The Perfect Summer (Hubbard's Point) (5 page)

BILLY WATCHED FOR A CAR TO PULL INTO THE
DRIVEWAY
: his mother's, his father's, he almost didn't care whose. He wasn't too worried about his dad, even though he knew everyone else was. His dad was probably working late. He had made a promise a while back—to never mess around with that weird lady again—and Billy believed him.

But even if he wasn't messing around, he'd kind of screwed up. Billy hated to think that. Pegeen was really upset about not going to mini golf. She'd been looking forward to it all day, and she was only nine—nine-year-olds took things like this really hard.

He looked over at her, sulking at the picnic table. She was this wiry little kid, no bigger than a string bean. A beetle was climbing up the leg of the table. She was crooked over to one side, her head upside down, watching the beetle—and talking to it. That was the best part. Billy moved closer to listen.

“He promised, he really did. I was going to get the green ball today. Pirate's Cove lets you pick your own golf ball, and they come in all colors, and I usually pick bright blue, but today I felt like green. He must have forgotten. I wouldn't forget if it was me, if he was waiting for me. Beetles are pretty. Why's your shell so shiny?”

“Hey,” Billy said.

“What?” Pegeen said, not looking up.

“Who're you talking to?”

“No one.”

“Oh. You sure you're not talking to that bug?”

“I don't talk to
bugs
. When's Mommy getting home?”

“Soon.”

Peggy's head was still upside down. Billy could just imagine all the blood in her body rushing to her brain and knew that certain older-sibling measures were necessary here. Annie had showed him how to do it countless times, so he gently put his hand on Peggy's shoulder and eased her up.

“Hey,” he said. “Sit up straight.”

“I was just watching that beetle, not
talking
to it.”

“Watch it with your head up.”

“I wanted to go golfing,” she said, her eyes glittering.

“We'll still get to go. Just not today, probably.”

“That sucks.”

“Big time.”

“Is Daddy with that lady again?”

“Nah,” Billy said.

“How do you know?”

“He promised he wouldn't.”

Peggy nodded. That was good enough for her. Or maybe, like Billy, she just chose to believe the best of their dad—it was called “the benefit of the doubt.”

“You going to sit here all day?” Billy asked.

“Yeah,” Peggy said. “I'm going to sit here at this picnic table watching this beetle with the shiny shell all day.” Her mouth wiggled; he got a smile out of her.

“Then you'll miss your ups.”

“Huh?”

“I'll pitch to you. Go on, get the bat. Let's see you hit one out of the park.”

“It's the
yard,
Billy. Duh!”

“Yuck, yuck, I forgot—good thing I got you to remind me!”

AT HOME, ALL WAS QUIET. THE SUN WAS GOING DOWN, BUT
there was still plenty of light. Billy and Peg were playing baseball in the side yard; they came running over to the car the minute she drove in. Everyone gathered together, a little tribal pod, asking a million questions.

Billy and Pegeen: “Have you seen Daddy? What's going on?”

Annie, back to them, “He didn't come home? He wasn't here at all?”

And Bay, pierced to the heart by her kids, by the family she and Sean had created, “Will you guys just keep playing, while I try to find out some answers? Just keep looking after each other . . . Peggy, I know . . . can you wait till tomorrow for mini golf? We'll go tomorrow . . .”

Billy and Peggy said they would keep playing, watching for their father. Annie wanted to come inside. While Bay went into the kitchen, Tara followed Annie into the den. She could hear them in there.

“Okay, darling,” Tara said in a brogue borrowed from her Irish grandmother. “We're going to play beauty parlor. I'm going to give you a pedicure now, all right? I've chosen this lovely shade for you . . . ‘Tickled Pink.' Is that to your liking now, darling?”

“Oh, Tara . . . I don't want to play.”

“Nonsense, darling. Sit still. Give me your tootsies, that's a girl. Sit back and relax, and I'll tell you about my last trip to the beautician. It was a facial-gone-bad. The steam was a tad too hot, and it left me looking like my grandmother with rosacea. Truly, not the look I'd been seeking. Ever had one of those?”

“I've never had a facial,” Annie said, the tiniest bit of laughter in her voice.

“Oh, darling. Perhaps once the toes are done, I'll administer a mask of egg whites and beer. Not that you need it, with skin like that. Did anyone tell you you've the complexion of a wild Irish rose? No? Well, just sit back and let me be the first . . .”

