Kiss River (17 page)

“As soon as he wakes up,” sheriff said, “he has a lot of questions to answer.”

Then they went upstairs with Daddy to get rid of the dead German.

I knew he was dead and couldn’t hurt me, and I knew the other man was far away and injured, but the thought of going back up to my room was scary to me. I felt like a baby. Mama knew, somehow. Maybe she knew how she would have felt at my age if such a thing had happened to her. She said I could sleep with her for the rest of the night, and that Daddy would sleep in my room. I was grateful to her.

It was strange sleeping with her. I did manage to sleep, but
I’m not sure she did. I felt her petting my hair as I drifted off, and she was still there when I woke up in the morning, petting my hair and smiling at me. There were tears in her eyes. “My little girl,” she said to me. “I wish I could have protected you.”

I no longer felt that helpless kind of feeling from the night before, and I didn’t like her being so close and so kind to me now. I sat up and turned away from her. “It was nothing, Mama,” I said. “Really.”

But I was very tired, more tired than I’d been in my whole life. Mama said I didn’t need to go to school, and so I went back to bed, in my own room, not looking at the spot in the hallway where I was afraid I’d still see some blood. I slept most of the morning, and then had lunch, and now I’m writing this. And tonight I will see Sandy. I plan to go back to sleep now to make that time come quickly.

S
horty’s was overflowing with the evening crowd when Clay stopped by to pick up Henry, and he had to park down the street instead of in the lot. He’d worked late, designing an addition for a house in Duck, a project he was excited about. The owners wanted something different and unique, and he’d actually lain awake the night before thinking about what he might create. It had been a while—eight months, to be exact—since he’d worked with any fervor on a project, and the excitement left him both relieved and guilty: Terri would never experience such joy in her work again.

Several people greeted him when he walked into the restaurant.

“Hey!” Kenny was seated at the counter, and he raised his mug of beer in the air. “Have a seat, Clay.”

“Better not.” Clay glanced toward the entrance to the back room. “I’m already late picking up Henry.”

“Just for a minute,” Kenny said. One of Shorty’s thick, juicy burgers lay half eaten on Kenny’s plate, and Clay was seduced. He ordered one for himself, then went into the back room to let
Henry know he was there and make sure the old man had eaten. Returning to the main room, he took the empty seat next to his friend.

“I was in here for breakfast this morning and saw your new roommate again,” Kenny said. “Man, that girl is hot.”

“Housemate,” Clay said.

“What?”

“Housemate, not roommate.”

“Whatever. What’s she like?”

Clay shrugged. “Hard to say.” After a week and a half of sharing a house with Gina, he still knew little about her. “She’s a teacher in Washington State,” he said.

“I thought you said she was a lighthouse historian?”

“That’s just her hobby. She really teaches junior-high science.”

“Oh,” Kenny looked dejected. “Probably one of those women who run the other way when they find out I don’t have a college degree.”

“I don’t have a clue about that,” Clay said. “All I know is, the only thing she seems to care about is the Kiss River lighthouse.”

“Well, I can talk about the lighthouse,” Kenny said.

“You can’t talk to her about anything,” Clay said with a laugh. “You had a chance with her on Saturday and you just sat there, stupefied.”

Kenny laughed. “Yeah, well, I just needed to get over the shock of seeing someone like her in a place like this. I’m ready now. So, you going to set me up?”

Clay studied his friend. He knew women found Kenny attractive. He could seem like a real jerk sometimes, but he
was
smart—in his field, at least—and an all-around good guy who would give a stranger the shirt off his back. His ideas about women were a bit backward and heavy-handed, but maybe Gina would like that. Who knew? She didn’t seem drawn to Clay, so maybe Kenny would be more her type. Although, frankly, he doubted it.

“I’ll check it out with her,” he said, reaching for the beer the waitress had placed in front of him.

Kenny lifted his own beer again in a toast. “Awesome,” he said.

