The Body in the Birches (3 page)

“You're mad, utterly mad,” he had said, immediately getting up and enveloping her in his arms before kissing her to the applause of the adjoining tables.

Babs was not as enthusiastic, especially as Sophie couldn't sublet her rent-controlled West Side apartment and had to give it up.

“Burning one's bridges is never a good thing,” she'd said crossly. “Pay the rent and leave it empty. I wish you had talked to me about this. You could have taken vacation time until after New Year's and then decided.”

Instead Sophie packed for what she knew would be a typically British rainy winter, purchasing a new Burberry in anticipation and following her besotted heart, moving into Ian's spacious Kensington flat off the High Street in time to celebrate the holidays.

London at Christmas! The decorations throughout the city and especially on Regent Street made New York's appear in need of higher wattages. The tree in Trafalgar Square, a gift from Norway, dwarfed poor Rockefeller Center's. Sophie and Ian drank mulled wine, ate mince pies, skated in the flooded courtyard of Somerset House and at a smaller rink by the venerable Science Museum on Exhibition Road. At the nearby Victoria & Albert they asked a perfect stranger to take their photo in front of Helen and Colin David's Christmas installation, “The Red Velvet Tree of Love.” It seemed as if everywhere she turned, there was another good omen.

Sophie had always liked London, happy when work or a vacation took her to the city, but now she was on her way to truly being a Londoner, with a “myWaitrose” card for the upscale grocery and one for Boots, the chemists—she'd had no trouble switching from “drugstore” to the British word. Just as she also switched from Clarins to Molton Brown, coffee to tea, all for her new home. All for love . . .

Ian's family lived in Kent. Sophie had spent a weekend with them. The house was everything she'd imagined: the British equivalent of shabby chic except it was authentic. The furniture had been in the family forever and the Colefax and Fowler was vintage. A trio of King Charles spaniels had greeted her uproariously. Their owners less so, but as the weekend wore on, Sophie thought she had made a good impression, especially when Ian's
mother had pressed a jar of locally made gooseberry jam into Sophie's hand when saying good-bye.

Sophie had assumed they would be spending Christmas in Kent, but the “mater and pater” Ian had told her would be going to his sister's in Yorkshire and he wouldn't inflict that on her “for the world.” Sophie had thought Christmas in Yorkshire had an enticing Ye Olde English ring to it, but then thoughts of the Brontës intervened, and on Christmas morning she was glad to be in Ian's warm flat next to the tabletop tree she'd decorated, opening gifts ranging from Agent Provocateur lingerie—“I rather think these are for you, Ian darling”—to a gold bracelet from Links of London—“If it's good enough for the Duchess of Cambridge . . .” he'd said.

New Year's Eve had been wonderful beyond imagining . . .

After the stop for gas, she'd soon left any semblance of main roads. The shape of a dark cluster of trees loomed up in front of her as she took a curve too fast. She slowed down and tried to keep her thoughts on what was in front of her. What she could see of it, that is. Not only was it dark but also foggy, and it didn't seem to make a difference whether she used high or low beams. Or the fog lights. Sophie began to switch among them, yet even that activity couldn't keep her from revisiting what had been the happiest night of her life. December 31.

“We're going to meet some of my mates at Babylon to watch the fireworks,” he'd told her. It was amusing the way these Savile Row–clad men referred to one another as if they were getting together for a pint and darts, she'd thought more than once. She'd liked Ian's friends and they had accepted her as one of them, even offering advice about how she could get a job with a firm based
both in the United States and the UK. Though Sophie did notice that all the women who had jobs seemed to be doing something vague for a magazine or dropping by “to mind the till” in a Mayfair boutique. A few of Ian's friends were married, and those women weren't working at all, busy doing up the flat and giving little dinner parties to help their mates, as in husbands, get ahead.

The Roof Gardens at Babylon were located a few blocks from Ian's flat on the top of what had been a department store in the 1930s. Sir Richard Branson purchased it in the 1980s, transforming it into a restaurant and private club. The rooftop, a hundred feet above the High Street, sported seventy full-size trees and three resident flamingos, an oasis in the middle of London. Sophie tended to forget how temperate the climate was when confronted by palm trees and palmettos amid the oaks.

