Summer Harbor (26 page)

“If I could whistle, I would. You look beautiful.”

Toby was decked out in crisp white linen trousers and a blue blazer over a white shirt, his tie a tasteful pattern of tiny signal flags on a field of dark red.

Kiley complimented him, glad to have something nice to say to him for once.

“It’s black tie optional. This is as close as I wanted to get. I figure you can’t go wrong with a nautical tie.”

He put out an elbow for Kiley to take. She felt a little silly, but the new sandals were already challenging her balance and she was glad of the support. They were halfway to the Yacht Club before she realized that she’d forgotten her sneakers.

Will watched his mother leave the house balanced on the real estate agent’s arm. He slumped in a rocker on the front porch, nursing his annoyance. He still had a little while before he could pick Catherine up from work; then he planned to take her to a nice restaurant with the last of the money from Pop. That was fine, but he and Catherine needed something to do this last evening together to solidify their relationship, some symbolic gesture they could refer to again and again as they brought their summer romance into the winter months.

Mom was pretty clear about being home on the early side, so the one obvious homage to their new relationship was probably out of the question. Besides, he wasn’t entirely sure Catherine was ready for sex with him yet. The birth control was for her complexion, she’d said conversationally, in the middle of a make-out session. It had taken a month or so with Lori before they’d reached that decision, and Catherine was already too important to him to jeopardize their association by pressing her too soon.

It felt good, this new relationship. It felt true and in no danger of dissipating as soon as the wheels hit the road. This was a keeper; Will knew it in his soul. They had plenty of time.

What didn’t feel good or resolved or satisfying was this thread of hope that he might, at last, solve the mystery of his birth. He had all the tools and even a blueprint, but he didn’t have a place to build the house. It was almost as frustrating as knowing nothing at all. The “might be” of Grainger offset the “could be” of Mack. Everyone had attributed thoughts and motives to Mack, but only from their own points of view.

Like Grainger wanting him to have the boat because he thought Mack would have wanted him to have it, promising him to go out in the boat today and then using a lame-o excuse about it being too rough. Will didn’t see any whitecaps; how rough could it be? On top of that, then refusing to have the DNA test done. Grainger acted like he didn’t want to be his father. To hell with him and his leaky promises.

Neither Grainger nor Mom really knew what Mack felt or wanted, or—and here was the big one—if he meant to die that night. No one had said that aloud, but Will wondered if maybe that’s what happened. What if it wasn’t an accident? Could his mother have been so wonderful that Mack would kill himself over her? Or had Grainger’s betrayal driven Mack to a desperate gesture? Had he gone overboard on purpose out of selflessness or self-pity? It all came down to Mack, the only one who wasn’t there to put his own spin on the story.

He needed a schematic, a line like those he’d had to draw in history class. This happened, then this, then that, and the result was Mack being dead, Grainger run off, and his mother pregnant.

Will sucked in a great lungful of salt air to clear the suffocating pressure within his chest, then went back into the house, found the out-of-date phone book, and looked up MacKenzie.

Just visible behind and to the side of the MacKenzies’ house on Linden Street was a small guesthouse. The slow sunset cast interior shadows, and lights came on in both houses. Will sat in the idling car, watching, waiting for the moment of divine courage when he could do what he came to do. In the main house he could see an older woman moving briskly from one side of the room to the other, her hands lifting and disappearing into cupboards as she talked and went about making dinner. In the front room of the guesthouse Will could see Conor MacKenzie, slim and balding, buttoning a white shirt and knotting a tie.

Will got out of the car, his pounding heart nearly audible. Not even going up to Grainger’s boathouse that first morning had made him this nervous. Repeating the Nike mantra under his breath, Will opened the gate in the picket fence. “Just do it.” The gate scraped the cement of the walkway with a loud grinding—no backing out now. Will pushed the doorbell.

A man opened the door. Will instantly thought that he looked like Pop—bent over, white-haired, crepey skin loose around the jaw. The man was smiling with an expression of expecting to answer a question; he probably thought Will was lost, looking for an address. He was a doctor; doctors always anticipated questions.

“Can I help you, son?”

