The Sweetest Summer: A Bayberry Island Novel (6 page)

“Something wrong, Clancy?”

The Mermaid Society . . . Rowan . . . the Safe Haven . . . that was it! The Safe Haven attic! Mona raised an eyebrow. “Care to share?”

The photo of the girl.

“Son?”

“It’s nothing. I was thinking that I should get anything of mine out of the attic before Rowan tosses it on the garbage barge. Didn’t you store some of my kid stuff up there?”

“Yes. Your school work, refrigerator art, and trophies for track events and the like.” She tipped her head with curiosity and grinned. “Since when have you been the sentimental type?”

“Ma,” he said, gently patting her back. “It’s more practical than sentimental. If Rowan and Ash are going to live at the Safe Haven, then it’s only right for me to get my junk out of their way and take it to my cottage. I do have my own home, you know.”

She didn’t seem satisfied with his answer. “All right. So nothing else is bothering you?”

Clancy shook his head. “It’s just festival week. You know how it is.”

His mother stopped and faced him. “All I want is for you to be happy.”

Uh-oh
.

“Someday you’ll find her, and she will be exactly right for you. Everything you’ve been through will have been worth it.”

“Hold up.” Clancy laughed at how quickly she’d forgotten her promise to stay out of other people’s business. “First off, I’m not looking for a woman, exactly right or completely wrong or anywhere in between. And I have no idea how your brain went in that direction, since we were talking about me getting my crap out of the attic.”

She shrugged.

“The woman of my dreams isn’t inside a mildewy cardboard box shoved under the rafters.”

Mona chuckled. “I’m simply telling you that I’m here and I love you. If you ever want to talk about anything and everything or nothing at all, you know where to find me.”

Clancy stopped walking. “You and the mermaid
brigade do not have permission to mess with my personal life. No magic spells or true loves or anything. You’re clear on this, right?”

“Of course! My gracious. I would never even dream of that, son.”

*   *   *

Evelyn jolted awake in a panic, her eyes searching her surroundings and her brain spinning, struggling for traction. It took a few seconds before she put it together. They were in the motel on Bayberry Island and Richard Wahlman was hunting them down. Christina was sound asleep against her, one bony little knee poking into Evelyn’s side. She breathed deeply and forced herself to relax, realizing that her niece’s usual nighttime flailing had woken her from a deep sleep.

But just then, she heard it, an odd beeping sound coming from the corner of the room. Her mind began to race through all the worst-case scenarios—was Richard here? Had he found them already? Was the SWAT team at the door, or FBI agents? Evelyn’s heart pounded as the beeping continued.

Then it dawned on her. She rolled her eyes at her own ridiculousness. It was her phone, the disposable phone she’d purchased from the variety store in Augusta. And the only person in the world who had the number was Hal.

She’d completely forgotten to call him.

As carefully as possible, Evelyn pulled away from Christina. Her niece grumbled a bit then turned over on her side, but she remained asleep. Evelyn rose from the bed, tiptoed across the room, and grabbed the duffel from the floor. She rushed into the bathroom and closed the door, then went rummaging around in the bag for the phone. Finally! She found it tucked into a pair of Christina’s socks. As soon as she flipped open the no-frills device, she apologized.

“I’m so sorry, Hal!” she whispered.

“Christ on a cracker! I’ve been worried sick about you guys!”

“Sorry.”

“It’s nearly one a.m. I haven’t seen anything on Justice Department or state police sites, but I hadn’t heard from you, so I didn’t know what to think.”

Evelyn sat on the edge of the bathtub. “It was kinda rocky when we first got here, and then Christina fell asleep.”

She heard Hal sigh with relief. “Good, but why did it take you so long to answer?”

Evelyn rested her forehead in her hand. “I couldn’t figure out what the beeping sound was.”

He laughed.

“Hey, I’ve never heard this phone ring before! But we’re fine. Thank you for making sure we’re okay.”

“Of course. So you followed the plan? You waited for the teenager to check you in?”

“Yes. Everything worked out. I waited for the owner to turn over the front desk to the summer help, just like you said. And God, he snatched up the cash without a second of hesitation.”

“Good.”

“And, from what I could tell, he changed the guest records to the name on my ID, and he knows he’ll get more money when I check out without incident.”

