CHAPTER 24
Hester followed the smell of floor cleaner through the inn and into the bakery’s kitchen as Mindy tugged at her leash. Lydia knelt down, scrubbing, her hair tied in a red kerchief. Mindy woofed.
“You have her,” Lydia said, sitting back and letting the sponge fall to the floor. “I’d wondered if I’d have to go out and find her.” She took a deep breath. “I heard they arrested Vaughn. And that you had something to do with it.”
“More Daphne than me. I found her, but I bet you’ve already heard that too.”
“Most of it,” Lydia said. “I heard there were drugs. Lots of them. The ones that killed Rory’s brother. And that Vaughn installed a padlock on the cellar door, and that your friend there survived on pretzels. How could any of this be true? Vaughn wouldn’t do these things.”
“Rory told you a lot,” Hester said.
“Not me,” Lydia said. “The two of us are back to not talking.”
Right then, the front door to the bakery slammed open and shut. Oliver ran through to the kitchen, stopping to show his mother a fistful of worms. “I think they’re rattlers!” he said, running through the inn and back into the garden.
“He just learned about rattlesnakes,” Lydia said.
“You haven’t told him about Trey, have you?”
Lydia shook her head. “I need to before someone else does.” She stood, wiping her hands on her apron, lifting the bucket, and setting it next to the sink. “I have to stay busy,” she said. “Otherwise I might lose it. I scrubbed this floor. And I’ll scrub the rest of this place till it sparkles. That’s about as much as I can focus on right now.”
The bells over the bakery door rang as someone let themselves in. “Can’t people read?” Lydia mumbled, and then added in a shout, “We’re closed. I’m in mourning.”
Mindy’s ears perked up at the sound of boots crossing the store. Rory stepped into the tiny kitchen, followed by Detective Kelley, and as soon as Lydia saw him, she tossed the sponge into the bucket and faced him. Everything on this island had changed in the past twenty-four hours, especially in Lydia’s world, and no matter what happened in the end, Hester could see that Lydia’s life would never be the same again. “I defended you all summer long, and now I wish I hadn’t. You arrested Vaughn? I bet those rumors about you taking Oliver are true.”
“I didn’t touch Oliver,” Rory said.
“Take it down a notch,” Barb said. “Both of you. Mrs. Pelletier, we need to talk to you.”
“Why?”
“I bet you can guess,” Barb said.
“Everyone in town knows about the affair,” Lydia said, untying her apron and tossing it onto the counter. “All of you can go to hell for all I care.”
She left the kitchen and slammed the bakery door behind her. Mindy woofed and wagged her tail, and Rory let the dog lick his hand.
“Where’s Vaughn?” Hester asked.
“He’s locked up,” Rory said. “At the community center.”
“Someone told me to ask him about the drugs.”
“Why don’t you let us ask the questions,” Barb said.
“Well, before you start, let me tell you something, then,” Hester said. “Lydia thinks that Oliver and Ethan are brothers. She told me earlier today. Her husband got around.”
“Did you know this?” Barb asked Rory.
From the look on his face, Hester could tell he meant it when he said, “I had no clue.”
“You could have told us earlier,” Barb said.
“I’ve been a little distracted,” Hester said.
Barb paced across the floor. “First things first,” she said. “Daphne. We need to talk to her. Now. We need to know her connections to Seth and Frankie, and why someone would lock her in Vaughn’s cellar.”
“She’s upstairs,” Hester said, leading them to the room. She knocked on the door and peeked in, only to find an empty bed where she’d last seen Daphne. She crossed the hallway and tried the bathroom door. Inside, the air was steamy, with the gray dregs of a full tub drained.
“She must have gone down the back way,” Rory said.
Out in the harbor, the ferry blew its horn as it backed away from the pier.
“Shit,” Rory said, running down the stairs, his boots pounding the floorboards.
“We need her,” Barb said. “We need both of you. Stay put. Do not move.”
