The Perfect Summer (Hubbard's Point) (33 page)

Annie was silent, listening, and so, apparently, was Tara.

“Go, then,” Tara said hurriedly. “I'll get ahold of Joe.”

33

A
ND THEY WEREN
'
T SURE; AND THEY DIDN
'
T
know,
but how could they not check? How could they not get into Dan's truck and, just in case, drive to the Gill River? Bay had called the police; she knew that Tara was calling Joe Holmes.

Dan drove crazily, down the middle of the road, as if his truck was a missile, shooting straight for the Alewife Cove and prepared to take out anything in his way.

“What would they be doing there?” Bay asked, holding on to the door handle. “Why would they have taken Eliza to the same place?”

“Because that's where they killed Sean,” Dan said, swerving to pass a car. “Because they know they can do it there.”

“They killed Sean,” Bay whispered, in shock over the revelation, the confirmation that her husband had been murdered by people they thought were friends. But more intense, immediate, was a growing terror for Eliza's life.

“You know the waters over here better than I do,” Dan said, referring to the creeks and coves across the Thames, meandering through the towns west to the Connecticut River. “So you have to tell me where to go.”

Bay directed him off the highway at Silver Bay, told him to turn right, toward Black Hall. Her heart was shimmering; it felt hot in her chest and sore, almost skinned, with the unbearable news propelling them forward. She touched her chest, felt pain under her fingertips, thought of Eliza, thought of Annie reading her father's letter, thought of Sean and bowed her head.

“Now where?” Dan asked, his voice a little loud, frantic. He was keeping it together, but just barely.

“Along the river, a quarter mile,” she said as she saw the Connecticut gleaming darkly across the narrow strip of land, the river full and black under the starlit sky. “Then left here,” she said, “and right just past that boulder . . .”

Water gave life to water. The Connecticut River was the parent of tributaries, and Long Island Sound provided an inflow to hidden coves. The river was tidal here. It was brackish, the water neither quite fresh nor all salt, but still home to saltwater species—bluefish, weakfish, flounder, fluke. And in winter, seals were sighted, seeking rocks and good fishing.

Bay leaned forward, watching the road, trying to find the right turnoff. She had come down here alone this summer, just once, to see the spot where her husband's life had ended.

“There,” she said, pointing at the narrow lane.

Dan turned the truck, and they bounced over a series of potholes. It was quiet, untraveled, back here. In the summer, people sometimes came down for picnics and fishing, and during very cold winters, kids sometimes looked for ice thick enough to skate on. But right now, in the dead of November, there was no one here.

Or maybe there was.

Up ahead, blending into the darkness, was a wine-red van. It was camouflaged by night, but the headlights of Dan's truck picked it out as they came around the corner. Beside the van, like two deer caught in the headlights, were two people, their faces white in the light.

“Where is she?” Dan shouted before he even parked the truck. “Where's Eliza?”

Bay fumbled with the door, shocked despite everything she now knew to see the Bolands here in this tangle of white pines at the edge of this salty cove, in this place where they had already killed her husband.

“Eliza!” Bay screamed.

Alise and Mark ran for the van; Alise jumped inside, and Bay heard the engine start up at the same second she heard Dan's fist smash Mark's jaw.

“Where's Eliza?” Dan shouted, and his punches landed again and again. “Where's my daughter?” The van rumbled to life, the headlights firing on, hanging in the air for a split second as Mark clung to the passenger door, trying to shake free of Dan, crashing onto his face as Alise threw the van into reverse, swung onto the rutted road, and drove away, plunging them into darkness.

But not before—for one brief, God-given second—Bay saw Eliza's face, chalk white, like a shorebird, her ferocious eyes raking the sky, begging the angels to come down from heaven, those eyes reflected in the white headlights of the maroon van, and then the red taillights, before sinking into the dark and brackish cove.

Bay ran for the water. She kicked off her shoes and dropped her jacket on the ground. She didn't think twice. The first jolt was the worst—icy cold frigid water on her toes and then her body and then in her mouth. Her clothes turned into dead weight instantly, anchoring her body, dragging her down into the cove.

Gulping water, spinning then swimming downward, hands flailing around because her eyes were of no use whatsoever; her only vision was coming from somewhere else, either deep inside or high above. It was the vision of the heart—Bay's own, but also Charlie's and Sean's, guiding her, sending her plunging to the very bottom of the cove, this inlet of the Sound and tributary of Gill River, down down down as she used her hands to feel and see, the way lobsters use their antennae.

