Stone Cove Island (21 page)

I wandered the kitchen, pacing a little. Sometimes I find moving around makes my brain work better. David had a funny collection of coffee mugs on a shelf above the sink: lobsters with giant claws, a mug with jokes about Boston, a crossword puzzle mug, a lacrosse mug, and even the famous Stone Cove Island rose cottage mug. I felt a pang of guilt that I hadn’t even told Meredith where we were going, but I hadn’t wanted to get her in trouble for knowing and not telling anyone, especially with the police involved.

Above the collection of mugs was a big map of Gloucester and Salem Sound tacked into the wall. I located Karen’s house on it, and David’s place, the street with the diner where we’d had hot chocolate, and the visitor’s dock, where I hoped
Tigerlily
was still tied up safely. On the very right edge of the map was Stone Cove Island. To the north was New Hampshire, only about an hour away, and to the south, Manchester and Salem. Between the two was an island colored in green, which meant it was a wildlife preserve or park. Great Misery Island and Little Misery Island floated side by side, just offshore from Salem. I laughed to myself about the names until I suddenly remembered.

“Charlie,” I said. “Can you pass me Bess’s papers? Isn’t there one on
The Scarlet Letter
?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Here.” I knew that Hawthorne lived in and had written
The Scarlet Letter
in the town of Salem. Since Stone Cove didn’t have many celebrities of its own, all schoolkids were taught about famous locals from the
area, which the island claimed as its own. Alexander Graham Bell, the painter Edward Hopper and Nathaniel Hawthorne featured prominently on this list, as did
Perfect Storm
author Sebastian Junger, even though he was technically from Boston, but since the book was set in Gloucester, they counted him.

I glanced down at Bess’s paper, “Pearl: Hester’s Curse and Salvation in
The Scarlet Letter
.” Pearl, I remembered, was Hester Prynne’s illegitimate daughter, the one who causes her village to pin the red letter
A
for adultery on Hester. We had read the book the previous spring. But that’s not primarily what I was thinking about. I was thinking about how the nickname Bess had given Stone Cove was Misery Island.

“What’s up?” asked Charlie, interrupting my train of thought. “You’re a million miles away.”

“Why is Karen going all the way to the Salem Public Library when she has a perfectly good library a block from her house? We passed it on the way from the harbor.” Charlie looked uncomprehending. “Bess had a thing about Salem. She identified with the main character in
The Scarlet Letter
. She was in
The Crucible
at school, that play about the Salem witch trials. She nicknamed Stone Cove “Misery Island.” It’s right here on the map. A little island off the coast in Salem Sound. And her mother subscribes to the Salem Public Library newsletter, even though I didn’t see a single book in her house, only magazines.”

“She could get magazines at the Salem Library.”

“Or at the Gloucester library, a block from her house.”

“Well. It’s a good place to start, for sure.”

“I wish we could go there right now.” We couldn’t do that of course. It was ten o’clock at night. But Charlie looked up the bus routes on David’s computer and found a bus that would get us to Salem the next morning. It was only forty-five minutes away. He Googled Elizabeth Linsky, looking for Salem addresses and, as expected, found nothing.

“She could be married. Even if she’s not, I’m sure she would have changed her name. She’s supposed to be dead, after all. And I’ll bet half the women living in Salem are named Elizabeth.”

“That’s probably true,” said Charlie. “But it’s not that big a town. We’ll just have to scope it out, see what we can find.”

I knew he was right, but it was hard to be this close and not know for sure. I wished we had thought to bring a copy of the school yearbook with Bess’s picture. That might make it easier to recognize her.

Charlie and I had bought some travel toothbrushes at the drugstore and I had a long T-shirt with me I could sleep in. David had generously offered us the sofa. He and his roommates had cleared out of the living room, but I could still hear them in their bedrooms, playing music, talking on the phone. One was working out with hand weights and they made a muffled, rhythmic
clonk
sound every time they hit the carpeted floor. Just knowing they were on the other side of the thin walls made me uncomfortable. I had never spent a whole night with Charlie, and I’d certainly never slept in the same bed as him. Not that we were going to actually, you know, sleep together, but I still felt jitters.