She followed Rory. Hester watched out the window as Rory ran down the path, waving his hands over his head. He pulled a radio from his waist and shouted into it while Hester scanned the upper deck of the boat for a flash of Daphne’s red hair. The ferry’s engine stopped, and the boat reversed course. Hester retreated to the room, where she sat on the bed, her knees tucked in. Mindy leapt up, and she let the dog snuggle in beside her. She checked her wallet, which she’d left by the TV. Nothing was missing. Daphne wouldn’t have gone anywhere, not without money. If Daphne hadn’t taken the boat, she must have gone to Little Ef, to the Victorian. Hester could probably make it there and back before Barb and Rory had finished searching the ferry.
Outside, the air had grown cold. Leaves swirled from trees as Hester set off, letting Mindy run off the leash. Little Ef seemed abandoned. The houses she passed were empty, boarded up for the season. She rounded the last bend in the path and stepped into the darkness of the forest. The house still rose from the rhododendrons, but now, with most of the plywood removed from its windows, it looked naked and sad, and certainly uninhabitable, once the cold of winter set in. At least Hester didn’t have a four-year-old with her this time. She called to Mindy, who dashed toward her from out of the trees and sat expectantly. Hester’s pockets almost always had spare treats from her morning walks with Waffles, and today was no different. The dog accepted the biscuit and waited patiently for another.
“Daphne!” Hester shouted toward the house. “Are you here?”
A movement caught her eye. She glanced up, toward the second floor, where Frankie stood in one of the open windows staring out, her face blank. She held Ethan against her shoulder, rocking him back and forth. “Frankie!” Hester shouted. “We met yesterday. Come outside. I want to talk to you.”
She heard a groan from the forest. “Who’s there?” she said, stepping toward the brush. Beside her, Mindy whined. She heard another groan and followed it to where she found a state trooper lying on the ground, unconscious. His name tag read NATE GARDNER. She shook him, but he didn’t wake. “Frankie, come help me,” Hester shouted. “Someone’s hurt.”
As she took a step toward the house, a blast threw her to the ground. Flames erupted from the kitchen, black smoke pouring into the air. Mindy spun around, barking at the fire. Hester shouted Frankie’s name again and shoved the dog toward the road. “Run,” she said. “Get out of here. Scat!”
She hurled a stick into the trees, watching as Mindy ran to retrieve it. The flames had spread up the back of the house, engulfing the century-old wood. Hester held her hand in front of her face and squinted into the heat. Frankie was at the window, still holding Ethan to her chest. “Go toward the front!” Hester shouted, waving her arms. “Down the front stairs! The fire is in the back of the house.”
Frankie screamed as smoke engulfed her.
And Hester ran. Forward. Toward the burning building. She ran without thinking, shoving the oak door open with her shoulder and nearly falling back as a wave of scorching heat swept over her. She took her phone out and dialed 911, praying the call would go through. She covered her face with her fleece and pressed forward.
The fire had swept from the kitchen and through the front room. Hester found a path up the front stairs. Smoke burned her lungs as she shoved open the door to Daphne’s room and shouted her name. The room was empty. Back in the hall, she nearly fled. But she forced herself to keep moving, into smoke as thick as night. She fumbled with her phone. It slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor. Leave it! she thought. There isn’t time. “Come toward me!” she shouted. “Anyone!”
She gasped for oxygen. The heat had grown unbearable. Safety beckoned. How long could those front stairs last? She turned, crawling away. Retreating. And then she heard it. The boy. Crying. “Ethan!” she screamed.
She lay flat on her stomach, as close to the floor as possible, and moved, toward the noise, till she came to a wall. She felt along it till her hand landed on the seam of a closet door. Inside, she found Ethan, pressed into a corner. “Come,” she said, but he pushed away and refused to move.
“Where’s your mother?” Even those words hurt to say.
