Kiss River

by Diane Chamberlain

  Alec nodded. “Yes, hon. I’m sorry to have to tell you this about her. I never wanted to, but—”

  “She cheated on you?” Lacey asked.

  He nodded again. He heard the man upstairs moving around, using the bathroom.

  “Did you know about it?”

  “Not at the time, no. I didn’t learn about it until after she died. Mary Poor told me. Your mother used to bring men out here to the keeper’s house.”

  “Jesus.” Clay exhaled the word.

  “I don’t think Mary’s memory was that good,” Lacey said.

  As proof, he could tell them about Annie’s affair with Olivia’s husband, Paul, but that would be unwise. They saw Paul from time to time, when he came to visit Jack.

  “I believed her,” Alec said. “There were many, many clues that I missed. Obviously, Mom had a need that couldn’t be met in our marriage. That I couldn’t meet.”

  Lacey began to cry. Alec moved over to put his arm around her, but she shrugged him away, much as she had as a teenager.

  “Why are you telling us this now?” Clay asked.

  Alec looked down at the old, worn floor for a moment, remembering the terrible day in this house when he’d learned the truth about his wife. “Because I see Lacey following in her footsteps, and it worries me.” He looked directly at his daughter. She’d grown pale, the yellowish bruise the only color in her face. “I’m worried about you, Lace,” he said.

  Lacey looked up at him. “Are you making this up because you think I’m promiscuous and that by telling me a story like this I’ll stop?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not making it up, Lacey. Believe me, I wish I were. I know it seems unbelievable. But what’s really unbelievable is watching you turn into her right before my eyes. All the good parts as well as the bad. You’re Lacey O’Neill, honey. Not Annie.”

  Lacey stood up. She scooted past Clay, then ran to the stairs, her bare feet slapping lightly on the wooden floor. Alec sighed. He knew she wasn’t going upstairs to throw her lover out. She was going there for comfort.

  “Dad,” Clay said. He ran his fingers through his dark hair. “I just…I wish we didn’t know. I wish you didn’t know.”

  “I had to tell you,” Alec said.

  Clay nodded. “I’m sorry. What that must have been like for you…to discover…” He shook his head. “Man.”

  Alec stood up and nodded toward the second story. “Keep an eye on her, okay?” he asked. “She’s built her life around her mother being the great Saint Anne.”

  Clay walked him as far as the back door, and he continued the rest of the way to his car. He still didn’t know if he’d done the right thing or not. Olivia would say he had. But he couldn’t forget the pain in Lacey’s face. With a few words, he’d hurt her. He only hoped those words would stop her from hurting herself.

  CHAPTER 50

  Saturday, August 15, 1942

  Today, Dennis and I were married. Nothing has changed except that I am now Mrs. Dennis Kittering. Elizabeth Kittering. Not a name I’d ever expected to have. If anyone had told me a year ago that I’d be married to the schoolteacher who camped on the beach on weekends, I would have laughed in their face! I’m not laughing now.

  We were married in the rectory at St. Mary’s, by the priest who told me the only way to atone for my sin would be to convert to Catholicism, and I am doing that, although not with my whole heart. I’m just doing it to get the priest off my back and to make things easier for Dennis, since I know he could only imagine being married to a Catholic. SueAnn was there, and a lady from the rectory, and that was it. Just a quiet, simple exchange of vows.

  This was not what I’d expected for my wedding day, that is for sure, but it’s me who messed everything up, so now I guess that’s my payment. Or penance, as the priest would say. “For your penance, say five Hail Marys and have a small, peculiar wedding.” Of course, we are not taking a honeymoon. We are not even sharing a bedroom. Dennis told me that he loves me, but he knows I don’t feel the same about him and that we don’t have to sleep together until I’m ready. I do love him, although I didn’t tell him that, since it’s not the sort of love he means when he says it to me and I don’t want to give him false hope. But I know marriages used to be arranged all the time and they worked out even if the two people didn’t start out loving each other, so I’m hoping this one will work, too. It has to, because Dennis doesn’t believe in divorce. Not that I do either. I guess I am glad to be married, actually, since it will soon be very obvious that I’m pregnant. It’s best I have this ring on my finger.

