Dreaming of Manderley

by Leah Marie Brown

  Olivia knocks on the window and I slide my phone back into my purse. A man with a swarthy complexion is standing beside her. He is a handsome man, in a Johnny-Depp-as-Captain-Jack-Sparrow kind of way, with shoulder-length black hair, soulful brown eyes, and a nasty, jagged scar above his right eye that he probably got when he was doing something shady. He’s wearing a pair of jeans with a rip at the knee, a black tee, and at least a dozen slender braided-leather bracelets around his wrist.

  I get out of the car and shut the door. The temperature has dropped and the air feels moist with impending rain.

  “Manderley, this is Nicabar,” Olivia says. “He collects the tolls for the road to the island.”

  “Bonjour, Nicabar.”

  “Nica,” he says, gazing deeply into my eyes, too deeply for my comfort. “Am pleased to meet you, Madame de Maloret. Was telling your friend the road to the island is closed today.”

  Besides dropping the nominative pronoun from the beginning of his sentences, he speaks with an unusual accent that is too bouncy, too rhythmic to be French.

  “Nica has agreed to take us to the island on his boat,” Oliva says, smiling brightly.

  “Thank you, Nica. That’s kind.”

  “Kind,” he repeats, laughing. “Sure. Got money? Difficult, the passage to the island, and the weather, is not being our friend. So, pay.”

  “Of course. How much would you like?”

  He grins. “How much worth?”

  How much worth? “Excuse me?”

  “I think Nica is trying to barter with us, Manderley,” Olivia says, narrowing her eyes on the man. “He wants to know how much we’re willing to pay for the ride over to the island.”

  “Oh.” Heat flushes my cheeks.

  “Well, alright.” Oliva pushes her sleeves up and crosses her arms. “Bring it, Nica. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  “What worth?” he repeats.

  Olivia names a sum. Nica laughs and responds with a sum double Olivia’s offer. Furious negotiations continue until I feel a little sorry for Nica.

  Olivia looks pointedly at Nica’s small, shabby cottage and then at the red-and-white striped barrier barring vehicles from using the primitive toll road. A road currently very empty.

  “Forgive us, Nica. It’s obvious you are a busy man. We have taken up too much of your time already.” She walks around the car and opens the passenger door. “Come on, Mandy, we will drive back to the docks. I saw a sign for charters.”

  “Wait,” Nica says.

  Olivia comes back.

  In the end, Nica agrees to take us to the island for slightly more than Olivia’s original offer plus the bottle of Chouchen she bought at Caro’s shop. Before they shake on the deal Olivia makes Nica promise to wait for us while we are at the Verites and then ferry us back to the mainland. He agrees.

  “Good negotiator,” Nica says, grinning at Olivia.

  I am wearing a simple white-and-black striped cotton sundress with spaghetti straps and my espadrilles, my hair pulled into a fishtail braid, because I didn’t know when I got dressed this morning I would be climbing onto a stinking fishing boat with a nominative-pronoun-dropping toll collector who looks as if he should be living in a van, playing a guitar in some city square for spare change.

  I pull my purse out of the car, tie my thin summer cardigan around my shoulders, and push the lock button on the McLaren’s key. Nica leads us behind his cottage to a rickety wooden pier. A wooden fishing boat, green paint peeling from the hull to reveal several other colors of paint, is tied to one of the pilings.

  Nica helps Olivia climb onto the deck of the swaying boat and then holds his hand out to me, a rakish grin on his face. I look from him to the sea, trying to measure the distance from the pier to the island, and fighting the wave of panic building inside me.

  “Come,” Nica says, waving backwards.

  Sweet Lawd! What am I thinking? I wouldn’t go sailing with Xavier, an experienced seaman, but I am going to step onto this leaking, patched-together motorboat?

  “Come now,” Nica says again. “Before weather comes.”

  A mile. The island can’t be more than a mile away. I can swim a mile on a good day. No problem. It’s not like we are going far from the mainland.

