The Perfect Summer (Hubbard's Point) (32 page)

He swore he'd protect her if they tried . . . well, if they tried this.

And that had been his downfall. Mark required absolute commitment; there was too much riding on this. He demanded total loyalty, and when Sean was adamant, they all knew it was only a matter of time. Mark knew that no witness could be overlooked; Sean should have known that, too.

This night had been a long time coming. First Sean had gotten in the way, and had had to be killed. It was too bad, but unavoidable. Alise herself had tried to get Dan Connolly into the circle, tie him in as a way of assuring his daughter's silence, by phoning him, floating Sean's name out there—if Connolly had had any second thoughts about the money he was passing up, he would have taken the bait. But he didn't—signing his own daughter's death warrant.

Mark and Sean had insisted on considering it a game. But Alise knew that that was just their way of making themselves feel better. They wanted the boyhood lie: If they were playing for trophies, it really didn't count. They stole from their richest clients, the ones who would never notice. Sean, at his most exuberant, had called Mark “Robin Hood.”

But in the end, what was it all for? Why had Charlotte had to be killed, and why had Sean himself ultimately had to be stopped, and why was Eliza Day Connolly about to die?

Wealth.

That's all.

Wealth—the pursuit of it, the protection of it. Big houses cost money, and so did antiques and artworks, and fine cars, and precious jewels. Not everyone was born with such things. And not everyone wanted them, as hard as that was to believe. Mark had taken such good care until now; he could be excused his boyish need to reward himself and his “teammates” with silver. Now, as the tide rose and the time arrived to drown the girl, it was time to protect the gold.

IT WAS SO LATE, AND HER MOTHER WAS STILL AT MR.
Connolly's. Annie felt so afraid for Eliza. Whatever was happening, she knew it was bad, and no matter how much Aunt Tara stroked her hair and sang lullabies, Annie couldn't fall asleep.

“Where could she be?” she asked Tara.

“I don't know, honey. Everyone's looking for her, though. Joe, the police . . .”

“What if they don't find her?”

“We have to believe they will. We have to send her our love, so she can grab on to it and come home to us.”

“Love,” Annie said, as if it was the first time she'd ever said the word.

“It's the most there is,” Tara said. “Eliza knows that. Wherever she is, she'll be able to feel our love for her.”

“But I still don't see how that can help.”

“Do you believe in guardian angels, Annie?”

Annie shrugged, not wanting to hurt Tara's feelings. Angels seemed like nice creatures in stories.

“I think you do, Annie. I know your mom does. And so do I. Our grandmothers told us about them.”

“But what can they do?” Annie asked, her voice high and thin. Outside the window, all the stars were out. The moon was new and the sky was very dark. Owls migrating through Hubbard's Point, as they did every November, flew out from the oaks, calling on the hunt. “What can spirits do, when we're right here on earth? We're here; we should be able to save the people we love!”

Tara held her, as if she knew that Annie was crying about her father, about her worst nightmare coming true with the news of his death.

“We can do a lot,” Tara said, “and we can turn to them for help.”

“Do you really believe that?” Annie asked.

“I really believe that. And it helps to know that Joe and the police are looking, too,” Tara said. “Eliza is a survivor, Annie. She has a light inside her. We've all seen it, and we love her for it.”

“We do,” Annie whispered.

Then an owl called again, from the top of the tallest pine, and that seemed like a signal that something was about to happen. Tara kissed her, and Annie tried to breathe. She thought of Eliza out there in the night, somewhere on this rocky coastline of coves and bays, cold ground covered with fallen leaves and pine needles, out there in the starlit darkness.

Annie's small wooden boat was on the bedside table; she stared at it now, thinking of how she had given it to her father, so he would know who to row home to. She closed her eyes and thought of Eliza and the light within.

And then, she wasn't sure why, she reached for her small wooden boat and gave it a little shake. That rattle was still there.