The dark sky was shot through with color from the windows of the keeper’s house by the time he got home. Both Lacey’s and Gina’s cars were in the parking lot, but inside the house, he found the kitchen empty except for Sasha, who leaped around his legs, whimpering as though he’d been afraid Clay was never coming home. The dishwasher was warm from having been recently run, and the aroma of tomato sauce was still in the air. Lacey and Gina had probably shared some pasta for dinner.

There was no sign of either woman now, though, and he figured they had gone up to their rooms early to read. The house was still and quiet, the only sound the clicking of Sasha’s toenails on the kitchen floor and the alternating roar and whisper of the ocean through the open windows. A stack of mail rested on the porcelain-topped table. Lacey must have gone to their post office box. All bills, he noticed, thumbing through the stack. He was about to open the electric bill, when he spotted a mosquito on the wall above the oven. He smashed it with the unopened bill, then carefully peeled the envelope free and dropped it in the garbage. Noting the amount that he and Lacey owed the electric company, he groaned. Insane.

Sighing, he looked through the kitchen into the hallway, which glowed from the lights in all the other rooms. Every light in the damn house was on. It had become his job to turn them off in the evening. If Lacey had her way, they would burn all night long. He thought of taking the electric bill upstairs to her, tossing it on her bed and telling her they had to conserve. But then Kiss River would be dark and colorless when he arrived home each evening. He would pay the bill.

He took Sasha outside for a few minutes, letting the dog run on the beach until the mosquitoes drove them both inside. Back in the house, he began walking through the downstairs rooms, turning off the lights. When he reached the office, he was surprised to see Gina at the computer. She was reading e-mail, and she barely turned her head toward him when he walked into the room.

“Hi,” he said, leaning against the desk. He nodded toward the monitor. “Any good mail?”

“Nothing special.” Her voice sounded tight.

Maybe she has a lover, he thought. A painful situation she’s run away from. They’re trying to sort things out through e-mail. By the sound of her voice, it wasn’t going too well.

“Did you want to check yours?” She glanced up at him quickly and he saw that her eyes were red. “I can get off.”

“No, that’s fine,” he said, wondering if he should ask her what was wrong. It would seem like prying, though. “Where’s Lacey?” he asked.

“Upstairs,” she said, her gaze back on the monitor. She was scrolling through paragraph after paragraph of some long piece of e-mail, and she didn’t look up at him as she spoke. “She’s not alone,” she added.

“Ah.” He suddenly felt embarrassed, though whether
for
her sister or
by
his sister, he wasn’t sure. “Is she with Josh?” he asked.

Gina shook her head. “No, not Josh. I don’t remember his name. He has dark hair. He came over right after dinner and they went upstairs.”

He sensed Gina’s discomfort, as though she thought she might have been in the way when the man arrived and that’s why he and Lacey had disappeared upstairs. He started to tell her that Lacey
always
disappeared upstairs with her male friends, but he didn’t particularly want to give words to that thought.

“I wanted to ask you something,” Clay said, looking for an excuse to stay in the room with her.

She couldn’t seem to answer him. He saw a tear slip down her cheek.

“Gina?” He took a step closer. “What’s wrong?”

She shook her head. “Nothing,” she said, reaching for a tissue from the box on the desk.

“You’re upset about something,” he said.

“It’s nothing,” she repeated, wiping her eyes dry. She looked at him then. “What did you want to ask me?” she asked.

The time didn’t seem right, but he’d already introduced the topic, so he might as well continue. “Do you remember my friend Kenny?” he asked. “I had lunch with him at Shorty’s on Saturday and you waited on us?”

She nodded. “He was in again this morning,” she said.

“Well.” Clay squirmed a little. “He’s interested in you. I’m supposed to check out whether you’d be interested in him.”

She smiled at that, but there was still sadness at the corners of her mouth. “I’m not interested in anyone,” she said.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll let him down easy.” He took a step toward the door, but stopped. “Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked again.

“Yes. Oh—” she touched the printer to the right of the computer “—but could I use your printer?”

“Of course. Do you need some help with it?”

