The Ice Cradle (11 page)

It took me a moment to absorb what Baden had said, and when I did, I practically shuddered.

This was bad. This was very bad.

I remembered reading about the construction of the Quabbin Reservoir, a man-made lake that holds Boston’s water supply. Dams had been built and four towns evacuated and razed in the 1930s to create the basin for the water, billions of gallons of it, but before they let in one drop, the engineers moved the cemeteries. Thirty-four of them. Six thousand graves. I’ve never forgotten those numbers.

Burial grounds are sacred. Granted, the undersea wreckage of the
Larchmont
wasn’t your average cemetery, but it was the only cemetery those poor souls had, and it deserved as much protection as that afforded Native American burial grounds, churchyards filled with unnamed slaves, and the mass graves of anonymous victims of genocide and famine.

“You said they’re conspiring,” I went on tentatively.

“Yes. Certain
parties
are aware that there is a television person coming to the inn.”

“By
parties
, you mean ghosts, spirits.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re talking about the TV crew, the guys from Australia. The ‘ghost detectives.’ ”

“I am.”

I was beginning to catch on. Because Mark was publicly leading the wind farm initiative, the ghosts had identified him as the person on the island to target, the man responsible for the impending destruction of their communal graveyard. They hoped to defeat the wind farm proposal, and they planned to do that by driving away the man they perceived to be leading the effort.

“Let me guess,” I said. “They know the ghost detectives are coming and they’re going to put on a real show. Haunt the daylights out of the inn.”

“You’re very astute,” said Baden.

“So the Grand View will come off on national television as not just haunted, but …”

Baden was nodding.

My mind raced ahead to envision all the things a few dozen angry, disruptive spirits could do to set off electromagnetic field meters and infrared thermometers and all the recording gizmos and wireless doodads that these Australian opportunists employed on camera. Heck, these guys found ghosts where there weren’t any! I could only imagine the red lights that would blink and the sensors that would shriek if there actually
were
a few dozen spirits in the house.

And I had been worried about Vivi’s being on the premises! Suddenly, Vivi seemed like a relatively small problem to have.

Then again, maybe not.

“Wow,” I said, shaking my head.

“Indeed,” answered the ghost.

I couldn’t decide whether it was worth going to bed. It was nearly five o’clock now, and a thin, pale line of pink had just appeared on the horizon. The firmament above me was still slate blue, and in it, a couple of stars were shining so brightly that I thought they had to be planets. But closer to the line separating sea from sky, I began to make out tufts of violet clouds and the barest streaks of lemony light.

I hadn’t seen a sunrise in years. The clouds, lit from underneath, from back behind the curve of the earth, were like lavender cotton candy, torn into clumps and shreds and tinged with outlines of pink. The sky behind them was streaked with shades of melon and peach, and slashes of bisque and pale turquoise portended the sky of day. The ocean, reflecting the light from above, was eerily calm and more salmon than blue. The outlines of several fishing boats were silhouetted blackly against the glowing sky.

I took a deep breath. The air, while cool and damp, carried the slightest note of hyacinth. Soon, at least back in Cambridge, it would be heavy with the fragrances of lilacs and lilies of the valley and apple blossoms, all of them, this morning, still enclosed in tight green fists of buds.

I had to remember to pay attention. So longingly awaited through the hard, flinty chill of January and the blizzards of February, through the slush and mud of March and the drizzling weeks of April, the blossoms and their hypnotizing scents came and went in a matter of days. You could easily miss them
altogether, these quiet, precious rewards for having endured the winter.

As the light grew and gathered around me, I vowed to take Henry to the hilly woods around Fresh Pond, carpeted by millions of lilies of the valley, or maybe to the Arnold Arboretum for the blooming of the lilacs. There was an awful lot of beauty to be seen in the world, if you only remembered to look.

TUESDAY

I
NEVER DID GO
back to bed. By five thirty, when the tantalizing scent of fresh coffee first drifted out of the kitchen, I had decided that I’d probably feel worse after an hour or two of sleep. This is a trap, as anyone who has ever pulled an all-nighter knows. You get a burst of energy first thing in the morning, then walk around wired for five or six hours, marveling at how perfectly fine you feel. Until, suddenly, you don’t. I wasn’t looking forward to that moment, having only a few days to get my arms around a fairly ambitious amount of work, but I’d figure it out.

