This was a good thing. He should feel great. And yet he felt nothing but empty. That money was only coming to him because Carole had died. It was blood money. He wanted none of it.
He didn’t need any goddamn money anyway. From the age of seventeen he’d been fending for himself, and now he had a healthy bank account and complete freedom. That money came from the Berensons’ world. By way of Carole, sure. But it was Berenson money, and to him that meant it was poison.
He floored the accelerator and zoomed down the bluff road at twenty miles above the limit. As if that would help him escape the envelope that lurked in the passenger seat like a silent carjacker.
Five
Even though it was after midnight when Ruthie got home, her mother was still up. Not a surprise; neither of her parents had ever followed normal working hours.
“Honey, is that you?” Angelica Malone called from the kitchen, where she was working on retiling the counter with clay tiles she’d made herself. “Greta Desroches left a message for you. It’s a strange one. She said she consulted with the cedar waxwings and that she’s finally ready to talk to your tape recorder.”
Her first interview! Woo-hoo!
Ruthie hung her denim jacket on the peg in the arctic entry of her parents’ rambling farmhouse. She’d intended to find a place of her own when she got back. Unlike her parents, she liked regular hours and an orderly environment. But she’d been so busy with the museum that she hadn’t had a chance yet. In the meantime, her parents had cleaned out the entire attic for her, since her old room had been converted into a pottery studio for her mother.
In the kitchen, she picked up the message that her mother had written in purple ink on a sheet of pressed-flower notepaper that she’d created during her paper-making phase. “She was supposed to call my cell phone. Sorry about that.”
“You know these elders. They’re fixed in their ways. She probably has our number written down in her address book and that’s good enough for her. Such an intriguing message! Finally ready to talk? Is she confessing to a crime?”
“That would be juicy, wouldn’t it? It’s that oral history project I told you about. I’m trying to get some of the old-timers to tell their stories on tape. I’m going to make digital audio recordings for the museum.”
“Right, of course.” Her mother frowned as she applied glue to the back of a tile. Her hair, strawberry blond fading to silver, flowed down her back like a fairy queen’s. Her feet were bare, since she only wore shoes in the snow. Being the awkward daughter of such a beautiful, ethereal woman hadn’t been easy.
“I thought you dropped that idea. It’s not really your forte, is it? Talking to people?”
“Geez, Mama,” Ruthie protested, a little hurt. “Maybe not in the past, but you keep forgetting I’m grown up now. I talk to people all the time. I thought you’d be proud of how far I’ve come.”
“Oh honey, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. The truth is, I was hoping you’d drop it. If you go around stirring the pot, you never know what might boil over.”
“What pot? What do you mean? That isn’t a real saying, is it?”
“Oh, it’s just… When we first moved here I worked at the newspaper. I covered the town meetings. The rumors I heard…” She shook her head. “Just don’t be surprised if you dig up some doozies, that’s all. Lost Harbor has a wild past.”
“I hope I do! That’ll make the whole project worth it. Can you make me a list of some of these rumors, names included?” She pulled out a journal from her bag.
“Oh no, honey. I’m staying out of it, just like I stay far away from town meetings now. But…” She cocked her head, her eyes gleaming. “Greta Desroches isn’t a bad place to start.”
Beaming, Ruthie pulled out her phone to call the number Mrs. Desroches had left.
Her mother waved the glue brush at her. “Tomorrow will do just fine, don’t you think?”
Right. It was after midnight. As always, she’d gotten a little carried away. She put her phone back and headed for the stairs at the back of the kitchen.
“How’s little Ralphie doing?” her mom asked as she passed by.
“He’s fine.”
Fine, but…unexciting? Was that a disloyal thing to think?
“I hope you can resume your friendship. You were such good friends when you were little. Like brother and sister. Siblings and friends.”
A knot formed in her stomach. Mama was making a point here, and she knew exactly what it was. Don’t expect anything more than sibling/friendship from Ralphie.
“Good night, Mama. Don’t forget to sleep.”
“I’ll set an alarm.”
“Most people do that when they want to wake up, not sleep.”
Her mother waved her off as she climbed the stairs to the second floor, and then the ladder that led to the attic. Over the years, her parents had reworked this house to suit their own quirky tastes. Reading nooks, studio space, hand-carved lintels, murals covering entire walls, everywhere you looked there was an explosion of creativity.
But Ruthie was adopted, and somehow none of her parents’ artistic abilities had rubbed off on her. She was meticulous instead of messy, detail-oriented instead of expressive. She liked order and consistency. She had a wild imagination, but it stayed in her head instead of turning into art. For example…well, Herrington the fish-boy.
Some of her fantasies about Ralphie were pretty imaginative too, come to think of it.
She sighed at the thought of her crush and their awkward dinner. What had she expected? Some kind of instant starburst of destiny? If so, it hadn’t been anything like that. Pleasant enough, swapping memories and so forth—and yet so anxiety-provoking that she’d been relieved when he left.
Was the boat canopy just an excuse for him to flee? Boats were used to being exposed to rain. It must have been. Alastair was right. She’d gone completely overboard. The lottery tickets in the bouquet… She cringed at the memory.
Ralphie was a mellow guy, while she, as they said, “had no chill.” Not a bit. At least not when it came to the blond mini-god of her childhood.
And honestly, not with most other things either. She tended to get fully immersed in whatever she was doing. With certain things—projects, research, Ralphie—she could get just a teensy bit obsessive and forget all about proper behavior.
The walls of her little attic loft were proof of that. One entire wall had a long timeline of the history of Lost Harbor tacked to it. She’d used a roll of butcher paper and different-colored sharpies to mark the big events. It started with the very first native groups who had come here for seasonal clam digging. Then there was the arrival of Western explorers, who named it Lost Harbor because the second time they tried to find it, the entire bay was shrouded in mist.
At some point, a vein of coal had been discovered in the local bluffs, and enterprising miners had attempted to make a business out of that. It had failed because the coal was poor quality, but that hadn’t stopped the local land profiteers from trying to sell off large blocks of bluffside property. In fact, that was how the lighthouse property had become available. She’d drawn a lighthouse on the mark for 1952, which was when it had been built.