“No, I don’t think so, thanks.” She turned away from him, back to whatever had brought those tears to her eyes.

Upstairs, he heard laughter coming from behind the door to Lacey’s room, and he closed his eyes against the sound. He walked into his room and lay down on the bed, Sasha jumping up to snuggle beside him.

God, Lacey was loose! He hated using that word to describe her, but there was no denying that it fit. She’d been that way as a teenager, but he’d assumed she’d outgrown it. Apparently not. He’d confronted her about her promiscuity once since they’d moved in together…and only once. She’d been more reassuring than indignant. She was hurting no one, she said, as if this might be his primary concern. She was careful about avoiding pregnancy and disease. So there was no need for him to worry about her, thank you very much.

He did not understand his sister. She was beautiful and bright. She could have been a veterinarian herself instead of an aide in her father’s office. Yet, she had not even bothered with college.

In her senior year of high school, Alec had told her that Tom Nestor was her biological father. Clay remembered Lacey’s shock and disbelief at that news. “Mom would
never
have done that!” she’d screamed. Clay had been stunned by the revelation himself, but it seemed to destroy something in his sister. Once she accepted the truth, however, she sought out Tom Nestor. He began teaching her stained glass, and Clay figured that it was her way of bonding with the crazy old man. Who could have known that she would become so absorbed by the craft, hungrily learn
ing new skills, taking over her mother’s place in Tom’s studio? She was good at it. There was a market for her stuff, just as there had been for their mother’s. So she did not bother with college. She became the stained-glass expert in the area, a part-time aide in the animal hospital and the local do-gooder, the person everyone turned to when they needed help. That was apparently enough for her. That and her men. There were people who were smart, brilliant even, but who possessed not a shred of common sense, and he feared that described his sister.

Sasha lifted his head at the whisper of bare feet on the stairs, and Clay listened as the sound faded into the room Gina was renting.

“It’s just Gina,” Clay said, pulling Sasha’s head down to his side again.

Gina was alone, just as he was. And she seemed determined to stay that way. Something had upset her tonight, but she didn’t want to share it with him. That much had been obvious. He didn’t have whatever it took to draw someone out. Terri had told him that more than once. “You get weird if I talk about my feelings,” she’d complained. “You don’t know how to comfort me.” She’d added that she knew he couldn’t help it. He was male, and males were “disabled” in that way. “I know it’s not your fault,” she’d said. “You’re handicapped, that’s all.”

She had been right. If only he had the chance to comfort Terri now. If only he could see her again, hold her in his arms. He would make up for all the times he’d turned away from her when she’d needed him to listen to her. He would never leave her alone with her feelings again. But second chances were rare, and in this case, impossible.

He heard the door to his sister’s room creak open, and Lacey’s laughter filled the hallway. He heard some murmured words from her lover, then more laughter, and he buried his head in Sasha’s shoulder to block out the sound.

I
n the picture, the little girl wore a white cotton shirt that was too big for her tiny frame. Her smooth skin was the color of caramels and her black hair was cropped very short. All the children at the orphanage had short hair to keep down the incidence of lice infestations. Gina lay on her bed in Bess’s old room at the keeper’s house, studying the picture, staring at the little girl as if she didn’t already know her features by heart. The windows were open and a warm salty breeze filled the room, but Gina would not have noticed if snow had been blowing through the screen. She was focused on the two-month-old picture. How had Rani changed since then? How much sicker was she?

The first picture she’d seen of Rani had been of the child as an infant. A man had found her wrapped in a shirt, lying near the entrance to a building on a busy Hyderabad street. At first, he’d thought she was nothing more than a small, discarded pile of rags. The heart problem was discovered during a medical exam at the hospital before she was transferred to the orphanage, where
they named the baby Rani. Gina learned that a single woman could adopt a child from India, and applied to adopt her. She thought she would be able to get Rani quickly because of the baby’s urgent need for medical care. Yet the process dragged on. And on.

