Fire Works in the Hamptons : A Willow Tate Novel (9781101547649) (36 page)

Discouraged, the Paumanok Harbor group started back to the gate. I stayed behind a minute for a last try to make contact. “I know you are resting,” I said, and pictured a slumbering giant. “And that's fine. It's a big step you and the young ones are taking.” I visualized a tadpole turning into a frog, a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. Then I tried to send my curiosity, my need to know.

I got nothing back, so I gave up, too. I just wasn't good at that. I could draw it, but without eyes, how could M'ma see?

Before I joined the others, though, I made a quick circle around M'ma's bulk, for a fast estimate. Many less maggots worked their way down to the new shape beneath the decay. Where did they go? Maybe they went somewhere to make a cocoon, if that's what they did. Grubs couldn't fly, so they had to be near. I searched, trying to get an idea of the progress. I was careful where I walked, but I couldn't find anything that could house an infant firefly. I knew some beetles spent their entire lives underground so maybe the larvae burrowed alongside M'ma to complete their growth and transformation. But I didn't see any holes in the soft dirt, either.

What I saw, in my head, was a picture of a rainbow-colored seahorse.

“A pretty picture, that's what you send me when I need to know how to help you? I need more.”

This time I saw a crocodile, or maybe an alligator. I never could remember which was which. This one gleamed lavender.

“A seahorse and a crocodile? That's supposed to make sense to me? You're as bad as my father.”

Oh, boy. I waited for more explanation but none came, so I left.

Lou waited at the gate. “Any progress?”

“Nothing that's any help in getting him out of here.”

“Keep trying.”

I heard the unspoken “or else” and shivered.

I checked in with my father, in case he had better advice, or if he'd dreamed about seahorses or alligators. He had a stiff neck, maybe a lawsuit. His lady friend had a sore knee and three frantic, overprotective daughters. My mother was a pain in the butt, as usual.

In other words, no help at all.

 

“Seahorses and purple crocodiles?” Piet swore. “What's next with you, fiddler crabs playing ‘The Flight of the Bumblebee'? This is real, not some kiddie story.”

I knew how real it was without his frustration bubbling over on me. I might invent a million plot lines, draw a million pictures, but I could not hurry M'ma along, or understand him better.

“Come with me and see if you can do any better,” I snapped. Things were not going well in the personal relationship department, either. Kiddie story? Our partnership took another turn for the worse when he refused to come visit the salt marsh with me the next day.

He didn't want to see the ugly sight, he said, not when he could be putting out fires, rescuing people, saving property. Important stuff.

As if what I did was less valuable.

So I asked Matt to go with me.

 

I had to argue with Charlie at the gate, but he let the veterinarian through. Matt mightn't have any supernatural powers, but he did not have any malice in him either.

He listened to what could possibly be heart sounds again. “It's stronger, whatever it is.”

“Do you feel anything?”

“Damp.” The weather had turned raw and dank, the mud where he knelt sopping through his pant legs.

“No, I mean do you feel anything inside?”

“Hungry?”

I handed him one of the apples I'd brought along. “Not a physical sensation. More an emotion.”

He smiled at me. “Does that include attraction?”

Hmm. “I mean do you sense any calm, restfulness, welcome?”

“Here? In a swampy place with a dying beast? Not likely. Is that what you feel toward this poor animal?”

“Not recently. Sometimes, when the fireflies are up.” They had not been around for three days. I still couldn't find a dead one or anything like a birthing nest for lightning bugs. I wasn't getting any vibes from M'ma either. I hadn't really expected Matt to, although I'd hoped his affinity for dogs and cats might help.

He couldn't see the brilliant colors or the graceful shape coming clearer every day. Matt still thought the beached creature was a dolphin or a small whale. He thought he spotted a blowhole, but no eyes or mouth.

I knew M'ma's eyes were shut. I knew they'd be azure blue and emerald green and gold, all at once. That's how I'd drawn them.

“It's a wonder this thing is still alive. I still think someone ought to consider putting it down. I am upset that the marine rescue people haven't come, or the Humane Society.”

Lou and his agents had called them off.

Matt had no malice, but empathy gone awry could be equally as dangerous. He didn't understand, and I couldn't explain. I turned him back toward the path, away from M'ma. “Killing him is not an option. But tell me, do you know of any connection between seahorses and crocodiles?”

“Is this a riddle? I've never really studied either one. They're not related, scientifically.”

“There has to be some common thread.”

He mightn't have magic, but he found it. Seahorse fathers kept their babies safe in a pouch. Crocodiles were thought to carry their infants in their mouths to protect them from predators, like other crocodiles.

I rushed back and knelt by what I took to be M'ma's head. “Is that it? You've got the babies in your mouth? That's where they've gone?”

I felt a smile, inside out.
Soon.

So I hugged Matt.

He didn't understand that any more than he understood about M'ma. I didn't care. “He's almost ready.”

Which meant I couldn't bring Matt back here again. I could not chance him seeing something so far beyond belief that he'd be a threat to all of Paumanok Harbor. Telling him that hurt his feelings, and mine.

