Kiss River (22 page)

“It won’t rot,” Kenny said. “It’s glass.”

“You know what I mean,” Gina said. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

Her wet hair was jet-black, and it was sleek and shimmering, the ends undulating above her shoulders in the water. The sun had turned her cheeks and forehead pink, and she could not seem to stop smiling.

It’s not nearly as beautiful,
Clay thought,
as the woman who wants it raised.

Saturday, April 18, 1942

I
took some goodies over to the Coast Guard boys today. Sandy was there and he winked at me as I was handing out the fudge I made this morning, but I knew he wouldn’t talk to me with everyone around. I talked to Teddy Pearson and Ralph Salmon for a while, mostly about Boston. They think I don’t know anything because I haven’t ever lived in a big city. Jimmy Brown barely had a word to say to me, as usual, but I don’t care a bit about that these days. He did take a piece of my fudge, though, and thanked me for it.

As I was leaving, Mr. Hewitt followed me outside. He asked me how I was doing since that terrible night with the German spies in our house, but I could tell he had something else on his mind. Finally he told me, very quietly, looking over his shoulder to make sure no one could hear him, that he needed to talk to me about something serious. He would pick me up along the Pole Road in an hour, he said, right at the entrance to Kiss River. If anyone was there, he would drive right past me, and I should wait and he would return, but he would only pick me up when no one was around. No one must know we were meeting.

I could hardly speak as he said all this to me. I just kept nodding and nodding, wondering if he, like Dennis Kittering, knew about Sandy and me. If he did, I was going to be in a heap of trouble, but it would be even worse for Sandy. I went home, but didn’t stop in the house before walking out to the road. I didn’t want to have to explain to my parents where I was going.

Well, I don’t think Mr. Hewitt knows a thing about Sandy and me. At least, that was not what he had on his mind. He picked me up on the Pole Road, which was, fortunately, deserted, and we drove north toward Corolla. Mr. Hewitt is someone I trust completely, so I did not feel afraid being with him. I just wished he’d get to his point, so that I could stop stewing. He was very quiet as he drove, though, looking around us as if he was afraid someone might see him with me. I decided I’d better keep quiet myself. Remember, right then, I didn’t know if he was mad at me about Sandy or what. I had no idea what to say, anyway.

We drove all the way up the Pole Road, almost to Poyner’s Hill, and he pulled the jeep off onto a little rutted trail leading into the woods, where it probably couldn’t have been seen by anyone on the road. My heart started beating hard then, and I began to wonder if maybe Mr. Hewitt
was
planning to hurt me after all. Or, at the very least, yell his head off at me. But he just turned to me and smiled.

“You must be wondering what on earth I brought you out here for,” he said.

I nodded, waiting for him to say something about Sandy.

“This is extremely serious business,” he said, “and I need your promise that whatever we talk about right now will be kept completely confidential. Completely secret,” he added as if he was afraid I might not know what he meant by confidential.

I was confused, but I was pretty sure this wouldn’t be about Sandy and me, so I relaxed a bit. “I won’t breathe a word,” I said. I crossed my heart and then felt stupid. That seemed like a little-girl thing to do.

“The German who was killed by the boar did not die right away,” Mr. Hewitt said.

I nodded again. “I know that.”

“But you think he stayed unconscious, don’t you?” he asked.

“Didn’t he?” That’s what everybody had said. That he’d hit his head on a rock or something and never woke up.

Mr. Hewitt shook his head. “No, but it’s important that people keep thinking that he did. Okay?”

Why, oh why, I kept wondering, was he telling me something no one else was supposed to know?????

“You mean, he was able to talk before he died?” I asked. “You could ask him questions?”

Mr. Hewitt nodded. “The authorities questioned him,” he said. “Only a few people know about this. I’m the only person on the Outer Banks who does. And now you.”

My eyes nearly popped out of my head. “Why me?” I asked.

“You’ll understand in a minute. I just need to make you understand how important it is for you not to talk about this.”

“Mr. Hewitt,” I said, “I can keep a secret.”

“Okay.” He looked out the window behind us, and I started getting nervous again. “Okay. Here’s what the German said. He said that he and the other men on the U-boats were getting classified information from someone in this area, someone onshore.”