  Of course, the whole point of Dennis begging me to move here was so I could get a better education, and now here I am, not able to go to school in the fall. He is going to teach me himself. He’ll bring books home for me and tell me what books to get from the library and have me study by myself during the day. I like this plan, although I will feel even lonelier here than I already do, not being able to make friends at school. But that is hardly Dennis’s fault. I have only myself to blame for my predicament.

  I wonder if I’ll ever see Mama and Daddy again. I already feel so different from the girl I was a few months ago. I’m afraid of all the questions they’d ask me if I go back to visit and afraid of getting Dennis in trouble. It might be better if I never go back, although I get a heartache when I think about that.

  If I was still in Kiss River and they discovered I was pregnant, I know what would happen. After I got the tar beat out of me by Daddy (That’s just an expression. He wouldn’t ever lay a hand on me, but the words he’d chew me out with would feel like it all the same), I would have to drop out of school and live with Mama and Daddy. I’d have the baby right there, in the house, and be one more Banks girl who just becomes a mother and nothing else. It is better for me here, I keep telling myself. Yet, if I still lived at Kiss River there’d be a chance I might at least see Sandy every once in a while. If he didn’t get picked up by the FBI, that is. And although I know that seeing him is the wrong thing to wish for, I can’t help it. I miss him, at least the Sandy I knew before that night that changed everything.

  Some pain goes on and on. I can hardly remember what he looks like now. I keep trying to get his image in my head, but I can only see around the edges of it. I can’t really make him out at all. But I can remember him holding me, and us walking the beach on his patrol, and a lot of times at night I cry myself to sleep thinking about him, hearing those ugly words he said to me the last time I saw him. Tonight will be one of those nights, because whatever hope I still had that I might someday see him again, that some miracle might happen to make things go back the way they were, is gone.

  Yours in heartache,

  Mrs. Dennis Kittering.

  CHAPTER 51

  Clay was glad Gina was not yet home from the store. He sat in the living room after his father left, Sasha’s head on his knee, staring into space. He needed some time to think, to absorb all his father had told him, and to come to grips with the anger that now tarnished the feelings of love and loss he had for his mother. He wished Lacey would kick her damn boyfriend out so that he could talk to her about what they had learned. She was the only person who could share his sense of horror and betrayal. He had a feeling, though, that she felt it even more deeply than he did.

  The phone rang, jarring him out of his lethargy, and he went into the kitchen to answer it.

  “Miss Gina Higgins, please.” The caller was a woman with a vague, possibly British accent, and he realized that this was the first call Gina had received since living in the keeper’s house.

  “She’s not here right now,” he said. “Can I give her a message?”

  The woman hesitated a moment. “Yes. This is Mrs. King. Tell her that, given how complicated matters have become over here now, the price has risen to two hundred thousand dollars. Tell her I’m sorry, but everything’s become much more difficult.”

  What was she talking about?

  “Where is ‘over here’?” he asked. He
was afraid he knew, and afraid, as well, that he knew what the money was for.

  “I’m calling from Hyderabad,” the woman said. “Be sure to give her the message.” She hung up the phone abruptly, and Clay was left with the sound of the dial tone in his ear.

  When Gina arrived home with her load of groceries, he was waiting for her in the kitchen.

  “Did things go all right with your father?” She set the three overstuffed bags down on the counter and bent over to nuzzle Sasha.

  “You had a call,” he said from his seat at the table. He’d been sitting there as numbly as he’d been sitting in the living room, and he didn’t make a move to help her with the groceries.

  Gina’s hands froze on Sasha’s neck. “A call?”

  “From a Mrs. King.”

  She stood up, reaching into one of the grocery bags to extract a box of cereal. “What did she say?” she asked.

