The House on Fripp Island

by Rebecca Kauffman

  Rae wiped sweat from her upper lip and stared down into her book with a frothy, unsettling feeling in her groin. She wanted so much more out of this world.

  Out in the water, Kimmy was creating bubbles in her palm and releasing them one at a time to the surface. She said to Ryan, “Does your sister like boys or girls?”

  “What?”

  “Because there’s a boy at my school who grew his hair out long and it’s because he likes boys. He’s gay, that’s why he wants to have long hair and look like a girl, because he likes boys. I just wondered, with Alex doing that with her hair, I wondered if she likes boys or girls.”

  Ryan looked at Kimmy. “Neither,” he said.

  Kimmy laughed. “Really?”

  Ryan laughed too, then he went underwater for a moment, and when he came up he had a small shell in his hand.

  Kimmy said, “I like Alex. I don’t care if she likes boys or girls. I was just curious. But I really don’t care one way or the other.”

  Ryan said, “Me either.”

  He held the shell out to Kimmy. It was beautiful, the outer cone brown and grayish, soft pink on the inside vortex. He said, “This is a hawk-wing conch.”

  Kimmy said, “Hawk-wing conch.”

  “Doesn’t look like there’s a little guy in there now, but these shells house marine gastropods.”

  “Gas—what?”

  “Sea snails,” Ryan said.

  Kimmy examined the shell. “I want to put it on a necklace. Could you keep it in your pocket for me?”

  Ryan put the shell in the zippered pocket of his swim trunks. He wiped salt water from his eyes and dug his toes deep into the sand.

  Kimmy did a headstand, then came up and said, “I heard that in West Virginia the kids get a day off school to go hunting. Is that true? Like a day off, like a holiday? That is so weird!”

  Ryan nodded.

  Kimmy said, “Do you do it?”

  “I don’t like hunting myself, but a lot of my friends go with their dads on Hunting Day.”

  “Is West Virginia full of hicks? It must be, if you get a day off school to go shoot animals in the woods.”

  Ryan ran a hand through his wet hair. “Some people there rely on hunting to eat. They haul in a buck, that’s fifty pounds of meat they can freeze and eat all winter long, when they might not be able to afford to buy that much meat from the grocery.”

  Kimmy’s easy smile and happy mood vanished immediately. She felt something bad and hard inside and said, “I’m sorry.”

  Ryan laughed generously and dropped low into the water and kicked back so that he was floating. “Don’t be. I’m sorry I made you feel bad. That’s just life where I’m from. I know it’s different where you’re from.” He remained afloat on his back without moving a single muscle. He said, “Can you float?”

  Kimmy said, “How do you mean?”

  “Can you keep afloat on your back like this without paddling or moving at all?”

  “Well, I don’t know. I’m not really a good swimmer.”

  “I’m not either. Just a good floater.”

  Kimmy kicked up her feet. Her silver one-piece filled with water and bubbled up over her belly and chest.

  Ryan said, “It’s easier if you get a big lungful of air.”

  Kimmy did this and found that she was able to float if she kept the slightest current going with her fingers.

  Ryan said, “That’s good. But now you can’t laugh. If you laugh, you’ll let all that good air out and your muscles will tense up and you’ll sink right away. Don’t laugh, OK?”

  When Kimmy looked over at him, he was making a ridiculous face, eyes crossed, lips in a snarl, and tongue sagged out to the side, and she could not help laughing. She sank right away, then she stood up, laughed more, and splashed water at him. “Funny, funny, funny!” she said. She dove under and did a somersault while Ryan continued to float easily on his back. Kimmy came up, shook out her hair, and said, “Do you believe in ghosts?”

  Ryan maintained his position, flat on his back, chin to the air, and he didn’t turn to face her. “Why do you ask?”

  “I asked my teacher in catechism a few weeks ago if ghosts were real, and he said it was unrighteous and ungodly to believe in ghosts except for the Holy Ghost, and so then I had to go to confession, and the priest made me do one Hail Mary.”

