I stood by the cash register, holding my breath, staring at the photo, hoping that if I looked at it long enough the woman would turn into someone other than me. My eyes moved to the large black letters over the picture: WOMAN SAVED FROM DROWNING OFF MARLIN BEACH THANKS RESCUER. My knees began to buckle as I read the caption: “Victim is brought to shore by rescuer after being swept out by rip current.”
A crowd began to form around me. “The girl who almost drowned,” a man said. And then a child asked, “Why couldn’t she swim, Mommy?”
I turned to the child. “I can swim,” I said, crossing my arms defiantly.
That’s it, I thought. I’ve got to put an end to this. What if Hayden ever saw that photo? How could I explain it to him when I couldn’t even explain it to myself? Or what if the media got hold of it? I mean, the real media, back in New York, where they would recognize me. Maybe the chance was slim, but my heart began to rattle in my chest when I thought about what would happen to me, to Hayden. I couldn’t take the risk.
The first thing I needed to do was get rid of all the newspapers in this store. I leaned over the counter toward Phil. “Excuse me,” I whispered. “What would it cost to buy all of those?” I pointed toward the papers, my hand trembling.
Phil squinted at me. “You want all of them?”
“Yes,” I said. “All of them.”
His mouth twitched for a second and then he smiled. “Oh, I get it. Souvenirs.”
Someone behind me whispered, “She’s going to sign them and sell them.”
“Please,” I said, as I tried to breathe in and out slowly, the way Hayden always told me to do when I got flustered or upset. “I’m not going to sign them or sell them.” Breathe…breathe…
“I just want to buy them. Please, how much?” I had my wallet out and ready.
Phil rubbed his chin. “Well, I’d have to count them. We get five hundred every day and they’re fifty cents apiece—”
“Okay,” I said. “Five hundred times fifty is—”
“Yes, but we’ve sold a bunch,” Phil said, shaking his head. “So let me see…” He narrowed his eyes and looked at the ceiling.
I took out four crisp fifty-dollar bills, two twenties, and a ten. “Just take this,” I said, shoving the money at him. “I’ll pay for the full five hundred.”
Phil looked at the money as though it were foreign currency. “Well, gee…” Then he scratched his head. “But that’s too much.”
“No, please,” I told him, pushing the bills his way. “I insist.”
It took me three trips to haul all of the newspapers to my car, as I speed-walked to and from the market, trying to avoid the stares of the customers.
I tossed one copy on the passenger seat and threw the rest in the trunk. Then I got in, slammed the car in reverse, and launched onto the road. I drove for ten minutes, with no idea where I was going, until I came to a field surrounded by a black post-and-rail fence where three horses grazed. I pulled off the road onto the dirt shoulder.
I grabbed the paper and took a good, long look at the photo. For a second I could feel his arms around me again, I could feel his lips on mine, I could taste the salt water. And it was all…
Nothing. It was all nothing. I was a happily engaged woman, getting married in three months and looking forward to it. I sat there, imagining my walk down the aisle, Uncle Whit at my side, his arm linked in mine, standing in for my late father. And Hayden would be watching me take that walk, waiting for me, looking tall and handsome, his face tan from golf or tennis or the family yacht, his hair bleached from the sun. He would give me that little nod and that wink that I loved.
I unfolded the paper and read the article.
A woman fell through the dock at 201 Paget Street off Marlin Beach yesterday afternoon and was apparently swept away by a rip current. In a daring rescue, a man dove in after her and brought her back to shore. The grateful victim gave her hero a kiss. Neither the victim nor the hero has been identified. The incident took place around four o’clock, according to Dan Snuggler, owner of Snuggler’s Pet Supply on Cottage Street. Snuggler was walking his poodle, Milarky, at the time of the incident and took this photo. “It was quite a courageous rescue,” Snuggler said. “It looked as though she couldn’t swim.” Snuggler also noted that the dock is on private property and added, “Maybe she shouldn’t have been trespassing.” For more photos, turn to page 7.
More photos? My hand trembled, rattling the pages as I turned them—four, five, six. Thank God, I thought as I found page 7. There were no other photos of me or Roy. Only pictures of Mr. Snuggler’s poodle frolicking on the beach, which made me wonder just what kind of journalism was being practiced in this town. And what was that bit about the daring rescue? And the hero? And the trespassing!
