The last time I’d come to this site, Reagan had been president, but not much had changed. I tasted the old oak on the water and circled the broken mast down to the hull. It was just as I remembered. Hand over hand, I trailed the starboard side to the third porthole window. I had to smile just a little to see Joe’s gaunt face bobbing on the other side of the filmy glass.
It probably wasn’t his real name, but I’d called him that as a kid. He looked as good as the first day we met, back in ’74. Joe and his crew had already been dead ninety years by then, but the cold water preserved them. Bacteria couldn’t grow at these temperatures, so the bodies didn’t rot or bloat. The sleeve of Joe’s peacoat was caught on something, which kept his face forever bouncing against the glass.
It was good to see him again. He’d always been a willing ear, and he’d heard plenty from me over the years. After Mother died, I visited him often and pretended he was giving me fatherly advice. It helped sometimes when I was at my lowest.
“Hey, Joe,” I said, leaning my shoulder against the exterior of the ship. “Looking good, man.” Out of politeness, I waited for him to respond, then imagined the rest.
“Where y’been, kid?” he’d ask.
“Here, there.”
“Staying out of trouble, I hope. I don’t want to get any bad reports.”
“Hmm,” I said, smiling at his joke.
“What’s bothering you?”
I ran my fingers through my hair. “That obvious?”
“Those sisters giving you trouble again?”
I nodded and pressed my hands to the portal glass.
“That bad?”
“That bad.”
“Let me guess, you didn’t let Tallulah beat you in a race? Put sneezewort in Pavati’s hair again?”
“No.”
“Snakeroot?”
“I’m not a kid anymore, Joe.”
“Right. Right. Listen, you and your sisters will always butt heads. I suppose that’s only natural.” I didn’t say anything, so Joe finally asked straight out, “What did you do this time?”
“I got between them and Jason Hancock.”
Joe laughed a big, hearty laugh. “Wow, kid. I didn’t realize Maris had found him. You got a death wish or something?”
“Something like that.”
A long, morbid silence stretched out between us as he waited for me to elaborate and I waited for his sage advice. Joe spoke first.
“Well, I’m sure you had your reasons.”
I rolled over my shoulder so my back was flat against the hull. “Mm-hmm.”
“And this reason … she must have been very pretty.”
“Very.”
“Good conversationalist?”
I smiled and nodded.
“Then what the hell are you talking to me for, son?”
I turned back to face him and slapped my hand on the side of the hull as if to say, “Thanks, Dad.” My place was with Lily. I’d promised her safety. I would keep that promise—whether she wanted me to or not.
My body whipped itself toward the surface, a wake of white bubbles trailing behind me. I cut straight west and looped the big island to my now familiar willow tree. From there I would watch and wait.
35
HAMMOCK
When I got to the Hancocks’ dock, I hovered just outside the floodlights. The front door opened, letting a slice of light cut across the front yard. I held my breath. It was Lily. Of course it was Lily. She must have been watching for me. She was wearing a thin cotton nightgown. The light from the house shone through the fabric, revealing the curve of her legs.
She walked on tiptoe in bare feet across the porch and down the repaired steps, carrying a flashlight in one hand and pressing something else against her chest. The flashlight battery was weak, and the beam barely reached five feet ahead of her.
I started toward the dock. Slowly. I took hope in her coming to the water, but I still wasn’t sure what she’d want to say. Regardless of what reparation I’d made for my sins in saving Hancock, I was sure she’d have more fury to dole out.
“Calder,” she whispered, her voice carrying over the surface of the water.
“I’m here,” I whispered back, bracing myself for what was coming.
She sighed and lay down on the dock, reaching out in the water for me. I swam in, tentatively, and she took my hands. She pulled me closer. As my chest came up against the edge of the dock, I saw what she’d been carrying. My new clothes were neatly folded beside her. How long had it taken her to find them in the dark?
“Are you hurt?”
“No,” I said. “Not yet, anyway.”
“I was so afraid they’d hurt you. How much trouble are you in?”
“Trouble doesn’t begin to cover it.”
She kissed me, and her fingers laced through my hair. “I’m sorry. I should have never doubted you.”
An apology. It hurt more than her forgiveness, which I didn’t deserve, either. What did she have to be sorry for? It was more punishing than her anger. I shook my head and pushed myself away. “I told you I planned to kill your father, Lily. You reacted exactly the way you should have.”
She grabbed my wrist and pulled me back to her, wrapping her arms around my neck. “I’m still sorry.”
“Please don’t say that.”
She kissed me, cupping my cheek in her hand, brushing her thumb across my bottom lip. “What will happen to you now?”
“I don’t know.” I could picture Maris plotting against me, pacing on the beach. “They’ve shunned me.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” she whispered, her eyes on my lips. “I thought you wanted to be free of them.”
I almost laughed. “I’m hardly free. I may be shunned, but I’m still mentally tied to them, and Maris will never give me my freedom now. Worse, being shunned from the island, I won’t have the benefit of knowing what their next move will be. If they attack again, I won’t be able to hold them off.”