She crawled into the closet, where the air was clearer for the moment. She took a deep breath. Oxygen filled her lungs, and a part of her wanted to stay here. To breathe. But she lifted the squirming boy under her arm. He struggled, clawing at her as smoke seeped under the door.
What would she do if Kate were here? What world would she create to get them out of this? What would she ask Kate to count? “I need your help,” she whispered in Ethan’s ear. “I need you to be brave and to run as fast as you can when I tell you to. Like Superman. Do you like Superman?”
He pushed away from her.
“Thomas!” Hester said, remembering the conversation outside the General Store. “Thomas the Train.”
“The tank engine!” Ethan said.
“The tank engine,” Hester said. “What would Thomas do?”
Ethan stopped squirming. “Bash his way out,” he said.
“Then that’s what we’ll do too,” Hester said.
He rested his head against her shoulder and wrapped his legs around her waist and mumbled, “Okay.”
“Don’t let go of me,” Hester said.
She opened the closet door and smoke poured in. The air was hot enough to melt skin. Flames had spread into the room, licking at the ceiling, and as she tried to retrace her path to the front stairs, the ceiling collapsed. “There’s another way,” she whispered.
There had to be.
She felt along the walls to where the windows should have been. They were still boarded up. “We’ll bash our way out, right?” she said to Ethan.
“Like Thomas,” Ethan said.
Hester balanced Ethan on her hip and shoved her shoulder into plywood. It barely moved. She kicked at it and kicked again and again till the wood buckled. Her head had grown light. She kicked one more time. The plywood cracked, a shaft of light shining through. She kicked again, and a chunk broke off. She lifted Ethan through the hole and lowered him to the top of a bow window on the first floor, and then followed. Black tears filled her eyes. There had to be at least fifteen feet to the ground. Flames burst from the windows around them, and she felt the burn as the flames caught her fleece. This was their chance. “Me first, then you.”
She leapt, hovering in midair for what seemed like forever before plummeting. After hitting the ground with a jolt, she rolled to the side. But she was on her feet again, reaching up. “Now!” she shouted to Ethan, her arms held wide.
He stared down at her.
“Thomas can fly,” Hester said.
“Thomas can’t fly.”
“Who can?”
“Harold,” Ethan said. “He’s a helicopter.”
“Then be Harold!” Hester said.
He leapt as flames shot from the wall behind him. And he came at her, slamming into her chest and knocking them both to the ground. Hester rolled across leaves and pine needles. Ethan’s sweatshirt was on fire. She pounded at it with her bare hands, ignoring the burns. She took the boy’s hand and fled into the trees, toward the water. Off in the distance, a bell rang, a chime from another time alerting the town to danger. When they reached the water, Hester plunged into it, despite the cold, to stop the burning, to save her flesh. Water enveloped her, a world away from this one, a world of peace where mothers didn’t die horrible deaths while wondering if they’d saved their children, where friends didn’t go missing, where children stayed at home. She crawled to the beach. Ethan sat on the sand, and she examined him from head to foot. His hair had singed on one side, but otherwise he seemed fine, at least on the outside.
“What happened?”
Hester spun around. Daphne stood a few feet away. Behind her, flames burst over the tree line. The ends of her red hair had burned. Hester lifted Ethan from the ground. He was lighter than Kate, skin and bones enrobed in a University of Maine sweatshirt. Still, he smelled of innocence and everything good. And of urine. And smoke. She’d need to bathe him at the hotel. She’d need to figure out what to do, where he should go. What the next step was when a kid had no parents. She’d have to do all of this. And she’d make Daphne watch. Make her see what it meant to take responsibility.
“What did you do?” Hester asked. No, she shouted. She was tired of being nice and trying to understand. She was tired of waiting and wondering. She was tired of putting Daphne’s presence and absence and her every decision at the center of her world. And she was tired of pretending that any of this was normal. “You did this,” she said.
Pop.
