Firefly Beach (14 page)

Now, alone on her mountain perch, she looked for a star to wish on, in memory of Andrew Lockwood. She always did. Finding one, she shivered, even though the summer night was warm. Then she found one for her father. Thinking of her father wasn’t always easy. But she made herself do it anyway.

Breathing the sea air, Caroline wondered whether Joe had received her package. She wondered whether her note would anger him, but it didn’t matter. She hadn’t written it for his reaction. Standing on the hilltop, watching the ship she imagined to be Joe’s, Caroline felt a mystical communion with him. He had to love nature to spend so much time at sea.

Hating to hunt, Caroline was guilty of loving to catch fish. She loved the initial grab, the pull on the line, the tension between her and the fish. When she looked in its eye, she felt a strange kinship with the creature. Usually she let it go. She had spent time trolling Moonstone Reef. Stripers and blues were common in August; tautog and flounder lived on the bottom. She knew the wreck attracted fish, and she wondered whether Joe saw them or whether he had eyes only for the gold.

Maybe he wouldn’t care about Clarissa’s diary at all. Perhaps he only wanted the treasure, didn’t care about the story behind it. He had run from his own story. By the time Caroline had been ready to tell him her part in it, he had been too angry to hear.

Or too afraid.

By the time Caroline walked down the trail, the half-moon had traversed the sky. She heard night creatures rustling in the trees, but she didn’t feel afraid. Her feet were sure on the steep path; she held a walking stick in her hand. She followed the Ibis River to the inn’s grounds, where the guests were having a party. She heard their music, their drunken cries. A group had taken off their clothes and were standing in the shallow water.

When she got to her cottage, she heard her phone ringing.

She almost didn’t answer. At this hour it would be her mother. She would have been drinking, and she want to apologize for their unpleasant visit earlier. Caroline stared at the phone. She counted the rings: five, six…

But what if it were Skye? What if something had happened? Caroline picked up.

“Hello?” she said.

No one spoke. The line crackled with static. The call seemed to be coming from a long way away, from halfway around the world, or from another hemisphere, from an airplane over the ocean…

Or from a boat.

Caroline imagined she could hear the wind and waves. She listened hard. She could almost hear someone breathing. But no one was there. The call was nothing more than crossed wires. The static buzzed like a ferocious swarm of bees, and then it was gone.

The line was silent.

Caroline hung up.

Early the next morning, Michele teetered on a wooden ladder, starting to hang Japanese lanterns. The ball was days away, but it took time to get the inn ready. The trees were hung with a hundred candelabra, the dance floor was installed. Caroline called it the Firefly Ball, in honor of her parents, and she wanted candlelight to do the night justice. She had ordered beeswax candles from the Bridal Barn, and May Taylor had just brought them over.

May and her family—three generations of women—ran the Barn, planning weddings for women of the shoreline, making products from their herb garden. May and her five-year-old daughter, Kylie, seemed so excited about the ball, about the fact their wonderful, luminous candles would light every table.

Thirty round tables were stacked behind the barn, the long white damask tablecloths were expected back from the laundry that afternoon. The Japanese lanterns were bright and fragile; they danced on a wire strung around the perimeter of the inn’s back lawn. She hoped the heat would return, as it always did, every year, for the night of the ball.

A tropical depression was chugging up from Savannah, bringing muggy air and temperatures in the nineties. Michele knew Caroline wished the night of the ball to be hot and steamy. Caroline loved the look of men without their jackets, their starched white shirts clinging to their sweaty backs; she wanted the women with bare shoulders and bare feet, dancing in the cool grass. The Firefly Ball was a night for artists to be wild and expressive, free of constraints and inhibitions.

Every year, Caroline chose a different theme—taking cues from various art forms. This year the theme was to be “My Favorite Painting.” People really showed their different styles. Clea and Peter always attended in costume. Last year, for their favorite song, they had dressed as “Rhapsody in Blue,” two lovers wrapped in blue chiffon. Skye and Simon had come straight from their studios in the barn, still in their paint-and-clay–stained work clothes, many of which were strewn, as the night progressed, in various bushes around the property. But Caroline the hostess always simply wore a gown.