AT HOME, DAN SAT ON THE SOFA, HIS ARM AROUND BAY,
who
slept with her head on his shoulder. It was so late, and Eliza was out in the night. He stared at the phone, as if he could will it to ring. Joe had told him to stay home, by the phone, but every muscle in his body ached to be out searching for his daughter.

His thoughts, in the silence, were cacophonous. He was the Monday-morning quarterback of his own life, trying to figure out what he could have done differently. Holding Bay, he stared at Charlie's portrait, the painting of his unhappy wife. They were Eliza's parents, keeping vigil together.

Charlie . . . She had grown up so very privileged. Charlie knew she was an aristocrat. Her family had had money for generations; they gave away more in a year than some people make in a lifetime. She had an unassailable sense of superiority—never overtly snobby, but very reserved. Isolated.

That's how Dan had seen her when they'd first gotten to know each other, the year after he had worked at Hubbard's Point. Her uncle had hired him to restore a beautiful old wooden yacht, a Concordia yawl. All work was to be done at a yard in Stonington, just across the harbor from Charlie's house. Mansion, really. It was a huge white Colonial with outbuildings and a dock. Dan had started noticing her every day: always alone, always self-contained.

One day, on his lunch hour, he pulled a dinghy down to the water and rowed across. He'd started viewing her as a poor little rich girl, and he thought he'd give her a treat: take her for a boat ride.

He still remembered pulling up to the dock, calling across the broad green lawn, asking her if he could take her for a row. And he could picture her carefully laying her book on the garden bench, smoothing her slacks, and walking down to the water. He had offered her his hand, to help her into the boat, but she didn't take it.

Almost amused, she climbed in herself. And she let him row her to the end of the harbor and back. The day was bright and clear, with fish jumping in the cove and swans swimming around the moorings. He still remembered the day perfectly; and he recalled the sense that Charlie considered that she was giving him the pleasure of her company.

That feeling never really left him.

He had married her—maybe he'd been her chance at limited rebellion. Don't marry the boatyard owner; marry the employee and give him a boatyard to run. What better way to own a person?

He had never given up loving her, trying to make her happy. And deep down, wanting her to love him more than she did, to accept him as her equal. But Charlie had never really had any equals. Everywhere she went, people knew her as the heir to Day Consolidated. If they didn't, five minutes in her presence made them realize that she was somebody different. Somebody who epitomized the expression “born with a silver spoon in her mouth.” And it had been Dan's role as her husband, and as her employee, to protect her. To take care of his poor little rich girl.

Dan had wondered what it meant that last year, that Charlie had suddenly, for the first time in their marriage, gotten very interested in something outside herself, outside her home. She had become intrigued with the bank and banking. She began to talk about going back to school for an MBA.

So many days in a row, she had gone to Shoreline Bank, to ask in-depth questions about her accounts, about her and Eliza's trust. After so many years of letting others manage her life—her fortune—Charlie had started taking charge.

While Dan had felt happy to see her truly animated by something, he had also felt her pulling away. It had confused and hurt him in small ways—sometimes he'd come home and find her talking on the phone, pad and pen ready, taking more notes. Or had the learning and studying been just a smokescreen? Had his wife been covering up an affair with Sean McCabe?

Knowing that they had kissed made Dan think it was a little of both. At the boatyard, he dealt with the absolutes of marine architecture: center of gravity, length overall, beam, draft. In love, in marriage, there were no such things. It was all a gray area, like sailing in the fog.

But sailing in the fog can be beautiful,
he thought, holding Bay.
You sense your way home; you smell the pines onshore, listen for the bell buoys, feel the wind shift and drop as you near land.

If only he and Charlie had done more of that with each other. Maybe if they'd had a better marriage, Charlie would still be alive, and Eliza would still be home.

But that made him hold Bay even tighter. She was so straightforward and real, and she seemed to need—with the same imperative that she needed to breathe—to tell the truth about what was in her heart.