Tara's words and pretend accent almost made Bay smile. Her friend had such a generous way about her, enfolding those she loved with boundless kindness and humor, always knowing just what to do to help.

Hoping that Annie was okay for the moment, Bay steeled herself. She headed out of the kitchen, down the hall, up the stairs, into her bedroom. She looked around, as if she had never entered the room before, and then she closed the door behind her.

White curtains lifted in the gentle breeze blowing through open windows. The children's voices came up from the yard, but Bay hardly heard. She walked across the floor—polished wood covered by old hooked rugs, made by her own grandmother—to the bed. Everything on it was white: sheets, pillowcases, and summer-weight quilt. It was one of her favorite luxuries, an all-white bed. It always looked so clean and fresh, so ready to bestow sweet dreams.

Now, sitting on the edge, she reached into her pocket and pulled out the letter she had found on the boat. Her hands, to her surprise, were shaking. Her eyes scanned the page. Although she had written this to Danny Connolly twenty-five years ago, her own handwriting looked the same as it did today.

This copy had never been sent. She had written it as a draft, then copied it over on better stationery. She had been fifteen at the time; she had had long, long strawberry-blond hair and as much of a summer tan as she ever got, and she had ridden her bike everywhere. She had worn her bathing suit with just a T-shirt over it, without a trace of self-consciousness.

She had been so in love.

Had she known that was what it was? Even now, she wasn't sure. The first stirrings of love are mysterious to the girls feeling them. Heart beating too fast, a sense of standing on the edge of the world, hands that won't stay still . . .

Danny had been everything to her. To him, she was a summer kid, someone who bothered him while he did his job, building the new boardwalk. There were other jobs, too—painting and reroofing the parking lot guard shack, repairing the latticework at Foley's store—but the main thing was the new boardwalk.

While Sean had tried to talk her into swimming to the Wickland Light, or diving off the trestle over Eight Mile River, or joining the flotilla of boats out to Orient Point, Bay had stayed by Danny's side, handing him nails and learning how to swing a hammer.

Bay remembered thinking that he could build anything. He had worn khaki shorts and a faded beach T-shirt. She remembered his brown hair glinting in the sun. He had a Red Sox hat, but rarely wore it.

One morning, just before he started work, the baseball hat had been resting on the hood of his car, and she had stared at it, and as if he could read her mind, he had grinned and placed it on her head. His fingers had brushed her hair, just slightly, and she had felt weak and strong all at once and wished he would touch her hair again.

Daniel Connolly. Danny. His name had always been magic to her. She stared at the name now and thought about that summer so long ago—she could almost see him. Before he'd gone away at the end of the summer, he'd made her a swing out of the crescent moon—a sea-silvered arc of driftwood.

They had written to each other all through that next winter; Bay turned sixteen and began to date Sean. Danny took a trip to Europe. Their correspondence dwindled off, and he didn't come back the next summer, and as Bay's life took off, she lost touch with him.

Now, holding her letter, she wondered why Sean had taken it. What was the fax about; why had Sean contacted him? Could it even be the same Dan Connolly? Bay hadn't been aware that Sean remembered his existence—or if he did, why he would care. It had all been so long ago.

She stood and walked to the end of the bed. An antique chest rested at the foot. She used it to store blankets, but at one time, it had been her hope chest. Such an old-fashioned concept, she thought now. Her grandmother had given it to her upon graduation from high school. It had belonged to her great-grandmother, had come over on the boat from Ireland. Some of the first things Bay had packed inside had been her and Dan's letters.

After twenty-five years, marriage to Sean, and three children, she could hardly believe she still had them, but lifting the lid and pushing aside the blankets and old baby clothes, there they were: a stack of letters nearly an inch thick, held together by a frayed rubber band. Looking more carefully at the paper she'd found on the boat, she realized it was a photocopy and noticed what she had only glanced at before—notations in Sean's own handwriting:
Eliza Day Boat Builders, New London CT.

Bewildered, Bay closed her eyes. She knew she had only a few minutes, before Annie or the other kids came in and wanted to know what was going on. They were frantic about their father, and Bay needed to have something to tell them.

Her palms were clammy, her heart racing too fast, her mind swirling with disbelief that today could be happening. What did any of this mean? It felt like someone else's nightmare. Holding the letter, staring at it, she wondered what her husband could have been thinking.

