Hale's Point (2 page)

People close to Raleigh Hale called him
R.H.
“Your—Mr. Hale said… He didn’t say it in so many words, but…” She took a
breath, trying to remember. “I saw pictures of you— of
Tucker
.”

There were two photographs on Raleigh Hale’s desk. One,
framed in silver, showed a young boy about ten at the wheel of a large
sailboat, the name
Anjelica
painted across its stern. He wore a white polo shirt and chinos, and he grinned
excitedly as he wrestled with the big wheel. In the other, framed in ebony and
mother-of-pearl, a graceful white sailplane lay aground in the middle of a
grassy field. Next to it, his hand resting on one slender wing, stood the same
youth, older by five or six years. He had gotten tall, and wore a work shirt
and patched jeans, his long hair caught in a disheveled ponytail.

“And I asked him about you.” Harley continued. “About his
son. What he did, where he lived… and he said, ‘Tucker’s gone.’”

“And you just assumed—”

“But then I asked someone else. A woman named Elizabeth
Wycliff
. She said something happened a long time ago and I
shouldn’t—”

“Liz
Wycliff
? She’s an old family
friend. She still teaching at Columbia, or has she retired?”

“She just retired last month.” Harley said. “She was my
statistics
prof
.” So. He knew who Elizabeth
Wycliff
was. That didn’t prove anything, but…

“You go to Columbia?” he asked.

Harley nodded. “M.B.A. program. It was Liz who got me this
job. She introduced me to your—to Mr. Hale.”

“What job? You work here?”

“I’m house-sitting while he’s on vacation.”

“Vacation…” He rubbed the back of his neck again. “Damn.”
After a moment, he asked, “So what did Liz tell you?”

“Not to talk to Raleigh Hale about you. About Tucker. Not to
mention his name. Not to open up twenty-year-old wounds.”

“Twenty-one,” he said. “I left twenty-one years ago.” He
stared at the floor, eyes unfocused. “I was sixteen.”

“Look… I want to believe you. But you broke in here in the
middle of the night like some kind of—”

“I didn’t think anyone was home. I knocked, but no one
answered.”

“I’m a sound sleeper. Until I hear glass breaking.” He
reached into his back pocket. Alarmed, Harley raised the bat. “What are you—”

He produced a little white card and held it out to her. “Identification.”

She remembered the way he had grabbed the baseball bat. He
could just as easily grab her arm. “Throw it.” He flicked it toward her and it
spun to the floor at her feet. She kept her eyes on him as she bent to retrieve
it. It was a business card: “Hale Aviation.” There was an address in Alaska,
and a phone number.

He said, “My driver’s license is in my wallet, which is in
there.” He nodded toward a duffel bag on the floor next to the piano bench. “Also
a pilot’s license and a library card. If you require a major credit card, I
guess I’ll have to take my business elsewhere, ‘cause I’ve never had one of
them.”

She had no intention of passing by him to get to that duffel
bag. He might be lame, but he was clearly still quick and powerful. “Take your
hat off,” she said.

After a moment’s pause, he removed the cap, set it on the
floor, and ran a hand through his disheveled brown hair. He looked up at her
and smiled. “I guess I
have
been
forgetting my manners.”

She studied his rugged face, looking for similarities to the
teenage Tucker, or perhaps to the elder Hale. He did have the same somewhat patrician
nose as Mr. Hale. Long and straight. Through the stubble she could make out a
cleft chin and smile lines. Tiny grooves between his dark eyebrows. The scar
still bore faint stitch-marks. It had healed some, but hadn’t settled into
looking like a real part of his face, as old scars do. This one might not even
show that much, over time. She wondered what had caused it. And his limp.

He was watching her study his face, calmly and patiently, his
own eyes on hers. Despite the depth of their color, they had an almost
childlike transparency, undermining his laid-back machismo. Like when he
thought his father had told her he was dead. He probably thought he had looked
pretty stoical, but Harley had seen the hurt in his eyes.

Was Raleigh Hale this man’s father? Mr. Hale had a commanding
presence and aristocratic good looks. She could sense some of that in this man.
They had a similar build, and some of their facial features were the same, but
their coloring was different. The older man had fair skin and the kind of white
hair you could tell had once been blond; the man claiming to be his son was
darker. Also, Mr. Hale’s eyes were ice-water blue, and Tucker’s… Already she
was thinking of him as Tucker, she realized.

Then there was the way he spoke. A hint of something. A
distant, deeply ingrained upper-crust flatness that he shared with Raleigh Hale
and Elizabeth
Wycliff
. You can take the boy out of
Hale’s Point, but you can’t take Hale’s Point out of the boy.

As she inspected him, she saw him inspecting her, his gaze
resting on her mouth, her hair, her hands gripping the bat.

“You’re trembling,” he said.

“You would be, too, if a ghost woke you up in the middle of
the night.”

“Ah! So you admit I’m the long-dead Tucker Hale.”

She thought for a moment. “Tucker Hale’s room is just like he
left it. Tell me what’s in there.”

“You mean all my old stuff’s still there?” Harley nodded. “Not
just Rocky, but everything?”

“‘Rocky’?”

He nodded toward the baseball bat. “Rocky the rocket bat.
Fastest bat in the East. Is the dartboard still there?”

“It’s still there.”

“The models? The cars and boats and planes? Are they still—”

“Everything’s just like you left it. It’s real creepy.” Just
knowing about the dartboard and models wouldn’t have convinced her. But he had
called the baseball bat “Rocky.” When he did that, although she couldn’t say
just why, she knew in her heart that he was Tucker Hale.

He began positioning himself to get to his feet. It looked
like a pretty challenging endeavor. “So I take it I’m free to stand now,
without risk of further bodily harm.”

