They made one detour on their way home from Ocean View, a pleasant diversion from the tension of the day.
“I think Esther’s knitting needles are what get her through those long shifts at the police station,” Nell said. “She knit some ornaments for our Harbor Green tree and asked me to pick them up. I think she has at least a dozen. She’s putting us to shame.”
Esther Gibson was home as promised, but not alone. She and her husband, Richard, were sitting in the family room playing poker with Alan Hamilton and another good friend, Claire Russell. “It’s our Sunday ritual,” Esther explained as they walked back to the family room.
Nell felt a sudden, grateful rush. She’d been hoping to run into Doc Hamilton—and here he was. Birdie’s good omen was still working its magic. Hopefully it would stay with them, the wind at their back, until the “beast” was behind bars.
And hopefully that would be soon.
“We’re interrupting your game,” Birdie said, eyeing the poker chips stacked at each place. She looked over at the doctor and said, “I don’t mean to insult you, Alan, but they’re beating the pants off you.”
Alan looked at her and joked right back—“Good thing Esther doesn’t allow strip poker in her little casino.”
“Excellent thing!” Birdie said, with such punctuated enthusiasm that they all burst into laughter.
“Sit, sit,” Esther said.
“All we have is beer and bottled water,” Richard said. “Any takers?” He pointed to a makeshift bar.
Izzy went over and grabbed water bottles for Nell and Birdie and one for herself.
“So, has this been going on long? This little clandestine gambling casino?” she asked, perching on the arm of the couch.
“Blame it on Richard,” Claire said. “He’s pretty good at it. They say he’s taking Reno by storm.”
“Richard, I’d never have guessed,” Birdie said. The retired fisherman was quiet, usually letting Esther take the lead in conversations. Being a cardsharp didn’t fit his profile.
Richard laughed at Birdie’s surprise, but then confessed, “Esther keeps me on a tight leash. Reno’s a special occasion. Usually I go to some of the casinos around here—but it’s just for fun and with only a couple of fifties in my pocket. Esther’s rule. That’s it. When it’s gone I come home. It’s fun. Same expense as going out to dinner and a movie.” He grinned, warming to the subject. “Some guys joke that playing the slots is a sure way of getting nothing for something. Not true for me. I have fun with my buddies, drink a few beers. That’s what I get. I stay away from folks I know out there who take it too seriously.”
“Who’s that?” Claire asked. The landscaper had turned Nell’s backyard into a paradise for Izzy’s wedding, and she had been a cherished friend to all of them ever since.
“Oh, you know, other folks around town,” Richard said. “You get to know each other. You’d be surprised, some Sea Harbor folks have made a bundle off the slots, the cards. Lost a bundle, too. Not me.” Richard laughed again.
Esther filled in. “Gamblers are friendly folks. Our Reno trips are mostly because we can stay in a friend’s lovely home and I can sit on the fancy porch and smell the trees and enjoy the free meals the casinos give us. We drink wine there, not beer. It’s uptown.”
Richard snorted, his beer foaming over the rim.
Esther fussed at him and grabbed a box of tissues. “Enough talk about Reno. See what it makes you do?”
Nell pulled up a chair across from the doctor. “Alan, were your ears burning today? A nurse at Ocean View sang your praises to the sky.”
“Ah, that’s music to my old ears,” the doctor said, tiny laugh lines spreading out from his clear blue eyes. He took off his glasses and forked his fingers through his hair, strands of silver showing among the brown. “Better than those who want to cook my goose, right?”
“I can’t imagine anyone wanting to do that, Alan,” Birdie said.
Nell agreed. Doc Hamilton had been the Endicott family physician for years and the man didn’t have a mean bone in his body. She was happy to see he and Claire had linked up together recently. Two interesting, wonderful people. It was nice when they found each other.
“What were you doing at Ocean View?” Alan asked.
Birdie sat down on a chair Esther pulled up. “Following Amber, you might say. Walking in her footsteps.”
They put their cards facedown and turned her way. Birdie went on. “Amber had been pouring through the Cummings financial papers.” She looked over at Esther. “Esther knows all about that, so you may, too. We’re just trying to figure out what her thoughts and emotions were that last week, why she did what she did, went where she went and why.”
Alan nodded. “Trying to help put an end to this difficult time,” he said solemnly. “I knew Amber stopped over at Ocean View. I ran into her one day. She was being rather abrupt with one of the nurses.”
“Amber could be abrupt,” Esther said.
“I was glad to see her. She didn’t remember me, of course, but when she realized I had been her mother’s doctor, she became more open. I tried to reassure her that her mother had had good care at Ocean View, and that her life there was peaceful. She asked a lot of questions about that last day, but that’s understandable.”
“I’m sure it was comforting to her to talk with you,” Nell said.
“I think what she really wanted me to do was turn back the clock so she could have been there holding her mother’s hand that night she died. Or better yet, have protected her—she kept saying that. It’s hard sometimes—especially when the deceased isn’t sick in the usual way—to understand how they could be alive one day with strong vital signs, then dead the next. It was really difficult for Amber to accept it. But it happens.”
“Did you tell her you visited Ellie often?” Izzy asked.
“Yes. She was glad that her mother had friends who came—Esther, me, Father Northcutt, Jake, a few others. She said she wanted to thank them, all those people who had ‘filled in’ for her, as she put it.”
