Jooooooy to the worrrrrrld, the Lord is coooooome.”
Birdie made a face as she poured flour into the mixing bowl. Abner’s song might be a joyful noise, but it was still noise. The baker couldn’t carry a tune in the proverbial bucket.
“Abner,” she called, checking her recipe book. “Did we use up that entire tin of nutmeg already? I’m making Saint James Puddings for Christmas gifts, but I’ll need nutmeg.”
Abner stopped singing long enough to give her a frown. “I thought we got plenty when Vernie’s order finally came in.”
“Well, the new tin is empty, and I’m almost out of cloves, too. Better call Vernie and tell her we need more— I’m going to need allspice, too, for these puddings.”
Birdie blew her bangs out of her eyes and wiped her hand on her apron. The recipe for Saint James Pudding came straight from the 1896 Fannie Farmer Cookbook, and she’d been gifting her neighbors with the traditional puddings, neatly packaged in buttered one-pound baking powder boxes, for nearly thirty years. She’d thought her troubles were over when Vernie’s supplies came in on Wednesday, but apparently she hadn’t ordered enough. Either that, or Abner had gone spice-happy in the last few days.
“Joy to Vernie Bidderman,” she muttered, closing the recipe book with an emphatic snap. “This time the spices had better come quick, or nobody on Heavenly Daze is going to get their Christmas pudding from Birdie’s Bakery.”
Abner opened his mouth, probably about to utter one of his consistently optimistic proverbs, but the jangling of the bell cut him off. Birdie walked toward the counter, grateful for the interruption. Sometimes she didn’t feel like being optimistic and cheery. Today she felt more like Scrooge—one who’d be happy to steal some nutmeg, if she could only find it.
Babette Graham had entered the store, and she greeted Birdie with a worried frown. “How be you,” she said, setting her macramé purse on the counter. “I’m glad you’re in.”
“We’re always in when the weather’s this cold,” Abner joked, energetically rolling out a piecrust.
Birdie ignored him. “Are you wanting some doughnuts, Babette? Wait—I think we have some of those fried apple pies your Charles is so fond of.”
“I’ll take a couple,” Babette said offhandedly, her pretty mouth set in a frown. “But I really wanted to talk to you.”
Her tone sent a tremor up Birdie’s spine. “Nothing wrong at your house, I hope?”
Babette tilted her head. “That’s what I’d like to know. I’m a little worried.”
Birdie glanced at Abner, who winked and lifted his hands from the rolling pin long enough to make a go-on motion. Birdie nodded.
“Let me pour us both a cup of cider,” she said, moving toward the stove where a saucepan simmered. “Abner keeps a pot warm for occasions like this. We’ll sit out there at the chairs and you can tell me all about it.”
Babette sighed and moved toward one of the tables at the front of the store, shedding her coat as she went. Birdie ladled cider into two china teacups, then placed them on saucers and carried them out to the table.
Babette had pulled a sheaf of folded papers from her purse. Now she stared at them as if the source of the world’s trouble lay revealed on those pages.
Slipping into the chair across from Babette, Birdie eyed the papers. “What do you have there? The mortgage?”
Babette smiled and shook her head. “Nothing so grown up, I’m afraid. Look at these—they’re paintings of Georgie’s.”
Bemused, Birdie took the pictures and unfolded them. The tempura paint cracked as she bent the page, and the mingled scents of paint and paper reminded her of long-ago mornings in Sunday school, when she and Bea had painted pictures of Calvary and Sunshine Mountain . . .
These paintings, she noticed, were of puffins. That was nothing unusual, because Georgie had always displayed a fondness for the birds. So why was Babette disturbed?
Birdie lay the three sheets on the table, then spread her hands over them to keep the bent pages from returning to their folded shape. “Three puffin paintings,” she said, wondering what Babette had seen in them. “So—Georgie’s exhibiting a penchant for puffins again?” She lowered her head to meet Babette’s troubled gaze. “Is that bad news? I know the boy gave you fits last month, but I thought you all were past that trouble by now.”
