The Secret Hour (49 page)

 
“Make him tell you,” Kate cried. “Make him tell you what he did to her!”

 
“I’m a doctor,” Beckwith said, his cheekbone fractured and bleeding. “If it wasn’t for me, she’d be dead! Caleb took her from that lot, and he would have killed her long ago. Young men can never wait. They don’t have the patience!”

 
“Patience…this!” John shouted, smashing the doctor in the face.

 
“What did you do?” Kate screamed, coming over to the cliff’s edge, grabbing at the doctor’s face and clothes. “You could have helped my sister, saved her. But instead you…”

 
The doctor tried to breathe, wiping his face on the grass, looking down. He ignored Kate completely, as if she wasn’t even there—as if she hadn’t even spoken. Instead, he looked down at John’s leg.

 
“That’s arterial blood,” he said calmly.

 
John didn’t speak. Teeth gritted, he felt the pulse in his femur, as his body pumped his blood out onto the ground.

 
“You’ll bleed to death,” Beckwith said, “if you don’t get help right away, John.”

 
Stars swam in John’s vision, and he heard Kate gasp as she realized what John already knew—that the doctor was right.

 
“I’m a physician,” he said. “I can help you. I need a tourniquet to start. Give me your shirt…”

 
Had he been talking to Kate or John? John wasn’t sure, but suddenly he knew he had to do something, or he’d die and leave Kate alone with the monster. With caution, eyes never leaving Beckwith, he started to strip off his shirt—because he wouldn’t, for anything, have Kate do that for him, in front of the psychiatrist—and while he was tangled in the fabric, he felt Beckwith’s fist shoot out and jab him in the throat.

 
Choking and caught in his shirt, swearing at himself for being a fool and getting duped, he knew he’d die sending Beckwith to hell on the rocks below before he let him touch Kate. The moon and stars reeled overhead as he tried to get his balance.

 
But he was too late. Kate had reached into her pocket, pulled out a red knife—looking just like Maggie’s—and with a raging sob, jammed it straight into Beckwith’s neck.

 
The psychiatrist clutched his throat, staggered back, met John’s eyes for one precarious second, and then tumbled backward off the bluff. John, reaching for Kate, pulled himself to the edge. They lay there together, holding each other, staring at Beckwith’s inert body lying on the breakwater below. The lighthouse beam passed overhead, illuminating the cresting waves, revealing the tide: full high.

 
“Kate,” he whispered.

 
“John,” she cried, holding him, stroking his face. “Don’t die, don’t go. Stay with me! I’ll go get help. Don’t die now!”

 
John stared into her eyes. They were so beautiful, that odd color that had reminded him of river stones the first time he’d seen her. Of smooth round stones, their edges softened by the passage of water over them, through this century and the last, ancient stones polished by endless water. By that beautiful west-running brook, just across the orchard, where John wanted to spend all the time in the world with her. Eternal eyes…

 
“I love you, Kate,” he whispered. He heard the sea in his ears, the salt-filled ocean rushing to take him away. Behind it a high call, a cry, a siren…

 
“I love you, too,” Kate Harris cried, rocking him, holding him as if she didn’t want to lose what she had just found. Because he felt the same way, just before the dark wave rose to take him away, he felt the tears rise in his throat, pumping out of his body along with his blood, into the cold ground.

 
It was the day after Thanksgiving, and the morning of the first funeral.

 
All the Jenkinses had gathered at the Silver Bay Chapel, dressed in black and with heads down to avoid television cameras and news photographers. Their friends surrounded them in a cluster, helping them into their cars afterward.

 
Only Hunt Jenkins spoke to a news reporter, angrily stating that “My nephew didn’t kill Amanda Martin, had nothing to do with Willa Harris’s imprisonment…He’s a victim of Dr. Philip Beckwith, just like they were…At most, he was hired to build the lighthouse room, but he never had any idea what it was for…”

 
The second funeral, Dr. Philip Beckwith’s, would be held at a later date, a private ceremony to be announced by his mother, his only surviving relative, of Boston, Massachusetts.

 
“What explanation can there be,” the Judge asked, carving the turkey, “for a doctor who does that much harm?”

 
“I’m not sure we can explain any of it, Dad,” John said, watching Kate across the table. She had her arm around Maggie, and she was staring back at John as if she never wanted to look away again.

 
“How come we get to eat Thanksgiving dinner with the TV on?” Maggie asked. “We never have before.”

 
“We’ve never had it on Friday before, either,” Maeve said, carrying the gravy over from the stove. “Or eaten in the kitchen…”

 
“Miracles sometimes take time,” the Judge said solemnly. “And we can’t rush them. Friday was our first available date.”

 
“Daddy almost died,” Teddy said.

 
“And so did Kate’s sister,” Maggie said, bending into Kate’s body, closing her eyes as if she couldn’t believe she had someone wonderful to sit next to, to lean against. “We couldn’t have Thanksgiving until we knew they’d be okay.”

 
“Will your sister be okay?” Teddy asked.

 
“Yes,” Kate said, still staring at John so warmly, with so much love in those cool river eyes. “Yes, she will. After some time in the hospital…”

 
“I helped, right?” Maggie asked. “By telling you about the airplane pin, by loaning you my knife?”

 
“I wouldn’t have known where she was without you, Maggie,” Kate said, avoiding the question about the knife. Blinking, looking away—as if she could block out the fact that she had killed two men. John, sitting on the sofa in the family room part of the kitchen, leg extended, moved closer, wanting to reach for her across the table.

 
“Kate?” he said, stretching out his hand. “Come sit next to me.”

