Monstrous Beauty (19 page)

Betsy said to the family, “If ye care to follow me, I am off to water and feed the goats—mayhap the children would like to help?”

“They’d love to,” the mother said, glancing sideways at Hester as they left.

When their backs were turned Hester rolled her eyes and continued pounding on the nail, until with great satisfaction she tested the stool and found it to be as steady as a rock.

*   *   *

At the end of the day, Hester peeled off her costume, rinsed her face, and pulled on a short skirt, a long-sleeve T-shirt, and flip-flops. Peter and Sam arrived to pick her up, with Sam smiling broadly.

“Ready?” he said, getting straight to business. “We’ve got to get to Squant’s Treasure before the fireworks crowd arrives.”

On the way to the wharf, Hester felt the sensation she’d had since the night of the party, only stronger—that something was tugging at her, drawing her to the beach. The only logical explanation was that she was feeling rebellious about Pastor McKee’s request for her to stay away from it. But if that were true why would the pull feel so external, not internal? Why was it so nagging, so demanding, even when she wanted to forget it?

She looked over at Peter, who was silent and seemed to be concentrating on the road. He hadn’t contacted her at all in the two days since she’d sent him packing at the Plantation. This was the first time they’d seen each other since then, and the outing had been organized by Sam weeks ago.

“Mom and Dad won’t let me go to the fireworks with my friends,” he had said on their way home from school. “They think we’ll be an unruly mob, without supervision.”

“That sounds about right,” Peter had said.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Sam agreed, laughing. “So you and Hester have to take me.”

At the time, with the three of them squashed together in the front seat of Peter’s truck and the liberating thought of an impending summer break, it had seemed to Hester like a fun idea. But now all she wanted was to be alone, on the beach.

The parking lot at the wharf was already packed. Hundreds of people had set up blankets on the shore, and some of the townies had jealously marked off their territory with police-style yellow tape. Peter pulled into the only empty space in the lot, reserved for Captain Dave Boats.

Sam sighed. “It’s good to know people in high places.”

Hester got out of the car, stretched, and looked down the beach. The water level was high, with almost no sand showing.

“Where are we in the tide cycle, Peter?” Hester asked as nonchalantly as she could.

“This is pretty much high tide. Maybe in the next fifteen minutes it’ll peak.”

“So low tide will be…”

“A little after midnight. I think I know what you’re getting at, and it’s not a bad idea.”

“What?” Hester said. “What am I getting at?”

“The tide will have ebbed to halfway by nine o’clock, when the fireworks start. The lawn will be full, but maybe we’ll still be able to find a good spot on the beach.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Sam said

Hester nodded. “Yes, the beach.” Her mind was clouded with that incessant calling—the distracting tugging. An image of the cave flashed in her mind. That was where she needed to go.

She suggested, “How about after supper we walk down to the picnic area past the Rock, where we had the party? We can enter the beach there.”

Hester ate only a couple of her steamers and gave the rest to Sam. It was too soon to go to the beach, so they wandered over to Scooper Dooper for ice cream, where they bumped into Sam’s buddies. The ice cream parlor was a zoo, with Sam’s booming voice the loudest.

Hester couldn’t focus on anything but the pull she felt inside. The real world had become a foggy waiting area. They were at a tiny table near the window, and all around them was standing room only. Peter sipped a soda and laughed at some of Sam’s antics, but otherwise he was quiet. Hester stared out the window, vaguely aware whenever Peter was watching her. She summoned the will to smile at him a couple of times—she should make up for being so horrible at the Plantation, shouldn’t she?—but each time it was an empty smile, she had nothing to say, and her eyes were drawn out the window again.

Finally she said, “Let’s stroll down to the picnic area now, huh, guys?” She got up without waiting for a response and pushed her way out of the crowded shop.

Walking there was effortless, as if she had a steady wind at her back. It was the direction her body was supposed to go. It was the path of no resistance. Sam and Peter trailed behind her, even with their longer strides.

