The Woodcarver's Secret (Samantha Sweet Mysteries) (21 page)

The tide was on the rise. Each successive wave splashed a little harder
and came a little nearer to his bare feet. He counted to ten with his eyes shut
and, surely enough, the very next wave lapped at his toes. He opened his eyes
and scanned the foamy edges for signs of a fish that might come within his
reach. He carried a small net made of fine rope and a long spear of flexible
wood.

A dark shape bobbed on the water, just inside the reef, farther than he
wanted to venture just yet. As he watched, the waves brought it closer. It was
large—maybe even a young porpoise. His eyes remained fixed on the spot. It was
not swimming away, so it had probably been injured. When it came close enough
he would snare it in his net and drag it in. But he had to be careful—if it had
much life left in it, the creature would fight him. He could swim, but not
strongly. He could not chance that it would drag him far out to sea, and he
could not afford for it to get away with his only net.

Closer it came. He caught flashes of white, along with the dark parts.
It looked like no other fish he’d ever seen. He stealthily took one step after
another until he was in the water nearly to his waist. When he got a clear
look, his breath caught.

It was a person.

Long, dark hair floated away from the head and that was what had first
caught his attention. A woman, he saw, with very light skin. Her eyes were
closed against the morning sun. She floated on her back and one hand held fast
to something else that was dark—a piece of driftwood maybe? He waded out
another two steps, nearly chest-deep now, the buoyant salt water trying to lift
him off his feet. He touched the woman’s arm and she jerked. She was alive!

Her feet kicked and she sputtered for a moment.

“
Tranquilo
,
te
tengo
a
ti
,” he said gently.

She stared at him with blue eyes
such as he had never seen before, but she seemed to understand that he only
wanted her to be still and let him help. She gripped the small wooden object
more tightly with her right hand but allowed him to take her left arm and pull.

“You can probably stand now,” he
said gently in Spanish.

The woman struggled to place her
feet on the sandy bottom of the sea but she wobbled and fell backward, nearly taking
Sammy with her.

“
Está
bien
. Do not worry. I will help you.”

She weighed practically nothing
in the water, so he pulled until the sea came barely above his knees and he was
having to lean over too far to keep hold of her.

“Try again to stand,” he said.

Again, she fluttered a bit but
this time she was able to get her feet under her. He draped an arm around her
waist and took much of her weight as, together, they struggled ashore. The
woman immediately sat down hard when she reached dry sand. Sammy’s net had
become tangled around his arm and shoulder; luckily, he had left his spear
ashore and it had only floated a short distance away. He retrieved it, unwound
the net, and set them down.

The white woman sat with her legs
bent slightly, the chunk of wood on her lap. She had not let go of her tight
grip on it. No wonder—hanging on to the one thing that would float may have
saved her life.

“Who are you?” he asked, kneeling
beside her.

She gave him a blank stare.

“
¿
Hablas
español
?
”

She nodded vaguely but did not
answer. Sammy stared out at the endless sea. “
¿
Dónde
vienes
?
”

She opened her mouth but only a
small croak came out. She tried to swallow, to moisten her throat to speak, but
no words came. He tried to think quickly. Water. She was thirsty.

“Can you walk? Come to my house
and my mother will give you water.”

The blue eyes rolled upward and
the woman fell sideways onto the sand.

Sammy stared for a moment. What
to do? He bent over her, tried to lift her but she was as large as he and with the
wet clothing was far too heavy for him to manage. He looped his hands under her
armpits and dragged her, but quickly saw how impossible it would be to get her
all the way home. He had walked well over a mile from the house.

A banyan tree cast its large
shade over the sand, twenty yards away. A few steps at a time, Sammy got her to
the cooler spot, then he headed for home at a run.

“Mamá! Mamá! I found a woman on—”

“Finally,” teased Cornelia. “Sammy, ready to marry!”

“No, you stupid fool,” he said. Could she not simply let him finish?
“She was floating in the sea. She almost died, but she is alive. I need
water—and help. I cannot carry her.”

Bless her, Mamá responded by drawing water from their drinking cistern
into a small jug. “Take this. Cornelia, get Manuelito.”

The tide had risen even farther by the time Sammy and Cornelia’s
muscular boyfriend arrived at the banyan tree. The woman was exactly as he’d
left her and Sammy rushed to her side, afraid she might have succumbed. Her
shallow breathing told him she was alive—barely.

“What’s this?” Manuelito asked, kicking at something with his toe.

The chunk of wood, to which the woman had been clinging, lay near her
feet. Sammy felt drawn to it, this object that had probably helped save the
lady’s life.

“I’ll get it if you can lift the woman,” he said.

Manuelito caught the hint of doubt Sammy had put into the question and
he bent to pick up the woman as if it were no effort at all. Sammy reached for
the wooden thing and discovered that it was a box, carved in a pattern like
quilting, with small stones mounted on it. He fell in behind the other man as
they walked back to the house, pondering this odd item. Although the wood was
fairly well saturated with seawater, it should dry out nicely.

The box might have washed out to sea during the hurricane that ravaged
the entire area a couple of weeks ago, but where had the woman come from? Not
from around here; he knew everyone in their tiny village. Maybe she belonged
with the Americans who had recently begun to move to the nearby plantation to
cultivate bananas. It was the only logical explanation, he decided. She was one
of them and had foolishly gone out in yesterday’s high waves in a small boat.

At the house, Mamá had already prepared a bed with a clean blanket and
both sisters were standing by.

“Put her there,” she instructed.

Manuelito seemed happy to deposit his burden, although he made a point
of preening in front of Cornelia, acting as if it were no difficulty at all.
Sammy set the wooden box on a table near the bedside and they all watched as
the unconscious woman stirred. Her eyes did not open.

