Dark Lady

by Richard North Patterson

  Caroline found it startling. It was a sprawling, almost gingerbread structure with chimneys, windows, and dormers everywhere, and a glassed-in porch with panes shaped like waves, so that they seemed to flow and ripple across the porch. Nicole contrived to be enchanted. “This is wonderful,” she said. “So many people live as if they’re communing with their ancestors.” Caroline glanced at her father, who was studying Nicole with a faint half smile. “This would drive my ancestors crazy,” Nerheim said, and gave Nicole a smile of complicity that seemed to exclude Channing. “If I even knew who they were. Come, I’ll show you the attic.” Trailing after them, Caroline fell in next to her father. The attic was made of polished teak, shaped like the prow of a ship. In spite of herself, Caroline was impressed. “The original owner hired a shipbuilder and then ran out of money,” Nerheim explained. “It wasn’t finished for years, until I did the rest last summer. A masterpiece of the shipbuilder’s art.”

  “Does it float?” Channing inquired mildly. Nerheim gave a short laugh. “Perhaps we’ll see,” he said. “During the next hurricane—”

  “But where’s the ballroom?” Nicole interjected. “You, Paul, who seem to like dancing so much.”

  “Oh,” he said. I’ll pour some champagne and show yOU.” Glasses in hand, her parents followed Nerheim across the grass to a carefully laid stone path that meandered artfully through the woods. At its end, a clearing suddenly opened to a clay tennis court. They stopped by the net. Surrounded by woods, they could not be seen or heard from the house. Nerheim gave a mock bow. “The ballroom?” Nicole asked. Nerheim smiled. “Of course.” At a dinner served by two silent servants, Nerheim turned the table talk to the opera season in New York, the symphony, the jazz clubs he knew here or there. Nicole listened appreciatively; her questions sent him on knowing tangents, which, Caroline saw, seemed of interest only to her mother. What inquiries Nerheim addressed to her father seemed so studiedly polite that they underscored Channing’s inability to speak to what seemed to engage his wife. To Caroline, Nerheim said almost nothing. “Can I go for a walk?” she asked before dessert. “I’d like to see the ocean from here.”

  “Of course,” her father answered, excusing her from Nerheim’s table without glancing at their host. Outside, in the cool of early evening, Caroline breathed deeply. The sun was falling behind the trees. Caroline walked the darkening path through the woods until she reached a fork; she stopped, confused for a moment, and then chose the path which she guessed must lead to water But the woods were thick and gnarled; it was not until she climbed a steep rise, toward a sudden swatch of evening sky, that she found herself on a sheer cliff above the blue endless sweep of the Atlantic. The surprise of it caught her in a moment of vertigo, left her pulse racing. Two hundred feet below her was a sandy beach; the orange sandstone cliff, scarred by wind and rain, was so precipitous that it seemed to drop beneath her feet. Down the face of the cliff, stairs crisscrossed to the bottom; beside them were strewn the skeletal remains of other stairs, destroyed by storms. Caroline sat, gazing across the water. It was strange. She had always viewed the ocean with a respect close to awe, but never with fear. Yet beneath the gray-blue surface of the water she felt the savage roiling of a storm she could not see, save on the ruined cliffside. It was some time before she rose, a little unsteady, and backed away. When she returned, the adults were in the living room, still chatting about opera. Her father glanced up from his chair. “Tired?” he asked pleasantly. To her surprise, Nerheim summoned a look of deep

  courtesy for Channing, a smile for Caroline that was close to rueful. “She should at least be bored,” he said. “I’ve been so alone lately that I ramble on about whatever interests me, without a care for my guests. My apologies, Caroline.” Caroline did not know what to say. But her mother’s expression changed, as if this last remark had engaged her more than what had gone before. “What may seem boredom,” she said gently, “is, in Caroline, self-sufficiency. As for us, there is very little opera in Resolve. You are kind to remind us of the larger world.” As he turned to Nicole, Nerheim’s smile became warm; perhaps it was only to Caroline that his humility seemed too self-assured. “Thank you, Nicole. I’m sure Resolve has other charms. Next time—and I hope there will be—I’ll leave room for you to tell me of them.” Nicole’s returning smile was oblique and ambiguous—to Caroline, it could have meant anything, from Of course, all of us know that we’ll never do this again to Please give me a few days to consider what Resolve charms are. As Channing put down his coffee, contemplating his wife, Caroline sensed an unspoken humiliation. “I am kind of tired,” she said to her mother. “If you don’t mind.”