“It’s not the paintings that concern me—well, not in particular. Look at them, Birdie. Look how different they are.”
Birdie looked again. They were different, she supposed, though to her one child’s painting looked pretty much like another’s. Each featured a blue sky, a black-and-white bird, and rolling ocean waves. One of the paintings was more detailed, it seemed, and one appeared brighter than the others.
Then she saw it. One painting had been initialed with Georgie’s customary G; the other two were signed with a B.
She crinkled a brow.
“You see?” Babette leaned closer and pointed to the B in one picture. “I asked Georgie why he put a B on this picture, and he said he didn’t paint it.”
A warning spasm gripped Birdie’s throat. “If he didn’t paint it,” she forced the words out, “then who did?”
“A boy named Bob.” Babette’s voice went as flat as Abner’s singing. “And the other one was painted by a girl named Brittle-knees. Remember? His imaginary playmates.”
Birdie took a deep breath and felt bands of tightness in her chest. “Well,” she began, staring at the Bs at the bottom of each painting, “there’s no real harm in having imaginary playmates, is there? I’m no expert on child rearing, but it seems to me that creativity is a healthy thing, especially when a child is the only little boy living on this island—”
Her throat closed; she couldn’t go on. But Babette seemed not to notice her reluctance.
“I’m so frightened, Birdie! What if this is a sign of multiple personalities? What will I do if one night he tells me that he’s Bob? Or Brittle-knees?” She groaned and pressed her hand to her face. “Merciful heavens, what if my little boy starts to believe he’s a girl?”
“Really, Babette.” Birdie forced a laugh, though to her ears the noise sounded more like a sob. She glanced at Abner, who had stopped rolling out dough in order to watch.
“Babette, don’t carry on like this.” She patted the younger woman’s free hand. “Your son is many things, but he’s not mentally ill. He’s a normal little boy, with a healthy imagination and a great sense of fun.”
“He’s never lied to me like this before.” Babette wiped tears from the wells of her eyes. “I mean, sure, he’s lied to get out of trouble, but alst I had to do was look at him and he’d break down and confess. But I’ve been giving him, you know, that look all morning, and he still insists Bob and Brittle-knees painted these pictures.”
Glancing at Abner, Birdie patted Babette’s hand again. “Does he, um, say anything else about these friends of his?”
“Oh, yeah.” Babette’s tears began to flow in earnest. “He says they wear pumpkin outfits and live in the lighthouse. And once they spent the night under Cap’n Gribbon’s boat, until a tall man with long white hair rescued them. And they came from over the sea, they don’t have a mommy, and their favorite food is Werther’s Originals.” She lifted her teary eyes. “Honestly, Birdie, I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to punish my boy for lying, but I don’t see what other choice I have. If he keeps telling these whoppers—”
“Maybe they’re not whoppers.” Birdie pressed her lips together, then forced a smile. “I mean—if they’re real to him, maybe they’re . . . really real.” She shrugged. “After all, dear, when you were a child, didn’t you believe in moonlight and magic and the monster under your bed? No matter what anyone told you, you still knew—”
Snorting, Babette gave Birdie a look of utter disbelief. “Surely you’re not saying I should promote belief in monsters and fairy tales.”
Birdie shrugged. “I’m saying that maybe you’re making a tempest in a teapot over something that isn’t really hurtful. And maybe one day you’ll discover that these children were real . . . at least real to Georgie.”
Babette pulled a tissue from her pocket, then blew her nose. “I don’t know”—she dabbed at the end of her nose with the tissue—“but this boy is breaking my heart. I constantly worry about parenting him, about doing the right thing. If I’m this worried when he’s almost six, what am I going to do when he’s sixteen?”
Birdie gave her a smile. “Honey, I think you grow into the job.”
