Evangeline Carrington didn’t stop driving for three states. She picked up Route 95 in Massachusetts, skimmed across the southeastern corner of New Hampshire, and into Maine, where she took Route 1 up the coast. The weather 150 miles from Boston was cool and dry, and after a three-hour drive, they arrived at a village called Dory Landing.
A handful of wood-frame buildings, shingled weather-gray and trimmed in white, clustered around the town dock. A half-dozen fishing boats bobbed on the incoming tide. Dory Landing was a working community where men in slicers and woolen caps stayed out for days to fill their holds with cod, where men in rubber boots and rubber aprons chugged along the coast, baiting lobster traps, cursing shorts, and praying for a two-pounder at the end of every rope.
“Welcome to Winslow Homer country,” said Evangeline.
About a mile north of the village ten or twelve small cottages grew among the pines. Evangeline parked in front of a saltbox which looked across a meadow to the ocean. The nearest cottage was a hundred yards away and barely visible through the trees.
“Very nice,” said Fallon.
“I come up here when I need to get away from things. No one in the family knows I own it.”
“Are all these places summer cottages?”
“No. A lot of craftsmen and artists live around here, would-be Wyeths who sell their paintings to tourists during the summer and starve the rest of the year.”
“Not a bad place to be hungry. You can fish and pick wild berries, and when it gets cold, you can chop down a tree and spend the winter by the fire.”
“Sounds idyllic,” said Evangeline, “until you try it.”
The shades were drawn and the cottage was chilly and damp inside. It reminded Fallon of the beach houses that his parents had rented when he was a boy. He recalled the smell of mildew and wet sand and the gloom that burned away as soon as Evangeline raised the shades. The afternoon sun poured in, reflecting off the knotty-pine paneling and maple furniture, filling the room with an amber glow. Fallon could feel himself begin to relax. He sat at the table beside the picture window and placed the diary in front of him.
“Not yet,” said Evangeline firmly. “I need a drink and a few minutes to collect myself.”
She hasn’t said a word between the Massachusetts border and Dory Landing, thought Fallon. She should be well collected by now.
“Then,” she added, “I’m going to call my uncle.”
She produced two bottles of Miller’s beer, a small store of ripe Camembert, and a box of crackers. The beer, in clear bottles, caught the sunshine and highlighted the amber glow with gold. Fallon drank and realized that his throat had been dust-dry since he had stepped onto the widow’s walk at Searidge.
Philip Pratt stood at service line, five stories up. Behind him stretched three blocks of Back Bay. In front of him, an attractive brunette named Melissa Pike awaited his shot. She was his woman for the season.
In autumn, he chose ladies who enjoyed gourmet cooking and Harvard football games. Winter brought Nordic types who made love as well and as willingly as they skied. In April, he went to the Bahamas alone to recover. And in early summer, he sought lithe young professionals who played tennis and sailed. Melissa worked as a junior editor for a Boston publisher, she shot a withering backhand, and on weekends she didn’t wear underwear.
Pratt shot.
“Fault,” she cried. “Game, set, and match.”
Pratt didn’t like to lose, but Melissa jumped about in triumph and distracted him from defeat.
They were playing on the rooftop tennis court of Pratt’s Commonwealth Avenue home, which had been in the family since its construction in 1866. Soon they would be playing in Pratt’s circular bathtub, which had not been part of the Pratt tradition for quite as long.
“Another match?” she asked.
“You’ve got twenty years on me, Melissa. Besides, it’s too hot. Let’s have a drink instead.” He poured two chilled martinis, and the phone rang.
“Philip? This is Evangeline.”
Pratt excused himself and took the call in his study on the fourth floor. “Where the hell are you, Evangeline?”
She refused to tell him, but it sounded like long distance. “This morning, I went to Searidge.”
“I know,” he said coldly. “Breaking and entering is a crime.”
“Is that why Harrison pulled a gun on me?” She didn’t pause for an answer. “And where is Grandmother?”
“We’ve admitted your grandmother to a rest home. Christopher’s death has had an absolutely devastating effect on her.”
“A rest home will have an even worse effect.”
“It’s for her own good.”
Evangeline laughed. She didn’t believe that Philip Pratt ever did anything for anyone’s good but his own.
“Is that student with you?” asked Pratt.
“Yes. Why?”
“Harrison was trying to protect you from him. We’re not certain of his intentions, and your safety may be in jeopardy if you stay with him.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t trust him.”
