Kiss River

by Diane Chamberlain

  “Get out,” he said. “Maybe we can talk about it tomorrow. Right now, I’m too pissed off.”

  “All right,” she said. “But think about this. Think about if you’re trying to find a reason not to love me. If you think you’re honoring Terri somehow by not living your own life.”

  He didn’t turn around, and she feared she had pushed too far in saying that to him. Before he could answer her, she left his room and went back to her own.

  Crawling into her own bed, she fought back tears. She hadn’t expected his anger, but he certainly had a right to it. She’d always thought of men as the deceptive gender, but who was the deceptive one now? She couldn’t help it. She wouldn’t have told her own beloved mother what she was up to.

  Just moments earlier, he’d been touching her, loving her. She shivered with the memory of his hands on her body, and she could still smell the salty scent of his skin like an aura around her. Rolling onto her side, she stared out at the ruins of the lighthouse, barely visible in the soft light of the night sky.

  Her mother had made her read the diary to her over and over again, holding on to the past she had never known. After her mother died, Gina had tucked the diary away with the other things belonging to her mother that she’d wanted to save. The small, pink book would always be linked to her mother’s final weeks in her mind, and she needed no reminder of that painful time.

  But two months ago, she’d brought the diary out again, needing to reread it. She’d needed to pursue the secrets it held.

  CHAPTER 36

  Thursday, May 7, 1942

  Last night was the best night of my entire life. It’s amazing that with all that’s happened in the past few weeks I can say that, but it truly was. I snuck out as usual and was walking through the woods to be with Sandy when he suddenly appeared in front of me. He told me he was not on duty tonight, that Teddy Pearson was, and that he had a plan. He held my hand as we walked through the woods, across the Pole Road and on out to the sound, and we finally reached the rickety old pier west of Kiss River. There was a small motorboat there, which he had borrowed from a friend. I have to say, I know more about motorboats than he does, but I let him think he was doing a good job as we sailed into the sound. There was a full moon last night, and the weather is really warming up. It was beautiful out there, and the jellyfish were lighting up like they do sometimes. That shocked Sandy. He’d never seen anything like it. I think it just made the night that much more spectacular.

  For the first time ever, we talked about the future. Sandy wants to be a mechanical engineer, he said, working on ships. He’s really gotten to like the Banks and the sea. I’m proud of him for letting it seep into his bones when he’d hated it so much when he first got here. After he gets out of the Coast Guard, he wants to go to college. He asked me what I want to do after I graduate and I said I want to go to college, too. I told him I want to be a teacher. He said maybe we could go to the same school, and then get married and live back here in the Banks. He said all that! I was floating, as you can imagine, and not just because I was in a boat.

  We talked about having children. We both want to have three. Both of us are only children, and we don’t want any of our children to ever have that alone feeling.

  Then Sandy told me that he needed to talk to me about something serious. I couldn’t imagine how anything could be more serious than marriage and children! But I said, okay, what is it? He admitted that it bothers him how much attention I am giving to the other boys, as well as how much attention I’m getting back from them.

  He said, “I’ve tried not to be jealous, but I don’t understand why you started spending so much time with all of them, especially Ralph and Jimmy and Ted. I’m not accusing you of anything. Just confused.” He was hurt, I could tell.

  I was afraid, but knew I absolutely had to tell him. I said, “I’ll tell you the real reason why, but only if you swear you won’t tell anyone. Not a soul.”

  He looked very confused. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  “Swear to me. No matter what I tell you, you’ll keep it to yourself.”

  “I swear it,” he said. He looked real serious.

  So then I told him everything. I said how Mr. Hewitt took me up near Poyner’s Hill to talk to me. I told him, “Mr. Hewitt said the German who was hurt by the boar told the sheriff that…”

  “He was killed before he could tell the sheriff anything,” Sandy said before I could finish my sentence.

  “No,” I said, “he wasn’t. And he told the man who questioned him that someone in the Banks was in cahoots with the Germans, giving them information or whatever and maybe helping them sneak onshore to blow things up.”

