So it came to be that Georgia Abernathy decided she would pay a visit to the St. Claire house. It had been years since she had set foot in that home on the hill. It had been that long since she had driven her big Mercury any farther than church and the grocery store; she had become nervous and a poor driver, but she chanced it that day. She took the car down and had it washed and refueled and began her five mile drive down Lakeside Drive, heart pounding as she made the sharp and winding curves through the woods.
She was relieved that Lucas St. Claire greeted her kindly at the door, but then she had always known him to be a gentleman. He showed her into the great room where she seated herself in the straight back chair after being offered a plushy club chair instead. She sat forward with her feet together and hands knotted. She began to struggle for the words, and suddenly they came to her in a rush:
“Lucas, it was most difficult for me to come here...as you might imagine...and the last place I ever thought I would be. I don’t guess it’s any secret that I blamed your daughter for the death of my son. He worshiped Emma. She could do no wrong in his eyes, and when he was not with her, he was miserable. When she broke up with him, he was inconsolable. I don't know that it was a healthy relationship because it was more of an obsession. Youngsters can have such intense feelings and they don't know how to handle them. Yet now I don’t think it caused my boy to take his life. I'm no longer sure it was suicide. I believe I was wrong about some things.”
Lucas leaned forward and unfolded her clinched hands in his. As he looked into her eyes, time rolled away, and he saw the girl Georgia once was: a laughing, happy girl .
“You know, sometimes, when I see you, I remember the good times. I remember us,” he said.
A slight smile played about her mouth to soften its severity. “We were quite the pair weren't we, Lucas?”
“We were the best. If I hadn't gone into the service right after after high school, I would have given John Abernathy a run for his money.”
“But you met Grace, and she was more worldly than this hometown girl and...maybe prettier.”
“There was never anyone prettier than you Georgia. A young man just gets confused and lonely when he’s away from his sweetheart. There’s always a different type of girl who goes after what she wants, and young men aren't equipped to handle them yet. And Grace always knows what she wants, whether it for the best or not. That is what happened to us. Have I never told you?”
“And then, that’s what happened with Ethan and Emma wasn’t it? There was Amy between them.”
“Yes...and that’s what happened to your son and my daughter. It became a tragedy for both. Unrequited young love is always tragic, but always memorable and always...always...the impossible standard for all love that comes after it.”
“Lucas, I came here to tell Emma I’m sorry. I wanted to say I’ve been wrong. It came to me yesterday that Ethan did not take his own life. I believe someone else did... perhaps in a moment of heat and anger…or perhaps even premeditated. After all these years, I doubt we’ll have the full story...but I believe I know who may have been responsible.”
“Say no more, Georgia. I will see if I can talk to someone who can look into it. It’s been such a long time ago, you know? Even if there is no retribution, no justice, you deserve the truth...and so does Emma. “Now…” he said, as he squeezed her hand “... if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do...but I’ll call Emma from out back. She’s painting again...and Georgia…”
“Yes Lucas?”
“Take care of yourself, will you?”
Emma came in with her art supplies and a couple of canvasses under her arm. Following her was Junior. The big dog wagged his tail and plopped down at Georgia’s feet as if she were a long lost friend.
Georgia gasped “My Lord...it’s Mutt. It’s Ethan’s dog. No, it couldn't be, not after all these years.”
Emma set her things on the coffee table and sat down opposite Georgia. “Amazing resemblance to Mutt, isn't it? He acts as if he knows you. He wasn’t so friendly to Tommy yesterday.”
“I can imagine why he wouldn’t be. Animals sense things about people and are better at it than we humans. Emma, I think I’ve wrongly blamed you...and held a bitterness against you that was wrongly placed. Even if Ethan had taken his life, I should not have blamed you. You had no ill will toward him. He broke your heart...and when our hearts are broken...we say things that never should be said. Do we not?”
“We do,” Emma replied. “Yes, we do, and I would give anything on this earth to take back what I said the last time I talked to your son.”
