Sand Witches in the Hamptons (9781101597385) (16 page)

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-ONE

I
had a good afternoon. And hopes for a better night.

Marion left with her dog. She'd seen enough sights in the clinic. That alone made my day. Then Harris agreed I'd be safe enough with Matt to be left on my own with him. Yes!

The DUE agent watching over my Manhattan apartment reported no suspicious mail, visitors, or phone calls. I had no disturbing messages online. Deni'd lost interest. Another weight rolled off my shoulders.

Lou's guy also kept tabs on Mrs. Abbottini and the Rashmanjaris. All was well on the first floor, and everyone knew not to give out information on my whereabouts, just in case. And Lou said Carinne was settling in fine with the professor and Lily: no kids, no voices.

I could almost relax and enjoy myself. Almost.

My father called, asking if I'd told my mother.

My mother called, asking what I wasn't telling her.

I decided to ask Grandma Eve to tell her. She was Mom's mother, right? Or maybe Aunt Jasmine, Mom's sister, could do it. I'd talk to them tomorrow, after a day with Matt. It had to be done soon, before too many people saw Carinne in person, but not right now. I deserved this time. Our relationship required it.

I told Harris to guard Susan with his life—and keep her away from Carinne as long as possible, at least until Carinne learned to control her talent . . . or lie.

“Ask Susan to make you lunch, if she's awake. That'll take hours, but it'll be worth it. Then she'll go to work.”

Harris waited to leave the clinic while we checked the bag of sand. Matt poured a sample in a little dish and focused the lens. It wasn't the highest magnification I'm sure Ms. Garcia had access to, but far better than the naked eye.

I thought about naked and nothing else.

“I don't see anything,” Matt said after he stirred the sand a couple of times. “You look.” He stepped back, but not far, so I had to stand in his embrace to look down at the eyepiece. What a sacrifice.

“What do you see?”

“Not much, individual grains.” Harris might as well get going, thank goodness. I kept peering at the sand while Matt walked him out and locked the front door behind him.

“See anything?” he asked again, coming up close behind me.

“Nothing moving.”

“Oh, yeah?”

I did feel something moving, but it had nothing to do with the sand. Either he really missed me, or the vet had a ferret in his pocket.

“What did you expect?”

“To wait until tonight.”

He laughed, warm and rich and full of promise. “I meant in the sand. I'm not sure what we're looking for.”

So I told him about the professor's notes and Ann, Dan, and Stan. How bellicose, how small, how powerful. How they wanted the impossible from us.

He fiddled with the scope again. “So they're in the sand like microbes?”

“No. They're made of sand, like magic.” I took out my sketch of the pointillism people and told him to concentrate on it, asking them to appear. “Close your eyes and see the picture, feel the question. Maybe our thoughts together can get them to talk to us.”

“I don't know about that, Willy. I'm new to this kind of thing. You're the one who gets things to communicate.”

“Only when they want.” I took his hand and squeezed. “Just try.”

Of course our eyes shut, our hands together, his hard but gentle at the same time, ruined my concentration. His, too, by the way his breaths came a little louder.

“Let me look through the microscope again.”

I had a better idea. I took the little dish of sand away and set it on the floor. Then I called Moses. The young Newfoundland had been saved from drowning when the sandbar saved the cruise ship. Then he got rescued by Oey, a thoroughly magical creature who talked to me, Matt, the professor . . . and Moses. Now the Newfie was way wiser than any dog I knew. He didn't like Marion, did he? That's how wise he was.

He barked at the dish on the floor, but we couldn't tell if he saw something, heard something, or wanted something more palatable in the dish.

“I wish your mother were here,” Matt said.

“Hell, no. I'm not ready for that.”

“But maybe she could tell us what Moses sees.”

“I doubt there's words in English for what I think Moses might see. But if he can convince the Andanstans we come in peace . . .”

Matt rubbed the back of my neck, right where the muscles were tight. “I think you're giving Moses too much credit. He's the most teachable dog I've ever had, with the best temperament. He knows where the biscuits are kept, and what time his dinner arrives, but he still bumps his head under the table when he forgets how big he is.”

