A Warmth in Winter (30 page)

Bobby frowned as he considered Georgie's comment. This goofy kid was no dummy, and he could help. Besides, he had a mother and a father, so if he had trouble getting back to the island, his parents would come get him. Probably.

“Okay, you can go, but you've got to get in now, with her.” Bobby nodded toward his sister. “I'm not going to have you wet and complaining all the way over.”

“Okay.” Grinning, Georgie threw himself over the side of the boat, moved to the middle seat and picked up the oars.

“You'll have to leave one of the paddles for me,” Bobby called as he began to push. The wet sand seemed to have gripped the bottom, but each incoming wave seemed to lift and release it for a moment before the wet sand claimed it again. Bobby waited until a particularly good-sized wave rolled in, then pushed with all his might and waded into the cold surf. The boat rose and fell on the waves, finally free of the sand.

“Here!” Georgie held out his hand. “Come on, get in!”

“Just a minute.” As the cold water nipped at his ankles, Bobby turned to watch the sea. He'd spent days studying the waves on the island. Here at the north point, the waves came in at an angle to the beach, so if he could catch the current, the swells should carry him away from the shore and toward home . . .

He gave the boat one final push, propelling it northward, then took Georgie's hand and pitched himself forward. For an awkward moment he hung over the edge like a hooked fish, then Brittany grabbed his coat with both hands and pulled him in.

“Yeah!” Georgie crowed, splashing in the water with his oar.

Bobby glared at him. For an island kid, Georgie knew nothing about rowing. Bobby had never done it, but he'd watched the grandfather.

“Let me have that.” He took the oar from Georgie, then sat with his back to the stern and placed his oar through the hole in the side of the boat. “You have to sit here.” He pointed to the empty place next to him. “And I have to put my oar through this other hole, and then we have to row together. Okay?”

Georgie nodded happily, then took his seat and held the oar. He splashed it once, spraying Britt and making her squeal, until Bobby gave him a stern look. “You have to wait until I'm ready.”

Georgie lowered his head, but he waited until Bobby had threaded his oar through the ring.

“Okay.” Bobby checked both oars' positions. “Now we pull together. Ready?”

And then, as Brittany lifted her face to the sun and sang to her doll, the two boys began to row.

“Why, look what the wind blew in!”

Caught by the note of surprise in Abner's voice, Birdie looked up, then felt her heart do a double thump. Captain Salt Gribbon stood in her store, one hand palm up on the counter, the other in his pocket. For a moment, standing there with his hand outstretched, he looked like a beggar asking for alms . . . or a man begging for forgiveness.

“I'll take care of this customer, Abner,” she said, rising from her chair at the work desk. She walked toward him, taking care to keep her expression composed. “Can I help you, Cap'n Gribbon?”

He stared at her like a fellow faced with a hard sum in arithmetic. “Ayuh,” he finally said. “I need more bread.”

She lifted a brow. “Ate all that rye already? I didn't know you had such an appetite.”

A flush rose from his collar, coloring his face with red blotches. “A man's got a right to buy what he pleases, doesn't he?”

“Ayuh.” She walked to the display case. “That he does.”

He followed her movements as she slipped on a pair of plastic gloves. “And I was wonderin' if you might be willing to do me a favor.”

“A favor?” Her voice sounded like chilled steel even in her own ears.

“I need to go over to Ogunquit.” He glanced at Abner back at the work counter, then lowered his voice. “Before the storm rolls in, I need you to come out to the lighthouse for a while so I can go over on the ferry. I'll only be gone a few hours, but I need to pick up a few things for Christmas.”

Though every nerve in Birdie's body rebelled against the thought of doing Salt Gribbon a favor, her heart warmed at his words. So the old man was willing to let the kids celebrate Christmas! She couldn't have been more surprised if he'd confessed a belief in Santa Claus.

“My, um, company needs to have somethin' on Christmas morning,” he said, speaking out of the corner of his mouth. “I can't have those kids waking up and finding nothing in my house for 'em. And I can't buy anything at the mercantile without Vernie Bidderman getting all suspicious.” He looked directly at her then, and when he spoke again, she heard a note of apology in his voice. “Will you come?”

