The Turning (3 page)

I guess I’d better shut this down and get my luggage and get ready to leave the boat. I’ll write you again from the island.

Keep the faith. Write me. Meanwhile,

Love you,

Jack

JUNE 2

DEAR SOPHIE,

I guess I must be more superstitious than I’d thought. I’d been seeing bad omens the whole time on the ferry. But as we neared the island, the signs suddenly got better.

First, the weather cleared dramatically. The sun burned through the fog, and the island appeared, emerald green, shimmering in the light. From far away, I could see a willow dipping its leaves in the water. I’d never seen a tree growing so near the sea. A long white beach took up part of the shore, hedged by a stone embankment. The whole island looked like a garden, lawns and fields rising to a low hill, on which I could just make out the roof and chimneys of an enormous house surrounded by tall pointed trees.

The next good sign was the brand-new red pickup truck parked at the end of the dock. I don’t know what I’d imagined, exactly. Maybe I’d been thinking that someone from the house would come to pick me up in a horse-drawn buggy.

The minute I set foot on the dock, a woman jumped out of the truck. She was around your mom’s age, the age my mother would have been, but kind of tough and muscular, and she moved like someone much younger. She was wearing jeans and a plaid shirt, a tan jacket, and hiking boots that, on her, looked cool and stylish.

Mr. Crackstone had told me the kids lived alone with their cook, a widow named Mrs. Gross. I guess it was pretty stupid of me to have pictured a fat, unpleasant-looking woman whose appearance matched her name.

The woman held out her hand, and I shook it. Her palm was calloused and rough.

“Linda Gross,” she said. “Call me Linda.”

“Good to meet you, Linda. I’m Jackson Branch. Call me Jack.”

“Welcome to Crackstone’s Landing, Jack,” Linda said. “I’d imagined someone different.”

I wondered what she’d expected. Someone older and more grown-up? Someone better dressed? Some brawny physical-trainer type weighed down by sports equipment?

I said, “I did, too.”

“I don’t want to know what you imagined,” said Linda. “Hey, look. You made the drizzle stop! It was cold and nasty this morning.”

By now two crew members had got off the boat and were unloading cartons of stuff for the house and putting them in the back of Linda’s truck.

“Hiya, Linda,” they said. “No mail today. Any letters going out?”

“Just a couple of bills,” said Linda, handing one of the guys a few business envelopes.

“When aren’t there bills?” he said.

“You can say that again,” said Linda. “Good thing I’m not actually the one paying them.” The workers kept on going back and forth from the boat to the truck. It was amazing how many boxes they were delivering.

“Thanks, guys, as always,” said Linda.

“It’s crazy,” she told me. “I have a little garden that’s just started producing peas and lettuce. But except for that, and for the rest of the year, everything has to be shipped in.
Everything
. Paper towels, clothes for the kids, grass seed for the gardeners. Like I said, I’m glad I’m not paying the bills.”

Standing there talking to Linda, I’d almost forgotten for a moment where I was and how I’d gotten there and what I was doing. It was almost as if we were old friends meeting on the street. But the minute she mentioned the fact that everything came in by ferry, I remembered: no internet, no phone. And it crossed my mind that, as far as Jim Crackstone was concerned, I was just another bit of cargo off-loaded from the boat and delivered to the island.

Linda was waiting for me to answer a question I hadn’t heard.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“I was asking if you smoked,” said Linda.

“I don’t,” I said.

“Good. I don’t, either,” said Linda. “No one should. But every so often I indulge. Do you mind?”

“No,” I said. “My dad smokes.”

“Good,” said Linda, lighting up. “Believe me, I would never ever smoke in the house.”

“I believe you,” I said.

“How was the ferry ride?” asked Linda.