“Philip, I don’t trust anyone.”
“You’d better trust me, and get yourself up here as soon as possible. I’ll explain everything when I see you.”
“Tomorrow at ten.”
“We’d prefer to talk to you today.”
“Tomorrow at ten.” She hung up.
Pratt called Soames and told him about the phone call.
“Is she bringing the student with her?” asked Soames.
“I don’t know. I told her he might be dangerous and suggested that she get away from him.”
“I think it’s imperative that we talk to him. Did she say where they were?”
“No.”
“He has more than his share of nerve,” said Soames after some thought. “I won’t be surprised if he’s with her tomorrow. I suggest calling Mr. Hannaford. He may be able to help us.”
“What if Fallon doesn’t show?”
“We’ll go out and find him. Whatever he knows, we can’t have his knowledge floating around free.”
Pratt hung up and stared down at the traffic on Commonwealth Avenue. He had been fighting depression for weeks, and it was making another assault. Once he had moved through his world like a corsair. He had directed the affairs of the corporation with the supreme confidence that came to him from six generations of leadership. His authority had been unquestioned, his business ability recognized by associates, competitors, and stockholders alike. In the early years, as he worked through the lower levels of management to a vice-presidency, he had been tough, disciplined, ruthless, and the stockholders had agreed with Artemus Pratt IV when he had stated, in his last corporate report before retirement, that his son had earned the presidency and chairmanship of Pratt Industries. For years, Philip Pratt fulfilled their expectations. Now his future rested on the tea set.
He had to commit his aunt to a nursing home because she was deemed a threat to company security. He had to worry when his niece spent time with a Harvard graduate student. And he relied more heavily on the advice of his personal secretary than he did on himself.
Someplace, he had lost control, first of himself, then of the company. As he had reached forty, the discipline which had brought him to be president and chairman of the board had begun to deteriorate. He had realized that he was not enjoying his life, and the future had no longer seemed limitless. He had turned his attention to new pursuits. He had spent more time sailing, playing tennis, and skiing. He had bought into American Center Films because he wanted a plaything. He had begun to enjoy the company of younger women.
A divorce had followed. His wife had taken the house on Martha’s Vineyard and custody of their two sons, aged ten and eight. Pratt had kept the family mansion in the Back Bay and the lifestyle he was learning to enjoy.
Then, William Rule had mounted his challenge, and Philip Pratt had tried to fight back. He had reached into himself for his old resources and had found them gone. He had called to his old allies, and they had not answered. Philip Pratt had decided that he had enjoyed himself too much. He had resolved that he would not be the first Pratt to turn over the chairmanship, and he had instructed Christopher Carrington to investigate the history of the Golden Eagle Tea Set.
Pratt remembered that Melissa Pike was still on the roof waiting to play another set. He stepped into the hallway and heard running water. He glanced toward his bedroom. Melissa’s clothes were piled on the rug, and the bathroom door was open. A whirlpool bath for two. Pratt kicked off his shorts and forgot his problems.
Bennett Soames was in his office when Philip Pratt called him. Since the tea-set business had begun, Soames had been working extra hours just to read and initial the paperwork required to keep the executive office functioning smoothly.
However, Soames had always worked long hours, ever since he had begun work in 1946 as a twenty-two-year-old veteran with a background in military intelligence. He had started as an accountant and was running the department within a few years. In the late fifties, he had attracted the attention of Philip Pratt, who was just out of Harvard Business School. He had become Pratt’s administrative assistant and confidant, and he rose with the president’s son. His loyalty to Philip Pratt had been rewarded with power, a spacious office, a generous stock option, and a salary on which he lived most comfortably.
Soames had never married and had no family. Women interested him only in passing. When he needed female companionship to fulfill social or sexual requirements, he had no trouble attracting it, but his passions were the opera and trapshooting.
He devoted one room of his apartment to his collection of opera recordings, books, and posters. Every summer, he traveled for three weeks to hear the best companies in Europe, and he contributed annually to the Opera Company of Boston. Opera, he said, allowed one to experience the most extreme emotions and, because of the music, hold them at arm’s length, so that they might be admired.
On weekends, Soames traveled to the Kenworthy Gun Club, near Newburyport, and he shot clay disks as they traveled across a range. Trapshooting tested speed, coordination, and marksmanship. The target appeared, it was destroyed, and another was launched at the shooter’s command. He considered it an efficient sport: one wasted no motion in the stalking of prey and saw no bloody carcasses.
