Skin Deep (18 page)

“Rob, it’s—I—” she whispered as he pulled her to him. “Before, in the kitchen—”

“It’s all right,” he murmured, stroking her hair. “I’m out of practice, you know. One kiss like that in an evening is all my blood pressure can take at this point. I’m not going to rush you. It’ll come. Will you just let me hold you?”

“Yes, that would be…thank you.” She rested her head on his shoulder with a little sigh. She should have known better than to worry. Rob would never pressure her into anything she wasn’t ready for. Sometime soon she’d kiss him again, and this time it would be
him
she kissed, not a fantasy man—

A sudden, shrill beep split the air. Garland started.

Rob swore under his breath. “It’s my damned pager. I swear there’s someone out there keeping track of exactly when not to have it go off.” He fumbled at his belt and glanced at the pager’s display. “Oh God, it’s the police department. I’m sorry, Garland, but I have to take this one.”

Garland led him into Derek’s old office and went back to stand by the fire. But even down the short hallway and through the mostly closed door she heard Rob’s exclamation of dismay. Evidently something bad had happened.

Rob reappeared a few minutes later. Garland could see by his shoulders, tight yet drooping, that maybe “bad” wasn’t a strong enough word. She went to the table and said, “Do you have time for a quick cup of coffee before you go?”

“Yeah, I’d better. I’m going to need it.” His voice was curt.

She looked up from pouring. “Do you want me to put it in a travel mug?”

“Don’t bother. My signing the death certificate now or ten minutes from now won’t make any difference. He’s already been dead several hours.”

Garland nearly dropped his cup. “Oh, no! What happened?”

“I’m not quite sure. The officer I spoke to wasn’t terribly forthcoming. Something grisly on a fishing boat involving a slippery deck and the captain not realizing that what he’d hit with the propellers wasn’t a sand bar, I gather.” Rob gulped at his coffee as if the scalding liquid could remove the taste of his words from his mouth.

Garland’s stomach clenched. “Who was it?”

“Young man, about nineteen. Just started fishing. It was his uncle’s boat, which makes it worse. Dear God.” He put his cup down and she saw that his hands shook. “I didn’t think I’d have to do this sort of thing in Mattaquason. I hated my rotation in the ER. My job is to heal people, not declare hunks of meat that used to be human dead.”

She put down her own cup and pulled him into her arms. “I’m sorry, Rob.”

He hid his face against her hair and was silent for a moment. Then to her surprise he drew back and laughed a short, sharp laugh. “I suppose I should have known. It is March twenty-first, after all. Do me a favor, Garland. Remind me to make sure you’re out of town come mid-September.”

A chill prickled the back of Garland’s neck. “What do you mean?”

He closed his eyes and sighed. “Nothing. Forget I said it.”

“No. Tell me, Rob. I live here too. What’s wrong with March and September?”

He opened his eyes and looked at her with a bleak expression. “I’ve lived in Mattaquason two years now. And for those past two years, some young person in town has died a violent death every March and every September, around the first day of spring and fall. If I weren’t a rational man I’d begin to wonder just what the hell was going on here.”

Chapter 10

G
arland finished quilting the green forest quilt, machine-sewed the binding to it, and set it aside. Tonight she’d flip the binding over the raw edges of the quilt, hold it in place with the metal clips that looked like little girls’ barrettes, and blind-stitch it to the quilt backing.

She could have done it all by machine. But somehow this little act of direct handwork, with nothing between her and the fabric but a silver sliver and a length of smooth cotton thread, was important to her. It was work that she liked to do right before she went to sleep because the rhythmic, repetitive motion of hand sewing cleared her mind almost like meditation. She always slept deeply and dreamlessly after binding a quilt.

