Tom reached for Faith's hand while he watched Benjamin careen over the tree roots and pine needles in the path. "I know you're mad, Faith, and I'd adore Benjamin to grow up just like you. But a little like me. Besides, it wouldn't kill you to go swimming. You should try my method. You jump in all at once and swim like hell for a few seconds. Your blood gets going and it's really warm."
“Sounds like great fun, Tom," Faith said. "You knew I wasn't a Campfire Girl when you met me and I'm too old to change even if I wanted to, which I don't." Faith had always been suspicious of exercise conducted outside a health club, spa, or ski resort.
She took a few deliberately limber strides. "And I don't particularly care to have aspersions cast upon me." Umbrage tended to embellish Faith's vocabulary.
“I know, darling, don't worry. And I won't teach Benjamin to shoot, swear, and spit. He'll have to learn them on his own.”
They looked fondly at said Benjamin for an instant before realizing he was no longer in front of them, but had abandoned the path for greater adventure and was in the act of climbing a huge rock. They lunged together. Faith might not be Gertrude Ederle, but she could run fast.
“Want wock!" Benjamin screamed. Faith sighed. Even with trusty Samantha, Tom's absence was going to be tough going. How did single parents cope? She made a mental note never to get divorced no matter how many touch football games Tom wheedled her into.
The phone was ringing as they entered the cottage. Faith picked it up. Pix was on the other end.
“Faith, fantastic news! They're going to auction off the contents of Matilda Prescott's house next Thursday. It's under ‘Special Events' and there's so much listed I can't read it all over the phone, but there were some lovely things in the house and goodness knows what was in the attic! She only died a month ago, and I thought it would take them longer to go through things. I didn't even know the will had been probated.”
It was good news. Faith loved auctions, although until she had come to New England they had been of quite a different nature and mood. Now she knew enough to bring her own chair and a thermos of coffee, and to arrive at the crack of dawn to inspect things.
She hung up and told Tom. He was crestfallen. House auctions were his favorites, and he told Faith to try to get him any old tools she saw, especially if there were box lots. You never knew what you'd turn up in one of those. He was still hoping to come across a daguerrotype of Lincoln at the bottom of one, as a friend of his parents allegedly had some years earlier.
Faith fed Benjamin and together they put him to bed, chanting Goodnight Moon, his current favorite, in unison. By the second bowlful of mush, he was asleep.
Afterward they sat on the porch again and ate steaming bowls of fish chowder. Tom was thinking how much better it was than mush, whatever that was, when Faith interrupted his train of thought just before he could speculate on what she had made for dessert.
“I'm going to miss you, Tom," Faith said solemnly. "This is the longest we'll have been separated since Ben was born."
“I know, sweetheart. I'm not looking forward to it much. I'd love to stay here. Pix is right. This place really is perfect. Anyway, the time will go fast. You'll have all these exciting things to keep you busy—auctions and potluck suppers."
“ `Exciting' is not the word we're searching for here. The last thing in the world these next couple of weeks are going to be is exciting. But that's all right with me. I'll get all those books and New Yorkers read that I've been putting aside all winter. And I have to work on some new recipes.”
It was twilight and the tide was still high. A lone Larus atricilla, better known as a laughing gull perched on a rock and slung his strident cry at the approaching dark: "Ha-haha-haah-haah.”
2
The sun shone steadily on the ocean, creating island mirages and turning the real ones into silver silhouettes. Faith had closed her eyes against the brilliance and would soon have to move to a shadier spot, but for the moment it was delicious to bask in the warmth, listening to the steady thumping noise of the wheel as Eric Ashley transformed lumps of clay into graceful goblets. He had set up his kickwheel on the desk in front of the Miller's boathouse to take full advantage of the sun and the view.
Eric seemed to have no trouble talking and working at the same time, although his eyes never strayed from the cone shape he was pushing up and down. Faith had never watched anyone work on a wheel before, and she found herself irresistibly fascinated by the phallic shape that rose, fell, and rose higher again, before Eric plunged his fingers into the glistening shiny wet center, spreading it into the cup for his goblet. Her heart beat a little faster in time to the wheel. Tom had been away only since Saturday. Two days. Labor Day seemed further away than ever.
“Of course everyone is calling us `fortune hunters' and worse, much worse," Eric was saying.
Faith didn't know Eric, or Roger, well enough to have formed an opinion; but certainly Pix had been surprised along with the rest of Sanpere to find that Matilda Prescott had left her magnificent house not to flesh and blood, but to these two off-islanders. Pix had been in the IGA when she heard one bitter Prescott connection say, "Why didn't she just have the place torn down? Same thing.”
Matilda did leave the contents of the house to her relatives, and Sonny Prescott was the executor. It was his decision to auction the whole caboodle off at once rather than have endless arguments and lifetime feuds over who was supposed to get which teapot and to whom Matilda had faithfully promised the rosewood parlor furniture. This way, they'd split the money, and if someone was dying to have something, why he could just bid at the auction like everyone else. There was some grumbling over this, especially among those with the faithful promises, at least three of them for the parlor furniture; but in general the Prescotts thought Sonny had done the fair thing. However, first a bevy of them, including Sonny, was going through every chest, every drawer, every possible secret hiding place for the gold.
Darnell Prescott's gold that is.
Matilda's father, Darnell had owned the lumberyard, and it was widely known that he never trusted banks—even before the crash—nor did Matilda. He paid cash for everything, and there wasn't a Prescott on the island who didn't ardently believe in the existence of a well-worn leather pouch filled with gold coins. Others tended to classify it with Captain Kidd's cave—the real one was on virtually every island within sight.
Even if some of the Prescotts were skeptical, they weren't taking any chances of seeing headlines in the Ellsworth American, "Vacationing Indiana Couple Buys Trunk Filled with Gold Coins at Local Auction." Or still more catastrophic, having Eric and Roger pull up a loose floorboard and discover the loot.
The kickwheel stopped, and Eric deftly sliced the goblet from the base of clay and set it in a row of others in the shade.
“It's not as if her family ever paid much attention to her. They couldn't stand her and she couldn't stand them. We lived next door to her for years, and they wouldn't even bother to plow her out in the wintertime. Roger and I did. Not that we ever thought she would do something like this. My God, I couldn't believe it when the lawyer told us, but now I realizeshe was dropping a lot of hints just before she died. I had made some lobster stew, which she loved, and brought it over. She was bed-ridden at the end, you know. She kept saying over and over how terrible it was about our house. It burned down in May, Pix probably told you. Then she went on saying we wouldn't have to worry long. I thought she meant because Pix and Sam had let us have this place and said something about the Millers being great people. Matilda kind of humphed, which meant she agreed, but she went right on talking about how far away it was from our studio and how were we going to meet our orders?”