Firefly Beach (10 page)

“Did I shoot him?” Skye asked. “Did I? Did I? What have I done?”

Caroline, who had never ignored her sister in her life, ignored her now.

“What’s your name?” she asked, looking into the man’s eyes.

“Andrew,” he answered. He was not much older than Caroline, the age of some of the younger teachers at her college.

His eyes were so bright. They were calm and kind, reassuring Caroline that she was doing her best, that he understood she was trying to help. At first there was no fear in his eyes at all. Every second seemed longer than a heartbeat. Caroline felt the blood pumping out of his body, soaking her jacket, flowing through her fingers into the ground. Their campsite was only five miles down the dirt road, but that was too far. They would never make it for help. Time had paused for them, Caroline and Skye Renwick, Andrew and his dog.

“I thought he was a deer,” Skye sobbed.

The sky was too blue. The day was too beautiful. The dog wanted to sniff the man’s blood, kiss the man’s face.

“Homer,” Andrew said.

“He’s just a puppy, isn’t he?” Caroline asked, noticing the dog’s puff-ball body, his eager yellow face. He was barely full grown.

“Yes,” Andrew said.

“Call him, Skye. Call Homer,” Caroline said, because the dog had blood on his muzzle from kissing Andrew, and she thought Andrew would look at him and see his blood and be afraid.

“Homer,” Skye said, her voice thin and high, trying so hard. “Here, boy.”

The dog ran to her. Only then did Andrew’s eyes look away from Caroline. He watched his dog go, and then his gaze came back to Caroline.

“I’m going to die, aren’t I?” he asked.

Caroline knew he was. She saw his lips turning white, felt his blood moving slower. She heard her sister crying behind her, felt the dog return to Andrew, wriggling between them as he snuggled closer to his master. Caroline thought of Joe Connor, of the lesson she had learned about how important it was to tell the truth about death, about how it was the least one person could do for another.

“I think you are,” she said.

“Oh, God,” Andrew said. His eyes turned afraid. It was so terrible to see. Caroline pressed harder on his chest, but she knew she wasn’t doing any more good. His hands clenched and unclenched. Homer made a sound like a human crying, a mournful sob that came from deep inside. Skye stood right behind Caroline, her legs shaking against her sister’s back.

“I didn’t know,” Skye wept. “I thought he was a deer.”

“Homer,” Andrew said.

The dog licked Andrew’s face. There was comfort in that, Caroline knew. Even at that moment, with his life flowing through her fingers, she could see that he found peace in the presence of his dog. She could see it in the way he closed his eyes and let everything slip away. He didn’t open his eyes again.

“A big bouquet,” Joe Connor said to the woman at the roadside stand.

“Do you want just zinnias and sunflowers, or wildflowers too?” the woman asked.

“Everything,” Joe said.

He watched her work. She stood under the yellow-and-white-striped tent, pulling flowers from big buckets of water. She was heavy and very tan, dressed in a faded red housecoat, a scarf tied around her brown hair. She frowned. Watching an unhappy woman work hard reminded Joe of his mother.

“Did you pick the flowers?” Joe asked.

“Yes. And planted them too,” she said, smiling proudly.

“They’re pretty,” Joe said, reaching into his pocket. The flowers cost five dollars, but he gave her a twenty. She started to make change, but Joe shook his head. The woman cast a quick glance at her husband, but he was sitting on a stack of milk cartons engrossed in the sports page. She nodded her thanks. But she put the money in the cash box instead of her pocket.

“Hey,” Joe said, startling the man. “You should take your wife out for dinner.”

The man grunted. His eyes were small and red. He looked mean, like a pig. Joe wanted to knock him off the milk crates.

“You should buy her a lobster,” Joe said, “at her favorite restaurant.”

“Yeah,” the man said.

Joe drove away. He had problems in the area of unhappy women. He hated seeing women frown. He had watched his mother transform from a pretty, enthusiastic woman into a bitter, hurt, disappointed shadow. Working double shifts at the shellfish company, she had spent her free time waiting for Hugh Renwick to call. Drowning in guilt after her husband died. She had married again, but by then she had spent some miserable years.

Joe had wanted to bash heads. Everyone who had ever hurt his mother. The shellfish company owners, for making her work too hard. Hugh Renwick, for breaking both his parents’ hearts. Joe’s father had died in the Renwicks’ kitchen, friendless and alone. And his gold watch: his father had died wearing his watch, the watch he had always let Joe play with, and Joe’s mother had never bothered getting it back. The missing watch had been a symbol of everything Joe thought he had lost.

Staying friends with Caroline after learning the truth would have taken a miracle. For Joe’s seventeenth birthday, his uncle had taken him out to the Spindrift to get him drunk. Joe was underage, but that was beside the point. They had sat on barstools, drinking boilermakers, while Uncle Marty told him the truth about his father’s death. He was a jealous man, Uncle Marty said, out of his mind. Killed himself right in the Renwicks’ kitchen. The kids had been there, Uncle Marty had said: Caroline and Clea. Caroline had watched his father die, heard his last words.

How could a friend know something like that, such a brutal part of his life, and not tell him? His friendship with Caroline was over. Whiskey numbed the initial shock, so Joe kept it flowing. He turned to the sea, studies, and drinking to forget. To block out how bad he felt, how angry it made him. After a while he cut out drinking, but the first two still worked.

Trying to forget the flower stand lady, Joe did his errands. He had supplies to pick up for the
Meteor,
letters to mail, packages to send. His divers had collected some timber fragments and rust scrapings, and he was sending them to Woods Hole for analysis, in order to date the vessel. Today he planned to enter the wreck, when the tide was right, so he was in a hurry to get back. Nothing like a dive to take his mind off his emotions.