  “Of course,” Nerheim said with a tolerant smile, and rose from the table. At the door, Nerheim clasped her father’s shoulder, one friendly man to another. Knowing that her father disliked being touched by strangers, Caroline winced; Channing’s expression did not change. “Channing,” Nerheim said, “thank you so much for lending me your family. As I said, I’ve spent too much time alone.” As Channing extended his hand, the gesture put distance between them. “Thank you,” he said with civility. “It was good of you to have us.” The corners of Nerheim’s eyes crinkled, and then he turned to Nicole, clasping her hand in both of his. “Nicole,” he said. “I hope I see you again. All of you.”

  Her mother tilted her head; what this suggested to Caroline was that, were it not for Channing, she would have proffered her cheek. “Oh, you will, Paul.” She gave a wry look at their surroundings. “Solitude in such a place must be a trial for you.” Nerheim laughed. “Oh, it is,” he said, and released her hand. The ride home was quiet. Leaving, Channing stopped at the fork in the road, beam lights catching a gnarled tree. “To the left,” Nicole said softly. Otherwise, she was silent. Later, Caroline went to the kitchen for orange juice, heard raised voices from her parents’ bedroom. The last voice was her father’s. Despite herself, Caroline crept to the bedroom door. “The man is cheap and insinuating,” she heard her father say. “And you played to him.”

  “The man is polite, Channing. As was I. For both of us.”

  “You’re my wife.” The thick anger in her father’s voice was something Caroline had never heard. “You needn’t compensate for me. I’m sure that there are other women who can give Paul Nerheim the admiration he so clearly needs.” There was silence. When her mother spoke again her tone was so quiet and weary that Caroline barely heard. “Admiration,” she said softly, “is all that’s left to me.” In the darkened hallway, Caroline felt herself flush with the shame of listening. She turned away. The next day, they left the island, four days earlier than planned. Now, a year later, the memory fell like a shadow between Caroline and Nicole. “I don’t feel like seeing him,” Caroline said to her mother. Nicole finished her wine. “You don’t have to,” she answered in a careless voice. “I’m not sure that I do, either.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  As the days passed, Nicole Masters seemed restless.

  She took less interest in their tennis, did not come up with new excursions, retreated into books. She encouraged Caroline to contact the daughters of other summer people, friends from past years. Yet for two nights running, Nicole walked the beach alone; Caroline watched her, hands in the pockets of her white cardigan sweater, gazing out to sea. Caroline felt a loss.

  When her mother returned from the beach on the second night, Caroline was waiting. With new directness, she asked, “Are you all right, Mother?”

  Nicole looked startled, as if awakened from her thoughts. “Have I not been?”

  Caroline hesitated, afraid to articulate her instincts. “I don’t know ….”

  Nicole gave her a faint smile. Gently, she said, “It’s not you, Caroline. If that’s what you’re sensing.”

  Caroline felt relief, the tenuous renewal of their bond. “What is it, then?”

  Her mother shrugged. “Does ‘it’ have to be anything? Other than me?” Her voice was dispassionate but not unkind. “I have my moods, that’s all. P
erhaps you notice them more without your father to distract you. If so, I apologize.”

  It was less apology than statement of fact; it was as if Nicole had accepted her own apartness, and thus that others should. But Caroline did not wish to.

  “I’ve been thinking—tomorrow, let’s go for a day sail.” Caroline’s voice quickened, as if to impart excitement to

  her mother. “We’ll sail over to Tarpaulin Cove, where Father took me last year—have a picnic on the beach and go swimming. Really, it would be fun for you.”

  Nicole’s smile did not quite hide a sadness in her eyes. “Would it?”

  “Sure,” Caroline answered. “I’ll make the sandwiches and sail the catboat myself. All you have to do is go with

  me.”

  Nicole considered her, still smiling a little. “All right, then. You make it hard to argue.”

  Before Nicole could change her mind, Caroline went to the kitchen and began preparing for their picnic. When the telephone rang, her mother answered it in another room.

  Caroline emerged from the kitchen. “The picnic’s ready,” she said. “Was that Father?”

  Nicole seemed to study her. “Your father would have asked for you. But you may call him if you wish.”

  The tacit rebuke silenced Caroline. She found that she did not want to speak with Channing.