“Fine,” I said. “Uneventful. A little choppy at the end.” No way I was going to tell her that I’d met a seagull that warned me to turn around and not go to the island—the same island on which an obviously nice person had come to pick me up in an obviously nice red truck. Maybe after a few weeks, I could mention to Linda that on my way here this unnerving event had happened, or I
thought
it happened. Even now the seagull seemed less real by the minute. Maybe Linda and I would laugh about my hallucination on the ferry. Eventually I would tell her how the blind man’s wife had mentioned something about a … problem and an investigation. But I couldn’t exactly say, Hi, nice to meet you, is it true that someone died here and the cops were involved?

The blast of the ferry horn startled me. Even Linda flinched. But the men unloading the cartons yelled, “Okay! Shut up! We’re coming!” I couldn’t stop staring at how full they’d packed Linda’s truck. Groceries, I got that. People needed to eat. But how much could Linda, the two kids, and I possibly consume? Toilet paper, paper towels. Shampoo, lightbulbs, toothpaste. I saw a large box labeled with the name of the high-tech vacuum cleaner that the know-it-all British guy advertises on TV.

At last the men got back in the boat, the walkway came up, and the ferry began to pull away from shore. I looked up at the deck.

The sad-looking red-haired woman was gazing over the railing. For a few moments I was sure that she was looking at me. But she was already too far away for me to be sure. She was definitely too far away for me to see if she was still crying. I wondered who had won that card game. I couldn’t stop myself from waving. She didn’t wave back. She probably didn’t even see me.

“Friend of yours?” said Linda.

For a moment I longed to tell Linda about how sure I was, without knowing why, that the woman had been thinking about jumping off the boat. And about how I was certain that she and the guy in the café had been playing cards for something that she couldn’t afford to lose. But I didn’t know Linda well enough, and I didn’t want her first impression to be that I was some kind of crazy kid, or someone who made everything into a drama just to get attention. I shook my head in answer to her question.

“Let’s go,” said Linda. “I know the kids are waiting. They’re excited to meet you.”

I said, “Two kids alone in the house? They’re probably tearing the place apart.”

Linda gave me a funny look. “Not these kids,” she said.

I wanted to ask what she meant. But I couldn’t think how to put the question so she wouldn’t think I was being nosy or trying to make her say more than she wanted to.

The cab of Linda’s truck smelled loamy and good, like the earth after a rain. She drove quickly and confidently, sort of like my dad.

I said, “How long you have you lived here?”

Linda said, “I moved here when the children did. They were practically babies. I’d been the cook for their family. The kids’ dad, rest in peace, found me working in a local diner and hired me on the spot. The kids’ parents were really great. And when they …” Her voice trailed off. “I was married then. My husband came with us when we all moved here and worked as the handyman on the island, but he got sick and died two years ago. Sometimes it seems like yesterday and sometimes like a million years ago.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. I was about to bring up how my mom died when I was little. But I sensed that it would only make the mood in the truck turn darker. Later there would be time to tell Linda all about it, if I felt like it. Meanwhile I was already wishing that my dad could meet someone like Linda. Maybe I could introduce them after the summer was over.

“When we first came to the island,” Linda said, “there was a nurse and a nanny and a gardener. There have been others since. People have come and gone. People who had a lot more influence over the kids than I did. If the kids seem a little … odd to you, I can’t take any blame or credit. Maybe they were born that way. The mom was royalty, supposedly, but she was always really nice to me and never acted superior or snooty. Some of the teachers the kids have had …” Linda shook her head. “Well! I suppose they’re unusual children, not that I remember anymore what
usual
children are. But I have nieces and nephews I see sometimes, and trust me, they’re not like Miles and Flora.”

“What are Miles and Flora like?” I said.

“Sometimes I almost feel like they’re from another era completely,” Linda said. “But you’ll see what I mean. Anyway, the entire Crackstone’s Landing population is down to us three. Me and the kids. And now here you are, bringing the total to four.”

The dirt road led through a field in which tall grasses and wildflowers grew thickly on each side.

“Awesome field,” I said. It took all my self-control not to ask what she meant by calling the kids a “little odd.”