  “That the price has gone up to two hundred thousand dollars because it’s more complicated ‘over there’ now.”

  Gina set the box of cereal down and leaned stiffly against the counter, her back to him. She pressed her fist against her mouth.

  “You want to tell me what’s going on?” he asked. “Who is Mrs. King? Are you paying some sort of bribe? And with what money?” The questions poured out of him quickly. His temper felt very short. On this day of revelations, he was sick of being lied to.

  Gina turned and walked toward him, lowering herself into one of the chairs at the table. She covered her eyes with her hand and cried silently, her shoulders shaking, and he had to fight the urge to comfort her.

  “I want the truth, Gina,” he said.

  She nodded, dropping her hand from her face. “Yes,” she said. “I know. And I’m sorry, Clay. I’m so sorry. But I just couldn’t tell you this.”

  “I thought I was supposed to be the one with the communication problems,” he said.

  She ignored the comment; he wasn’t sure she had even heard it. “Mrs. King has gotten other children out of the orphanages in Hyderabad,” she said. “She gets paid a lot of money for doing it, but she succeeds. How she avoids getting arrested, I don’t know. And I don’t know what she does with the money. She pays bribes, I’m sure. She probably buys off judges and attorneys and orphanage staff and who knows who else. I don’t care.” Her hand trembled as she pressed her fingers against her temple. “I just want my baby,” she said. “She’s dying. One of these days, it’s going to be too late to save her.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this?”

  “If you were going to pay someone an illegal fee for saving your child’s life, would you tell anyone?” she asked.

  I would tell you, he thought, but he wasn’t sure that was the truth.

  “I’m not a bad person, Clay,” she said. “I’m not a criminal. I don’t even jaywalk. But I can’t see any other way to get Rani out of there.”

  “Where do you intend to get two hundred thousand dollars?” he asked.

  “I…” She sighed, then looked at him with those dark eyes he had come to love. “I’d like to read you some of Elizabeth Poor’s diary, all right?”

  He was perplexed. “That’s going to tell me where you’re getting the money?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “How? Did she bury diamonds in the sand behind the privy or something?”

  “Actually, it is something like that.” She stood up. “I’ll be right back.”

  She went upstairs, and he put away the groceries, trying to muster up a good self-righteous anger at her for keeping this from him, but he found he couldn’t. They were not married, not committed to a future with each other. She didn’t owe him anything.

  She reappeared in the kitchen, a small, pink diary in her hand. “Could we sit on the lighthouse stairs?” she asked, glancing toward the hallway. “In case Lacey comes down?”

  They were quiet as they walked out to the lighthouse and climbed the tall spiral staircase. The top step was still wet from that afternoon’s rain, and they had nothing to dry it with before sitting down. They brushed the water off with their hands as best they could, and Clay felt the dampness seep through his shorts as he sat down.

  Gina began to read to him from the diary. It was strange to listen to the tale, to hear about a world that had existed so long ago, right here on the land and in the house where he was living. He was shocked when Gina read about Bess’s discovery that the Coast Guard boy, Sandy, was the spy. But when she read the part about Bess carving his real name into the prism of the lens, he felt his anger rise.

  “That’s why you want the lens?” he asked. “All this crap about…Gina! Damn it. Why didn’t you tell me any of this? Why didn’t you tell me your grandfather’s name will be on the lens?”

  “I’m sorry.” She was crying, wiping tears from her cheeks with her fingers. “I’m so sorry, Clay. But I just couldn’t tell you.”

  “I don’t get it,” Clay said. “What does a name on the lens have to do with getting the money?”

  “He was being paid for spying, remember?” She held up the open diary. “My grandfather has money. He was probably wealthy, while my mother—his daughter—had absolutely nothing.”

  He heard a rare sort of anger in her voice. She was making so little sense that it frightened him. “But he was probably arrested,” he said.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “Bess still loved him, so she made a very weak attempt to turn him in when she carved his name into the lens. She knew it was unlikely Bud Hewitt would even notice the name. And she read the newspapers all the time, and never saw a word about him being captured.”

