Blue Moon (41 page)

“Eddie, tell me straight out,” she said, blinking at him, trying to clear her blurry vision. “Are you here to tell me I’m going to die?”

He nodded his head. He seemed hardly able to contain his happiness. “Yes. Don’t be afraid.”

“Will you be with me?”

“Forever.”

“Then I’m not afraid.” Sheila sat in her chair and removed from its envelope the telegram informing them of Ward’s death.

“The worst news we ever got,” Eddie said, his voice thick.

Sheila sighed, handing the paper to Eddie. “I couldn’t protect Ward, but I helped Billy. I did that for Cass.”

Eddie read what she had written on the telegram, and then Sheila
put it away. She held on to her pearl, in its tiny globe dangling from the chain around her neck, as tight as she could.

“I’m ready,” she said again.

“We’re going to the Blue Moon, my darling,” Eddie said, his voice becoming clearer with every word. “Put on your white dress and that beautiful big hat. You’ll see Patrick and Doreen, and, yes, Sheila, you’ll see Ward. Bring a shawl—the wind’s blowing from the east.”

“I’m coming, Eddie,” Sheila whispered.

The bells of Mount Hope rang when wars were won, when sons and daughters of the town married, when children were born. Sometimes the bells were rung for joy. Other times, the bells of Mount Hope rang with sorrow: when fishermen drowned, when hope was lost.

Cass and Billy stood in the sun-porch door, watching Zach teach Josie some new signs. Suddenly Billy’s eyes looked over their heads, toward the window. He caught Cass’s eye, to see if she’d heard it, too. The Portuguese church bell. It started to ring, and then the bell at Our Lady of Mount Hope started, then the deeper bell at St. Matthew’s Episcopal, until all the bells in town were ringing, drowning out the foghorn at Minturn Ledge.

“It’s time,” Cass said.

“Bye, Zach,” Billy said. He and Cass kissed Josie goodbye, as the bells grew louder.

“I wish I could say something,” Zach said, shrugging. “I’m sorry about the men.”

“Thanks,” Billy said.

“Thanks for staying with Josie,” Cass said.

She and Billy got their dark coats and headed outside. In the driveway, approaching the car, Billy stopped short. He looked at Cass, helplessly.

“I couldn’t even bring their bodies home,” Billy said. He reached for her; they held each other close. There in the driveway, they stood still, pressed together, listening to the funeral bells. Then they got in their car, and Billy drove toward the harbor.

Suddenly, Cass became aware of an unusual brightness in the
sky. She leaned forward to see where it came from. The air seemed awash with particles of gold burnishing the mid-morning blue sky. “What’s that light?” Cass asked.

“I don’t know,” Billy said. “Reminds me of skies I’ve seen offshore. Sunset skies.” But it was nine-thirty in the morning.

Billy rounded the corner for Minturn Ledge Light. To Cass, the light was nothing like a sunset. It wasn’t a bank of golden clouds or a streak of orange in the western sky. It was diffused through the entire sky, the air itself, and the golden light grew more concentrated as they neared her parents’ house.

Just as Cass and Billy approached the Keatings’, Cass caught sight of a young couple leaving her parents’ house.

“Who are they?” Billy asked.

“Stop the car!” Cass said.

“We’ll be late,” he said, glancing at his watch.

“Please,” Cass said. “We have half an hour.”

The couple was dressed all in white, he in a flannel suit and she in a beautiful dress flowing to her ankles. They wore straw hats with blue ribbons around the crowns, and she carried an umbrella. They skipped down the steps, as if they were in a hurry to get somewhere, laughing with pleasure. They looked familiar; the woman had features that closely resembled Cass’s own. Yet they seemed old-fashioned, otherworldly, like a modern couple got up like John Singer Sargent portraits for a costume ball.

“Hello,” Cass called to them, climbing out of the car. “Hello!”

At the sound of her voice, they stopped short. Their smiles vanished for a moment. They seemed ready to bolt. But they turned around and walked toward Cass and Billy.

“May I help you?” Cass asked, her voice quavering.