  “Did that make you stop believing in ghosts?”

  “No.” Kimmy drew small circles in the water with her index fingers. “I wanted it to, but it didn’t. There are lots of times when I want to stop thinking a thought and I can’t seem to.”

  “Mm.”

  “Well, anyway,” Kimmy continued, “my friend Marti lives in a creepy old house where a little girl died a long time ago, and sometimes Marti sees a little girl in the hallway at night, and she doesn’t have a sister, so it could only be a ghost.”

  “Do you believe her?”

  Kimmy nodded very seriously. “Marti doesn’t lie. So even though I want to stop believing in ghosts, I can’t seem to make myself. It’s weird.”

  Ryan said, “I guess I wonder . . . if ghosts are real, why do they spend so much time sulking around the old houses where they died?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You always hear about people seeing ghosts in creepy old houses where they died. Like your friend Marti’s ghost. Wouldn’t you think, if you were a ghost, that you’d want to go zooming around to all the places you didn’t get to see when you were alive? Instead of walking up and down the same old hallways like some broken toy?” Ryan did a zombie imitation and Kimmy giggled.

  She was quiet for a bit, then said, “My grandma’s got cancer, bad. So we’ll probably be coming to Wheeling for more visits soon. I like going to the train museum.”

  “If you like trains, the next time you guys come visit your grandma, you should go to the depot,” Ryan said.

  Kimmy squinted at the sun, then at Ryan. “You didn’t answer, though, if you believe in ghosts.”

  Ryan tapped his fingers over the water before him, like it was a table. “I don’t wanna put something in your head that’s gonna get you in trouble with your priest, have you saying Hail Marys for the next ten years.”

  “I don’t always tell him everything I’m thinking,” Kimmy ventured.

  “I think believing in ghosts is a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Ryan said. “Same with believing in anything that can’t be proven. Like God. Or karma. Anything that’s a feeling, not a fact.”

  “You think those things are feelings, not facts?”

  Ryan raised one shoulder indifferently.

  Kimmy said, “What’s a self-fulfilling prophecy?”

  “It means once you’ve decided you do or don’t believe in something, everything you see is just going to reinforce your decision.”

  Kimmy considered this, then she said, “Wait, so do you think ghosts are real or not?”

  “I think there’s a strong possibility.” Ryan slapped at some fish that had bonked up against his back underwater.

  Kimmy gazed toward the beach and waved at her sister. Rae did not wave back. “I can’t ever tell if she’s ignoring me,” Kimmy said, “or if she’s just not seeing me.”

  Lisa and Poppy stood together in the kitchen as Lisa stirred her sangria with a butter knife. The pale skin of her cheeks was a patchwork of delicate ruddy veins, and Poppy didn’t know if this was from twenty minutes of midday sun or whatever it was that she had just witnessed at the front door.

  Lisa said, “Have you heard of Megan’s Law?”

  Poppy nodded. “Girl was abducted by her neighbor a couple years back, right? The guy killed her.”

  “That’s right,” Lisa said. “The guy was living right across the street from Megan’s family for years and had some prior convictions, sexual offenses, served his time. The parents didn’t have a clue. After she was killed, they advocated to change the law on making that information public, so parents can know if they’re living next to somebody with a recor
d.”

  “Sure,” Poppy said. “I remember reading about that.”

  “The story hit close to home for me because Kimmy was about the same age as Megan back when it happened. And the idea that that guy was living so close to her family, right there the whole time, and those poor parents didn’t have a clue . . .”

  “Why’ve you got something like that on your mind?” Poppy said. “You watching too much late-night Forensic Files?”

  Lisa said, “I know this sounds like total paranoia, but ever since then I’m in the habit of getting names off the registry.”

  “How’s that?”

  “The sex offenders registry. Any local police department will give you a list of names and addresses if you ask.”

  Poppy stared at her. “And?”