When she got to the picnic area, she threaded her way through the crowds to the top of the stone steps, where her heart sank. The sun had set and there was not yet a moon, but she could see in the remains of twilight that the beach was full of people.

“Shoot,” Sam said as he caught up with her. “Everyone had the same idea.”

They walked down to the beach and found a rocky, damp spot to stand. Hester crossed her arms against the chill and looked longingly in the direction of the cave. She felt a crushing sense of disappointment not to be able to just walk over there.

In the next few minutes the sky became black, with pinpricks of stars, and the crowd buzzed with anticipation. The first firework went off and lit up the sky. The crowd cheered. A little boy next to her squealed. After the second firework, Hester felt Peter’s hand on her shoulder. She recoiled from his touch and nearly glared at him before she caught herself; he was only trying to get her attention.

“Some stairs are still free, let’s go up there,” he said over the boom of the third burst. In the next pulse of light, Hester saw he was right: many steps were empty.

She nodded in agreement. It was a better view, and what did it matter if they left the beach? She was trapped tonight anyway, playing big sister to Sam, making amends to Peter, and pretending to be a part of … all this.

She looked over at Sam and felt a surge of guilt. Why couldn’t she just enjoy herself? Why had she allowed that nagging feeling to consume her, to the point of snapping at the people she cared about? If she was honest with herself, she knew she was aching to see Ezra again. If she was brutally honest, she knew the desire was becoming obsessive. Maybe McKee was right after all, and it would be healthier for her to avoid Ezra. She touched Sam’s elbow and motioned to the steps.

The second and third stairs from the top were wide open. She and Sam sat down, and Peter stood on the stair behind them. The tugging feeling resumed in her core, and she resolved to ignore it. She wrapped her arms around her bare legs to keep warm. Peter’s jacket slid onto her shoulders. She tried to concentrate on the reflection of the fireworks on the water, but the calling became painfully insistent. She closed her eyes and miserably allowed it entry. She couldn’t push it away, she could only endure it. The oohs and aahs of the people began to grate on her—they were mindless cattle, standing between her and … and what?

She opened her eyes. “I hate tourists!” she said, too loudly.

“Tourists pay your salary.” Peter laughed from above.

With the next explosion of twinkling light, something forced Hester’s attention on the crowd. The biggest fireworks threw strobes of neon, nearly as bright as day. She saw upturned faces one moment. She saw men with baseball caps the next. She saw women holding toddlers pointing to the sky. Something drew her eyes to one spot. On the next burst of light she saw that it was Ezra, in the middle of the crowd.

And then it was as if everyone around him had melted away. He stood tall and lanky—so extraordinary, so singular. He had his hands in the pockets of his black pants. He was staring at her. She slowly stood up. Peter’s jacket slipped off her shoulders. Through three explosions of fireworks their eyes met, down the length of an entire beach. He took his right hand out of his pocket and raised it in a simple, discouraged greeting. There was so much standing between them: Peter, Sam, and about a thousand strangers. She raised her left hand, mirroring his.

“Who do you see?” Peter asked.

She startled. She turned to look at him.

“Was it someone from school?” He picked up his jacket and held it out to her.

“No, I was mistaken.” She gently pushed the jacket back at him. “I’m warm now, thanks.”

The finale started. Crackling, popping, and deafening booms took the place of all other sounds in the world. There was a powerful smell of sulfur and smoke in the air. So many fireworks exploded at once that the audience was bathed in nearly constant fluorescent light. But he was gone.

Chapter 30

O
N THE WAY HOME
from the fireworks display, Hester’s thoughts returned obstinately to the beach. The urge to go back to the cave was not just nagging now, it was consuming. As Peter’s truck took her farther away from it, her insides ached with the effort of resisting. The water had significantly receded by the time they’d left the fireworks show, but there were also hundreds of lingering tourists and partying teenagers. She didn’t want to share the beach and the cave with any of them.

She calculated that if the tides were on roughly a twelve-hour cycle, the next low would be around noon tomorrow—while she was at work. She had already taken a long lunch the day before. She couldn’t ask again, not in the high season. She shook her head and exhaled and then caught herself; she was sitting next to Peter, and even though his eyes were on the road she could feel him reading her mood.