  Inhaling, I climb onto the boat without Nica’s assistance and stand beside Olivia beneath the wheelhouse awning, before I lose what little nerve I have mustered. Nica removes the rope securing the boat to the piling and we are off, chug-chug-chugging over choppy surf toward the island. The scrambled eggs and coffee I had for breakfast churn in my stomach.

  Nica nudges Olivia. “Kestra is pale,” he says, a scornful twist to his lips. “Think get sick from the sea.”

  Olivia looks at me, worried. “He’s right,” she says, holding my arm. “You are pale.”

  “I’m fine, really.”

  Olivia squeezes my arm encouragingly, letting me know without words she understands how difficult this journey is for me. I smile to reassure her, even as a bitter, acidic taste fills my mouth.

  “Nicabar,” I say, raising my voice above the noise of the motors. “That’s an unusual name. Is it French?”

  “No. Romani. Means one who is cunning.”

  He leers at me, his gaze lingering on my breasts. I pull the edges of my sweater closer together around me.

  Romani.

  Xavier said the French call the Romani people manouches and their general feeling for the nomadic group is one of distrust.

  “Why visit Verites?” Nica asks, his intense gaze fixed on me. “Are friends with their granddaughter?”

  “My husband knew their granddaughter.”

  “Husband.” Nica snickers. “Knows granddaughter.”

  I flash Olivia a confused expression. She shrugs.

  “How do you know the Verites?” Olivia asks.

  Nica’s answer is to stare straight ahead and keep on grinning, as if he didn’t hear the question. “Take you to the dock near Verites. Short walk from there.”

  “Walk?” I look at Olivia.

  “Apparently there is only one taxi on the island and the driver is in the hospital,” Olivia explains.

  “How many people live on the island?” I ask Nica.

  Nica shrugs. Standing at the wheel, with the wind blowing his long black hair, he looks every bit the cutthroat pirate.

  “The island has good salt marshes. Most of the people harvest the sea salt.” Nica eases off the throttle and the boat slows as we approach a long wooden dock. “Are here.”

  A wooden rowboat tied to the dock is the only sign that the island is inhabited by more than lichen-covered rocks and squawking seabirds.

  Nica signals when it is safe for us to jump onto the dock. I am expecting him to kill the motor and lead us to where we want to go, but he remains at the wheel.

  “Follow path up hill. Verites cottage close.”

  “You’re not coming with us?”

  He pulls a beanie out of his back jeans pocket and puts it on, arranging the brim low over his black brows.

  “You will be here when we get back, right?” Olivia asks.

  “Yes,” he says, waving us away. “Go now. Storm here soon.”

  The sound of distant thunder rolling closer has us scrambling up the narrow path, our feet slipping on the muddy earth. We make it to the top of the hill and spot a stone cottage in the distance, surrounded by what appear to be rectangular pools of ruddy water. The edges of the pools are rimmed in a crusty grayish-white substance. In the distance, someone is raking one of the pools with a long wooden stick.

  I squat at the edge of one of the pools and pinch some of the wet, gritty salt between my fingers.

  “What are you doing?” Olivia asks.

  I toss the salt over my shoulder for good luck and make a silent wish for the rumors about Xavier to be false.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  The cottage is humble, with blue painted shutters at the deep-set windows and a roof missing a few of its shingles. I t
ry to imagine the sophisticated brunette in the Marchesa wedding gown as a girl playing with her dolls in the small garden beside the cottage. Did she gaze out over the marshes at the sea and dream about the day she would escape the tiny island? Did she pinch salt between her fingers and wish for a knight-errant to carry her off to his château?

  My chest aches for that little girl, even though I don’t know her. It aches for Xavier, who loved and lost.

  “Here goes nothing,” Olivia says, lifting the brass door-knocker and rapping it against the door.

  I reach for Olivia’s other hand, childishly clinging onto it. The door creaks open and a stoop-backed old woman eyes us warily.

  “Bonjour,” Olivia says, smiling. “Êtes-vous Madame Verite?”

  “Oui,” she says, looking behind us.

  Olivia introduces herself and tells the woman I am Manderley de Maloret, Xavier’s new wife. Madame Verite inhales sharply, the air whistling between teeth. She looks at me with open hostility.