She did everything right. She’d moved obediently, if impatiently, through the tedious steps of the adoption process. There was the home study, the careful creation of a dossier, the interminable waiting. Finally, she’d received the referral. Rani would be hers. But there were still more months of waiting, and the occasional pictures of Rani sent to her from the orphanage were not enough. It had amazed her how attached she could become to a child she had never met. Her friends had not understood, but she belonged to a support group on the Internet filled with other parents adopting from India, and they had empathized easily with her bond to the little girl she’d never seen. They had all either endured the ordeal already or were going through it just as she was.

In April, she’d learned that the Indian court was finally about to grant her the guardianship order. She took time off from teaching, using her meager funds to fly to India, filled with excitement and every material thing she could possibly need for the little girl. Her friends had thrown her a shower, and she had with her a baby sling, packages of diapers, bottles, sippy cup, toys, picture books, little outfits, a pink and yellow blanket and some medicines her pediatrician had suggested. She’d been filled with the anticipatory thrill of discovery possessed by nearly every expectant mother.

Her plan was to spend the first three days in India at the orphanage, getting to know her new daughter and preparing with the Indian lawyer for the court hearing. On the fourth day, she would go to court to receive her guardianship order. She knew it might take more than one court date to receive the order, but after all the waiting she’d already endured, she could handle that. Then she would begin the preparations to take Rani home with her. She had already spoken to a pediatric cardiologist in Seattle who was ready to evaluate the little girl as soon as Gina brought her home.

The temperature outside had been ninety degrees and rising on her first day at the orphanage. Her driver dropped her off in front of the boxy, two-story building, and she had to step around
a goat that was dining on leaves on the dirt path to get to the entrance. She had not anticipated the conditions she found inside. Most, although certainly not all, of the parents on the Internet support group who had visited the orphanages reported clean and caring conditions, and Gina had hoped Rani’s orphanage would fall into that category. But it did not. The moment she stepped through the front door, she was greeted by the scent of urine and an ominous silence. She knew what that meant. “The bad orphanages,” someone had told her, “are very quiet. The children have learned that crying is pointless because no one will respond to their tears. Making noise will only bring the ayah with her stick.”

Rani’s orphanage was bursting with children. There were sixty of them, infants to about twelve years of age, divided into four crowded rooms, where some of them slept on floor mats yellowed by urine. The little ones ran around naked, not even diapered, and Gina saw more than one pile of feces on the cold, tiled floor. The ayahs, those beautiful Muslim caretakers in their sapphire blue saris, seemed mostly kind and caring, yet overworked. There were not enough of them and too many children. They carried sticks to herd the children from one room to another, and although Gina did not witness any abuse, she knew corporal punishment was allowed in India and wondered if those sticks were used to hit as well as herd.

Flies were everywhere, and she batted them away from her face as she waited in the sparsely furnished reception area. It was so hot. The large windows were wide open, but the air was still and suffocating. A portrait of Gandhi hung on one of the walls, but that was the only decoration. She watched a gecko crawl from one side of the room to the other while she waited, thinking about taking Rani away from this place as quickly as she could. She hoped the next day’s court hearing would be sufficient to allow that to happen.

There was beauty in India; her driver that morning had taken her to the Golconda fort, from where she could look down on the city and the tombs of the Muslim rulers, and she’d been struck at finding such a stunning vista high above the crowded city. The culture was rich with history and ritual, and she was
determined that Rani know about it. They would come back when she was older. They would make visits to India a part of their lives. Gina had made peace with the guilt she felt over stealing a child away from her culture, her roots. Yes, there was beauty in India, but there were no adoptive families available here for a damaged child. Especially not a damaged female child.

Finally, one of the ayahs came to the waiting area and led Gina into a small room, where three little girls were playing with blocks and dolls. Two of the girls scrambled around the room, but the tiniest remained seated on the floor, moving one of the dolls up and down with her arm.

“Rani,” the ayah called to her.

Rani lifted her huge eyes to the ayah at the sound of her name, and Gina’s heart twisted inside her chest. She felt tears fill her eyes and tried to prevent them from overflowing. She didn’t want to frighten the little girl. Her daughter.