“Classified information about what?” I asked him. Even though I know everyone is supposed to be on the lookout for spies, Dennis had told me there was really no need for the Germans to get information about the merchant ships they were attacking. Nobody needed to tell the Germans where those ships would be or what they would be carrying or anything like that, because there were so many of them, just sitting out there on the ocean, ripe for the picking.

“We don’t know, exactly,” Mr. Hewitt said. “Our best guess is that someone here is helping the Germans plan to come ashore and sabotage our power plants and railroads and such. Maybe give them fake identification cards and money and that sort of thing.”

“No one around here would do that,” I said, shocked.

“Well, someone has, I’m afraid. They couldn’t get any more information from the German sailor before he died. He just said they were supposed to meet up with the informer the day after they got to shore, but of course that never happened. Since they came ashore near Kiss River, our best guess is that the man—
or maybe even the woman—they were supposed to meet is in that area.”

I shook my head, sorting through everyone I knew who lived anywhere near Kiss River. “I can’t imagine it,” I said.

“I know. One thing I’m concerned about is that this person must be in a position to let the Germans land. It might be…” Mr. Hewitt seemed to have a hard time getting this part out, and I couldn’t blame him. “It might be one of my men,” he said.

“Someone in the Coast Guard?” I asked. It seemed crazy. Everyone I know in the Coast Guard is patriotic and working hard to protect the coastline. I keep thinking of how angry Sandy would be if he thought for a minute one of his buddies would do something like that.

“It’s a terrible thing to think about, isn’t it?” Mr. Hewitt said. “But we have to face reality. Are you willing to help me?”

“How?” I asked, still confused.

“Through your friendship with the men at the Coast Guard station,” he said. “They all like you. Most of them have crushes on you. They love it when you come around. You’re the last person in the world they would suspect of being in cahoots with me. You’re only fifteen, you’re a girl. But you’re smart as the dickens.” He got a faraway look in his eyes. “Look, Bess, this is a huge thing I’m asking of you. I thought long and hard before asking you, too. I told the man who interviewed the German about you, and he said they would never ask a child to take on such a dangerous role. So they don’t know I’m asking you to do any of this, and all you have to say is no, Bess, and I’ll never ask you again. But the very fact that you’re a fifteen-year-old girl is what makes the plan so perfect. If you do this, though, you will have to be extremely careful. Absolutely no one can know what you’re doing.”

It’s hard to describe how I felt right then.
Honored
is the best word, I guess. Mr. Hewitt trusted me more than I ever would have imagined. He and I would be the only two people on the Outer Banks to know what was going on. Except for the culprit. I am certain it will turn out to be someone other than the Coast Guard boys, but who, I have no idea.

“I’ll help any way I can,” I said. “What should I do?”

“Just keep bringing goodies to the boys. Maybe more often
than you are. Maybe just stop in to say hello now and again. See if you can—very carefully, mind you—find out if any of them might have relatives in Germany or if one of them suddenly seems to have a lot more money than he should.”

“Why would he have more money?” I asked.

“Most likely he’ll be getting paid by the Germans for his help.”

Of course. I felt stupid for asking the question.

“You must tell no one what you’re doing,” Mr. Hewitt said again, just in case I didn’t have the message yet. “Not even your parents. I’m sorry to put you in that position.”

I told him I didn’t mind. I had seen firsthand the death and destruction on the beach and I would do all I could to find the person who was helping the Germans make that happen.

I wanted to ask him if I could tell Sandy what I was up to. First of all, he could help. He knew the other men very well and might know who could possibly have some sympathy for the Germans. Plus, I was worried he would think I was flirting if I started spending more time with the other boys. But I caught myself just in time before I asked the question. If I asked if I could tell Sandy, Mr. Hewitt would guess about Sandy and me for sure.

“No one must suspect that you and I are talking about this,” Mr. Hewitt said. “We have to work out a way of communicating so that no one can possibly know. Otherwise, the men will be careful what they say around you.”

I thought for a moment, suddenly remembering the way my cousin Toria and I used to communicate when she lived nearer to Kiss River. I reached in my pocket and handed Mr. Hewitt the key to the lighthouse. “Here’s what we can do,” I said. “Once a week, or however often you think we should, I can leave you a note in the lantern room of the lighthouse, telling you anything I find out.”

Mr. Hewitt frowned at the key. “Someone would see me go up there, though,” he said. “And your parents go into that room, I’m sure. They could find the note.”

