Firefly Beach (16 page)

“That’s for us to do,” Skye said quietly, before she could stop herself.

Simon stopped rubbing her back. He sat up straight, pushed his dark hair out of his eyes. Peering at Skye, he seemed to check her out.

“You okay? They planning to let you out of here soon, or what?”

“I hope so,” she said. “I do.”

Now that Simon had pulled back, her feelings changed. They went cold. It was as if his physical nearness had an anesthetic effect on her, as if the illusion of their love calmed her down, quelled the storms raging inside. She wanted him to hold her again, but she understood that a drink would work just as well. Or a painkiller.

“What’s this?” Simon asked, glancing at the photo album.

“Just family pictures,” Skye said, turning the page to a series of shots taken in St. Lucia, when she and her sisters were young. They stared at the images of palm trees, big white clouds in a bright blue sky, the black marlin their father had caught hanging above the dock beside their chartered boat.

“Hugh strikes again,” Simon said with an admiring laugh. “Or did you kill that one?”

“He did,” Skye said quietly.

“What you said before,” she heard herself say to Simon, “that it would kill you, what I did. I’d never kill you. I’d never do anything to hurt you. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yeah, baby,” he said, rubbing her back again, sitting so close, their bodies were nearly one again. “I know that.”

Augusta Renwick was curious about the treasure hunters. Ever since Caroline had been here—pointed out the ships at Moonstone Reef—Augusta had been glued to the window. Watching through Hugh’s shooting scope, she kept hoping for a glimpse of some shining objects being raised from the depths.

Focusing on such glamorous activity, she was able to forget the fact that her youngest child was in the hospital. Not forget precisely, but set aside. She had seen Dr. Henderson in the hall outside Skye’s room. They had circled each other warily. She mistrusted him. That eager voice with its phony warmth made her shiver.

Standing at the picture window, Augusta tried to see what the men on the boat were doing. Bending over something, raising it to the light. Must be something exciting, she thought. She adjusted the eyepiece for a clearer look.

That tiny act, the slight movement of her two hands as she twisted the spyglass, took her back twenty years: She had taken this very same shooting scope with her to spy on Hugh and one of his women in a glade north of Hawthorne, and she felt a rush of shame and fury. She had taken the girls with her. They had been young: nine, seven, and four. She hadn’t told them what she was doing, but she suspected they knew.

Her girls were cursed with exceptional powers of perception.

She narrowed her eyes, focusing on the ship, but the thrill was gone. That flash of guilt from the past had destroyed it. What kind of woman took her daughters to spy on their father?

Maybe she should have a cup of tea. She walked into the kitchen. A cool breeze ruffled the white curtains at the windows. The air smelled fresh, of the sea and herbs from the garden. Augusta set a kettle on to boil, then walked out the screen door to the small, sunken herb garden. Homer followed her, panting.

Set in a circle, the garden had plants that dated back one hundred years. Augusta had taken snips and cuttings from her mother’s garden in Jamestown and her grandmother’s garden in Thornton. Whenever she came out to pick rosemary, sage, or thyme, she felt the endless love of those two wonderful women. Augusta had had no sisters of her own. She was an only child, and when she had borne three girls, she thought it was the most amazing blessing possible.

That she had daughters, and that they could be sisters to each other in a way that Augusta had never had sisters of her own, had made her feel so happy, as if she had provided something for them beyond measure. Sighing, she sat on a stone bench. She reached down, letting her fingers trail through a clump of mint. The stalks were dark red, the leaves fuzzy green. When she smelled her hand, she went back in time to her grandmother’s garden, with all the love and comfort any child could ever want. The feelings she had wanted to give her daughters and their children.

She heard a car coming up the driveway. The sound broke the spell, but Augusta stayed where she was. She knew from the sound it was Caroline’s old Jeep. Augusta might have walked around the house to meet her, or gone into the kitchen to set out an extra teacup, but she didn’t. She knew that Caroline finding her in the herb garden would be a good thing. It would make Caroline sympathetic to her. The herbs themselves would be an unspoken connection to the good past, to Caroline’s beloved grandmother and great-grandmother.

Homer bounded off on the trace of Caroline, and Augusta knew he would lead her back.

“Hi, Mom,” Caroline said.

Augusta opened her eyes. She seemed startled, as if she had been sleeping. She sat on a bench in the garden, wearing her pearls and a straw sunhat, holding a handful of herbs. It touched Caroline to see her mother sitting there in the grandmothers’ herb garden, enjoying the sun and the breeze.

“Caroline!” she exclaimed, smiling.

“I thought I’d take a swim,” Caroline said. “Do you feel like putting on your suit and coming down to the beach?”

“That would be great,” Augusta said. “Just let me turn off the teakettle.”

Caroline went upstairs to change. She used the bedroom that had been hers as a girl. It faced the beach, and from her window she could see Joe’s boat. Putting on her black tank suit, she walked barefoot through the back halls of Firefly Hill. It was bare and dark in this part of the house: The floors were dark oak, the wainscoting nearly black with age. The bedrooms and living rooms were bright and over-flowing with pictures and furniture. But back here, this section intended for servants, had always been spooky; walking through it had always made Caroline and her sisters feel nervous of what lurked in the shadows.