Michele wondered what everyone would wear this year. She and Tim planned to dress as characters from Seurat’s
Grande Jatte
. Michele had a long white dress and a parasol, and Tim would look adorable in his spats and bowler hat. Caroline always insisted that they attend as her guests—not to work, but to revel.

Standing halfway up the ladder, a crimson lantern in her hand, Michele spotted Simon Whitford. He was on the inn’s porch, hands on his hips, squinting into the sun. He had that dark artist look to him, one of the brilliant ones who couldn’t be held to the rules of ordinary men. But Simon was trompe l’oeil: a fake trying to be Hugh Renwick.

Poor Skye, Michele thought. Marrying a man with her father’s fierce moods and none of his tender heart. Michele wondered why he was there. To see Skye, no doubt. Caroline certainly hadn’t invited him to the Firefly Ball. The confrontation was coming: From her perch on the ladder Michele could see Caroline coming out of the inn, straight into Simon’s path. She held on tight, leaning out for a better view.

Caroline had lain awake too long the previous night. The telephone call with no one there had unsettled her. She had tossed and turned, unable to get comfortable. After midnight, fog had closed in, swaddled the property, and given her a headache. The foghorns had wailed. Caroline had waited for the phone to ring again, but it never did.

But that morning at work, first thing, Michele had placed a message on her desk. It was from Joe Connor, an invitation to dinner aboard the
Meteor
. The telephone connection had been terrible, Michele said. So filled with static, it sounded like the ship might be riding out a thunderstorm. Afraid he would lose the transmission, Joe had talked fast, asked Michele to tell Caroline if she wanted to visit the excavation, she should be at the dock at eight on Thursday.

Bleary and frazzled, Caroline felt confused. He cut her out of his life, and now he wanted to have her over for dinner. Unsure of any of it, she walked down the back steps of the inn, straight into her brother-in-law.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Caroline asked, unable to believe her eyes.

“Hello to you too, Caroline,” Simon said, grinding out his cigarette on the flagstone step.

“I don’t want you here,” she said.

“I’m here to see Skye,” he said. “Where am I supposed to stay? We gave up our place. I’m hardly welcome at your mother’s house.”

“So you thought you’d stay at my inn? I think I’m safe in assuming you don’t intend to be a paying guest. You lost your brother-in-law privileges when you walked out on my sister.”

“Let me stay, please, Caroline? I’ll sleep in the barn, in my old studio. I already checked—no one’s using it right now. I need to see Skye. I want to help her.”

Caroline chewed the end of her pen. She stared at Simon. He was tall and lean with wild black hair and gaunt cheekbones, sunken black eyes with that sexy fire that drove Skye crazy and made Caroline and Clea mistrust him to their bones. He was ingratiating and manipulative. He wore black jeans that rode low on his skinny hips and a clean white tee-shirt with laundry-faded paint stains. He looked malnourished, dissipated, and artistically tormented.

At her most cynical, Caroline wondered whether he had married Skye to complete the picture.

“Well. Speak of the faithless devil,” came a voice from across the garden.

At the sound of Clea’s voice, Caroline looked over her shoulder. Her beautiful sister came sauntering across the lawn, stunning in a salmon-pink sundress and big dark glasses. She circled Simon like a great white shark on a bleeding surfer.

“Hi, Clea,” Simon said. Caroline didn’t want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but he did sound miserable. Together, she and Clea were his worst nightmare. He had hurt their little sister—hurt her badly—and she wondered how he felt, standing in their midst, bearing the brunt of their scorn and derision.

“What brings you back to town? Is there a bank account you forgot to clean out?” Clea asked.

“Clea, I’ll tell you what I just told Caroline. I want to help Skye. I made a mistake, okay? I love her, and I want her to take me back.”