Soames had devoted himself to Pratt Industries and Philip Pratt, and he had been the first to notice when Philip began to neglect his duties. He had tried to keep Pratt to his daily routine, but Pratt had refused. Pratt skipped meetings, took longer vacations, failed to read reports which, if seen in time, might have meant thousands of dollars to the company. Bennett Soames watched the stock fall, and he felt betrayed. He had decided that he would help to find the tea set, and that would be the last service he performed for Pratt Industries.
After she had hung up, Evangeline looked straight at Fallon. “Without taking more than fifteen seconds, tell me the name of the American who negotiated the Treaty of Ghent.”
“What?”
“Don’t waste time. Just tell me.”
“There were five. Albert Gallatin, John Bayard, and John Quincy Adams started. They were joined later by Henry Clay and John Russell.”
She seemed relieved. “You couldn’t come up with an answer like that if you weren’t a historian.”
“What else would I be?”
“Jack the Ripper, according to Philip Pratt.” Evangeline then sketched her conversation. “I told him I’d see him tomorrow in Boston.”
“Does that mean we’re spending the night together?” joked Fallon.
“Don’t push, Peter. You’ve already invaded my world and, at least for today, turned it inside out. I’ve been tempted several times in the last few hours to pull over at the side of the road and toss you out on your head. Keep your distance.” She spoke carefully, logically. She did not threaten. She knew what she needed to keep her life intact, and she didn’t care what he thought about her.
He smiled. “I wasn’t serious.”
They took their crackers, cheese, and beer out to the yard and sat in wooden lawn chairs. Several hundred feet beyond, past a stand of pines and an open meadow, the land fell away to a rocky beach. Evangeline closed her eyes and listened to the sound of the waves. Fallon wiped the dust off the diary with the tail of his shirt.
The diary was bound in leather, and Abigail Pratt Bentley’s initials were hand-tooled on the cover. The lock, made of brass, wouldn’t open. Fallon tried to pry it with his pocket knife, but old leather was weaker than brass, and he pulled the lock completely out of the book.
“It’s been a bad day for heirlooms,” said Evangeline.
“You wouldn’t think a lock like that would still hold after so long.” Fallon opened the book. The pages were made of the finest rag fiber, and there was very little deterioration. The date of the first entry was January 1, 1845, the last, December 31, 1845. “We have one year of a woman’s life in front of us. How much did you know about her?”
“Not much, although Christopher was fascinated by her. Family history became a hobby of his three or four years ago, and I remember one November, between sailing and ski seasons, he spent every weekend reading her diaries in the Searidge attic.”
“They must have contained a lot of interesting stuff.” Fallon began to read. “ ‘January 1, 1845. I begin another chapter in the story of my life, which grows more fulfilling with every year. Young Artemus, now thirty-seven, with three bright children of his own, has invested heavily in the railroads that now wend their way across the American landscape. The Reading Railroad, the Attica and Buffalo, and the Auburn and Rochester are all financed by our Pratt dollars. I am now discussing with him the potential of a line to Chicago that is, as yet, unfinished—the Michigan Central.’
“This was one smart woman,” said Fallon. “The old Yankee merchant families were still making good money in the China trade, but the profits had leveled off by the time she was writing this, and New York had outstripped Boston as the center of shipping and commerce. More and more Boston money went into railroads, and the Michigan Central was a huge money-maker.”
He looked at the diary again. “ ‘I have been well pleased with the qualities and capabilities that Artemus Pratt has displayed in the years since he took over the leadership of Pratt Shipping and Mercantile. He has made the right choices, he has dealt firmly with his competitors, and he has conferred closely with me on every decision. From the day that he bargained away Pemberton Hill for seventy-five shares of Boston and Lowell stock, instead of the fifty Jackson had offered, I knew we were in firm hands. Ever since, Artemus has done nothing to disappoint me. Nor has Elihu, who has been Artemus’s right hand and faithful servant. My only regret in my dealings with my nephews is that Philip has never forgiven me or his brothers for his father’s death. Philip is now twenty-one years old and the handsomest young man I have ever seen. Although he is civil and decorous at all times, he still hates me. My heart breaks to think that what happened fifteen years ago can color our lives today, and I try, whenever I see him, to touch Philip in some way, to remind him of the greatness of the Pratt past and our mission in the future. I fear that I have not reached him.’ ”
“This is amazing,” said Evangeline softly. “Amazing.”
