Firefly Beach (5 page)

“Yeah?” he asked. “We’ll take them.”

Clea came forward, a worried look in her green eyes.

“Someone just made a pass at Leo Dumonde’s wife,” she said, “and Leo wants to fight him outside. I think he’s trying to be Dad.”

Caroline exhaled; she didn’t have the patience just then. Leo Dumonde was an abstract expressionist from New York, a man with a bigger reputation for investing than painting, and he was one of the artists who tried to live what he thought was the Hugh Renwick way: paint fast, fight hard. Exhibit timber, cheat on your wife, drink too much, hunt and fish enough to get noticed by the sports writers.

“Your father was the real thing,” Joe said. “Leo Dumonde’s a fake. He won’t be stepping outside with anyone from my boat.”

“You knew our father?” Clea asked, twinkling.

“Knew of him,” Joe said. “The bastard.”

Clea’s smile evaporated.

“Clea, meet Joe Connor,” Caroline said evenly, every one of her senses on guard.

“
The
Joe Connor?” Clea asked.

“I think so,” he said, flashing her a wicked grin and shaking her hand.

“We’ve been wanting to meet you for a long time,” Clea said.

“He’s a treasure hunter,” Caroline said. “He’s here to raise the
Cambria,
and then he’s going home to Florida.”

“That’s right,” Joe said. “Renwick territory is a little too dangerous for me. Or at least it was when Hugh was around.”

“We’re our father’s daughters,” Caroline said sharply, the pain of Joe’s rejection as sharp as it had been at fifteen. Amazed that it could still hurt, she felt her eyes fill with tears. He had been her friend, and he had cut her off without a second chance. Not even for her own sins, but for their fathers’. “You’d better not forget that.”

“I never have,” Joe Connor said softly.

Closing her office door behind her, Caroline went to her desk. Her hands were shaking, her heart pounding as if she’d just climbed a steep trail. Clea had driven away, and Caroline was glad to be alone. Pulling the curtains, she sat down.

The bar was noisy. She heard the loud voices, the excited laughter. It was a busy night at the Renwick Inn, and she knew she should feel pleased. Friends and acquaintances from the past often walked through her door. Sometimes they knew she owned the place, often they were surprised to find out. It never mattered: Caroline viewed those visits as serendipitous, lucky business.

Joe Connor was different.

Very slowly, she opened the top drawer of her desk. It was cluttered, filled with pens and receipts and mementos. Reaching back, rifling through the papers, she found what she was looking for. She pulled out the old picture and laid it on her desktop.

It was Joe’s first-grade school picture, taken long ago. The little boy was smiling, his front tooth missing. He had blond hair, the back sticking up in a cowlick. The picture was stained brown, and dark flecks covered the boy’s face. The flecks were his father’s blood.

Caroline had held James Connor’s hand while he shot himself. Crushed beneath his body, she had pulled his son’s picture from the spreading pool of blood. Silent now, she sat at her desk and stared at Joe’s face.

Her mother had given her permission to write to him. Against her better judgment, Augusta had let her find his address in Newport, even given her the stamp. Caroline, five years old, had written to Joe Connor, six years old, to tell him she was sorry his father was dead. She didn’t mention the gun, she left out the blood. Her emotions were enough, her sorrow for another child who had lost his father. Her mother had helped her print the words, and the letter was short.

Joe wrote back. He thanked her for her letter. She could still remember his first-grade printing, his confusing words: “My father had a heart attack with you. I am glad you were with him.”

Caroline responded. They became pen pals. On and off during the years, they wrote to each other. They sent Christmas cards, birthday cards, valentines. As the years went by, Joe began to ask about his father. From the questions, Caroline could tell that he had been lied to, that he had a totally wrong idea about his father’s death.

Joe seemed to have the idea that their fathers had been friends. James Connor had met Hugh Renwick during one of his painting forays to Newport, guys from different walks of life who liked to drink together. Somehow James had ended up visiting the Renwicks and had a heart attack in their kitchen.

To Augusta’s consternation, Joe’s letters began to arrive more regularly. He and Caroline liked each other; when they became teenagers, they liked each other more. It drove Augusta crazy, seeing the name Connor in the return address. She’d grill Caroline about the letters, tell her to stop writing back. Reminded of her husband’s infidelity, she couldn’t stand Joe Connor.

The letters stopped. Caroline hadn’t thought about that part in years, but the memory still carried power. She felt the color rising in her neck. Joe finally learned the truth, and not from Caroline.

Joe’s mother had been too ashamed to tell him how his father had died, and one day someone in his family let it slip. An uncle or a cousin, Caroline couldn’t remember. Joe finally learned that his father had committed suicide. The heart attack had been a lie, and so had the story about their fathers being friends.

James Connor had died among enemies. That was terrible, enough to break the heart of any teenage boy. But what was worse, the thing that brought tears to Caroline’s eyes now, was the betrayal. She had been his friend. All along, reading his letters, she had known she should tell him the truth.

At the end, he couldn’t forgive her. She had known and he didn’t. He was seventeen and needed to know all he could about his father, and Caroline had held back a crucial fact: Her father had been having an affair with his mother, and James Connor had killed himself because of it. She had withheld the most important thing one friend could ever give another: the truth.

Truth was never big in the Renwick family, but that was no excuse. Sitting at her desk, staring at the bloody picture, she thought of Joe Connor out in her bar. If he were still a friend, she could buy him a drink, catch up on old times, get to know the man in person. But as it stood right now, he was just another customer.