The sun had come out from behind the clouds by the time Birdie, Bea, and Abner finished lunch in the sisters’ living quarters. While Bea and Abner speculated about the reasons for Stanley Bidderman’s sudden reappearance, Birdie stood and put away the casserole. She had no more than a passing interest in Stanley Bidderman, who was still abed at the B&B and still unable to obtain an audience with his estranged wife.
Birdie was thinking about taking a drive up to the lighthouse . . . even though the town was also buzzing about her frequent trips to the end of the island. The other day she’d caught Abner checking the tires on the golf cart—he said she’d been putting so many miles on the vehicle that he worried for her safety.
After stacking her dishes in the sink, Bea moved to her desk in the keeping room to begin answering the latest stack of angel mail. Standing, Abner tied his apron behind his back and gave Birdie a sly smile.
“Goin’ out this afternoon?” His dark eyes glinted with humor. “I can handle the baking, so you don’t need to worry about a thing.”
Though she’d been about to walk to the coatrack, Birdie halted in midstep. “Where would I be going?”
Abner grinned. “Well, I figure Cap’n Gribbon must be running low on rye bread by now. And I have some snicker doodles that will go to waste if nobody eats ’em. Seems to me the captain might find some use for a dozen snicker doodles.”
A thousand questions whirled in Birdie’s brain as she stared at him. There he went again, smiling like he knew Salt’s secret. Was the baker a mind reader, or had she let something slip?
“Well,”—she reached out and took her coat from the rack—“maybe I will drive on up to the lighthouse and see how the captain’s getting on. So if you want to put together a care package for him, that’d be right nice. I’m sure he’d appreciate it.”
Winking at her, Abner whirled and moved toward the bakery, humming an off-key rendition of “Silent Night.”
After slipping into her coat, Birdie stepped into the hall bathroom, then ran her fingers through her silver hair. She pulled a protective lipstick from the medicine cabinet and ran it over her lips, then paused and stared at her reflection.
What was she doing? She was too old to be thinking about impressing a man, and too inexperienced to be thinking about children. Her work at the Ogunquit library had exposed her to young ones, but she’d done little more than read to them and remind them to shush when they grew too excited. She didn’t know a thing about comforting kids with skinned knees . . . or healing broken young hearts. And those children at the lighthouse had to be hurting inside, the poor things. Salt was a good man, but he’d taken them away from their father. Sure, he had reason, but was even a bad daddy better than no daddy at all?
She pressed her fingertips to the mirror and shivered at the chill of the glass. Bea thought Birdie was infatuated with Salt, and maybe she was, a little, but she was far more concerned about Bobby and Brittany. Those kids had never known a mother, if Salt’s story could be trusted, and their exile up at Puffin Cove couldn’t be good for them, especially at Christmas.
But what could she do? She’d tried to convince Salt that the townsfolk could be trusted, but he didn’t believe her. She’d begged him to let her involve Bea, whose heart was tender, but he’d insisted that the postmistress encountered too many people on a daily basis and therefore couldn’t keep a secret. She’d tried to make a case for involving the pastor and his wife, or Babette and Charles, but to each entreaty Salt turned a deaf ear.
He was, she decided, like an offshore lighthouse, built to stand alone in a sea of trouble. Through her reading she’d learned that off-shore lighthouses had to be extra-tough in order to withstand the pounding sea, underwater quakes, and even iceberg collisions. Trouble was, once built, the sea isolated them from everyone and everything.
An out-of-tune rendition of “O Come All Ye Faithful” snapped her out of her reverie. An instant later she heard a short rap at the bathroom door. “Um, excuse me, Birdie, but I’ve put the care package on your kitchen table. It’s all ready for you.”
“Coming.” She cleared the thickness from her throat, then buttoned her coat. She’d run up to the point and check on the kids, leave them some bakery goodies, and ask if Salt needed anything from the mercantile. Then she’d come back home and try to focus on something useful like coming up with something she could bake that didn’t require nutmeg. Or maybe she’d help Bea answer some of the angel mail . . . or she could organize her underwear drawer. Something, anything, was better than worrying about Salt and the kids.