  When Olivia says something else, Madame Verite shakes her head and tries to close the door. Olivia sticks her foot in the opening.

  “Wait!” she cries. “Où se trouve Marine? Avez-vous vu votre petite-fille récemment?”

  “Non!”

  Madame Verite shuts the door with a final, firm bang.

  “What did you ask her?”

  “I asked her if she has seen her granddaughter recently and she said no.”

  My shoulders slump. I want to curl up on Madame Verite’s doorstep and cry tears as salty as the water in the marshes. I don’t blame the woman for not wanting to talk to us, strangers who suddenly appeared on her doorstep demanding information about her granddaughter, the ex-wife of my husband. She can’t know how much I have risked in coming to see her.

  “I am not giving up that easy,” Olivia says, reaching for the door knocker. “I said you were going to have answers before the sun sets, and I intend to get them even if it means I have to pull a Liam Neeson on the old broad and threaten her with my special set of skills.”

  “No.” I grab her hand. “Maybe this is a sign that we aren’t supposed to be here, prying into Xavier’s past.”

  “Sign-schmine,” Olivia says, pulling her hand away. “Don’t you want to know about Marine?”

  “What do you want to know about Marine?”

  A stocky man with ruddy cheeks chapped and wrinkled from years of working by the sea is walking up the path, a long wooden rake resting on his shoulder.

  “Are you Monsieur Verite?” Olivia asks.

  “Oui.”

  “Bonjour, Monsieur Verite,” I say, stepping closer. “My name is Manderley de Maloret.”

  “Manderley de Maloret, you say?” he says, his accent thick.

  “Yes.”

  “We don’t wish to pry, monsieur, but we have a few questions about your granddaughter we were hoping you could answer,” Olivia says.

  Monsieur Verite lifts the rake off his shoulder and rests it against the side of the house beside the door. “You already spoke to Madame Verite, I assume?”

  “Yes.”

  “She wouldn’t answer your questions.”

  He says it as statement rather than a question, but Olivia still answers.

  “No, she wouldn’t.”

  “Come,” he says, gesturing for us to follow him. “We can talk in the barn.”

  We follow him into an old stone gite filled with rakes like the one he had been carrying, wooden wheelbarrows, and battered wicker baskets, to a scarred oak picnic table. He flips on an overhead light and invites us to sit on one of the benches on either side of the table.

  “What is it you wish to know about my granddaughter”—he folds his wrinkled hands on the table in front of him—“and why have you not asked your husband these questions?”

  “You’re right, monsieur. I shouldn’t be here,” I say, guilty heat fanning over my cheeks. “I should be at home, waiting for my husband to return from his trip. It’s just . . . you see, we didn’t know each other long before we eloped, and my friend has heard rumors.”

  “What rumors?”

  Olivia shares everything Caro told her with Monsieur Verite. He listens carefully, without interrupting, and then says, “In France, we have a proverb: Dans une bouche close, il n’entre point de mouche. It means, ‘A closed mouth catches no flies.’ Saint-Maturinus is full of people whose mouths are full of buzzing insects.”

  “Are you saying the rumors aren’t true?”

  “I do not pretend to know what happened between Marine and Xavier and I refuse to speculate, but you should understand something, madame. My granddaughter was une mauvaise femme.”

  A bad woman.

  “I knew something wasn’t right with Marine when she was still a young girl. She seemed incapable of expressing genuine warmth. She didn’t laugh and play easily with the other children on the island. She was arrogant, bossy, and at times, cruel. She would manipulate the children into giving her their favorite toys, not because she wanted them, but because she didn’t want them to have more than she had.” Monsieur Verite stares at me vacantly and I realize he is caught in a complex cobweb of memories. “As a teenager, she would steal money from my wallet and lie about it. Even then, Marine could not admit when she had made a mistake.”

  “Do you think she started the rumors?”

  Monsieur Verite is still lost in his cobweb. It takes a few seconds for my question to reach him.

  “It would not surprise me, madame.”

  “Do you know where she went after she left Xavier?”

  He shakes his head. The flat, vacant look in his eyes has been replaced by sadness, and resignation, perhaps.