And she heard silence in her ears, huge, thunderous silence, underwater silence . . . she had never imagined drowning before, but she was experiencing it now, all but the last breaths of seawater . . . a few wrong seconds, a desperate drawing in, and it would happen, and it would be all over. She would drown . . . and Eliza would drown . . . in this water, salt mixed with fresh mixed with Sean's blood. Her husband had bled into this cove; his car had driven straight to the bottom, his last stop on this earth. The minerals of Sean McCabe's blood had joined these molecules of water.

He was dead and Charlie was dead, but Bay and Dan were alive, and they were both in the water now. And Bay felt moved by the spirits of Charlie and Sean, parents who had tried to live and tried to love as well as they could, and had made so many mistakes, and whose journeys had ended far too soon; and Bay saw this as their last chance to make things right, to save what they had nearly, themselves, killed.

And Bay's fingers touched wood, a drowned log at the bottom of the cove, and they brushed weed, swaying in the current, only Bay knew: It wasn't wood, and it wasn't weed. Her lungs burning, she tangled her fingers in the hair, and she gathered the body into her arms, and with her legs kicking, a mother swan moving her cygnet through a patch of dangerous water, Bay brought Eliza to the surface.

Dan was beside her as they broke the surface, as Bay sputtered and passed his daughter into his arms. They emerged from the icy water to find a theater of blue light, strobes blinking from the forest. Crawling in the mud, Bay choked and spit out water and dead leaves. Her hand so numb she couldn't even feel her fingers, she reached over to Eliza's mouth and pulled off the silver tape.

Eliza's eyes were shut, her face blue, her lips white.

Danny heaved himself up from the mud, holding the young girl he'd brought into this world, and watching him Bay thought of Annie's birth, how Sean had taken their baby into his arms and held her while she cried for the first time. She watched as Dan slapped her back, trying to get her to spit the water out. He tilted back her head, shook her hard, kissing her face, frantically lowering her to the ground.

“Eliza,” he said, as if he was just waking her up for school. Then he took a breath and blew it into his daughter's mouth. Then another, then another.

“Come back,” Bay said, her voice cracking, and she could have sworn she heard the wings of angels fluttering in the air, of Sean and Charlie themselves hovering over Eliza.

But the words, whoever had spoken them, were filled with power. And so was Dan's will to save Eliza, and so, especially, was Eliza's need to survive.

Because she coughed. She coughed very hard, and she rolled over, to throw up seawater. She retched for a long time. And when she stopped, she looked up into her father's face, right into his eyes, and she said, “Daddy,” and she threw her arms around his neck and started to cry.

34

T
HE WINTER SEEMED VERY LONG, LONGER THAN IT
ever had.

Christmas came and went, and for the first time in her life, and as much as she had to be grateful for, Bay was glad when it was over. The moons passed, some in a clear sky, others obscured by fog, by clouds, by driving snow. Bay kept an internal clock of the lunar cycles, always acknowledging the power and brutality of nature—in the sky, in the garden, in her own life.

So much in life seemed new, unfamiliar. She watched the news, read the papers, had to ask herself whether she had been sleeping through her life, surrounded by people she thought she knew, she thought were friends. People she had never known at all.

Mark and Alise Boland were charged with murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, bank fraud, conspiracy, and embezzlement. Frank Allingham had been involved, too, and was charged with bank fraud, conspiracy, and embezzlement. Sean's role had come to light: He had embezzled from his clients, but at the end he had died because he'd been opposed to killing Eliza.

“How stupid could I have been? How could I have missed it all?” she asked Tara one night in March.

“You missed it because you have trust,” Tara said. They were bundled up in pajamas and robes, listening to a fierce gale roar off the Sound. “Because you loved Sean. Because you looked at Alise and Mark and saw them as friends.”

“I thought they were friends,” she said. “And so did Sean. And they killed him.”

“I know,” Tara said. “And they killed Eliza's mother.”

“And they almost killed Eliza. Oh, Tara . . . what were we living with? In the midst, on the edge of all that, and I didn't know . . .”

March was just too soon for any understanding to emerge. The darkness that had finally almost engulfed them that November night, when Eliza had nearly died, was taking a long time to chase away. All of the children had nightmares. Eliza was, of course, the most affected. But Bay's kids were cut to the bone by everything that had happened. The crimes their father had committed, the one he had tried to prevent, the letter he had written to them through Annie.

Danny spent many nights and most weekends in Massachusetts, where Eliza had been readmitted to Banquo Hospital. Bay drove Annie up for a few visits, and as the girls' friendship deepened, and as Eliza made good progress, Bay and Dan found themselves so firmly entrenched in their parental roles, they rarely had any time alone.