The ayah spoke to Rani in Telugu, and the child got slowly to her feet and toddled toward them. She was like a doll herself, with dark eyes in a tiny, wheat-colored face. Gina could barely breathe. She squatted low to the floor, holding her arms out to the girl, who changed direction from the ayah to Gina, as though she knew that was where she belonged. Rani nearly melted into her arms. The other children looked up from their play, watching while Gina sat down on the floor and rocked her baby. Rani stared up at her with those huge eyes, her thumb in her mouth, and Gina could no longer stop her own tears. “Sweet little girl,” she said as she rocked. “My sweet little baby.”

Rani wore a loose diaper and a white cotton shirt, beneath which Gina could feel every one of her ribs. She was malnourished, she thought, but that might not be the fault of the orphanage. The heart problem could do that, just as it made her breathing so rapid. Gina could feel Rani’s heart tapping against her ribs, and she held her tightly, as though she could keep that heart beating, keep the child alive until she could get her the surgery she needed. Rani didn’t speak, but she listened attentively to every word Gina spoke, mesmerized by the sound of her voice, or perhaps by the English.

Gina spent three long and wonderful days with Rani, holding
her as she slept, playing with her, showing her the picture books she’d brought along, feeding her, teaching her to drink from a sippy cup. Rani opened her mouth like a baby bird waiting to be fed. It took a while, but she finally got the hang of it, and although she didn’t speak, she clung to Gina like a monkey.

Gina didn’t want to leave the orphanage the night before her court date, but she had to return to her hotel. She’d been warned that the next day would be long and tiring, sitting for hours in the un-air-conditioned courthouse, waiting to receive her guardianship order. She tucked her daughter into bed and kissed her goodbye.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” she promised, and she thought for sure Rani understood what she was saying. Later, she was to hope Rani had no idea what those words had meant. She didn’t want her child to think she had lied to her. Because she was not back the next day. That was the day everything changed.

Gina set Rani’s picture back on the night table and picked up the sheet of paper on which she’d printed an e-mail sent to the Internet support group. She knew the woman who had written the e-mail. Gina had met her and her husband in the courthouse in Hyderabad, where they, too, had been waiting for the court order that would allow them to take their daughter home. Like Gina, they had gone back to the States empty-handed, and she knew from the information they’d shared in the support group that the last couple of months had been as torturous for them as they had been for her, as they waited and battled and hired attorneys and did all they could to get their daughter out of the orphanage. Tonight, though, she knew that couple was suffering even more.

“We are heartbroken and don’t know where to turn,” the wife had written. “We had not been able to get any information from the state orphanage, where Meena was moved in May, so we flew back to India last week. And there we were told they had no record of Meena ever being there. Neither does the original orphanage where we visited her. We
know
she was there, since that is where we spent time with her. Meena’s existence has been expunged. It’s as though we’re the only people who know that she ever existed, because we held her and talked to her and loved her. And now we can’t find her. I am sick over what might have happened to her.”

Gina had never fully understood why Meena had been moved to the state orphanage, but she did know that no one wanted their child in that place. Might Rani be moved as well? Could she also disappear?

The e-mail had wiped from her mind her distress over the lost four hundred and ten dollars, as well as the unproductive conversation with Alec at the Sea Tern Inn, where she’d looked like an ignorant fool as she tried to answer his questions about the lighthouses in the Pacific Northwest. It even, if only for a moment, made her forget what he’d said about the missing panel and her fear that that very panel might turn out to be the part of the lens she needed.

Closing her eyes, she rested the e-mail on her chest. She used to be an active member of the Internet group, but she could no longer commiserate with those parents. She had become a silent lurker, reading their messages but never responding or posting any news of her own. She could no longer turn to them for advice or sympathy. She had taken a path they would never approve of, and she could not let them know.

And now it seemed that her only hope to get Rani lay in the secrets of Bess Poor’s diary.