Stargazey Point (37 page)

“So go back to work and I’ll just roam around. I’ll try not to bother you too much.”

Light flickered in his eyes as he looked at her. “You can bother me anytime you want. I think I made that clear.”

She laughed. “I’ll keep you to that,” she said purposely misunderstanding his meaning.

She set up some handheld shots, filming different aspects of the carousel from various angles. She moved in behind Cabot and zoomed in on the miniature carousel that sat on a block of wood on the workbench. He glanced up and smiled at her; she concentrated on the viewfinder and holding the camera steady. She moved away, and she felt Cab’s eyes follow her as she moved to her next shot. It was an effort to concentrate on her work.

She didn’t like how her body was betraying her. Her mind might not like it, but the rest of her . . . She was surprised and a little excited that she could actually feel that way again. And she felt the ties that held her to the past loosen just a bit more.

She went into the workroom, panned across the finished panels and the partially restored animals. Moved in to capture details. She hit her stride, entered that place where the work practically created itself—and was surprised when the sound of her own name rang as if from a deep well. She pulled herself away from her subject matter to see Beau standing next to her.

“We’re closing up. Cabot and I think you’ve done enough work for one day.”

She laughed and rolled stiff shoulders. “Is that a polite way of telling me to get lost?”

“No. You’ve been working at the center all day and now here. Time for you to take some time for yourself. Now let’s go get Cabot before he gets involved in something else.”

Cab was waiting for them by the front door. Abbie and Beau waited while he locked up, and then they walked across the tarmac together.

Beau stopped them. “I told Silas I’d meet him over at Hadley’s, if you wouldn’t mind walking Abbie home.”

“I can walk—”

“I don’t mind.”

“Then I’ll say good night.” Beau ambled away.

“You really don’t—”

“I’d like to. Besides, Beau won’t let you walk alone and I don’t think he’s ready to go home and have to deal with Millie. I heard there was a dustup this morning over the miniature and painting.”

“I can’t say that I’m looking forward to it either. I just don’t understand why she was so upset. Cab, they’re brilliant. And they’ve been hidden away for decades. Why?”

“There’s no understanding some things, and this may be one of them. Families are full of secrets and animosities that no one ever learns.”

Abbie looked at him. Were they? It always seemed to Abbie that her family was too open about what they were feeling.

She and Cab walked down the road without speaking. It was a comfortable silence, which neither seemed eager to interrupt. They were halfway through the arbor of trees before Cab asked, “So when do you think you’ll finish the documentary?”

“Hopefully for the opening of the carousel. I was thinking of having a guest viewing the day before, though the number of people the center can hold is prohibitive. Once the carousel opens, we could run a continuous loop, maybe at the inn or the art gallery.”

“Then what?”

She looked up at him. “I haven’t really thought. I may enter it into a few contests. There are organizations that accept student films.”

“I meant with you. What’s next for you?”

She looked into the darkness between the trees. Shrugged. “I haven’t decided yet.” She hadn’t even thought about what she would do after she left Stargazey Point. She only knew that she wouldn’t go back to being the weathergirl.

They fell silent again, and Abbie became very conscious of the space between them. What had begun as a calculated safe distance began to change, seemed to vibrate with energy, drawing them closer. Which was ridiculous. She was just feeling their mutual attraction.

She glanced at Cab to see if he was feeling the same pull. From the corner of her eye she saw a shadow move silently through the trees.

“Did you see that?”

“What?”

“Something or someone in the trees. I think they were watching us.”

“Probably just a trick of the light.” But he slipped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, and in another minute they stepped into the clearing before Crispin House.

Cab stayed only long enough for Marnie to answer the door. Abbie watched from the window until he crossed the clearing and started down the drive, watched until he melted into the shadows of the arbor and disappeared from her view.

When she turned, Marnie was watching her. “I saved you a plate; it’s in the kitchen. And don’t worry, the coast is clear. Millie has taken to her room . . . again.”

“I’m sorry if I’ve caused a rift between you and Millie and Beau. It just seemed like such a waste to leave Beau’s paintings hidden away. And I didn’t coerce him into agreeing to show one to Dom.”

Marnie poured out two glasses of wine she kept in the mudroom. “You’re right. It is a waste. I had no idea the paintings were there. And you didn’t cause a rift. Whatever the big bugaboo is, it’s between Beau and our father. Millie adores Beau, ordinarily. She wouldn’t have reacted that way if Daddy hadn’t planted it in her mind.”

“But that had to be decades ago.”

“For most of us. Not for Millie. Now don’t give it another thought; she always does this, whenever she’s upset or doesn’t get her way, or if things are happening that frighten her or that she doesn’t understand.

“You look dead tired. Go to bed. I’ll worry about the dishes. And Millie.”

Abbie trudged up the stairs wondering how long it would take for Millie to come out of the sulks this time. Or if Abbie’s actions had pushed them into a permanent family rift. Whatever had happened all those years ago—it had to be fifty or more—it wasn’t over yet. And she realized as she climbed into bed that she’d been watching it play out day after day after night since the first day she arrived at Crispin House.

She fell asleep almost as soon as she climbed into bed. And she dreamed not of Werner, or Cab, but of Millie and Marnie as young women, dancing beneath the stars.

A
crew of painters were already at work when Abbie passed the carousel the next day. She had to consciously make herself keep walking. Her destination was the ramshackle community center, not Cab Reynolds or his carousel. Not today anyway.

She spent the morning leaning over her laptop, scanning the Internet, and was still there when the kids arrived, bringing several parents, some of whom weren’t signed up for an interview. Word had traveled quickly about the carousel project. They seemed more interested in cooperating with carousel interviews than they had been with the family histories. Abbie wondered if Ervina had anything to do with that.

