a half wave.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
~ ~ ~
Through the afternoon, lightning illuminated the room’s farthest corners in jagged flashes. “One-thousand-one, one-thousand-two, one-thousandthree . . .” A staccato clap of thunder shook the building. The storm was three miles away. Or was it? Isobel tried to remember: did you simply count, or did you count and then divide the total in some mathematical formula? Turning on a small lamp, she sat down on the floor and watched Louisa sleep. So much lightning. She leaned against the felt bolts on the floor and played with her daughter’s hair, curling it into damp loops over her cheek, dabbing perspiration from the girl’s skin with the hem of her skirt. A brilliant flash rendered Louisa’s flesh white, the blond cowlick tracing an ephemeral confluence down her neck.
Lightning and racking thunder lit and shuddered the windows, but oddly, no rain came. The waiting between the flashes and roars reminded her of childbirth — the bracing, droning tightness before the spasm, the release and ominous stillness bringing the brief arc of relief before it began again. She lost track of the time as she waited for the first drops. Then the clock tower chimed.
Four… five… six.
As the last chime died away a new sound emerged, a distant whine like a swarm of mosquitoes. The sound grew, revealing itself as a far-off siren, and Isobel sat up. Acrid air from the open window seized halfway down her throat.
The wailing wove around and over itself until it broke into two distinct sirens, two fire engines. As they rumbled into town Isobel watched their revolving lights hurl crimson over the storefronts and awnings. Louisa slept on, but when the trucks bore closer she tossed restlessly as if trapped in a dream. The building trembled, loosening shards of ambered varnish to rain from the ceiling and settle among shelves and floorboards.
Isobel looked over the sill to see three green forest service trucks fall in behind the fire engines; a dozen men weighted with water p
acks clung to the sides. She strained to recognize Jack among them. As the cortege veered and skidded, men swayed out and away from the vehicles, the water on their backs threatening to yank them from their moorings. When she stood she saw the trucks turn at the narrow road at the edge of town.
The road to Granite Point.
Isobel blinked and slid back to the floor, sitting very still until the sirens died away. Urgent footfalls met the pavement, and distant shouts were drowned in the bursts of car engines firing. Louisa moaned in her sleep, and Isobel crawled to gather the girl in her arms and rock her.
She looked at the pattern of the pressed ceiling. To still her mind she began to count the sections. Rocking, she counted twenty across the breadth of the shop and then started on the length, counting as far back into the room as she could see, until sections fused in shadow.
An erratic wind rose, and when the door flew inward the rope of chimes hit the wall in sudden violence and windows rattled. Through the open door she saw the street, scraps of paper sailing along in a dusty regatta. She was about to get up and close the door when she heard a footfall.
She stiffened and turned away as someone stepped in. A heavy footstep. Isobel peered up, and ducked back when she saw it was Liam Malley. He was scanning the room, taking in its empty corners. He began backing out the door, but slowly, as if doubtful, as if sensing a presence. Crouching, Isobel scooted into the bolts of fabric, dragging Louisa with her. Her elbow caught on the electrical cord and the small lamp on the counter hit the floor.
Liam spun.
The lamp rolled, sending a weird sway of yellow over both their faces.
Louisa woke at the noise and began to cry when she saw the man’s ash-streaked face. Liam strode to where they huddled. Isobel gripped the girl.
He towered over them, his voice barely controlled. “Where is she?”
Isobel lifted Louisa from her lap and set her into the bolts under the table. She looked at Liam and tried to control the tremble in her voice. “I don’t know. She’s not at the cottage?”
“The cottage is gone. So are half the woods on the south shore.”
When he crouched down next to Isobel she could smell the fire on him. His voice was hoarse with smoke. “So is Jack Reese’s cabin.”
Isobel bit the inside of her cheek. A copper pool collected on her tongue. They looked at each other until Isobel blinked. “Gone. You mean burned?”
“To the ground. Where is she?”
“I don’t know. I… where can she be?”
“That’s what I’m asking you, Mrs. Howard.”
“I said I don’t know.”
He pulled her up by her elbow, dropping her arm the instant she was on her feet, as if touching her was unpleasant. The tone of his voice made Isobel cringe.
“Where is my wife?”
“I do not know.”
“You” — he was shaking — “are the only person she would have told. I will ask you one more time. Please… ”
His soot-blackened hands curled and uncurled into fists. “Will you tell me where my wife is?”
“And I will tell you again, Mr. Malley.”
She knew he was misreading the waver in her voice as a lie, her growing panic pleating every utterance. “I have no idea.”
He raised his fists and a cry tore from him as his arm swept the counter clear. A mug of pencils hit the wall and shattered, account books tumbled open and grazed the chair like drunken gulls. The heavy adding machine pounded to the floor last, its thud followed by a metallic ching as keys struck, the machine ejecting a curled tongue of paper. They watched dumbly until the paper worked its way out and the machine ticked to a stop.
Liam spoke with barely strained patience. “Can you guess?”
She tried. She could only picture them at Cathryn’s cottage or at Jack’s. All places beyond those charred points were voids, her imagination remained unyielding. Her sigh was an apology.
“No, I can’t.”
Liam’s posture suddenly went slack, the anger draining from his face, a grey mask of exhaustion filling in.
The rain began to fall, thrumming the tin roof over the entrance like hoofbeats. Louisa had stopped crying and was hugging her knees, staring from her mother to the man.
