by Lea Wait
“I don’t care what the picture’s of. It ain’t yours. He said he was going to change his will. But unless he did it today, under our noses, he ain’t done it yet. You have no right to that painting.”
“Silas, it’s all right. Ted gave the painting to Sarah. I was there; I saw him.” I stepped toward Silas. He stunk of coffee brandy, but at four or five feet from us, that wouldn’t interfere with his aim. I turned slightly. “Sarah, give me your keys.”
She handed them to me, whispering, “I don’t want that drunk driving my van!”
“Silas, Sarah and I aren’t going anywhere. Neither is the painting. See?” I held up the keys. “These are the keys to the van. Now why don’t we all go together and find Ted and ask him about the painting.”
“That man never liked me. But I’ve taken care of his damned daughter all these years. Thinks she’s so great, growing up in this place”—he gestured wildly with the gun—“but that father of hers never gave us nothing. Said we’d married without him, we could live without him. Figured someday he’d die and we’d get what was rightfully ours. But now he goes and gives it to some foreigner who don’t even speak English right.”
I could feel Sarah stiffen behind me.
“Silas, put the gun away. Let’s go and find Ted. If he agrees Sarah’s stolen the painting then I’ll call the police myself. I promise.”
He hesitated.
“Remember, I have the keys to the van. No one—Sarah or anyone else—can drive the van and the painting away while I have the keys.”
“You’d really call the cops?”
“I would. You have my word on that. And if they find you waving that gun around, they’ll arrest you instead of Sarah. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”
He slowly shook his head.
Then he put his gun in the holster I now saw under his shirt. Had he worn the damned thing all morning?
“Let’s all go together now. Slowly. Ted’s probably still in the house.”
The three of us moved cautiously toward the kitchen door. Inside the kitchen Silas stopped to pick up another bottle of Bradley’s. Just what he needed. But I didn’t object. “Ted?” I called. “Ted, are you here?”
No one answered for a few minutes. Then Ted started down the stairs from his bedroom. He’d dressed for the lobster bake in old paint-covered pants and a sweatshirt.
“I’m here. What’s the problem?”
“Silas saw Sarah and I putting that painting in her van. He thinks she stole it.” I turned to look at Silas. “He pulled a gun on us.”
“Damn it, Silas, don’t get involved with what isn’t your business. I gave that painting to Sarah. It’s a portrait of her grandmother my dad did back in the forties, not a multimillion-dollar seascape.”
“You sure she didn’t steal it?”
“Absolutely sure. Now, if you still have that gun on you, I want you to give it to me, right now.”
Silas didn’t move.
“Silas, I don’t allow guns in this house, and you know it.”
Silas slowly took the gun out of his holster and handed it to Ted.
“Now, I’m going to put this in my safe. I’ll give it back to you before you leave tomorrow. In the meantime, I don’t want you harassing Sarah or questioning what I choose to do with what’s still mine. I’ll be dead soon enough, and you and Abbie and the boys can fight for every can opener in this place. But for now I’m in charge, and if you don’t do as I say, you can get your wife and the two of you drive back to the County tonight. Hear me?”
“I hear you, Ted.” Silas looked as though Ted had just stuck a pin in him.
“Tell Sarah you’re sorry.”
“Sorry, Sarah.” Silas’s words were as clear as they could be after all he’d drunk, but I saw his eyes. He might be saying he was sorry, but he was furious. I didn’t trust him an inch.
“Silas, you’ve got the bottle you came for. Why don’t you go on down to the beach?” I handed the car keys to Sarah. “Sarah, lock your van. And why don’t I go with you, Ted, to make sure that gun goes in your safe.”
He looked at me questioningly, but nodded.
Sarah waited until Silas had started down the path to the beach. “Hide your car keys somewhere no one can find them,” I advised her quietly. “Now, Ted, I’m sorry to bother you, but we’d better get that gun into a safe place. I want to make sure Silas doesn’t come back for it.”