Lily shook her head. “You’re strong.”
“So are they. And there are three of them.”
“Not even Tallulah will side with you?”
Tallulah’s name on Lily’s lips was like a curse from an angel. I made a disgusted sound that she didn’t understand. I had no intention of explaining that development. “We’ve got to keep your dad off the water, Lily.”
“He never goes out on the lake. Well … except for tonight. But I don’t think we have to worry. He’s on the computer right now, posting a classified ad. ‘Boat for Sale.’ ”
I dunked below the water and came up again. “Don’t underestimate my sisters, Lil. Nobody ever plans to go to them, and yet so many do.”
“You don’t think they’d come to the house, do you?”
“That’s one thing you don’t have to worry about. A kill is only honorable on the water.”
“Honorable?”
I gave a short laugh. “Yeah, that used to make sense to me. I don’t suppose you want to tell your dad the whole truth?”
“And let him know Grandpa planned to sacrifice him? No thanks.”
“I thought so. So this is what I want you to do. I’m going to pull your boats out and sink them. That will be the easiest way to keep your dad off the water. But you need to convince him that being so close to the lake, almost losing Sophie, is too stressful for your mom. That it’s bad for her health. You must convince him. You have to leave, Lily.”
She looked panicked. “But what if he agrees?” she said, gripping my hands tighter.
“I’ll be close behind.”
She paused, considering my demands, then stood up. “Get out. Get dressed. Meet me in the hammock. It’s freezing out here.” She ran back toward the house, her hair streaming behind her.
A few minutes later Lily crawled into the hammock beside me and pulled a wool blanket over us. The hammock swayed, and we floated under the trees. I stared up at the blackened sky. She drew small concentric circles on my chest with her f
inger.
“Why did you do it, Calder? Why did you save him?”
“What else could I do?” My voice was low.
“You’d planned to kill him before.”
“I did.”
She stopped drawing circles and laid her palm flat against my chest. A patch of five-fingered heat soaked into my skin.
“I realized killing him would kill you. And that would kill me.”
“Figuratively speaking,” she said.
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“So that’s it?” she asked.
I didn’t answer right away, trying to understand what she was really asking. “What more should there be?”
She had no response for me.
“Now you tell me something,” I said, lifting her chin with my finger.
“What do you want to know?”
“How is it that you can be here with me? Regardless of what I did last night, how can you forgive me?”
“I like to think of it the other way around.”
I waited for her to explain.
“What would happen if I didn’t forgive you?” she asked.
“Hopefully, your family would take off and hide. I’d do my damnedest to sabotage my sisters’ attempts to find you again.”
“You’d go away?”
“Yes, of course.” I answered easily, not thinking of the logistics, and twisted a lock of her hair around my finger.
“That’s impossible to think about, but that’s not really where I was going with this.”
“I’m listening.”
“Look at your sisters, Calder. They’re bitter, miserable creatures who’ve now turned on you. They’ve spent half a century obsessed with nothing but murder. Do I want to sentence myself to that kind of prison?”
I understood. Hadn’t I always felt shackled to them? “But how do you do it, Lily? What are the mechanics?”
“Forgiveness? I don’t have a choice. Or at least, no other good choices.”
“I’m not sure I can forgive them for what they tried to do last night—to your father, to Sophie, but most of all to you.”
“Forgiveness isn’t just for them, Calder. It’s for you. Forgiveness is freedom. It’s something you do for yourself—to keep who you are intact. Now that I think about it, in some ways, it’s kind of a selfish act.”
I tightened my grip around her shoulders and pulled the blanket up under her chin. There must not have been any clouds because the stars burned unusually bright. I imagined, from their vantage point in the sky, they could see the approaching sunrise. It made me wonder. Was it better to see the source of one’s demise approaching or to be surprised?
“Look at the stars, Lily.”
“I’d rather look at you,” she whispered back.
“You can do that later.”
She raised her head an inch, and her eyes burned into mine. Her hair fell in soft loops across my shoulder. “Can I, Calder? I thought you were trying to get rid of me.”
My eyebrows pulled together as I frowned at her. “Why would you say that?”
“ ‘Leave, Lily.’ ” She imitated my voice from back by the dock.
My face softened. “I also said I’d be close behind.”
“Words,” she groused, and she laid her head back down on my shoulder.
I reached over with my right hand and gently turned her chin so she’d look up at the sky. “See the stars, Lily?”
She sighed, surrendering. “Of course.”
“Do you think they can see the sun coming?”
“I don’t know. Probably?”
“Do you think they’re scared?”
“They’re burning balls of gas, Calder.”
“Oh, c’mon. Where’s the poet in you?”
She exhaled, and I sensed her smile. “I see. Well, in that case, yes. They’ve finally come home. They are triumphant in their midnight kingdom. But the enemy approaches. They have the numbers on their side, but the enemy is bigger, stronger, with a history of winning that goes back to the dawn of time. They’re definitely terrified.”
I nodded. She understood my analogy.
“But they don’t run, Calder.”
Air caught in my throat.
