The Secret Hour

by Luanne Rice

  “I know,” Kate had said.

  “You guys are so lucky. I hope that when I fall in love it's with someone who loves me half as much as he loves you!”

  “Hear that, Kate?” Andrew had asked, trying to hug her toward him. But Kate's body wouldn't yield, and she'd sat up straighter in her chair.

  “Would you want that for her?” Kate had asked, her voice cold.

  “Katy . . .” Andrew had taken her hand, clasped fingers.

  “Sure he would!” Willa had exclaimed, staring at the check. “Why wouldn't he? Andrew's my self-esteem coach! I swear, I wouldn't have made it through St. Chrys's without him. All those field-hockey-crazy, preppie congresspeople's daughters . . . and now he's giving me my first commission.”

  Under the table, Andrew had squeezed her hand. She could almost hear him: Come on, Katy. Loosen up, will you? I love you, only you . . . I married you, no one else. She had heard him say those words before. And because she so badly wanted them to be true, she always let herself try to believe them.

  “I already have your portrait of Kate,” Andrew said. “The airplane one. But that's of her alone. This one has to show us together, and don't leave out my absolute adoration.” He'd struck a lovesick pose, staring at Kate with huge eyes, making Willa laugh and Kate smile. She was starting to soften; she always did. After all, he'd never stopped denying her accusations. Maybe she was wrong—being suspicious for no reason.

  “You're crazy,” Willa had said, shaking her head.

  “Mad is more like it,” Andrew had said, dropping his hand to Kate's knee under the table, starting to make lazy circles on her skin. “Madly in love with your sister.”

  “I love you both,” Willa had said, smiling at them with sheer joy, like a child who knows her parents love each other, that her home is secure. “I'd do the picture for free.”

  “Take the check,” Kate had said, smiling back. “If Andrew wants to pay you for it, I think you should let him.”

  “Listen to your sister, kid.” Andrew had laughed. “She knows what she's talking about: I always get what I want!”

  Now, staring out the window at the O'Rourkes' house, Kate remembered feeling happy about at least one thing that day—that Andrew cared so much about Willa. Art was a hard field—much more mysterious and difficult to earn money in than marine biology—and she was all in favor of bolstering Willa's confidence.

  Andrew had always been so good at that. . . .

  Sighing, stepping away from the window, she picked up her bags. The old memories had made her hands shake. Her love of Willa collided with her feelings of betrayal. Why hadn't Willa seen Andrew for what he was? How could she have succumbed to whatever line he had offered her, told her?

  The portrait had never gotten done. Willa hadn't been able to get them together long enough to sit for it. She had started a job in Andrew's office on Capitol Hill. Filing, answering telephones, stuffing envelopes: easy stuff that wouldn't get in the way of her art.

  “Oh, Willa,” Kate murmured, still feeling the pain. That moment when she had come upon them . . .

  Carrying her luggage downstairs, she settled up her bill.

  “I would have come up to get your bags,” Barkley Jenkins said, smiling. “At least let me carry them out to the car.”

  “That's okay—they're light.”

  “We're a little surprised you're leaving so soon,” Felicity said. “You'd reserved the room for another week.”

  “I know, but I'd like to see a little more of New England before I head back home.”

  “Understandable,” Felicity said quickly. Kate was taken aback, a little surprised. She had expected a protest about her sudden decision to leave, perhaps an argument about getting her deposit back. But instead, Felicity put through the paperwork, refunding the seventy-five dollars to Kate's credit card. Watching, Kate thought Felicity looked haggard, with sallow skin and swollen eyes, as if she hadn't been sleeping well.

  “Hope we didn't drive you away,” Barkley said.

  “No, it's been very pleasant. Even Bonnie enjoyed it.”

  “She's a cute dog,” Barkley said, petting Bonnie and letting her lick his fingers. “I swear, she remembers me from before.”

  Kate's stomach dropped, and she thought she heard Felicity gasp. “Barkley,” she said warningly.

  “That's okay,” Kate said. She had confided her reasons for being there to Felicity on arrival, wanting to learn everything the family might know. Felicity had said she remembered Bonnie—or a Scottie just like her—but not her owner. “Some people come for just one night,” she had explained. “They're here, and then they go. . . . we hardly get to see them.”

