Kiss River

  In twenty minutes, Alec came into the waiting room.

  “How about Sam and Omie’s?” Alec suggested.

  Sam and Omie’s was every bit as old and nearly as casual as Shorty’s, and it was much closer to the animal hospital. But Clay knew his father’s real motivation for selecting it.

  “You’re in the mood for soft-shelled crabs, huh?” he asked.

  “How’d you guess?” His father smiled at him as they headed out the door.

  They took Alec’s car, heading south along the beach road.

  “Henry’s birthday party’s this Saturday, isn’t it?” his father asked as he drove.

  “Uh-huh.” Clay had nearly forgotten and was grateful for his father’s reminder. He’d planned the surprise party for Henry’s eightieth birthday months ago. It would be held in Shorty’s back room, and as far as he knew, everyone was managing to keep it a secret.

  “How are you going to get him to Shorty’s?” his father asked.

  “I’ll tell him that Lacey and I are taking him out to dinner,” Clay said. “He’ll know something’s up when we take him to Shorty’s, since I’m sure he’d expect us to take him someplace fancier, but I think he’ll still be surprised. Hope so, anyway.”

  They talked about one of Clay’s projects for the rest of the drive, and he knew that his father was wondering what was really behind this request for lunch. Neither of them addressed that question, though, until they were sitting in one of the booths at the crowded restaurant and had ordered their soup.

  “You seem…” Alec said, “I don’t know…a little preoccupied, I guess. Is everything all right?”

  Clay hadn’t realized that his mood was that obvious. “Well,” he said, “I have some interesting news.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It turns out that Gina is related to the Poors.”

  He saw his father’s instant look of distrust. “How so?” he asked.

  Clay repeated much of what Gina had told him the night before, about her mother being adopted and her deathbed wish to learn about her roots, and about the box of effects she had received from the grandniece, along with the diary.

  “Have you seen the diary?” his father asked.

  “No. I don’t think she has it with her. At least she didn’t mention it.”

  His father folded his arms across his chest, lips in a tight line. Finally, he spoke. “I know you like her, Clay, so I’ll just say this once. I promise. But I have to say it.”

  Clay waited, knowing he couldn’t stop him.

  “Could she have made this up—this relationship to the Poors—as a way to up the ante?” he asked. “You know, make our hearts bleed for her about her long-lost family roots so we’ll help her raise the lens?”

  Clay sighed. “Dad, I believe her. She’s not a lighthouse historian. She admitted that. Her connection to the Poors has been her real motivation all along.”

  “Then why the hell didn’t she just say that?”

  Clay hated the deep crease between his father’s eyebrows as much as he hated the logic of his words.

  “I think she just never expected to get to know people here. She thought she’d show up, see the lighthouse, visit the place where her grandparents lived, and go back to Washington. She didn’t want to have to explain the whole thing with people who meant nothing to her. She didn’t expect to make friends with Lacey and me. Or to have us…me…begin to mean something to her.” God, he hoped he wasn’t kidding himself about this.

  “You’re in love with her, aren’t you?” his father said.

  Clay nodded. “It’s your fault,” he said, half smiling. “You said to open up to her.”

  His father returned the smile. “And you did?”

  Clay nodded. “She was great,” he said, remembering the night before in his bedroom. “She was wonderful.”

  “Is the feeling mutual?”

  “I think so.”

  His father sighed, then sat back as the waitress placed their bowls of soup in front of them. When she walked away, he leaned forward again and looked Clay squarely in the eye.

  “I’ll think about the lens, Clay,” he said. “I will give it some very, very serious thought.”

  CHAPTER 38

  Saturday, May 9, 1942

  All of a sudden, everything is going wrong.

  This morning, I was late getting up and I didn’t have time to go up to the lantern room to find the note Mr. Hewitt always leaves me on Friday nights because I had to help Mama with the baking and she would’ve been suspicious. I was real quick in my trip to the Coast Guard station with the pies and cookies because I needed to get that note before anyone else did. So when I got home, I went directly to the lantern room, and you can imagine how shocked I was to find Daddy there! I was afraid he might’ve found the note. I got ready to be asked a million questions, but then I saw Mr. Hewitt’s note wedged into the coupling where it always was. What a relief! Daddy was only up there to clean the windows.

  When he saw me, he put down the sponge he was using. “Guess what, Bessie?” he said to me. “They caught a spy!”

  My first thought was Jimmy Brown, of course, because in the note I left Mr. Hewitt last night, I’d told him about Jimmy changing his name. But that wasn’t it at all.

  “Who?” I said. I was trying not to sound all that interested because I didn’t want to make him suspicious.

  “Moto Sato, that’s who!” Daddy said. “Bud Hewitt was just over here to tell us.”

  I was dumbfounded, but Daddy didn’t seem to notice. He just kept on talking. “Everybody’s suspected he was up to something, but nobody wanted to believe it because he seemed like such a nice old man who just liked to spend his days fishing in the sound.”

  I started stammering, I had a billion questions to ask. I was so confused!

  “You know, he didn’t burn up in that fire at his house,” Daddy said, like this was news.

  “Right, I know that,” I answered.