“Really?” Caroline asked, frowning. He hadn’t told her that part.

“Yeah. Can I stay? In the barn?”

“I don’t want you here,” she said.

“Skye does.”

“Why the hell would she want to see you?” Caroline asked, amazed at his arrogance, wondering how it could possibly help Skye to confront the man who had scorned her love.

“How do you think I found out about her accident?” Simon asked, palming another cigarette, wanting to light it so badly, his hand shook. “She called me. She needs me, just like I need her.”

“She called him,” Caroline said to Clea. The sisters gazed at each other for a few seconds, weighing this new information.

“That does make a difference,” Clea said. “Although she’s not in her right mind.”

“She may have called you, but she doesn’t need you,” Caroline said to him, narrowing her eyes. “Let’s get that straight.”

“Think what you want.”

“I’ll let you stay,” Caroline said. “I’ll make sure something’s free for you.”

“I’ll stay in the barn—”

Caroline shook her head. “In the inn, not the barn. You have one more chance to be good to Skye, and I’m not going to make you sleep in the hay.”

“Thanks,” he said. He moved forward, as if to embrace Caroline, but her look stopped him. Lowering his head, he backed away. Then he went toward the parking lot to get his things.

“Scum of the earth,” Clea said, sighing, “but Skye loves him.”

“For now,” Caroline said.

The sisters walked across the brilliantly green lawn to the old red barn where Caroline had been headed before her encounter with Simon. Surrounded by stone walls and white fences, the soft red paint picturesquely peeling, the barn was a painting waiting to happen. Many artists, especially Hugh Renwick, had made it famous. Paintings of the Renwick barn hung in the Clark Institute, the Phillips Collection, the Guthrie, the Farnsworth, the Corcoran Gallery, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Inside, the barn was cool and dark. It smelled of hay. Caroline’s grandfather had kept horses and cows. Her father had taught his daughters to ride here; the box stalls were now individual artists’ studios. The more expensive rooms at the inn came with barn rights. The stalls were occupied now, with guests painting, sculpting, and getting to know each other better. The unmistakable sounds of passion came from a stall/studio at the far end, making Caroline and Clea laugh softly.

“I lost my virginity in this barn,” Clea whispered.

“At least twice.” Caroline laughed.

“The Firefly Ball is upon us,” Clea said, surveying the scene, feeling the excitement. Sunlight slanted down from the hayloft.

“Did I do the right thing, letting Simon stay?” Caroline asked.

“Skye is a grown-up,” Clea said. “We forget sometimes. We can’t protect her forever.”

“Or at all,” Caroline said. Then she heard herself say, “I sent Joe a copy of the diary Maripat gave me.”

“You did?”

“And he invited me to his boat for dinner on Thursday night.”

“Really!” Clea said, her eyes sparking as she smiled.

“Yes. But I don’t know if I should go. Or if I want to.”

“Why not?” Clea asked.

“Oh,” Caroline said, shredding a piece of straw, “mainly because we don’t like each other very much, I guess.”

“Maybe you’ll find out he’s not so bad. I already know you’re not. You’ll both be in for a nice surprise.”

“I was thinking about a quick trip to Scotland. Just for a few days, to check out a brand-new place that opened on one of the western islands. It’s an old priory with great views of mountains and the sea, and there’s a labyrinth. Doesn’t a labyrinth sound fascinating? I read about it in the airplane magazine on my way back from Venice last time, and I need some new ideas for the inn….”

“And you have to leave tomorrow? How convenient. I think you should stay, have dinner with Joe.”

“I might.” The pull to travel was strong. She had always done it to get her out of her own life. She went to beautiful country inns, visiting them with a vengeance, telling everyone it was for inspiration. Traveling like a fugitive—got to get there, got to check in, looking over her shoulder. If she kept moving, she wouldn’t think too much. With Joe Connor in town, this might be one of those times.