No one answered her; Matt stirred in Colin's lap.
And before they were able to begin speculation, Tabor was back, his face red and his mouth set tight. "The ferry," he told them when he slapped his hat hard on his desk. "The goddamned ferry's gone."
"But why?" Montgomery asked, bewildered.
"It figures, doesn't it?"
"How?" Peg said.
"How else do you get off this island?" No way else, she thought… except the fishing boats.
Garve saw her expression, and he grabbed for his hat again. "Yup. I think I'll make a quick run to talk to Alex. He must've heard the ferry go, too."
"Wait," Colin said, and Matt shifted in his arms.
"Look, Col-"
"No. Just listen a minute. You're going out there to warn Alex, right? Well, would you mind telling me what you're going to warn him about?"
The chief stammered a moment before saying, "Lilla, who else? She's obviously crazy, she probably killed Warren, and now she's doing things like that," and he gestured in the vague direction of the bay.
"You don't know for sure she did it."
"She was heading that way."
Colin squirmed to get more comfortable. "And what about Tess, Garve?"
No one said a thing.
"I think before you leave, we'd better decide exactly what it is we're really facing out there."
"You have an idea?"
He stroked Matt's hair, and Peg wanted to cry.
"Yeah. Yeah, I think I do. I didn't know before, but after what I saw and heard back there in the cell, I have a fair idea."
"If it has anything to do with ghosts," Garve said, half joking, half angry, "I don't want to hear it."
"Then don't listen, friend, because that's all I have."
Rose Adams sat in the living room and stared mournfully at the brown class register on her rolltop desk. So many names there, she thought as she brushed a finger over her own name embossed in gold on the flexible cover. So many names. She tried to run through each of her classes for the past ten years, a trick she'd learned from an older teacher long since gone, a trick that was supposed to help her remember the new students.
It had never worked, but whenever she was feeling depressed, whenever her family got too rambunctious and rebellious, she tried to remember every name she could. Like counting sheep, it would dull her mind to the demands it made on her.
Not today, however.
The wind was screaming something fierce outside the window, and Mitch hadn't returned from his search for baby Frankie, and Denise had somehow managed to sneak out of the house without her seeing. My God, when would they ever wake up and really appreciate all the things she did for them, all the sacrifices she'd made just so they could have clothes on their backs and food on the table. God knew, if she left it to Mitch they'd be on welfare by tomorrow.
Now here it was Saturday, and tonight-she looked at her watch and realized with a silent gasp it was less than four hours away-tonight at seven there was the big party at the Clipper Run. If they didn't get home soon, they wouldn't have time to make themselves presentable.
She sighed loudly, slapped her hands wearily against her thighs and pushed herself out of the chair. She was still in her bathrobe, but there'd been little incentive so far to get into a dress. With no one around to care how she looked, even on a weekend, why should she bother?
She looked to the sideboard, then, and the cabinet beneath. A drink, maybe. A fortification against the battles she knew would come when they returned. No, she thought with a decisive shake of her head and a deliberate glance away. It was too soon for that, and she hadn't clung to the wagon this far with Hugh's help to fall off now. Though God knew she needed a good toot now and then when Frankie started acting up and Denise refused to listen to her advice. My God, she'd say, I'm a teacher, don't you know that? A teacher! I know things. I know life, for God's sake!
But Frankie would only shrug and look sullen, and Denise would just smile and wiggle her ass out of the house.
Rose looked at her watch. Not time for the first drink yet, but what she should do is take a shower, be ready when Frankie or Mitch or Denise finally came home. That would show them. That would teach them a lesson, that planning in the home is just as important as planning in the classroom. She'd be all ready and sitting properly in the living room while they were all running around swearing and screaming and working up a sweat that would stain their good clothes.
Oh, God, she thought as she headed up the stairs, isn't it bad enough I got this sickness without having this family, too?
A hour later she wrapped a pink terrycloth towel around her and scuttled out of the bathroom, laughing to herself as she stumbled into the bedroom and switched on the vanity light. God, she loved that massage thing Mitch had installed at the beginning of the summer; it did things to her she thought were almost sinful.
A look at the gold watch placed carefully on the dresser, and she went to the closet to choose the dress she would wear. At the window, however, she stopped and looked out. She expected to see the fog that was giving her a case of nerves she didn't need.
What she saw was Mitch, Denise, and Frankie standing in the middle of the backyard.
She rapped a knuckle on the pane.
They looked up, one by one.
Thank God, she thought in relief and annoyance, and turned to hurry from the room when something about them made her look out again. It was Denise; she was naked, and there was a stick or something clinging her to shoulder. Oh, God, she prayed in furious resignation, what are they doing to me now? What if the neighbors… she clenched her fists until the spasm of rage subsided, then rushed to the stairs so she could give them all hell when they came in to explain.
The wind toppled a patio chair and tore a shingle from the roof.
She changed her mind and headed straight for the kitchen, where she could face them squarely, the queen of this damned house and they'd better not forget it.
Denise was the first to come through the door.
PART FOUR
October: Saturday
ONE
Colin stood in the front of the boarded window, a lighted cigarette in his right hand, his left jammed into his hip pocket. Crushed butts littered the floor at his feet, and his hair was a slick tangle over his brow from constant tugging and violent shakes each time the enormity of what he was saying thrust itself home.
"We saw the signs of what was happening a hundred times." He stopped, changed his mind, "f saw them, but didn't know what I was looking for, so didn't know what I was seeing. But they were all there-Lilla's reluctance to have Gran buried in the usual way, her insistence that he was furious at us for imaginary evils… I kept assuming her grief had mixed up her time sense. What else was I going to think?
"But at my place yesterday, just before Peg came over, Lilla was telling me straight out he'd not died at all, or he'd come back somehow, and he was out to get what he believed was his due. He was using some… some power of his to get what he thought we had cheated him out of.
"He was dead, and now he's back.
"Needless to say, I didn't believe a word. Power like that belongs in dreams and movies."
"It doesn't exist," Montgomery said simply. Seated at El's desk, he looked at Garve first, then at Peg and
Matt who were in a chair at the back of the room, Matt still asleep and sprawled in her lap.
"It does exist," Colin insisted without heat. "I don't know what's behind it, how it does what it does, but it damn well exists and Tess Mayfair's walking is the proof. What Garve and I saw there in the cell block was just icing on the cake.