She stood her collar around her throat, then pulled her gloves from her pocket and glanced down the hall. Abner stood in the doorway that led to the bakery, and a shadow of concern darkened his eyes.
He smiled at her as if she were a small child. “You be careful up there, Miss Birdie.”
“Oh, Abner”—she yanked on her gloves—“the wind’s not that bad.”
“I wasn’t referring to the wind.”
Before she could look up to search his face, the man had turned the corner and disappeared.
The wind had picked up by the time Birdie rolled up to the lighthouse, and she was surprised to see Salt standing outside the small outbuilding that housed the generator. His serious eyes were intent upon the road, and his expression softened only a little when she unzipped the vinyl covering of her cart and waved hello.
The rising wind came whooshing past her, lifting her hair and whipping her coat around her frame as she walked toward him. “How be you?” she called, looking around for the children.
“Nicely,” he answered, glancing down the road as if he expected her to bring an entire parade of townspeople into his sacred territory.
“It’s just me, Salt,” she said, stuffing her hands into her coat pockets as she walked forward. She gave him a smile, then inclined her head toward the lighthouse. “Are the children inside?”
He shook his head, then jerked his thumb toward the old dory he kept on the beach. “They’re under there. When we heard you comin’, I told ’em to scoot out of sight.”
“Why, they’ll catch their death under there.” Leaving him to his tinkering, Birdie walked toward the boat. “Bobby? Brittany? You can come out; it’s only me.”
In an instant, two hooded heads appeared and two smiles flashed in her direction.
“I’ve brought some goodies for you.” She pointed toward the cart. “Abner’s been busy baking, and he gave me a package of cookies and candy for you.”
Brittany scrambled out from under the boat, her sweet face a combination of rose and pearl and wet sand. “Can we look?”
“You may look, and you may have a cookie,” Birdie said. “After that, you’ll have to ask your grandfather. I wouldn’t want to spoil your supper.”
As the children sprinted toward the golf cart, Birdie turned back to Salt. He had finished with the generator, apparently, for he’d closed the door and was wiping his bare hands on a grease-stained towel.
“Salt,” Birdie began, moving toward him, “can we go inside? I really need to talk to you about Christmas.”
Salt shook his head. “I don’t want to leave the kids out alone. Yesterday they stayed out longer than an hour, and for a few minutes I couldn’t find ’em. I nearly went out of my head with worry.”
Birdie drew a deep breath. He wasn’t going to make this easy.
“Salt, I really wish you’d let me tell the other townspeople about the children. They could help, especially with Christmas. I’m sure you’re going to want to do something special for the kids, but they’ve already missed the town party—”
“Don’t need anything. I’m managin’ fine, with your help.” He gave her a grudging nod. “And I wasn’t planning on doing much for Christmas. We’ll just keep quiet and stay out of sight. No sense in getting the kids all riled up about things they can’t have.”
“Why can’t they share in our holiday?” She brushed the windblown bangs out of her eyes. “Maybe you’ve forgotten, Salt, but Christmas means everything to children. You don’t have to give them a stack of presents, but a gift and a festive dinner might be nice—and I’d even be willing to cook the dinner. And the Christmas Eve service—why, that’s what Christmas is all about.”
He shook his head without looking at her. “We don’t need all that stuff. We’re doing fine on our own.”
“Not quite.” Birdie lifted her chin. “This morning I spoke to Babette Graham, who’s convinced her son is either a liar or developing multiple personalities. Seems Georgie was with Bobby and Brittany yesterday, and the three of them painted pictures. Georgie went home and showed his mom the paintings—” She shrugged. “Well, you get the idea. Quite frankly, your secret is causing Babette a lot of grief, and I don’t like being caught in the middle.”
