“Look and see if there are any nails in the wal or anything sharp you could use to try to undo mine " Pix did not want her daughter to suffer the way she had; she knew her fingers were bleeding from the rough rope.
Samantha hopped around the lean-to. The moon had risen. It was past eleven o'clock.
“Here's a bunch of nails. They must have hung stuff on them. I'l try to get one with my teeth."
“Be careful!" Al those years of orthodontics, fluoride treatments, sealants. She watched Samantha hop back toward her with a rusty nail in her mouth and kneel by her side. Samantha dropped the nail to the floor and deftly picked it up, starting in on the knot, looking over her shoulder the same way her mother had.
“Boy, are we going to be stiff in the morning.”
“Yes," Pix agreed, stiff, but not stiffs.
“Al right, it's your turn.”
Pix started to sing. This time Mama bought.
After what seemed like hours, Pix was somewhat freed also and they gingerly made their way down to the shore. Coming through the trees, the ocean with the moon streaking across it like a beacon was a welcome sight. Pix had almost fal en in the woods and now she fel on purpose, rol ing over and over toward the shoreline, wel away from the ledges. She closed her eyes as the hard rocks pressed into her body, then opened them when she reached the smoother sand. Samantha fol owed her and they began to cal , "Help! Help! Please, someone help us!”
They decided to take turns, then figured they might as wel wait until morning. No one was within earshot. Pix once more lay as close as she could to her daughter. The wind was picking up. It was getting. colder. Even if they could free themselves, it was too far to swim to the mainland through the frigid waters. Pix reassured Samantha. It offered a measure of comfort for herself, too, despite the disbelief of a quick rescue steadily rising like the tide.
“Don't worry, everything wil be al right in the morning.
Why don't you close your eyes"
“I don't think I can sleep."
“Hush, little baby ..
Before she could get very far into the lul aby, Pix thought she heard the sound of an oar or a paddle. She lifted her head. Wishful thinking. Then the sound came again, more distinctly.
“Yoo hoo! Pix? Samantha? Where are you?" It was Mother.
The three women and Duncan made a somewhat outlandish grouping as they sat on the deck of the Athertons' house waiting for Earl. Neither Pix nor Samantha had wanted to go inside, so Duncan had fetched blankets for them to wrap around themselves and a bottle of brandy and glasses at Mrs. Rowe's suggestion. Pix was drinking from the Baccarat after al . The teenagers had Cokes and were steadily devouring a bag of potato chips. Although hungry, Pix herself did not feel like eating anything from this particular larder.
Warm, the brandy seeping into her weary bones and bloodstream, Pix wanted her mother to tel the story again
—and again just as a child with a favorite book. Like most other parents she knew, she had more quotations from Doctor Seuss and Margaret Wise Brown to hand than Doctor Seuss and Margaret Wise Brown to hand than Shakespeare.
“You actual y have Duncan here to thank more than me," Ursula said.
“I know," Pix answered, and gave the boy yet another hug. Since her mother had climbed out of the canoe and deftly cut their ropes with the Swiss army knife she always carried, Pix had been doing a great deal of hugging.
“I knew something was weird. They had been treating me like shit—excuse me." Duncan flushed and looked at Ursula. "I mean, they had been yel ing at me and saying I was never coming back here, then suddenly Mom gives me some money and tel s me to take al my friends out." He shook his head. "She's been real jittery al summer and it's been worse lately. I thought because of what was happening at camp, and"—he lowered his voice
—"because of what they thought I was doing.”
Pix was indignant. "We owe you an enormous apology!"
“Don't worry about it. I probably would have thought it was me, too. Like who would have thought Mom would go out and buy the same shoes? They're for kids.”
Pix pul ed the blanket closer around her. The wind was picking up and it seemed they might final y get the rain they'd been waiting for al these weeks. It could come. The Fairchilds' foundation was dry. Even if Seth couldn't work for a few days, the ground was so parched, it would be worth it.
The deck they were sitting on seemed another island and time was suspended, making it difficult for her to decide to move. Behind them the house was stil il uminated, a gaudy backdrop to the dark landscape on either side. The waning moon shone across the water and the stars were out, mixing with clouds moving across the sky in an ever-increasing number. The air was fresh. Tilting her head back, Pix drank it in grateful y.
She realized she hadn't been listening to the conversation, and Duncan, uncharacteristical y, was continuing to talk.
“So I go to my friends, `Let's blow the pizza, get snacks, and see the early movie.' I wanted to check out what was happening. I came back here alone. Al the lights were on, but no one was home. They weren't in the office at camp, either, and al the campers and staff were in their cabins. Mom's car was in the driveway and when I looked in the garage, Jim's was there, but yours was, too. It didn't make any sense. You couldn't have al gone somewhere together, unless someone else had picked you up, but you didn't seem to be that kind of friends, anyway. I decided to cal your house. I was going to hang up when you answered so you wouldn't think I was a jerk. When you didn't answer, I began to get this funny feeling. I couldn't cal Earl. We aren't exactly buddies. So I thought of your grandmother. She seemed okay.”
Ursula took up the tale. "I couldn't imagine who was cal ing me at such an hour. Duncan wanted to know if you were there and of course you weren't. I told him I'd be right over." What Ursula did not say was that she knew immediately something was very very wrong. It was a summer out of sync and the disappearance of her daughter and granddaughter had to be serious. She stopped at their house to make sure and found it dark, completely empty.
“It's amazing what we can do when our adrenaline gets going," Pix marveled, thanking God that she had not known at the time her octogenarian mother, who had not driven for years, was racing from The Pines across the causeway to the Athertons in the dead of night in her venerable
"Woody"—a 1949 Plymouth Suburban wagon.
“Fortunate that I had just had the car serviced for Arnie and Claire to use while they're here. Anyway, Duncan had been doing some investigating of his own while I was on my way. When I arrived, he told me there were many things missing from the house—valuable things—and the lobster boat was gone; the Whaler was at the mooring. I cal ed the police, then decided to take the canoe out. Duncan had found some rope and your purse on the floor in one of the rooms upstairs and we were both convinced that you'd been taken someplace under duress”
Pix liked her mother's choice of words—a quaint way to describe the terror that she and Samantha had just suffered.
She looked at the group. It was very late and they were al in one stage or another of extreme exhaustion.
“I think we'd better go home, especial y because it seems a storm is on the way. I know Earl was coming here, but surely the state police have been in touch with him and told him we're al right. He'l know we went home—and al of us are sticking together for the rest of this night, anyway”
When Duncan had reached Earl, the sergeant had immediately launched a search of the area around the camp, including the quarry, cal ing back to tel the boy to stay put with the Mil ers if they turned up at the house.
There was one more thing Duncan wanted to say.
Everyone was being so nice and he felt guilty. "I didn't think Mrs. Rowe should go out in the canoe like that, but I don't know how to paddle one, and she was pretty insistent.”