Maine took my breath away.
Mountains bathed in colour sloped down on the left to kiss the sea on the right, and in between we zipped forward on this ribbon of tar, tracing the shape of each bay, of each harbour.
And then, north of Portsmouth, I saw it.
The Keeper’s Inn.
It was just a small bed and breakfast. A converted white clapboard carriage house. But the sign was clear, at least to me.
I slowed and turned my head. Evil did not emanate from the windows, and the place held no malice. It shook me just the same.
Not as much as the next sighting.
The Keeper’s Eatery.
Fifteen minutes separated the buildings, likely unrelated concerns. I scanned the landscape harder. Fish houses. Lobster houses. Lightkeeper mercantile.
Keeper.
That word graced signs and businesses everywhere I looked. If Elias knew what surrounded him, he would be beside himself. Well, beside this self.
“Elias. I know you trust me as your guide.”
“I do.”
“But this quest. I know so little about this Keeper. Could you clarify anything that might help me as I search? Do you have any more details? Anything at all?”
He removed his sketchbook from his pack. He hunched over a page, and his hands clutched and re-clutched a pencil. Finally, he let his hand go. Minutes later, he reached me the pad. “I guess it’s time. I have that.”
“It’s a lighthouse.”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“No, not maybe . . . and not a general lighthouse. This is a specific one. We’re looking for the keeper of this lighthouse. Am I correct?”
“I don’t know.”
“It makes sense, doesn’t it? And what’s this building, this faint building. Is it a building?” I squinted at the structure sketched so lightly it was hardly there. “Is this a mistake?”
“I don’t draw mistakes.” He folded his arms.
“Right, well, may I keep this? Just until we arrive? I think it may prove quite handy.”
We drove on, and for the first time the scenery stole attention from our purpose. There was a piece of England on this coast, with settlements wrapping arms around each inlet. We reached Penobscot Bay, and the towns lining it grew smaller, and quainter. The pace slowed and the air was kissed with salt. Rockland. Rockport.
Camden.
“Stop here.” Elias pressed his nose against the glass. “Stop here.” He swallowed and glanced around, his head cocked. “That bay.”
“Do you remember something?” I asked, and slowly pulled onto a side road.
“I remember.”
We had been following idiocy for so long, the presence of a memory, a real memory, felt a certainty that should not be ignored, no matter how faint. I screamed and pounded the wheel. “I knew it. I knew it, Elias. We would get near and you would remember, and then not just part of you but the other part of you, and when both of you remember . . . Oh, Elias, this is it. I feel it.”
“What are you taking about?”
“It doesn’t matter. What do you remember? Maine? Camden? Penobscot Bay? A building? A street?”
“A feeling.”
I paused. “You remember a feeling? That’s it?”
He patted his belly. “I’m hungry. Come on.” Elias got out of the Porsche.
“So he remembers being hungry. We stop in Camden because his stomach grumbles.” I tongued the inside of my cheek and rubbed my face. “Fine.”
We wandered downtown, past the white clapboard inns and flower shops, and into the town’s three-story brick heart, my steps a few behind Elias’s. There was a uniqueness to his wandering, a route filled with frequent pauses and lengthened looks.
Until we reached the wharf.
Then his feet found purpose, and he quickened his gait. Beyond the harbour; up, over, and around on the road that traced its shape. He veered toward the water again, and then Elias ran.
And stopped.
Laite Beach. Elias stepped gingerly onto the sand-less shore. He crunched over pebbles and shells, dropped to his knees, and pressed his ear against the ground. Dots were connecting — I knew it — and I gave him room, room to walk on the tide wall, balancing as a child. Room to dip his hand in the water.
Thirty minutes later, Elias still stared at the tide, before glancing at a small island on his right.
It happened.
“Curtis Island.” Elias pointed into the distance. “See it? That’s Curtis Island.” He half turned and gazed at the mountain on his left. “That’s Mount Battie. I’ve been to the top before. From the top you can see everything.”
I froze.
The confused one. The Other One. The paranoid Elias stepped into my world.
I broke into a run and wrapped him in a hug. “You remember this place! Elias, this is real. These places are real. These memories are real. We aren’t in Salem, we’re not following stars or myths, but still you remember.”
He looked at me, fear in his eyes.
I shook my head. “We found it, a memory that predates your Great Undoing.”
“I want to leave.” Elias abruptly turned from the sea and climbed back onto the road. We followed its curves back into town. Passed the swaying boats of the Camden Yacht Club and across Frye Street. We split the red brick buildings straddling the road, and peeked into the windows of several chowder houses.
Then the town opened, and the road forked before us. Everywhere floated the smell of fish, and we wandered into Boynton-McKay, and plunked down in one of the high-backed booths.
“Is this all right?” he asked. “I’m so hungry.”
