“It will be delicious," she commented.
“Waal, can't say I ever cared much for the creatures. I like a good steak myself," he said.
“That's got to be a bit harder to find than fish on this island." She smiled.
“Ayup, but we always want what we can't get, Mrs. Fairchild." The intensity of his glance full in her face seemed to pin her against the wall next to some coiled rope, netting, and a long fly trap black with prey.
“I suppose so," she said without looking away. She paid and joined Pix on the dock, wondering as she did whether what had just occurred was an oblique reference to Matilda's house, the quilt, or a come-on. Maybe all three. She'd never heard him say "Ayup" before either. A reminder of turf?
He stood in the doorway and watched them go to the car.
“I'm sorry he didn't have any scallops. Maybe Monday," Pix said.
“What do you know about him? He seemed almost sinister today. The last time I was here, he was full of jokes and talked my ear off. Do you think he's heard about the quilt?"
“No, or he would have said something. Sonny and Margery Prescott are as honest as they come. We've known them for years. He's probably worried about the catch today, or maybe he's not feeling well. You know there can be logical explanations for things, Faith. You're beginning to imagine bandits behind every bush."
“I suppose you're right. I do feel surrounded by a kind of cocoon of suspicions. I keep looking at people and wondering where they were when Bird was killed, or the house broken into, or even if they have the kind of drill that made the holes in Roger's boat.
“Well, Sonny certainly has a drill like that, I'm sure. And I'm equally sure he didn't do it." Pix's mouth was set in a firm straight line. It reminded Faith of the lines they used to have to draw under the predicate with their rulers when she was in grade school. The line suddenly curved toward the rest of the sentence.
“I thought this was going to be the perfect vacation for you and you'd fall in love with the island. How wrong could a person be?"
“Not very wrong at all! I do love the island, and while it certainly hasn't been the perfect vacation, it hasn't been dull. And anyway, nothing more is going to happen, except when we find the treasure." Faith was surprised to hear her declaration of allegiance to Sanpere and even more surprised to realize it was true.
Both children had gone down for gaps when they returned. Pix decided to go home, take an allergy pill, and lie down too. The "nannies" reluctantly relinquished their role and went with her. Pix had promised to take them to the danceat the Legion Hall that night, and they had to decide what to wear. This could take all afternoon.
As Pix was leaving, Faith said, "If you don't feel up to it, I can take the girls to the dance for a while and you can lie down here."
“Oh, I'm sure I'll be all right. These pills are magic, though I do hate taking them. They make me so dopey.”
Pix was loath to take even an aspirin and was driven to any form of medication only if in dire pain. Faith had found this to be characteristic of New Englanders. They seemed to revel in the antique remedies enjoyed by their foremothers and -fathers, righteously avoiding the relief provided by modern medicine. "Let Nature take its course," one parishioner was fond of saying whenever she heard of an illness in the congregation. Faith reflected if we had let Nature take its course unhindered all these years, most of us would be dead.
“Call me if you need me," she shouted after Pix. "Otherwise, I'll talk to you tomorrow.”
After they left, she felt a certain relief. The children were asleep and it was nice to be alone. It would have been nicer if Tom was there—he had called early in the morning to make sure she was still alive and kicking, or so she had accused him. She was extremely happy to hear his voice, though, and they agreed he would call at the same time for the next few days.
Now, after the intensity of the last twenty-four hours, she was content to go into the kitchen and poach some fish for the mousse. She decided to bake some bread too. The real comfort food. The real comfort smell.
She couldn't keep her thoughts away from the scene in Bird and Andy's shack. She plunged her hands into the dough, trying to knead away the memory of all that redness, all that blood. As she built up the rhythm and felt the dough smooth into an elastic texture under her hands, she wondered how Bill Fox was. The Fraziers hadn't called. His silent grief had a self-destructive quality, or perhaps it was self-preservation—if he gave way to what he was feeling, it would be impossible to be whole again. Either way it was terrible. She tried to think about Bird. Who was she? Was it simply her startling beauty that had enthralled Bill and Roger, or had it been more than that? Faith had categorized her immediately as the flower child of parents poised in the sixties forever, picturing Bird's mother in black tights, ballerina flats, sack dress, and Student Peace Union button, teaching little Bird to weave, silk screen, or whatever. Or maybe Bird was as romantic in her way as Bill, yearning for what she imagined the sixties to have been like and re-creating them in her person. Whatever she had been, she had a kind of consistency Faith admired—from afar. Bird had decided to live a certain way and had not merely adopted a few surface trappings—the beads, the hair, and inevitable water-buffalo sandals.
Faith put the bread to rise again and went upstairs. Zoë was lying in the cradle awake and talking softly to herself. Faith leaned down to pick her up and thought how much simpler it would be to adopt Zoë than go through the whole tedious business of pregnancy again. Maybe it wasn't such a crazy idea. It could be that Bird didn't have any family, or perhaps if she did, they wouldn't want the child or be able to take her. And Andy had told the police he wanted nothing to do with Zoë, that she was all Bird's idea.
Ben was up too, and they all went outside again. He taught Zoë by example how to roll down the little hill behind the cottage and soon they were shrieking with delight.
It was late in the afternoon and Faith was gathering her small charges for mousse when the phone rang. She grabbed them to hurry inside before it stopped—something that happened with irritating frequency.
It was Pix, or some approximation of Pix. Her nose was so stuffed up, she sounded like a caricature of herself.
“Faith, cud you ruddy tage de gurls to de danse?”
Faith hastened to interrupt her. It was a horrible sound.
“Don't say another word. Please. Of course I can take them. Why don't you plan to spend the night here, both of you? Then you can get settled in bed when the kids go to sleep. You know there's plenty of room.”
In between major trumpeting into possibly an entire box of tissues, they established that Pix would come over after dinner and spend the night. Samantha was going home with Arlene, and Faith could drop them there no later than eleven o'clock, which Pix and Arlene's mother had established as a reasonable curfew.
Faith hung up the phone and turned her thoughts to what to wear. It wasn't going to be Capote's Black and White Ball, but she didn't think she should turn up in jeans. Pix had told her that there would probably be a few square dances sandwiched between the band's renditions of Pink Floyd and Lawrence Welk favorites. The Saturday-night dances attracted a wide age range. Faith lacked the requisite circle skirt and petticoats for do-si-doing, but she thought she would dress for the spirit of that part of the soiree and decided on a pale-blue Eileen West sundress with a wide skirt. At the last moment she tied a black ribbon around her neck and promptly took it off in the car. It had been a close call.