The day was still young. I hoped for Ted’s and Sarah’s sake that we could all enjoy the lobster bake and that the trouble was over.
But I was wrong. Trouble was just starting.
Chapter Eighteen
“Teach me the measure of my days
Thou maker of my fame
I would survey life’s narrow space
And learn how frail I am.”
—From sampler completed by Fanny Rine. Fanny was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on September 26, 1796, and stitched her sampler at Mrs. Armstrong’s School, also in Lancaster, in 1808.
Sarah took Ted’s arm as the three of us headed down the worn rocky path toward the beach. Both of them looked shaken, but all was well. Silas’s gun was locked away, as was Sarah’s painting. Even I didn’t know where she’d hidden her van keys.
Maybe we’d seen the end of a family conflict. With everyone around, Silas would be more under control. I hoped.
Preparations for the lobster bake were in full force by the time we got to the beach. The food was piled in bags and buckets to one side, a pit about four feet wide and two feet deep had been dug, and Michael, Luke, and Abbie were carefully covering the bottom of the pit with two layers of medium-sized sea stones. Jeremy, wearing a multipocketed fishing jacket that looked brand-new, was climbing over rocks on one side of the beach, tearing off handfuls of rockweed and tossing them into a large plastic garbage can.
Silas stood alone on the other side of the beach, looking out to sea and lifting his bottle of Bradley’s to his lips.
“You don’t need any more rocks than that?” Patrick was asking. “I thought the hole would be deeper.”
“Pit doesn’t need to be deeper. Just deep enough to hold the rocks and seaweed and food,” Luke explained.
“What about all the wood?” Patrick pointed to a pile of driftwood and branches that I assumed had come from Ted’s woodpile. “When you put the wood on the stones, you’ll fill up the pit.”
Michael grinned. “Watch and learn from the masters.” He stood up and stretched. “If you feel the way I do, Luke, I’ll be fighting you for a hot bath and painkillers tonight.”
“If you went to the gym more often, your muscles wouldn’t object as much,” said his brother.
But he was stretching, too.
“You’ve done a great job with the pit and stones, boys. Time for the kindling, I think.” Ted sat on a rock near the sea grasses. Someone had spread blankets on the sand for the rest of us.
“Yes, sir,” said Abbie, grinning. “I brought a stack of old newspapers you hadn’t recycled yet down from the barn. We can start with those.” She tossed small stacks to Sarah and me, instructing us to knot them, and then put them on top of the stones in the pit.
I showed Sarah how. Then Luke and Michael covered our layers of newspaper knots with small branches, and then with medium-sized logs. The siblings might not have seen each other frequently, but they knew how to work together.
“Dad, I think you should light it,” said Luke. “For old times’ sake.”
Ted pulled matches from the pocket of the old canvas jacket he’d put on over his sweatshirt and knelt to carefully light the newspapers in several places. Sarah helped him stand and we all watched as the papers caught fire and began igniting the kindling.
“When do we put the food on the fire?” Patrick asked.
Everyone smiled. But no one laughed.
“The fire has to burn for a while, Patrick. Maybe an hour. Maybe longer. When the wood is just about gone, and the stones are hot, you’ll see. In the meantime,
you folks need to collect more rockweed. I’ll handle the corn detail and keep an eye on the pit,” Ted pronounced.
I felt like saluting. Ted must have been a tough dad. Today no one was complaining about being given orders, likely because they knew it would be the last time they’d gather in just this way.
Patrick and I stayed back a little, picking up a couple of large garbage bags and knives then heading to the rocks at the edge of the water.
“What’s ‘corn detail’?” he asked as I bent down and showed him how to pull or cut off pieces of rockweed attached to rocks, or pick up pieces of kelp that had floated in from deeper waters. It was a harder job than it sounded. It was almost impossible to have too much seaweed for a lobster bake.
“Traditionally, people steam the whole ear of corn, with the husk, on top of the seaweed. But it’s late in the season, and September corn is tougher. Ted’s going to shuck the outer layers, leaving the thinner layers of the husk on the ear.”