“You can almost picture her, sitting there with her needlepoint in her lap fretting about her nephews. She talks as if they were her sons.”
“She didn’t have any children of her own, so she lavished all her love and worry on her brother’s children. It’s only natural.”
Fallon continued to read. “ ‘Of course, his father’s death was a terrible tragedy, and I have relived it in my mind’s eye many times. But I firmly believe that Jason was a victim of himself more than anything else. Artemus and Elihu recognized their father’s weakness, but Philip was only seven when Jason died, and he retains a romantic image of the man. I deeply regret his death. Had he lived to accept the terms I was going to offer, he would have become his son’s chief adviser, and he would have seen his beliefs about shipping vindicated. Since the Opium War ended five years ago and the British forced China to open all her ports, our ships have hauled enormous quantities of textiles to China, and our profits have been greater than ever.’ ”
For the next several hours, Abigail entranced her readers. Sitting on the lawn, with the afternoon breeze sifting gently through the pines that surrounded the cottage, Evangeline and Peter were transported to 1845.
Abigail spread her deepest emotions across the pages of her diary and wove them through the narrative of her life. When she was happy, she wrote short, fragmented entries that burst with enthusiasm. When she was depressed, she spent hours filling pages with her ramblings. But one theme dominated her writings—she was obsessed by the passages of the Pratts through history, by the mark they had left on the past and the glories they would enjoy in the future.
“Listen to this,” said Fallon. “ ‘May 2, 1845. A beautiful blue day in spring. A ride on the Boston and Worcester with my nephew’s beautiful children. We picnicked in the Needham countryside and returned to Boston at sunset. The children squealed with delight as we rode the “Dizzy Bridge,” that most frightening structure of trestle and track that crosses the Back Bay Full Basin between Brookline and Gravelly Point.’ ”
“ ‘Lord! How much has changed in thirty years. Two railroad lines now crisscross one another in the middle of our Back Bay, and the flow of water is all but stopped. The mills are completely useless. But no matter. Our legacy is still safe, our future is secure, and another beautiful generation of Pratts has learned to love their aunt. I will teach them all I know, for they will take us into the twentieth century.’
“How the Back Bay has changed in thirty years.” Fallon repeated the phrase and tried to inject it with importance.
“Everything changes in thirty years,” said Evangeline.
“But Abigail says the changes don’t bother her, because her legacy is still safe. She’s only fifty-five when she’s writing this, and she’s always talking about her legacy. What kind of legacy?”
“Her diaries, her collection of old walking sticks, her Herman Melville decoder ring. I don’t know. Wait until you read something significant before you start finding meanings. The only thing clear to me is that she wasn’t a very happy woman. Anyone who is always thinking about the future or the past can’t be enjoying the present too much.” Evangeline pulled her chair into a patch of sunlight.
“She was a manipulator. She had a hand in everyone’s business and, if I read it correctly, played a role in her brother’s demise. It sounds as though she was a real dowager queen.”
“Whatever she was, she still hasn’t told us anything about your mythical tea set. Read on.”
Fallon asked Evangeline to read for a while. He wanted to sip beer and listen.
She read through May and into early June. “Here’s something interesting.”
“About the tea set?”
“No, but it gives us a nice picture of the old girl. ‘June 7, 1845. Today marks the twentieth anniversary of Sean Mannion’s arrival at my door. It is hard to believe that he entered my service so long ago. I don’t know what I would have done without him. In the early years, he was source of strength, encouragement, and, yes, love of the purest sort. Now, he and his wife Lillian, whom he married ten years ago, are more like close friends than servants. I remember their son Joseph’s birthday as I remember my nieces’ and nephews’. Yesterday, we had a party to commemorate his years with me. Artemus and Elihu and their wives and families all attended, along with many of Sean’s Irish friends from the North End.
“ ‘He is still a handsome man. His brawn and muscle have not diminished with the years, and his kindness and gentleness grow greater as he grows older. Would that we all aged so gracefully.’ ”
“Sounds like she had the hots for him,” injected Fallon.
“I doubt it. She was a New England Yankee. She wouldn’t look twice at an Irishman.”
“Maybe that was her problem.”
