Stone Cove Island (19 page)

I sleepwalked the two miles back to town. In my hand
I clutched the envelope with Bess’s school essays. Charlie didn’t say much either. I knew he was wondering what to think as well, picturing his dad down in that room. Would I have recognized my dad’s much younger hands without the scar? I thought so, but I really didn’t know. Had he really not seen them, or just not wanted to?

The diner was closed. That was not really a surprise. Businesses closed early off-season, sometimes depending on the whim of the owners or the number of customers rather than the official hours. We kept walking uphill to the Little Kids’ Park. I had no idea how late it was, but we didn’t see anyone along the way. When we got there, we each took a swing and rocked back and forth, looking out at the streetlights, now finally illuminated once more. There were still puddles of water under the swings left from the flooding. You had to reach your toes way over to the side to push off the ground.

“Charlie,” I said. “This whole time, I’ve felt like we were on a ride, our own secret mission, getting closer and finding out all this stuff no one else had been able to. And now I want to get off. I feel like it was a mistake to dig this up. It’s not like we can help Bess now. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Charlie kept swinging, nodding gently. He didn’t answer.

“You think we should keep going?”

“I don’t know,” he said, but he said it in a tired way, like he didn’t have the will to keep going on either.

“At the school, Malloy said I was obsessed with Bess because I was avoiding reality, not wanting to think about
the storm and the bad things that were happening. I guess that makes sense.” All I could see in my mind’s eye now was that picture of my dad’s hands. I pulled out some of Bess’s papers, just for something—anything—else to focus on.

The first was an essay entitled “Nursery Rhymes in Charles Dickens’s
Hard Times
.” The next was a reimagining of Hamlet’s Ophelia as a high school girl in 1988. The last was on Albert Camus, the sweeping and grand title of which was “Camus and the Birth of Existentialism.” I paged through them. Bess’s writing style was at once flowery and dull. Even I could tell she wasn’t a great student. I doubted Mr. Malloy would have kept them under different circumstances. It seemed to be superstition, not admiration, that had motivated him.

I started the Camus essay. He was a writer who was no longer included in Malloy’s syllabus, so all I knew about him was that he was French and that there was an old Cure song about one of his books. Bess seemed to wildly admire Camus’s ideas and wrote about him as though giving a rave review to an exciting movie. Most of the essay consisted of her quoting brilliant observations Camus had made about life.

I didn’t have to read past the first page, because there it was:
Do not await the last judgment. It takes place every day. To breathe is to judge
. It was that weird phrase from the letter, the one that had stuck out for not sounding like the writer of the rest of the note. Now I realized that was because the murderer hadn’t written it. Camus had. I didn’t need to check my notebook. I knew every word of the letter
by now. I handed the stack to Charlie, the existentialism paper on top.

“Look. Charlie. Look at this. And there’s a whole essay on nursery rhymes. Bess’s murderer didn’t write the letter. Bess wrote it herself.”

Charlie dropped me off at home and I went inside as quietly as I could. Salty sniffed at my ankles and gave me a questioning look, like he wondered what I’d been up to, but he didn’t bark or make any noise. I got into bed but of course, could not sleep. In the morning, I was up before my parents, making coffee and even whipping up some pancake batter from a mix.

I tried to unswirl the thoughts in my head, but it was impossible. We’d spent an hour together picking apart what the letter could possibly mean, now that we knew Bess had written it herself. On the one hand, there had been no murder. I was sure Bess had faked the blood on her shirt. She had wanted to frame the Black Anchor Society members, or scare them. So there could be closure: Mom could stop feeling responsible for Bess’s death. On the other hand, the Black Anchor Society was real, and my father was a member. What other crimes had they committed? Did they lure Grant out to sea the day he’d drowned? Were they involved in the developer’s death?
Right now there was an anchor in the drawer of Dad’s shed. What was he going to do with it?

I nearly jumped when my parents wandered in. My dad was in sweatpants and a flannel shirt, ready for whatever weekend woodworking project he had planned. My mother was still in her shell-colored, quilted robe and fuzzy slippers. She smiled when she saw I was cooking.

