The Wishing Tide (11 page)

There hadn’t been time to go after it when they came for him, no time for good-byes or explanations, either. His things had been quietly packed while he was at breakfast, and before he knew what was happening he’d been belted into the back of his uncle R.B.’s big black car, heading for Boston. For years he’d wondered if the book was still there, collecting dust while mice gnawed at the pages and the colors slowly faded. And then, for a time, he’d forgotten about it—until the dreams started and refused to leave him alone.

For nearly a year now, virtually every night, he had come awake with a start, his nostrils filled with the dank, musty air of the passage, his fingers still registering the feel of the leather cover, the smooth, heavy pages, as if he’d actually retrieved the book and spread it open on his knees, instead of only dreaming it. The whole thing seemed ridiculous now, a silly, childish obsession, but the truth was he felt the loss more keenly than he liked.

At least he knew now, and it wasn’t really such a monumental deal. It was a book—a silly book full of silly pictures, a pointless boyish memory. But deep down it
was
a monumental deal, and he knew it. Not only for the boy he’d been, but for the man he was now, a man who bore the scars of another life, and the guilt that came with failing those you loved. He wasn’t sure how finding the book would have helped with that; he only knew he’d hoped it would. Instead, the memories seemed to sting more than ever. Training the flashlight on the stairs, he started back up, wishing to God he’d never come back to Starry Point.

Lane

L
ane kicked off her shoes, wriggling her heels into the soft, cool sand of the dune, savoring what would likely be her last chance of the season to go barefoot. The breeze off the water was warm and briny, more like April than November, as she sat beside Mary, sipping her tea and nibbling the pumpkin bread she’d baked earlier that morning.

Perhaps it was only wishful thinking, but she couldn’t help feeling as if some sort of barrier had fallen, that when she had appeared with her thermos, Mary had been almost happy to see her. And yet she had seen the brief flash of wariness as the precious purple bag was snatched up and furtively stashed beneath Mary’s jacket. Trust, it seemed, was still an issue, and might always be, no matter how many thermoses of tea they shared. The realization made Lane sad. It must be a terrible thing to move through the world believing everyone meant you harm.

“Mary,” she said gently, breaking the silence. “I want you to know that I would never take your bag. You don’t have to hide it.”

Mary lifted her nose with a delicate sniff. “Of course you wouldn’t, and I wasn’t hiding it. I just like to know it’s nearby. I don’t dare lose it, you see.”

Lane knew she should let it drop but couldn’t help herself. “Why? What’s in it?”

Mary opened her mouth, then seemed to change her mind. Instead, she dragged the bag back into view, plucking a moment at its frayed strings before reaching in and pulling out a fistful of something.

Lane peered at the frosty bits of blue and green held out for inspection. “Sea glass?”

Mary didn’t answer at first, engrossed in picking through the smooth pastel shards with her index finger. “There’s been quite a lot lately. But then, the pickings are always better after a storm.” She glanced up then, her gaze suddenly clouded and distant. “All sorts of things have been known to wash up after a storm.”

“I’ve heard that, yes,” Lane responded awkwardly, not knowing what else to say. She hated that Mary always seemed to keep her off-balance, that she never knew quite how to take the things she said, or at times, if they were even talking about the same thing.

Unscrewing the thermos, she poured the last of the tea into their cups while Mary stashed her sea glass. “You know,” she said finally, hoping to bring Mary back from wherever it was she had strayed. “I collect sea glass, too. I keep it in jars on the windowsills of my writing room.” She turned, pointing to the tower windows. “Right up there. See? That’s where I write.”

Mary’s gaze cleared a bit. “You write stories?”

“Well, sort of. I write articles for magazines. I just finished one about soap making. Now I’m working on one about beer.”

Mary blew on her already tepid tea, then sipped. “I used to make up stories,” she said in a voice laced with sadness. “Beautiful stories, for my princes. But they’re gone now. I lost them.”

Once again, Lane found herself completely in the dark. “Your . . . princes?”

“Yes, my girl,” she said, her voice suddenly soft. “Two darling
princes with smoky eyes and dark wavy hair. They loved me once, a long time ago. I was their queen, you see. But they’re gone now. All gone.”

Sons. She must have had sons once. “Gone where, Mary? I don’t understand.”

