The Tale of Halcyon Crane (11 page)

I settled the tray down on my bed and switched on the
TV, wanting some mindless companionship with my meal. After I had eaten, I drew a bath and slipped into the steaming water. I was enormously grateful to be able to retreat into the tub that particular night. I’ve always found a long hot bath to be the cure for almost any problem—or at least a way to release its stress.

But it wasn’t long before the tears came yet again. Would I ever stop crying? At the same time, I felt as though every cell in my body were screaming in response to what I had learned.
My dad? My sweet dad?

I cried for the gentle, level-headed, sensible man whose rock-solid love and support built the foundation for the woman I grew up to be. I cried for all the nights he tucked me into bed with a kiss on the forehead and a wish that I would have sweet dreams. I cried for the man who didn’t hide his tears but, instead, wrapped me in his arms, both of us grieving, when we had to put our old dog to sleep. I cried for the shell of a man he became because of his disease, the birds outside the window his only enjoyment.

Could this man also have been a murderer? Could he have murdered the girl they found outside our window that day? What possible reason would my dad—or anyone—have to kill a child? I also felt a pang of disloyalty. My father had taken me and fled this island thirty years ago, and now here I was, stirring up everything he spent his life laying to rest. Maybe I shouldn’t be here at all.

I knew one thing: I was immeasurably grateful to Will for warning me, before I came to the island, not to blurt out the fact that I was the long-dead Halcyon Crane. God knows how that ferry captain might have reacted to the news;
certainly he was around when the incident happened. And what about Mira? She was, I estimated, a decade or more older than I and, by her own account, a longtime islander. She must remember the murder or at least have heard of it. What would people do when they learned the truth? What would they think of me?

I toyed with the idea of leaving the island right away, on the next ferry. I would go home to my safe warm house on Puget Sound without facing these people. But then I remembered: It wasn’t possible, no matter how much I wanted to run away. I had two whole days to endure on this island before the ferry would come.

I slipped under the surface of the water and floated there awhile, holding my breath. It felt good to be weightless, the rush of the water filling my ears.

Then I heard something: laughter. I opened my eyes and saw the face of a little girl looking down at me. The girl in the white dress. With long braids. The same girl I had imagined seeing earlier at Madlyn’s house. She was standing over the tub, watching me. Her mouth didn’t move, but I heard the singing all the same:
Say, say, oh, playmate. Come out and play with me.

I shot up out of the water, sputtering, to find—nobody. I hurried out of the tub, wrapped a towel around me, and padded out into the main room. No one was there. No one had been there. No little girl in a white dress.

My entire body was quivering. Was this girl a figment of my imagination? Was she Julie Sutton, the girl who had died? Was I remembering her?

I pulled on my pajamas, climbed into bed, and found I
could not stop shaking. I switched on the television, wanting to fill the room with voices, and laughter, and ridiculous situations.

I don’t remember turning off the television, but I must’ve done that because I drifted off to sleep. I dreamed of the ferry ride I had taken the day before, only I wasn’t alone on deck as I watched the island emerge out of the water. My father came up behind me and wrapped me in his arms.

“Hi, Peanut,” he said softly.

“Dad!” I cried, hugging him, and only then did I realize that it wasn’t my adult self, there on deck, but myself as a child. He picked me up, and I wrapped my legs around his waist monkey-style, the way small children do.

“I don’t want you to go back there, Hallie,” my father said to me. “It’s not safe for you.”

“But I’m already here, Daddy.”

“Look,” he said, pointing across the water. I turned my head toward the island, which was coming closer and closer. What I saw horrified me: hundreds, maybe thousands, of writhing beings, some in the water, some on land. I believed they were ghosts or spirits of some kind, moving in slow motion, all of them looking at me with empty eyes. They were trying to speak, but their mouths were dark hollow shells.

My father spoke. “You see now, Hallie. This is why I took you away.”

I woke with a start, sweating, my legs caught between the damp, twisted sheets. It was only one o’clock. I had another six hours to get through until daylight.

I
opened my eyes to see the sun streaming in through the windows. Glancing at the clock, I bolted awake. Almost ten-thirty! How could I have slept so late?

As I showered and made my way downstairs, I pondered my dilemma. The way I saw it, I had only two choices: I could hide here, staying out of everyone’s way until the next ferry, sell the house, and never come back to the island again. Or I could do what my father hadn’t done all those years ago: stay and fight.

I found Mira in her office, a tiny room just off the kitchen. I popped my head inside and said hello.

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty!”

“Yeah.” I sighed. “I had a rough day. And night.”

She looked up from the papers in front of her, lowering the pen poised in her hand. “Hallie, is everything okay?” Her expression was so kind. I wondered how it would change when I told her what I had to say.

“Well,” I began, “I got some strange and upsetting news yesterday.”

Mira stood up. “Why don’t I get you some coffee and a muffin and you can tell me all about it.”

My heart was beating so hard in my throat that I was certain it looked like an enormous Adam’s apple. And my stomach was beginning to churn. I hoped I wouldn’t have a repeat performance of last night’s unpleasantness.

Mira had arranged a full pot of coffee, a jug of milk, a few muffins, and two cups on a tray. “Why don’t you come into the sunroom?” She beckoned, sitting down in a wicker armchair while I took the rocker across from her.

As she poured the coffee, adding milk to mine, I leaped directly into the fray. “Madlyn Crane left everything she owned to me.”

Mira choked on the sip of coffee she had just taken. “But I thought you said you didn’t know her.”

“I didn’t,” I said evenly. “But she knew me.” Mira was clearly not understanding, so I went on. “I just found out I’m her daughter.”

Mira stared at me, confusion all over her face, weighing her disbelief against my uncanny resemblance to my mother.