“Pancakes! Eliza, how nice.” I smiled back. We would sit down, have a normal breakfast together and then I would figure out what to do. But before I could open the syrup, we heard the crunch of gravel on the driveway and the short wail of a police car siren. I was first at the front door, wired on adrenaline from the previous night and lack of sleep. My parents were slower to react. They stood and looked at each other, confused.

Outside, Lynn Bailey was in the drive, driving her cruiser and dressed in her sheriff’s uniform. She was making a point. She was here on official business.

I waved hello, suddenly aware that I probably still had Katniss makeup smudged under my eyes. I hadn’t had the energy to wash my face the night before. “Are you looking for my parents?”

She hesitated. “Mind if I come in?” It seemed like a trick question, though I couldn’t really figure out what the trick was.

“Sure.”

She followed me inside.

“Hi, Lynn,” called my dad, spotting her from the hall. “Get you some coffee?”

“No thanks, Nate. I need to see Willa.” Dad looked
surprised but stepped back to let her in to the kitchen. Mom was standing by the sink, already pouring a mug of coffee to offer her guest.

“Willa,” said Officer Bailey. “I’m sorry about this. I’m going to need you to come to the station with me. You’re wanted for questioning in the death of Bess Linsky.”

“What?” said Mom, almost dropping the mug.

“Lynn! What is this?” My dad looked furious. He moved to stand between her and Mom.

“Sorry, Nate, but it’s out of my hands. The state is involved now. They’ll have a detective here this afternoon.”

“No!” I yelled. “What are you doing? This is crazy!”

Dad shot me a look that clearly said I was making things worse and should shut up and leave it to the adults. But what was she doing taking my mom in? There wasn’t even a murder. Of course, the only people who knew that were me and Charlie. And we couldn’t prove it. Suddenly it hit me: Mom’s diary. Lynn Bailey had taken it, read it and something she’d found convinced her Mom was involved in Bess’s death. I’d have to reread it, figure out what she was using to base her evidence on. But first I needed to get Charlie. Officer Bailey was telling my mom she could get dressed, but then she’d have to come with her right away. She didn’t read Mom her rights, so I guessed that meant she wasn’t arrested officially. Yet. Or maybe that was only how things went on TV.

I scrambled around my loose bed sheets, until I found my phone. Then I texted Charlie.
SUPER URGENT. CAN YOU COME HERE RIGHT NOW?
I ran back to the kitchen,
where Officer Bailey and Dad were waiting in a silent standoff for Mom to re-emerge from the bedroom. I rushed in to head her off.

“Eliza!” warned LB.

“Oh, leave it, Lynn. She’s a kid. You’ve scared her and she’s worried about her mom. Let her have a moment.”

LB nodded, not liking it. But I took my opening. Mom was dressed nicely, almost like she was going to church. When I came in, she was just putting in her second pearl earring. I went to her and grabbed her arms.

“Mom. Listen. Don’t go. They’re going to try to make you say you did something you didn’t.”

Mom turned to look at me. Her eyes looked worried, as usual, but now instead of weak they seemed gentle.

“I know, Eliza, that you want to fix it. I know that’s how you are and I appreciate it so much. But this can’t be fixed. It happened and there is no way to take it back.”

“But Mom,” I said. “You didn’t do anything. It’s in your head that it’s your fault.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her Bess might not even be dead, that Bess had written the letter herself, but I knew Charlie and I would only have one chance to prove it, and right now we had almost no evidence. Especially under the circumstances, everyone—and in particular Officer Bailey—would assume I was panicking, making it up out of desperation to save my mom.

She gave me a sad, patient smile. “You’re right. I didn’t do anything. And that’s why Bess is dead.”

I couldn’t decide if I wanted to punch her or hug her. And hug her not out of love, but out of pity. She’d
devoted herself to playing the victim and that was all she could ever be. She was broken. She’d decided to ruin her life over something she had nothing to do with. Over something that hadn’t actually happened. Mom swept me into her arms, making the decision for me. Her body felt limp. Then she walked back out to the kitchen.

I stayed in the bedroom, like a coward. I didn’t want to watch her go.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, CHARLIE
was on the front porch, breathing hard and looking concerned. I kissed him for coming so quickly and tried to explain what had happened. It all came out in a confused rush. I stopped once I got to Mom’s arrest.