September 20, 1972

Dear Joe Connor,

We have a shipwreck near our house! It happened long ago. The Cambria came from England loaded with treasure. My sisters and I look for coins on Firefly Beach. If we find some, I will send you one. Our beach is magical. Instead of lighthouses we have fireflies. Are you in fourth grade? I’m in third. The Cambria was a barquentine. It is buried in the mud.

Sincerely yours,

Caroline Renwick

October 16, 1972

Dear Caroline,

Why do you always write Dear Joe Connor? No other Joe lives here. Shipwrecks are cool, as long as you’re not on them. Newport has plenty. Lots of barques. (The nickname for barquentine.) Yes I’m in fourth. How many sisters do you have? Keep looking for the treasure.

Your friend,

Joe

P.S. Of course it is buried in the mud. Otherwise, it would decompose. (That means “rot” to you third-graders.)

J
OE
C
ONNOR DROVE HIS TRUCK DOWN TO THE DOCK
, feeling the air grow thick with sea mist. Behind him was a convoy of vehicles returning to the ship. Bill Shepard sat across the seat, but Joe wished he were alone. He hadn’t been prepared for his reaction to meeting Caroline Renwick. He felt wired, as if he had either just landed or lost a black marlin. His hands were actually shaking on the steering wheel. He needed a drink, and he had quit drinking ten years ago.

For one thing, she was beautiful. Five-six and slender with incredible curves, the kind of body that sailors spend their lives dreaming about. Her face belonged on magazine covers, porcelain-pale with wide gray-blue eyes and high cheekbones, a tender mouth that wanted to smile but didn’t right away. Her dark hair was long and wavy, and with her pallor it gave her a mysterious black-Irish look that made Joe think of whispers and passion and how her fingernails might feel digging into his back.

For another thing, the main thing, she was Caroline Renwick.

They had a past. All the letters and then, when he’d found out the truth, the rage. He had seen her father’s famous portrait of her,
Girl in a White Dress,
hanging at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But by then he was deep into his hatred of the Renwicks. The lies had already come to light.

“Nice place, the Renwick Inn,” Bill said, yawning as he gazed out the open window.

“It is,” Joe said.

“So, we’ll be keeping a couple of rooms there, sort of like a land base?” Bill asked. He was new to Joe’s crew, a diver they’d picked up at the tail end of the last excavation. He was young and eager, but he liked to talk too much. Joe wasn’t big on getting to know his team. They did their work, he paid their salary.

“Yes,” Joe said.

“Pretty girls,” Bill said. “That owner chick and her sister. They friends of yours?”

“Not exactly,” Joe said. “But close enough.”

“I wouldn’t mind getting to know her better, that Caroline. Very hot, very hot. But she has that New England–reserved look, real hard to get. You know?”

“That’s because she is,” Joe said harshly.

“Hey, you never know.” Bill laughed in that drawn-out southern way of his. He had a spooky cast to his eyes, and his manner managed to make most things he said sound snide. Joe felt a big knot of anger balling up in his stomach, feeling like the right thing to do was defend Caroline and not really knowing why.

“Listen,” Joe said. “You want to drink, do it somewhere besides the Renwick Inn. When it’s your turn to bunk there, stay away from Caroline and her sisters.”

“Sister,” Bill corrected Joe. “There was only one.”

There are two, Joe thought, remembering Caroline’s letters. He didn’t bother to enlighten Bill.

“I’ll tell everyone, not just you, but the Renwicks are off limits. Let’s just say they’re friends of the family. Okay?”

“Gotta respect that,” Bill conceded. “But they’re sexy as all hell. Too bad.”

“Too bad,” Joe agreed.

They were nearing the water. The saltier the air got, the easier Joe breathed. Going to sea, he always felt like a freed man. All the bonds of dry land, the problems and worries, slipped away. He loved the movement of waves under his feet, the sense of wind and tides having more power than he did. It had always been that way, since around the time he stopped writing to Caroline. He had escaped life by shipping out.

The road curved around, the coast grew rocky. In the back of his mind, Joe wondered where it was: Firefly Hill, the place where his father had shot himself. He could locate it on a chart—had done so a million times—but being so physically close sent chills down his neck.

On the USGS charts, the town was called Black Hall and the point of land, jutting like a crooked elbow into Long Island Sound, was called Hubbard’s Point. Firefly Hill was a dot on the chart, the apostrophe in the name “Hubbard’s Point,” the highest point of land on the shoreline from Branford to Stonington. Firefly Beach was the family’s name for their private beach; Joe recalled Caroline’s story about having fireflies instead of a lighthouse.

Joe had dived for treasure in five of the seven seas, gotten rich doing it, found artifacts he still couldn’t believe. But the
Cambria
was his Holy Grail. His Atlantis. Diving off Bosporus, his hold filled with Turkish gold and casks of Russian rubies, he had rocked the nights away in his cramped bunk, plotting his excavation of the
Cambria.
Finally, he laid legal claim to the wreck and brought his equipment and team and fleet north from Florida.

Was it just because the
Cambria
had sunk off the Black Hall shore? Within sight of Firefly Hill? Staring at the foggy road ahead of him, Joe thought to himself: Black Hall should be marked by a skull and crossbones on nautical charts. His reaction might have been less intense if the same name hadn’t made him feel so happy for all those years, seeing it postmarked on Caroline’s letters. He was bitter about the way she had held back the truth. But she had piqued his interest early with her letter about the
Cambria
, and here he was. In Renwick territory.