In the end, I didn’t have to figure out anything. At about eight thirty, just as I was leaving to walk Henry to the school, Caleb Wilder pedaled up on an old three-speed bike. A dozen friends and neighbors had already assembled to offer their support to Lauren and Mark. The women, two of whom carried boxes marked “Christy’s Bakery,” were now chatting and drinking coffee with Lauren in the kitchen, and the men were back in the barn with Mark, checking out the damage the fire had done.

“I just heard!” said Caleb. “Everyone okay?”

I nodded. Henry and I had just come back from inspecting the barn, or as little of it as the fire officials would let us see. Frances hadn’t turned up, which I was insisting was a very good thing.

“You must be Henry. I’m Caleb.”

“Hi,” said Henry.

“Caleb has two girls at the school. Kara and …” I blanked on the second name.

“Louisa,” Caleb said.

“I know Louisa,” Henry offered. “She’s painting the sign.”

“What sign?” I asked.

He gave me an incredulous look.
“Burger Palace.”

“That’s right, she is,” said Caleb. “Speaking of which, you two had better get a move on. And Anza, if you need to take some time today, feel free. You were probably up half the night.”

“Thanks,” I said. “It was pretty crazy around here.”

“Yeah, no problem. As long as we get everything organized and under way in the next few days, you can finish the work at home.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, I’ll probably fade sometime this afternoon, but I’m wide awake right now. Might as well make the most of it.”

“I’ll be in at about eleven.” Caleb said. “You’ve got your key?”

“I do,” I replied.

My task today was organizational. There were thousands of pieces of paper to examine: newspaper clippings, official and
personal correspondence, reports of all the inquiries into the collision of the
Larchmont
and the
Harry Knowlton
, telegrams, lists of pieces of cargo that had washed up during the subsequent weeks, and intimate, handwritten accounts of the islanders’ experiences with the dead and the injured.

There were also dozens of snapshots, and these were plaintive and haunting. According to Caleb, the pictures had been taken in the days following the disaster by a young woman named Honor Morton, an amateur photographer who had lived on the island. She had been a sickly child, asthmatic and often bedridden. When she was eleven or twelve and recovering from a bout with influenza, she had been given a Brownie box camera. These sold for about a dollar at the turn of the century, and delivered the means of photography, for the first time since the process was invented, into the hands of ordinary people.

Judging from her vision, the eighteen-year-old Honor had been anything but ordinary. Her evocative images offered a twist on the old Sufi adage “Blame the archer, not the arrow”: her eye was unerring and her composition flawless, even though her “arrow” was little more than a cardboard box equipped with a lens. For me, these curled and cracked snapshots of the stunned and hollow-eyed survivors and the islanders who nursed them were the real treasures of the collection.

I heard a knock at the door and looked up. A robust, ruddy-cheeked man in a dark olive barn coat and crisp khakis was standing on the porch. The door was unlocked, so he hadn’t needed to knock.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said, opening the door and stepping inside.

“We’re not actually open.” I felt a little uncomfortable employing
the first person plural. I wasn’t really in charge here. I was also a little spooked by a strange guy’s coming in while I was all by myself in the building, but I tried not to let that show. What was he going to do? Pull a knife and demand some newspaper clippings?

“I’m Porter Rawlings,” he announced.

“Anza O’Malley,” I replied. “I’m working on a project with the director.”

“Caleb? Just the man I was looking for.”

“He’ll be here in about an hour.”

Rawlings nodded but showed no sign of leaving. He looked me over, up and down, and I fleetingly regretted my rumpled appearance. Just as quickly, I reminded myself that first, I had been up all night trying to help put out a fire, and second, bookbinders wore old clothes to work, because new ones were immediately ruined by glues and dyes.

Rawlings glanced around the room, nodding. In Cambridge, I would have been on high alert by now, but I struggled not to overreact; this was small-town America, where people were friendly and not always in a rush.

“What’s all that?” Rawlings inquired, indicating the clippings and photos.

“Oh, historical papers. Some old pictures.” I tried to sound perky and unruffled, but I hoped my tone made it clear that I wasn’t exactly inviting him to sit down and paw through the piles.

Rawlings nodded. “Tell Caleb I came by. My wife and I are having a little party tomorrow night—cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, nothing fancy. I just wanted to invite him and Sally.”

“I’ll tell him,” I said.

He looked me straight in the eyes, disconcertingly, and
seemed to be about to say something, but apparently he thought better of it. He gave me a brisk nod and departed.