It was probably for the best, Bay thought. Her kids needed her so much, wanted her home every second, and that's where she wanted to be. She immersed herself completely in them, as together they all felt their way through the dark months. Billy and Peggy were full of questions about their father, and what he had done, and how he had tried to help Eliza. Bay sensed them needing to turn their father into a hero, and she was surprised to hear Annie speaking to them one day.

“He wasn't a bad man, was he?” Peggy asked.

“No, he wasn't—it's right there in the letter,” Billy said. “He wasn't going to let anything happen to Eliza.”

“He loved us,” Annie said. “We know that for sure. And the dad we knew wasn't a bad man.”

“But is it still okay to love him?” Peggy asked, starting to cry. “If he did those things?”

“It's fine to love him,” Bay said. “And it's also fine to be mad at him. You can feel both ways.”

“The thing I'm maddest about,” Billy said, “is that he's not here anymore. That's what SUCKS. I almost hate him for it.”

Bay hugged her kids, and tried not to talk them into or out of any one feeling. She remembered a poem from long ago, about “the dark unknowability” of another person. What did that mean? She had been young, she had grown up in the Connecticut suburbs, the sun was shining. Or, if it wasn't one day, it would be the next. Good things happened to good people.

She had married Sean McCabe, a boy she'd known her whole life. His pictures, all through their house, showed the open, smiling, friendly face of the most popular kid at the beach, in school. A man his friends and clients had loved, had trusted with their money.

A crook.

In the end, though, Sean had turned back into Sean the good man, full of fire, who would put someone else's well-being, her life, above his own selfish desires. Bay had read Sean's letter to Annie over and over; she was pretty sure, from everything he said, that he had been prepared to go to jail to save Eliza's life.

Sometimes she wanted to call Danny, to talk it all over with him. But there was no getting past the fact that her husband had been involved with the people who had killed his wife and tried to kill Eliza. And right now, his daughter needed all of his attention.

As Bay's kids needed hers. Still, every crescent moon, she would look out the window, and wonder whether Danny could see the moon from wherever he was, and her heart would go out to him and Eliza.

Tara was always there for the family. Now that the case was over, she had started spending time with Joe Holmes. Since Bay was going to be a witness in the trial against the Bolands, he couldn't really get to know Tara's best friend yet—a fact that riled Tara no end.

“How can I know what I truly feel about him,” Tara asked, “if I can't get you to check him out?”

“I think you already know what you truly feel about him.” Bay smiled, watching Tara blush.

“It's the most amazing thing,” Tara said. “Who would have thought, in the midst of the worst time of our lives, that I'd find myself falling in love with the man investigating my best friend's husband? Oh, Bay—will you always have bad feelings and memories when you see me with Joe?”

Bay shook her head, smiling. “Not if he's making you happy,” she said, hugging Tara.

“I want you to be happy, too,” Tara said, hugging her back. “I want you to make it through the rest of this awful winter, Bay. I want you to feel the sunlight again. I promise it's coming . . .”

“I'll hold you to that,” Bay said, looking out at the brown garden and gray skies.

So she buried herself in seed catalogues, planning her own and Augusta's gardens for the spring, reading, taking care of her children, waiting for the sunlight Tara had promised.

When Eliza returned home from Banquo, she and Annie resumed their visits to each other. Bay picked Eliza up and dropped her off. She, Annie, and Tara were the first people Eliza wanted to see the day she got her new front teeth, to cap the ones that had been broken during her kidnapping.

All the silver, even the Paul Revere cup, was being held as evidence, but at least it had been recovered. Eliza was thrilled it had been found, and couldn't wait to have it back, for the memories it held. “The best things in life aren't things,” she said, one day when Bay was driving her home. “One thing I learned in the hospital is that I still love my mother, no matter what.”

“Can I tell you something?” Bay asked.

“Sure.”

“You know, that night . . .”

“Yes,” Eliza said. Her voice dropped. The memory of that night was still so traumatic for her, Bay wanted to tread very lightly.

“I felt your mother right there,” Bay said.

Eliza looked across the seat.

“You did?”

Bay nodded. She remembered that feeling of extra strength, knowing that it had come from Sean and Charlie. “I did,” Bay said. “Your mother was with me . . . with you. She was a strong woman, Eliza. Just like her daughter.”

“I survived,” Eliza said. “Thanks to you.”

“Thanks to
you,
” Bay said, knowing that one could never remind one's own daughter, or one's own self, too often of the power she had within.

THE CASE WAS OVER, OFFICIALLY CLOSED, AND JOE HOLMES
was proving to be not only tough and valiant at crime solving, but ineffably tender and gentle as a boyfriend. He held Tara's hand whenever they went walking together, and on nights when she thought of all that had happened, of how close her best friend had come to drowning in an almost-frozen cove, she would sometimes call Joe and he would drive right down Route Nine, to hold her till the sun came up.