A bullet ricocheted off granite. The rifle went off again, and everything slowed. Hester’s first instinct was to dive to the ground, to cover Ethan’s body with her own, to crawl and to hide. Her second impulse was to be grateful, grateful that she’d sent Kate off with Morgan, to know whatever happened here, whatever happened with this other person’s child, that for once, Hester had made the right decision and Kate would be safe. She’d choose Kate any day. Her third impulse was the one she followed. She slammed her shoulder into Daphne and tackled her to the ground right as another bullet ricocheted off a boulder. A wail began in the base of Ethan’s throat, and she pulled him close, putting her lips to his ear, kissing him, tickling him, hoping the tricks she used to keep Kate on the right side of a tantrum might work here.
“How many friends does Thomas have?” she mumbled, right over his ear, barely a murmur. “List them off, but as quiet as you can, and I’ll try to remember. It’s a game.”
“He has a lot of friends.”
“That’s why you have to list them all.”
“There’s Toby,” Ethan said.
“Even quieter,” Hester whispered. “Right in my ear.”
Reasoning almost never worked with Kate, and maybe, if Ethan had known Hester, it wouldn’t have worked with him, but he relaxed into her arms as he went through the list of names, Gordon and James and Percy.
“You’re bleeding,” Daphne said.
“Shut up before you get us killed,” Hester said.
Daphne lay flat on the sand. She took Hester’s hand in hers and squeezed.
“It’s just a scratch,” Hester whispered, scanning their surroundings. “Come,” she said, crawling to a thicket of roses. “And watch the thorns,” she whispered to Ethan as he continued to list off names, as if a thorn could matter now, but even as she said it another shot rang out. “It’s coming from over there,” she whispered, nodding her head toward an outcropping of rock two hundred yards down the beach. The shooter was positioned to block them from returning to the Victorian, to the fire, to the safety of a crowd.
“Where should we go?” Daphne asked.
“Down there, around the bend?” Hester said. “If we can get there, we should be out of the line of sight.”
“Then that’s what you should do.”
Daphne was on her feet, running and weaving, dashing toward the trees, shouting at the top of her lungs. At the tree line, bark exploded around her. Hester lifted Ethan onto her hip and ran, stumbling over rocks, her feet splashing through tidal pools. The rifle went off again. And Hester was around the bend, and the spit leading to the lighthouse was in front of her. And she didn’t dare turn.
They could hide in the lighthouse, barricade themselves in. They could wait. If they waited long enough, the tide would come in and the spit would disappear. Six hours of safety. Six hours for anyone but them to find the gunman.
Hester’s arm ached. She could put Ethan down, hold his hand, tell him to run beside her. She could put him down and leave, save herself. For Kate. Or at least that’s what she could tell herself for all the years going forward, for all the years of guilt and regret. But she pushed that thought away and held Ethan to her chest, even as she dared to ask what Kate would face without her. “We’re all right,” she whispered in Ethan’s ear, her breathing labored. “Everything will be all right.”
“There’s Donald and Bill and Whiff,” Ethan whispered.
Sand fell away. She hurtled forward, crashing across the beach. Ethan rolled away from her. And she crawled even as he fell, scrambling toward him, hand to his mouth. “The game,” she said. “Who’s next? Who else is friends with Thomas?”
“Rosie?” Ethan said.
And they somehow moved as one, crawling and crab walking till they sat, backs against a rock, out of sight. She held Ethan between her legs. He’d skinned his cheek. She resisted touching it or asking him about it, because it was the kind of hurt you felt only when you knew it was there.
“I don’t like this game,” he said.
“You’re good at it, though,” she whispered. “Much better than me. And I think you’re winning.” She closed her eyes and listened to the quiet of waves lapping at the shore. She rested her burned, blistered palms on the cool, damp sand.
“I’m scared,” Ethan said.
“What color is Thomas? Is he pink?”
“Thomas is a boy.”
Hester resisted arguing. Arguing made noise. “Tell me about all of Thomas’s friends. Start again. From the beginning. But this time tell me what color they are. As quiet as you can.”