I’LL ALWAYS REMEMBER my first sighting of Trouble Island.
I believe it shall appear in my dreams and nightmares for the rest of my life, emerge before me in odd moments, just as it first materialized through the fog as I stood on the prow of the McGees’ small yacht nearly two years ago.
I’d only just distinguished the shore when Rosita McGee’s mansion emerged, as if it floated there on its own, created of mist and water and sky.
Rosita’s descriptions drifted across my mind.
From the veranda I can see for miles across Lake Erie!
The library—so many books! Not that anyone besides me uses it. But you would.
The roses out front are so lush that I can smell them from the tennis courts.
Such were the wistful descriptions that once spurred visions of what my first trip to the island would be like: swirling images of lightness and laughter and joy and ease.
But as it turned out, my first—my only—trip was no such visit.
It was for my imprisonment.
AFTER MY FIRST few days on the island I discovered that there was no angle from which to see the full façade of the mansion. Trouble Island is too small and flat and forested, the mansion too big. No matter how I approached—emerging out of the woods on the singular gravel path that semicircles the southern edge of the island, returning from serving guests at the pool or on the tennis courts, coming back from the small cemetery—I could only glimpse Rosita’s mansion in small bits, like puzzle pieces.
Fitting, as although I once thought I knew her, Rosita herself had become a puzzle.
After that, every time I glimpsed a fragment of the mansion, my first view from the yacht’s prow would flash before my eyes. The only time I had seen the façade of the mansion whole.
Until an early morning last November 1931, when everything changed.
AT FIRST, I thought I’d finally found my means to escape the island.
I was taking my last swim of the year in the early morning around the island, which normally took me an hour, but a half hour in, I was too cold, even in my flippers, goggles, and the full swimsuit I’d made. I came out on a patch of grassy beach along the northern edge of the island, just before the shoreline became challengingly rocky. I knew if I kept going, I’d have to swim past the rock-ridden stretch to the north dock, and there was no path from that dock—used for private business—back to the mansion.
As I staggered out of the lake, something glinted under the morning sun in the shore grass, catching my attention even with my poor eyesight. Curious, I went to it, and found a rectangular lockbox.
I picked up the box, too heavy to easily swim with, so I made my way to the semicircular path, which traced from the southwest dock—where guests launched fishing boats or visited the old lighthouse—to the main dock in front of the mansion.
I hurried as quickly as I could along the path to the lightkeeper’s old cottage. Inside the dark, dank abode, I rushed to the derelict rolltop desk, rolled back the broken cover where I stowed my glasses and clothes while I was swimming to protect them from mice and other critters. I was so curious that, though I shivered, I didn’t peel out of my suit, but quickly took off my goggles and put on my glasses.
I studied the box; it was in good shape, not corroded or rusted. So it had not been in the lake, at least not for long. Was it a box that belonged to a recent visitor? A box from one of the many shipwrecks on Trouble Island’s shore thirty, forty, even fifty years before? Maybe the box had fallen into the tangled roots reaching from the trees and shrubs that grew on the very edge of the shoreline. Maybe a ferocious Lake Erie storm had stirred up the box, and in a great crashing wave, deposited it in the tall grass, where it had remained, waiting, a gift from the lake to me. A reward for all my months of swimming. Of coming to appreciate the lake and island’s natural life, as our visitors never seemed to. They, instead, focused on the delights of the island’s mansion, the headiness of being a guest of the island’s notorious owner.
The story I wove for the box pleased me, and so, after I spotted a hammer carelessly left on a side table—the cottage was used as a storage and toolshed—I was careful as I used the tool’s claw end to pry open the box.
I stared in shock at the contents: three bars of gold bullion. Jewels—a diamond necklace, cuff links, earrings.
I considered taking the box back to my room at the mansion, but I didn’t want to face my workmates’ curiosity and questions. I thought about stashing it in the rolltop desk, but the top didn’t lock.
I spotted an old fishing net and had what I thought, at the time, was a brilliant idea: I’d bind the box in the net and tie up the box under the southwest dock. I took a moment to consider how the fitful lake and its creatures might affect the box. It should be fine for a week, even two, and by then I hoped—prayed—I’d have concocted a plan for leaving the island before icy winter weather locked us all down. I closed it, bound it with twine, and tied it up securely in the net. I carried my odd package of loot out to the southwest dock.
Before I could have second thoughts, I donned my goggles, grabbed the net-bound lockbox, and jumped back into the frigid, rollicking water. Under the dock, I held my breath so long that my chest was on the verge of convulsing, but eventually I tied up the net.
And then I surfaced, gasping for air, yet giddy. I laughed aloud with joy. The contents of that box were worth at least five hundred dollars, enough for me to start my life over—once again.
But my delight and hope were short-lived. For I spotted a boat coming from the south toward Trouble Island.
Even with my blurry vision, I could see the blue flag flying from the boat’s stern.
I knew what that meant.
That I had to get to Rosita as quickly as possible.
So I pulled myself out of the lake and onto the island’s southwest dock. I did not even pause to change from my swimsuit back into my dry clothes or slip on my shoes.
I ran from the shore along the island’s graveled path, not expecting to encounter any of my workmates. We were supposed to be closing down the mansion for the winter, and because of my escapades with the lockbox, I was late.
But around the curve, one of them—the new bodyguard—was walking toward me. He looked alarmed, stopped me, took off his hunting jacket and offered it to me. I accepted it, gratefully, but did not pause or, through my chattering teeth, answer his question about what I was doing, nor did I turn back when he called after me.
I ran on and finally emerged from the woods onto the mansion’s grand skirt of lawn. I rushed up the limestone pathway between the main dock and the porticoed front entrance, not sparing a single glance at the boxwood topiaries of exotic animals—bear, elephant, giraffe—that always charmed visitors. I ran past the multi-tiered fountain topped with a glorious goddess perpetually pouring water. That morning her water was off, a canvas crumpled at the base of the fountain as if she had tossed aside her cape.
Where is the groundskeeper?
I brushed aside the thought, kept running, and finally stopped before the mahogany front door. I panted, my lungs burning. As I was technically deemed staff, I almost always came and went by the basement kitchen door. But that morning, I yanked the front door open, hurried inside, then skidded on my bare, wet feet across the black-and-white marble entry floor, nearly crashing into a ladder below the chandelier, its cut crystals glinting in the morning’s spare sunlight. Wood polish and a pile of cleaning cloths lay on the bottom step of the sweeping central staircase.
Where is the housekeeper?
It was better that my fellow domestics did not see me. They’d think I’d gone mad if they saw my disheveled state: dripping wet, shivering, barefoot, wearing only my swimsuit and a man’s jacket, my knees and hands scraped and bloody because I’d fallen on the path. I rushed up the stairs, grabbing the curved mahogany banister, fearful of slipping, falling again, cracking my head open.
From the gallery, I veered down a long hall, passing the door to my own bedroom. No time to change into respectable clothing, or to run a comb through my snarled hair. I yanked open the door to the stairwell to the third floor and ran up to Rosita. Always to Rosita.
For that was why I’d been sent to Trouble Island. My punishment for what I’d done in Toledo was to come here in servitude to the McGees, a servitude that was meant to be a life sentence.
A sentence that at first I thought I deserved.
Now, looking back, I realize that from the moment I first spotted Trouble Island and Rosita’s mansion, deep down I knew that only a small part of me would remain forever on this island.
But the rest of me—the best of me—would find a way to break free.