“Umm.” Every rehearsed word fled from him. He swallowed. “I just wanted to come by to, ummm, to meet you. You and Mrs. MacKenzie. I’m Will Harris.”

Dr. MacKenzie’s friendly blue eyes grew shaded. “Come in, then. Doro!”

Mrs. MacKenzie came into the front room, wiping her hands on a half-apron tied around her ample waist. She seemed a lot younger than the doctor, maybe only in her mid-sixties. “Hello. Who have we here?”

“Will Harris.” Dr. MacKenzie had one hand on Will’s shoulder.

Mrs. MacKenzie didn’t react to the name, just kept wiping her hands and looking at him.

Will awkwardly put out a hand to Mrs. MacKenzie. “Kiley Harris’s son.” He felt the reaction of his words in the sudden weakness of the hand clasping his.

Mrs. MacKenzie held on to his hand, pulling him fractionally closer as if to examine him. Then those soft white hands flew to her mouth, stroking parallel lines down her age-softened cheeks. Tears sprang in her eyes, and one hand slipped back to cover her mouth.

“We should have known.” Dr. MacKenzie let go of Will’s shoulder, stalking into the kitchen.

“Don’t mind him. Come, let me give you something to eat and you can tell us all about you.”

“No, thank you, no.” Will began to back away. He had seen all the hurt and disbelief, the hope and expectation that his mother had avoided, rise up to meet him, and he didn’t know how to deal with it. “I shouldn’t have come.”

“Don’t say that. William.” As Doro said the name, Will knew she believed he’d been named for Mack. Just like Grainger had.

“Actually, it’s Merriwell William, like my grandfather. But that wasn’t a great name for a little boy to go to school with, so they call me Will.”

The assumptions weren’t to be deprived. “It’s close enough.” Mrs. MacKenzie reached out and touched Will’s freshly shaven cheek. “Please don’t leave.”

“I can only stay for a minute.” Will heard the back door open and men’s voices.

“That will be Conor. Please come and meet him.” Mrs. MacKenzie led the way into the cluttered kitchen.

A typical 1950s style Cape Cod kitchen, square, a maple table dead center, microwave on a crowded counter, heavy cupboards aligned above. A used, comfortable kitchen. Sort of like his at home in Southton.

Conor MacKenzie wasn’t smiling, or looking at Will with any expectation, disappointment, or hope. He was looking with suspicion. “Whose decision was it that had you just show up?” Conor remained standing after the other three sat at the kitchen table.

“Mine. Mom doesn’t know. I’m leaving tomorrow, and I just felt as if I hadn’t, well, heard everyone’s side of the story. I came to Hawke’s Cove knowing nothing. Now I know something, and I just had this stupid idea that if I got to meet you all, I might be able to figure it out.”

“Figure what out?” Conor challenged him.

“Who my father was.” There, it was said.

Mack’s name hovered unspoken. No one had said it, no one seemed likely to. A ghost, he filled the room with an invisible, unspeakable presence.

“I mean, Grainger or Mack.”

Conor came across the linoleum, and placed his hands on the table. “We know who you mean.”

Will stood up, sliding the wooden kitchen chair roughly against the linoleum. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.”

“Enough, Conor. The boy is just curious.” Mrs. MacKenzie elbowed herself up from the table and held out a hand to Will.

“Come see his room.”

Conor and the doctor looked at each other with dismay. No doubt her family had made every effort to keep her out of the past and in the present. They probably avoided every reference to Mack, as if, by speaking his name, they would remind her of the thing she lived with every moment of every day. Now here he was, dragging the past back into their world.

“Mom.” Conor’s voice was edgy, warning.

“Conor, there’s no harm.”

Will followed Mrs. MacKenzie up the stairs to a small bedroom on the left of the central staircase. Eaves overhung the twin beds; anyone sleeping there would have to be careful about sitting up in bed too quickly. On the walls were posters, the sort any kid might have of favored rock musicians; on the dustless bureau a trophy, almost exactly like the one he’d gotten as captain of the team for the baseball championship last year. Stuck in the lower edge of the mirror frame were pictures similar to Kiley’s collection, featuring the same three faces. Two small high school portraits were placed on either side of the frame at eye level. Will stood in front of the mirror and stared at his face reflected there between the faces of Grainger and Mack, exactly as old as he was now.