It had rained most of that last day of the old year—had rained almost continuously since Sophie had arrived in the city, not that she minded. When it appeared to be letting up, they had taken the Underground to Holborn and Lincoln's Inn Fields, deserted with not a lawyer in sight. The sun came out, a long low late-afternoon light that made the grass emerald and the Tudor brick buildings look like a stage set. They strolled up to St. Paul's and then down along the Embankment before the crowds made it impassable. For a brief moment, Sophie had wished they weren't going to a party but could stay and be part of the throng watching the fireworks quayside. Just the two of them. But back at the flat, she changed her mind when she saw the look on Ian's face after she emerged from the bedroom dressed in the posh frock she'd splashed out on at Harvey Nichols.

It was like nothing he'd ever seen her in. Nothing she'd ever owned, in fact. For one thing it wasn't black or gray, but hot pink. Very hot. It was an Alice and Olivia lacy cocktail dress (she'd been amused that the department store had a whole department for “le cocktail”). The fabric hugged her body like a glove, and the dress had a low but not plunging neck in front. The wow factor came
when she turned around—a keyhole back open to the waist. Ian had pulled her close, running his hand appreciatively over her bare skin, then lower.

“No bra I can tell,” he said. “No knickers . . . ?”

“No knickers,” she whispered in his ear.

“Maybe we should stay in,” he said.

Sophie had been tempted, but the dress was having an interesting effect on her, too. It had started when she'd put it on and stepped out of the dressing room to look in the three-way mirror. The saleswoman had gasped. A customer had said, “Luv, whatever it costs, get it.”

Her dark hair—thick and shiny—was longer than it had been since she was in her teens and it almost brushed her shoulders, the ends curled under. The dress was short. Her legs seemed to go on forever; especially with the strappy high-heeled Jimmy Choos she'd bought in the shoe department after she realized the all-purpose black pumps she'd brought with her would kill the effect. She'd tried the whole outfit on back at the flat and instantly felt sexy, desirable—like a whole new Sophie. New year. New girl.

No, they didn't stay in but went off to Babylon where she'd lost count of how much champagne she'd had and afterward only recalled the feel of Ian's lips on hers at midnight as the fireworks went on and on and on.

A week later she found a part-time job in an antiques store while she continued to apply to firms with offices in both countries. Ian took her to Paris twice through the Chunnel, easier than getting from Manhattan to Brooklyn—and shorter than that trip during rush hour. Babs called less frequently and Sophie was both relieved and disappointed. It had been annoying to have her mother constantly ask when she could send out Save the Dates, then when she stopped asking, Sophie felt her mother was giving up on her. Ian started to work even longer hours than usual, which she understood all too well from her lawyer days. His parents had gone to Spain to escape the weather and he promised when they
returned he'd talk with them about a date. He'd shown Sophie his list, all in late June or early July. She'd called her mother to announce that they were getting closer, but Babs had been underwhelmed. “Just let me know, dear . . .”

Spring came in a rush. One day London was cheerless and wet, the next sunny and blooming. On such an afternoon, Sophie arrived at the flat, her arms filled with fragrant lilacs from the flower stall outside St. Mary Abbots at the start of Kensington Church Street. Letting herself in, she heard voices coming from the bedroom, which meant that Ian had come home early as promised and had the television on. He was a self-confessed news junkie.

Except the only news was the redhead in bed with him.

He'd smiled that smile. “Sorry you had to find out like this, darling.”

Only he wasn't sorry. Not one little bit, she realized.

She'd bolted down the stairs, smacking into Gillian, who lived in the ground-floor flat and had just let herself in the front door. Gillian had taken one look at Sophie's tear-streaked face and promptly steered her down a few streets to The Hereford Arms, guiding her to a booth in the back corner of the pub before going to get drinks.