  “There’s no one in our neighborhood at home,” Lisa said, “no one near the girls’ schools. But”—a chill shook through her shoulders—“I always get the list for any place we’re vacationing, too. It’s total paranoia,” she said again, “but I want to know. Not that I’d do anything or say anything, but I’d just want to know.”

  “Sure,” Poppy said, feeling a tense energy rise within her.

  “Anyway, there was one name on the registry for Fripp Island, and I remembered it because it’s so unusual,” Lisa said quietly. “Keats Firestone. You don’t forget a name like that. And when I went to sign for the work on the fridge, there it was, printed on that paper staring right up at me.”

  “He’s on the list,” Poppy said.

  Lisa nodded. Hot sangria breath puffed out of her.

  “I don’t reckon we’ll need to make any more maintenance calls this week,” Poppy said.

  “This island is only three miles long, though, Pop. It’s not like he’s on the other side of the world. He probably lives here. I’m sure he’s around. You know?”

  Poppy considered this. “Did you say they give out the addresses of these guys?”

  Lisa nodded. “It’s on the paper in my purse.”

  She returned a moment later with a handwritten list on yellow legal paper and a map of the island. Together they approximated the location of their beach house on the map and then that of the address listed for Keats Firestone.

  Poppy breathed, “Well, shit,” realizing that he lived about a quarter of a mile up the beach. “How’s a guy working maintenance afford to live in a beachfront house?”

  Lisa said, “Oftentimes a property owner will rent a tiny apartment in the basement or above a garage for their maintenance guys so they can get to all the rentals in a flash.” She stared out the window, down the beach in the direction of Keats Firestone’s house. “Do you think the property manager knows?” Her eyes flashed. “The property manager who sent this guy to our house?”

  “No way,” Poppy said. “If he knew, he definitely wouldn’t be employing the guy.”

  “I should think not,” Lisa said. “Sending him into people’s homes. We should tell him.”

  “You think?” Poppy said.

  Lisa nodded. “Definitely. Wouldn’t you want to know?”

  Poppy hesitated. She felt crowded by the facts of this situation. “Yeah, I would,” she eventually answered. It was quiet for a bit, then she said, “He was wearing a wedding ring.”

  “Was he?”

  Poppy nodded. “And he was a looker, wasn’t he? You usually don’t imagine . . .” Her voice trailed off. Poppy didn’t know about Lisa, but she imagined that sexual predators always had weird haircuts and sunken, piggy eyes. Nothing like this Keats guy.

  Lisa downed the rest of her sangria. She loosened the braid she had put in her ponytail, brushed her chin with the tail of it. “For all the times I’ve done this over the years, I never put much thought into what I’d do if I actually came face-to-face with one of these guys on the list. You don’t think . . . No, we shouldn’t tell our guys. Right? The husbands or the kids.”

  “I don’t want the kids to be scared to leave the house,” Poppy said. “And the husbands would probably be overprotective about it. Let’s keep it between us and keep a close eye on things.” She nodded toward the beach. “Make sure nobody goes wandering too far unsupervised.”

  “I am going to tell the property manager, though,” Lisa said. “I just need to decide how. And when.”

  Poppy glanced back out toward the children and was just noticing that there were only three instead of four out there when she heard a sudden noise from the staircase at the far end of the room.

  Alex’s head emerged, and she came up the stairs and into the kitchen. Towel draped over her shoulders, pink-cheeked and wet-lashed, a patch of sand on her collarbone. She wore a banana-yellow one-piece swimsuit and blue flip-flops.

  Lisa said, “Hey, hon, you need something?” She smiled with teeth that were purpled by sangria.

  “My tummy hurts,” Alex said. “And I’m thirsty.”

  Poppy studied her daughter’s face for a moment. “How long were you there on the stairway?” she said. “Did you hear what we were just talking about?”