She cringed, “Listen, I—I’m sorry if I hurt you. Are you— is
it very bad?”

Straining, he managed to chuckle. “Nothing another operation
couldn’t fix. Course, that’s what they said three operations ago.”

“What? Did I—I mean, are you going to have to have another
operation ‘cause I…”

She dropped the bat and held out her hands to help him up. He
let go of the cane and took them. He had large hands. They felt warm around
hers, and a little rough. Rising to his feet, he said, “Of course not. Can’t
you take a joke?” He didn’t let go of her hands.

“I’ve been told it’s not my strong suit.”

He grinned and shook his head, then turned her hands palm up
and rubbed his callused thumbs over them as if trying to soothe away their
trembling. His touch only made it worse, just when it had been getting better.

He looked up. “I’m sorry I scared you.” She knew he was. She
saw the remorse in his eyes. And something else. Something that made her
extract her hands from his and cross her arms, one hand automatically pulling
closed the collar of her robe.

“You can put your hat back on now.”

He leaned down and swooped his hat off the floor, then tossed
it across the room like a Frisbee. It landed neatly on top of the duffel. “Funny
thing. At home, I can wear a hat indoors and not think twice about it. But here—”
his gaze took in the huge, trailing Boston ferns, the piano, the Ming urns “—it
simply isn’t done.”

He picked his cane up off the floor. Leaning on it, he again
reached into his back pocket, this time for a pack of Camel cigarettes. He
shook it until one slid out halfway, then brought the pack to his mouth, took
the cigarette between his lips, and returned the pack to the pocket—all
one-handedly, while the cane supported his weight. It looked like a
well-practiced maneuver.

Harley said, “Sorry, but that’s another thing that simply isn’t
done here. Smoking. Your father doesn’t allow it in the house.”

“But he smokes.” He brought forth a pack of matches. Again
with one hand, he opened it, bent a match until it was doubled over, and
thumbed it against the striking area. When it flamed, he lit the cigarette.

“No, he doesn’t. Not anymore, anyway. Look, I know you’re his
son, but he left me in charge of the house. And when it came to smoking, he
made it crystal clear—”

“Well, that hasn’t changed, at least. He always did like to
make things crystal clear.” He took a relaxed draw on the cigarette, clearly
with no intention of putting it out. “I can’t tell you how sick I got of his
rules. By the time I turned sixteen, I’d heard enough about what is and isn’t
done to last me a lifetime.”

“Okay, fine. You don’t like to do as you’re told. No problem,
except this is my job I’m talking about, and I
am
expected to do as I’m told. He told me not to allow smoking in
the house.”

“Did he tell you how you’re supposed to enforce that edict if
someone absolutely refuses to obey?” He brought the cigarette to his lips
again.

“He didn’t have to.” She reached out and snatched the
cigarette out of his mouth, then marched with it around the piano to the French
doors leading to the patio. She didn’t look back at him, but she could hear him
following her. “I told him I was going to keep cigarettes out of this house.
And—”

“And you always do what you say you’re going to do. Right?”
He sounded amused.

“Right.” It was cool for mid-June, even considering the hour,
and the air was swollen with moisture. It would rain soon.

She crossed the brick patio to the pool, crouched down, and
dipped the cigarette in it. It extinguished with a sizzle.

“When did he put the pool in?” Tucker was standing silhouetted
in the open door of the solarium.

“I don’t know. I never saw this house till two weeks ago.”

“It’s a big sucker. Olympic-size?”

She nodded. “Seventy-five feet.” She walked over to him and
handed him the soggy butt. He accepted it with a bemused expression. “It’s all
right if you want to smoke out here. Just not in the house.”

He leaned against the doorframe, scrutinizing her, his gaze
lingering on her mouth. When he met her eyes, there was something that looked
almost like shyness hiding in them. “You’re not from Hale’s Point. I’d hear it
in your voice if you were.”

“I’m from…” That was a rough one. “All over. But I live in
Manhattan now, on the Upper West Side. Except I’m subletting my apartment for
the summer.”

“What’s your name?” Seeing her hesitate, he added, “We’re
going to be living in the same house. I should know your name. I think Emily
Post would agree.”

“Are you planning on staying here? What, till your father
comes back?”

“That’s not an answer.”

A kind of panic seized Harley. She had no way of contacting
Raleigh Hale, but she doubted he would approve of his estranged son just
showing up in the middle of the night and moving in. Perhaps it would help to
remind Tucker what it was like to live under his father’s many rules. “If you
think you want to stay here, then you should know there are a few other things
your father’s kind of picky about.”

Wearily he said, “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

“He said no eating or drinking anywhere except the kitchen,
dining room, or breakfast room. No dogs or cats allowed in the…”

Shaking his head, Tucker turned and walked back into the
solarium. With a sinking feeling, Harley noticed that his limp had worsened
considerably since her attack with the baseball bat. He picked up his cap and
put it on, then slung the duffel over his shoulder.

“I honestly can’t imagine why I came here.” he said when she
joined him. He shrugged his big shoulders. “Sorry I disturbed your sleep.”

Bewildered, she walked behind him as he made his halting,
pained way out of the solarium and through the house to the front door. He wasn’t
staying? What was going on?

Shivering, she followed him onto the porch and halfway down
the steps. It really was getting chilly, and she could feel minuscule drops of
rain, like pinpricks, on her face.

“Where are you going?”

“Back to La Guardia. Then home, I guess.”

“Home? But you just—”

“Just got here and I’m just going home. I know when to cut my
losses. I haven’t forgotten that much in twenty-one years.”

Harley looked around. “Where’s your car?”

“Don’t have one. I hitched from the airport.”

“You
hitchhiked
?”

“And I’ll hitch back.”

“La
Guardia’s
seventy-five miles
away. Let me drive you.”

“You’re not dressed.”