Dan prayed for the chance to do more of that—with Bay, with Eliza. He wanted the chance to be the best father on earth to his daughter. He wanted to help her get stronger, to help her see how wonderful she was. To never want to hurt herself again.

Thinking of her out there somewhere, his guts twisted. He had the sense of time draining away, of Eliza in horrible danger. The clock was ticking in his head. The world, even the shoreline, was such a big place to search. If only he had some idea where to start . . .

32

D
ID THEY THINK SHE WAS ASLEEP? OR HAD THEY
just
decided to stop thinking about her at all?

The people in the front were just driving quietly along, waiting for something. But what? So many questions, and Eliza was haunted by all of them. She lay still, her ear folded over on itself, aching under her head. Visions of a maroon van filled her mind. She saw it hit her mother, her mother's blood on the road.

And then she saw the van again, in a flash, just a whoosh as it visited her memory. Where had she seen it before?

The memory came in pieces. Eliza, her mother, shopping on a Saturday. They had had lunch at the Sail Loft Café, then gone to Hawthorne. Eliza had loved poking around in the boutiques, trying on a bright yellow sweater, getting a new pair of shoes. Her mother had wanted to look at house things . . .

Shiny copper pans and cast-iron skillets in one store, embroidered pillows and fancy lampshades in another, and then, in the last place, squares of tile and swatches of fabric . . . a designer's studio . . . a place people went to have their houses designed and decorated.

Eliza blinked under the blindfold. She could see her mother, hear the surprise in her voice. “Oh, I didn't know that this was your business!”

And the designer—so petite and stylish, dressed in a black suit, with pretty blond hair and gold earrings—smiling to see them, letting Mom look through some fabric samples, asking Eliza what she thought of a certain wall sconce.

“Do you like this one?” the woman had asked, holding up a brass lantern, then lowering it and raising up a pewter candlestick with a black shade, “or this one?”

“I like the lantern,” Eliza said.

“So do I!” the woman had said, smiling brightly. “What excellent taste you have! Charlie, you have a charming daughter.”

Eliza's mother had nodded, smiled, and said “Thank you,” as she'd continued looking at the squares of material. The shop had seemed so cozy and feminine, fun and creative, and the woman had looked so dainty; and right now Eliza was remembering how her mother had said, “I've been spending so much time at the bank; both Mark and Sean have been so helpful. I've imagined going back to school, somehow getting into finance . . . but then I come in here, and I think how great it would be to do
this
. . .”

And Eliza had felt curious, hearing that her mother wanted to change the things in her life—not scared, not worried, but just curious, because she had never heard her mother say anything like that before.

“This?” The woman had smiled.

“Yes—surrounded by such pretty things, so much beauty.”

The woman had made a muscle with one arm and pointed out the window with her other hand. “That's what the job is really about,” she said. “Lugging things around. Sample books, bolts of fabric, antique armoires, paintings—I'm really just a workhorse.”

And Eliza and her mother had leaned over, to look out the window, to see what the woman was pointing at, and there it was, sitting in the driveway behind her shop, in front of a red barn.

A maroon van.

Eliza moaned as she remembered.

“Did you hear that?” the man's voice asked. “How much longer are we going to wait? Christ, Alise.”

“I know, I know,” the woman's voice replied.

“We should have just done it right away. Like the others.”

“The others were different,” she said. “The others we didn't have to take from their houses.”

“So, what—you're losing your nerve?”

“Aren't you?”

Be human,
Eliza begged silently.
Lose your nerve.
Now that she could see the woman's face, her blond hair, her shop with its pretty colors and fabrics and objects, now that Eliza could hear the woman talking to her mother, telling her how charming Eliza was, now that Eliza remembered her name,
Alise,
and the name of her business,
Boland Design,
it was all so different.

“Yes, I am,” Mark said.

“Well, you can't afford to,” Alise said. “And neither can I.”

“The longer we wait—” Mark said.