Deep and dreamless sleep would be a refreshing change. Ever since her dinner with Rob last week she’d had a hard time sleeping, her mind whirling through the same spirals of thought—the clammer…Mrs. Swain…the boy who’d died on the fishing boat, and the others before him that Rob told her about. Like the boy with a severe bee-sting allergy who’d gone for a walk in a grassy field full of blooming goldenrod on the edge of a salt marsh without his epi-pen kit in September. Or the girl whose car had skidded off an icy bridge into a tidal river last March. Or the surfer caught in an undertow in the aftermath of a nor’easter the September before that. The precision of the dates made it even more horrible, almost like a ritual. Suddenly Mattaquason did not seem like the safe, quiet refuge she’d pictured it as all the long months of hashing out her divorce from Derek with the lawyers. Life was just as ugly and unfair here as it was anywhere else.

But she didn’t have the luxury of dwelling on any of this right now. She had to get busy and get another couple of quilts made. Kathy had asked for a new wall-sized quilt for the shop every month until July, not to mention the twelve or fifteen for the show in August. The green one would do for May but she needed April and June, and then more for the show. And the library quilt for September, too… Now let’s see, what could she do for September? A nice pictorial quilt of a late season swimmer being attacked by a rogue shark? A skater falling through thin ice on a deserted pond? Why had she made Rob tell her about those deaths after all?

Only when she slipped into her color trance could she escape those worries. What could she do for an April quilt? To her, spring had always been about the return of light, the sun strengthening, the sky changing color. Flowers and birds were the last things to happen. First it was the light, the darkness of midwinter’s night giving way—a bargello pattern, maybe, with a series of offset circles to represent the climbing sun, the colors subtly shifting from one end of the quilt to the other. She hefted boxes onto the floor to search through, grays and yellows and finally the palest of greens.

She was vaguely aware of Alasdair quietly picking up the fabrics she chose and pressing them smooth at her ironing board, arranging them on her cutting table so that she could begin to cut pieces as soon as she was ready. It was companionable without being intrusive—a warm, supportive feeling. And Conn—he had taken to curling up as close as possible to her while she looked through her fabrics, like a little cat. But unlike most small children, he didn’t squirm or try to distract her. If anything, she could almost feel him—well, loving her, offering his snuggles up to her like a soft, supporting cushion.

When she’d accumulated a pile of fabrics, she stopped and scooped the little boy onto her lap. Knowing his mother was gone made her less hesitant to snuggle him, to give him what she no longer could. “Little limpet,” she murmured into his dark hair. He smiled and nestled closer.

“How did you know that was his nickname?” Alasdair set down the iron and eased himself to the floor in front of her.

“I didn’t. It just seemed—right.”

“Bàirneachag,”
he said softly. “That’s how we say it.”

“Bàirneachag,”
she repeated. Conn twisted his head to grin up at her. “What language is that?” Maybe this was a clue, a lead to follow to find their home—

“I don’t know what you call it. It’s just what my people—” He stopped speaking and looked away.

“Alasdair—” Impulsively, Garland held out her hand to him. She could almost feel his sudden pain—homesickness, perhaps? No, something deeper, more visceral than that. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just thought maybe it might help you remember—”

Slowly, he reached out and took her hand in his. He gazed down at it for a long moment, his face thoughtful, then ran his fingers lightly over it and down each finger. When he turned it over and delicately traced the lines in her palm, she shivered. Still staring down at her hand, he said quietly, “I do not think this hand—or its owner—could ever do harm.”

She laughed a little shakily. “You have no idea what things I’ve wished on Derek.”

“And I know very well what you’ve done for Conn—and me,” he added, more quietly. “What do your wishes matter, compared to your deeds?” He nodded toward Conn, who had closed his eyes and dozed off in her lap. “You’ve given us peace—more than he’s ever known in his life. I only wish I could give you something half as precious in return.”

They stared at each other for a long moment over their clasped hands. Something seemed to shift inside her, like a shoot bursting from its encasing seed and reaching toward the light. Like spring had come again inside her, after a cold, bleak winter.

* * *

The spring quilt almost seemed to make itself even though it ended up being slightly larger than any of her previous quilts. Even more surprisingly, she had all the colors she needed for it. Considering she used over sixty shades ranging from black to gray, then almost imperceptibly to gold and finally to green, it was nearly miraculous. She kept the quilting simple—this quilt was all about color—and bundled it up to bring it down to Kathy on Saturday morning.