  “You remember Bonnie, too?” Kate asked now, staring at Barkley. He was tall and rangy, with graying blond hair and a big blond mustache. He had good-time eyes—easy to smile, and bloodshot from last night's drinks. She recognized the signs from the Washington cocktail party circuit.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “Wish I could say I did, Kate. But Felicity told me you were here looking for your sister, that Bonnie's her dog. Really hope you find her. . . .”

  “So do I,” Kate said.

  The owners smiled, and Felicity handed her the bill stapled to the credit card receipt. Barkley, in spite of her protestations, carried her luggage to the car. There was one package she carried herself, not letting it out of her grasp. Standing in the driveway, letting him load the bags into her trunk, she heard hammering. Each bang sounded loud and close, amplified by the fog.

  She gazed around the grounds, following the sound, and her eyes came to light on a barn just north of the path leading to the beach, the breakwater, and the distant headland where the lighthouse stood.

  The barn was weathered and old. Its roof, missing shingles, sagged in the middle. A young man stood on the very top of a tall ladder, hammering under the barn's eaves. His slim silhouette was dark in the luminous fog. Suddenly he stopped banging, turning to look at Kate from a hundred yards away. He waved, a friendly salute, and Kate waved back.

  “It looks like he's going to fall,” she said.

  “Not Caleb,” Barkley said, shaking his head.

  “Your son?”

  “Yes. He works with me on my crew, doing construction all week, and he's got some kind of gift—hangs from the rafters; carries hundred-pound bales of shingles up ladders, one on each shoulder; climbs to the top of the lighthouse to repair the mortar in those walls . . .”

  “He's good at what he does,” Kate said, wondering why she hadn't met him once during the whole time she'd been there.

  “The best. He's working overtime, giving up his Saturday, to get that old barn into shape. We're expanding bit by bit. I turned over the lighthouse to him—we come from a long line of light keepers.”

  “What do you have to do?”

  He chuckled. “Since you asked . . . she's a brick and iron tower. Lots of upkeep there, fighting the sea and the salt air. My father used to work twenty-four/seven, maintaining the property, monitoring the fog and light signals. The system became automated twenty years ago, and it got a lot easier. Now we rely on sensors—light-sensitive relays to operate the light.”

  “Machines do everything?” Kate asked, thinking of how sad that was, how much more romantic was the notion of a light keeper, watching over the coastline and its passing ships, of a family whose work it was to keep seafarers safe, prevent ships from being wrecked on the rocky shores.

  “Well, they run the light . . . but we have to replace the materials. A one-thousand-watt tungsten-halogen lamp in the fourth order lens . . . a backup lamp kicks in if the first ever fails. Even the fog signal has a sensor—measures the moisture in the air. When I was a kid, we had a reed horn. Broke down constantly, and I had to sit there . . . while John was away at Yale, and then Georgetown, I was sitting there making sure the horn gave off two-second blasts every thirty seconds. Caleb doesn't know how easy he has it.”

  “What a great family tradition,” Kate said.
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  “We think so. Okay, then,” Barkley said, slamming her trunk closed. “Good journey . . . If you find yourself in a boat, look for our light. Silver Bay tower lets out a white flash of light every six seconds, with a red sector covering two nearby shoals.”

  “Thanks—I'll stay off the shoals,” Kate said, letting Bonnie jump into the backseat. Smiling, she said good-bye, placing the package she held right beside her on the seat, and climbed into the car.

  She had one last stop before leaving Silver Bay. Although she didn't have directions, she had the address. She had looked it up in the phone book—surprised that a retired judge would have a listed number. On her way through town, she turned up the car's heat, trying to chase the chill in her bones.

  The Judge's house was surprisingly easy to find. In a quiet, prosperous section of the village, it overlooked the green, the town hall, and two churches. Gray-blue, it had white shutters and a slate mansard roof. A wrought-iron fence surrounded the tidy yard. Shaggy white and golden chrysanthemums bloomed in straight beds. Kate recognized the pumpkin she had bought for Maggie on the front steps.