I stayed in the bathroom a long time, brushing my teeth,
staring at myself in the mirror and wondering how I’d gotten here. Had I really stolen a boat, sailed across open ocean in winter weather to chase after a dead girl? The person who would do that was not a person I recognized, just as I did not recognize my father as someone who would be part of some threatening, mafia-like group. Had he actually done terrible things? Or was the Black Anchor Society more like a fraternity, something he’d gotten into because his friends were doing it, because he was a joiner? I didn’t want to tell Charlie this but I suspected that if Jimmy was part of the Society too, it was likely he was running it. I couldn’t imagine he wouldn’t bring the same take-charge, can-do attitude he brought to every other project he took on.

I imagined Lynn Bailey striding up to our front door to arrest my mother. What had made her decide to do that? Or had someone else suggested the idea to her? I had reread Mom’s diary again and again. There was nothing to implicate her that I saw. I thought of the LB my mom had written about, the lonely, outcast girl who longed to be included by the popular kids. Now she was the sheriff, officially in charge. But was that who she still was underneath? Had someone convinced her to go after my mother and she was just carrying out orders? If that were true, that had to rule out Dad, didn’t it? He would never allow my mom to be taken away and charged with something she didn’t do.

I stayed in the bathroom so long that finally I heard a gentle tap and Charlie’s voice at the door.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah. I’m good. Just trying to put everything together and I think I got lost in my head somewhere. But I’m
back now.” I opened the door and pulled the T-shirt down toward my knees, feeling shy. Charlie had arranged a layer of random blankets and pillows on the couch for us. It looked more like a squirrel’s nest than a bed, but seemed pretty cozy and warm, which was the main thing. Charlie was wearing a white T-shirt and boxer shorts. I couldn’t figure out if it felt weirder to look at him or not look at him.

I climbed onto the couch first and Charlie followed, pulling the blankets up to our chins. The air in the living room was cold, but under the slightly itchy blankets, it was warm. The heat from Charlie’s skin radiated out and wrapped around me. I could feel every point where our bodies touched as though each was in close-up under a microscope: my stomach against his, his hand along the side of my thigh, the tops of my toes against one shin. Our faces were so close in the dark I felt the flutter of his eyelashes against my cheek. Charlie wrapped his free arm around my shoulders and pulled me closer, until there was no space at all between us. I looked at the gold flecks in his eyes, thinking I could count them.

“This isn’t how I pictured our first night alone together.”

“Me neither.” I laughed. “Especially the alone part.” In the next room, the free weights clanked together and hit the floor with a soft thud. Whichever roommate that was had switched to push-ups, and we could hear the creak of the floor and the sharp “heh” of each exhalation. Charlie laughed too.

“Yeah. The alone part, definitely. But I’m not complaining.” He kissed me.

I didn’t really sleep. I drifted, waking periodically to
think, “Oh. That’s my arm wrapped around Charlie’s ribs” or “Those are my feet, tangled with Charlie’s feet.” It was restful in its own way, a half-dream state that never went all the way to consciousness or unconsciousness. Charlie seemed to really sleep, but in the morning he seemed more tired than I felt. As soon as the hard light came through the blinds I was awake. Then I just lay there, alert, my eyes clear and wide open, as if I’d already had a few cups of coffee. I didn’t feel like I would need sleep again, ever. After what seemed like about an hour Charlie woke up too. He was groggy, eyes unwilling to open, burrowing back into the warmth of the blankets.

“Hi,” he said, half asleep.

“Hi,” I whispered back. “We’d better get going before these guys need their living room back.” Charlie nodded, eyes shut. It took another half hour or so for either of us to leave our nest on the sofa, pull on whatever clothes were dry enough to wear and slip out quietly, leaving a thank-you note for Dave.

OUTSIDE IT WAS SO
relentlessly cold I could feel the air freeze the insides of my nostrils each time I took a breath. Terrible weather for walking around Salem with no idea what we were looking for. I felt slightly better after coffee and oatmeal at that same diner, but was still kicking myself for not having planned better. Had I imagined Bess would be standing on the visitor’s dock, waving and ready to come aboard as we pulled into Gloucester? Of course we weren’t going to find her in one afternoon. We didn’t even know where to start, really. I was basing my whole theory on a
school play, an eleventh-grade essay and a joke she’d made once to my mom. As we waited for the bus, I reached up and ran my thumb along the sharp underside of Bess’s necklace, willing some psychic connection to take place.
Are you in Salem, Bess? Are you even alive?
Not surprisingly, I got nothing back. Next to me, Charlie hopped from foot to foot, trying to keep warm, periodically tossing me a grin that said,
This is so crazy, right?