“I wonder how she came to be in the water,” Yolanda said as she dipped
a cloth into a basin of cool water and began wiping the soft white face.

Sammy gave his theory but Manuelito quickly shot it down. “She’s not
from the plantation. Only two of the Americans have brought women with them.
She is not one of those.”

“Well, she must have left home with more clothing than she’s wearing
now,” offered Cornelia, eyeing the fine cotton chemise. “These are only her
undergarments.” She glanced at her fiancé. “And I think you men should leave
the room now.”

“Very true,” said Mamá, giving Sammy a stare.

As he walked toward the back door he heard Yolanda say, “She must have
realized that heavy skirts would pull her under the water so she took them
off.”

“
Si
. Can you imagine her fear?”

Sammy thought of his father. This poor woman had nearly met the same
fate. He walked away from the house, remembering that he’d set out this morning
to catch some fish. Now, most likely, his net had washed away on the tide.

The day passed. Yolanda watched the white woman on the bed. She and her
mother had managed to get the poor thing out of her sodden undergarments, had
washed the salt from her skin and dressed her in a clean nightgown. Still, the
woman had not awakened. She tossed in her sleep, at times crying out. Once she
said something that sounded like
nanci
. None
of them knew what this word meant.

If the woman was not from the plantation her sudden appearance here was
entirely a mystery.

* * *

James Cox extended a hand to the black-clad man who approached,
accepting condolences on the front steps of the church. At his side, Nancy and
Constance picked at each other. For the first two days they had continually
asked when mommy would come home. James had tried to stay cheerful, to let them
think she was away on a grand adventure and would ride up in a carriage with
whatever kindly soul had followed the balloon and brought her back to them. But
the balloon had last been seen over the open sea and he knew, down inside, that
if it did not change direction and drift back inland within the first hour it
probably never would. Despite the lookouts posted up and down the beaches, the
small aircraft had never been seen again. The funeral served as hard evidence
of the facts.

The line of mourners moved forward, each stopping to shake his hand and
to purse their lips at the sad sight of those motherless little girls.

“Now, James, if there is anything …” Virginia McDermott laid a gloved
hand on his arm. “Of course, I will continue to bring your supper by each
evening. You have much more important things on your mind than preparing
meals.”

He knew the woman had been Elizabeth’s best friend, but ever since Bill
McDermott went away to the Congress of the Republic, James had found Virginia
to be just a little too cloying.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I have Elvira and she’s doing a beautiful
job with the house and the meals.”

“Still … no one makes a chocolate layer cake like mine.” She actually
batted her eyelashes. “I’m bringing one over this afternoon and I will accept
no argument.”

What could he say? He sighed and put on a brave smile.

The brother of Rory Duncan stepped up next in line. He mouthed nearly
the same words James had said to him yesterday in almost this exact spot. James
had spent four days wanting to hate the balloon pilot but somehow simply could
not work up the energy to do so. The man was dead. Elizabeth was gone. He had
to accept that.

Eventually, the whole sad procession moved to his house where it seemed
every woman in town had brought dishes. For one man, two children and a maid,
it was an obscene amount of food. He began insisting that people take some of
it home with them, and he was pleased when he overheard Elvira getting a little
firm with Virginia McDermott, telling her not to show up with one more thing to
eat.

He had telegraphed Elizabeth’s family back in Maryland to let them know
of the tragedy. Her mother became bedridden at the news and her father was a
somewhat frail man, a banker who’d never traveled west of the state line. It
was no surprise that they had not attempted the journey to Texas.

“Mommy missed having this delicious chocolate cake,” little Nancy said
as Elvira used a damp cloth to wipe smears of icing from the child’s face. “Be
sure to save her a piece for later.”

The colored maid turned quickly away, stifling a sob, and James tried
once more to explain to his youngest that mommy would not be here for cake. Or
for anything. As much as it pained him to think of it, once the prescribed year
of mourning was over he really should look for a wife, a mother for these
babies. They needed a woman’s care.

By the time the month was out, James was beginning to think more
frequently of his own needs. He missed Elizabeth in their bed at night; her
reticent manner in public did not extend to the bedroom and he’d never lacked
for satisfaction of that sort, until now. He invented a
meeting
to
attend each Tuesday night and left the girls in Elvira’s care.

In reality he strolled down to the waterfront, wearing simpler clothing
than the top hat he usually sported when performing his official mayoral
duties, deceiving himself into believing that no one would notice his presence
at one of the smaller saloons or see that he often walked up the stairs with a
young woman who went by the name of Fancy.

Fancy delighted him in ways that even Elizabeth had never dreamed of.
For one thing, the oil lamp in the room was never turned off. And he had never
seen a woman wearing red satin undergarments before. Her blond hair and the
perfume she wore enchanted him, although sometimes afterward he realized that
only a few months ago he would have thought them tawdry. And if a spot of her
lip rouge stained his collar now and then, at least Elvira had the good sense
not to mention it.

He continued to sit at his desk in the mayor’s office five days a week,
to make speeches as needed, and to attend church on Sundays with his daughters.
Two months passed and he had
almost
become accustomed to the fact that
Elizabeth was not waiting in the parlor to greet him when he came home. The
sight of her clothes in the cupboard startled him less often—he should gather
them for charity, along with her hairbrush and mirror.

Yes, he had almost grown used to his widower status but still, it did
not suit him. Then one Sunday as he took his little girls’ hands after church,
he noticed Mary Conway. The young Sunday School teacher had stooped down to tie
Nancy’s bonnet ribbon and the interaction between them was so sweet, so loving.
Mary would be a natural mother someday, young and energetic and very attuned to
the activities of children. He decided to call upon Mary soon.