The Tale of Halcyon Crane (29 page)

In all the excitement, I had forgotten she was coming back that day. Unlike the previous day, she began by taking the Murphy’s Oil Soap in one hand and a rag in the other and setting off to shine the woodwork.

“You’ll hear your mother’s story over lunch,” she told me gruffly.
Fine
, I thought. I grabbed a book and retreated to the sunroom.

Iris joined me there a couple of hours later, carrying a tray holding a bowl of leftover stew and a mug of steaming tea.

“Iris,” I said, as I took a bite of the stew, “I hope you’re not off ended by what I’m about to say, but I’ve been wondering if the stories you’re telling me are the truth, or if they’re embellished
accounts with threads of truth running through them.”

A smile crept across Iris’s face. “It’s the boyfriend doing the wondering, I expect.”

“Well . . .” Where was I to go from there?

She nodded and closed her eyes and sat for a bit. “Do you not see them as I tell their stories?” she said, finally.

“I do. I do see them.” She had a point. I hadn’t told this to Will for fear of how strange it would sound.

“Then you know what I’m saying is true. You’re seeing it as it happened.” She looked at me deeply. Trying to discern what I believed?

“Okay—well, good, then,” I said, awkwardly. “I just wanted to know.” What I really wanted was for her to stop staring at me and get on with today’s tale.

“I was beginning to tell you of Madlyn’s gift,” she began, “her ability to capture bits and pieces of the souls of others through her photography. Have you heard that many ancient cultures—and some not so ancient ones—were convinced of the power of mirrors?”

I nodded slowly. “I think so. It sounds familiar.”

“Many cultures have believed that mirrors hold the power to predict the future, capture people’s souls, and send bad luck to whoever is unfortunate enough to break one.”

That
last one I
had
heard. “Seven years of bad luck.”

“Exactly. Because mirrors capture and contain bits and pieces of a person’s soul. In other cultures, they believe
mirrors are portals to the spirit world, allowing people and spirits to travel back and forth between the two planes.”

“So?” I led her. “What does this have to do with my mother’s photography?”

“Cameras, my dear, contain mirrors. And unlike the fleeting image reflected in a mirror, cameras capture images that remain.”

“Of
course
,” I said. “I’ve heard that. Many Native Americans refused to be photographed. Crazy Horse never allowed a photo of himself to be taken, even on his deathbed.”

Iris smiled like a teacher whose student has finally caught on. “Yes, child. And why?”

“Because the camera would steal a bit of their soul.”

“Exactly. They weren’t wrong. A camera does have the ability to capture the soul of its subject, just as a mirror does. But it needs to be in the right hands to do so. Your mother had such hands. It was her gift. Oh, she didn’t see it right away. Nobody did. But even from a young age, she was drawn to photography. She begged her parents for a camera for her birthday when she was, I believe, about five years old. Of course, Charles could never deny his daughter anything, so he got one for her, believing her interest to be a phase and he would be the one to end up using it.

“But Madlyn was never without that camera. She took it everywhere. When your grandfather got the first set of pictures developed, he was amazed at their quality and clarity. He had expected to see childish snaps: people’s heads cut off, fuzzy landscapes. Instead, he found that his little daughter had taken beautiful, haunting portraits of himself, of Amelia, and of people who had visited the house.

“Charles especially loved Maddie’s portraits of his animals, the horses in the barn and the dogs. He was astonished to find that they represented these creatures in a way that only Charles knew them.

“As you might imagine, Madlyn never wanted to do anything else. In very short order after she graduated from high school, she was working for major magazines, hired on the strength of the photographs she had taken growing up. She was on her way.”

“You’ve told me a lot about my mother’s talents and gifts, Iris, but not much about who she was as a person. I’d like to know that, too.”

“Madlyn was a complicated girl,” Iris said. “She was at times a delight and at times a terror, not unlike many teenage girls today. She would sink into dark moods in which she would talk to no one except—when she thought nobody was listening—her twin. At those times, it was as though her twin’s spirit was attached to her, weighing her down. She continued having these dark moods her whole life, even after she met your father. Sadie never left her. But at other times, as I said, Madlyn was a complete delight. She was Charles’s daughter, all smiles and laughter and goodness. Soon enough, she met your father.”

I smiled at the thought of my young parents. And then another thought struck me. “Iris, you never mentioned my mother being bothered by the triplets. Charles had animals to protect him; who protected my mother?”

Iris nodded her head. “A very good question, Halcyon. Sadie, of course, was there to stand between the girls and your mother. But it was the camera, and Madlyn’s unique ability to
capture souls, that really kept the girls at bay. They knew not to get too close. At least, it was that way when Madlyn was young. When she met your father and brought him into this house, things changed somewhat.

“It was the summer of your mother’s twentieth year. She was already a photographer of some note, living in New York City and traveling all over the world, working for
National Geographic
and other magazines. But this particular summer, she came home to the island because Amelia was in ill health. It was cancer, but nobody knew it then. She had been growing weaker and weaker, and Charles, frantic and already, I believe, grieving, contacted Madlyn and asked her to come home.

“She was a great solace to Amelia and Charles during this time, as you might expect. And they made the most of it, spending every day together, whether it was simply sitting and reading in the house or taking Amelia, who by now was confined to a wheelchair, out onto the cliff for picnics. It was as though they wanted to extract every bit of togetherness they could out of every moment Amelia had left.

“She died in August of that year.” Iris sighed deeply. “Charles grieved for her every day of his life. He never got over losing her, although he did throw himself back into his practice. Tending animals gave him comfort during those first dark days.

“Madlyn, meanwhile, was due back at her New York apartment and her high-powered life the following month, and she was contemplating what she was going to do with her father—take him to New York, perhaps?—when she met Noah Crane.”