Downtown Mattaquason was much livelier now than it had been just two weeks before. All the leftover Christmas decorations were gone and most of the stores had reopened, if only on weekends for the thin trickle of tourists that came down to take advantage of pre-season rates at the B&Bs.

Traffic had begun to pick up as well, and all the on-street parking near the Captain Hayes Gallery was taken. Garland finally found a place halfway up Main Street. She pulled into it, scooped up the quilt wrapped in a dry cleaning bag, and stepped out of her car into the street. May as well cross now, while there was a lull—

She was halfway across the street, trotting. There wasn’t another moving car in sight when she started hardly a second before, but suddenly a large black car was zooming up the street toward her, driving at a speed that would have been more appropriate for the highway than for downtown Mattaquason.

Garland gasped and put on a burst of speed, clutching the quilt to her. But the car sped up too, following her diagonal path—good God, was it
trying
to hit her? She tried to get a look at the driver—was it a drunk or someone on a bad trip?—and just caught a glimpse of a elderly woman with blue-rinsed hair staring at her fixedly with bulging, terrified eyes, her mouth open in a scream even as she steered the car toward her—

* * *

“Jesus Christ in a Jaguar!” someone said, too loudly. “What the hell happened? Garland, can you hear me? Someone call a doctor, fast.”

Garland opened her eyes. She was lying on the ground, surrounded by several wide-eyed people staring down at her, their hands hanging by their sides. Kathy Hayes knelt by her, looking positively ferocious.

What had happened? Why was she lying on—she squinted up and saw a bright pink and white striped awning—on the ground outside the Mattaquason Candy Castle?

Then she remembered—that car— “Wasn’t a Jaguar,” she muttered. She felt giddy and disoriented, as if she’d taken one too many breaths of laughing gas at the dentist’s. “And Jesus doesn’t try to mow down pedestrians, even ones not in the crosswalk.”

Kathy’s ferocity softened somewhat. “You’re alive. Don’t try to get up. Can you move your legs? What about your arms? I don’t see any blood—”

Garland obediently moved her arms and legs—ohh, was she going to be sore later—then disobediently hitched herself up on her elbows to look at herself. Her vision wheeled for a few seconds and she feared she would throw up right there in front of the Candy Castle. Which surely would not be appreciated even if there weren’t any tourists in sight. Thankfully, the spinning slowed to a halt. “No blood. I’m okay, I think,” she said, then remembered more. “Is the quilt all right?”

Kathy was staring at her, white-faced. “I’m still trying to figure out if you’re all right. I just saw that damned car mow you down going forty. You flew like ten feet and hit the sidewalk. By all rights you ought to be dead or damned close to it. Did anyone get its number?” she demanded, glaring at the small knot of onlookers.

“Didn’t have to,” said a man. “I know that car. It was Ed Shirley’s Lincoln. I almost bought it from him couple years ago until gas prices got so jeezly bad and I changed my mind.”

Kathy frowned. “Ed Shirley? What the hell was he—”

“A woman was driving it,” Garland said, feeling faint again. She’d thought the face she’d glimpsed through the windshield had been familiar, and she was right. It had been Shirley Shirley, the volunteer she’d met at the library. But why had the chatty, friendly old lady tried to run her down?

Run her down. Someone had just tried to kill her. She shivered and clutched at Kathy’s hand.

Just then a police car careened past them down the street, lights and siren blaring, followed seconds later by a fire truck and an ambulance. The crowd watched them pass in silence, their faces curiously uncurious.

“Expect she crashed,” another man finally said. A murmur of assent rose and ebbed away.

Good God. Was that all they could say? Garland struggled to sit up, ignoring the way the crowd suddenly seemed to be revolving around her again. “Poor Mrs. Shirley!” she cried. “Don’t you care? How can you just stand there like this? Something must be wrong—she must be ill—”