Embers (37 page)

Allie said,
"
Don
'
t be silly! Timmy can
—
"

"
Never mind, Allie,
"
Meg told her quietly.
"
Let them do it.
"
She gave Wyler a look of complete understanding and hauled her sister and nephew away from the scene.

Wyler and Terry dragged the dinghy onto the pebbly beach and tipped it on its side, spilling out the water that had leaked into it so freely.

"
This isn
'
t a dinghy,
"
Wyler said.
"
It
'
s a colander.
"

No smile. Obviously the bonding after the cherry-bomb incident hadn
'
t been permanent. Sighing, Wyler decided to tackle the issue head on.

"
I understand how you feel, you know,
"
he said quietly.

Terry rolled the dinghy the rest of the way over.
"
Yeah, right.
"
He lifted up the bow and waited with downcast eyes for Wyler to pick up the stern.

"
I mean it. I almost drowned when I was a kid. I
'
m not even sure the water was over my head. It was in a pond. A nice little pond where the water was warm.
"

"
Yeah, you were probably three years old or something.
"

"
I was almost your age,
"
Wyler said, fudging a bit. He lifted the stern with an exaggerated
oof
and the two of them
muscled the dinghy over to some nearby bushes.
"
I don
'
t really know why I lost it, but I did. I guess it was the feel of seaweed around my ankles. I just started grabbing at it, to get it off, and I swallowed some water and start
ed thrashing around. I just .
.
.
lost it.
"

Terry took the dinghy painter and knotted it around a branch.
"
Yeah, but then you prob
'
ly swam back to shore. Am I right?
"

"
Nope. I passed out. They told me some guy fished me out and gave me artificial respiration.
"

"
No kidding?
I
didn
'
t pass out.
"

"
You kept your head above water,
"
Wyler agreed.
"
But this is what I wanted you to know: ever since that day, for most of my life, I
'
ve been afraid of water. Until today.
"

"
No
kidding?
"

"
I
'
m telling you. And it was so dumb, because I only
thought
I was afraid. I wasted a lot of good swimming holes.
"

The boy frowned and said,
"
You shouldn
'
t be telling me this, admitting that you were
—
you know
—
chicken.
"

Wyler shrugged.
"
I don
'
t know about that. The way I look at it, it takes a certain amount of courage to admit you were scared.
"

Terry thought about it a moment.
"
Yeah. If you
'
re a cop, especially.
"

The two of them started back toward the house. Terry said,
"
So you think my brother won
'
t think less of me after today?
"

Tom put his hand on the boy
'
s shoulder.
"
Not if you don
'
t try to fake how you felt out there,
"
he said as they made their way up the right of way.

"
Man, I thought I was gonna die.
"

"
Yeah. I know the feeling.
"

T
he next day Meg divided her time equally between searching her heart and searching for the right earrings.

Emotionally, she was a basket case. She
'
d become so jealous of her sister that when Allie was around, she had to look away. It was too painful to compare Allie
'
s sparkling, violet eyes with her own everyday hazel ones; too traumatic to compare Allie
'
s lithe and elegant body with her own distressingly sturdy one. Her sister
'
s laugh had become intolerable; her sister
'
s hug, a bruising encounter. Allie liked to hum, and Meg used to love to hear her do it. Now her sister
'
s hum sounded like the annoying buzz of a mosquito.

It wasn
'
t just because Allie was more beautiful than Meg; after all, Allie
'
d been that way all of her life. And it wasn
'
t because Tom Wyler was in love with Allie
—
because Meg was more and more certain that he was not. No, Meg was jealous of her sister because Allie had the luxury of loving a man with all her heart and soul. Meg didn
'
t have that luxury, and she was utterly miserable without it. What woman wouldn
'
t be?

And meanwhile, Meg had fallen into a complete, ridiculous tizzy over earrings. In the morning she
'
d agreed to wear the ones Allie had offered her, a pair of braided gold hoops. By evening, Meg had changed her mind again. She
'
d wear the only jewelry her grandmother had left behind, a pair of very ordinary but somehow pleasing pearl teardrops. Allie
'
s gold hoops had been a present from Bobby Beaufort, the leader of the pack of her high school boyfriends. As for the teardrops, no one could remember if they were from Meg
'
s grandfather or from a Cracker Jack box.