Evangeline pretended to miss his meaning. She simply continued reading. “ ‘He is now thirty-nine, and I know that he will never strike out on his own, as he wanted to do before my brother’s death. The circumstances surrounding that unfortunate incident tormented him for many months. Eventually, he regained something of his old personality, but he never found the strength again to break away from the security he has always had with us.”
Evangeline looked at Peter. “I wonder what happened.”
“It sounds like the guy blamed himself for Jason’s death. Maybe he killed him.”
She looked again at the diary. “ ‘For selfish reasons, I was happy that he stayed, but I now am haunted by the thought that he wasted his life.’ ”
“She feels guilty because he felt guilty that her brother died,” mused Fallon. “Interesting situation.”
“This next entry looks like a short one. ‘June 8, 1845. Philip will be graduating next week from Harvard. We have suggested that, like his brothers before him, he take a trip around the world and see the extent of the Pratt empire. I think he would enjoy spending a year at our China office. He is very interested in the prospect of a trip, but he says he won’t be stopping in China or coming back to Boston. Now that his mother is dead, he says he has no reason to remain in the city.
“ ‘He is young and fancies himself an adventurer, but I hate to see him go. I have, for many years, imagined him as part of the triumvirate that would lead our company for the next forty years. I may yet try to keep him in the fold. I am considering giving him a clue’ ”—Evangeline slowed down—“ ‘to our family secret and hope that it holds him here.’ ”
At first, Fallon did not react. “Read that last sentence again.”
She did.
“Damn,” said Fallon softly. “Why couldn’t she be more specific?”
“Because it’s a secret. She knew what it was. She didn’t have to be specific. Be quiet and listen. On June 15, she writes, ‘After a long, sleepless night, I have made my decision. I am going to give each nephew a quotation. I am going to tell them enough about our treasure to—’ ”
“The set never left this country,” said Fallon excitedly.
“She calls it a treasure, not a tea set.” Evangeline tried to control Fallon’s excitement and her own.
“Let me finish.” She found her place. “ ‘… enough about our treasure to bind them together.’ ”
“She’s certainly crafty.” Fallon was certain that Abigail was talking about the tea set. “She’s probably hung on to some of the choicest clues for herself.”
Evangeline didn’t stop to speculate. “ ‘June 16, 1845. I have failed in my plan. Artemus held a graduation party for his youngest brother at his new summer home in Marblehead, a handsome oceanside dwelling called Searidge. Before dinner, I called my nephews into the study.’ ” Evangeline stopped reading.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She laughed nervously. “It’s just very strange to read about a place where you’ve spent so much of your life. I used to sit for hours in the Searidge study and play with my dolls or look for sexy passages in the books I’d seen my grandmother reading. Nobody else ever used the study. It was my girlhood retreat. I knew that nothing could hurt me there. I never thought about all the life that went on there before I even existed.” She paused. “Of course, my illusions about my special place were shattered when I was sixteen. That’s when my mother told me that my father was murdered in the study. I felt betrayed somehow. I kept asking myself, why did he have to die there?”
Fallon remembered Katherine Carrington’s reference to her son. “How old was he?”
“His late twenties. My mother was carrying me when it happened.”
“Who killed him?”
“We never found out. Apparently he surprised a burglar who had just broken into the house. The burglar escaped.” She paused again and gazed out toward the ocean. “Of course, for most of my life, my own father has been as distant to me as Abigail Pratt Bentley. Just another link in the chain of the Pratt-Carrington past, another picture on the wall in the living room.”
Evangeline picked up the diary again and found her place. “Abigail calls her nephews into the study. ‘And, without naming it specifically, I told them each about the family treasure, the legacy left to us by my father. I told them that it was buried someplace in the waters around Boston…’ ” Evangeline stopped and looked at Fallon.
His jaw dropped. “The tea set. Still in the Back Bay mud. Pratt’s grandson must’ve drowned trying to find it, and Pratt just said the hell with it.”
“Now it’s in the museum,” she said firmly.
“Maybe not. Maybe it’s still out there buried under some brownstone.”
Evangeline finished the entry. “ ‘I gave each of them an envelope containing a clue and told them that if they ever wanted the treasure, which I now estimate would be worth almost fifty thousand dollars to the right buyer, they would have to stay together. Artemus and Elihu were polite but little interested in my story or the envelopes. Philip read his, then folded it and jammed it into his pocket. I thought for a moment that he was intrigued by my story, but then he gazed upon me with an expression of the deepest contempt and said—how it wounds me to use these words!—that I was a “meddlesome bitch unfit for his company.” He said that I had manipulated his father and his brothers, but I would not manipulate him. He then stormed out of Searidge, and we haven’t seen him since.’ ” Evangeline could feel Abigail’s pain, and her voice conveyed it.