His brow wrinkled. “I never intended for you to be involved at all.”
“I know, but sometimes—well, sometimes the Lord leads us to places we never expected to be. I never thought I’d be spending hours thinking about two children who mean nothing—I mean, who aren’t mine by blood relation.” She softened her voice. “Because, you see, they have come to mean a great deal to me. I only want what’s best for those kids, and I think the town could give them a lot more than you and I could. Why, Dana Klackenbush is wonderful with children, and she could teach them. And Olympia de Cuvier’s Tallulah would love to play with the kids—”
“That mangy mutt is up here all the time,” Salt interrupted. “So is that dog with the smashed-in face.”
“Butch.” Birdie supplied the name. “He’s the Klackenbushes’ bulldog.” She hesitated. “Did the children . . . did they like playing with the dogs?”
Salt snorted. “Whaddya think, woman? I had to chase the durn dogs away before I could get the kids back in the lighthouse, and it colder than a clam digger’s hands out.”
Birdie crossed her arms. “You see? Those kids need someone to play with. There’s a whole town down there that’d be willing to keep company with those children, but you’ve got to let them in on the secret. There’s no shame in asking for help, none at all. And it’s what you need to do, especially with Christmas only four days away.”
Salt set his jaw, bristling the whiskers on his cheek. “I can handle things.” He turned and lifted a hand to the side of his mouth. “Bob! Brittany! You two come here and say good-bye to Miss Birdie. She doesn’t have time for any more than a dooryard visit today.”
Birdie lowered her gaze, lest he see the hot tears that had filled her eyes.
Salt blew out his cheeks as the children came forward with cookies in their hands and a sizable bakery bag tucked beneath Bobby’s arm.
“Do you hafta go?” Brittany asked, her face screwing up into a question mark.
“Apparently I do.” Birdie’s voice had gone as cold as the wind. She smiled though and bent to pat Brittany’s cheek. “But I’m sure I’ll be back before too long. After all, Christmas is right around the corner.”
Determined to ignore her, Salt rested a hand on his hip. “Miss Birdie brought me a bit of bad news from town. Seems that Georgie Graham’s in a peck of trouble with his folks for playing with you two. So from now on, you’ll have to stay away from that boy. If you see him comin’, you get on inside the lighthouse and stay put until he leaves.”
“But, Grandfather!” The genuine alarm in Bobby’s voice caught Salt by surprise. The child had never argued or voiced a disagreement with any of Salt’s rules.
He gave Bobby a stern glance. “You don’t want that boy getting in trouble, do you?”
He shifted his gaze from Bobby to Brittany. Sadly, these kids knew what trouble meant, and though Georgie would probably never experience the tortures and neglect these two had known, still, it wouldn’t hurt to stress a point.
Lifting his gaze, he saw Birdie staring at him, her lips pressed together and her eyes glowing with rebuke.
He looked away. “That settles it, then. No more playing with Georgie.”
Brittany’s eyes welled with tears. “Did we do something wrong? We said we were sorry for staying out too long yesterday.”
Unable to stand the sight of the girl’s distress, Salt turned and fumbled with the padlock on the door. You had to be firm with children, just like you had to be firm with men.
He heard an audible sniff from Birdie, then the crunch of boots upon gravel as she walked away. Then he heard her call. “Come here, kids, and give me a hug before I take off. What would you like me to bring when I come again? More molasses cookies? Maybe some gingerbread?”
Salt turned in time to see her bend and hug each child. He blew out his cheeks, then walked toward the shore, unable to suppress the troubling notion that he had somehow failed.
Despite all he’d done for those children, he could count on one finger how many times they’d hugged him.
Taking Brittany’s hand, Bobby stepped back as Miss Birdie zipped the cover to her cart, then waved and drove away. He watched her round the corner and disappear past the dunes, then he turned and saw the grandfather standing alone by the rocky shore.