Before returning to sea, he had one final stop to make. He drove down Main Street, away from the small business district, through the outskirts of town. He pulled into the shady parking lot of Shoreline General Hospital.

“I’d like to leave these flowers for a patient,” he told the blue-smocked lady at the information desk.

“What’s the name, please?” she asked politely.

“Skye Renwick.”

“Whitford’s her married name,” the lady said, smiling. She didn’t even bother typing Skye’s name into the computer, and Joe recognized the doings of a small town. “I’m afraid she can’t have visitors quite yet.”

“All right,” Joe said, relieved because he didn’t want to meet her anyway. He scribbled a note and handed the lady his flowers. “Would you please see that she gets these?”

“Aren’t they beautiful?” the woman exclaimed. “I certainly will.”

“Thanks,” Joe said. He turned to walk out of the hospital. The air-conditioning stifled him. He couldn’t wait to breathe the sea air. In an hour or so he’d be in the water, diving down to the wreck. He’d be away, he’d be free.

Caroline knew Skye wasn’t supposed to see anyone, even family, but she stepped off the elevator with authority, a folder of papers under her arm, and she said a brisk hello to the nurses she passed instead of stopping to ask if it was okay for her to visit. No one questioned her. She had known they wouldn’t, from all the times she had sneaked in when her father was sick.

Skye was awake. She was propped up in bed, staring at a card someone had sent her. It was a large, expensive greeting card with bluebirds, roses, a waterfall, and a rainbow on the front. It was supposed to be painterly and beautiful, but the artist had, perhaps unintentionally, given the bluebirds leering expressions in their large eyes. They looked like winged lechers.

“The word is out,” Caroline said. “Fan mail is arriving.”

Skye looked up and forced a smile. Her bruises had darkened and yellowed. The bandages around her head were disheveled from sleep; they hadn’t been changed yet that morning. It was painful to look at her hands shaking from withdrawal, but Caroline couldn’t take her eyes away.

“Who sent the card?” Caroline asked. Although, of course, she knew.

“Mom,” Skye said, and with that she really did smile. She passed the card to Caroline, and her smile grew wider. It was a fact in the Renwick family that their mother bought and sent cards for all occasions, the more sentimental and glittery, the better. In turn, when Augusta herself received a card in the mail, she always checked the back to see how much the sender had spent on her.

Caroline turned the card over, to see the price.

“Wow,” she said. “You really rate.”

“A four-dollar card,” Skye said, smiling harder. “You’re not jealous, are you?”

“Don’t rub it in,” Caroline said, pretending to scowl. She read the handwritten message:

Darling,

When will you learn to ask when you need something? My car is yours whenever you need it. You had no business driving that old junker anywhere—never mind all the way to Moonstone Point. What ever possessed you to go there anyway? Come home soon! I am rattling around this big house without you!

Love,

Mom

“Vintage Mom,” Caroline said, laying the card beside Skye’s breakfast tray.

“She misses me,” Skye said.

“She misses the point,” Caroline said.

“Hmmm,” Skye said.

“Not one word about vodka in that whole four-dollar card.”

“Caroline, I feel bad enough,” Skye said. “Don’t rub it in, okay? I was an idiot, driving in the first place. I’m sure Joe Connor thinks I’m out of my mind. I know you don’t understand, and I don’t really feel like explaining it right now, but I had something I wanted to tell him.”

“Tell
me,
” Caroline said. She sat on the bed, waiting to hear Skye try to talk her way out of the situation. Skye’s expression turned sullen.

“Don’t torture me. I was hammered. I admit it.”

“You don’t remember, do you?”

“Blackout city,” Skye confessed.

“It’s not funny, Skye,” Caroline said. “Last night your doctor told us you’re an alcoholic.”

“They say that about everyone,” Skye said. “Look where I am: the rehab unit. It’s how they make their money. They think everyone who has more than two beers is an alcoholic.”

“Do you think you are?”

“No! Of course not! But I’m going on the wagon.”

“You are?” Caroline asked, surprised. It wasn’t something she had expected Skye to say.

“For now. I’ve been drinking too much. I admit it, okay? But things with Simon…and I can’t get my work to go right…Does Homer miss me?”

“I’m sure he does. I stopped by to walk him this morning.”

“Good, he was there?” Skye smiled, wanting to divert Caroline with speculation about Homer’s secret life. He would take off, and they never knew when to expect him back. But Caroline wanted to stay focused on Skye. She sat still, not saying anything.

“I was worried,” Skye went on. “What if he didn’t come back? I mean, he’s so old now. Doesn’t it seem like he was just a puppy?”

“Something about Joe coming to town,” Caroline said as if Skye hadn’t spoken.

“What about it?”

“Stirring everyone up. Upsetting you.”

“Not
me,
” Skye said, smiling expectantly.

Trying her best to cajole Caroline, Skye hadn’t noticed her bandage slipping over one eye. Reaching over, Caroline gently straightened it.

“When you were drunk,” Caroline said carefully, “you said maybe Joe’s father didn’t mean to kill himself, and I know you had to be thinking about what happened with you. About shooting Andrew Lockwood.”

“The beauty about it…” Skye said. She was sitting upright in bed, her knees drawn up. A white cotton blanket was spread over the sheets, and she had worked one of the threads loose, tugging the loop with her index finger. “Is that I don’t really remember what I had in mind.”