Peter dropped them off, refusing Sam’s invitation to come inside for a late-night snack. Hester forced a cheerful goodbye and ran straight to her room. She closed the door, opened her laptop, and found the South Shore tide calendar. The next low tide would be halfway through her lunch break tomorrow, as she had predicted. She had only forty-five minutes for lunch, and if she changed clothes and drove to the beach and back, she’d end up with less than twenty minutes of free time. She ran her finger along the computer screen: the low tide after that was at 1:09 in the morning.

She slapped the computer shut and slumped back in her chair. There was no way on earth that Nancy and Malcolm would let her go out alone after midnight.

*   *   *

By the end of the next agonizing day at work, she knew she had no choice: she had to sneak out of her house that night. She couldn’t stay away from the beach any longer. Peter drove her home and Hester said goodbye, but this time she waited for him to pull away before she went inside the house. She had a sudden inspiration: she would get her bike out of the garage and hide it in the backyard, to be as quiet as possible later that night. Peter paused, and since Hester had no apparent reason for standing rooted to the spot, she waved with a silly shrug, realizing instantly how uncharacteristically attentive her behavior toward him must seem at that moment. As he left, his smile was half confusion, with a bewildered shake of the head.

After stashing her bike, she let herself inside the house through the front door. She picked at her supper, which held no interest for her, and tried to follow the conversation but couldn’t. She helped clear the table and wash the dishes, and then excused herself to read. Upstairs, she showered, brushed her teeth, put on clean clothes, climbed into bed, and read the only thing that could keep her attention—the Doyle journal.

The book always felt warm in her hands, as if someone had been reading it before her and had just set it down. She read a section on how the males of the species had gradually killed each other in warfare and the last baby had grown to adulthood a thousand years ago. Because of this their world was childless, save for the occasional human foundling transformed into a water breather. There was a beautiful image of a pale female submerged deep in the ocean, with sharp fins and wide eyes, protectively cradling an apparently living human infant, with a fantastic architectural rendering of a shipwreck behind her on the ocean floor.

Hester touched the ink of the illustration. Doyle was long dead, yet still speaking to her and engaging her imagination. It made her think about how recording information, ideas, and stories can collapse the time and space between the writer and the reader. It was one of the reasons she was drawn to history in school: there was such romance in listening to voices of the past. She closed the book and took a deep sniff of the cover. What an intriguing person the author must have been in real life.

It was ten o’clock. She set her alarm for one o’clock on its softest setting. Somehow, miraculously, she fell into an exhausted sleep, with the journal nested beside her.

Her eyes opened at 12:52, before her alarm went off. She got up, tucked the journal inconspicuously on her bookshelf, pulled her hair into a ponytail, and grabbed the sweatshirt she had laid out on the bed. She walked down the stairs carrying her running shoes, heady with anticipation. She tried to reason the feeling away, to prepare herself for disappointment: it was one o’clock in the morning; she had no prior arrangement with him; he wouldn’t be there; he
shouldn’t
be there.

But the tugging in her chest told her differently.

She put on her shoes in the living room, tying the laces in the dark, and tiptoed toward the back door, through the kitchen. She froze when she saw Sam. He was bent at the waist, his entire front half illuminated by the light inside the refrigerator. Before she could think to turn around, he saw her.

He stood up and stared, with his hand still resting on the gaping fridge door.

Damn,
Hester thought.

“You going out?” he said simply.

“Uh-huh.” She started quickly for the back door, avoiding his eyes.

“I won’t tell, but someone should know where. In case.”

She stopped walking. She realized she was hunching, like a criminal, and stood up straight. Sam had long ago proved himself to be an unfailingly sensible and sensitive accomplice. Why was she worried? It had been years since he had been the snitching little brother.

She said in a low voice, “I’m going to the beach by the picnic area. I’ll be back before Dad gets up. I have my phone.”