  Sandy looked shocked. “That’s ridiculous. Who would do something like that?”

  “First he thought it might be one of the Coast Guard, since they’d have that information. Now I’m not sure what he’s thinking.”

  Sandy looked as angry as I’ve ever seen him. “How could Bud think it would be one of us?” he asked me. “He knows us better than that. I don’t even think a one of us has any German blood in him. Except Jimmy Brown.”

  That was a surprise! “Jimmy Brown is German?” I asked.

  “Yes, but keep that to yourself, all right?” He still looked a little angry and I was afraid it was with me. “He changed his name when the war started. Brown was really spelled B-r-a-u-n. That’s the way the Germans spell it. But that just shows how much he didn’t want to be associated with the Germans. He hates them.”

  So Jimmy was German! There were a million questions I wanted to ask Sandy, such as was Jimmy born in the United States, did he have relatives still in Germany. Finally, I thought I had something important to put in a note to Mr. Hewitt. But now I realize that I would be double-crossing Sandy if I told him. So I’ll have to look further into Jimmy myself before I say anything to Mr. Hewitt.

  “Does Mr. Hewitt know about Jimmy’s name?” I asked.

  “It’s none of Bud’s business,” Sandy said. “Jimmy would never do anything to hurt America.” Suddenly, he pounded his fist on the side of the boat. “I just can’t believe Bud would put you in such a dangerous position. You have to stop this spying or whatever it is you’re doing right now.”

  I ignored what he said, starting to wish I hadn’t told him.

  “I saw Mr. Sato,” I said. “Mr. Hewitt suspected he might be helping the Germans somehow.”

  “What do you mean, you saw him?”

  “I went to his house and pretended I needed to use his phone.”

  “And what if Moto Sato had been a spy and you were in his house? He could’ve hit you over the head with something and no one would ever have known what happened to you.”

  “I’m sure he’s not a spy,” I said. “He’s just a crippled old man. He doesn’t understand English at all. And I tried some German on him. He didn’t understand that either.”

  Sandy raised his eyebrows. “You speak German?”

  “Just two sentences,” I said. “But he didn’t understand them.”

  Sandy shook his head. “Bess, you are the sweetest girl. And you’re kind and beautiful. But you are still really young and you can be pretty naive sometimes.”

  That made me mad, but I didn’t say anything. I hate that word naive.

  “Let’s not talk about this now,” I said. I had to change the subject, because Sandy and I had been feeling so good about each other a few minutes ago and I’d ruined it by bringing up all this talk about spying.

  He was still upset, I could tell, but at least it wasn’t because he was jealous. I was a little worried he might say something to Mr. Hewitt, but I tried to put that out of my mind. He would get himself in trouble as much as me if he told Mr. Hewitt we were close enough that I’d confided such a big secret to him.

  He finally relaxed, and we turned off the motor and pulled the cushions from the seats of the boat onto the floor and got comfortable, lying next to each other, looking up at the beautiful stars. I kne
w what was going to happen. This was the right time and the right place. I can’t put the details here, of course. I’ll just repeat—it was the most wonderful night of my life. I was a little afraid of getting pregnant, but Sandy said we could practice withdrawal and that I wouldn’t get pregnant that way. I think that was hard for him to do, and I felt really cared about that he did it.

  Then came the one bad part of the night. We were just floating in the boat when we heard some noises from shore. Our boat had drifted down the sound a ways, and now we were straight out from Mr. Sato’s house. We heard some whoops and yelling, and saw some boys running around the house. Their feet were pounding on the deck.

  “What’s going on there?” Sandy asked me, like I might have the answer.

  We soon found out. The boys disappeared, and then we noticed fire around the bottom of the house. Those boys must’ve poured gasoline around the house and set it on fire! Before I could say a word, Sandy started the boat up and we zipped over to the beach near the house.

  “We have to get Mr. Sato and his daughter-in-law out!” I said, jumping from the boat.

  Sandy was already ahead of me. I noticed that the daughter-in-law’s car was not in the driveway. There’s a rumor she has a boyfriend, so I figured she was with him.

