Kiss River (35 page)

S
itting next to Clay in the waiting room of the rehab center, Gina played with the clasp on her backpack. It had been mere hours since they’d seen the name on the lens, and Clay had wanted to wait a day before they went to Elizabeth City to talk to Walter, but Gina could not have put it off another minute. She had to confront the man who had betrayed Bess Poor and his country.

“How long do you think his exercise session lasts?” Gina asked, looking at her watch. They’d been waiting forty minutes already.

“Has to be over soon,” Clay said. Then he sighed. “You know, Gina, Walter’s a really nice guy.”

“So was my husband,” Gina said. “And Sandy-slash-Walter was extremely nice to Bess, too, before he turned on her.”

“That was sixty years ago.” Clay took her hand. “People can change a lot in sixty years. I know you’re hoping he’s some sort of multimillionaire, but Walter doesn’t have any money socked away. I’m sure of it. If he ever received it, he spent it long ago. He lives in a little bungalow.”

She feared he was right. Frankly, she no longer knew what she hoped to discover by speaking with Walter. She was having a difficult time reconciling the kind old man she’d come to care about with the traitorous Coast Guard patrolman who had turned on Bess so cruelly. But she’d had trouble reconciling the fact that Bruce had changed so radically, too. She wondered if Clay was destined to change, as well.

She squeezed Clay’s hand. “I’ll be gentle with him,” she said. “I promise.” She knew Clay was afraid that confronting Walter might cause him to suffer another heart attack.

It was a few more minutes before Walter wheeled himself into the waiting room.

“Well, it’s nice to see you two,” he said, a broad smile on his face. “I sure do miss home. I miss Shorty’s. Not a soul to play chess with here.”

“Is there someplace private we can go, Walter?” Gina asked him. There were other people in the waiting room and this was not going to be the sort of conversation that should be overheard.

He lost his smile. “Is everything all right?” he asked. “Everybody all right?” He probably thought something terrible had happened to Brian or Henry.

“Everyone’s fine,” Clay reassured him. “Gina and I just need to talk to you for a few minutes.”

“We can go to my room.” Walter pointed toward the hallway behind them. “I have a roommate, but he’s getting PT right now, so it’ll be private, at least for a while.”

They followed him down the long corridor to his room. There was only one chair, and Gina sat down on it, clutching her backpack in her lap, while Clay sat on the edge of Walter’s unmade bed.

Walter looked from one of them to the other from his wheelchair. “What’s on your minds?” he asked.

Gina glanced at Clay. Now that she was face-to-face with Walter, she was unsure where or how to begin.

“We wanted to talk to you about when you were in the Coast Guard,” Clay said.

Walter wore a look of confused surprise. “You do?” he asked. “I wasn’t in all that long. Henry and Brian could tell you more than I could.”

“Walter,” Gina said suddenly, “you’re my grandfather.”

“I’m
what?
” Walter laughed.

Gina reached into the backpack and pulled out the pink diary.

“This is the diary Bess Poor kept the year she was fifteen,” she said.

The color drained from Walter’s face and he stared at the book. Then he shook his head.
“Bess,”
he said, more to himself than to either of them. He pointed to the diary. “What does she say in there?” he asked.

“She talks about falling in love with you. With Sandy.”

He chuckled. “Sandy. Haven’t heard that name in a long time. She sure was the only person in the world who ever called me that.”

“She adored you,” Gina said.

“And I adored her, too.” Walter looked suddenly somber and sad. “I worry her life didn’t turn out too well.”

Gina felt angry and had to struggle to control her voice. “And whose fault was that? You sent her away from her home. Were you ever caught? Were you paid millions of dollars by the Germans?” The words spilled over each other as she rushed to get them out.

Walter looked dumbfounded. Finally, he spoke. “Maybe I should see that diary,” he said.

She pictured him ripping the pages out, tearing them up before she could do a thing about it. She should have made a copy of the book.

“She tells about you spying for the Germans, Walter,” Clay said, his voice much calmer than Gina’s. “Don’t worry. We’re not going to tell anyone. It’s water under the bridge. We just wanted to know if it’s the truth.”

Walter suddenly laughed. “Is that what you two are worried about?” he asked.

Neither she nor Clay said a word, and Walter sobered at the serious expressions on their faces.

“Well,” he said. “I can see I have some explaining to do.” He looked at Gina. “But what’s this about you being my granddaughter?”

“Bess was pregnant when she left Kiss River,” she said. She felt like adding,
Withdrawal is a lousy method of birth control,
but managed to bite her tongue.

“Oh no.” Walter turned away from them, staring blankly out the window. “For many, many years, I didn’t know where she had gone,” he said. “Her parents didn’t know, either. No one did.”

“Did you care where she went?”

“Yes, I cared.” He faced Gina, sounding a bit defensive. “It wasn’t easy for me to let her go.”

“Let her?” Gina asked. “You
sent
her.” She was not doing a good job of treating him gently, and Clay leaned forward to wrap his hand around her wrist.

“Take it easy,” he admonished her.

Walter looked down at his lap, where his hands lay still, one resting upon the other. “Listen to me, you two,” he said. “I…I was never really in the Coast Guard.”

“What do you mean?” Clay asked.

“I was actually working for the FBI as a double agent.”

Gina frowned. “I don’t understand,” she said.

“We had some intelligence that German saboteurs were planning to come ashore,” Walter said. “The FBI sent a fellow to the area to gather information, but he got himself murdered, probably because he spoke German with a terrible accent and they grew suspicious of him. That’s when they sent me. German was my first language, since my parents were both born in Germany.”

