Chapter 15

Winston pulled up the collar of his jacket against the cooling wind and sprinkle of rain then looked back over his shoulder to check the distance between himself and the house. It was okay. He was safe. Sybil wouldn’t be able to see him even from their bedroom on the second floor. There was nothing between his secret and her, but the quiet solitude of great trees, damp moss, and the distant slap of bay water. He couldn’t ask for a better place to live and a more appropriate place to die. But death wasn’t on his agenda today. There were too many things to do.

He rubbed the tight pain in his chest as if it were a pulled muscle that could be coaxed into relaxed submission by a firm kneading of his palm, and sensed the pain deepen. Still, he was glad to be away from Sybil and the fear and sadness his pain left in her eyes. She would never see him like this again if he could help it. He would do whatever it took to guarantee that quiet promise to himself.

God, his chest hurt. It hurt worse than it had ever before.

Closing his eyes for a second, he mumbled a silent prayer then looked around. The ground rolled and swayed as if he were viewing it from the bow of a storm-riddled ship. Dizziness threw him off balance, and he stumbled. With trembling fingers, he reached into his shirt pocket to search frantically for the little bottle of pills and realized they weren’t there. A pat at the other pocket produced the same result. Digging deep into his pants pocket, he felt the tiny bottle escape his grasp then caught it. Another spasm of pain, deeper this time and searing, seemed to grab his heart and squeeze. He cried out. The pill bottle slipped from his fingers and spilled its contents to the ground.

Falling to his knees, he fought blurring vision to focus on the scatter of white pills spread out before him. One pill, covered in sand and grit, stuck to his finger. He forced it under his tongue and tasted the bitterness of Mico Island mixed with medication.

Mann staggered toward the sturdy bulk of an oak, leaned against it, and tried to catch his breath, to will away the pain that permeated every muscle of his chest. Better now, it was better, easing some. A little. Another few minutes of rest, and he’d be okay.

The pain dissipated in slow layers. He took a deep breath, felt it catch then loosen. Another found pill dissolved under his tongue, leaving only thickened mucus tinged with salty sand. Rubbing a moist hand across his lips, he leaned heavily against the tree to think the situation out.

The heart problem was getting worse. No doubt about it now. And wouldn’t Doc Nesheim get that gleam in his eye when he said everything but “told you so.” Doctors were paid for that kind of nonsense to suggest this test and that—and for what? To tell a body what they already knew, while his heart was in the right place, it wasn’t working quite up to par.

Good money, hard-won, was used to more thoroughly diagnose what he didn’t want to know anyway. It was as if being in good health all his life hadn’t counted for anything. At one time, he could ignore away any annoying malady, head colds, broken bones; it didn’t matter. This time it was different, frightening. Even more, it was unfair.

Sybil needed him. He needed her. Damn it; they needed each other. Shouldn’t that be the way it worked?

If only he could tell her, be honest about the entire situation, maybe even face up to his mortality, but that wasn’t the real issue, was it? Death was just a phase—something you went through, like puberty and pimples, on the way to something else. Leaving her alone to fend for herself was the worst part.

She was better now, better than she had been in years. A hopeful recovery the shrink had said, but a shrink was just a doctor without a scalpel. Shrinks didn’t cause the open wounds in the first place; they just sometimes forgot about the thickened layer of skin that covered the wounds and hid them from view. It was a layer separating sanity from…questions, from pain.

The pain lingered, hidden deep in his wife’s eyes. He had seen it surface once in a while, had tried to talk to her about that night, and Phillip, then saw the dullness come back to her face. The conversation fell on deaf ears. She closed her mind and pushed whatever tried to surface further and further in until she could almost forget, and the wound was once again covered.

But she was better; he reminded himself.

The lack of any emotion in her face had suddenly erupted as anger in her voice, a sign she was better, and better left not knowing about his latest problem.

Or the story of Eleanor Trippett.

He took a deep breath. The fading dot of pain left his chest.

These would be his secrets. Maybe, if he found the time, he’d let the doctor in on the latest heart problem to see the gleam in his medical eye. But never, never, under any circumstances, would he let Sybil know about this or the woman in black. She had enough on her mind without bother of his petty, nagging heart mess, or knowing about Eleanor Trippett’s loss two years after he and Sybil lost Phillip. The similarities were uncanny, and a rare night went by that he didn’t blame himself for the tragedy. To this day, his mind rolled around and around the problem and how he could have solved it, but there was nothing he could do.

What he would give to solve the Cameron problem, too. If it were in his bag of tricks, he would erase Sybil’s worry over Charlie, Annie, and the mother-in-law like a dusty blackboard and fix the fractured family.

It was a broken home, all right. No doubt about it, that is if you could take Richard’s word in the letter, and Charlie’s stubborn refusal to talk about anything to do with his father and mother being together. Then there was odd behavior of Mr. Cameron at the dock, and his conspicuous absence since. This was not a man who took kindly to his family. Worst of all, he bet Charlie thought he was responsible for his parent’s marital problems.

Mann shook his head and wished he could say something, or do something that would make it better for the boy. Charlie had become almost a son to him, a picking up where things were so abruptly left off many years ago. Not that Charlie was a substitute for the love he still felt for his son, but he was transference of sorts, a salve on empty, ragged emotions. Charlie was different from Phillip in a whole list of ways, but the same in one way: he was a boy who cried out for attention that Winston was all too ready to give, as was Sybil. He smiled to himself, wondered who was crying out for attention, the boy, or him and his wife. But that was okay, too.