“Won’t the husks burn?” asked Patrick. He was finding it difficult to loosen the rockweed from the rocks. His hands couldn’t hold the knife tightly enough.
“He’ll soak the almost-shucked corn in a garbage can filled with seawater. The saltwater will add some flavor to the corn, and keep it from burning.” I stood up. “Do me a favor and hold the plastic bag open? My hands are slippery, and I have trouble opening it to put the rockweed in.”
Patrick looked at me. “You can just say it. I can’t scrape the rockweed with these damn hands of mine. Don’t pretend, Angie. We both know what the problem is. Don’t pity me.”
“I know you’re having trouble. But I’m not pitying you,” I answered. “I am struggling with the plastic bag. We can help each other.”
Patrick stood up. “I don’t want any special treatment, Angie. Not ever. Not from anyone. And especially not from you.”
“Understood.” I reached down, severed another piece of rockweed, and tossed it into the bag Patrick was holding. “Look—the others are going back to the beach. Maybe we have enough.”
“We’ll go see,” Patrick agreed. “But if they need more, we’re coming back.” Then he smiled. “I’ll admit, I had no idea how hard putting together a do-it-yourself lobster bake would be.”
“Next time back to the caterer?” I smiled.
“Not sure about that. But this all better taste spectacular.”
“It’ll be memorable, no matter what,” I said. “Your first authentic lobster bake, after all!”
“I’m grateful to you, and Sarah, and especially to Ted, for including me,” he said as we headed back to the section of the beach where the others were gathering. “I know I’m an outsider. But I’m serious about making Haven Harbor my home. I want to learn about living here.”
I didn’t tell him that to most Mainers in Haven Harbor he’d always be “from away.” Or that, despite her newly discovered roots, so would Sarah. But being from away didn’t mean people wouldn’t accept him as he was. He’d be different, but still part of the community.
“I’m glad you’re here, too,” I said. I wished my hands weren’t full of knives and plastic bags full of salty-smelling rockweed. I wished I could hug Patrick, or hold his hand. The best I could do was touch his shoulder with mine as we walked across the sandy beach to where the lobsters’ pyre was burning.
Chapter Nineteen
“Sweet music descend and bless the shade
And bless the evening grove
Business and noise and day are fled
And every care but love.”
—The beginning of a poem stitched on the inner bed valance (so it could be read by those in the bed) by Mary Swett Bulman about 1745-1750. Mary, who’d been born in Boston, married Dr. Alexander Bulman in 1730, when she was fifteen. After his death in 1745 during the siege of Louisbourg she began needlepointing these elaborately flowered bed hangings, perhaps to keep her mind busy. Her set, including four curtains, a coverlet, headcloth, tester, outer and inner valances, is the most complete set of bed hangings from this period to survive. Today they are in the Museum of Old York in York, Maine.
“Getting close to raking time,” Ted declared. “Corn’s soaking, and looks like you have enough seaweed. It’s a little early to open the champagne, but anyone want beer or wine?”
Silas, of course, had been drinking all along. He was focusing on his bottle of Bradley’s. Michael poured several plastic cups of chardonnay and passed them around. I suspected he would have preferred scotch.
“To the lobsters!” toasted Ted. We all raised our glasses (or bottles).
The tide was coming in more quickly now, each incoming wave covering a few more inches of beach. We were all sitting safely above the high tide mark, but by the time the lobsters were red, most of the beach would be under water.
I inhaled the salt air and looked around.
The rock where Ted was sitting was at the top of the beach, almost to where gentle sea breezes were moving the now-yellowing salt grasses and sea lavender in gentle waves. Above him, on the hill overlooking the beach and the sea, stood the Lawrence cottage.
It had been the center of his family. I didn’t know exactly when his father had bought or built The Point, perhaps when Ted was in his teens. But The Point had been designed to stand out. To prove Robert Lawrence’s success to the world.