“Gave you the push, right?” Gillian said when she'd returned with the glasses. Through the haze of her emotions, Sophie remembered they'd had drinks here once before—with Gillian and the man she called “my non-live-in lover.”

The venerable pub had been a haunt of Alfred Hitchcock's when he'd lived close by, and the entire back wall was covered in posters from his movies. The more Sophie imbibed, the more she thought about adopting the techniques used in some of them.

“Okay, enough,” Gillian had said when Sophie had begun to get maudlin, reciting the names she had picked out for their first baby (Alistair if a boy, Sarah Jane if a girl). She had steered Sophie out into the cold night air and put her to bed on the sofa in Gillian's flat.

As Sophie closed her eyes, trying not to see the image of Ian and the redhead in bed that was burned on the back of her lids, she'd wailed, “But he gave me a ring! His great-grandmother's!”

“Oh, luv,” Gillian had said, tucking a duvet around her. “He has a drawer full of them.”

She got a plane out of London to New York the next day, but it had taken Sophie a week to call her mother, who—to her credit—had not said “I told you so” until after the first five minutes of conversation. Getting another job was not going to be easy in this economic climate, even with her credentials and experience, but Sophie hadn't realized how bad things were. She had been in full panic mode for some time when Babs called, sending her on this odd mission to Maine. What exactly was it she was supposed to do on Sanpere to guarantee her mother as Uncle Paul's choice?

A happy sight greeted her as she drove up and over one of the hills that she knew meant she was in Penobscot and not far from the bridge to Sanpere. She spotted taillights up ahead. Another human being. And what was more, a path to follow. She accelerated. She didn't want to lose sight of them.

Suddenly they were too close for comfort. She hit the brakes but not soon enough, and felt a faint
thunk
. Seconds later a man bolted out of the car stopped in front of hers. He was shouting. She rolled the window down in time to hear the last part loud and clear.

“What the hell! You hit me!”

He was tall, dressed in dark clothing, and angry.

“What the hell were you doing stopping short in the middle of the road!” she retorted with equal vehemence.

“I don't know where you come from, lady, but in Maine when you see a deer crossing the road smack in front of the hood of your car, damn straight you stop.”

Sophie opened the door and got out. “Well, I didn't know there was a deer. I was just trying to stay in sight of your taillights.”

Her heart sank when she got a closer look at the car. It was some kind of vintage, read expensive, sports car, sleek and low to the ground, which also explained why she hadn't seen the lights when the road dipped.

The man, who appeared to be around her own age, was grumbling audibly about women drivers, specifically women drivers from away. “I don't see any damage,” Sophie interrupted before he could get on to a further subcategory.

He turned abruptly and went back to the car, returning with the largest flashlight she had ever seen, directing it toward his car's rear bumper. The lights were intact and all Sophie saw was a slight indentation. Very slight.

“Of course I will pay for any damage.”

She got her purse, and they exchanged information. She was so tired now, she was tempted to pull over and sleep when she got to the Eggemoggin Country Store just ahead.

The man, whose name was Will something—she was too exhausted to remember—was still training the light on his beloved car's bumper.

“Would you mind if we got going? I've driven from Connecticut today and still have a ways to go.”

“Connecticut!” The sneer in his voice was perceptible, although Sophie realized he was not from Maine, either. He had a slight Southern accent.

“Yes, you have a problem with that?”

“No, no problem at all. Not with that.”

With one last furious glance back, he slammed his car door and shot off into the night. Sophie got in her own driver's seat and leaned over to put the registration back in the glove compartment. The lid wouldn't shut. Something was stuck.

She turned the interior lights on and pulled out a bunch of maps—quaint of Babs—a small tissue box, an Altoids tin, and at the bottom a heavy object loosely wrapped in suede. Some of the fabric had caught. She worked it free and suddenly Sophie wasn't sleepy at all.

Babs had been particularly insistent that Sophie take the Lexus rather than one of the other smaller cars at the house. She'd told her daughter twice she wanted it to be on the island. Wanted it because of what Sophie now held in her hand?

A gun.

Her mother had a gun?