He had been jealous of Danny Connolly, way back in the day. Despite the differences in their ages, despite Dan treating her like a little sister, Sean was sharp enough to spot a rival. He had wondered how Bay could prefer hanging around a half-built boardwalk to waterskiing in the Sound. And Sean, with all his fire, could never understand the quiet incandescence of the poetic, Irish carpenter.

Bay cast her mind back to the folder in which she had found the letter. She could see the bold drawing of the van, the swirled-out doodles of “the girl.” Sean was at it again; that's all she could think of. He was obsessing about someone new.

She didn't know what else it could be; she couldn't imagine. After all these years together, she knew less than ever about how her husband's mind worked.

4

T
ARA HELD ANNIE
'
S FOOT CUPPED IN HER LEFT HAND,
painted her toenails pink with the other. The girl's foot was as big as a woman's now, but holding it in her hand, Tara was transported back in time, to when Annie was a baby and Tara—her godmother—would play “this little piggy” and make her laugh and would wish to someday have a daughter of her own.

“Darling, you get the prize,” Tara said now.

Annie didn't reply. She was almost oblivious to the pedicure, attention riveted on the stairs. No sounds issued from up there. Bay was frighteningly silent, causing Tara's own anxiety level to kick up a notch.

“Don't you want to know what prize?” Tara prodded.

“What prize?” Annie asked.

“For the best beach feet. A-one beach girl beach feet. These calluses rival anything your mother and I had at your age. Close encounters with barnacles, crabbing on the rocks, scalded by hot tar—you are the real deal.”

“Thanks,” Annie said, not even slightly smiling. “What's she doing up there? Why aren't we looking for Dad?”

Tara took a deep, steady breath, concentrating as she applied a dab of shell-pink polish to Annie's baby toe—as if there was nothing more pressing in this world than getting the lacquer on right.

“Well, we are. Or, by that I mean, your mother is on top of it. She's in constant contact with the police, as you know, and I'm sure she's talking to your father's friends, asking where he might have gone. You know your father . . .” Tara said, and then stopped herself, because she was veering into dangerous territory.

“What do you mean, ‘know' him?” Annie asked, picking up on it.

“Oh, I mean, he's such a fun-lover. Always up for an adventure, right?” Tara asked mildly. Like philandering, breaking your mother's heart, running out on his family, blowing the money for your tuition at the casinos . . .

“You mean, fishing? And camping?”

“Exactly,” Tara said.

“But what about all that blood?” Annie asked.

“Darling, I know,” Tara said. She stroked Annie's foot gently, staring into her godchild's worried eyes. There was nothing she could say to explain the blood. If only she could be blithe, like her own mother, and come up with reassuring but slightly askew pearls of wisdom . . . or, as her mother used to say, “pears of wisdom.”

“Stop, Tara,” Annie said, staring at her toes. “I can't just sit here, letting you give me a pedicure. I should be out looking for him—”

“No, you should stay right here, Annie,” Tara said. “It's getting dark out, and you can't just go—”

“No, I have to,” Annie said, almost apologetically, getting up from the wicker couch, hobbling toward the door with her toes arched skyward. “He might need me!”

“Annie, it's getting dark,” Tara called after her, but Annie walked out of the room, out of the house. She opened the back door, and the smell of sweet tidal decay blew in on the summer breeze. The sky was still light, the trees luminous; they were still in longest-day-of-the-year territory.

Time to call in the mother. Tara walked upstairs and stood before Bay's closed door. She knocked once, and then walked in. Her best friend sat on the end of the bed, staring into her open hope chest, holding a bunch of letters in her hands. Tara sat beside her, slid her arm around her shoulders.

“Your daughter is on a mission.”

“She's gone out to find Sean.”

“Of course. With seven toes painted pink. I suppose it will make her feel better, to be doing something, but it'll be dark soon.”

“Okay, let's go get her,” Bay said, standing up.

“What have you got there?”

“Danny Connolly.”

“What?” Tara asked, shocked by the old name.

Tara sensed that the letters were somehow holding Bay together.

“I kept our old letters,” Bay said. “And I found one of them on Sean's boat today.”

“You're kidding—what would he be doing with it?”

“I have no idea, but I also found a fax from Danny. Seems Sean got in touch with him, about having a boat built. I guess Danny's become a boatbuilder.”