I hurled the paper toward the backseat as the realization hit me that I had to do some damage control. I grabbed the bag from the market and took out my sandwich. Yes, damage control was definitely in order, I thought as I took a bite. The turkey and stuffing were still warm. I took another bite. The cranberries were cool and refreshing and the bread tasted homemade. I opened the bottle of club soda and took a sip.
I watched the horses graze and flick their tails at passing flies. There was no way I could have this photo circulating, even if my name wasn’t mentioned and even if it was just in The Beacon Bugle. There was only one thing to do. I would go to every store in town that sold the Bugle and buy up all the copies. I would take them out of circulation. Then tonight I would find a big trash bin somewhere and dump them.
I drove around town and made six stops, ending with the Three Penny Diner, where the aroma of freshly baked cider doughnuts was overwhelming. Laying two twenties on the counter, I scooped up their copies and dropped them in my trunk. I felt a surge of relief as I slammed the lid. The incident involving the Swimmer was officially closed.
By this time it was almost two o’clock. I set the GPS for Chet Cummings’s house again and headed off. When I arrived on Dorset Lane, the green Audi was in the same place. I knocked on the door several times and looked in the kitchen window again, but the house appeared to be empty.
I sat in the car and wondered what to do. I could go back to the Victory Inn, open my briefcase, and get some work done. That was one option. But the day was so clear and the sky so relentlessly blue…
I leaned back against the seat and let the breeze drift through the windows as I surveyed the neighborhood. Most of the houses were older—early 1900s, I guessed. Each one had a dark green lawn and gardens full of coneflower, lupine, black-eyed Susan, Shasta daisies, beach heather, silvery Russian sage. I could see Gran as a girl, tending one of these gardens, the same way I’d seen her so often as an adult—trowel in her hand, floppy yellow hat on her head. She would be humming to herself, pulling up weeds or deadheading old blossoms, maybe adding a little more mulch here or there.
I felt so sad to think that I would never see her in her garden again. I squeezed my eyes shut to keep the tears away. I just wanted to feel connected to her. Maybe I’d hung my hopes on finding that connection in Beacon, through Chet Cummings. And maybe that wasn’t going to happen. Maybe I’d come all this way for nothing.
I gazed again at the houses on the street and began to wonder about my grandmother’s childhood home. What if she had lived on this very street? What if I was looking at her house right now? And I realized that perhaps there was something I could do. I could find Gran’s house. This was something I could easily accomplish. Real estate was my specialty. I pictured myself driving down a street of quaint New England homes, knowing that Gran’s was one of them, looking for her house. I started to feel much better.
I took out my cell phone, checked the Internet, and found the number for the Beacon town clerk’s office. The town clerk’s office would know where the real estate records were kept. The woman who answered the phone told me the records were kept right there, at 92 Magnolia Avenue. Finally, something was going right.
The Beacon Municipal Building, at 92 Magnolia Avenue, was a one-story redbrick structure with four windows across the front, white shutters, and a white cupola above the double front doors. It looked like it had been built in the 1960s—not too modern, but not too old, either.
I stepped inside and caught a faint whiff of ammonia. A directory on the wall listed the town clerk’s office as being in room 117. By the time I arrived at that door, the ammonia smell had been replaced by the smell of spaghetti sauce. A woman with short gray hair and the wrinkled face of a pug dog sat at one of two desks, eating penne and marinara from a plastic tray.
All around her were piles of paper, notepads covered with dark, scrawled handwriting, stacks of manila folders from which the edges of documents peeked out, pens, markers, and colored paper clips. The nameplate said ARLEN FLETCH.
She put down her plastic fork and looked up, waiting for me to speak.
“I’m Ellen Branford,” I said, extending my hand. “From New York,” I added. I beamed a big smile her way as I noticed a yellowed microwave oven in a little cabinet across the room.
Arlen looked at my hand and then shook it.
“My grandmother lived in Beacon when she was young.”
Arlen nodded and stirred her pasta around in its tray. A puff of steam rose into the air.
“And she recently died…” I waited to see if there would be any reaction to that, but Arlen just looked at me again. A door closed somewhere down the hall, followed by a stream of laughter.
“I’m here taking care of some business for her,” I went on, “and while I’m here I’d like to find the house where she grew up.”
Arlen slipped one of the tines of the plastic fork through a piece of penne. Then she popped the food into her mouth. “So I take it you don’t have the address.”
“That’s right,” I said, relieved that she could talk. “That’s what I need to find.”
She looked down at her tray, eyeing it for several seconds, and I thought she was going to tell me to come back in twenty minutes so she could finish her lunch. Instead, she smiled for the briefest second and said, “Well, you’ve come to the right place.”