Linda seemed not to hear me. “It’s not a life for everyone. Most people would get lonely, I guess. Freaked out by the solitude and the silence. But I’ve always liked it. I grew up in the country.”

We crossed the field and drove through a patch of woods so neat that the forest floor seemed to have been swept clean. Then we came into a clearing, through a stone gate, and past a series of gardens, like walled, flowered rooms leading off the corridor of the road.

I said, “Do you do all this yourself?”

“Are you kidding? Hank Swopes, the landscape guy, comes once a week, with a crew. He has his own boat. He’s kind of cranky, but if you’re nice to him, he’ll sometimes mail a letter for you or bring you back something special from the mainland. We used to have a full-time gardener. Did I say that? I can’t remember. But he’s not with us anymore. It didn’t work out.”

A tightness in Linda’s voice made me think that maybe the full-time gardener had been a boyfriend or something. Maybe after her husband died. Or anyway, someone special.

“Here we are,” she said. “The Dark House.”

Towers and gables and peaked roofs rose from the huge wooden structure. There were porches and windows and a slanted roof in which there were windows suggesting attics, and attics on top of attics. And all of it, including the trim, was painted a deep coal black that seemed to swallow up all the light.

I felt the hairs on my neck and arms rise. The house seemed like some hulking black monster or a dark hole you could fall into when you walked through the door.

Linda didn’t seem to notice my reaction. She said, “Strange color choice, I know. But it’s been like that for so long … decades and decades and decades. And every time it’s repainted, it stays black. It’s written, almost like a law, in some family papers. I know most people think it’s creepy, but you’ll come to love it, I promise. It’s … unusual, like the kids. Though two months may not be long enough for you to see how perfect it is. It just wouldn’t look
right
if the house was white or gray. Yellow would be ridiculous, and what other colors are there, really?”

“Serious Goth,” I said. “Before its time.” What else could I say?

“I guess you could say that,” said Linda. “Or maybe after its time. The tradition started when that poor unfortunate couple drowned all the way back in the twenties.”

I said, “I heard about that from these old people I met on the boat.” Probably this would have been a good moment to ask about that more recent thing that happened, the “incident” that the blind man’s wife couldn’t remember. But I couldn’t think of how to begin, and I didn’t want to interrupt Linda.

“After they were lost at sea, the girl’s father, the snobby idiot who’d forbidden them to marry, which is why they’d eloped in the first place, was so grief-stricken and guilty he ordered the house to be painted black, and for it to stay that color forever. It’s been repainted twice since I’ve been here. I don’t even have to explain to the painters that it’s what Mr. Crackstone wants. Everybody knows about this place. It makes things kind of easy and, in another way, kind of hard. I guess the house doesn’t look very welcoming, does it? Oh, well. I’m going to pull the truck around to the back so we can bring all this stuff directly into the kitchen, if you don’t mind. It’s not the most formal way to introduce you to the house, but—”

“I don’t mind,” I said.

Linda drove around the house, which was larger than it looked from a distance and more complicated and elaborate. Strange additions jutted out from unexpected places. There were porches, walkways, covered verandas, bay windows, a hexagonal tower attached to one corner, and several more towers you couldn’t see from the front. It certainly looked like a haunted house. But I already knew that, if I asked, Linda would tell me it was just a house painted black. Unusual, but still just a house. Hey, I told myself, it’s only a house.

I said, “This old blind man on the boat told me people sometimes saw ghosts of the couple who drowned.” I laughed, but it sounded fake.

Linda gave me a searching look. She said, “It seems like people on that boat had a lot to say about us.” Then she burst out laughing. “Years ago I read this story in the papers about a British castle whose owners needed money, so they opened the place to tourists and overnight guests and tried to drum up business by claiming the house was haunted by the ghosts of some English queen. They offered special vacation packages on Halloween, or whatever they call it in England. Paint your house an unusual color, and you won’t believe the stories people come up with. The stuff people say. If you’re even a little different, or you live by yourself, people make up all kinds of things. Don’t believe everything you hear. Let’s go.”