  “My best guess is that a better opportunity presented itself and she grabbed it with both of her greedy little hands.”

  If there is a better opportunity than being married to a kind, generous man like Xavier de Maloret, I don’t know what it is.

  “What about Coco?”

  He frowns. “Her little dog?”

  “Yes. She left her behind.”

  “Bah!” He waves his hands. “She never cared for that dog, any dog, really.”

  “Did Xavier give Coco to Marine?”

  “Non.” Monsieur Verite shifts in his seat. “Marine was never a faithful person, you see? She would tell Xavier she was coming to stay here and then go sailing with that man. The dog was a present from him.”

  “Xavier knew she was having an affair?”

  “He called here once, worried because Marine was late in coming home. If Madame Verite had answered the phone, she would have given him an excuse, but I answered. I would not lie for Marine. She stopped visiting after that, stopped calling her grandmother.”

  “Poor Xavier,” I say, remembering how I once likened him to a jungle cat with a thorn in his paw. He had a thorn, alright, but it wasn’t lodged in his paw, it was lodged in his heart.

  “Oui,” Monsieur Verite says, exhaling heavily. “I am certain Marine did many things to hurt Xavier. She only married him because he was a de Maloret.”

  Outside a bolt of lightning zigzags across the leaden sky, followed by a drumroll of thunder.

  “Thank you, Monsieur Verite,” I say, standing. “I appreciate your candor.”

  “Go home to your husband, Madame de Maloret. Go home, put your worries to rest, and wake tomorrow grateful that you are married to a good man.”

  “Thank you, monsieur. I will.”

  We are halfway to the door when Monsieur Verite calls after us. “If you don’t want the burden of caring for Coco, you could return her to my granddaughter’s gypsy boyfriend.”

  Olivia grabs my arm and we both turn around to look at Monsieur Verite.

  “Gypsy?”

  “Oui,” Monsieur Verite says. “The vagrant who lives in the toll house on the mainland. His name is—”

  “Nicabar!”

  Chapter Forty

  “Nicabar gave us the shaft!” Olivia cries. “Bâtard!”

&nbs
p; We are standing on the dock, staring across the channel separating the island from the mainland, a thin rain plastering our hair to our faces.

  “In hindsight, maybe we shouldn’t have paid him until we were safely back on the mainland.”

  “He still would have left us here.” Olivia angrily swipes her bangs off her forehead. “It wasn’t about the money for that shady, cunning bastard. It was a way to use you to stick it to Xavier.”

  Normally, I would urge my best friend to give the man the benefit of the doubt, but I remember the way Nica leered at me when he learned I was Madame de Maloret and I am inclined to believe the worst of him.

  “I’ll call Caro and explain what has happened.” I fish around in my purse for my iPhone. “I will ask her to call one of those charter captains to pick us up.”

  “Good idea!”

  I pull my phone out and my heart sinks when I see SEARCHING FOR NETWORK in the status bar.

  “We are out of range.”

  “What?” Olivia cries. The cool, composed woman has left the island. “What are we going to do? We can’t stay on this island all night. A storm is coming. What if it is a hurricane and we are swept out to sea?”

  “Calm down,” I say, pulling a collapsible umbrella from my purse. “We will walk to the top of the hill and see if I get a signal.”

  “Good idea.”

  I flick the umbrella open and we huddle beneath it. We are halfway up the hill when I slip in the mud, my smooth-soled espadrilles providing no traction on the slick ground. I fall to my knees, scraping my skin on a sharp rock. Olivia helps me up. I wipe the blood-streaked mud from my knee and we finish climbing to the top of the hill.

  “Still no signal.”

  “You have got to be kidding me,” she cries, grabbing my iPhone and holding it at different angles. “What kind of godforsaken place is this? Who lives on an island without cell service?”

  “Robinson Crusoe. Swiss Family Robinson.”

  “Funny.”

  “We are going to be just fine,” I say, taking my iPhone from her and slipping it back in my purse. I pull a Kleenex out of my bag, dab my knee, and cover the cut with a Band-Aid. “If Leo could survive The Beach, you will survive this island.”