  Sandy jumped right over the flames and into the front door, and I followed him. Inside, we found Mr. Sato unconscious on the floor near his bed. It was real smoky in there and it looked like he was trying to get to his wheelchair when the smoke got him. Sandy and I were both choking. I was scared we would all be trapped inside the house.

  I was worried Mr. Sato might already be dead. “Help me carry him,” Sandy said. He got Mr. Sato’s arms and shoulders, and I took his legs and we carted him into the living room, Sandy and me coughing and hacking and Mr. Sato quiet as a dead man. He was very light, but my arms were still shaking like he weighed a ton. The flames were too high by the front door for us to get out that way, so we carted him through the kitchen to the back door that led out onto the deck. We were able to get outside there, but the deck was on fire and there was nowhere for us to go but over the railing. We had to throw Mr. Sato into the water first and then quick jumped in ourselves to hold him up. Not even the water woke him up and I was sure then that he was dead. Sandy and I swam to the beach, dragging him all the way, trying to keep his head out of the water. Then we lifted him and carried him to the front of his yard where he’d be safe from the flames.

  Mr. Sato was still unconscious, but Sandy felt his pulse and said he was alive. Then he started groaning a bit, and I know Sandy and I were both thinking the same thing, that we couldn’t stay there with him. We couldn’t take the risk of being seen together, by him or anyone else.

  Sandy turned to me. “You go home,” he said. “I’ll make sure the sheriff knows Mr. Sato’s house is on fire. Don’t tell anyone what we did or that we were even out here.”

  I sure knew better than to tell anyone! I ran all the way home and snuck in the house, hoping the dip in the sound had washed the smell of smoke off me, and went to bed. It was a long time before I fell asleep. I kept remembering how strong and good Sandy was, caring about an old Japanese man enough to risk his own life to save him.

  This morning over breakfast, Mama told me about the fire at Mr Sato’s and how half the house was destroyed but he somehow managed to get out just in time. I pretended like this was all news to me. Mama doesn’t know anything about my life. She doesn’t know I’m a lifesaver, the owner of a beautiful ruby necklace, and no longer a virgin. And I think I’d better keep it that way!

  CHAPTER 37

  Clay heard Lacey and Gina talking in the kitchen as he and Sasha walked downstairs the morning after he’d banished Gina from his room. There was animation in their conversation, or at least, in his sister’s voice, and he guessed that Gina had told her about her relationship to the Poors. He hoped that was all she had told her.

  He still felt burned by the night before, by the secrets that Gina had kept from both him and his sister. What was her game? Her reticence to share her connection to Kiss River still did not make sense to him.

  He should not have invited her into his bedroom, and certainly should not have made love to her, although he was finding that hard to regret despite the guilt that still teased him—and the realization this morning that, as far as he knew, they had used no form of birth control. She’d said she loved him, and he wanted to believe her; her actions toward him had grown loving indeed. Yet she’d withheld so much from him.

  “Morning.” He walked past the table to the back door to let Sasha out.

  “Isn’t it cool?” Lacey said, as he stood at the screen door waiting for Sasha to return. “About Gina being Mary Poor’s great-granddaughter?”

  “Very cool,” he said without turning around. The flat tone of his voice didn’t even seem to register on his sister’s radar. She continued talking to Gina. “Mary never told me much about her daughter,” she said. “Although I do remember her saying something about her running wild, and she didn’t want me to turn out that way.”

  “Yes,” Gina said, “she was a little adventurous.”

  He thought he could feel Gina’s eyes burning a hole in his back.

  “So, tell me more about your relationship with Mary,” Gina said to Lacey.

  Lacey laughed. “We smoked together a lot,” she said. “She always wanted a cigarette. I started to feel like her drug dealer. She couldn’t get them anyplace else, I don’t think. She told me about how great my mother was and everything. She gave me lots of old-lady type advice. You know, be a good person, be honest, save yourself for marriage—”

  “Smoke like a chimney,” Clay interrupted her as Sasha ran past him into the room, ready for his breakfast.