“I know. Don’t cry now. I can't abide tears. It’s alright.”
Then Georgia looked at Emma as if she were seeing her clearly for the first time. “You were hurt even more than I, weren’t you? All of us...this whole town...we’ve blamed you for all these years. What a terrible burden you’ve carried. No wonder you chose to live in Boston.”
Emma reached for one of her paintings, the one called “Two at Moon Lake”, and handed it to Georgia. “I want to return this to you, if you will have it. I just finished retouching it this morning. But tell me if you now see the truth in this painting...the love between me and your son. When you gave it back, you told me it was a lie. Please look at it, and tell me you can change your mind.’
“Yes, oh yes, Emma. The love shines through in your work, and I would be honored to bring it back where it belongs... back on the wall of Ethan’s old bedroom.”
“You have no idea how happy that makes me.”
“Oh...I believe I do know.”
At last, Georgia rose slowly from the chair, and a haunted look came into her eyes. “Justice for our Ethan will come...in one form or another. I just know it.”
Then she walked to the door and turned to give Emma a sweet and vague farewell smile. When she spoke , her words came softly, almost in a whisper: “Everyone in Cobblers Cove will see the truth. Just you wait and see. Everyone in this clannish little town is going to be as sorry as I am for judging you.”
12: Father and Daughter
Lucas figured Emma had experienced enough drama to last a lifetime—all in one week-end. There had been too many strange occurrences since she had arrived in Cobblers Cove; it made him rethink the need for his daughter to face the past, to bring it forward and resolve it. What if there was no resolution? What if that resolution was not worth the misery? Did a person need to face every ghost from their past? Maybe he had been wrong. Maybe the truth was only valuable if it released Emma from a virtual prison of uncertainty, rather than plummeting her even farther into the depths of despair. Which would it be?
Yet he had to trust in some inner strength in his daughter that was not readily apparent at this point in her life. Had he and Grace not witnessed true grit when, as a child, she had stood up to bullies and had relished climbing the tallest tree in the neighborhood on a dare even going against their continuous warnings? No, Emma had never been a coward, he decided. She was a bit emotional yes, but that was what made her who she was. It was that sensitivity that made her both creative and perceptive.
He had to believe that when the truth finally came, Emma would be flooded with that old rush of spirit she had displayed—all the way up to the moment she found Ethan’s lifeless body. As Emma's doctor had told them: “Even steel has a melting point.” Yet once melted, could she not be remolded?
As Emma's father, he felt a protectiveness toward her, to the point that the old stand by hands off approach now seemed like some pointless game with no clear rules.
Someone was messing with Emma's mind, and that person was undoubtedly the person who knew what really happened to Ethan. How could he know Emma's life was not in danger as well? He had to know who that person was, even if it was Brad Caldwell himself—someone he loved like a son. The thought of that was inconceivable, but he knew in his gut that you can’t know the inner workings of anyone's mind not even your own flesh and blood. One could only go on the past which sometimes
became a history textbook slanted with bias and distorted facts.
With those thoughts, Lucas decided what they both needed was a relaxing day on the lake, doing a little fishing in the early morning hours when the lake was at its quietest—just the two of them and maybe that shaggy stray hulk of a dog Emma called Junior.
As for Emma, she had surprised him by seeming happy to get away. There were the phone calls from Benjamin, which seemed never ending. Ben would go from pressuring her to return to Boston to bribing her with the possibility of a showing of her artwork. It was the strongest persuasion he could muster. For that reason, Emma agreed to a day on the lake, as long as it was Lucas there beside her. If quiet time on the lake brought total recall of the day of Ethan's death, then so be it.
On the way out, the water was smooth, and the pontoon boat glided effortlessly over its surface, until they reached the thicketed inlet that had been their old fishing spot. Junior promptly jumped in the water to paddle around and then returned to the boat for a nap. They dropped their lines and sat silently for almost an hour until Emma at last began to speak, sensing that her father was ready to listen:
“I know you brought me out here to talk about the things that have been happening lately, and I wish I knew what to tell you. The dreams have stopped just short of recalling one last detail. I was so close to seeing it all. Daddy, sometimes it's just too painful to talk about.”