  Brainer barked when she parked in the driveway. He stood at the window, crying, eager to get outside to see her and Bonnie. Kate half hoped he would attract his owners, so she could hand the package to Maggie herself.

  No one responded. It was ten o'clock in the morning, and there were no cars in the driveway. Perhaps John was working, or maybe he had taken the kids out to breakfast or another soccer game.

  Kate felt a lump in her throat to think of the family. The kids were great. She was so glad they had each other. In a different scenario, she would have liked to get closer to them. But she pictured John's eyes last night, when the kids had invited her for pizza, and knew that that would never happen. She had recognized the steel plating: He told himself he wasn't getting close to someone who wanted information about his client. But Kate knew the real truth.

  He wasn't getting close to anyone.

  Kate put John O'Rourke out of her mind and walked up the stone steps. She opened the screen door and crouched, to leave the package inside, when the heavy door flew open.

  An old woman stood there. She was small and stooped, with snow-white hair drawn up in a bun. Her face was soft and pale, a field of wrinkles, but her eyes were startlingly blue. She wore a black dress and white apron, and she smiled with great curiosity and warmth of spirit.

  “Who has come to call?” she asked with an Irish brogue, smiling broadly at Kate standing one step down.

  “Oh—Kate Harris,” Kate replied, standing up. “But not to call—just to leave this package for Maggie.”

  “Miss Margaret?”

  “Yes—Miss Margaret.”

  “Aye, ye're her mother,” the old woman said, nodding knowingly as she accepted the parcel.

  “No,” Kate said, confused. “Her mother's—”

  “With the angels,” the old woman said, clutching Kate's package to her chest. “I know. Not that mother . . .”

  Kate was speechless.

  “Do you know the angels?” the woman asked, tilting her head.

  Kate shook her head, stunned, almost in a trance.

  “Oh, but you do. Of course you do. The good girls who have gone before us, who were stolen away. Our sisters, dear lady. Are they not angels?”

  “Willa? Are you talking about my sister Willa?”

  “Aye,” the woman said, lifting her bright eyes to the cloudy sky, crossing herself, and then gazing back at Kate. “Ye're Mary, are ye not? Blessed Mother . . .”

  “Mary? No, I'm—” Kate stopped, suddenly getting it. The old woman had Alzheimer's, or something like it; she thought Kate was the Virgin Mary. Brainer came around the woman's legs, and Kate hugged him with relief.

  “Will you look after them, dear Mother? My sons? And our sisters? And all the lost girls? The hurt girls? And all the wicked boys . . .” The woman's eyes glittered with fervent love, and she reached out to clutch Kate's wrist with one warm hand while hugging the brown parcel to her bosom with the other.

  Kate wasn't sure what to say or do. She was a scientist, and religious visions were beyond her domain. But Willa used to say that on a good day, Kate was compassionate all the way down to her toes; summoning up her sister's good opinion of her, Kate was suddenly clear. She smiled into the old woman's eyes, then leaned forward and kissed her forehead. The smell of rose-scented talcum powder filled the air.

  “I will,” she whispered, her throat aching as she thought of all the hurt girls.

  And, petting Brainer one last time, Kate ran down the steps. The smell of roses had transferred to her hands, making her feel light-headed. She didn't go to church, never prayed, and she hoped she wouldn't be struck down for impersonating the Virgin Mary. She had the clearest sense, instead, of having just been blessed.

  Waving at the old woman, she backed out of the driveway. She hoped the woman would remember to give the package to Maggie. And, as Bonnie stood in the backseat, barking farewell to Brainer, Kate Harris took the back roads to the highway, pointing east, toward Newport, Rhode Island, in search of her lost girl.

  The day was a disaster.

  Maggie had begged her father to spend the day with her, but she'd imagined the mall and a movie—or maybe a hike through Foxtail State Park. Not, repeat not, a morning at the office.

  Some days his office was fun. Maggie loved the secretaries and paralegals. Many of them were young women, and they'd let Maggie sit at their desks, typing on their computers or drawing pictures on firm letterhead.