  Lacey leaned back to look at him as he scooped kibble into Sasha’s bowl. “You really got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, didn’t you?” she asked.

  He set the bowl on the floor for Sasha, not bothering to respond to his sister’s question, and she returned her attention to Gina.

  “You look like her,” Lacey said, tilting her head to study their houseguest. “I mean, she was ancient and you’re certainly not, but I can see her in the way your nose is shaped, and your eyes are the same shape, too, even though they’re a different color.”

  Clay nearly laughed. He’d only seen Mary Poor once or twice, but Gina looked nothing like the old woman.

  “Really?” Gina said. “I resemble my mother, so maybe I did get the genes from that side of the family.”

  Clay dropped two pieces of bread in the toaster and poured himself a cup of coffee, which he promptly dropped on the floor, sending coffee and shards of the ceramic mug in all directions.

  “Damn it!” he said.

  “What’s going on with you?” Lacey sounded exasperated as she got up to reach for the paper towels.

  “He’s angry that I didn’t tell both of you sooner,” Gina said. “I should have, I know, and I’m sorry. I’m a private person. With the adoption and all, I’ve just had so much on my mind.”

  “Of course you do,” Lacey said, helping him mop up the mess, and Clay wondered why his sister had been the child to inherit one hundred percent of their mother’s kind tolerance.

  Standing up from the floor with the pieces of mug in his hands, he looked at Gina and saw the hurt in her eyes. He remembered her tenderness from the night before. The way she’d listened to him on the lighthouse. Why should she have confided in him before last night? He certainly had not confided in her. He held her gaze now, the hard core inside him melting.

  Tossing the mug into the trash can beneath the sink, he suddenly remembered that her car was in the shop.

  “Do you need a ride to work?” he asked.

  “I’m taking today off,” she said. “I’ve decided to call your father just one last time. I’ll tell him my connection to Kiss River. Maybe now that we know exactly where the lens is and that it’s in one piece…” Her voice faded. �
��I have to give it one more try.” She looked at Lacey. “Does he wear down eventually or does he just get more stubborn?”

  “I’ll talk to him for you,” Lacey said.

  “No, don’t.” Clay poured himself a fresh cup of coffee and sat down at the table across from Gina. “I’ll call him,” he said. He looked across the table at her, at the gratitude in her face. He wanted to reach over and touch her hand, take her back up to his room and make love to her again. And tell her that he loved her, too.

  He left his office at eleven-thirty and drove to the Beacon Animal Hospital. Two men and three women sat in the waiting room, along with one crated cat, one lethargic white German shepherd and a golden retriever puppy with a serious-looking scratch on his nose.

  The receptionist was new, someone he didn’t recognize.

  “I’m Clay O’Neill,” he said to her. “Would you ask my father if he has time to have lunch with me today?”

  “I’d know who you were without you saying a word,” she said. “You sure got his eyes, didn’t you?” She left her desk without waiting for his response and went through the door to the rear of the hospital. She returned a moment later.

  “He said to give him fifteen minutes,” she said.

  “Thanks.” He sat down next to the woman with the golden retriever, and the puppy immediately jumped from her lap into his.

  “What happened to his nose?” He stroked the pup’s silky head.

  “We’re down here on vacation,” the woman explained, “and my daughter brought her cat. Rudy got a bit too close, I’m afraid.”

  “Ah,” Clay said. He held the puppy’s head between his hands as he looked into the brown eyes. “No more cats for you,” he said. It was a nice pup and it would grow into a good dog. He already had that goofy golden retriever personality, but there was a sharpness in his eyes, an alertness Clay had learned to recognize. A year ago, he would have talked to the woman about training this handsome pup in search and rescue work. He wouldn’t have been able to help himself. He might have performed a few evaluative tests with him right there, checking the dog’s sensitivity to sight and sound. Goldens could be good at search and rescue. What they lacked in nose, they made up for in obedience and willingness to please. But he was no longer a dog trainer, and when the vet tech called the woman into the examining room, he looked away without even watching the puppy’s gait.