Torn between her pride and her desire to help, Birdie closed her eyes. Yesterday he'd been downright snippy, sending her away with scarcely a thank-you and reacting to her pleas with another hardening of his heart. But this was softness, wasn't it? He might not be able to reach out to the town yet, but at least he was reaching out to her.

“Abner.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Can you cover things here if I go up to the lighthouse for a few hours?”

“Sure.” Abner flashed an Aquafresh smile. “Everything's under control.”

She met Salt's eye. “Let me get my coat,” she said, pulling off her plastic gloves. “And we're driving up there in my golf cart. If you think I'm walking all that way in this cold, you've got another think coming, Salt Gribbon.”

Imagine!

Chapter Twenty-two

S
alt said little on the drive up to the lighthouse, though he groaned when Birdie hit potholes and threw his hands over his eyes when she headed straight toward a boulder, then jerked the wheel at the last minute.

“You've got to do it like that,” she remarked coolly, not looking at him. “It's the only way you can avoid that big rut in the road.”

“Why pay that one any special favors?” Salt demanded, peering through his gloved fingers. “You managed to hit all the others.”

She gave him a sarcastic smile, then rounded the corner at Puffin Cove. The red-and-white lighthouse gleamed in the bright light of early afternoon, while beyond the point the sea roiled with whitecaps.

Leaving Salt to unzip himself out of the cart, she set her shoulders and marched toward the front door of the lighthouse. “I'll fix the kids a bit of supper if you're delayed,” she called, shivering as the wind chafed her cheeks. “They'll probably want lunch, too, seein' as how you've been gone all morning and the little dears have been left to scrounge for themselves.”

Salt mumbled something in reply, but the wind caught his answer and carried it away. She rapped lightly on the lighthouse door, then tried the knob, expecting the door to be latched from within. It wasn't.

Strange. The kids knew Salt expected them to batten down and wait whenever he went into town. She opened the door and stepped inside, scanning the round room, then glanced up at the spiraling staircase. No sign of the children on the stairs, in the room or—she crossed to the bathroom, opened the door, and found it empty.

She hurried to the doorway. “Salt? The kids aren't here.”

And in that moment she saw a sight she would carry with her until her dying day. Salt stood on the beach in water to his ankles, his hands pressed to his face. The sand where he stood had been marred with a long scrape, and the dory that always rested upside down on the shore was . . . gone.

With blood pounding thickly in his ears, Salt pulled his hands away from his eyes, hoping to find that the world had somehow righted itself while he closed himself off. But the beach was still empty, the sand still marked with tiny footprints and a long scrape. And despite the fervency of his whispered prayer, his boat had not materialized.

Birdie stood at his side now, tugging on his sleeve. “Salt,” she was saying, fear radiating from her like a halo, “those kids couldn't have taken the boat—could they? Why, there's no way they could manage it without help.”

Salt's heart was hammering; he could feel each thump like a punch in his chest. “Of course not, they couldn't take it.” He looked down at the sand and followed the long abrasion to the place where it began—the spot where his boat had rested only a few hours before. Footprints sprinkled the beach here, but there wasn't an adult-sized print among them.

“We have to get help.” Birdie's voice had risen to a fevered pitch. She was breathing in quick gasps, and her face had gone the color of paper, even with the biting wind. “You don't—you can't handle this one alone. You don't have a boat; you don't have anything.”

He turned and moved past her, striding toward the lighthouse, but for what? Every muscle in him yearned to do something, to push or pull and labor, but what could he do? Something in him wanted to race to the switching panel and manually activate the light, but what good would that accomplish?

Pausing in the doorway, he pressed his hands to the jambs, straining against the wood. His grandkids were out on a rough sea with a storm approaching. The waves would soon be high enough to warrant a small craft warning, and not even independent Bobby would know how to handle a dory in waves higher than three or four feet.

From the beach, Birdie let out an anguished scream. Salt ran toward her, fearing that she'd seen something in the waves, but she was pointing to something on the sand.

“What is it?” he panted, running up. Then he saw what she'd seen—Bobby's encyclopedia and a blue backpack.