“But now we know Bess is alive,” he said, shaking his head. “It should be easy to clear her.”

“We don’t know she’s alive. We think she is, but we can’t prove it. And my mom’s not doing herself any favors. She’s like Joan of Arc climbing right up onto the fire. She thinks she deserves this, even though she’s not guilty. The state police are getting involved. LB said they’re bringing a detective over this afternoon.”

Charlie shifted from one foot to the other, glancing back toward the town. “Hope he has a seaplane or something. There’s no ferry.”

“I’m sure they’ll figure out something. Charlie, this is seriously bad. We have to do something.”

“Let’s go tell Jay what we found out last night.”

I looked at him skeptically. Jay had barely pursued
investigating the story when it had happened. Would he believe our story? Would he be willing to take on the Black Anchor Society? “No. We have to find Bess ourselves.”

“Eliza. We have no idea where she went and no way of getting there, even if we did.”

“Come on,” I said. I was already halfway down the driveway. “I have an idea.”

STONE COVE ISLAND SAILING
Camp was deserted. The boats were tucked away in their sheds or under tarps for the winter. The gravel parking lot was empty.

“Think Hopper will forgive me?” I asked, taking stock of the situation. Hopper ran the sailing school in the summer and coached the sailing team the rest of the year.

Charlie stood a few feet back, his smile grim. “Depends on what condition the boat’s in when it comes back. If it comes back.”

I shot him a look.
Not helpful
. “Charlie. There’s no ferry. Almost all the bigger boats are in dry dock by now. I guess we could always just wait and ride over with the state police when they take my mom to jail in Boston.”

His eyes softened as they shifted to me. “I wish we could take my dad’s Bristol. It’s a lot bigger, a lot sturdier. It’s November, Eliza. There’s a reason why everyone’s taken their boat out for the year.” That was true. The Rhodes 19 racing boat we were about to steal—that is, borrow—was a much dicier choice for open ocean in November than Jimmy’s 32-foot keelboat. We would have to watch the weather every second. But I was pretty sure we could make it as long as we were careful and didn’t run into any
major surprises. Anyway, Jimmy’s boat would be hard to sail with only two people and I was much more willing to risk Hopper’s wrath than Charlie’s father’s.

I spun the dial on the lock of my sailing locker and took out my foul-weather gear. Charlie had brought his from home. We also had cell phones, a radio, water, navigational charts for the bay between Stone Cove and Gloucester, emergency flares, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, my mom’s diary, and a change of clothes. I hadn’t left a note for my dad. I didn’t want him to know where we were going. I figured once we got out, we could call or text someone and let them know. Maybe Jay, or even Hopper. Someone who wouldn’t totally freak out. Since I was a sailing instructor in the summer, I also knew the combinations to the boat locks. Racing boats are designed to be identical and without individual quirks, to keep things fair, but I still had my favorite lucky boat,
Tigerlily
. We weren’t supposed to give the boats names either, but where was the fun in that?

Charlie helped me roll
Tigerlily
down to the launch. We didn’t need the winch. We could roll her right in. Usually I liked to have three people to step the mast, but two would do in a pinch, especially since Charlie knew what he was doing. I felt a little guilty doing all this behind Hopper’s back, but this was an emergency. I just hoped he would understand. The wind was whipping up a little, coming out of the northeast, making the wind indicator and metal sheeting on the sheds whistle and clatter. I saw Charlie look up, estimating its direction and strength.

“Fourteen knots?”

I nodded. “Maybe fifteen. I don’t see any whitecaps though.” That was a good sign. The boat could handle a solid breeze as long at the water didn’t get too choppy. We didn’t have the weight to cut through big waves, especially without a third crew. “We can reef the sail. I think we’ll be fine. And a northeast wind should speed the trip. Even if it’s likely to be shifty.” The mainland was nine miles away. It was going to take us about three hours.

Half an hour into the trip, I could tell I hadn’t dressed warmly enough. The water was frigid and the wind kicked up waves over the stern and onto my legs. With the wind pushing from behind us, we were mostly able to run, which meant the boat was fairly level in the water, we didn’t have to change course much and we were moving fast. There’s always the moment where you lose sight of shore in all directions. It had always given me a shiver of both fear and elation.