“No, you wouldn’t understand. No one would. I was pretty once. Hard to imagine it now, but I was. Once upon a time I was fresh and young, and men fell at my feet. I danced at balls and wore gowns and jewels, and they all courted me.”

Okay, maybe not sons. Lovers perhaps? “Are we still talking about the princes?”

“No, the men,” she answered distantly. Her eyes had taken on that flat dark look again, like the sea when the clouds suddenly eclipse the sun. “I could have had any of them back then.”

Lane’s gaze slid to the woman seated beside her in tattered, mismatched layers. It was hard to imagine her wearing jewels, dancing at parties. And yet her delicate hands and lilting voice, her tinkling silvery laugh, all spoke of another woman, another life. Could any of it be true, or were these merely the ramblings of a wistful old woman wanting to remake the past? It took every ounce of fortitude Lane had not to ask that very question, to silently sip her cold tea and leave Mary to weave her story in her own way, and in her own time. After a moment she was rewarded.

“They told me they loved me—all of them,” she said with a smile that was both coy and bitter. “I knew better than to believe them, though. Except for
him
, with his dark hair and his smooth words.
Him
, I wanted to believe. And so when he kissed me and whispered in my ear, I pretended he meant it. And I gave him what he wanted. Any fool could have guessed what would happen next.” She paused to drag in a shuddering breath, then sighed out the rest. “Any fool but me.”

Lane bit her lip and looked away. Was that it, then? A child conceived out of wedlock? A decision over the child’s fate, lamented after
all these years? It was hardly a new story, although in Mary’s day it probably hadn’t occurred as often or as openly as it did today. Still, it seemed a stretch to imagine such a thing pushing a woman over the edge—unless she’d been poised there to begin with.

“I can still see his face when I told him about the baby,” Mary went on. “Like he’d just heard the door to a jail cell slamming shut. He didn’t want it—or me. But my family made a stink. In those days a boy married a girl when that kind of thing happened. And deep down, I was just a little bit glad. Foolish girl—I thought I could make him love me.”

“But you couldn’t,” Lane said softly, knowingly. She’d made the same mistake.

Mary shook her cropped head grimly. “He meant to be an important man, you see. And he needed me to be an important man’s wife. Only I wasn’t. I was a child, silly enough to believe in once upon a time—in fairy tales and happily ever after. I didn’t know how to be what he wanted me to be, and I didn’t want to learn. I thought he should love me for me.”

Lane stared down at her hands, at the faint impression in her ring finger, still visible though the divorce had been final for almost five years. The story was all too familiar. “He should have,” she said quietly. “He should have loved you for you.”

“Ah, but he couldn’t, and I should have known it. We were different creatures, he and I, always at odds. He wanted money, and to be important. I wanted only my castle and keep, my king and my princes. But now I’ve lost it all—my castle in ashes, my princes lost forever.”

“Your husband—what happened to him?”

“Why, a woman happened, of course. He left like a coward, slipped through my fingers and disappeared. That’s when I let go, when there was nothing left to hold on to. I let them do what they wanted after that. I became what the White Coats call . . . tractable. That means you eat what they put in front of you, swallow whatever
pill they put in your palm, lie still while they peer inside your head, and pretend you don’t mind them raking through all the things that broke your heart.”

Lane closed her eyes, repressing a shudder as a series of gruesome images flitted through her head—white coats and leather restraints, padded walls and straitjackets. Did they still use straitjackets? She started when she heard Mary’s laugh, a high, thin peal that sent an ice-cold prickle needling down her spine.

“Oh, I’ve seen that look before,” Mary said, with something like glee. “You’re thinking I really am crazy. Well, my girl, I’ve never pretended I wasn’t.” She reached for Lane’s hand then and patted it, her voice suddenly somber. “Come, now, don’t look so startled. You’ve known it all along, haven’t you? Besides, you have a right to know the truth.”

“The truth?”

“I am what they say I am. Everything, and a little bit more besides. Dirty Mary, the Starry Point Hag—and those are the nice things. Now, now, don’t look like that. I’ve been called worse, and probably deserved it, too.” Fumbling beneath her jacket, she produced the purple bag again, this time spilling a cache of pill bottles into her lap. “There, now,” she said, pointing. “There’s what I can’t afford to lose. My pills—blue ones, yellow ones, white ones, and every day I wonder if this is the day they’ll stop working. I won’t go back. I’d rather die first. That’s why I take them, you see, so they’ll let me walk around free.”