There was a pause in which all three seemed to be casually listening to the rain. The stale air in the shop shifted as smells of wetness and burnt timber blew in the open door, heat ebbing under the strong wind.
Liam rubbed his face thoughtfully, as though to check the growth of his stubble. He whispered, “Mrs. Howard. Isobel. There are things you don’t know about Cathryn. She suffers periods of blackness. There are weeks when she cannot rise from her bed. The doctors have tried to explain these episodes to me, but the plain fact is that you and… ealthy people — can never understand what it is like to live with her particular anguish.”
He looked into Isobel’s eyes, his fingertips darting over his temple. “She told me once that on her bad days she feels she’s being held under the surface of a cold ocean, a bottomless, soulless place.”
His hand paused to cup his chin, as if to support the weight of his head, and he looked away, out the window, through the rain.
“Jaysus. I always knew it would end. But this. This.”
Isobel inched closer to Liam, touched his arm. She opened her mouth to speak, but her tongue was thick. Liam saw her struggle and felt for her hand to cover it with his own.
“Isobel. Jack Reese can’t help her like I can. He can’t know how. You see, Cathryn denies her illness even to herself. She needs… she needs to be taken care of.”
Isobel’s voice was a dry whisper. “But if… if you find Jack Reese, you’ll find her.”
Liam grunted. “And where might I find him? In the ashes of his bloody cabin? I don’t think so, though it’d serve the bastard right. His boat’s gone too, y’see.”
Liam shook his head. “In the morning, when the fires are out, they will search the cottages. They’ll probably try dragging the lake, but I’ll wager Jack Reese will never be found. I’ve even gone into the Maze, past his place and into the bogs, but there’s no sign of them there.”
Liam moved away from her, reached down, and meticulously brushed the knees of his pants with his large hands. “No sign.”
Soot and pine needles drifted to the floor. Isobel stared at his pant legs and crouched down to pluck a burr from the floor.
He straightened. “I love her, you know.”
He stepped away. “Loved her.”
“I’m sure she loves you too.”
He scowled. “You know nothing of us,” he said, speaking to the window. His tone was acid. “I dread leaving her in the morning and I dread coming home at night. I can’t read her moods anymore; you’d think it would be the opposite, by now. This many years. I don’t know when I can make love to her, or when she might scream for me to leave our bed. I don’t know when it’s safe to leave her alone. You’ve seen the scars?”
He reached up to his collar. “The one she calls her ‘surgery’? She tried cutting her own throat. I was only out for fifteen minutes, gone out for milk. She said she wanted a milkshake.”
He inhaled. “You cannot conceive how much floor a few pints of blood can cover. The bottle fell from my hands, and then there was the milk mixed in. Glass everywhere… her head on the edge of the tub, just resting, like. She could have been sleeping there, her neck dripping, dripping… the whole floor grown pink with milk and the blood. Rivers of it between the tiles.”
Isobel leaned onto the counter.
Liam straightened. “There’ve been other times, you can guess.”
Isobel closed her eyes to the ridge on Cathryn’s wrist.
She’d claimed she’d been caught on a barbed wire fence as a child. When she and Louisa had played at the shore, Isobel had noticed the strangely uniform white hatches on her thighs just below the hem of her swimsuit. Cathryn cheerfully dismissed them as ancient. “Oh, some old bicycle crash or fall.”
She shook herself as if waking when Liam spoke.
“I wish you hadn’t taught her how to drive.”
There was no recrimination in his voice, only exhaustion.
“We’ve got to find her.”
“No.”
He touched the doorknob, studying it as though he’d never seen one. “I’ve got to find her.”
The door opened. “The sheriff will be by. He’ll have questions.”
Isobel nodded.
At the door she watched him walk toward the road to Granite Point. Halfway down the block he paused, pulled up the collar of his jacket against the rain, and turned slowly on his heel to set off in another direction.
She sat down hard on the floor, still nodding, the motion uncontrollable.
Louisa crawled out from her nest of bolts to touch her mother’s shoulders. She rested her cheek next to Isobel’s and whispered, “Momma, you’re bleeding.”
Isobel looked down. A thin trickle staining her dress at the knee. She opened her clenched fist to see the burr from Liam’s trousers crushed into her palm.
“So I am.”
“Momma, let’s go home.”
They walked in darkness, Isobel unaware of the rain until it suddenly stopped. She looked up in surprise. Inside, she dried Louisa’s hair and helped her into her pajamas. She tucked the girl into Victor’s and her bed. She negotiated the hallways by weak light. Out the bathroom window she saw the storm moving off, lids of clouds sliding away to expose stars. She ran water into the tub, tempering its chill with a kettleful from the stove, then stripped off her wet dress, and stepped into the bath. In the darkness she examined the bar of soap in her hand; it was colourless, as was the towel she had laid on the floor. The robe she’d draped over the chair, brilliant in daylight with red-and-gold dragons, was indistinct and dull. The room and all its furnishings became a monochrome of dead greys. She imagined blood on tiles; a horrible pool.
Cathryn owned a book of paintings that held both colour and black-and-white plates. The black-and-white reproductions had the same oatmeal texture as the bathroom at midnight, condensing all shades into points of dark and light. Isobel remembered the name of the painter, Cezanne.
These Granite Islands Page 21