She led me into an adjoining room that had no windows and smelled dry and stuffy. Except for a table with two computer monitors on it, the room was filled from floor to ceiling with books in gray metal bookcases. I knew that between the computer database and the books, the room contained a copy of every real estate document that existed for every piece of property in Beacon, from the very first sale that was recorded.
There would be deeds of title, mortgage deeds, tax liens, foreclosure notices. There would be judgment liens, bankruptcy notices, covenants and restrictions, and easements. And, somewhere, there would be a deed of title to a piece of real estate in my great-grandparents’ names.
“Okay, so let me show you how this works,” Arlen said, taking her pencil and waving it as though it were an orchestra leader’s baton. “First, someone comes in with a document. Could be a deed of title. That’s a pretty common one. Or it could be a mortgage deed or maybe a—”
“Excuse me,” I said, as I started to raise my hand to stop her from wasting her time and mine, to tell her I’d spent hundreds of hours in rooms like this doing title searches as a young real estate associate. But the look on her face was so serious, so stern, that I decided I’d better keep quiet.
“Sorry,” I said. “I thought I had a question, but I don’t.”
She nodded. “Well, then, let’s say it’s a deed of title. Cecil or I, he sits over there”—she pointed to the empty desk—“we put it through that machine.” She nodded toward an old time-stamp machine.
“That puts the date and time on the deed so there’s no question when it came in.” She pointed her pencil at me. “That can be very important when people are arguing about who owns what, you know.”
This was Real Estate 101, but I bit my tongue and let her continue.
“Then we photocopy it and scan it on this thing”—she pointed to a scanner— “and Alice, who comes in three mornings a week, puts it all into the computer and organizes it all in there so people can look up a deed by seller, buyer, property address, you name it.”
I continued to stand there patiently while Arlen explained how to look through the annual grantor-grantee indexes for my great-grandfather’s name, and how, if I found his name, there would be a notation as to what kind of document had been filed with the town clerk and the book number and page of the book where a copy of the document would be found.
As Arlen talked, I began to wonder if I would find my great-grandfather’s name in this vast selection of books that contained the history of Beacon real estate. And if I did, where would the house be and what would it look like? Would it be brick or stone? Maybe it would be a clapboard house with shutters. Maybe it would have a nice porch on the front like Chet’s porch. On the other hand, it might have an ugly addition pasted onto it or, worse, be run-down and falling apart. I began to worry. What if it was owned by a commune? Or a group of drug dealers? Were there drug dealers in Beacon? I wondered.
I looked up and saw Arlen staring at me. She seemed to be waiting for me.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She waved her pencil. “Federal tax lien. Ever had one filed against you?”
I shook my head. “No, I haven’t.” Some of my clients had, but I wasn’t going to get into that.
Arlen’s gray eyes seemed to light up with this topic. “You’d sure know if you had,” she warned me. “Those IRS people—they’re monsters.”
“Really,” I said in a half whisper. I dated a guy in law school who was now working in the office of the chief counsel of the IRS. I had never considered him a monster, although I did later find out he was secretly dating someone else at the same time he was dating me. Maybe Arlen had a point.
She put the pencil in the pocket of her pants. “You should begin here.” She motioned toward a section of ancient-looking leather-bound books. These were massive things whose covers were chipped and flaking and whose yellowed pages, I knew, were filled with beautifully penned deeds and other documents that would make even Bartleby the scrivener sit up and take note. They would contain the oldest records.
“Then you can work your way up to these.” She moved her hand across the room, indicating shelves of books with white plastic covers, a modern filing system to hold photocopies of documents created on typewriters and, later, computers. Finally, she pointed to the table, with its two sleek black monitors. “Anything recorded in the past five and a half years is in our database and you can find it on one of those,” she said.
I nodded. “Thanks. I think that will get me started.”
I sat down on a metal chair and searched for “Goddard,” my great-grandfather’s last name. I pored over all the annual indexes for a twenty-year period, from the late 1800s through the early 1900s. Although each index had a section for every letter of the alphabet, the names in each section were not alphabetized. Grant would come before Gibson, and Gates would be after Goats. That’s just the way it was with the old books. People came in with deeds and other documents to record, and the clerks entered them in their section of the book in the order they were received. On top of that, all the old entries were handwritten, which made reviewing them even slower. After two hours I’d come up with nothing, my throat was dry, and the stuffy room was giving me a headache.
Arlen was sorting through a stack of papers when I walked up to her desk. “Got a question?” she asked.