  “Well, when the sheriff got to his house, Mr. Sato was sitting up by the road, soaking wet. What do you think of that?”

  I wasn’t sure what Daddy was trying to say. I wondered if he knew what Sandy and I had done and was trying to trip me up. Maybe Mr. Sato had been more awake than we’d thought, and he told the sheriff we’d saved him. I clamped my mouth shut, afraid I was going to stick my foot in it if I said another word.

  “So, they knew then that he wasn’t crippled at all. That wheelchair of his was still in his bedroom. He must’ve run through the house and outside, jumped into the sound, swam to land and walked across his yard to the road. A crippled man couldn’t have done all that. He couldn’t give any other explanation for how he came to be there.”

  “Maybe someone saved him and left him there in his yard,” I said.

  “Then why didn’t he say so?”

  I didn’t know how to answer that. “Why do they think he’s a spy?” I asked.

  “Because he’s been faking being a crippled man all this time. Probably been stealing out to the beach at night, sending messages to the subs. They found a burned-out radio of some sort in his house.”

  It’s just a regular old radio! I wanted to scream.

  “He’s still faking it, Bud told me,” Daddy went on. “He pretended he couldn’t walk when they tried to get him in the sheriff’s car.”

  That old man can’t walk worth a damn. I started to cry. I grabbed the chammy and went around to the other side of the lens, pretending to help with the windows, but the first thing I did over there was pull Mr. Hewitt’s note out of the coupling and stuff it in the pocket of my dungarees. “So, what will happen to him?” I asked. I hoped he couldn’t tell I was crying from the sound of my voice.

  “Bud said he’d be questioned. If they can find some evidence on him, he’ll be arrested. Otherwise, they’ll just send him to one of them internment camps. His daughter-in-law was screaming and crying when they carted him away, but they’ll be questioning her, too. She might have some
thing to do with this. She was married to a Jap herself, after all.”

  Well, I knew I had to talk to Sandy right away. We needed to come clean, even though it would mean…well, I wasn’t sure what it would mean. He might just get some kind of warning, but I would be locked in my room for life. It didn’t matter. We couldn’t let an innocent man get sent away.

  I helped with the windows for a while so as not to make Daddy think I was up to something. Then I left the lighthouse and ran all the way back to the Coast Guard station, stopping only to read the note from Mr. Hewitt.

  He wrote:

  Bess, thank you for the information on Jimmy’s last name. I don’t think he’s the one, though. I don’t really blame him for changing his name, do you? It turns out, Mr. Sato managed to get out of his burning house without his wheelchair, so our suspicions about him might be correct after all. This is not a certainty, though, so please continue your good work and our exchange of notes, at least until I tell you otherwise.

  “Oh, what a mess!” I thought when I read that note. He wasn’t even going to bother talking to Jimmy now that he thought he had his spy.

  Once I got to the Coast Guard station, I realized I had no idea what to do. I wasn’t supposed to talk to Mr. Hewitt because people would get suspicious. I couldn’t talk to Sandy for the same reason. Anyhow, it turned out that Mr. Hewitt and a bunch of the boys had gone to the scene of a sunken ship down to Oregon Inlet. Fortunately, Sandy was one of the boys left behind, along with Jimmy and Teddy and a few others. He hadn’t been around when I’d brought the pies over earlier. He looked at me when I walked in, and I knew he was upset, too. I could tell by the look in his eyes. I didn’t know how I was going to get to talk to him, but he solved the problem.

  “Bess,” he said, “I’m so glad you’re here! I want to make some of that fudge you and your mama make, but I don’t know how.”

  “Do you have the ingredients?” I asked. It was like we were talking in a secret code.

  “Sure do,” he said. “In the kitchen.” He nodded toward the kitchen, and I followed him in there. I was afraid some of the other boys would want to come with us, but no one did.

  Once in the kitchen, he grabbed my arm. “You heard?” he asked me.

  “Yes. We need to tell Bud we saved him.”

  “We can’t do that,” Sandy said.

  “We have to,” I said. “I know we’ll get in trouble, and probably lots of it, but we can’t let Mr. Sato get sent to one of those camps or worse.”

  “He’d be better off in a camp than out here where people want to burn his house down.”

  “But they think he’s a spy. They might torture him. Or kill him, even.” I really don’t know how a spy would be treated, but I know it wouldn’t be good.

  “Bess, listen to me,” he said. “We can’t tell anyone we were there together.”

  “Then I’ll say I was there alone,” I said. “I’ll leave you out of it.” I felt like crying again.

  “And why will you say you were there?” Sandy asked me. “And exactly how did a pip-squeak like you manage to cart a full-grown man through the house, over the deck railing and through the water to the yard?”

  I knew he was right, although I really resented being called a pip-squeak! I’m nearly as tall as he is.

  “Then you say you did it alone,” I said.

  “Sure,” he said. “I’ll say I was just out wandering around on my night off, and for no good reason I crossed the island to the sound and noticed Sato’s house was on fire and saved him.”