“Isn’t she lovely?” the young man asked. “She was just a girl when I last saw her.”

“You should see
her
daughters,” the young woman said. “Beauties, both of them. And a handsome son.”

By the voice, Cass knew. “Granny?” she asked.

The young woman nodded, giving Cass a beautiful smile. She had sparkling, even teeth. All of them. She wore the pearl globe, dangling from its dainty chain.

“I don’t understand,” Cass said.

Sheila nodded. She made a move to touch Cass’s cheek, but stopped herself. “We’re off to the Blue Moon; we can’t be late. Say hello to your grandfather.” She turned to her companion. “And this is Billy.”

“Hello,” Billy said.

“Our Billy,” the young woman said. “Home safe.”

It seemed strange, calling this handsome young man “Grandpa,” but Cass did it. “Hello, Grandpa.”

The two couples stood there, gazing at each other. Cass, in her funeral black, smiled at her grandmother, radiant as a bride in white.

“We really must be going, Sheila,” Eddie said gently, cupping Sheila’s elbow with his strong hand.

Sheila stood very close to Cass and studied the expression in her eyes. “Don’t be sad,” she said. “Promise?”

Cass wanted to promise, but she found she could not.

“And whatever happens, remember I did what I thought was best. I did what I needed to do. I love you very much. Thanksgiving, Cass,” she said.

A sob caught in Cass’s throat. She knew that this was goodbye.

“We musn’t stay,” Sheila said. Then, in one quick motion, she pulled her crystal globe, breaking the chain, and thrust it into Cass’s hand. Then she and Eddie ran off. Cass stood watching them until they disappeared—not around the corner, but into a shimmering haze of golden light.

“Billy,” she said, afraid to move.

“Let’s go inside,” he said, his hand cupping her elbow, just as Eddie’s had Sheila’s.

They made their way up the front steps, into her parents’ house. Once inside, with the memory of what she had just seen burning in her mind, she ran up the stairs to her grandmother’s room.

“Oh, Granny,” she said. Her grandmother sat slumped forward in the rocking chair. Cass touched her cold wrist, fumbled for a pulse.

The clock ticked loudly. Cass sat on the floor beside her grandmother’s body, sensing the light fade outside. The room seemed dim and cold. Cass noticed Ward’s painting lying on the floor. She
stared at it for a minute, the two boys clamming at low tide. She recognized Easton’s Beach and the boardwalk in the background. She recognized which boy was her father: the one with the cowlick, the devilish smile, his skinny long legs. Slowly she stood, then replaced the painting on the wall.

She returned to her grandmother’s body. She had the urge to cover it with a blanket. She didn’t want to see her grandmother’s eyes. But she had to check, she had to know—the necklace. She felt for it and finally tipped her grandmother’s head back so she could see. But, of course, it wasn’t there; Cass held the pearl globe and its broken chain in the palm of her left hand. At that instant, she noticed that her grandmother was clutching a piece of paper. Easing it out of her stiff grasp, Cass began to read.

“It’s the telegram,” Cass said. “Telling them Ward had been killed.”

“There’s something on the back,” Billy said.

Cass turned it over. She and Billy huddled close, trying to read. Sheila had written something in a frail, spidery hand.

“Keep Billy safe,” it said, “and let me go in his place.”

“Oh,” Cass said, holding Billy.

They stood together, looking down at Sheila. Tears ran down Cass’s cheeks, and she read the message over.

“Is it possible? Do you think?” she asked.

Billy nodded. “It was a miracle,” he said. “I shouldn’t have come home. I knew that from the first night. I hoped—I hoped like hell. But to be rescued like that …”

“By. T.J.”

“By my own son.”

Cass slowly opened her hand. There was the pearl, safe in its glass locket. She clasped it in her palm, thinking of what her grandmother had said: Thanksgiving. She kissed her grandmother’s forehead, and then she slipped her hand into Billy’s.

“It’s Thanksgiving,” she said out loud. Outside, the funeral bells, the bells of Mount Hope, rang and rang.

Read on for the first chapter of Luanne Rice’s twenty-ninth novel,
The Silver Boat
, coming in June 2012 from Penguin Books.