Maybe that was “the Point.” A joyous declaration of accomplishment.
How many storms had it weathered since then? Nor’easters and blizzards. Pains and sadness of deaths. Joys of marriages and births. Adolescent rebellions and tears. And now more changes were coming. Ted would be leaving this place that he loved. Would one of his children buy it in from the others? He didn’t expect them to. That had been clear last night.
Everyone else was sitting on blankets, looking at the sea, sipping their drinks. Maybe remembering other times on this beach.
Silas faced the sea, while Luke had turned toward the others on the beach. Michael sat alone. Would Luke have acted any differently if his husband had been here this weekend? I suspected not. But I didn’t know.
Jeremy and Abbie sat on either side of Ted. Abbie was refilling his glass. Despite Silas’s reaction earlier this afternoon, the weekend Sarah and Ted had planned seemed to be going as well as they’d expected, if not hoped.
Patrick also sat alone, looking out to sea. Was he thinking of paintings he hoped to do? Of his new life in Maine?
Or were we all just tired from foraging for supplies for the lobster bake? Tired, relaxing, and waiting.
Ted broke the silence. “The fire’s burned down enough now. Who’s got the rake?”
Michael stood and got a heavy iron rake from one of the wagons now lined up below the path to the house and started raking the pieces of wood in the pit.
Patrick leaned toward me and said softly, “What’s he doing now?”
“Breaking up any pieces of wood still unburned, and making sure the coals fall between the rocks to keep them warm. Next . . .”
“Rock time!” Ted announced.
Each of us picked up several stones either near us, or in the pile someone had made earlier, and dropped them carefully on top of the other rocks and the hot ashes.
“Now the seaweed,” Ted continued, almost in an incantation.
Abbie began, filling the pit with the rockweed she’d gathered. “Who has more? We need a couple of feet,” she said. Luke tipped the seaweed-filled garbage cans into the pit as Michael raked it relatively smooth.
Patrick watched in fascination. “That’s a lot of seaweed,” he commented.
I just smiled.
“Now—clams and mussels!”
Jeremy poured the few clams they’d dug that morning, plus the mussels Patrick and I had bought, on top of the seaweed.
“Potatoes . . .” continued Ted. “And Sarah, take the corn out of the water and put it in now. Onions, too.”
The layer of food was getting thicker.
“And now more seaweed!” Ted proclaimed
as though he were announcing a tournament win.
I lugged the bags Patrick and I had filled over to the pit and Luke helped me empty them onto the food.
“What about the lobsters?” Patrick asked.
A few people laughed, but the laughs were good-natured.
“Best for last!” Ted bellowed. I had the feeling his proclamation and directions were part of the Lawrence tradition. “And now—the lobsters!”
We all stood around the pit and passed the bag of lobsters around, each placing two of the creatures, less feisty than they had been earlier, on top of the seaweed. Ted then stood up and added a half dozen eggs to different parts of the lobster layer, while Luke stood by with a large tarp. “Help me, Jeremy?” he asked.
Jeremy looked surprised to be asked, but he and Luke covered the pit, and everything in it, with the tarp. We all fastened the edges down with small rocks and sand so the tarp wouldn’t blow away or let out the gathering steam.
“And now?” asked Patrick.
“Now we have more drinks,” Michael explained. “And wait about half an hour.”
“I remember”—Patrick turned to me—“when the eggs are cooked, so are the lobsters.”
“You’ve got it,” Luke agreed. “The hard work is done. Eating is ahead.”
Of course, there’d be cleaning up, too.
But as the wine bottles made their way around the group, I had the feeling not everything would be cleaned up tonight.
“Finish up that wine,” Ted said. “Champagne comes next. We’ll gorge ourselves and drink champagne and then watch fireworks. It’s going to be a night to remember.”
Ted was right. He didn’t know just how memorable.
Chapter Twenty
“Oh virtue, sorrowing man’s relief
In pity by kind Heaven Sent
Thou takest away the thorn of grief
And Plants instead the rose content.”