  But when morning came, Nicole did not wish to sail.

  “I’m sorry, Caroline.” Her voice was soft. “I find that I don’t feel well.”

  In her mother’s eyes, Caroline saw a silent plea for understanding—of what, she did not know. But Nicole said nothing more.

  Caroline’s anger burst out unbidden. “It’s a beautiful day,” she said. “I’m not going to mope around the house all day or hang around that goddamned yacht club, talking about boys.”

  Nicole looked at her gravely. “Such language, Caroline. But about the ‘goddamned yacht club,’ I understand. So what do you propose?”

  “Sailing. If I have to go by myself, I will.”

  Nicole glanced down, as if knowing that what Caroline most wanted was a change of heart. Softly, Nicole asked, “Would your father let you do that?”

  Caroline folded her arms. “He told me I could last summer. Whenever I felt ready.”

  “And you are?”

  “Yes.” Caroline hesitated, still hoping for a sign that Nicole would go with her, saw none. In a flat voice, she finished, “Can I go now, Mother?” For a long time, Nicole turned to gaze at the weather, eyes hooded. “When would you be back?”

  “By six o’clock.” Caroline made her voice indifferent. “There’s no point in getting back any sooner.” Nicole’s eyes were sad again. “All right,” she answered. “You can go.”

  The day was brilliant. It lightened Caroline’s heart, braced her defiance. For a moment, she forgot that her father, knowing the sudden treachery of oceans, never would have let her sail alone. She walked swiftly to the catboat without looking back. The boat was handsome and beautifully maintained—a twenty-foot Crosby, built in 1909. When her father had first shown it to her, a present for Caroline’s thirteenth birthday, she fought back tears of surprise. “Your birthday is special to me,” Channing said gently. “Sail this with the care you deserve.” Warmed by the memory, guilty at her willfulness, Caroline set sail. The sky was cloudless, the breeze stiff and constant. She did not check the weather. The sail to Tarpaulin Cove was brisk and sure. Caroline felt a sense of her own mastery. Running before the wind, she headed toward the lighthouse. At the head of the cove, Caroline moored the catboat, turned to measure the expanse of ocean she had crossed with such ease. On this sparkling day, she still could see the Vineyard. She would take her time, Caroline told herself, do everything she would have done had her mother not deserted her. She ate her sandwich, drank her Coke, legs dangling over

  the bow. Only when she had finished did she jump into the bracing water and swim confidently to shore. The beach was empty, the sand warm. She lay there lost in her own thoughts, the ocean lapping at her legs and feet. She should not be angry at her mother, Caroline decided. Things that Nicole could not avoid or help had happened well before Caroline was born. Caroline would take the good days as they came, fight the disappointment when her mother slipped away. She wished it seemed that simple for her father. When at last she looked at the ocean, a long finger of fog crept the line between sky and water. Caroline sat up, surprised. Knew at once that she must leave long before she had planned. Forgetting her parents, she swam quickly to the catboat. As she clambered up the stern, the fog was darker, a dense bank rising from the water between Caroline and home. She set sail toward the fog. The varnished deck of the catboat still glistened in the sunlight; she would sail through the fog, Caroline assured herself, and see the Vineyard through the sunlight on the other side. Sails creaking, Caroline reached the first seeping mists. The water was suddenly gray, and then fog and solitude closed around her. Her face was damp and chill. The catboat plowed forward, knifing the water Caroline could scarcely see. But she was on open sea, she told herself; unless someone rammed her, there was little danger. Suddenly, the fog was no longer sitting on the water but whistling past her, breaking up before her eyes. Startled, Caroline tried to remember what Channing said this meant. Just before she saw the black line of clouds racing toward her on the horizon, she knew. A squall. She had only minutes. Now she remembered clearly what her father had told her—with the thunderstorm would come a driving rain, savage winds from every direction. She saw no sailboats on the water.

