“Well, nobody seems to be at home over there,” Captain Hamilton said, nodding out across the pond. “Do you have any idea where Mr. Reed and the little girl might be?”
I remembered the last thing I’d seen at Mr. Reed’s house, Mrs. Reed bolting across the lawn, Mary trotting at her side, both of them headed for the old gray shed.
“I think I know where she is,” I said.
Captain Hamilton appeared surprised to hear it. “You do?”
“In the shed,” I answered.
“What shed?”
“There’s a shed about a hundred and fifty yards or so from the house.”
Captain Hamilton watched me closely. “Would you mind showing it to me, Henry?”
I nodded. “All right,” I said, though the very thought of returning to Mr. Reed’s house sent a dreadful chill through me.
Captain Hamilton glanced at Miss Channing, then touched the brim of his hat. “We’ll be talking again,” he said as he took my arm and led me away.
Moments later, as he would testify the following August, Captain Hamilton and I made our way along the edges of Black Pond. The old shed stood in a grove of trees, its door tightly closed, locked from the outside with a large, rusty eyebolt.
Only a few feet away we heard a sound coming from inside. It was low and indistinct, a soft whimper, like a kitten or a puppy.
“Step back, son,” Captain Hamilton said when we reached the door.
I did as he told me, waiting a short distance away from the shed as he opened the door and peered in. “Don’t be afraid,” I heard him say as he disappeared inside it. Seconds later he stepped back out into the light, now with Mary in his arms, her clothes drenched with her own sweat, her long blond hair hanging in a tangle over her shoulders, her blue eyes staring fearfully at Captain Hamilton, asking her single question in a soft, uncomprehending voice—Where’s my mama gone?—and which she would hear answered forever after in a cruel school-yard song:Into Black Pond
Is where she’s gone
Drowned by a demon lover
Mr. Reed’s car had already been dragged from the pond when Captain Hamilton and I got back to Milford Cottage. Mrs. Reed’s body had been taken from it by then, transported to Henson’s Funeral Parlor, as I later learned, where it was placed on a metal table and covered with a single sheet.
Miss Channing and I were standing near the cottage when my father arrived. He looked very nearly dazed as he moved toward us.
“Dear God, is it true, Henry?” he asked, staring at me.
I nodded.
He looked at Miss Channing, and in that instant I saw a terrible dread sweep into his face, a sense that there were yet darker things to be learned from Black Pond. Without a word he stepped forward, took her arm, and escorted her inside the cottage, where they remained for some minutes, talking privately, my father standing by the fireplace, Miss Channing in a chair, looking up at him.
They had come back outside again by the time Captain Hamilton strode up to the cottage. He nodded to my father in a way that made it obvious that they already knew each other.
“Your son’s a brave boy, Mr. Griswald,” Captain Hamilton said. “He tried his best to save her.”
I felt my eyes close slowly, saw Mrs. Reed staring at me through a film of green water.
“The car looks fine,” Captain Hamilton added, now talking to all of us. “No problem with the brakes or the steering column. No reason for an … accident. Henry, when the car went by, could you see Mrs. Reed behind the wheel?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t notice anything but the car.”
Captain Hamilton started to ask another question, but my father intervened.
“Why would that matter, Captain?” he asked. “Whether Henry saw Mrs. Reed or not?”
“Because if there was nothing wrong with the car, then we begin to wonder if there was something wrong with the person driving it.” He shrugged. “I mean something like a seizure or a heart attack, some reason for Mrs. Reed to lose control the way she did.”
For a moment, no one spoke. Then Captain Hamilton turned his attention to Miss Channing. “This young woman, Sarah Doyle. Did Mrs. Reed know her?”
Miss Channing shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
Captain Hamilton appeared to turn this over in his mind, come to some conclusion about it before going on to his next thought. “And what about you, Miss Channing? Did Mrs. Reed know you?”
“Only slightly.”
“Had she ever visited you here at the cottage?”
“No.”
The captain’s eyes drifted toward the road, remained there briefly, then returned to Miss Channing. “Well, if Mrs. Reed didn’t know you, why would she have been coming this way?” he asked her. “It’s a dead end, you see. So if she didn’t have any business with you, Miss Channing, then why would she have been headed this way at all?”
Miss Channing replied with the only answer available to her. “I don’t know, Captain Hamilton,” she said.
With that, my father suddenly stepped away, tugging me along with him. “I have to get my son home now,” he explained. “He needs a change of clothes.”
Captain Hamilton made no attempt to stop us, and within a few seconds we were in my father’s car. It was the middle of the afternoon by then, the air impossibly bright and clear. As we backed away, I saw Captain Hamilton tip his hat to Miss Channing, then step away from her and head out toward the pier, where, at the very end of it, I could see Mr. Parsons facing out over the water, clothed in his dark suit, his homburg set firmly on his head.
CHAPTER 27
Once we got back home, my father told me to change quickly and come downstairs. Sarah had been taken to Dr. Craddock’s clinic, he said, and all of us were to come to her bedside as soon as possible. I did as I was told, pulling off clothes that had once been soaked through but were now only damp, then rushed back downstairs to find my father waiting edgily on the front porch, my mother already in the car.
“I knew something bad was coming,” she said as I climbed into the backseat of the car. “A woman knows.”
Dr. Craddock’s clinic was situated in a large house on the eastern end of Chatham. It had once been the home of a prosperous sea captain, but now functioned as what amounted to a small hospital, complete with private rooms on the second floor.
He met us at the door, dressed in a long white coat, a stethoscope dangling from his neck.
“How is she?” my father asked immediately.
“She’s still unconscious,” Dr. Craddock replied. “I think you should prepare for the worst.”
“Do you mean she may die?”
Dr. Craddock nodded. “She’s in shock. That’s always very dangerous.” He motioned us into the building, then up the stairs to where we found Sarah in her bed, her eyes still closed, but now motionless behind the lids, her breathing short and erratic.
“Oh, Lord,” my mother whispered as she stepped over to the bed. “Poor Sarah.”
Looking at her, it was hard to imagine that she was in such peril. Her face was unmarked and lovely, like a sleeping beauty, her long black hair neatly combed, as I found out later, by Dr. Craddock himself. A gesture that has always struck me as infinitely kind.
My father moved to touch her cheek, then drew back his hand and turned toward Dr. Craddock. “When will you know if she’s … if she’s going to be all right?”
“I don’t know,” Craddock answered. “If there’s no brain injury, then it’s possible she could—” He stopped, clearly unwilling to offer unfounded hope. “I’ll know more in the next few hours.”
“Please let me know if there are any changes, or if there’s anything I can do,” my father said.
Dr. Craddock nodded. “How long has she been with you?”
“Nearly two years,” my father answered. He looked down at her tenderly. “Such a lovely child. Bright. Ambitious. She was learning to read.”