“That works.” Tara nodded. “That makes sense.”

“It all seems so far-fetched, Sean going to Danny for anything. With all the troubles in our marriage, what good does he think can come from dredging up that part of the past?”

“I'd say Sean isn't thinking clearly,” Tara said. “Because he sure doesn't come up looking good next to Dan Connolly—at least the Danny we all knew. That Danny would hate him for what he's put you through. Are you going to call him?”

“I thought about it just now,” Bay said. “But I don't think so. I don't feel like dropping out of the blue after all these years and saying, ‘Oh, I hear my husband wants to buy a boat from you, and by the way—he's disappeared.' ”

She took a long breath, as if to continue, when the front door knocker sounded downstairs. Without a word, she dropped the letters on the bed, and Tara glanced down to look. Dan Connolly—the cutest guy ever to swing a hammer within the summer realm of Hubbard's Point.

Now, there was a man who could have gotten to Bay's soul. Not like Sean McCabe, who'd only managed to break her heart.

IT WAS DUSK OUT, AND FIREFLIES HAD BEGUN TO BLINK IN
the rosebushes as Bay opened the door. Billy and Pegeen had come inside, and she scanned for Annie even as she saw Mark Boland standing on the bottom step. Very tall, he wore a dark blue suit, a red tie, and gold-rimmed glasses. Bay tried to smile in greeting, but as she noticed his stern expression—and the even sterner looks on the faces of the two dark-suited strangers flanking him and several others behind them, and as she saw Officers Perry and Dayton climb out of their squad cars at the end of the driveway—her heart fell and her smile followed.

“Hi, Mark,” she said.

“Bay, we need to find Sean,” he said.

“I know—we're all worried,” she said.

“Worried doesn't begin to cover it,” Mark said.

“I'm Special Agent Joe Holmes,” one of the other men said, stepping forward to shake Bay's hand and look her in the eye as if she and he were the only ones there. “I'm with the FBI. This is my colleague, Andrew Crane.”

“The FBI?” Bay asked, and thought of what Annie had overheard and asked about earlier:
the Feds.

“If you can tell us where he is, Bay,” Mark said, his face bright red and beads of sweat thick along the border of his receding black hair. “He—”

“This is a search warrant,” Joe Holmes said, handing Bay a piece of paper. She glanced at it as several men walked up the front steps, around her and Tara, into her house.

“Let me see that,” Tara said, taking the paper from her hand as Bay looked down and saw “. . . data, records, documents, materials . . .” typed in.

Bay caught the annoyance in Joe Holmes's eye as Tara took charge.

“And you are?” he asked.

“I'm Mrs. McCabe's
consiglière,
” Tara said, eyes glinting dangerously. “Just so you know.”

Special Agents Holmes and Crane and the others brushed past them. Bay could hear their footsteps on her floors, hear them spreading out through the rooms of her house. She rushed into the kitchen. “Kids!” she called, feeling panicked. “Come here!”

Billy and Pegeen came running down the hall, looking up at their mother.

“Billy, honey,” Bay said, patting her pockets for money. Her hands were shaking so hard, she almost couldn't get them to work. She pulled out a ten-dollar bill and handed it to him. “Is the Good Humor truck at the beach? Will you go buy your sister an ice cream?” After-dinner Good Humors were one of the great Hubbard's Point treats, but right now both kids were rooted to the kitchen.

“What's wrong, Mom?” Billy asked.

“Mom, there are police cars,” Peggy whispered, staring with wide eyes out the window.

“I know, Peggy,” Bay said, holding her close. “Try not to worry, okay? Everything will be fine. Now, will you go with your brother down to the beach?”

“Is it Daddy? Is something wrong with Daddy?” Peggy asked in a reedy voice.

“Everyone is looking for him,” Bay said. “We'll find him really soon. Billy?”

Her son nodded reluctantly, and she had to hold back from kissing him. He took the money and grabbed his sister's arm. “C'mon, Peggy.”

“I don't want to—”

“Will you keep an eye out for your other sister, too?” Bay asked. “Annie went out a little while ago. I don't want her to be out after it really gets dark. Okay?”

“It's almost dark now,” Peggy said.

“Stay close to your brother. Just down to the beach, to the Good Humor truck, okay? I'll come get you in a little while.”