Amber’s surge of gratitude surprised Nell. Not that she wasn’t polite, but somehow she wouldn’t have expected it to be a focus for her. But maybe she wasn’t giving her credit. Amber returned to Sea Harbor older and wiser. And, perhaps, with a sense of gratitude for the good things that had been done for her mom.
“We met a nice nurse over there that said she assured Amber of the same thing. Her name was Carly . . . Carly something,” Birdie said. She felt inside her coat pocket. “She gave me her card. I have it here somewhere.”
“Carly Schultz,” Alan said.
“That’s it.”
“She’s a great nurse. She became attached to Ellie.”
“She said you visited Ellie the day she died,” Nell said.
Alan rested his head back and Nell could see his mind going back over the years to the day Ellie died. “The day, yes,” he said, nodding. “I wish I had been there that night instead so she wasn’t alone. Carly felt the same way. Esther here, too.”
Esther nodded. “It was hard for Amber—it would be for any one of us. But she hadn’t seen her mother in years. Details were important to make up for that.”
“Larry Northcutt had been there that day, too,” Alan said. “He and I relived that day a couple months ago when we met at the Cummingses’ home, of all places. It was shortly before Lydia died. Lydia was quite ill by then and often requested visits with Larry. Confession was good for the soul, she’d say. Maybe it was, because she fell asleep peacefully while we were still there. But confessions must be hard on priests, because Larry looked old, less than peaceful. The two of us sat for a while talking quietly while Lydia slept.
“The conversation turned to Ellie Harper and the care Lydia had provided for her. And we talked about being there the day Ellie died.
“Father Larry didn’t say much, which was unusual—you know him, he’s never at a loss for words. But he seemed preoccupied with the woman in the bed. He looked over at Lydia a couple times. Bowed his head slightly. Maybe in prayer? Yet he seemed to be listening to me at the same time. Then he turned away from her and spoke softly, as if to keep his words away from her. His words were odd, especially since he’d just heard her confession, but maybe I heard him wrong. He said something about helping Lydia forgive. But I must have heard wrong, because that’s what priests can do, right? They’re the ones who grant forgiveness?”
Nell looked out the window, listening to Alan’s story and remembering one of her own. A cold Thursday night when a burdened Father Larry stood outside the bookstore and talked about sins, and about forgiveness. Was it someone else who needed forgiveness?
Alan had switched the topic, uncomfortable with the puzzling memory. “Ellie’s death that night was a surprise, but it was probably a blessing, as people say. In spite of that, though, it was difficult for those of us who had spent so much time with her. She had a hold on people, even then.”
“Knowing she died in her sleep probably brought some comfort to Amber,” Claire said.
Richard got up and brought back a couple of beers. “It’s the way I want to go,” he said.
They all agreed, and Birdie, noticing that Richard was frequently looking down at his cards, also agreed that it was time for the four of them to get back to their game and confiscate the rest of Alan’s fortune.
Esther chuckled, got up, and took a cloth bag of knit ornaments from the shelf.
“Don’t forget these,” she said, handing the soft ornaments to Izzy and telling her to be careful not to drop the bag.
“We’re going to need more than just one tree for your ornaments, Esther.” Izzy laughed. “A forest maybe.”
Esther sat back down and picked up her cards, fanning them like a pro, her mind already moving on to her next bid, but she smiled at the comment.
“Esther, one more interruption,” Nell said. “I promise we’ll leave then. Did you take flowers to Ellie regularly?”
Esther looked up and set her cards down again. “You heard about those beautiful arrangements? No—I brought a vase in case it was needed. But those flowers arrived like clockwork.”
“They were beautiful. I assumed Lydia sent them,” Alan said.
Esther shook her head. “No, it wasn’t Lydia. I asked her once. She said it was a foolish, expensive gesture. And she was quite adamant.” She looked back at her cards, then up once more. “Is that it?”
But before anyone could answer Esther was spreading her cards out on the table. “Royal flush,” she called.
In Esther Gibson’s world, knitting and poker went a long way in easing the pain of difficult days.
• • •
The texts came in as they drove away from Richard and Esther’s and headed home.
Cass had left it on all their phones, explaining that if any of them planned on feeding her that night, they were out of luck. She and Danny were having dinner with her ma, but she needed to talk to them ASAP. She was off the next day. Monday early, Izzy’s back room? And would Birdie please bring some of Ella’s cinnamon rolls?
• • •
The sun was already slipping away, the sky filling with darkness. They all agreed that packing another mind-taxing session into their day would probably not be fruitful, no matter how anxious they were to put it all together—and to find out what Cass had found.
“If texts were like voices,” Birdie said, “we’d have an inkling.” But the blandness around words on a tiny phone screen provided few hints.
“We’re this close,” Izzy said, her thumb and index finger a yarn-width away from touching.
Nell and Birdie nodded, their emotions tangled as tightly as Purl’s basket of play yarn. Close. But only if they were seeing things correctly, if their intuition and patching together the pieces Amber had laid out for them all fit neatly together, piece by piece, stitch by stitch.
Only if Amber’s footsteps were truly leading them to the end of the road and not off the end of a shaky pier.
The woods were truly dark and deep.
And they had at least a mile to go before they’d sleep.