  Alex shook her head, but she wore such a strange expression that Poppy was almost certain she was lying. She hadn’t a clue how much of the conversation Alex would even understand, terms like “offender” and “registry.”

  Poppy said, “If you did hear anything we were talking about, it’s nothing to worry about.”

  Lisa said, “How about a Capri Sun?”

  Alex rubbed her palm over her scalp, forehead to neck, which sent a small mist of salt water into the air. “Sure.”

  Poppy pulled her daughter close and tickled her bare neck.

  Lisa popped the yellow straw into the foil packet and handed Alex her drink.

  “What’s Daddy doing?” Alex said.

  “They’re golfing,” Poppy said. “How’s the beach?”

  “We saw a live crab,” Alex said. “And Kimmy made a drip castle. Ryan’s looking at fish. I didn’t know Daddy knows how to golf.”

  Poppy said, “He doesn’t.”

  “When’s he coming back?” Alex said.

  It wasn’t unlike Alex to ask after her father—she always wanted to be in on whatever John was doing—but Poppy felt quite certain now that Alex had overheard their conversation, and she understood just enough to feel unsafe without her father in the house.

  “In a few hours,” Poppy said. “Did you say your stomach hurt? Are you gonna yak?”

  Alex shook her head and rubbed low on her belly. “I don’t think so.”

  Poppy said, “It’s probably a swim cramp. Gotta make sure you don’t go out for a long swim right after eating. You wanna lay down?”

  “No.”

  “Here,” Poppy said, “let’s fill up a cooler with more juice and some snacks and we’ll all head down to the beach together. If you get to feeling worse, we’ll come back. Capeesh?”

  4

  JOHN AND SCOTT sailed over a low hill in the golf cart, and Scott held his Scotch high in the air so it wouldn’t spill as they thumped through a patch of swampy terrain. John’s lower back suddenly shrieked with pain, and he stifled a gasp as he shifted his position and slowed the cart.

  The pain was still there, and it was still bad. Unless John was asleep, one position was rarely comfortable for more than a few minutes before a dull ache would start to thrum at the base of his spine with rhythms as deep and dark as a bass drum. Often the ache became sharp and acute, a blade, metal on metal, until he shifted position. Sometimes that made it even worse, and his balls would seize up, his lungs would seize up, and when that happened John simply had to wait. Bear down, hold on, and fight the urge to blow his brains out just to end the thing.

  John had made an appointment to discuss these episodes when he first started having them, about a month or two after the surgery. The doctor said it would improve. When it didn’t, and when the steroid injections, over-the-counter anti-inflammatories, and weekly physical therapy weren’t doing jack shit either, John brought it up again. Poppy was at that appointment. S
he was in tears, listening to John describe the pain. She pled with the doctor, “What do we need to do? What the hell is happening? Help us!”

  The doctor prescribed a painkiller, recommended weight loss, and authorized an MRI scan. John cut out the dessert and quickly lost ten pounds. The pills helped him sleep at night but made his emotions bizarre and unpredictable. Crying over commercials for Bob Evans. Irritable and morose over nothing at all one moment, overcome by ripples of euphoria and world-conquering notions the next. By and large, he didn’t like how the pills made him feel, so it was odd how often he found himself counting down the hours, then the minutes, until he could take the next one.

  When the results of the MRI came in, the doctor identified inflammation and nerve damage, which was not necessarily a result of the surgery, but John’s body wasn’t healing the way a body ought to. The weight loss was promising, but unlikely to correct the underlying problem. He was glad the meds were helping John sleep but wasn’t inclined to increase the dose.

  When the doctor recommended a second surgery, Poppy just about lost her mind. John nearly did too. A second surgery would mean at least another four days in the hospital. Their health coverage was abysmal—they were still crawling their way out of debt from the first operation. And the doctor wasn’t even able to guarantee better results; it was just his best recommendation. John had to drag Poppy out of the office that day before she hurt someone. Right before they left, the doctor had slipped John an increased prescription for the painkiller.