The kids left the house. What should have been a treat must have felt like exile; Bay watched them walk down the sidewalk, making sure they couldn't hear her, before she wheeled to face Mark Boland.

“The FBI?” Bay asked, totally shocked. “You called the FBI because of the blood on the boat?”

“No,” Mark said, looking very sorry.

Bay blinked, feeling surreal. “Why are they here, Mark? What's going on?”

“They're investigating Sean, and have been. I received subpoenas last week, for bank records . . .”

“What are they saying he did?” Bay asked.

“Embezzled money,” Mark said.

Bay felt Tara's arm around her. She shook her head. “Not Sean. He wouldn't do that.”

“Did he ever mention the Cayman Islands?” Mark asked. “Or Belize? Costa Rica?”

“Only as a place to dive,” Bay said. “And to go sports fishing . . . He dreamed of taking the
Aldebaran
down to Belize with the kids . . . take everyone out of school and go after black marlin . . .”

“Because that's where we think he moved the money. He could have used wire transfers to deposit funds into accounts there and in the Caymans—we're looking into a shell company, the misuse of a trust account . . .”

“The
Aldebaran
?” Agent Holmes asked, coming into the kitchen with a sheaf of papers in his hand.

“Yes—the bright red star in the constellation Taurus, the bull. It's the name of his boat.”

“Mrs. McCabe,” Special Agent Holmes said, “we've typed the blood on the boat, chances are looking good it's your husband's. Type AB negative is uncommon.”

“Oh, God,” Bay said, suddenly feeling weak, picturing that blood-soaked blanket.

“If it's his, and we think it probably is, he lost a lot of blood. He would have needed medical attention . . .”

“Did you check the hospitals?” Tara asked, supporting Bay. Her voice sounded strong and steady, almost a challenge to the agent.

“Of course, Ms.—”

“O'Toole,” Tara said.

“Well, Ms. O'Toole, we've checked all the local hospitals and emergency clinics. We've found no sign of him, at all.”

“People don't vanish into thin air,” Tara said. “My grandfather was a policeman, and he always said that.”

“Your grandfather was right,” the agent said, his brown eyes warm but unyielding as he looked from Tara to Bay and back, locking on Tara's. “People don't vanish. But people with head wounds like Mr. McCabe's are in serious trouble.”

“How do you know it's a head wound?” Bay asked.

“Because we found hair and blood on the corner of a table,” Special Agent Holmes said. “Someone hit that table with great force—more than if he just lost his balance. We believe it was Sean, and he was fighting with someone, that they pushed or punched him hard.”

“Sean wasn't a fighter,” Mark Boland said, looking pale, from the corner of the room. He pushed the hair back from his forehead, looking at Bay. “He was so easygoing.”

“
Is
easygoing,” Bay corrected him sharply.

If only Mark knew how much Sean had hated him, when he had first come over to Shoreline from Anchor Trust to take the presidency Sean had expected for himself.

“Could he have amnesia?” Tara asked the agent. “If he hit his head?”

“Anything is possible,” Holmes said. “But this story is going to hit the media tonight, and people will recognize him and contact us. Or call you, Mrs. McCabe. If they haven't already. Have you talked to your husband? Or has anyone seen him?”

“No,” Bay said quietly, still struck by Mark's use of the past tense. He thought—they all thought—that Sean was long gone. And Bay knew her husband was anything but easygoing. He was fiery, edgy, wildly enthusiastic about everything he loved, and very outspoken about the things he hated. Didn't Mark know that? Sean had been a championship basketball player in high school and college. And he still played hard at everything he did. It was part of who he was. And Sean had often invited Mark aboard the
Aldebaran
for shark fishing tournaments off Montauk and the Vineyard, as well as to gambling outings to the casino. And golf matches at the club. How many different faces did Sean wear for people? For her?

Bay remembered the bank's Christmas party at the yacht club last year. Raw from everything with Lindsey, Bay hadn't even wanted to go. She had wanted to stay home, hiding from everyone's prying eyes. But Sean had wrapped her in his arms, rocked her back and forth, asked her to change her mind.

“You're the one I love,” he'd said, looking straight into her eyes. “I doubt anyone even knows what happened, but if they do, let's show them what we're made of, Bay. Please? People will talk if you stay home. They keep score about things like this—who shows up and who doesn't. Mark and Alise have their perfect marriage—”