“You find yourself and you’re still thinking of food?” I rolled my eyes and ordered a bowl of haddock chowder. Elias did the same.
“I do think we’re close,” he said. “Close to ultimate evil.”
I smiled, raised a spoonful of chowder, took aim, and flicked it into his face.
He methodically wiped it off and dumped his bowl on my head.
“You jerk!” I swept thick and creamy off my face. “That was not responding in kind!”
“What you did was not kind!”
A waitress eased over and winced. “Other ways to protest the chowder, though nobody ever has before. You’re not from around here.”
I grabbed the towel from her hands and wiped chowder from my hair. “I’m certain it’s top rate. I’m sorry about the mess. It was a misunderstanding. But you’re right, we do need some locals.” I stood and stepped into the middle of the eatery, chunky fish drippings falling to the floor. “I’m looking for a lighthouse. I am running out of patience. I smell like haddock. Can anybody help me?”
“Ayup. Which one, lass?” A man wearing rubber overalls slid out of his seat.
I thought and dug in my pocket, brought out Elias’s picture. “This. I want this one.”
“Well, it ain’t Matinicus.” A rough voice from behind. “Not Browns Head, either.”
“Don’t look nothing like Boon or Goat Island.”
Soon I was surrounded by ten patrons.
“Seguin?”
“No, fool.”
“Ain’t the Heron’s Neck Light or Owls Head.”
I pulled the picture to my chest. “How many of these bloomin’ lights are there?”
“Sixty, maybe seventy.”
“You know where you need to go?” A rough voice cut through, and the others fell silent.
“If I did, I wouldn’t be standing here covered in soup.”
An old man smiled, his front teeth absent. He hobbled forward, his face weathered but his eyes clear. “I know a lobsterman. He’ll know your lighthouse.”
“Thank you. Did you hear that, Elias? This gentleman knows . . . Elias?”
Our booth was empty, save for a sketch on the table.
A head surrounded by a pool of blood.
Yes, that had happened. I picked up the sheet. We were near the end of my story, and as hard as I tried to focus on Elias’s quest, panic rose in me again. I was so close to my fear. The next sketch. It would tell all.
I pushed outside, calling, running, calling more. Finally, I returned and paid for the meal.
“You still want to find your lighthouse, lass?”
I felt in my pocket. I had the keys; Elias wasn’t going anywhere. I slowly folded the sketch. He wanted me to have it and know exactly what he knew. To that end, Elias would stay and perhaps discover more memories in the process. I hoped.
“Carry on.”
I hopped inside a stranger’s truck and sunk into my seat. Of all the horrid moments to lose Elias.
“You seem a girl with chowder on her head and a load of cares on her mind.”
I forced a smile. “I’m entertaining a few.”
“Call me Salt — it’s what they all do.” He reached out his hand, and though his knuckles were gnarled, his grip was strong.
“Call me Clarita, I guess.”
“Pretty name.” We pulled onto the windy road that snaked through Camden. He pointed at the harbour. “Walked down there yet? Camden’s got a beautiful harbour all right, but it ain’t the working man’s harbour it once was. Tourists and artists here now. See all them boats? Shrink-wrapped for the season. Got soft up here.
“Now, where we going, a few towns up, the lobsterman still work it hard. Take St. George, ‘bout fifteen miles south, it’s where we’ll find him. He’ll know your light, if it is to be known.”
I nodded. Something about Salt was comfortable, like Dad’s old armchair. “Thanks for your time. Let me reimburse —”
“Naw. A chance for Old Salt to carriage a beautiful young fishsmellin’ woman? Maybe some of the local seniors’ll see me in action and my prospects will improve.”
I laughed and straightened. “Oh, a charming gentleman like yourself?”
“Talk to lobster your whole life, and you almost forget normal human interaction . . . There. Lean on over here and take a look. There’s a light for you.” Salt pointed out his window at a lonely tower, rising in the distance. “Now, that’s not yours, but another’s been restored. These days, they’re all automated. Maintained by Fish and Wildlife. No more lightkeepers. No need.” He turned and smiled. “But we lobstermen, can’t rid Maine of us. Can’t replace a lobsterman with a computer.”
We drove through a scenic wonderland, through Rockland and finally into Rockport. The entire way, Salt talked of bait and traps, islands and storms. But these words I caught only in disconnected pieces. My mind was on Elias.
He would not leave a place that he knew. It would eat at him, though it might scare him, but that was all right. He would explore, and I would return with the final piece to his mystery, and perhaps Elias would give the final piece of mine.
His mind might even be whole.
But it was the next step that caused me to stumble. What if he was sound and all I wished for came true? What if somehow this place could do what medication couldn’t? What if Elias waited for me?
Wanted me.
So also did my dad.
Elias’s path had been clarifying. My own path was becoming murky.
“We’re here, lass. St. George. It’s where we’ll find him.”