Moses got touched by magic, the same as Matt did. No one knew their potentials. For now, Moses wasn't talking and Matt wasn't seeing anything I didn't.

I patted his back. Moses', not Matt's. “You're a good dog anyway. You put up with Little Red, and you kept Matt safe.”

Matt smiled. “I didn't know I was in danger.”

He hadn't seen that speculative gleam in his ex-wife's eyes. I patted his cheek. “You're a good man.”

He didn't understand, but he smiled and kissed me. Which was good, very good. Moses whined.

I looked at him. “See how smart? He knows we aren't going to figure this out unless we concentrate on it.”

“I thought we were doing fine.”

“Not that, the sand.”

Matt sighed. “Yeah, the police chief and the mayor keep nagging at me to get you working on the problem.”

My grandmother, too, I told him. And how they were having a big council meeting on Monday morning to hear what I'd discovered. Which was almost nothing, except how Matt's brown eyes had dancing gold flecks in them, and how his smile made me happy to be wherever he was. And how I thought the Andanstans caused the rashes, to get our attention so we'd give their sand back. “I just don't know where to start if I can't find Oey, and can't get these guys to talk.” I poured the sand through my fingers and back into the plastic bag to return to the beach; I was
not
stealing any more of their turf.

“Let's start with lunch,” Matt decided. He was always hungry, but I guess he'd missed breakfast, too.

Moses perked his ears up. He recognized the word “lunch,” at least.

So we went into town to pick up sandwiches at Joanne's deli. We parked near the library, so we went in there first, to fectch whatever books old Mrs. Terwilliger had for us. You never knew what the eldritch elder librarian kept on reserve for you, or why, but you usually needed it. Today she had a stack of books about writing and illustrating children's stories for me. And one called
Whose House Is It?
which was about adult women living with their mothers. Nothing about sand, stalkers, or skin conditions. Her rash from a paper cut was all healed up. Matt's cat scratch dermatitis was barely visible. Or touchable. I checked. Twice.

Mrs. Terwilliger gave Matt a book about office management and three résumés from local people Mrs. Terwilliger personally recommended.

“But I just hired a new receptionist,” he said. “I don't need these.”

Mrs. Terwilliger gave him a schoolmarm stare over her reading glasses. “You will.”

I had to agree. Matt seemed to go through office staff like Donald Trump through apprentices. No one had been there longer than a week or two since his niece left, after helping hack into the village computers to embezzle the municipal funds. She might have been hypnotized at the time, but the hellcat wreaked havoc in Paumanok Harbor and among Matt's clients. Part of the problem since then was that Matt hired people he felt sorry for, or wanted to help, not the most capable, most dedicated, most loyal, or most knowledgeable about small animals. And he never fired anyone. They got arrested or they quit, usually in a tantrum or in tears. In desperation, he'd hired an outside bookkeeping company, but he still needed a front desk person.

I already figured I'd be helping out, since I'd contributed to his last receptionist's departure. I'd ask later who he hired this time and read the résumés myself.

We walked past Vincent the barber's, who gave us a thumbs up through his shop's glass front. Yes, we both had clear auras; yes, Vincent thought we looked good together.

Walter the pharmacist ran out of the drugstore to hand us both small brown bags. “No charge,” he yelled as he ran back in to wait on the customer he'd left at the counter. I knew without looking what the bag contained. Walter always knew when a customer—or a couple—needed protection. Matt peeked in his and grinned. Yup, we were both going to get lucky tonight.

At the deli, Joanne gave me lentil soup and a muffin instead of the healthy salad I thought I should have. The soup was perfect for a mid-October day when the sky clouded over, like now. Joanne handed Matt a turkey salad sandwich, while he still contemplated the menu board. That was Joanne's gift, to know what her customers wanted before they did, just like the librarian and the druggist. She wrapped up a hot dog for Moses.

No one else was in the store, so I could ask, “You know what the dog wants, too?”

“No, he always wants a hot dog.”

“God, I love this town,” Matt said when we left. “You never know what's around the corner, or on someone's mind. Life is an adventure here, not a ho-hum slog.”