She ran down the porch stairs and met her mother outside. They walked across the lawn, through the tall grass and wildflowers. Caroline preceded Augusta down the long flight of stone steps to Firefly Beach, one hundred feet below. A quarter of the way, she heard her mother stop. “You coming, Homer?” Augusta called.

The rangy old dog stood on the top step. His head was big and proud, the sun casting golden lights on his thinning coat. From this angle he looked young and magnificent. Caroline remembered how he had loved to run on the beach his first summer there. Born a mountain dog, he soon learned to love the beach.

“Homer?” Augusta asked again. She hesitated, looking up at the golden retriever. Her pose was tense, urgent. She seemed to be willing him to move. “He’s tired, Mom,” Caroline said gently.

“I suppose he is,” Augusta said. Without another word she followed Caroline down the stairs.

These swims were precious to both of them. Caroline made time at least two or three times a month in the summer to spend a late afternoon on the beach with her mother. They dove in together. The water was cold and salty, and Caroline swam out to the big rock and back. She felt the sea caress her body, giving her that feeling of rebirth she got when the tide was high and she was swimming with her mother. They’d been doing this for thirty-six summers, and every time she came to Firefly Beach for one of their swims, she prayed that they would have another: another swim and another summer.

Back on the sand, they lay in the sun on separate towels. It was nearly five o’clock, but the day was still warm, the light gilded. It glistened on the sea and made the tiny pebbles, wet from the waves, look like beads of amber. Caroline watched her mother open a book and start reading. Caroline looked out to sea. There was the
Meteor,
rocking on the waves. She’d be having dinner out there in just a few hours.

Caroline took Clarissa’s diary out of her bookbag. It was the actual book Maripat had given her, so she held it carefully, away from the sand.

August 1, 1769

Today counted seven schooners and one brig and one barq. Found twenty-two red starfish. Ate two joe froggers after lunch. Saw three eagles, twenty osprey, and more than a hundred herring gulls. More than a thousand herring gulls. More than seven thousand herring gulls. But no friends! No little girls to play with. Only Mama and Pa, when he’s not too tired. Tomorrow morning we’re going for quahogs.

August 4, 1769

Pa got four geese. The bang from his gun scared me, and I was crying, but I couldn’t find Mama. She wasn’t there. I found her near to dark, by the south shore where we found the whale. The last place I looked, I came upon her. Mama as sad as when Grandmother died and we had to travel to Providence to bury her, but today no one is dead. She said she wasn’t crying, but I know she was, and when I kissed her she tasted like tears. I told her about the geese, thinking she would be happy because we always cook one for Christmas, but it only made her cry more.

“What’s that?” Augusta asked, curious.

“An old diary,” Caroline said slowly. “A little girl writing about her life. This part is about her mother.”

“Does she love her?”

“Very much.”

“Good,” Augusta said happily.

Caroline thought of how strange it was, Augusta asking whether the girl had loved her mother. What an odd thing for a mother to ask.

What made her so insecure? Had Augusta felt that way long ago, when the girls were young? Caroline took it as an explanation for the way things happened, the fact that their childhood had been so fragmented. The hunts, the fights, the separations and reconciliations between Augusta and Hugh. Caroline’s heart ached for her mother, then and now.

“The diary was written by Clarissa Randall,” Caroline said. “The daughter of the woman who died on that shipwreck.”

“Right out there?” Augusta asked, shading her eyes as she stared at the ships on the horizon.

“Yes.”

“Dear, how fascinating!” Augusta said. “I’ve been keeping my eye on them. They seem to be making great progress. They work night and day. Oh, I have a great idea….”

“What’s that?”

“You should send the captain a copy of the diary! Wouldn’t that be fun? And I’m sure he would find it extremely helpful. Maybe there’s some secret code in the diary, some key to where the treasure is buried!”

“Mom,” Caroline said.

“Darling, I’m serious. The captain would
love you
for it.”

Caroline wanted to tell her mother the captain was Joe Connor. She felt it so strongly, the desire to explain that Joe was the ship’s captain, that she had already sent the diary to him, that he was diving on the
Cambria
because of Caroline’s letters from long ago. But Skye was in the hospital and her mother hated the Connors. In Augusta’s mind the Connors were the enemy.

“Remember the treasure we found, honey? The gold chain?” Augusta asked, changing the subject herself.

“Yes, the one Dad gave you,” Caroline said, trailing off.

“Are you going to Scotland?” Augusta asked after a long stretch of thinking about Hugh. “Didn’t you say something about a quick trip?”

“Yes,” Caroline said, suddenly wishing she were leaving tonight, “but I’m not going just yet.”

“You pick up and go like no one I know,” Augusta said, shaking her head. “Half the time I call Michele, she says you’re on a plane to somewhere.”

“Not half the time,” Caroline said.

“I’m relieved, Caroline. That you’re not going now. Skye needs you too much. I try to be there for her, but I know it’s you she wants.”

Caroline heard the pain in her mother’s voice. She wanted to tell her it wasn’t true, that she was a great mother, that Skye needed her more than anyone. But she knew Augusta wouldn’t believe her, that the lie would only make her feel worse.

“She loves you, Mom,” Caroline said, telling the truth.

“I know, dear. But I wish I’d done more earlier. That I hadn’t missed my chance.”