 
She obliged, but Maggie came with her. As if joined at the hip, when Kate sat down beside John, Maggie plunked down beside Kate.

 
“Who wants white meat, who wants dark?” the Judge called over from the table.

 
“And who wants gravy?” Maeve said. “Cranberry sauce, turnips…and don’t the glasses sparkle? My sister and I washed them ourselves, every one.”

 
“I know you did, Maeve, girl,” the Judge said, blowing her a kiss. “You’re quite a team, you and Brigid.”

 
“Aye, we are,” Maeve said, smiling quietly as she ladled gravy over the plate Teddy had fixed and handed to her.

 
The assembly line continued, and John sat with his arms around Kate. He felt her breath on his cheek, her heart beating through her skin. They were at his house—Maggie had begged to come home, to have Kate stay with them instead of at the Judge’s—for as long as it took for her sister to recover enough to move back to Washington, and Kate had agreed.

 
Now, looking out the large windows at the sun shining on the silver sea, on the white lighthouse rising from the headland a half mile away, John saw nothing gothic, nothing frightening, nothing at all to show that lives had been lost there. He held Kate tighter, as if he could protect her from memories of what had happened.

 
“Daddy?” Maggie asked.

 
“What, Mags?”

 
“Are you Kate’s lawyer now?”

 
“Not exactly,” he replied.

 
“You advised me, though,” Kate said, looking down into his eyes.

 
“Only because I wasn’t sure what the police were thinking,” John said. “When Billy came driving up, the cruisers right behind him…”

 
“Teddy called him,” the Judge said. “He had a bad feeling when you didn’t come right home…and with Kate on her way to the lighthouse on such a stormy night.”

 
“I thought you both might be able to use some help,” Teddy said with shy pride.

 
“Thank you, Teddy,” Kate said, holding John’s hand. “You saved your father’s life. I was afraid…” She trailed off, not wanting to scare the kids by mentioning how close John had come to bleeding to death.

 
“Of the bad men?” Maggie asked, looking up into her face.

 
“No, Mags,” Teddy said as he carried plates of turkey over to the sofa. “She’d already taken care of them. You’re brave, Kate.”

 
“I was defending people I love,” she said.

 
“You love your sister,” Maggie said, her eyes shining. “And who else?”

 
“Mags,” John warned. “Be polite…”

 
“No—I want to know.” Maggie asked, “Who else?”

 
John sat still, on the sunroom sofa, his leg, bandaged so clean and white, sticking straight out in front of him. He could feel his daughter smiling like sunshine, and he was almost afraid to look at Kate’s face. What if she was embarrassed, or what if she wanted to dodge the question and move on—politely reply, give Maggie an answer she could live with, eat Thanksgiving dinner, and head over to the hospital to be with Willa?

 
Kate was smiling. That was the thing: John loved her smile. Even now, with Billy Manning wanting to question her again, with Willa hospitalized with more damage than they could even begin to imagine…even with all that, plus two kids watching her with huge eyes and the most obvious longing—as if she were Wendy and they were the lost boys and all they really wanted was for her to be their mother—even with all that, Kate just smiled and smiled.

 
“Am I being rude?” Maggie asked, and Kate’s grin grew wider. “By asking you who else?”

 
“Who else…what?” Kate asked, squeezing John’s hand. “I forgot the question.”

 
“Who else were you defending?” Maggie asked. “Who else do you love?”

 
And as Maeve began saying grace, thanking God and her sister and her four sons Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as Teddy and the Judge bowed their heads, John felt a huge shiver go through his body. Kate squeezed his hand, smiled a little wider, and turned to look at him with so much depth and love in her eyes that John thought he might go crazy waiting for her to speak again.

 
But she didn’t, right away. She just stared at him, through and through, giving him the feeling that they were alone in the sunroom, that although the rest of the family were with them, they were also, somehow, all alone.

 
Just the two of them, man and woman, two friends, two strangers who’d happened to meet in a dark parking lot in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, and again at a lonely lighthouse in Silver Bay, Connecticut.

 
Two people, John and Kate, who couldn’t manage to let go of each other’s hand.

 
Of course Kate remembered Maggie’s question.

 
It rang in her ear…and that took some doing. Kate’s head had been filled with the sound of ringing for a few days now.

 
She heard the ringing of metal striking metal—Maggie’s knife on the rusty hinge. And the sound of a revolutionary cannonball striking stone…and her feet clanging on the wrought-iron stairs…and the echo of Willa’s voice, beseeching her to get her out of the nightmare box…and the sound of the bar hitting Caleb’s skull…and the resonance of the Judge’s tires on the clamshell drive…and the ringing of Beckwith’s bullet hitting the lighthouse, ricocheting into John’s bone…Maggie’s knife stabbing the monster’s neck…

 
Closing her eyes now, Kate gasped, taking it all in.

 
“Mags,” she heard John say as he squeezed her hand. “You want to let it rest right now?”

 
“I didn’t mean anything bad,” Maggie said.

 
“That’s okay, John,” Kate said, her eyes flying open, not wanting any of them out of her sight for a moment.

 
“We haven’t had a minute alone,” John whispered. “There’s so much I want to say to you.”

 
“Me, too,” she whispered back. Their faces nearly touching, she felt his breath on her forehead as his lips gently brushed her skin.

 
She shivered, unable to believe what had come to pass.

 
Willa was safe.

 
She was hurt, horribly traumatized, but alive. Matt—going against everything in him—was coming north to see his sisters. He would arrive late that night; his oyster boat pushed to the limit, it would arrive at Silver Bay marina around midnight, just after the tide change.