“Madlyn had another daughter?” she said. “I never knew that. I don’t think anyone here knew that.”

Another
daughter. Mira, apparently, was not the brightest bulb. What did she think, Madlyn had two daughters, both named Hallie?

“I don’t know anything about
another
daughter,” I said slowly. “Mira, my name is Hallie James. But islanders would know me as Halcyon Crane.” My former real name echoed like an incantation inside of my head: Halcyon Crane. Me.

Her face was crimson. “But Halcyon was killed thirty years ago.”

“And yet here I am. Believe me when I tell you I’m just as surprised as you are.”

“But”—she was searching for words—”the accident. Halcyon survived?” Mira’s mind was obviously spinning. “How? I was at her funeral.”

I shook my head. “There was no accident. Apparently the whole thing was deliberate. I grew up in Bellingham, Washington, a small town north of Seattle. I lived there all these years with my dad. I grew up thinking my mother was dead, never knowing she was actually very much alive here on the island.”

“Bellingham.” I could see Mira’s mind was racing. She was getting it. “You’re Halcyon. Madlyn and Noah’s daughter.”

Noah. The sound hit me like a thunderbolt. It had never occurred to me that Thomas James wasn’t my father’s real name, but of course it wasn’t. I nodded. “That’s right.” And then I told her about the morning Madlyn’s letter arrived in my mailbox and turned my entire world upside down. “I didn’t believe it myself for a while,” I said to her. “But she sent photos. Apparently it’s all true.”

Silence.

“She didn’t say anything to me,” Mira mused finally, sipping her coffee. “Nothing at all. I wonder how in the world she found you. It’s not like she was looking for an abducted child all these years. Everyone thought you were dead.”

“A friend of hers who lives in Seattle saw a picture of me and my father in a local newspaper,” I explained. “The resemblance
was striking enough for her to mention it to Madlyn.”

Mira nodded, taking it all in.

“What eats at me most is the timing,” I admitted. “I grieved for my mother all my life, and she was right here all the time. She finds me and,
bang
, she’s gone. We were so close to finally seeing each other again, and now I’ll never know her.”

Mira reached over and took my hand. “I could see the resemblance the moment you walked in the door, of course. I thought you were a relative, a cousin maybe . . .” She shook her head. “He escaped. We all thought he was dead. The Suttons—what you must’ve endured all those years at the hands of that monster. I’m so sorry, Hallie.”

I was tempted to play the wounded child card. It was convenient, her feeling sorry for me, but I couldn’t betray my dad for the sake of convenience. “He was no monster, Mira. I loved him more than anything. He was a perfect father.”

The sympathy in Mira’s eyes turned cold. “Perfect father? That’s quite a description, considering the man is a murderer who took you away from your mother and made sure everyone thought you were dead.”

“Mira, please. You don’t know anything about the life I had with my father. He was a good man. I know he was. We were very close.”

“Hallie, you have no idea what that man did.”

“I know exactly what he did—and what he didn’t do,” I told her. “I heard about that girl’s death for the first time yesterday. And my father
didn’t
murder her.”

“You don’t know that. The police—”

Was this how it was going to go with every islander? Was I going to have to defend my dad’s memory in what was tantamount to a street brawl?

“I don’t care what the police said. The man who raised me didn’t kill anybody.”

Mira sniffed. “Tell that to the Suttons.”

“I will!” I said indignantly. “I
will
tell that to the Suttons! Bring them on, Mira! I’m sorry their daughter is dead, but my dad didn’t kill her. I was there. It was an accident.”

Mira’s eyes widened. “You saw what happened? We all suspected as much! That’s why he killed you—or pretended to.”

“I don’t remember it.” I looked down at my hands, trying to regain my composure. “I wish I could. I don’t remember anything about my life here on the island, not one thing. Yes, it looks pretty bad. He took me away from here under false pretenses. He changed our names. I know that now. The only thing I have to go on is what I actually remember—the best father a girl could ever have.”

“You can talk all you want about his being a great father, but it’s not up to you or me,” she said. “This is a police matter, Hallie. There’s no statute of limitations on murder. When the police learn he’s been alive all these years—”

Then it hit me. She didn’t know my dad was dead. “The police aren’t going to reopen this case, Mira,” I told her softly. “My dad’s gone. Remember I said I was having a hard time back home? It was because he died—the day after I got the letter from Madlyn.”

“Noah’s dead?” Mira’s eyes darted back and forth, as if she were looking for something she’d never find. “I . . . this is a lot to digest in one sitting. Noah was alive all these years, but
now he’s dead? You thought your mother was dead all these years, but she was alive—and now
she’s
dead? What you’ve been through!”

“Yeah, it’s been . . . devastating. I guess that’s the only way to describe it.”

“Hallie, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to imply anything or to insult his memory. What you’ve endured these past few weeks I wouldn’t wish on anyone. It’s just that we’ve believed, all this time—”

My head was starting to pound. I ran a hand through my hair. “Thank you for that, Mira. But I know what you’ve believed, and it’s not true. It can’t be.”

“Okay, then,” she conceded. “If it’s not true, if he didn’t kill that poor girl, why did he leave? What other reason could there be?”

“That’s what I need to find out. If he was not guilty of murder, and yet all the evidence pointed to him and the police were bearing down on him, it would’ve been cause enough to run. Or it might have been something else.”

“Another woman, maybe?” Mira offered.

“I don’t think so,” I said slowly. “There was no woman in our lives. My dad never even dated anybody, all those years. When I was in high school, I used to encourage him to see the single mothers of my friends, but he never would. He used to say he had had one true love in his life and that was all he ever needed.”

“If that was so, why would he take her child away from her?” she said icily.

Mira had a point. And suddenly I knew, without a doubt, what I was going to do.