I had already figured this out, thanks to the system Toria and I had worked out. “I’ll crumple up the note and tuck it in the brass coupling near the bottom of the lens, on the side closest to my house. That same night, you’ll come after dark, let yourself into
the lighthouse, get the note, and leave me another one if there’s something you need me to know. How’s that?”

He looked thoughtful. “You’re sure your parents won’t stumble over the note somehow?”

I shook my head. “We just need to be sure that you pick up your note the same night I put it there, and I’ll be sure to pick up whatever note you leave for me first thing in the morning.”

“Won’t your parents suspect something if you go into the lighthouse before you go to school?”

“I don’t think so. I’ll try not to let them know, but even if they do see me, it wouldn’t be that unusual.”

“We need to do this more than once a week,” Mr. Hewitt said. “At least twice. How about every Tuesday and Friday night? Will that work?”

I nodded. “But you have to promise you’ll get that note every Tuesday and Friday night. Otherwise, if one of my parents finds it, I’d have to tell them what I was doing.”

“No.”
He looked angry for a minute. “Under no circumstances do you tell them. You’ll make something up to protect what we’re doing. Your parents mustn’t know.” He shook his head. “They would kill me if they knew I was involving you in this.”

“Well, just make sure we each get the notes when we say we will.” I felt like I was suddenly the one giving the orders.

So, now I am working for the FBI, in a way! This is the most important thing I’ve ever done in my life and I can’t tell anyone. It’s going to be hard to keep my mouth shut around Sandy, but I will.

A
lec woke up at ten minutes before midnight. He opened his eyes, and through the bedroom’s wall of windows, he could see the triangle of moonlight shimmering on the sound, bright enough that he knew that was what had awakened him. Although the day had been cloudy, the night was beautiful, the half-moon surrounded by stars. An idea came to him, and he smiled to himself.

Rolling over, he gently shook his wife’s shoulder. “Olivia?”

“Hmm?” she said. Slowly, she opened her eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said. “But it’s beautiful out. I’m going to wake the kids up and take them to Jockey’s Ridge.”

“You’re what?” She laughed, raising herself up on one elbow to get a better look at him.

“I used to do that all the time with Lacey and Clay when they were little,” he said, missing those days all of a sudden. “Just a bit of an adventure.”

She turned her head to look at the clock. “It’s almost midnight,” she said.

“On a Saturday night,” he countered. “They can sleep in in the morning.” He looked out the window again. “Look how clear it is.”

Olivia rubbed her hands over her face as if trying to wipe away the sleep. “You’ll never be able to wake Jack up,” she said.

Jack was a deep sleeper and had been known to sleep through thunderstorms that kept everyone else in the house wide-awake.

“Bet I can,” Alec said.

“And Jockey’s Ridge is closed at dark,” Olivia said.

“So?”

She smiled. “You’re evil,” she said. “You’re going to teach your children to stray outside the law.”

“So, you want to come be evil with us?”

She hesitated, but only for a moment. “Sure,” she said, tossing off the covers. “I should be there to take the kids home when you get arrested.”

“Great!” He was out of bed and heading for the closet. “I’ll get Jack and you can get Maggie.” He dressed quickly, then went to wake his son.

Jack was groggy and disgruntled as he opened his eyes. Alec was shaking the boy’s arm, and when he saw the misery in his son’s face, he felt a little guilty for waking him.

“I don’t want to get up, Dad,” Jack moaned, leaning against his father as Alec pulled him into a sitting position. That was the only way to wake him up in the morning for school, as well. Get him to sit up and keep him sitting. Otherwise, he would fall right back to sleep.

“You’ll be happy you got up, Jack,” Alec said. “I used to do this with Lacey and Clay all the time when they were your age. They didn’t like getting up any more than you did, but I bet they’d tell you it was worth it.”

Jack’s weight grew even heavier against Alec’s side.

“Come on, now,” Alec said. “Do I have to carry you?”

Jack nodded, eyes shut, and Alec laughed. Jack was years beyond the carrying stage.

One hand on his son’s shoulder, Alec reached toward the
lamp on the night table and switched it on. The boy winced from the light, but it did the trick.

“Okay, okay,” he said, rising to his feet. “I’m up.”

“You can stay in your pj’s,” Alec said, knowing that Olivia wouldn’t be crazy about that idea, but he was anxious to get on the road.

They met the women of the house in the kitchen, where Olivia was dropping a can of insect repellent into her rattan beach bag. Smart lady. He would have forgotten. Maggie had on shorts and a halter top, and she ran toward Alec to wrap her arms around his waist.