Hal made a humming sound. “Yeah, well, he sort of changed the records. I had to tie up a few loose strings.”

“What? You didn’t—”

“Yeah, I hacked into the Sand Dollar computer system, if you could call it that. Listen, that place is a joke. If anyone wanted to, they could extract the credit card information for every guest who’s stayed there in the last decade.”

“Hal . . . ?”

He chuckled. “I only use my powers for good. You know that.”

Evelyn did. She’d met Hal at a New England wellness convention six years before, where she was slated to give a presentation. At the time, he’d been an overweight
type 2 diabetic who’d just learned he was playing Russian roulette with his blood pressure and cholesterol. He was only thirty-nine. Today, Hal was a marathoner, in prime shape, and off all medication.

It had taken years for Hal to admit he’d been part of a vigilante computer hacker group dedicated to exposing what he called “information injustice.” Evelyn had told him she never wanted to know the details. But he got himself out of that shady world and started a successful Internet security consulting business. Hal was now among the small group of people she considered her closest friends, and for that reason, it was impossible to lie to him.

“I do have an issue. It’s nothing huge, but I want to run it by you.”

Hal was quiet for a moment. “Let’s hear it.”

This would be embarrassing. She worried she’d sound ridiculous telling the story, like some kind of heartsick teenager. Come to think of it, that’s exactly what she had been all those years ago. She took a deep breath and steeled herself.

“Evie?”

“All right. All right.” She glanced up at the old bathroom ceiling fixture, which was not a smart thing to do. A layer of dead insects had piled up inside the cradle of the light’s frosted globe. “Oh, gross. There are dead bugs in the bathroom light.”

“That’s your issue?”

Evelyn giggled, relaxing a bit. “I wish. But, um, you know how Amanda had been planning this trip as a surprise for Pop-Pop’s seventieth birthday?”

“Yeah.”

“You know how we used to read all those mermaid storybooks to Christina and told her we came to see the beautiful mermaid as kids?”

“Yes.”

“And how Christina begged to see the mermaid for herself?”

“Yeah, but what are you getting at?”

“Well, what I didn’t tell you is that when we were here eighteen years ago, I had a . . . well, I sort of met a boy.”

“Uh, are we headed into Annette Funicello territory? ’Cause I need to prepare myself if we are.”

“Please, Hal. This is no joke.”

“Sorry. Go ahead.”

“I was fourteen. He was an island kid. The first day we were here, Amanda dragged me down the beach to meet up with a group of kids going swimming on a no-trespassing beach. We swam out to these rocks and started diving into the waves. I knew it was stupid, but I did it anyway, and . . . well, I almost drowned in the undertow.”

“Oh, my God!”

“The local boy saved my life. He dove under and pulled me out, and later he told me he hadn’t even planned to be there that day but changed his mind at the last minute.”

“Wow.”

“So for the rest of the week, we were inseparable.”

“Does he still live there? Is that where you’re going with this?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Uh-oh.”

“So this boy was my first love, right? He gave me his address and I promised I would write him and give him all my information so he could write me back. So just days after I got home, I poured my heart out to him. He never wrote back.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah. It felt like I’d been punched in the face, you know? So he was my very first love, and my very first broken heart. It was a two-for-one deal.”

“Give me his name and I’ll check him out.”

“No need, Hal. He’s the Bayberry Island Chief of Police.”

The line went quiet for a beat. Then Hal said,
“Ohhh, shiiit.”

“Yep, he saw us get off the ferry and walked right over
to me to welcome us to festival week. It took me a minute to figure out why he looked familiar, but then I saw his badge. This is really bad, isn’t it? I think we need to leave tomorrow and go somewhere else.”

Hal made a deep growl of frustration, and Evelyn could hear the lightning-fast clicking of computer keys in the background. “Well, it’s certainly not good. Okay, well, it looks like the police chief of Bayberry Island is not just some chowderhead. Clancy Flynn graduated with honors from the Mass State Police Academy and was a decorated Boston patrol officer, six years on the beat.” The keys kept clicking. “Check this out—he got a meritorious service award for pulling victims from the rubble of a gas explosion and two years later got a community service award for working with neighborhood watch groups. Looks like your man is a frickin’ Eagle Scout.”

