Dealing with my uncle was another matter. Uncle Mutt might easily believe Philip was up to no good, but would he accept Wendy's involvement in these machinations? I had no proof-and no idea how Wendy planned to pry the funds from Uncle Mutt's wallet. It depended on how much money was at stake. A few hundred? A few thousand? A million? I blew out exasperated breath. My stomach rumbled. I stood and headed back toward the dock.
Time to see what Wendy had cooked up for lunch. I'd have preferred to know what she was concocting for my unsuspecting great-uncle.
I don't have a career in espionage awaiting me. I snuck in the front door, thinking Wendy would be occupied in the kitchen. Wrong. She spotted me entering the house. She was setting the table in the dining room and she raised a perfect eyebrow at me-me. with my dirtied clothes and bloodied arm.
“Good Lord. What happened to you?”
I shrugged. “I was exploring and I took a tumble down a dune. I scraped my arm on a shell or something. I'm okay.” As soon as I manufactured this fib I thought: Shouldn't you have a little more sand in your hair? And clothes? And in the wound?
Wendy didn't appear to notice my relatively sand-free state. She examined my arm critically. “We've got a first-aid kit in the kitchen. I'll clean that up for you, or I'll find Deborah. She'd probably be insulted if I didn't let her exercise her vocation.”
“I'll tend to it myself,” I blurted. This woman made me uneasy. Wendy was no cowering servant girl from a Victorian novel. The coldness of her laugh, the educated way in which she spoke, the assurance she showed in dealing with Philip-it was a combination that didn't lend itself to domestic duties. And I'd detected concern in her voice for my injury. Who was this woman?
Her perfect eyebrow arched again. “Unless you're limber enough to kiss your elbow, you can't tend to this. Here, sit down.” I waited while she fetched the first-aid kit. She cleaned the wound, tsking as she did so. “That's a big scrape, Jordan. You want to be careful and keep it disinfected.” I watched while she spread medication across the skinned arm and taped bandages to it. Her touch was surprisingly tender.
“Thanks,” I said as she finished. “I'll try not to be such a klutz.”
She closed the first-aid kit with a click and regarded me with curious eyes.
The phone rang, and she sighed. “Probably another person calling to offer sympathy for Lolly's death. I think everyone in Calhoun County must be worried over Mutt.”
“It's nice to be liked,” I offered.
She shrugged. “He's important. I don't know if that's the same as being liked.” She answered the phone softly, explained that Mutt was unavailable, and began to make sympathetic assurances into the receiver. After a few moments she thanked the caller, jotted down the name and number, and hung up the phone.
“All that concern for the living,” she said, half to herself. She glanced up at me. “They don't worry about the dead.”
“They're beyond worry,” I offered. The words rang horribly callous to me and I blushed.
“You're right. We can only help the living. That's a favorite saying of Mutt's.” Her gaze seemed locked on some faraway object, and I felt the unintended sting of her words. Bob Don was living; the man I called Daddy was dead. My mother was dead, too, although she maintained an illusion of life by filling her lungs with air and pumping blood through her veins. But the thoughts that wandered through her brain were homeless and ill-formed, and her memories were warped and unplayable, like a vinyl record album melted by the sun. It wasn't life.
We can only help the living.
Wendy saw pain in my face and gracefully changed the subject. “I'm afraid lunch isn't fancy-salad and sandwiches. It should be ready in a few minutes.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I'll just go get cleaned up.” I excused myself and sauntered up the stairs; a backward glance told me Wendy eyed me speculatively, as though she found the story of my injury doubtful. Had she and Philip seen me in the grass and just played a joke on me? My name had come up rather abruptly, and I hadn't spied on them the whole time to see if they'd spotted me.
I paused on the stairs. I could feel the weight of Uncle Jake's stare on my back. I glanced over my shoulder; he was watching me with the cool glare of someone who has seen a lot of pain in his life.
“Your daddy's upstairs, I believe,” he said softly.
Oh, God. Had he heard the venomous argument between Sass and me? The greenhouse, after all, was his favorite haunt. I wasn't eager to have my problems become fodder for this family's discussions.
“Thanks. Maybe I'll go talk to him.” I could think of no other answer to offer.
“Think that'd be a good idea, boy. Fathers and sons shouldn't be so far apart.” He thumped an arthritic hand against the pages of his book; his fingers curled like a talon. “Your father had a hard enough time with his daddy, don't make history repeat itself.”
“I think history always does repeat itself,” I said. “We seem to make the same mistakes, over and over again.”
“This family. This island. Yes.” Jake's eyes glittered with the hard light of truth. “You're a perceptive boy.”
An unaccountable shudder ran along my spine. Creepy old man, sitting in the library like some warped oracle. I wanted to be away from him.
“See you later, Uncle Jake,” I said, and scurried up the steps. I could feel the weight of his incessant stare on my shoulders, as dreadful as the gaze of a dead orb.
Instead of going to my room or to Bob Don's, I headed to Candace' s. I knocked on her door. Her voice, strained, bade me wait a moment; then I heard the sound of a toilet flushing, and water gurgling in a sink. She opened the door with a damp washcloth pressed to her chin. Her skin was pale and her eyes had trouble focusing on me.
“Hey, what's wrong?” I asked. She turned and sat on the bed. From the bathroom I could smell the faint, sour odor of vomit.
“Oh, I'm okay. I ate a snack that didn't agree with me. I'm fine.”
All the talk of poison made my heart stop at the mention of distasteful food. “You sure? I'll get Deborah to take a look at you-”
“No, I don't need Deborah. I'll be fine, really. It's nothing. Just let me lie down for a bit.”
“Wendy's fixing lunch. How about some soup, sugar?”
“Uh, no. I'm really not hungry.” She rubbed her eyes and sighed.
“What'd you eat?”
“What?”
I took her hand. “Eat. What did you eat that made you feel queasy?”
“It's really nothing, Jordan, I wish you wouldn't conduct the Spanish Inquisition over this. I think I ate some bad cheese or something. I'm fine.” She lay down on the bed and noticed my bandaged arm for the first time. “What happened to you?”
I closed her bedroom door. Candace doesn't approve of me sticking my nose into other folks' business and I didn't want to admit to my recent exploration of the island, my discovery of the graveyard, and the conversation between Philip and Wendy. So I told her the same story I'd fed Wendy.
“Good Lord. Well, be careful.” Candace covered her eyes with her wet terrycloth veil, but her tone of voice let me know she was staring at me right through the cloth. Women can do that, you know. “Maybe you shouldn't traipse around this island alone.”
“It's fun. Like a boyhood adventure. I feel like Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn.” I tried to sound carefree.
She raised one corner of the cloth to fix a baleful eye on me. “You quit being a boy quite a while back, darling. At least I hope so. Your behavior doesn't always support that conclusion.”
“You're no fun.”
“Have you apologized to Aunt Sass?”
“I tried. We were getting along fine until she started chewing my ass out for not letting Bob Don in my life. Like she knows anything about it.” I didn't elaborate on Sass's rather valid reasons for disliking me. I wasn't too crazy about myself at the moment. I walked over to the window- the bay draws you like a magnet, especially if you grew up never seeing water wider than a river or a little lake-and contemplated the ceaseless rhythm of the waves.