“You never told Bess that,” Gina said.

“Of course not,” Walter said. “There was plenty I didn’t tell her. My job was to make the Germans think I was working for them while I was really working for the government. Bud Hewitt, the chief warrant officer, didn’t even know. It would have compromised the entire mission if anyone knew. Ultimately, we were able to prevent the subs from landing any saboteurs along the coast there.”

“You told Bess they were paying you millions,” Gina said.

“Millions?” Walter laughed. “The only money I got was my paycheck. If I
did
tell her that, it was because it was the only thing I could think of to say at the time. When Bess realized I was in cahoots with the Germans, I panicked. I didn’t dare tell her the truth. She was in real danger. She could have been killed by the Germans or…well, it wouldn’t have been the first time an American was killed to protect a mission. I’d put her in danger by
falling in love with her.” There was a sheen of tears in his eyes. “I sent her away,
scared
her away, because I loved her. I told her I killed the fellow on the beach. I hate that she left thinking the worst of me. I know it must have been very painful for her. But now, to find out she was pregnant!”

He mistook Gina’s numb silence as disbelief. Wheeling over to the night table, he fumbled in the drawer for a set of keys and he handed them to her.

“In my house, in the file cabinet in the den, there is a file labeled Personal,” he said. “In it, you’ll find a quiet little letter signed by J. Edgar Hoover, commending me for my service to the United States government in 1942.”

Clay slowly shook his head, stunned. “Holy shit, Walter,” he said.

Walter looked at Gina. “Now, please,” he said. “Tell me about you and how you came to be my granddaughter.”

Suddenly, she saw her mother in his eyes and in the shape of his mouth. She felt herself starting to tear up, and she looked down at the diary. There was so much to tell. She hardly knew where to begin.

“Bess gave her baby—
your
baby—up for adoption,” she said, leaning forward to press the keys back into his hand. Settling deeper into the chair, she prepared herself to tell him the story, from start to finish, forgetting for just a moment about money and Rani and India. For the first time in her life, she had a grandfather.

Monday, February 8, 1943

F
our days ago on February 4, I had a baby girl at the hospital where SueAnn works. I came home today, glad to get away from all the happiness and sounds of crying babies that filled that place, while my arms were empty. I didn’t even see her. I wanted to. Even though I knew it would be hard, and I would have to hand her over to the nurse to take her away forever, I still wanted to see her and look in her face. I wanted to see Sandy in her, because his face is so lost to me now, and I wanted that little reminder of him. But if I’d seen him there, I would never have been able to let her go. Maybe they knew that. Maybe that is why the nurses wouldn’t let me see her.

I had a very difficult time giving birth to the baby. I honestly don’t remember very much of it. They kept me asleep, or nearly asleep, most of the time, and when I was awake, I kept calling out for Mama. They told me I may not ever be able to have another child. Something about my uterus. Right now I don’t care. I am fifteen. I don’t want a child. Except maybe the one I just gave away.

The priest took her away. She is going to a “good Catholic
couple” he said. She will have a good life. I asked him if the couple went to our church, if I might get to see her from time to time, but he said, “Certainly not,” as though I’d asked the most stupid question in the world.

Dennis is being real kind to me, even more than usual. SueAnn told him some women get very sad (melancholy was the word she used) after they have a baby, even if they don’t have to give that baby up. I think that’s what’s happening to me. I just want to sleep. I want to wake up and have this whole year erased from my life and my heart.

A
pall had settled over the keeper’s house. Clay was living with two pensive, tearful women. One felt as though she had lost her child, the other her mother. He had never seen his sister like this, so quiet, so withdrawn. “I don’t know who I am anymore,” she told him, and he understood. She had wanted so much to be like their mother, to keep Annie alive in that way. She had not realized exactly how much like her mother she had become, in both good ways and bad.

And Gina was bereft. There was no other word for it. She contacted a group of physicians who volunteered their time and skill to help children in other countries and begged them to take on Rani’s case. She told him it was not the first time she’d called that organization, but it was the first time she’d sobbed into the phone while talking to the woman who was their liaison. The woman told her how sorry she was, but “there are just too many children. We wish we could help them all, but we can’t. And es
pecially not a child in an orphanage, where she is unlikely to get the sort of aftercare that is so necessary to her recovery.”

In bed at night, Clay held Gina close to him and let her cry. She slept poorly, tossing and turning and keeping him awake much of the night. She offered to sleep in her own room, but he wanted her with him, and he knew that was what she wanted—what she
needed
—as well.

Lying there awake at night, a plan began to take shape in his mind. He thought about it for a day or two and talked it over with his father, who gave him compassionate, if reluctant, support. He had decided not to tell Alec the real reason behind Gina’s desire to raise the lens. He would tell him in time, but right now, he needed his father on his side, and that information would only increase Alec’s already conflicted feelings about Gina.

On Saturday night, Clay sat with her on the top step of the lighthouse, watching the stars and fighting off the mosquitoes, and he told her what he wanted to do.

“I don’t have two hundred thousand dollars for you to give Mrs. King,” he said. “And I think you know that I wouldn’t give it to her if I did. But I
do
have enough money to take us both to India, and to let us stay there and take care of Rani while you—while
we
—fight the system.”

She looked at him, wide-eyed. “Why would you do that for a child you don’t know, much less love?” she asked.

He rested his hand on her cheek and kissed her, the woman who had given him back his life.

“Because I love
you,
” he said. “That’s why.”