The road twisted and ended abruptly at the waterfront. Warped docks and lobster traps spread out before me. Salt was right. This harbour was work and sweat and disrepair, the boats that bobbed in the water paint-peeled and pitched tight.
“Tenant’s Harbor. On the west end of the Penobscot.” Salt hopped out of the truck. “With any luck, we’ll find him in. Otherwise, we wait.”
We wandered down past nets and repair sheds, toward the colourful lobster boats moored in the harbour. All but one was empty.
Puffins and seagulls flew low overhead and turned east, flying out over the bay. The sky took on the deep shade of London grey, and a rogue memory of my mum pushed in.
“In early, Haley,” called Salt.
A gal looked up from the boat, raised her rubber gloves to her hips. She was pretty, working pretty, and she puffed air up and swept back her fringe with the crook of her arm.
“Been some time. Thought you’d grown soft spendin’ time wit’ all them Camden uppers.”
“Oh yes, I have grown soft.” He looked at me. “I want to introduce you to my granddaughter, Clarita, from London.”
“Hello,” I said.
“Well, hell.” Haley set to wrapping herring, tossing them into a barrel behind her. “Didn’t know you’d ever been across the sea.”
“Sometimes the sea just comes to you, then blows back where it come from.” Salt grinned.
“Ayup. Reckon it does. But I got seven hundred traps down, and I need to pull up one fifty before the man returns.”
“That’s who I came to see. I need his eyes.”
“Reckon two hours on that.” She peeked up at me. “So what’s it like in England?”
“Cloudy. Heavy. At least on Marbury Street. The street works the factory. The factory works them until they die, and the next generation takes over.”
She looked me over. “You don’t seem worked.”
Her hands slowed, and she pitched a bait bag into a barrel and straightened. “Years back, Salt and Atticus, they hauled up more lobster than you can imagine. First out, last in. Others saw their buoy colors and they knew to stay away. Ain’t so anymore. There’s all manner of thievery, especially out past Matinicus.”
Salt softened. “That’s the island where his reputation, and his moniker, was born. After he took that bullet from another lobsterman, he became Atticus. Territorial dispute, you see.”
“Maybe you should spend some time gettin’ your hands smelly.” She gestured with her head into the boat. “See if any of Salt runs through your veins. You can change yonder.”
“No, she can’t.”
I turned around, and knew at once I was looking at the man.
I had seen old people before. In wheelchairs, or with canes clacking down the street.
But this man was ancient, ancient and terrible. He strode, his legs strong and sure and his black trench coat catching in the wind. His skin was leather, with wrinkles deep and eyes sharp beads. On his head, capturing a white lock, was a yellow bandanna.
More pirate than man, if you asked me.
“Salt. What brings you back?”
“This girl.”
Atticus’s gaze held me, and I was, temporarily and unexplainably, without words.
“She’s his granddaughter,” Haley called, without stopping her work.
Atticus smiled. “No, she’s not.”
Salt smirked. “She needs to find a lighthouse. She has a photo.”
Words returned. “A drawing, to be more precise.”
Atticus held out his hand, and I removed the sketch from my pocket. He unfolded it, took a one second glance, and handed it back.
“Don’t know it.”
Salt frowned, and I regained my footing.
“Have you or have you not lived here all your life?” I asked.
“Yeah, ain’t nothing new to me.”
“I’ll wager that you know the location of every dangerous shoal.”
“I know where they ain’t.”
I held the picture in front of his face. “So where is this?”
Haley stared with wide eyes. Salt held back a grin, and Atticus slowly lowered the drawing. “You come to Maine alone?”
“No, I did not. I came with a . . . with a friend. Elias.”
Atticus took a deep breath, and whispered. “Elias Phinn.”
“You know him?” I asked. Elias and his alternate universe had been wholly disconnected along the course of our travels. To discover somebody knew him was unbelievable, akin to a person claiming to live in Salem, and I shook.
“That was Elias Phinn? At Boynton-McKay’s? Boy’s grown up. Grown strong.” Salt grabbed my arm. “Why’s he come back? Why’d he come . . . back . . .” Salt glanced at Atticus, who pursed his lips.
“What does he remember?” Atticus asked.
“Nothing really,” I said. “Nothing but this picture and remnants of this place.”
Atticus nodded. “Best that’s how it all remains. Salt, you old fool.” He turned and walked off the dock. The man who knew Elias’s past was leaving me. I couldn’t let it happen.
“He’s not right in the mind!” I called. “He hasn’t been right since he was a young lad. Something happened. He’s searching for the Keeper. He wants to destroy the evil that comes from this person. I need to know why. Please, we’ve crossed half the country, and I need to know.”
Atticus stopped and slowly turned.
“He wants to destroy him? It’s already been done.” He glanced at Haley and cursed. “Out. I need the boat. I guess it was going to happen, sooner or later. Time to return to Two Bush Island.”