“You’re the daddy with the best ideas!” She looked up at him, pure adoration in her eyes.

“I’m glad you think so, sweetie,” he said. She was a lot like him, with a lanky body and more energy than she knew what to do with. Jack was more like Paul Macelli, his biological father. Smart and cerebral, with a touch of the poet in him.

“He’s not dressed.” Olivia looked disapprovingly at Jack’s pajamas.

“At least he’s up,” Alec said.

Olivia relented with a smile. “Good point,” she said, and Alec knew she had turned this night over to him.

In the garage, they piled into the van, his barefoot children buckled into the back seat and Olivia next to him in the front. Alec backed out of the driveway, then drove up the short street to Highway 12, where he turned right.

“You used to do this with Clay and Lacey?” Jack asked.

“Uh-huh.” Their car was the only vehicle on the road. Alec liked that feeling of isolation.

“We should go get them,” Jack said. “Take them with us.”

“Yeah!” Maggie said. Both kids adored their older siblings.

“Kiss River’s in the opposite direction,” Alec said, although the idea was appealing. Lacey would be game, but he doubted Clay would want to get up in the middle of the night. Clay’s joie de vivre had died with Terri, understandably so. It was hard enough for him to function during the day, much less at night.

“We might as well go get them,” Olivia said. “If we’re doing something this insane, we might as well do it all the way.”

Grinning at being given permission, Alec turned the van around in a parking lot, and drove onto 12 again, this time in the direction of Kiss River. After a few miles, he noticed Jack in his rearview mirror, struggling to keep his eyes open, his head resting against the van window.

“We’re almost to Kiss River, Jack,” Alec said, and to his surprise, Jack opened his eyes and sat up straight.

They reached the unmarked road to Kiss River, and Alec turned the van into the dark, narrow tunnel formed by the trees. Not even the moonlight could reach this shrouded road.

“I always feel like I’m going to find a dead body on this road,” Jack said. “It’s so spooky.”

“Or a witch,” Maggie said.

“There’s no such thing as witches,” Jack informed his younger sister with disdain.

“There’s no such thing as dead bodies, either,” Maggie countered with the innocence of an overprotected child.

The truth was, Alec himself did not like driving down this road, not because of a fear of dead bodies or witches, but because of the memories. The aching uneasiness accompanied him anytime he came out here.

He had a key to the chain, and he handed it to Olivia, who got out to unlock the padlock. She looked cute in the headlights of the car, like a kid rather than a forty-nine-year-old physician. Her uncombed hair fell nearly to her shoulders and she wrinkled her nose at him as she struggled with the lock. Once she was in the van again, Alec drove onto the gravel road, and they bounced over the ruts and tree roots that were hard to avoid in the dark.

“Someone’s up,” Olivia said as they pulled into the parking lot.

Above the shrubs surrounding the lot, they could see that one of the upstairs lights was on in the keeper’s house. Stained glass filled the upper half of the window and put a lump in Alec’s throat. He should be used to Lacey’s stained glass by now, but it still caused a visceral reaction in him, a combination of surprise and sadness, each time he saw it.

“Is that Lacey’s room?” Maggie asked.

“I think it’s the one Gina’s renting,” Alec said. He had frankly forgotten about the visitor.

“Who’s Gina?” Jack asked.

“She’s a woman who’s renting a room from Lacey and Clay for a while,” Alec said. He unfastened his seat belt. “I’ll go get them. You guys can stay here.”

He walked through the parking lot to the wide, sandy yard. The moon was so bright, it cast his shadow, long and lean, in the white sand as he walked toward the house. He didn’t want to knock on the front door. Most likely, that would bring Gina downstairs, since she appeared to be the only person awake. Instead, he found some shells in the sand near the foundation of the house and stood below Clay’s window, tossing the shells at the screen. “Clay?” he called in a voice barely louder than a whisper.

In a moment, he saw his son’s face through the screen.

“Dad?” Clay asked. “What’s going on?”

“I’m taking Jack and Maggie to Jockey’s Ridge,” he said. “They want you and Lace to come along.”

Clay laughed. “You’re nuts,” he said.

“Come on. You can sleep late in the morning.”

Clay hesitated a moment. “Can Gina come?” he asked.