Sanpere celebrated holidays in a big way. At Christmas Santa arrived at Granville not in a sleigh with reindeer, but in a lobster boat decked out with lights accompanied by a flotilla of similarly adorned crafts. Most of the island was waiting on the town pier and escorted the jolly old elf to the Community Center for cocoa, hot cider, and other potables more potent in the parking lot. When a local team returned from a competition on the other side of the bridge—athletic sports as well as the nationally ranked chess team—islanders lined Route 17, the main road that circled Sanpere, waving banners to welcome the kids home, win or lose.

But all these observances paled in comparison to the festivities at the Fourth of July. After years of equitably alternating the parade and the fireworks display, the island had settled on Sanpere Village for the morning parade—this year's theme was “Our Beautiful Island”—and the much larger harbor at Granville for the evening's pyrotechnics. The rivalry between the two towns gave way to practicality.

“It seems strange not to have one of the kids decorating a bike or marching in the parade,” Faith said to her husband. They were at the cottage, waiting for their original builder, Seth Marshall, to
come back from Barton's Lumber. Two of his crew were adding the steady rhythm of hammering to the cries of the gulls circling overhead. With the Fourth only several days away, Faith was feeling nostalgic. “We won't even be able to have the picnic here.”

“Come on,” Tom said. “You've always wanted to see what the clambake at the Point is like. All those old Yankee families. We wouldn't be invited if we weren't staying at The Pines with Ursula.”

“Don't get your hopes up for anything special to eat. They will have lobster, too, but unless some of the islanders who work for them make the potato salad and pies, it will be the equivalent of the millimeter of anchovy paste or chicken salad on white bread crusts off they serve at funeral collations.”

“Wait a minute! Aren't you making something?”

Faith laughed at the sound of slight panic in her husband's voice. He was what her aunt Chat called “a big hungry boy,” and he had stayed annoyingly slim over the years no matter how many carbs he tucked into his tall, rangy body. Ben was the same, and it was a job keeping the larder and fridge stocked.

“Don't worry. I'm bringing two kinds of bread pudding—chocolate and a new recipe I want to try that calls for buttermilk. Since Ursula's garden has a bumper crop of strawberries—way more than we need for jam—I want to use them instead of raisins.”

Tom, and for that matter Faith, had never met a bread pudding they didn't like. “Phew,” he said and gave her quick hug. “I guess I won't go hungry.”

“I'm bringing barbecued chicken, too.”

“So there
is
a God.”

“Obviously, because here comes Seth. And you thought a run to Barton's meant a lengthy stop at the new coffee place.”

While Starbucks meant driving many hours to Portland, and even a Dunkin' Donuts was forty minutes away, islanders had never lacked for good coffee. Up until now the Harbor Café and Susie Q's had met the need. Two young local women, however,
had started roasting beans themselves in what had been the old high school, a white frame building, in Sanpere Village. The smell was intoxicating, and they were, too—both more than pretty and endowed with a hefty dose of Maine humor. The shop had become a favorite hangout for everyone from the fishermen to the many artists living on Sanpere.

Seth was carrying containers of coffee that Faith recognized were from the new place.

“Sorry, I would have brought some for you, too, if I'd of known you would be here,” he apologized. “You want to look at the tile, right?”

As they followed the builder into the garage where he'd put the boxes, Faith realized that her nostalgia for her children threading red, white, and blue crepe paper streamers through the spokes of their bikes was tied to the cottage's new addition. Years ago when they'd bought the original twenty-four-foot-by-twenty-four-foot dwelling, they had gutted it, creating an open kitchen/living area with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the cove. The twenty-foot-by-twenty-foot wing with a tiny bath and tinier bedrooms had been moved closer to the road and put on a concrete slab. It was supposed to be used as a garage, but Faith had long given up any hope of getting a car in. Besides Tom's workbench, it was filled with a ride-on lawn mower a neighbor was getting rid of; life vests, paddles, and other marine paraphernalia; finds from the dump and flotsam and jetsam from the shore; and always a mound of assorted items Tom thought too good to toss. Occasionally Faith sneaked out something like a bucket with a large hole, just as she culled sweaters he wore in college unraveling at the elbows—and cuffs and collar—from his wardrobe. The Fairchilds were the embodiment of the New England tendency to hold on to “string too short to be saved.”