I smiled, curling my feet up under me. I loved all of Iris’s stories, grim though they were, but now we were getting to the best ones.

“Noah was working on the island in one of the hotels for the summer with a few of his friends from the mainland. Your mother met him one evening in a pub downtown. He was drawn to her immediately, of course, as everyone was. But the difference was, she was also drawn to him.

“She knew immediately that she would never be going back to that New York apartment. And he knew he wasn’t going to take the teaching job waiting for him in the fall on the mainland. Within a few days of meeting each other, they had both decided to remain on the island and build a life together right here.

“I can see you’d like to know a little about their courtship.” Iris eyed me. “They did all the usual things—dinners and dances and picnics and walks. But most of all, Noah and Madlyn talked. They were able to talk more deeply and intimately to each other than to anyone else.”

It sounded familiar. It’s just how I felt with Will.

Iris went on. “Your father asked about a job at the small local school here on the island. They happened to have an opening for a math teacher, which is what he was, and he didn’t have a moment’s hesitation in accepting the position. Madlyn, meanwhile, called all the editors at her various client magazines and informed them that her home base would now be Grand Manitou, not New York. She would still go on assignment as she always had.

“Everything fell into place so neatly and nicely, Madlyn always suspected her dead mother had had a hand in it
somehow. Of course, that was true. I know for certain that Amelia was whispering in Noah’s ear that night in the pub—
Turn around, turn around now
—when Madlyn was about to walk by. If she hadn’t done that, my dear, you may well have never been born.

“She was also whispering
Stay, stay on the island
into their ears whenever they were together, planting that seed firmly and deeply. Yes, it was all Amelia’s doing that Noah and Madlyn got together and ended up settling down here. She did it all, of course, for her beloved Charles. She was terrified to think of him alone and knew how much he needed his daughter beside him.

“Oh, Amelia was a busy one during those months after her death. But when Madlyn was married to your father and Charles was suitably provided for, she turned toward that ever-present light behind her and saw a tiny figure standing there. Sadie. Amelia ran to her, wrapping her arms around her beloved child for the first time, and the two of them floated away into that light together.”

Iris’s face was softer and kinder than I had ever seen it, perhaps in response to the fact that I was, and had been for the past several minutes, bawling like a baby.

“That was so beautiful, Iris.” I sniffed, wiping my nose with a Kleenex. “But I don’t understand. They were so happy. What could have gone so horribly wrong in just five years to make my father steal me away from her?”

Iris’s face hardened into her familiar expression, but she grasped my hand as she shook her head. “That, my dear, is a
story for another day. It is your story. The tale of Halcyon Crane.”

“You can’t tell me now?” I was desperate to hear it.

“You have guests coming, miss. You need to prepare for them, and I need to take my leave.”

I knew better than to try to stop Iris when she was intent on leaving the house.
Let her go
, I thought. I had a séance to attend.

I
made pasta with chicken, caramelized onions, sun-dried tomatoes, and a Gorgonzola sauce—a recipe pirated from my favorite restaurant back in Seattle. Will brought fresh bread and several bottles of wine (those would definitely be needed) and rattled uncomfortably around the kitchen while I cooked until Mira materialized at the front door, seven o’clock on the dot.

I found her looking—well, just like she always looked. Jeans and a striped shirt, a sweater slung across her shoulders. Funky glasses hanging on a chain around her neck, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She seemed so—I don’t know, normal?—that it startled me. This made her laugh.

“Did you expect me to show up in a velvet cloak?”

I laughed. “Get in here, Madam Mira.”

Our dinner conversation covered everything from the weather to my relationship with Will to island gossip. I was skirting one of the issues I wanted to talk about with her and Will could see it, catching my eye every now and then to give me a look that seemed to say,
So? Ask already.

After a few uncomfortable forays into the subject—”Mira,
I was wondering . . . that is to say, I found out something . . . It got me thinking . . .” I finally choked out the words: “I recently learned that you found our kayak on the day my dad and I disappeared.”

Will winked at me across the table. Mira twirled the pasta around her fork, considering her response.

“That was some day,” she said finally. “Most everyone on the island was out looking for the two of you. I had the feeling I knew where he had gone—somehow I just
knew
—and sure enough, I was right. Still, the sight of that kayak took my breath away. I wanted to be wrong more than anything.” She looked at me with a mixture of regret and anger. “Your father certainly put this island through the wringer with his little stunt.”

Mira was baiting me, trying to shift the focus away from her finding the kayak toward my dad’s sins. But I refused to play along. “Why didn’t you tell me? We’ve had plenty of opportunities.”

“I really don’t know why,” she said, flustered. “When you first came to the island, I was stunned to find out who you were. Who wouldn’t be? You were dead for thirty years, Hallie. And then, as a bit more time went on—I don’t know, it didn’t seem to matter that I had been part of the search party that day. Everyone on the island helped, not just me.”

This made a kind of strange sense. I nodded, ready to change the subject, but Mira leaned toward me and continued, in an almost conspiratorial tone. “The thing is, Hallie, all these years, and especially back then, I had the feeling there was more to the story than we were being told.”

This intrigued me. “You did? How so?”

“Julie Sutton’s death. Your disappearance shortly thereafter. Everyone, especially the police, believed that Noah committed suicide in the face of those allegations and took you with him because you were the one witness to his crime. I wasn’t convinced. If he wanted to end his own life just as the police were bearing down on him, fine, but what would be the point of killing you? He loved you more than you can imagine. And if he
had
committed that horrible crime and somehow killed that girl, the Noah Crane I knew would’ve stood up and faced his punishment.”