“Of course,” Alec said quickly, although the thought didn’t please him. He’d wanted this to be a family outing. He understood, though, that they could not politely leave Gina alone in the keeper’s house, especially when she was already awake. He still felt distrustful of her.

He walked back to the van. All the upstairs lights were on by the time he reached it, and the keeper’s house glowed like a cathedral. In a few minutes, the three residents of the house arrived in the parking lot, and Jack and Maggie got out to let them climb into the rear bench seat. As they settled into the van, Alec overheard Lacey say to Gina, “I told you my father is not ordinary.”

Gina said something back to Lacey, which he couldn’t hear, but then she called out to him, “Thanks for inviting me, Dr. O’Neill.”

“Call me Alec,” he said. “And you’re very welcome.”

Everyone was quiet in the van on the drive to Jockey’s Ridge. Alec felt the same sort of satisfaction he always did when he had his four children together. They were healthy and beautiful, if not perfectly happy. His
younger
two were happy, but they’d known nothing but joy in their lives so far. Even Jack, who knew that
he was not Alec’s biological son, seemed to feel he was lucky to have two fathers instead of one.

There were no cars, no people, in the parking lot near the dunes. They traipsed out across the sand, then began climbing the dunes in the eerie moonlight. Alec had not thought to bring a flashlight, but the moon was bright enough to allow them to see one another as they clambered through the sand. He could see well enough to know that Clay’s gaze was on Gina as they climbed. And Gina’s was on Jack and Maggie.

“Have you been up here before?” Olivia asked Gina when they’d reached the crest of the first dune. They would have to climb down the other side of this dune, then begin climbing up again to reach their goal, the peak of the largest dune.

“I’ve seen the dunes from the road, but haven’t been up here,” Gina said. She was a bit breathless, but then, so was Alec. She looked out toward the black ocean. “They didn’t look this high from down there.”

It took them ten minutes more to reach the crest of the tallest dune, and from there they could see the half disk of the moon reflected in both sound and ocean. But they were really here for the stars.

“Okay, Jack and Maggie,” he said. “Make a bed for yourselves in the sand.”

He listened as Lacey instructed her younger siblings in the fine art of flattening the sand on the angled dune top so that they could lie there comfortably, with nothing above them but sky. He and Olivia smoothed the sand for their own bed and lay down.

Alec put his arm around his wife. “Thanks for going along with this,” he said.

“It was a great idea,” she admitted. “Although I still have visions of the article in the newspaper, ‘Olivia Simon, Director of Kill Devil Hills Emergency Room, Arrested on Jockey’s Ridge.’”

Alec laughed, giving her shoulders a squeeze. Olivia had been the brunt of a far more destructive article years earlier, and he knew she would forever feel a need to keep her reputation spotless.

“Look!” Lacey said suddenly.

From the corner of his eye, Alec saw his daughter raise her arm to point to the eastern sky.

“Oh, you guys missed it,” Lacey said. “It was so—”

“There’s another,” Gina said, raising her own arm.

“I want to see!” Maggie complained. “I can’t see any.”

“Just keep watching, Mag,” Clay said.

“I don’t know where to look!”

“Relax,” Alec said. “Let your eyes take in the whole sky instead of just focusing on one star.”

They spotted a few more falling stars before they saw a large white-green ball of light shoot across the sky right above them, a long tail trailing behind it. It was the most extraordinary sight Alec had ever seen. He knew every one of them had seen it, as a collective gasp rose up from the dune.

“What was
that?
” Lacey asked in astonishment.

“A UFO!” Jack said excitedly.

“It was a fireball,” Gina said. She sounded quite excited herself. “I’ve never seen one before, but that’s what it was. Look.” She pointed to the sky. “You can still see the tail.”

She was right. The tail had grown fainter, but it still cut across the sky directly above them.

“What’s a fireball?” Clay and Jack asked the question at the same moment.

“It’s a meteor, but an enormous one,” she said. “And very bright. You’re supposed to report them when you see them because they’re pretty rare.”

“Should we report it?” Lacey asked.

“I think we can do it online,” Gina said.

“Is the tail made from bits of the meteor coming off?” Jack’s eyes were still on the tail, which was starting to lose its linear shape.

“Actually, no, although that’s a good guess,” Gina said. “It’s just air molecules glowing from the fireball.”

“Wow,” Maggie said with reverence. “It’s scary, though. Do shooting stars ever fall on the earth?”