In place of the twenty-foot-by-twenty-foot, they had attached a two-story addition with a dining area, bath, and bedrooms for each kid plus a guest room on the first floor. Above was another
bath, master bedroom, and small study for Tom. It had all worked fine when the kids were small—literally. Now with Ben close to six feet and Amy, a teenager in September, as she reminded them almost daily—a thought Faith preferred not to contemplate—the family needed more space.

There was also the fact that Tom had to go over to the Millers' or other friends' to watch Red Sox and Celtics games, an activity that convinced him they needed a TV. A big TV. And so over the winter, they'd talked with Chris Scovel, their architect friend who'd done the first plan, and he'd designed a generous family room with a roof angle echoing the other addition and suggested tile with radiant heat as flooring instead of the hardwood in the rest of the house. Tom and Faith had selected the tile at a Home Depot in Massachusetts and specified the Sanpere delivery. Seth had called this morning to say it had arrived, and they'd driven over to make sure the order was correct.

It was the right tile and they walked back to the house. The wall between the new addition and the rest was still open, but the whole thing had been framed in. Faith was encouraged.

“When do you think we'll be able to move back in?” she asked. “I know you're working as fast as you can. It's just that I hate to inconvenience Ursula.”

Seth had done work for both Ursula and the Millers. He picked what he called “reasonable” jobs. Capable of building just about anything, he had turned down offers to put up million-dollar-plus McMansions. “Don't belong here.” And he didn't mean the houses.

Hard to tell how old Seth was, Faith thought, like so many island men. He was starting to go gray, but his unlined face was tanned from working outdoors a great deal and his body was fit. He could be anywhere from thirty-five to fifty-five. No wife. Told Tom that he'd tried it once and had decided to do the “poor woman” a favor and let her divorce him. He played in a local band. Not the Melodic Mariners, which kept things hopping at dances
at the Legion Hall, but The Urchins, who entertained at Camden hot spots and, closer to Sanpere, Bar Harbor. Sanpere's female population had long ago given up any hope of being the next Mrs. Marshall, or just Seth's steady girlfriend. He liked people, but liked to keep to himself equally, he'd told them.

Seth grinned. “I'm sure she's more than happy to have you,” he said. “The Rowes have always had a full house over there to The Pines.” He paused a moment. “And I guess it's going to be the same and more at The Birches.” His grin became broader. One of the things Faith liked about Seth was his broad knowledge of island gossip, despite his solitary status, and readiness to share good dish with her—once he got to know her, that is. They had bonded over the now historic skunk episode during the first remodeling. In the words of Elwell Sanborn as he ran to his truck after shooting out of the crawl space below the new section like a cannonball—“By Thundah! It's a mumma skunk and babies!” Faith had been in the yard at the time and Seth had turned to her. “Elwell's religious. That's pretty strong language for him. Doesn't much like any animals except for deer in his crosshairs.” It had been an ordeal, not funny at the time, luring the little family out. Seth had not kept a thing to himself. Now she was glad for his loquaciousness and grabbed the chance to find out his take on what was going on next door to The Pines.

“So you've heard that Paul McAllister is going to have a lot of company this month?” she said.

“Ayuh.” Seth was no more a geezer than Tom, but he liked to affect an old geezer Maine vocabulary. “Gorry, wouldn't want to be in his shoes. Glad I don't have anything to leave except my tools. Already told my nephew he can have the trailer if he wants it, sell it if he doesn't. But those people at The Birches—don't expect it's going to be pretty and besides . . .”

At that interesting moment Ben came racing up on his bike. “Mom, Dad! I got a job! Hi, Seth.” He was flushed and the words continued to spill out as he climbed up into the new construction.
“I'm going to be washing dishes at the Lodge. And Tyler is working there, too. You don't have to worry about driving me because there's a girl, who's working in the kitchen, Mandy Hitchcock, and she can drive us. And I've got my under-sixteen working papers all filled out. You just need to sign.”