“ ‘Oh, Lord, how hard I tried to make the boy love me and keep him as part of the family. How miserably I have failed.’ ”
A few days later, Abigail recorded that Philip had withdrawn the money held in trust for him until his graduation and had boarded a Pratt ship for London. She seldom mentioned him or, to Fallon’s disappointment, the family treasure again in 1845. She filled her diurnal with business reports, thoughts about new investments, praise for Artemus and Elihu, and an old aunt’s admiration for her grand-nieces and -nephews.
It was after seven o’clock when Fallon neared the end of the diary. They had been reading for over four hours, and the sun was dropping toward the hills a mile or so away. The breeze had died down, and the air was still. Fallon was sipping his third beer as he read.
On December 30, Abigail began her summation of the year. It usually took her two days to write.
As he reached the last page, Fallon was quite amazed that Abigail could calculate her thoughts to end with such precision. “ ‘All in all, it would have been a very good year, except for Philip Pratt’s abdication. A more beautiful and intelligent man I have never met. His presence with Pratt Shipping and Mercantile would have been invaluable. I did all that I could to keep him in the fold. I even offered him a piece of our treasure. He rejected it. He rejected us. We have not heard from him in six months. I fear that we may never hear from him again. I pray that future generations will not have such disregard for my dreams.
“ ‘Thus ends this Year of our Lord, one thousand, eight hundred, and forty-five.’ ”
Fallon closed the diary and looked at Evangeline. For a time, they sat in silence, in awe of Abigail Pratt Bentley. She had told them much about the tea set, and more about herself. Her revelations had convinced Fallon that he was moving in the right direction, and Evangeline, almost involuntarily, was becoming less skeptical.
For supper, they drove to a little place in Dory Landing called the Chowder Mug, where they had steaming bowls of fish chowder, home-baked bread, salads straight from the garden, and a pot of coffee. Fallon added a wedge of apple pie with cheddar cheese, and Evangeline paid. Fallon said it was the best meal he’d had in weeks. They drove back to the cottage with the top down. The sun had set, and the night was crisp and cool, without a trace of the humidity that was soaking Boston. But Evangeline was still wearing shorts and beginning to shiver in the open car. She pulled the Porsche up in front of the cottage and ran inside.
Fallon lingered to enjoy the arrival of night. He had not been out of the city at night in months. The stillness, the clean smell of pine and salt, the darkness that seemed to gather near the ground like fog and rise until it obscured the tops of the trees, all seemed new to him once more. He breathed deep and rested his hand on his full belly. He felt satisfied, relaxed.
Evangeline came out again. She was wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, and she was carrying a man’s windbreaker, which she handed to Fallon.
“Let’s walk.” She started down the trail toward the water.
Fallon threw on the windbreaker and followed. “When we get back tomorrow—”
“Stay on the trail. This place is infested with poison ivy.”
He fell in behind her and started again to speak.
She interrupted. “I don’t want to talk about tomorrow or Abigail Pratt Bentley’s treasure for at least an hour. I don’t like to upset my digestion.”
They crossed the road and walked in silence to the edge of the meadow. Wooden stairs led to the beach, twenty feet below. The lights of Dory Landing gleamed to the south, and a full moon was rising out of the water. Fallon looked at Evangeline. A pretty girl in a sweatshirt, a deserted beach, the familiar tightness in his chest—he remembered it all from the nights of his youth, nights spent in the sand at Falmouth or Martha’s Vineyard, nights he would love to relive.
He moved a step closer. He wanted to kiss her, but he remembered the warning about keeping his distance. Beneath the cool exterior, she was skittish and unpredictable, and he didn’t want to frighten her off.
She bounded down the stairs. Fallon followed. On the beach, she kicked off her sneakers and started to walk. Fallon took his off, found the sand too cold, and put them on again. As they walked, Fallon lagged a few yards behind, sensing that she did not want to talk. Evangeline sauntered along with her head down as though she were looking for something in the sand. After some distance, she angled toward the water and sat down on the hull of an overturned rowboat. Fallon caught up to her and sat in the sand at her feet.