“I’d rather lie in a hammock with you—with nothing but happiness surrounding us—and be ambushed than run away.”
I shook my head. “If I stay on the lake, I’d be like the stars watching for the sun. I could hear them, I could warn you, and you could get away.” What I didn’t say was that if I had never put on my human vestiges, I would not be here with her. And I didn’t want to be anywhere else ever again. Lily lay on her side, her left arm draped sleepily across my chest, her left knee pulled up over me, as if she were the one protecting me from what lay ahead. My arm was her pillow, and she pressed her nose into the side of my neck.
“How are you feeling, Calder?”
“Happy.”
She exhaled softly against my neck and her breath warmed my skin. “Me too. You do know what that means, don’t you?”
Yes. I knew what it meant. I’d known it for some time. Ever since I saw the college kids dead on the beach and felt no urge to search for my own prey.
“You’re not like them anymore.”
“But I’m not like you, either,” I said.
She gripped me tighter. “You’re right. You’re better.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m a prize, all right. I wonder what your dad would think about you snuggled up to a sea monster.” I marveled at how I could think of—even mention—Jason Hancock with no thoughts of malice.
“Which reminds me,” she said. “I read something else that might interest you.”
“Not another poem.”
“Not exactly. It’s from the Bible.”
I turned to face her now. “Now I’m interested. I had no idea you were religious.”
“Oh, you’ve just begun to scratch the surface with me.” She cleared her throat. “I memorized it. Are you ready?”
“I’m ready,” I said. “Knock my socks off.”
“ ‘Then God said, “Let the water teem with an abundance of living creatures.” And so it happened. God created the great sea monsters and all kinds of swimming creatures with which the water teems. And God saw that it was good.’ ”
I pulled her on top of me. “Well, who am I to argue with God?”
“Exactly.” Her mouth found mine. Her lips were warm and soft. She tipped up her chin, and my mouth slid down her throat to her collarbone and then her shoulder. Her natural scent mixed with the smell of herbal shampoo and freshly cleaned laundry. Nothing had ever been more right.
For the first time in weeks, I was warm. Very warm. The water couldn’t touch that. No one could change that. Or, perhaps, one person could. If Lily took my advice and left, the cold would rush in like water into a sinking ship. I might not have been happy with my life before, but at least I had accepted it for what it was. Now I could never go back.
I lingered on the details of the night, longing to reverse time and do it all over again, or speed up time to the next opportunity to be with her. Lily nestled against my chest. Her head sank heavier on my shoulder. Her eyes closed.
“I love you,” I whispered, kissing her forehead. She didn’t respond. “Lily?”
She slept more peacefully than anyone I’d ever seen—a stark contrast to my sisters’ restless slumber. I wondered if this was the peace that forgiveness bought.
Behind us, the Hancock house stood silent and invisible against the black trees. Below us, the hammock was our cradle. The weight of Lily’s arm around my chest reassured me. I was both exhausted and exhilarated. I would do anything to preserve this feeling, but I dared to close my eyes, and sleep overcame me.
36
PROMISES KEPT
I don’t know how long I slept. Maybe an hour. Maybe only a minute. When I opened my eyes, it was still dark, but the birds had all gone quiet. A fish broke through the water with a small pip. Wind ruffled the tree
s. When something larger surfaced, just a hundred feet from shore, I was both surprised and disgusted that I had allowed myself to hope.
Someone raced toward shore with arms extended over the surface of the water, palms up, in a gesture of peace. At first I assumed Tallulah had come to explain herself, though I couldn’t imagine what she’d have to say. But it was Pavati’s wide, exotic eyes that burned through the darkness.
I gently extricated myself from the happy tangle of arms and legs that Lily and I had become. The hammock tilted as I rolled out, but I retucked the blanket around her before she had time to register my absence. She murmured softly as I walked toward the lake and listened for any sign of ambush.
“Pavati,” I said, greeting her when she stopped fifteen feet out.
She said, “Peace, Calder,” but there was a strange anxiety in her voice.
“Are you here on behalf of Maris or Tallulah?”
Pavati squirmed, and she spoke quickly. “It was Tallulah’s confession to make. It wasn’t my place to speak for her. Not then, not now.”
I paused to consider Pavati’s anxious face. “How am I supposed to look at Lulah ever again?”
“Listen,” she said, looking quickly over her shoulder. “I’m not here to talk about her.” Her tail lashed behind her.
“Say what you’re here to say, then.”
“Maris has taken the Hancock matter into her own hands.”
Instinctively, I glanced behind me at the house.
“She’s taken the little girl. She’s accepting a daughter in the father’s stead.”
“You’re a liar,” I said, but despite my accusation, I couldn’t help but listen for the sound of Sophie turning in her bed, a soft snuffle, a murmur. I heard nothing, but did that mean Pavati was telling the truth? The house was no quieter than before. Surely I hadn’t allowed Maris to steal Sophie right under my nose. But was it possible? Oh, God … “Why would she do that?” I asked.
The sun broke the horizon behind Pavati, throwing her face into shadow. “Please,” she said. “Neither of us has time for explanations.”