“Slow down, son,” Tom said. “I thought you were going to be working at the day camp.”

Ben gave his father the look of irritation that automatically descends on a teenage face, pimpled or not, at the stroke of midnight on his or her thirteenth birthday. “I
told
you and Mom that they weren't sure they could pay me and that I was going to try to find something that did.”

Tom looked at Faith, who responded, “And I remember saying that jobs were scarce on the island even for kids older than you, so you'd better take the day camp offer for the experience it would give you.”

Seth judiciously walked away to talk to his crew.

“I
went
to the camp and last summer I pretty much was a CIT, so I have all the experience I need. The Lodge is a real job. If you're thinking how it's going to look on a college application I'm sure the fact that I want to earn some money will be impressive and I can do something to save the world the rest of the year.”

When did her sweet boy turn into this snarky stranger? Faith wondered. “The Lodge” was The Laughing Gull Lodge and one of the most beautiful spots on the island. In the 1940s a retired marine biology professor from Bowdoin had purchased the land and put up a rustic main building with a number of equally rustic cabins. With his wife in the kitchen helped by local women, guests were provided with three squares—very square, but filling meals—a day. The professor provided nature walks and talks. The faithful returned year after year for an affordable and enriching vacation. In the late 1960s, ill health forced the couple to sell, but not before ensuring a hefty chunk of their acreage would never be developed by giving it to a land trust. Since then the Lodge had
changed hands, and incarnations, many times, but never its name. New owners were giving it a try this summer, and Faith wasn't sure what it was being marketed as now.

She could see Tom was annoyed. More and more, father and son were locking horns. She knew from the books—and Pix—that this was normal and even healthy, but it didn't make being with them any more delightful. Before her husband could say anything, Faith jumped in. “Of course we're not thinking about what is going to look good on your college applications.” It was a white lie. “We just want a bit more information. Your hours, for instance. They're serving dinner now, right? So it could be late.”

Apparently deciding to rope his mother in as good cop, Ben said, “There are four kitchen crew who can be dishwashers. We're going to rotate shifts so no one ends up staying late often. And because of my age, I'm limited to the hours I can work anyway. Besides dinner is like at six and I should be done way before nine. I really want to do this. Tyler's parents have no problem with it.” He smiled. This was clearly his trump card. Tyler was one of Nan and Freeman Hamilton's grandsons. The Hamiltons, eight generations and maybe more on the island, were the Fairchilds' closest neighbors on Sanpere. The four had been through a lot together two years ago when another grandson had been mistakenly arrested for murder. It was the kind of experience that fortunately few people have, Faith thought, but when you did, it either made you shy away from one another once the crisis was over, or created an unbreakable lifetime bond. It was the latter with Nan and Freeman, plus their entire family, which constituted a sizable proportion of the local population.

Ben's strategy worked. “I'll talk to Freeman,” Tom said. “See what he knows about the new owners, but it looks like you have yourself a job. And we'll figure out the transportation thing ourselves. I don't like you having to depend on someone else, especially someone we don't know.”

With a “now what” look, Ben said, “Ask Mr. Hamilton about
Mandy, too. She's like a straight-A student and very responsible.” He scowled. “If we lived in Maine,
I
could drive myself.”

Faith decided to ignore the last part and Ben took off to tell Tyler his parents had said yes, so Tyler could tell his parents the Fairchilds were all for it, and that Tyler better call his grandfather fast—neither boy thinking this particular craftiness was anything other than a commonsense strategy for the care and handling of parents.

Seth came back over and, looking at Ben's energetic retreat, said, “Think I can just about remember having that much energy. Especially on a day like today. Hear they're frying eggs on the sidewalk in Granville.”

It had been hotter than anyone could remember since the middle of June and only an occasional rain at night kept the gardens alive. Faith had even waded into the Reach from the rocky shore by The Pines before the numbness in her legs convinced her that attempting a swim would be sheer madness.