We stopped at the gate. Charlie looked relieved I was leaving with the nonsensitive. “He won't be coming back,” I told him and Vinnie, so Matt got the message.

“But you have no marine scientist here.”

“No. We don't need one.”

“This is wrong! Who will care for it?”

“Could you?” I hated to hurt him worse, but there was nothing any of us could do to help M'ma.

“At least I'd make an effort to see about getting it back into the water.”

I wasn't sure M'ma swam. “We'll have help when the time comes.”

He looked back at the lawyer and the barber, and then at me, a writer and illustrator. “I see.”

CHAPTER 35

M
Y DRAWINGS LOOKED LIKE SHIT. My words sounded like they'd stepped in it. Sadness could do that to a writer. I missed the joy I usually felt in creating something.

My partner acted distant, as if the lack of sex meant a loss of friendship and goodwill, which was plain wrong and beneath his intellect, if not mine. We both knew he'd be gone at the end of the week, so neither of us was pushing for anything but to see Paumanok Harbor in the rearview mirror. I missed his solid strength and quiet confidence.

Matt turned unapproachable. He'd been scorned by his friends and neighbors, shut out again by the town he called home. His neighbors trusted him with their pets, not with their secrets. Now his snippy receptionist said he was in surgery; he'd call back. He never did. I missed his calm acceptance and steadfast decency.

I did not miss my cousin Susan's snide remarks about my love life, or lack of it. How many unsuitable men could I fall for, she wanted to know. I wanted to know if she'd been sent by my mother. Why was it that Susan could sleep with half the men on Long Island, but I was supposed to be looking for that happily ever after with a man of magic? I wasn't that much older than she was.

We stopped talking.

My two closest companions seemed to be a cranky Pomeranian and a sleeping leviathan. Little Red would be cranky tomorrow. Heaven only knew what M'ma would be when Rip Van Whalish finally decided to wake up: insect, sea creature, merman, or god? Maybe all four.

I took Little Red with me the next morning. He latched onto my ankle whenever I tried to leave the house, and peed on my shoes when I got home if I didn't take him. And I needed the company, too. He'd be safe from fireflies because most had disappeared.

Someone new was at the gate today, a friend of Lou's, it turned out, but not half as surly or intimidating. I did not know his talent, but he looked formidable with tattoos, muscles, and dreadlocks. Either he was a mind reader of some sort, or he'd been given an actual list this time. He gave Little Red an uncertain look, but he instantly opened the gate for me.

I carried the dog most of the way, then spread a thick blanket on the ground near M'ma. We sat, Little Red didn't growl, M'ma didn't send any messages. I felt better about things, though. Maybe M'ma sent his particular warmth my way, or maybe my spirits rose to see the otherworlder looking better and brighter. I still couldn't figure out if the appendages stuck in the mud were arms and legs, fins or wings, but I knew he'd be beautiful.

We stayed for a couple of hours, simply keeping each other company. That felt right also, as if none of us had a better place to be or any urgent tasks like putting out fires or transmuting into gods or writing books. I wasn't afraid out here, alone with an alien being and the ticks in the grass. I wasn't lonely or depressed or feeling inadequate to meet the town's expectations.

Even Little Red relaxed and went to sleep in my lap until I rustled the bag of potato chips I'd brought. Then dark clouds covering the sun and sky meant it was time to go. I might be braver than ever before, but those black clouds meant thunder and lightning. “I won't be back tomorrow,” I told M'ma. “There's a big party.” I made mental pictures of people gathered together, eating, laughing, dancing. “I have to help set up. It would have been nice if your friends could put on a fireworks display, but I guess they're all too busy. I'll come back the next day to see how you're doing. Should I bring anything?” The idea of bringing fried chicken and a beer out to this lump of decay was ludicrous, but I still had manners.

I got no response until I picked up the blanket and the dog.

“Careful of the storm, or some other danger? Come back soon, or you'll be leaving soon?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

I ran home before it rained.

 

The storm raged all night. I huddled under the covers, feigning a headache. I didn't want Piet or Susan to see how unnerved I was, not when I was supposed to be in charge of countering an alien invasion. Some heroine I was, clutching my dog every time thunder boomed.

The storm had blown out—or been blown out by the weather wizards—the next morning, the day of the benefit for Mary Brown. All that remained of the gale were some fallen branches, a couple of puddles, and some high clouds that looked like quotation marks around a lovely mid-September day.

The organizers decided to move half the party outdoors, onto the village green. That way more people could hear the live music in the band shell, and bring kids and blankets to picnic on the grass after fetching their meals from in front of the firehouse, half a block away. The firehouse got cleared of trucks for dancing later, a cash bar throughout, and an auction of donated goods and services.

Almost everyone in town donated something. Besides the gifts and baskets of cheer and tote bags filled with delicacies from the deli, Janie'd given a wash and blow-dry, the bowling alley donated free games for after the repairs, the restaurants provided gift certificates, and I put up naming rights to a lead character in my next book after Susan promised to make a bid on it. That way I wouldn't be embarrassed when no one wanted the only thing I had to offer except the quick cartoon sketches I volunteered to do for anyone who paid twenty bucks.