Grainger looked so different. Mack would never change. Will realized that he’d been conjuring up an image of Mack as an adult. Even as his mother and Grainger told him the story, he pictured them as they were now, not as kids. In the same way, he’d been picturing Mack as a grown man.

He wasn’t. He never would be. Mack was a boy his own age, who had acted with a self-destructive arrogance. Had he thought,
I’ll show them—they’ll miss me when I’m gone,
before risking his life in that boat? Had he meant it to happen the way it did?

Mrs. MacKenzie said nothing as Will surveyed the small stuffy room, watching as he examined the photos. Only as Will studied himself in the mirror did she speak. “Conor was in college, and had moved out of this room by the time the boys were in high school. Mack and Grainger shared this room, as close as brothers.”

Will was painfully aware of the catch in her voice. “Yes. I’ve been told.”

“They both loved her. It was so obvious, and I knew that it could only end badly. Of course, I never imagined how badly. You have to know, I had no idea that you existed. If I had, she could never have kept me out of your life.”

“I know. My mother kept me from Hawke’s Cove, from knowing about anything. I guess I never thought that other people might be kept in the dark too.”

“I blame your grandparents. They knew and they should have told us. Even if, even if you aren’t…”—tears clogged her voice into a thin rasp—“a MacKenzie, we would have treated you like one.”

“Ma’am, they
didn’t
know. I mean, Mom never told them who…” Will couldn’t think what else to say, and fumbled a little. “I have to go.” Tentatively, he patted her soft rounded shoulder.

Doro MacKenzie dabbed at her eyes with the corner of her apron. “Will you come back?”

“I can’t. We’re leaving tomorrow.” Will hated the disappointment in her eyes. “But I’ll keep in touch. Do you have e-mail?”

Mrs. MacKenzie bit back a smile. “No, dear. But letters are good too.”

As they came down the steps, Conor and Dr. MacKenzie stood like sentinels at the foot.

“Are you all right, Doro?” Her husband reached out to take her arm.

“Yes. Fine.” Mrs. MacKenzie shrugged his hand off.

“I’ll walk out with you.” Conor grasped one of Will’s elbows as if he was forcing him out of the house.

“You’ve opened up an old wound, Will.” But even as he said it, Conor’s expression of annoyance faded. “But it’s done. Please don’t do anything more to upset her.”

“You mean like ask for a DNA test?”

“Yes. What good would it do?”

It was clear that Conor was afraid it would do more damage to take away her faint hope that Mack
had
lived on—in him.

“Don’t worry, I won’t ask for it. At least not yet.”

“I don’t want her hopes raised.”

“I think she’d be okay either way.” Didn’t Conor understand that his mother had loved Grainger too?

“Look kid, tonight I’ll be prescribing Valium for her. Don’t tell me she’ll be okay. You have no idea what she’s been through.”

“Aren’t you a little curious yourself?”

“No.” He walked back to the house.

Will pulled away from the curb, upset but not unhappy. Although he didn’t have any answers, he at least had all the questions in order.

It was still quite light when Will picked Catherine up in front of the store. Light enough to show her the boat before they went to dinner. He drove them back into Hawke’s Cove to Egan’s Boat Works.

Grainger’s truck was gone, and the only response to his knocking was Pilot’s bark. “That’s weird. Grainger never goes anywhere without that dog.”

“So, show me the boat anyway. I’m hungry.”

Will led Catherine through the yard to the pier. The boat looked pretty unimpressive from this distance, bucking on her tether, her bow pointed straight at them. Not the effect he had hoped for.

“Nice. So, where are you taking me for dinner?”

“How about if I row us out to her, first? Then you can get a feel for all the work we’ve done.”

“What’s the big deal? It’s just a boat.”

“No. I was going to surprise you. Grainger gave her to me. She’s not just a boat. She’s
my
boat.”

“Awesome. So, okay, let’s go look at her up close.”

Will and Catherine climbed into the wooden dinghy tied up to the pier. Its little two-cycle engine started up on the first pull, and the pair sped over the chop to
Blithe Spirit.