I could do with less adventure, myself, and a lot less of everyone knowing my business. I wish Matt didn't like the place so much. He'd never move, especially now that he could see the magic.

I hoped one of us could see the Andanstans.

Matt drove us to the same beach I'd been at this morning, to return the sand and see if he or Moses spotted anything I'd missed. They didn't, but Moses chased the seagulls away from our blanket before they could mooch any of our lunch.

After that, we tried several other beaches along the shoreline; all suddenly narrow, with sharp drop-offs in the water. Moses went swimming. He didn't report any conversations with the sandy bottom, just wanted another hot dog. I was glad we had Matt's car.

He was still glad he lived in such a marvelous place with the gorgeous scenery and open spaces, where he could spend time with his dog. And me. With the wind in his hair and the grin on his face, he looked like he belonged here. Rugged, a little uncivilized, but natural and unique and happy.

On the way back toward town we stopped at a house on Shearwater Street, usually referred to, in fear and avoidance, as the House. No one lived there, yet the lawn got mowed, the taxes got paid, and trespassers—be they kids selling Girl Scout cookies, Jehovah's Witnesses, census takers, or real estate agents—all got yelled at, insulted, or pummeled with junk catalogs through the mail slot.

But the House talked to me and Matt last month. Actually, it sang, giving helpful hints like where to look for the missing professor and how to stymie the hypnotist. But not today. The place looked as tidy as ever, yet somehow it felt less inhabited. No one answered Matt's knock on the door, or my shouted, “Hello.” No one responded to the pictures I held up, the messages I tried to send mentally. On the other hand, no one threw things at us, set the shingles to shuddering, or caused the porch boards to collapse with us on them.

I kind of missed the weird, and the help. Matt muttered in disappointment. “Maybe we should try singing to it?”

Oh, yeah, stand on the sadistic porch serenading an empty house. At least no one could see us, since the houses on both sides were empty. No one wanted to live next door to a haunted Colonial. We tried “Home on the Range,” “Walking My Baby Back Home,” and “The House that Grew Me.” The results had Moses yowling, but the House stayed silent. I pushed a card with my phone number on it through the mail slot, just in case.

After that, we tried a couple more beaches before driving east toward Montauk, where the sinking cruise ship had heeled over on its side. On the trip there, we talked. We really talked, not like on the phone or in a text message, but face-to-face. I could see his expression, knowing he listened, even when he watched the road instead of me. Maybe that made it easier to apologize again for the angry words, the jealousy, the resentments that surfaced when we were apart because neither of us wanted to give up our chosen lives.

Matt pulled over to the shoulder on the Nappeague strip, and pulled me over to his side of the car. He apologized, too, for the jealousy that ate at him when he thought of another man getting to hold me.

So I let him hold me, even if the shift knob jabbed into my hip. I mightn't belong to the short list of world-savers, but I knew I belonged right here, in Matt's arms. Except people beeped at us as they passed by, and someone shouted out to get a room, which wasn't a bad idea except Little Red was back at my house, and Lou and Harris would throw a fit.

So we drove on to Montauk, to the ocean beach nearest where the cruise ship had been storm-tossed onto a previously nonexistent sandbar at sea. We parked in the lot next to the supermarket on Main Street, bought some apples, then walked along the beach, holding hands. We kissed and shared the tart taste of the apples, and forgave each other . . . and ourselves. We gave Moses an apple to eat or bury, and tossed our cores into the waves for the seagulls. And we listened to the sand.

We lay down in it a minute, too, thinking if we were closer, maybe we'd get a response. We got cold and damp, that was all. My hair had to look like a fuzzy peach by now, in the humidity, but Matt said he didn't care if I had purple polka-dotted hair or none at all. He'd take me the way I was, or the way I wanted to be.

All I wanted right now was to be with him. But we had a job to do and air to clear between us. So we walked and talked and stopped to pick up handfuls of sand to examine.

I explained my theories about the Andanstans, from the professor's notes, from my father's cryptic warnings, maybe from my imagination or intuition. Then I explained about my father and Carinne, the true story this time, and about my parents' tenuous relationship.