She knelt and placed her hand on the bag. “This belongs to Georgie Graham. He carries it all the time.”

Without a word, Salt turned to the footprints. In the sand, written plainly for anyone to interpret, he read the tale of three children. Three distinct sets of footprints cluttered the beach, one small, one medium-sized, and one with the word Nike emblazoned along the instep.

Fire blazed in Birdie's eyes when she looked at him again. “Georgie Graham is with them.” Abruptly she turned on her heel and strode toward the golf cart.

Salt ran after her. “Where are you going?”

She whirled to face him. “Charles and Babette need to know their son is in danger. And after I go to their house, I'm going to get Floyd to call the Coast Guard. And then I'm going to tell the pastor, so he and Edith can call everyone and get the town praying. And after that—” Her voice broke as her gaze drifted toward the sea. “After that, I'm going down to the docks to wait, I suppose. And I'm going to pray that nothing happens to those children—because if it does, Salt Gribbon, the fault will rest on your head.”

Her words stung like a whip, yet he knew he deserved every lash. She lifted her chin as if she expected him to argue, but he pointed toward the cart. “Let's go,” he said, moving toward the passenger side. “We've no time to waste.”

Birdie slid behind the wheel. Salt had barely managed to tumble onto the bench beside her before she pressed on the accelerator and spun around, slamming him against the support rail. He clung to the pole, however, knowing that anything he endured now was a small price to pay for his mistakes.

The cart flew up the road, spewing snow and gravel and slush in its wake. Birdie flew over the potholes, jarring Salt's bones and setting his teeth to rattling in his head, but he bit down and closed his eyes.

He hadn't meant it to end like this. He'd only intended the best for those children. And Birdie had been right all along.

Why hadn't he asked for help sooner? Why did he have to ruin every young life he touched? He'd ruined Patrick's life by being gone too much, and now he'd hurt these children by being around too much. Why couldn't he get it right?

If the authorities took the kids away—please, God, if he could find 'em—they'd have every right to place the children in a proper home. He'd blown his chance to make a good home for them, to reconcile his past and redeem his own failures.

But now he had to save their lives. He would find Russell Higgs at the dock and borrow his lobster boat. They'd go out and comb the channel between the island and the mainland. If they didn't find the kids there, they'd go farther to search. But he wouldn't quit, no matter how bad a squall blew in.

Birdie slowed as they passed the Lobster Pot, then stopped outside the gallery. “I'm going in to speak to the Grahams,” she said, turning to give him a stern look. “We'll call the Coast Guard. You take this cart and drive on down to the B&B. Russell should be home; if he's not, try the docks. I'm pretty sure I saw his boat tied up there this morning.”

Salt nodded and let her go, then slid over on the seat and gripped the steering wheel. The pitch of the electric motor rose when he pressed on the accelerator, and he drove as fast as the vehicle would allow until he reached the Baskahegan Bed and Breakfast. Electric candles glowed in the decorated windows, and he gulped in the scent of evergreen as he raced up the path and the porch steps.

He pounded on the door, then went to the wide bay window and pressed his hands to the glass, peering into the darkness. Nothing moved in the fancy parlor beyond, but a fire crackled in the fireplace and he could hear the strains of Christmas music.

A moment later the door opened. Floyd Lansdown stood in the foyer, his cardigan sweater buttoned at the waist and a notebook beneath his arm.

“I need a boat.” Salt crossed the wooden porch in two steps. “Is your lobsterman home?”

“Russell?” Floyd took a step out the door and looked toward the docks. “He's working on his boat. The engine's out of her, I think; he's doin' maintenance and repairs.”

Salt sprang off the porch, jumping over a snow-dusted bank of boxwoods, and ignored Floyd's urgent cry: “Is this an emergency? Should I get the fire truck?”

For an instant Salt debated whether or not he should even bother with the golf cart, for the dock lay just beyond Frenchman's Fairest on the hill. But his bones were aching from his leap and his muscles were tense with panic. He jumped into the cart and floored the accelerator, arriving at the dock a moment later. The ferry was nowhere in sight, but Russell Higgs's lobster boat, the
Barbara Jean,
bobbed alongside the dock.