“He is?”

“That was just a turn of phrase, but if you hold on a moment I can check—”

“No! Stop!” Evelyn sighed deeply. “We’ll leave tomorrow. I’ll pack us up and we’ll take the first ferry out.”

“And go where?”

She closed her eyes. “I have no idea.”

“This is not the way to do it, Evie. Especially with a traumatized little kid in tow.”

“Do you have a better plan?”

Hal was quiet for a long moment. “I am still trying to figure out how Wahlman got custody. I’ll need to drive to Maine and track down the clerk of courts in your county, do some human interface.”

“That’s a four-hour drive from Burlington!”

“Four hours is just four hours, honey. I’ll do a little detective work. In the meantime—”

“We’ll leave the island.”

“Hold up! Listen. Are you sure this dude recognized you?”

“Actually, I don’t think he did. Not yet, anyway.”

“Good.” Hal made his humming sound again, and
Evelyn knew he was thinking. “Listen, Evie. If your hair turned out anything like the Photoshopped ID, then you look nothing like you did when you were a teenager, right?”

“God, no. I had wavy brown hair past my shoulder blades back then, and I hadn’t yet discovered the magic of eyebrow tweezers.”

He snickered.

“And now I look like that eighties chick, what’s-her-name, the one who used to hang out with Sylvester Stallone.”

“Brigitte Nielsen?”

“Yeah. Her.”

Hal laughed hard. “Sweetie, don’t panic quite yet. Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll keep monitoring FBI and state police activity and let you know if there’s any indication they have a lead. I’ll also keep an eye on your hottie police chief. If I see him doing any online snooping on Evelyn McGuinness or the so-called kidnapping, I’ll get in touch with you immediately. Even if he searches for Cricket Dickinson, you should be okay—unless he decides to dig deeper than the first couple levels. Let’s hope he’s satisfied with what I had time to throw together. Keep your phone with you.”

“I will.”

“In the meantime, don’t make any rash decisions. Do you promise me?”

“Sure.”

“Good. Wear your sunglasses and hat or get yourself a costume. Put Chrissy in her pirate getup and just blend in at the parade. Hide in plain sight. Try to avoid talking with the cop. I’ll touch base with you tomorrow night.”

“Okay.”

“Bye.”

“Hey, wait, Hal. How do you know he’s a hottie? I never told you what he looked like.”

Hal snorted. “I’m staring at his BPD photo right now. Dude’s got a penetrating gaze and a set of guns on him.”

“Sheesh.”

“Do you want to know if he’s married?”

Evie clicked her tongue. “I can’t believe you asked me that! It doesn’t matter one way or the other. Why would it?”

“Right. Well, just as an FYI—he’s divorced.”

Thank God.
“Good night, Hal.”

“’Nite, Evie. Sweet dreams.”

*   *   *

No, no, no. He would not. He could not. He refused to touch the hand of the bronze sea goddess and say the words. He hated the words. He knew that anyone who believed this shit—including his own mother—had a screw loose.

A sane, rational man had no business here. He decided to go.

So odd . . . his feet made no contact with the ground. They pedaled along as if treading water. No matter how hard he willed his legs to churn, he didn’t move an inch. He was trapped in Fountain Square, staring directly at the mermaid, the one place he swore he would never be.

Suddenly his feet hit solid ground, but they froze in place. When the wind picked up, fountain spray misted his face and chest.

She beckoned to him again.

No!

She didn’t seem offended by his refusal. The metal maiden smiled down upon him as if she knew every doubt in his head, every regret in his heart.

He heard her speak, which was impossible, of course, since her lips remained welded shut, cold, and lifeless. He would not believe. He refused.

“Enough, Clancy Flynn. It is time for you to see that I am not your enemy.”

Oh,
hell
no. Of course he was dreaming.

“There is only love. And now you are ready for it
.
”

Okay. Since this was his nightmare, he would simply
make himself wake up and be done with the whole hideous hallucination.

Wake up.

Wake up!

Wake the fuck up!

“You are a son of the island, part of a story far bigger than you realize. You now face the most important decision of your life, Clancy. Soften your gaze. Calm your mind. Follow your heart, and the choice will be clear.”