  I looked down at my shoes. “Sandy, isn’t a man’s life worth us getting in trouble for being together?” For some reason, I started thinking of what Dennis Kittering would say about all this. He hated those internment camps. He would be proud of me for sticking up for Mr. Sato.

  “Look,” Sandy said. “Let’s not do anything about this right now, all right? Let’s give it a few days and see what happens.”

  I could tell I wasn’t going to be able to persuade him. Suddenly, though, I had an idea. I would watch Jimmy Brown on his patrol tonight. Maybe I would see something suspicious. The way to free Mr. Sato would be to find the real spy.

  “Okay,” I said, “but I won’t be able to sneak out to see you tonight. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re not upset about the other night, are you?” he asked. “About what we did?” He was whispering in case anyone could hear him. “You know I love you, Bess.”

  How I loved hearing those words from him! I told him I wasn’t upset about it, but that I was upset about this whole Mr. Sato mess and we would have to talk about it again in a day or so.

  “Why can’t you come out tonight, then?” he asked.

  “I’m just tired,” I said. “I need a good night’s sleep.”

  He seemed to believe me, although I’ve never needed a good night’s sleep before. But I was glad he didn’t ask me any more questions.

  I left the Coast Guard station feeling happy he said he loved me and sad he would not tell Mr. Hewitt that we’d gotten Mr. Sato out of his house. I think he’ll come around, though. He just needs a day or two to think about it. And maybe he’s right to wait. If I can find something out about Jimmy tonight, then we won’t have to ever tell.

  CHAPTER 39

  Shorty’s was busy on Friday morning, and Gina hoped Clay would decide to stop in for lunch so she could talk with him a bit. Or at least look at him. She’d awakened in his bed with him that morning, and she’d simply watched him sleep for a few minutes before she got up. His face had looked peaceful, with none of the anguish that had troubled him the night before, and watching him had filled her up in a way that was both unfamiliar and comforting.

  Last night, when Clay took her to get her car, he told her that Alec had said he would think about helping her raise the lens. Or at least, he would think about not standing in her way. That was more than she’d dared hope for. What had Clay told his father? Had he talked to him about his feelings for her? She knew he had them, even if she also knew those feelings were tinged with guilt that only time could erase. He had told his father about her connection to the Poors, that much she knew. “I told him about the diary and that you’re Mary Poor’s great-granddaughter,” he’d said, “And that you’re not a lighthouse historian.”

  “What did he say to that?” she’d asked him.

  “He said, ‘No kidding.’” Gina had winced, but Clay’d laughed. “It’s not a big deal,” he said. “I think he understands now why you lied.”

  She’d slept with him the entire night, and they’d made love again, interrupted only by Lacey knocking on Clay’s door, wanting to be sure he was all right. Gina and Clay had started laughing, and they could hear Lacey gasp.

  “I’m sorry!” Lacey had said. “Just ignore me. You guys have fun.”

  “We just made her day,” Clay said. “She’s wanted this from the moment you arrived here.”

  Gina remembered back to that evening, three weeks earlier, when she’d arrived at Kiss River to see the lens. She had barely noticed Clay then. Becoming involved with a man had been the last thing on her mind.

  Clay grew quiet, the laughter of a few minutes earlier quickly fading. Gina tipped her head up to look at his face. His mouth was a flat line, his gaze on his dresser, where she knew there was a picture of Terri and her dog. The room was too dark for him to have been able to make out their features, but he stared in the direction of the photograph nevertheless.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked, lowering her head to his shoulder again.

  He sighed, turning away from the dresser. “Nothing,” he said.

  “Is that what you used to tell Terri when she’d ask you what was wrong?” She hoped she was not slugging him below the belt, using one of his confidences against him.

  He gave her what could only be described as a dirty look, but then he started talking.

  “I’ve had some moments of happiness lately,” he said. “Like with you tonight. Laughing with you. Making
love to you. And then I suddenly remember Terri and…I hate myself for being able to laugh again. I don’t feel as though I deserve to be happy.”

  “You do, Clay,” she said.

  “I’m so damn pissed off at myself for sending her down there in my place,” he said angrily. “And I’m pissed off at that building for collapsing. And at the forces of the universe for taking her and our baby away.”

  Gina bit her lip. She had asked him to tell her; now she had to listen. “You miss her,” she said.

  He laughed, a short, bitter sound. “I don’t miss her anymore, and I feel worst of all about that. What kind of a son of a bitch am I? The scary thing is, I get it now. I can see how I shut her out. I finally got it the other night when I told you everything. That’s what I should have been doing with her all along. Talking to her about everything on my mind. We would have had a better marriage.”

  She didn’t feel threatened by his talking about how he could have improved his marriage to Terri. Instead, she relished his words. He was being honest with her, a gift she’d never before received from a man.

  “I remember when Bruce left me,” she said. “I wanted to have a fast-forward button. You know, so I could just fast-forward a year or two and skip over all the pain.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Doesn’t work that way,” she said.

  “I know.” He turned to look at her. “You’re so amazing,” he said. “I feel like I can tell you anything.”

  “You can,” she said, wishing she could tell him everything as well. It was her turn to feel guilty. He had forgiven her for withholding information from him. She knew that was more than she deserved.