  But today was Saturday, Halloween, and the only secretaries there looked grumpy and overworked, trying to finish projects for their busy bosses. Dad's own secretary, Damaris, was just about the nicest person alive, but this morning even she barely gave Maggie the time of day.

  “Can we go to the copy room?” Maggie cajoled, hoping Damaris would allow her, as she sometimes did, to copy her hands on the big Series 5 color copier.

  “Can't right now, sweetie pie. Your daddy's counting on me to finish this typing so he can get done early and have a nice afternoon with you and your brother.”

  “My brother's at his friend's,” Maggie explained. “He'll be home for dinner, but tonight he's going to a Halloween dance.”

  “Just you, then,” Damaris said, never breaking stride, just typing like mad. “That's enough.”

  “I'm going to be Amelia Earhart for the Halloween pageant tonight,” Maggie confided.

  “Superb choice,” Damaris said, but she was concentrating so hard on her typing, Maggie had the feeling she could have said she was dressing up as the postmistress, Elaine of Elaine's Clip and Cut, or Damaris herself, and gotten the same response.

  Shrugging it off, Maggie roamed the law firm's halls. Saturdays were quieter than weekdays, but by no means deserted. Lawyers huddled over their desks, shirtsleeves rolled up, reading, reading, reading.

  The library was a popular spot. More reading in the carrels, long tables, and computer stations. Most of the people here were associates—the younger lawyers, not long out of law school, who did the grunt work for partners like her father.

  As she walked around, Maggie realized she was scouring the firm for things to wear with her costume. The costume itself would have to wait; when her dad was finished today, he'd promised to take her shopping. But Maggie was resourceful, and she could look for emblems right now.

  She had long known who Amelia Earhart was, but last night she had looked her up on the Internet and found pictures of a pretty girl, dressed in a leather jacket with a white scarf and small cap. Kate had said Amelia had courage, but the photos had revealed that she also had happiness, curiosity, and excitement: all things that Maggie wanted for herself.

  Each characteristic needed an emblem.

  For happiness, Maggie was going to wear her mother's gold hummingbird pin. Her father had given it to her after five years of marriage, to commemorate her mother's speed, efficiency, and love of red flowers. The pin had e
merald eyes, and when Maggie received it after her mother's death, it became her most prized possession.

  For curiosity, Maggie planned to borrow a firm library access card. It symbolized reading, research, searching for the answers. Hadn't Amelia been doing that on her flight across the Pacific?

  For excitement, Maggie would tuck a photo of herself and Teddy at the top of Wild Expedition's tallest roller coaster—taken by their dad, just before their car had tumbled over the precipice. Maggie's stomach still roiled when she recalled that ten-story drop.

  But for courage . . .

  That emblem took a little more effort.

  Maggie wasn't known for her courage. In fact, she was the biggest coward she knew. She couldn't stand the sight of blood—her own or anyone else's. She hated when her father went over the speed limit, even though he was a great driver. Most kids loved Bambi, but since her mother's accident, the sight of deer terrified her. She jumped out of her seat at any loud noise. And, if she could have stopped that Wild Expedition roller coaster from climbing to the top, she would have—halfway up.

  So, making her way through the law firm, Maggie kept her eyes open for something that would prove her courage.

  Many things were off-limits: She understood and respected the rules. Her father had explained that people's lives and rights were at stake; to him, they were the same thing. He had told her that he trusted her and Teddy implicitly, but that they had to promise that anything they saw or heard stayed “at home.”

  They had both promised.

  The law firm made her feel safe and secure. It was in a stately old brick building designed by Stanford White—one of the best architects of the 1800s, her father had told her. Tall windows overlooked the granite courthouse with its fluted columns. The firm was quiet, but Maggie could feel that it was also important. Her father and his partners believed completely in what they did, and this gave an aura of might and righteousness to the very air.

  Maggie wandered past walnut desks and overflowing bookshelves, past oil paintings of the Connecticut shoreline—many of them of local lighthouses done by the most important landscape artists of the last two centuries—that looked as if they belonged in museums. She trailed her fingers over soft leather chairs and highly polished conference tables, dreaming of her Halloween costume, trying to find an emblem of courage.