“I know,” Alise snapped. “I know, I know. Don't talk about it.”

“That will make it go away? Make the problem disappear?”

I'm not a problem, I'm a girl,
Eliza thought, struggling behind the duct tape. Knowing if she could talk to them, make her hear them, she could get them to see this was a mistake. She wouldn't tell; they wouldn't have to go to jail.

“Nothing can make this problem go away,” Alise said. “That's what we're dealing with. We started something that used to be so simple. It was all paper till Sean screwed up!”

“She's not paper,” Mark said.

“I know that. Jesus! That's what's making this so—impossible.”

Eliza heard someone shifting in the front seat; turning around to look at her as the van kept moving. Couldn't they see that she was a real live person, her father's daughter? She raised her bound feet, let them clang to the van floor.

“Christ, I can't take this anymore,” Mark said.

“What's the alternative?” Alise asked sharply. “Just pull yourself together. We'll do it now, okay? We're almost there; the tide is high enough.”

“This isn't like Sean,” Mark said. “She's not bleeding to death—”

“That part was an accident,” Alise said. “Who could have expected him to fight like that?”

“We should have just left him on the boat,” Mark said bitterly. “He would have died there, and no one would have thought it was anything.”

“Except maybe he wouldn't have. Remember the facts, okay? He was strong, he was still conscious. He was talking about this one here—” Eliza could almost feel herself being pointed at.

“She's a kid,” Mark said, lowering his voice.

“Now you're sounding like Sean. Do you want to end up in prison?”

“No.”

“Then . . .”

Eliza had been holding herself back, afraid of annoying them, but suddenly the logic and reason part of her brain shut off, and the panic and terror part took over and she began kicking and thrashing, screaming behind the sticky slimy patch of duct tape.

“Put an end to this,” Mark said. “Jesus, I can't take this anymore.”

“Clear your head,” Alise said, and she must have opened her window, because suddenly Eliza felt a blast of cold air, a wonderful, icy, refreshing gust of fresh air swirling through the closed-in horrible maroon death van as it kept moving, but slowly, slowly.

ANNIE WENT DOWNSTAIRS, TO THE KITCHEN TABLE. SHE
had made the model right here; there was a cabinet filled with scissors, glue, paper, paint—craft things to keep the family busy on rainy days.

She shook her small model dory, and it rattled again. But she had built the boat herself, entirely of wood and glue; there were no nails or any other moving parts.

She examined the boat, and all was exactly as she had built it: not a seam, not a frame, not a board was out of place.

The clock read twelve-twelve. Twelve minutes past midnight.

She tipped the boat to port, heard something roll and hit the left side; then she tipped it to starboard, heard the same something hit the right side.

She had built the model with strips of balsa glued to fine frames, and she had inserted a cutout bottom, carefully made to fit directly inside the boat itself and provide a sturdy deck. Now, examining it under the bright kitchen light, she saw little scratches in the paint—as if someone, at one time, had tried to pry the bottom up.

“What are you doing there?” Tara asked, coming into the kitchen.

“Just trying to figure something out,” Annie said, concentrating. Tara watched for a few seconds, then went to the stove and put the kettle on.

“Want some tea?” Tara asked.

“No, thanks,” Annie said, although she felt comforted by the question.

She reached into the craft cabinet for the long tweezers Billy used to use during the two months—more like two minutes—that he was a stamp collector. He'd gotten a starter kit for Christmas one year, and he was bound and determined to become a philatelist. Annie almost laughed now, remembering how he couldn't even pronounce the word, but how he had saved every stamp on every letter that came to the house.

His long tweezers came in handy now, though. Annie used them to loosen the tiny seats, to remove them, and to pry up the boat's deck. She was afraid the piece of balsa, just eight inches long and pointed at one end, flat at the other, would break, so she worked very slowly and carefully.

But she did it. She lifted the deck out of the boat, and looking at what was hidden beneath, gasped. Tears filled her eyes at the sight of the small gray-blue periwinkle shell, at the folded note in her father's handwriting.