“So, is that because what you saw could implicate someone?’
“Maybe, but I don’t really know who it will implicate...if anyone. I see just the blur of a face through the stand of pines over there close to the pier, on the other side of the lake. Just when this face is about to come into focus, I wake up...and now...I’ve had no more dreams about it….or I’m just not recalling them.”
Lucas appeared to be turning her words in his mind, while setting his hook in response to the tug on the line. He pulled a catfish to the surface.
“You remember how to clean fish?” he grinned.
Emma smiled but shook her head. “That’s one more thing I choose not to recall.”
Lucas chuckled in agreement and released the fish back into the lake. They watched it return to the safe, muddy bottom of Moon Lake where secrets ancient and unknown lay hidden for eternity. But some day soon the fish would do it all over again. Lucas figured that a fish doesn't learn from getting hooked but takes the bait time after time. Were humans much different?
“Reminds me of what its like with bad relationships,” he said. “Sometimes its best to just catch and release, because its more trouble than its worth. Only a few keepers out there…what you might call trophy catches.”
“I get your drift, Dad, but there are probably no trophy catches in this town, and I'm not looking to mount the head of my prospective lover on my wall.”
“Speaking of hooked fish...didn't look like Brad was struggling too hard yesterday in front of the diner. He wasn’t exactly putting up a fight. Much like this little fish I just caught. As a matter of fact, Brad looked like he was hopelessly hooked to me.”
He squinted at his daughter with mirth tugging at the corners of his mouth: “Is he a keeper, Emma?”
Emma's eyes flew wide: “First of all, to borrow your absurd fishing metaphor, I never dangled bait in an attempt to hook anybody. Brad grabbed me...not the other way around...and to answer your question...I don't know if he is a keeper. There are too many unanswered questions. Brad has become somewhat of a mystery to me.”
“A touch of mystery in a man is not a bad thing. Keeps him interesting.”
“And maybe dangerously so.”
“That's what we have to know, isn't it, Emmie? We have to know where the danger lies...no matter where and with whom...no matter how badly it hurts.”
“Yes. That’s what we must do,” came her soft reply.
The afternoon's excursion ended at dusk with the slanting rays of sunlight glinting gold across the water. The ride back to shore was silent except for the steady hum of the boat motor. Junior hung over the side of the boat and peered into the water underneath the pier, causing Emma to grasp his collar to reign him in.
While Lucas secured the boat and gathered his gear, Emma brought Junior uphill toward the house, but the dog became resistant and began to bark and pull against her. Before she had time to react, he had gotten loose from her grasp and had taken off back down to the bank, where he began frantically digging deep into the wet red clay at the front of the pier. He dug until he had made a hole as big as his head.
Emma panicked. Not there...please do not disturb that site!
She fought to overcome her discomfort by taking slow deep breaths as she ran. Before she reached the dog, he held in his mouth a metallic, mud–caked object. Lucas took it from the dog it and wiped down what appeared to be a broken silver plated chain from which dangled a heart shaped charm. It looked as if it had been buried beneath the silt and clay for a very long time—close to where Ethan had lost his life. Quickly, he turned the broken necklace over and over in his hand, holding it up to the dying light.
One word was engraved thereon: “Amy”.
Lucas stuffed the necklace into his pocket and said not a word.
“What did he find?” Amy asked as she reached the bank.
“Nothing much,” Lucas replied.
13: Ruby and Lucas
Three o'clock in the morning on Tuesday, before any living soul walked the streets, Ruby McGuire trudged down a dark alley to the back entrance of her diner. She felt the weariness of Monday in the dull throb in her lower back, but she knew she would manage. She had managed during thirty years of feeding hungry people and listening to their problems and the local gossip. The diner was the hub of the community, and as weary as she was at times, it was she who was the wheel.