Something had happened between the grandfather and Miss Birdie, something Bad, but no one had yelled or slapped or cried. Bad things at his daddy’s house had always included yelling and slapping and crying, so for a moment he’d thought he had misunderstood . . . but he knew Bad well enough to recognize it.
So. Bad things could happen on this island, too. Only they sounded different. So maybe Bad things had been happening all along, and he’d been too much of a numb-head to realize it.
“Bobby?” Britt tilted her head to look up at him. “Did he mean we can never play with Georgie again?”
“I don’t know,” Bobby answered, his gaze fastened to the grandfather’s back, “but we shouldn’t now, that’s for sure.”
Brittany considered a moment. “But I like Georgie. I want to marry him.”
Bobby shrugged. “Well, then, I suppose you can. And maybe we can still play with him.”
His sister’s eyes went round. “You mean—”
“Why do we have to obey him?” Bobby nodded toward the grandfather. “I mean, how do we know he’s really our grandfather? Daddy never said anything about him. And he took us for no reason; he came and put us in his boat. Maybe we’re kidnapped.”
He glanced down at his sister and felt a rush of relief when he saw that the word had registered. She’d watched enough TV to know that being kidnapped was big-time Bad Stuff.
“We’re kidnapped?” She squeezed his hand. “So who’s going to rescue us?”
“Nobody. ’Cause nobody knows we’re here.” Bobby pulled her toward the road. “Come on, let’s walk.”
He set out across the salt marsh at a quick pace, much faster than his grandfather could move, and fast enough to make Britt pant after a few steps. They walked fast and far, taking care to keep the sand dunes between them and the houses of Heavenly Daze.
“Maybe we will keep playing with Georgie,” he said, his breath misting in the frosty air. “Maybe we’ll run away and go back to Daddy.”
Brittany stopped in her tracks. “But where is Daddy?”
“We came over in the boat, didn’t we?” Bobby jerked on her hand and reestablished his pace. “We’ll take the boat and go back. When we get to the other side, we’ll call the police. They’ll know how to take us back to Daddy.”
“Do you really want to go back?” Britt’s brows settled in a straight line above her eyes. “There’d be no more cookies. No more Froot Loops. And no more dogs, unless you count the big one that growls at us every time we walk past the neighbor’s door.”
“At least we’d be with Daddy.” Bobby stopped and faced his sister, suddenly unable to explain what he was feeling. How could he make a girl understand? Daddy was loud, and messy, and he drank and stank and hit them, but at least they knew him. Bobby knew what he had to do at Daddy’s place—he had to clean up the messes, keep quiet while Daddy slept, bring in the mail, and not answer the phone. He knew how to carry the empty bottles in a sack without letting them chink together, because the chinking sound always woke Daddy, and if he woke when he’d been drinking, he’d be mean and growly and as dangerous as a bear.
But at the grandfather’s house, he never knew what a day would bring. The grandfather wanted to do most of the work, and he wanted them to play, but sometimes he didn’t want them to play, and sometimes he seemed terribly afraid of something.
On those nights, when the grandfather sat in the fire-lit darkness and stared up at the twirling light overhead, terror gripped Bobby, too.
Bobby tried to explain. “I know Daddy,” he said simply, searching Brittany’s eyes. “I don’t know the grandfather, and he’s . . . well, he’s not like Daddy. But he was mean to Miss Birdie back there—”
Britt’s eyes widened. “How was he mean?”
“I don’t know how to ’splain it. I heard it, that’s all. Miss Birdie was mad when she left, and I don’t know if she’ll come back.”
Brittany rubbed her nose. “She said she’d come back. She said she’d bring us more cookies.”
“Grownups don’t always mean what they say. And they don’t keep their promises.”
Britt didn’t answer but turned toward the sea, where the waves crashed against the shore in a steady rhythm. “Okay,” she said finally, her voice flat. “If we find a way, let’s go home. I don’t want to be kidnapped.”