One day he took her to the range, to teach her how to shoot his gun.

“I don't believe in guns, you know,” she said.

“What do you think your grandfather would say about that?”

“Well, I believe in them for cops, but not for me,” she said.

“I want you to have protection,” Joe said. “I'm worried about you in that isolated spot all by yourself.”

“Bay's right across the water. And the kids . . .”

“There are bad people out there, too, Tara,” he said. “I can't stand to think of anything happening to you. To any of you.”

“The Bolands turned out to be pretty bad,” she said.

“Yes. The worst.”

“What made them do it?” she asked.

“Greed,” he said. “And competition. In some ways, it was a game to them.”

“All that silver they stole,” Tara said. “Just to have trophies . . . a way for Sean and Mark to one-up each other.”

Joe nodded silently, his brown eyes dark and grave, listening as Tara proved his point.

The Bolands had driven each other, their illicit thrills fueling their marriage. The couple had liked material things, and their tastes had become more expensive with every payday. Mark had worked alone at Anchor Trust, but when he arrived at Shoreline Bank and came to know Sean, his old rival, better, he'd seen a wild man, with a need for casinos and other women.

Sean had also been more careless, and when he let one money order sneak through to Fiona Mills, the operation was all over. Sean had also taken Charlotte Connolly's silver cup; once she discovered that theft, she became suspicious of all the attention he'd paid to her. She had opened her books, run the numbers, and realized the fraud. Confronting Mark Boland with it had been her undoing.

And the killing began.

Giving Sean drugs had been Alise's idea. And he was so easy to seduce—she'd gotten him high aboard the
Aldebaran
—set him up for Mark. After the fight with Mark, they'd taken him down that deserted coast road, and he'd been too drugged-up, too badly hurt and bleeding—losing consciousness, unable to perceive the situation—to stop Mark from leaning in to shove the car into gear. They had been so careful about some things, but Alise had dropped the perfume bottle that had held her cocaine. Small details, compared with murder.

The bridge had been Sean's spot to stop and think—he'd showed it to them, met with them there—but the Bolands adopted it as their killing cove, the place to which they'd brought Eliza. If they had killed with the tide too low, her body might have stuck in the reeds. They'd been waiting for the tide to rise and turn; to sweep Eliza's body out to sea.

“They almost got away with it,” Tara said.

“No, they didn't,” Joe said. “They didn't almost get away with it; they maintained their cover for a relatively long time, but there was never a chance we wouldn't have caught them. They were greedy and stupid, Tara. Good does triumph over evil. Thanks to you finding the slip of paper with the account number in Annie's model boat, the money from all their offshore accounts is coming back this week—we'll try to redistribute it to the people they stole it from.”

“Then why do I need to learn how to shoot?”

“So you can triumph over evil,” he said, laughing, holding her from behind as he helped her grip the 10mm, as he helped her straighten her arms and raise them, aiming for the target.

“I'll tell you what,” Tara said. “I'll do this, just to prove that I have my grandfather's genes . . . that I can hit the target. But then that's the end of it.”

“End of what?”

“End of my shooting career.”

“On one condition,” Joe said, his mouth against her ear as she raised the gun and squinted toward the target.

“What's that?”

“You let me take you dancing this weekend, to make up for the Pumpkin Ball.”

“What was wrong with the Pumpkin Ball?” Tara asked. “I had a wonderful time.”

“So did I,” Joe said, kissing her neck. “But we were both working that night.”

Tara aimed, cocked, and shot. She hit the bull's-eye, felt the recoil in her arms and shoulders, and handed Joe back his gun. He holstered it, never taking his eyes off her.

“Well,” she said, stepping into his arms. “You might have been working, but I had the time of my life. The
best
time of my life.”

“Don't tell the FBI,” Joe said. “But so did I.”

And he folded her into those steel arms and kissed her, and as Tara stood on tiptoes to kiss him back, she thought how she was forty-one and he was forty-seven, and how finally, after four whole decades and one extra year, she knew how it felt to be falling in love.

It felt wonderful.

THE VERNAL EQUINOX CAME, AND SUDDENLY IT WAS
spring.
All the bulbs that Bay had planted last fall came shooting out of the earth. She thought of the words from the liturgy: “faith in that which is seen and unseen.”

Daffodils, jonquils, narcissus, hyacinths, and tulips were everywhere. Bay and Tara called a springtime meeting of the Irish Sisterhood, and inducted Annie and Eliza as members of the new generation. They brewed a pot of tea, put out Granny O'Toole's linen napkins and Granny Clarke's silver spoons. Lighting a candle, they invoked the spirits of the beloveds.