  “It could have been kept very quiet,” Clay said. “And in any case, he sounds like a cruel, traitorous psychopath, not the sort who’s going to just hand two hundred thousand dollars over to you.”

  “Then I’ll…” There was desperation in her eyes. “Then I’ll blackmail him with the diary.”

  “This is ludicrous, Gina, don’t you see that?” he said. “Even if he wasn’t caught, he’s probably dead.”

  “I know.” She brushed a tear from her cheek. “But the diary should give me proof that I have a right to some of his estate.”

  Suddenly, he felt very sorry for her. Her love for a child had turned her into a desperate and thoroughly irrational woman. He doubted, though, that she was the first woman to suffer that fate. He pulled her to him, and she seemed surprised.

  “You’re not mad at me?” she asked.

  “I am royally pissed off at you,” he said. “But it’s obvious to me that you’re not thinking clearly. Your love for Rani has made you a little crazy. You’ve lost sight of what’s right and wrong, and pinned all your hopes on a pipe dream.”

  “Don’t say that, Clay, please.” Her voice broke. “There’s nowhere else for me to turn. I couldn’t get the money anywhere else. I tried to borrow it, but my credit is terrible because of my ex-husband’s debt.” She leaned back to look at him, her features contorted by her tears. “This is why I didn’t want to tell you,” she said. “I didn’t want to hear you say that I’m crazy or that this plan can’t possibly work.”

  “It’s not just that you’ve picked a hopeless way to get the money,” he said, “but that you’re paying off a…baby broker, or whatever she is, to begin with.”

  “I don’t know what else to do,” she repeated.

  He pulled her close again, thoughtful for a moment. “You know,” he said, “it’s possible that Henry or Brian or Walter might know who Sandy was.”

  “Why would they know that?” She sniffled against his shoulder.

  “They were all in the Coast Guard here,” he said.

  “They were?”

  “That’s how they became buddies,” he said. “I’m not sure if it was during World War II, though, but we can ask them. Of course, they won’t know the name Sandy, but maybe they would remember who patrolled that beach.”

  She tipped her head back to look at the sky, and he smoothed his hand across
her wet cheek. “Only if we can’t find out from the lens,” she said. “With any luck, we’ll be able to see it tomorrow. I don’t want to involve any more people than I have to in this.”

  “All right,” he said.

  She leaned her head against his shoulder again. “I know you’re mad at me, Clay,” she said, “but I just want to thank you for not being madder. I wouldn’t blame you.”

  “I think your plan is nuts,” he said, “but I also know how crazy a person can get when they feel like they’re losing someone they love.”

  “Thank you,” she said. Then she raised her head to look at him. “Is your father okay?”

  It was Clay’s turn to sigh. “He told us some things that were a bit hard to hear,” he said.

  “Can you tell me?” she asked.

  He felt torn, hesitant to speak the words out loud, but he wanted her to know. “He told us that Lacey is apparently taking after our mother, who was…well, I guess she cheated on him throughout their marriage.”

  “Oh, no,” Gina said.

  “Not that Lacey’s cheating on anyone,” Clay continued. “But my mother apparently had a series of lovers, my father being just one of them. And she would bring them here, to the keeper’s house. Mary Poor, your great-grandmother, knew all about it, I guess.”

  “She did? She was so strict with her own daughter.”

  “Well, not with my mother, apparently.”

  “I’m sorry, Clay. That must have been so terrible for you to hear.”

  He shook his head, still incredulous. “It’s like I have to adjust to a whole new world,” he said. “It’s as though I just found out that I’d been lied to all my life about the stars being three-dimensional objects in the sky, when they’re really just dots painted on a dome.”

  “Did your father have a clue that was going on?” Gina asked.

  “He didn’t find out until after she died. He thought she was a saint, just like everyone else did. Can you imagine how he felt?” He ached for his father. “Why do people have to betray each other?”