Dar McCarthy sat on the granite step of her mother’s rambling, gray-shingled house, listening to surf break beyond the pond. There had been a gale last night, driving in wild ocean waves, and through the salt pond’s wide bight she could see gray-green seawater tower and crash, the foam bright white in the first morning light.

Last night’s high wind had blown out all the clouds, and the dawn sky was turning what Delia used to call “happy blue.” The sun hadn’t yet melted the frost, which glimmered on the old stone walls and spiky brown grass, the lilac branches and the stone Buddha in the herb garden. Her mother’s ancient cats skulked home from a night of hiding under the barn, looking tufty and tiny and old.

“What did you catch?” she asked. They ignored her as usual, rubbing at the screen door to be let in, leaving snags of gray fur in the wire mesh. Dar obliged them, reaching up to twist the brass knob behind her head. As the five cats ran in, Scup, her mother’s black Lab, ambled out. He made a quick round of the yard, padding paw prints in the frost, then came to sit beside her on the step. They leaned into each other.

Scup nosed her hand with his white muzzle. He was thin; she could feel the ridge of his spine. She petted him for a while, and then he barked. She had promised him a car ride. Standing, she patted the pockets of her down vest to make sure she had her car keys.

They never locked this house, called Daggett’s Way centuries before Dar was born, and she never locked the Hideaway, her tiny yellow beach cottage at the west end of her family’s fifteen-acre property on the Atlantic Ocean in Chilmark, Massachusetts.

Opening the hatchback of her teal blue Subaru, she let Scup in and smelled the fresh air. Daffodils were ready to bloom in clumps around the yard and by the corner of the weathered shingle house; tiny buds had formed on tips of the lilac bushes. After a long, cold Martha’s Vineyard winter, April was here. Dar’s hands felt icy, so she closed the hatch and jammed them in her pockets. She was shivering not only from the morning chill.

She knew this feeling so well, from when she was twelve; everything that mattered in life was about to give way. Back then she’d had no real preparation, but now small warnings were everywhere: bills, deadlines, contracts, constant and unwanted calls and e-mails from Island Properties.

Climbing into the car, she discovered that Scup had jumped into the passenger seat. She looked into his deep brown eyes and wondered if he sensed impending change. He had seen the boxes she had been collecting from Alley’s and the Chilmark Store.

Pulling out the driveway onto South Road, she knew she was early to meet the ferry. She turned right, passing the cemetery, driving along the oak- and stone-wall-lined road, seeing the sun rise over the trees. One car came toward her, heading west—another year-rounder. They both waved. She turned into the parking lot at Alley’s Store, scanned the trucks for Andy Mayhew’s. There it was, dirty white with a hoist in back and his logo painted on the door.

She climbed the porch steps, looked for Andy but didn’t see him, said hi to everyone standing around drinking coffee. Stopping at the bulletin board, she riffled through all the business cards and notices until she found a note written on a thick card embossed with Harrison Thaxter’s family crest; this was how they communicated.

When are the girls arriving?
he’d scrawled in fountain pen. Reaching for the pencil dangling from the board by a string, she wrote back,
Today!
Then, not knowing whether he’d be by any time soon, she added,
(Friday, April 9th)
.

“When’s he going to get a phone?” Andy asked, handing her a large steaming black coffee.

“When’s he going to get a house?” she asked.

They both chuckled. Andy, Harrison, the McCarthy sisters, and a tight group of friends had grown up here—first summering on the island, then some of them digging in and becoming year-rounders.

“You okay?” Andy asked, standing close, their arms touching.

“Yes,” she said. “Going to pick up my sisters. I can’t wait.”

“You sure about that?” he asked. He was tall, and the top of her head just grazed his chin.

“Pretty sure,” she said, giving him a big smile, as if they hadn’t talked about this last night, as if her sheets might not still be warm from where they’d slept. “It’s going to be hard, getting ready to leave all this.”

“You don’t have to—” he began.

“Thanks, Andy,” she said, putting her finger to his lips.

“You want me to come with you?” he asked.