“But why would you have to—”

“I killed a boy once.”

Lane felt the blood drain from her face.

“The doctors said it wasn’t my fault—the judge, too. But it was. Of course it was. A boy died, so it has to be someone’s fault. Little boys don’t just die.”

“No,” Lane answered numbly. “They don’t.”

“Still, they put me away for a long time—for safekeeping, they said—so I wouldn’t try to hurt myself again. Dangerous, they said.” She scrubbed absently at her wrists, then shrugged. “Maybe I was. Yes, of course I was.”

Lane went still as Mary’s words sank deep. She had killed a boy. When? How? The questions trembled on her lips, but the truth was, she didn’t think she wanted to know any more. How could she speak so nonchalantly about the death of a child, as if she’d dinged someone’s car in the parking lot at the Village Mart? Dangerous—the word rattled around like a loose pebble in her head. What if Michael was right?

Once again, Mary seemed to read her thoughts. “You needn’t worry, my girl. You’re quite safe. I made a mistake, lots of them, in fact, but I’m not a monster. At least not the kind you’re thinking of. I didn’t have to knot up my bedsheets and shinny out a window to get free. They let me walk right out the front door.”

“How long ago?” Lane asked when she could finally trust her voice.

“Since they let me out?”

“No. Since the boy.”

Lane was surprised when Mary stiffened, then crushed the empty paper cup she’d been holding in her fist. Apparently the woman had no problem bringing up her past, but she didn’t like being questioned about it.

“A lifetime,” was the answer she finally gave. “I’m not that woman anymore. She died that night, too. And there was no one to even miss her.” The color was gone from her face and she was trembling, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears.

Lane laid a hand on her arm. “Mary, is there someplace— Can I take you home, wherever home is?”

Mary jerked her head emphatically. “I have my bike,” she said stiffly, and began stuffing the pill bottles back into her bag. She
avoided Lane’s gaze as she stood and handed back the crumpled paper cup. “I’m going now. I’m going to be late. I told you, they don’t like it when we’re late.”

And with that she was off, scrambling up the dune with her head down as she headed for the street, leaving Lane to wonder for the second time that morning if perhaps she should have heeded Michael’s advice.

Mary

T
hey say I’m not mad, at least not in the worst way one can be mad, but surely they’ve gotten it wrong. Only a fit of madness could explain what I’ve just done. Without a moment’s thought, I have dragged the worst of my sins out into the light, thrown back the curtain on the woman I have struggled long and hard to bury. And for what? For penance? Sweet bleeding Jesus, as if living through it all has not been penance enough.

Confession, they say, is good for the soul, but that’s just a load of manure shoveled by those who want to know your secrets. I should know. I’ve been confessing for years. Not to the priests or the nuns, or even to God. I gave up blathering to them long ago, when I finally realized no one was listening. No, I don’t believe in God. It’s best not to for people like me. It wouldn’t do, you see, to lay what I am at the feet of a benevolent God. Better, I think, to count myself, and those like me, as unfortunate accidents of nature, the splicing of cells gone terribly awry.

Instead, I’ve done my confessing to the White Coats, who all claim they will heal me, if I will only tell them again what happened that terrible night. And so I tell them. And then I tell them again, though all this confessing has done nothing whatever for my soul. It
is only the sea that understands, the sea that shares my secret, the sea that truly knows what set all the horrors in motion.

And now someone else knows. Or at least knows part of it.

If only I had stopped with the pills. Plenty of people take pills. Plenty of perfectly sane, perfectly safe people take pills. But then I had to bring the boy into it. Poor, dear thing; there was no missing the revulsion on her pretty face in that instant when I blurted out the truth. Oh, she hid it well enough, because it’s in her to be kind, but there’s no sense in trying to fool myself. I’ve been on the receiving end of that look too many times not to recognize it when it’s staring me in the face—like I’m something to be scraped off a shoe.

She was polite to the end, of course, offering to take me home, but that will be the end of it. The morning tea will stop, and she’ll begin taking the long way round the dunes when she sets out on her morning walks. Who can blame her, really? No one wants to take tea with a crazy woman, and certainly not one with the blood of a young boy on her hands.