Ruby switched on the light switch in the kitchen and squinted against the hard glare of the overhead neon light. The austerity of her life surrounded her: the small, pristine kitchen with its industrial appliances and over- sized pots waiting to be filled day after day. There was coffee to put on, pies to bake, and biscuits to set. So she began to work quickly and efficiently, as her hands and mind awakened. She was free to think in those early hours just before the breakfast customers took control of her time and her thoughts.
One day was much like another. Nothing much had changed in Cobblers Cove, since the first day she set foot in that kitchen where she had spent so much of her life; it was as if she herself had been stuck in a time warp along with the town itself. There she still stood: a divorcee with grown kids, a house with a second mortgage she struggled to pay off , and a business profit that dwindled each year from the rising cost of produce.
She had come to accept the idea that she would probably not remarry, even though she had kept company with Lucas St Claire not long after his legal separation from his wife. How long had it been she wondered. Had it indeed been eighteen years? Surely not. Where had time gone. Where had her life gone?
During that time, she hung on, even as her chances for remarriage had dwindled. She hadn’t fooled herself about Lucas’ intentions, nor had he promised more than he could deliver. Lucas was an honest man. But somehow, she had bet against stark reality that Grace would grant him a divorce. It had never materialized; and even if it had, she was not so sure she would have been Lucas’ pick for wife number two.
Thinking back, she remembered it had been Georgia he had dated in high school, and even though his old flame had gone a bit loony, Ruby figured first love was always there in the back of his mind. And wasn’t it always that same for everyone on God's small blue planet?
Then she rolled out her pie crust and turned to the stove to stir her cream fillings, all the while wondering if in the early days of the St. Claire marriage, there had been happiness. Lucas had been a lonely young man in the Air Force when he met Grace, some said it had been a whirlwind courtship...too fast and hot not to cool down. Tongues wagged over the oddity of a St. Claire marrying a Yankee, but that was b
efore political correctness set in. It was longer cute to poke fun at those unfortunate enough to be born north of the Mason- Dixon.
Grace had never truly fit in with the citizens of Cobblers Cove. Folks whispered about Lucas’ uppity bride, saying she was stand-offish, but Ruby had defended her, saying maybe she was shy—knowing better all along but protecting Lucas from the gossip.
No one, herself included, was surprised when Grace left Lucas and returned to Boston. Some said she followed Emma who was either sent there—or chose to live there—in Boston with her grandmother Donovan. Some said there had been a rift between the St. Claires, but whatever happened, the couple never lived together again. That much Ruby knew. Beyond that, she asked no questions.
In her early morning solitude, Ruby had time to think before the demand of the customers consumed her, body and mind. She floured her board to roll out the biscuit dough, and began to think of the fight that had broken out last Saturday—the blood on the diner floor and Tommy Walker’s swollen and slightly askew nose which had met with Brad Caldwell’s fist. As far as Ruby was concerned, the big mouth got what he deserved, after sneaking around inferring that Brad had something to do with Ethan’s death. It made no sense that he would just now bring it up. No, something more was behind it, she thought.
She had never understood what made Tommy tick. He had been a misfit from back when he was a husky high school football player, coming in with Amy for burgers—along with the rest of the Invincibles: jocks and jokers, eggheads and divas and some regular good kids. There must have been a dozen of them huddling in the back booths, while the adults sat at the front tables or the counter to escape the raucousness of youth. From three o'clock on, when school let out until curfew, laughter had flowed and the jukebox had played.
She remembered Ethan Abernathy and Emma St Claire in a booth alone, as if what they had was too precious to share. She could still picture the adoration in Ethan's eyes when he looked at Emma while their special songs played. Everyone who saw them together figured they two would marry some day ; yet Ruby had felt in her heart that Emma’s best friend Brad Caldwell would have been a better match. He had come from the same kind of people and had been Emma’s companion all their lives. He understood the girl and was always there when she had needed him. Ruby figured that’s the way it was with youth. Kids seldom saw what was right before their eyes. Still, Ethan and Emma dated throughout high school and had been inseparable.
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