The bus finally arrived. I had just gotten fully warm again when it dropped us in front of the Salem Public Library, the first stop in town. Charlie turned to me and shrugged.

“May as well start here.” We hopped off, the wind biting our faces as soon as the bus doors opened. The library was a beautiful three-story red brick building, with a widow’s walk on the roof, two big chimneys and brown trim. The entrance was kind of grand, with four columns and gold lettering that spelled out its name. I pushed the double doors open and walked in, not pausing to come up with a strategy. Inside, the room was bright, with light blue carpeting and honey-colored wood shelves. It looked like the library had been renovated not long ago. As we stood in the lobby, Charlie’s cell phone buzzed. He pulled it from his pocket and looked at it, drawing the disapproving look of the young librarian on duty.

“It’s Jay,” said Charlie, reading the screen. “He says he’s holding off our dads. Told them we took a day trip to Boston and hit bad weather. Your mom is still on the island at least for another day. Oh, and Hopper says call when you get back.”

I swallowed. I’d known that was coming, but still, I dreaded being in trouble.
Always the good girl
, I thought. And being that good girl had kept me blissfully ignorant; I posed no threat. Not until now.

“How did Jay say we got to Boston?”

“Don’t know,” said Charlie.

The librarian was approaching us. She was petite, dressed in somber autumn browns and her dark hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, but she looked friendly enough. Her smile was relaxed and familiar somehow.

“I’m sorry,” she began, “but we don’t allow cell phones to be used in the library.”

“Oh, I’m not going to talk on it,” said Charlie, holding it up to show he was reading a text, but he put it in his pocket anyway.

“May I help you?” she asked.

“Uh,” Charlie faltered. “We were hoping to look up ferry schedules. If you have a computer?”

“Actually,” I launched in. “We are researching a biologist in the area who works with the Misery Island Wildlife Foundation.” Obviously I was winging it. Was there a foundation? The librarian nodded, so I went on. “Her name is Elizabeth Linsky?” The librarian didn’t react, but I saw something click behind her eyes and a distance went up between us.

“Oh,” she said. “I’m not sure about that. But I’d be happy to show you the computers and our nature section. There may be some books on local ecology there that would help.”

“Thanks,” I said. Once she left us with the ecology books, Charlie said, “Biologist Elizabeth Linsky?”

“She knows Bess. Or knows something about her. Did you see?” Charlie shook his head. “Well, stay here and look like you’re researching. I’m going to see what I can find out.”

I followed the stack until I got to the one closest to the librarian’s desk. I stood on the far side, pretending to read a self-help book. Through the shelves of books, I could hear our librarian on the phone, talking in a hushed voice.

“I don’t know, but they asked about you by name. Maybe so. They’re still here. Should I have Mary bring your things? She could meet you there. She’s just back from lunch.” At that point, Mary, who must have been another librarian, walked up, because I heard a new voice.

“Phew! You can’t believe how cold it is out there. Is Willa back?”

“No,” said the first librarian. “Actually, she’s not feeling well. She went home. I was wondering, you’re leaving early today, aren’t you? Would you mind dropping her things by at home? She left some work here.”

“Not at all. Poor Willa. There’s something bad going around for sure. Change of season, I guess.”

I was practically holding myself up by the bookshelf.
Willa?
What was going on here? I was sure the librarian had been talking about us, and I had assumed she was talking to Bess. I decided to try the ploy that had helped me at Karen’s. Rounding the end of the self-help stacks, I put on my friendliest smile and walked right up to the young librarian.

“Hi again,” I said. “Would you mind telling me where I can find a bathroom?”

“Surely,” she said with a serene, professional smile. For a moment she was distracted from the pile of books and
folders she was trying to scoop up off the desk. I had time to read the name on the top file, before she whisked it into a canvas public radio tote bag.