"
Oh, Meggie, the gold hoops
—
truly,
"
said Allie as the two sisters stood together in front of the full-length mirror in the hail bathroom.
"
They
'
re perfect. And they really
are
pretty. I still can
'
t believe that Bobby Beaufort picked them out.
"

Allie was dressed in her service uniform
—
perfectly tailored black pants and a white shirt
—
and was tucking her sister
'
s hair into an old-fashioned roll that lay softly on her neck, an idea that Allie had stolen from a photograph of Margaret Mary Atwells. She
'
d teased droopy ringlets to fall gracefully in front of Meg
'
s ears and had done her sister
'
s makeup so artfully that Meg was scarcely aware that she wore any. The dress of pale lavender silk that Allie had originally bought for herself —
and that looked like a designer parachute on her
—
fit Meg perfectly, sliding off her hips into a soft, mid-calf flare.

All that was left to decide was the fate of the two pairs of earrings. Meg had a gold hoop in her left ear, a pearl teardrop in her right. She turned her head this way and that, amazed to see that she looked pretty in either one.

"
I think, the teardrops,
"
Meg said at last, slipping off the gold hoop and handing it back to her sister.

"
I suppose you
'
re right,
"
said Allie through the hairpins clamped between her lips.
"
They
'
re very old-fashioned, and so are you.
"

Allie slipped the last hairpin into her sister
'
s hair and stepped back to assess her work.
"
Yes!
"
she said, satisfied.
"
If I squint, you look exactly like Margaret Mary Atwells. What do you think? Will you get a rise out of Gordon Camplin tonight?
"

"
There
'
ll be a mob and I won
'
t get within fifty feet of him,
"
said Meg. She wanted to get a rise out of someone, all right; but it wasn
'
t Gordon Camplin.

"
I don
'
t know why I
'
m even going,
"
Meg went on, becoming edgier by the minute.
"
I
hate
wearing pantyhose in July. This whole thing is pointless. It
'
s too hot in here. Do you feel hot? God, I
'
m going into premature menopause. I
knew
this would happen. I just knew it. I
'll be drenched in sweat.
I
'
ll ruin your dress
...
or else it
'
s the damned furnace. Lloyd
'
s done something to the furnace. I
'
d better go see
—
"

"
Meg.
Meg.
You
'
re out of control,
"
said Allie, laughing
and giving her sister a shake. "
You look completely gorgeous, but out of control. Now calm down. We can
'
t both be emotional at the same time.
Someone
has to have a cool head tonight.
"

"
I
'
m tired of being the grownup,
"
Meg snapped.
"
You
take over for a while.
"

Allie ignored her.
"
I do love that color on you,
"
she decided with a dreamy smile.
"
When I get married, you
'
ll have to dress in lavender.
"
She glanced at her watch and said,
"
Oh, wow, gotta go. I
'
ll see you there later. You look perfect, Meggie. Nail him.
"

At the last minute Allie remembered Bobby Beaufort
'
s earrings on the dresser and impulsively put them on, then dashed out, leaving Meg with half an hour in which to pace and brood.

By now their plan to shake up Gordon Camplin seemed truly laughable. It had been conceived out of desperation, because in all their search for clues, they
'
d found nothing to suggest that Camplin had ever been obsessed with their grandmother. The one bit of gossip that kept surfacing
—
that he
'
d had, and still had, a
gambling
obsession
—
seemed irrelevant. If anything, it suggested that Gordon Camplin would not bluff easily. Not that dressing up like Margaret Mary Atwells was much of a bluff.

And Meg
'
s belief that her grandmother would somehow point the way for her? Equally laughable. Granted, things had started out like gangbusters with the impromptu séance. But since then, the only truly intense premonition to plague Meg had come yesterday, before the picnic, and nothing even remotely supernatural had happened all day to justify it.

Ah. But Terry had nearly drowned.
If that wasn
'
t worth a premonition, what was?

But the boating mishap wasn'
t a supernatural event.
It was about as physical an ordeal as anyone could hope to avoid. So what did this mean? That Meg was turning in
to some general-
practitioner psychic? The village witch?

One thing for sure: her premonitions had nothing to do with eating chili. If anything, her ability to see a threat behind every bush was a direct result of the family
'
s ongoing financial straits. She glanced at a couple of unopened bills she
'
d tossed on the dresser. Who wouldn
'
t feel edgy when bills arrived twelve months a year, and the high season lasted for only two?