“What is it?” Tara asked, leaning over to see.

“Something from Daddy,” Annie whispered.

“Do you want me to read it for you?” Tara asked, as Annie unfolded the paper.

But Annie, seeing the first words, shook her head. “No,” she said. “It's to me. I'll read it.” And she did, out loud.

“Dear Annie,

You know that bankers write a lot of letters, but this is the hardest letter I've ever written in my life. Maybe because I'm writing it to one of the people I love the most—there are four of you: you, Billy, Peggy, and your mom. No man ever had a better family. And no man ever screwed it up more. Maybe I can still fix things, make them right.

I have a lot on my mind, and you're the one I'm going to tell it to. Annie, I hope you never have to read this letter. Because if you're reading it, it means I'm gone. I can't imagine what you and everyone must be thinking. But I hope what I have to say here will help you understand—and help the others, too. I'm putting this letter into your boat, and leaving it with Dan Connolly. I'm looking at this boat you made me, knowing how much I love you. I'm going to leave it somewhere safe, with someone who will give it back to you.

The reason I'm writing to you is that you're my oldest daughter, and right now I'm thinking about someone else's daughter. Her name is Eliza. She's the daughter of an old friend of your mother's, and she's on my mind all the time now. She's the girl in all my thoughts and fears because she's in danger. Something I did put her there.

I did some things I'm not proud of. I got tempted at the bank, made some very bad choices. People trusted me, including my own family, and I destroyed that trust. I was greedy, Annie, and I'm not blaming anyone but myself for that.

Other things, however . . . Mark and Alise Boland murdered Eliza's mother, Charlotte Connolly. I had nothing to do with that, Annie—I want you to know that. But I stayed silent, because I knew that my part in the embezzlement would come out, and silence is another way of being involved. Of looking the other way, making it possible. What I won't make possible is them hurting Eliza. They want to kill her, because she witnessed the hit-and-run of her mother. I'm going to go to the police, to turn them in and—also, myself. For what I've done at the bank.

There's a cove, down the road from the marina. I'm sitting there now, in my car. In fact, I walked down to the edge of the water and found this shell for you. The blue reminds me of your mother's eyes.

The name of the spot, and you can see it on the chart, is Alewife Cove. It's an inlet between the Gill River and the Sound. I'm telling you because it's a place I love to come and sit. I showed it to the Bolands once, when we went down to make plans, and they said it would be a good place to take Eliza. That's when I knew they were serious.

I'm writing this to you, Annie, hoping that you can forgive me. When I finish this letter, I'm driving over to Eliza's father's boatyard, to hide this in your model boat. That way you won't get it too soon—and maybe I'll have the chance to make everything right. You deserve a real rowboat as pretty as the model you made for me. I finally figured out that I'm the luckiest man—father—in the world. I just hope I have the chance to prove it to you and the others. I love you.

Love, Dad”

Annie had started out reading the letter out loud, but midway through she had become choked up with tears, and by the end she couldn't speak or even read at all, so Tara had taken over.

Now, sobbing silently, Annie reached out her hand, and Tara gently put the letter in her fingers. Tara's arms came around Annie's shoulders, and although Annie was talking to her dad, she didn't mind that Tara could hear the words: “We love you, Daddy. We love you, too.”

Now Tara left Annie sitting there, holding the letter and the shell. She took another piece of paper that had been hidden in the boat—beneath the deck, along with his note—and went to the phone.

Annie stared at the tiny periwinkle shell, turning it over and over in her hand.

“Bay?” Tara said. “Is Joe there? He left? Listen to me. Annie just found a letter from Sean . . . Yes, I'm serious . . . she found it in the bottom of her boat, her model
boat . . . He had wedged it under the floorboards . . . Bay, it's part confession part something else . . . He says they wanted to kill Eliza . . . there, at Alewife Cove . . . Do you think—?”