The first interviewee was an old man who had known Ned Reynolds personally. “Me and Ned used to come down to the carousel when we was boys. Never had a nickel. Hell, nobody much had a nickel in those days. We’d just go down and lie on the grass and watch them horses go round and round. We could stay there for hours watchin’ the summer people bring their chil’run to ride. Ned said someday he was gonna make some money and buy that carousel and he wouldn’t never turn nobody away.” He slapped his bony knee. “And damn if he didn’t do it.

“He ran that carousel every day, even in the winter. ’Course times were better then. People came here all year-round, even for Christmas. Ned would dress up those animals in red ribbons, put that cotton snow all over the center drum, and play carols. One year he got a touch of bronchitis so I went down to spell him. Don’t know how he did it day after day. Nearly drove me crazy listening to that music all day long. If Ned hadn’t gotten better fast, I mighta had to rip that music right clear out of the player machine.”

“What you saying, Micah Jones?” A plump woman in a purple running suit hurried into the frame before Abbie could stop her. She turned to the camera and said, “You keep that thing runnin’, Dani. That music saved our bacon back in ’84. Hell of a year, what with the hurricane sweeping half the town away.

“And the economy going down the drain. Folks were hurtin’ I don’t mind tellin’ you. One night in the middle of the coldest night I can remember—it was a couple days after Christmas, I think—carousel music comes blaring out of the dark. It keeps playing and playing. Lordy, we were afraid it was judgment day.

“So my man gets up and gets dressed to go see what’s up. He comes back a few minutes later. ‘Get up,’ he says. ‘Get the kids up.’ I’m scared outta my wits but I do and we all go down to the boardwalk and there’s the carousel all lit up and there’s Ned in a Santa hat standing in front of the old craft shop, this building right here, and the door is open and the lights are on and heat is blastin’ and there’s a long old table with a spread of food the likes of which you’ve never seen.

“We crowded inside and had us a feast. Ned said that food fell off the truck. But we knew better. Ned Reynolds never stole a thing in his life. So it’s the least we can do to help young Cabot get the carousel up and running again. Maybe it’ll bring prosperity back.”

“That’s right, Ivy Lee. You tell it like it is,” came a voice behind Abbie.

“Amen,” said another. Then another “Amen” and another. Several women had crowded into the doorway and stopped to hear Ivy’s story.

“Those were good days.”

“Gone forever,” someone said.

“Aw, they weren’t so good.”

“Hell of a lot better than now. Everybody had their own houses. There was work to be had on the boardwalk, and the hotels and businesses out on the highway.”

“And the fishin’ was good, too. Not like now with so many rules you don’t know if you’re comin’ or goin’.” Micah Jones shook his head slowly.

“Amen to that,” said Ivy Lee and wandered off toward the kitchen, followed by the other women.

Abbie took the kids into the media room to work on the storyboard. There was some fighting over whose relative went first on the board thing. Even after Abbie explained how things would move around as they developed their story, there was still some grumbling. So she settled them in front of her laptop and showed them what she’d found and edited just that morning. Several minutes of vacation clips people had posted to YouTube, blogs, or Google images. The pictures were grainy and the color was primitive, but it showed a busy Stargazey Point from decades before.

There was some snickering about the fashion as snippets of families darted in and out of the film, strolled along the crowded sidewalk, or posed, smiling, in front of brightly painted buildings. But as soon as the carousel appeared, running at capacity with happily waving children and a few adults, they quieted and stared, mesmerized at the footage. A few women wandered in from the kitchen to watch.

“Look, that’s the center in the background.”

“Where?”

Abbie rewound and slowed the tape to single frame.

“Would you look at that. That’s from when we used to have the co-op here.”

“You had a co-op?” Abbie asked.

“Sure did and a farmers’ market and all sorts of things going on all year-round.”

“We want to see more pictures of the carousel,” said Pauli.

Abbie restarted the video. Everyone, including her, leaned a little closer to see.

When the tape had been watched through the second time, the women reluctantly gathered up their children and headed en masse out the front door. Abbie straightened up the media room, thinking about the past—Stargazey’s past and hers.

She packed up her laptop and camera and locked the rest of the equipment in the closet. She wasn’t taking any chances of someone, namely Eddie Price, ransacking the place again. She checked all the windows and the back door, then doused the lights and left. She was surprised to find Momo, Ivy Lee, and another woman standing in the parking lot. Momo was pointing at Hadley’s or maybe one of the abandoned buildings that lined that part of the street. They must still be reminiscing, while their children climbed over the rotten pier.

They nodded as Abbie passed them, said good night, and went back to whatever their conversation was about. The painters had knocked off work for the day. In the light of the low-lying sun, the carousel fairly glowed with paint and expectation.

She didn’t stop to see if Beau wanted to walk home. She knew they were planning to work late. She just kept walking, feeling a little lonely and not quite sure what she should do about it.

Chapter 25

A
bbie awoke to thunder. The sheer drapes billowed through the open French doors of her bedroom. Raindrops drummed and splashed on the veranda floor. She slid out of bed and hurried to close the doors, shivering as her feet hit the cold floor.

The temperature had been climbing steadily as the month wore on. They’d even started leaving the center’s doors and windows open to capture whatever cross breeze they could. But today they seemed to be cast back into winter.

She stood looking out at the rain slashing at a sharp angle and creating waves across the porch floorboards. In the distance the sea swelled dark and gray. She’d gotten used to the afternoon rains that darkened the skies, dumped buckets of rain, and moved on within a matter of minutes. But today it looked like they were in for the long haul.