  For an instant, Caroline was paralyzed. Then the other thing that Channing had said came back: the winds could capsize her. Panicky, she crawled along the ledge toward the bow, one hand over the other, clawing at the handrail. As the storm swept toward her, she loosened the rigging and let the sail drop. Then the squall hit. The first wave threw her from the bow, grabbing at the halyard as she fell on her side. She cried out; rain lashed her face. In a moment, the seventy-mile-per-hour winds would be upon her: already the boat bobbed like a cork, waves swamping the cockpit. Caroline threw herself onto the deck, and then the next wave covered the catboat. As Caroline grasped the wrought-iron tiller, the surge of water ripped her seaward, turning the boat on its side. Her muscles screamed with pain. There was a quickening surge beneath her, and then the boat righted itself in a spasmodic shiver. Blinded by seawater, Caroline felt the primal ocean envelop her. The next fierce wave would tear her hands from the tiller and sweep her out to sea. She clenched the tiller in both hands, eyes stinging with salt and tears from the pelting rain that scoured her face. Through half-open slits she saw the rope swirling in the flooded cockpit. In her mind, Channing Masters ordered Caroline to lash herself to the tiller. She grasped at the line with her right hand. The boat knifed into the air. Caroline fell back, head striking the floorboard. The cracking sound filled her ears, and then everything was black and lost and nauseous in the pit of her stomach. With a will of their own, the fingers of one hand still grasped the tiller. Water pounded her face, seemed to throw the line into her hand. She sat upright; from a great distance, her father’s voice told her again to coil the line around her waist and lash her body to the tiller.

  In the whirling boat, she snaked the rope between the spokes of the tiller and around her waist. A knot—the work of instinct—and Caroline and the boat were one. A wall of ocean hit. Caroline wrenched upward, was caught by the rope, ribs cracking against the wheel. She prayed that her knot would hold, that the catboat would not capsize and trap her beneath the ocean, a captive, lungs filling with water until she drowned. A bolt of lightning struck the mast, the roar of thunder deafened her. Caroline shut her eyes and prayed to no one. The boat surged and plummeted at random, wind singing in her ears, rain driving sideways into her face. And then it stopped. Caroline opened her eyes. A last thin darkness passed over her, and then the air was crisp and sparkling. Caroline began to cry. No, she told herself. With clumsy hands she freed herself. Her head throbbed, her rib cag
e felt raw. Then she could not seem to move. It was as if, in some deep trauma, she was helpless. Straining, she rose from her paralysis and moved haltingly to the rigging. As the sails rose above her, a fresh wind made the canvas crackle and then fill. She could see the Vineyard ahead of her. Numb, Caroline took the tiller again. Her eyes were swollen with salt. A second fog was seeping across the sound. Caroline sailed toward it in the southeast wind. The fog moved slowly, spreading across the water. This time, Caroline sensed, there would be no storm, no sound. Breathing deeply, she made the most of her last ten minutes in sunlight, and then entered the fog again. It was different. Silent, still, windless. Her sail flapped and withered on the mast. Blindly, Caroline drifted with a tide she could only feel. The tide could sweep her to shore, she knew, break the catboat on the rocks. Through the fog came the haunting toll of the first bell buoy. She was not sure where she was.

  Bearings lost, she drifted. All that she could do was listen to the eerie sound of the buoys slowly clanging, nearer and nearer, until she knew that she was inside them, closer to shore. She sat at the helm in the rear of the cockpit, trying to keep the catboat from the shoals of West Chop, hoping for the breezes that came in midafternoon. She could sense the cliffs coming closer, feel the choppiness of shallow water. And then—it seemed on schedule—her sails flapped with a gust of wind. Caroline grasped the tiller. Tilting leeward, the catboat sailed into sunlight, clearing the promontory of West Chop. It was as though the Vineyard had appeared by magic through a sheer curtain. She could see the mansions of West Chop, the distant masts spiking the harbor at Vineyard Haven. Faint and exhilarated, Caroline grinned as if she would never stop. She could not wait to tell her mother, to see her mother. All memory of anger had been swept away by the storm, the wind, the enormity of survival. The sail home was endless, a blur. Docking, Caroline forced herself through the rituals of seamanship, bursting with all that she would say to Nicole. Then she hurried stiffly to the house, sore and bruised and filled with love and gratitude. “Mother,” she called out. The house was silent. “Mom,” she called again. Perhaps she was asleep. Turning, Caroline crept down the hallway to her mother’s bedroom. It was only as she turned the knob, too late to stop, that Caroline suddenly knew what she would find. Next to her mother’s face, wide-eyed and startled, the head of Paul Nerheim stared at Caroline. Their bodies were frozen. Nerheim on his elbows, sheets to his waist; Nicole beneath him, legs apart, the tips of her breasts still touching Nerheim’s chest. Their stillness seemed so fragile that Caroline could not move. “Please.” Nicole’s eyes were pleading. “Leave us now.”