I shook my head and gave a despondent sigh. To find Gran’s house would have been wonderful. It would have been so exciting to stand before it with my feet on the ground where she might have stood decades ago. I was disappointed. There was no denying that.
“No, no question,” I said. “I think I’m done. Thanks again for your help.”
Arlen nodded and went back to her papers.
I turned to leave and noticed a set of old postcards matted and framed, hanging by the door. I walked up to take a closer look. There were yellow-tinged street scenes of downtown Beacon showing shops and people walking on the sidewalk and cars with rounded fenders and huge steering wheels. There was a postcard of a stark white building that had once been the town hall. And there was a redbrick building sitting on a blanket of green grass. An oak tree with a gnarled trunk stood in front like a wizened sentry. At the bottom of the postcard were the words Littleton Grammar School, Beacon, Maine.
Littleton Grammar School. What was that?
I turned to Arlen. “I do have a question,” I said, pointing to the postcard. “Do you know if this school was around in the forties?” If it was around then, my grandmother would have been a student there.
Arlen walked over, put on a pair of silver half-glasses, and peered at the postcard as if she had never seen it before. “That’s the Littleton School,” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “Do you have any idea when it was built?”
“I believe it was built in the twenties.” She squinted and moved to within an inch of the postcard.
“But I can tell you for sure if you just hold on a minute.” Arlen went searching through a file cabinet and finally pulled something out of a drawer.
“Here it is.” She waved a pamphlet at me. “One of the schools did a project last year on the history of the old buildings in Beacon. It talks about Littleton School in here.”
She handed me the booklet. On its yellow cover was a child’s drawing of a large green house with gables on the front. Inside were photos of a dozen local historic buildings, each accompanied by a narrative. I thumbed through and found a copy of the same postcard. Built between 1923 and 1924, the school had opened in the fall of 1924, the write-up said. Yes, my grandmother would have been a student there.
“You can have that one,” Arlen said, closing the file cabinet. “We’ve got lots of copies.”
“I have one more question,” I said, “and I really appreciate your help.” I clutched the pamphlet in my hand. “Is the school still around?”
She blinked her eyes wide open and stared at me. “Well, of course it’s still around. It’s on Nehoc Lane.”
With that, she turned, went back to her desk, and picked up her phone. I noticed a tiny orange spot on her shirtsleeve when I walked by and I wondered if it was tomato sauce.
The cool late afternoon sun and fresh air were a welcome change after the stuffiness of the records room. I programmed my GPS for Nehoc Lane. It was 3.2 miles away. Maybe I hadn’t found my grandmother’s house, but finding her school seemed pretty good. I was beginning to feel better about Beacon. Something about this town was becoming almost appealing.
Nehoc Lane was a residential street of mostly white houses that sat back from the road, giving way to long front yards filled with gardens of lilacs and blue hydrangeas.
The school looked a lot like the postcard, but there were some major differences. One of them was the circular drive and small parking lot in the front that hadn’t existed when it was built.
I pulled in and parked. Then I walked slowly around the building, studying the words LITTLETON GRAMMAR SCHOOL 1924 etched over the huge wooden front door, noticing the surprising smoothness of the brick when I ran my hand over it, peering at the mullions on the windows and the thick layers of white paint covering the trim. An addition had been grafted on to the back of the building in bright new red brick, and on one side of the school there was a large playground with a rubberized surface. A group of children played on the swings and slides while young mothers chatted at a picnic table.
I walked back to the front of the school, toward a huge oak tree with roots that rose above the ground like arthritic fingers. The giant tree canopy was full and hung over the grass like a leafy umbrella. I sat down with my back against the craggy bark and imagined my grandmother sitting there. Maybe she was six and it was her first day of school. Maybe she was eleven and she had a crush on a boy. I could feel her in the grass, in the sunlight as it snuck through the branches, in the still-warm patch of dirt underneath me.
I ran my fingers along the top of a root and felt the tears well up. They slid down my cheeks and fell onto my pants, making dark spots on the fabric. “I miss you, Gran,” I whispered, my voice choking. “I miss you. And I’ve come here to do what you asked me to do but it’s not going the way it’s supposed to. First, I fell into the ocean and almost…I almost drowned, Gran. Then I tried to deliver your letter but I haven’t been able to do it. And I tried to find your house but I couldn’t do that, either. I wish I knew why these things were happening. I wish you could tell me.” A breeze rustled the tree branches above and I put my head in my hands and closed my eyes.