The evening chill was turning cold. Evangeline jammed her hands into the pouch of her sweatshirt and pressed her leg against Fallon’s side. “You’re warm.”
He wrapped an arm around her legs, and they sat listening to the gentle lapping of the waves against the shore. After a while, she reached out and ran her hand across his arm and shoulder. He didn’t move. Then she placed her other hand on his arm and crouched down so that her head rested on his shoulder. He turned his face to her and she sat up quickly.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re dredging up old memories.”
He realized that she was caressing the jacket, not him.
“You’re the first man to wear that in almost two years.” She slid down into the sand next to Fallon. “I was going to marry him. I met him after my first year of law school, when I was working for Legal Aid.”
“I didn’t know you went to law school.”
“Oh, yes.” She laughed softly. “I went filled with purpose. I was going to get all the sophisticated weapons I’d need to fight the battles of the generation. You know—Vietnam, racism, pollution, all the windmills we went tilting after in the late sixties and early seventies. And I hated it. The first year was unbearable. But I got through it and went to work that summer for Boston Legal Aid. Most of the cases I worked on involved landlord-tenant problems in poor neighborhoods and hassles between the Housing Authority and their tenants in the projects.
“That’s where I met Cliff. He worked in the D.A.’s office. He was heading a campaign against the drug pushers operating in the housing projects where a lot of our clients lived. He said he wanted to nail the big guys and keep all the little losers out of the public defender’s office. I had a few professional discussions with him, and they led to a dinner invitation. We fell in love with each other, and together we fell in love with the Maine coast.” She recited it all without emotion, as though it had happened to someone else. “But we never got to enjoy it. He pushed too hard, and someone killed him. They found his body in his garage. Carbon-monoxide poisoning.” She stood decisively, as if she could leave her memories in the sand.
“Did you quit law school?”
“I went to law school because I was committed. I thought I could make a difference. After Cliff died, I realized that the problems are all too big to go away, and one crusading lawyer isn’t going to make much of a dent in any of them. Without him, the simple act of getting from one day to the next became a major challenge. So I decided to concentrate on me, on living my own life and letting everyone else take care of themselves.” She spoke softly, but with conviction. “Now, I grow my plants, I enjoy my work, and I seek whatever tranquillity I can find.”
Peter Fallon was beginning to understand her. Behind the defenses, he saw someone he wanted very much to know. He wondered how close she would let him come. He wanted to be gentle with her. He wanted to move carefully, but suddenly, he was leaping up and grabbing her by the shoulders. “Damn the tranquillity, Evangeline!”
She was startled. “What are you talking about, Peter?”
“I’m talking about this morning. About breaking into Searidge, about finding the diary.” The words began to pour out of him. “I’m talking about a challenge, something dangerous, like that fight on the roof. When I felt those hands close around my throat, I had to reach down and grab hold of all the guts and instinct inside me, and I had to tell myself I could make it. And I did. We both did. We were pushed to the brink, and we fought our way back. There’s nothing in life that feels better than when you know you’ve made it. The rush intensifies everything.”
She felt his fingers digging into her shoulders. She didn’t want to admit that he was frightening her. She tried to sound sarcastic. “I really think you’d be willing to risk your life for a few charges of high-grade adrenaline.”
“I made a big mistake going into history. I’m no scholar. I never was. I got dry rot from three years in the stacks, and I’ve killed myself writing a dissertation that nobody except my thesis board will read. In a few months, they’ll shake my hand and call me ‘doctor,’ and it won’t mean a thing, because I’m not going to disappear into some little school in Arkansas, and I can’t wait around until some bureaucracy offers me a job. I need something now. I need to find that tea set.”
She pulled away. In little more than twenty-four hours, she had attended her brother’s funeral, broken into her grandmother’s house, rifled through private papers, and fought her way out of the attic. She had a bump on her head, her body was bruised, and she had been pouring out her past to a man she hardly knew. All her intellect and experience told her to get away from Peter Fallon. He was potentially dangerous, someone she ought to avoid. But Abigail Pratt Bentley had whetted her curiosity, and something inside her wanted what Fallon was offering—a challenge that was physical as well as mental, a test of her instincts and her intuition, a chance to see the edge after seeking so long the soft center. She decided to help him.
“Tomorrow, I’ll talk to my uncle and try to find out what’s going on, for my own peace of mind and our curiosity. After that, I’ll make no promises.” She turned and headed back toward the cottage.