Sybil’s curt talk after his collapse had been persuasive all right, but the facts stayed the same; Phillip’s handwritten message found in their favorite book then the mysterious disappearance of both. Or maybe it wasn’t so mysterious after all—he could almost see Sybil’s protective hand in the whole thing. Had she tossed the note into the garbage, or hidden it? Whatever happened, it was Sybil’s doing, of that much he was sure. More important now was figuring out what the message meant and why it was written. What prompted Phillip to run, to get away, to get killed?

Phillip was young, but he wasn’t stupid. The bay and the workings of Errand One was almost instinct for him. There was no reason to crash on the rocks, storm, or not. Phillip had said himself what a dangerous place that particular stretch was had made a point to avoid it, in fact.

Yet there he had been, his thin body, washed pale with the rain and wedged tightly among the jagged rocks. His mouth gaped open as if in protest at a sight too horrible to comprehend.

Something, or someone, had chased his son to his death.

Ghosts of the past lived in the mind, deep in the heart, or showed themselves as someone trusting and loving, like a parent, and no amount of running could escape her.

Her?

His forehead wrinkled in thought. He stroked his chest, absently then stopped.

It was her, this hand from the grave, his however many great-greats aunt ago, who went after Phillip; it was Lady Manchester herself. What better place to isolate a deranged woman than on an island prison of live oaks and tabby mansion walls with nothing to do and no one to talk to. And then eventually there was a son.

Until she killed him, then stood among the flames on the widow’s walk and allowed herself to die.

The house, much later rebuilt as an investment, stood empty, its fate sealed by reputation until he and Sybil acquired it. A dab of paint here, a two by four there, the original family name christened the place and Sybil, and he had a home free and clear. Then things changed. A child died, his mother was locked away, and the Manns would never return to the house again. The history of Manchester Place had returned to haunt them. Only the tourists were fooled.

The natives knew the story and passed it from one generation to the next. Try as he might to forget, he remembered it, too.

And somehow, over almost two centuries, Lady Manchester remembered and reached out for his son. But how, why, and more importantly, would it happen again?

He shook his head to clear it of the subtle euphoria that comes when pain gives way to comfort, and gathered up the bottle with the few remaining pills. With a groan, he hoisted himself to a standing position and stretched. He paused for a moment, let his body adjust to the residual light-headedness from the pill when something jabbed him from inside his jacket pocket. The hornpipe.

He pulled the clarinet-like instrument from his pocket, blew a puff of air through it, and listened to a dull note drift away with the wind. Another try, stronger this time, produced a shadow of the resonance it would have had in its prime. Mann stroked the scratched wood, fingered the holes, and hoped that Charlie would like this old family heirloom. Finding it tucked away among the clothes, tools, and boxes accumulated over decades of garage storage only served to remind how unimportant it was to him, but maybe pushing out an occasional tune would provide some joy to Charlie. Playing with the hornpipe would at least kill a little time between fishing trips.

He shuddered at the thought and knew this past fishing trip was the last. Mann wiped sweat from his forehead then patted his shirt to draw away the moisture that covered his chest and clung to his back.

No more fishing trips unless they stood firmly on the bank, but most assuredly no more trips on a boat. The incident had taken a bigger chunk from the few remaining years of his life than he wanted to think about. Maybe the hornpipe would be a consolation of sorts.

He tucked the instrument into his pocket, took a deep breath, and walked to Manchester Place on shaky legs. Another breath and he felt stronger. That was the key, let things go and put them all behind you. There was no point in dwelling on things that were best left forgotten.

The great house loomed into view. He hesitated briefly, wondered why he did so then continued until he saw it.

The huge, broken branch of an old oak hung precariously off the edge of the widow’s walk, as Sybil had said. He would have to hire a professional for this job, someone from the mainland, and at a premium price, no doubt. Richard would surely volunteer, but it was too dangerous. Besides, there was no telling what kind of shape the walk itself would be in, much less the unkempt steps leading up to it. So he’d need a ladder and a hired professional when he would have preferred to do it himself.

But that was out of the question for many reasons. The most important reason being Sybil, who would stand on solid ground shouting a nonstop stream of warnings up the length of the ladder while wringing her hands into a knot. That is if she ever agreed to the proposition in the first place. And much as he admired Richard, the boy would probably stop at every window for a hopeful glance at Mrs. Cameron, assuming he didn’t insist she stand at the bottom and wring her hands right along with Sybil. Annie wasn’t the type; if he judged right, the woman had too much on her mind without dealing with Richard’s juvenile attempts at flirtation. Poor boy. He wore the most effective blinders when it came to romance.

The tree would be number one priority when he got home; in the meantime, he had another mission to complete. Deliver the hornpipe, check on the family to see they had everything they needed, and move on to the rest of his chores.

A cool wind blew up from the bayside. He zipped up his jacket, pulled the collar tighter around his neck, and looked up into the darkening skies.

Storm weather.

And by the looks and feel of this particularly cool September day, the storm might be a maritime high. This was a rare event, and if his guess was right, the cool weather and smidgen of rain were just a hint of things to come.

Now there were more things to add to his chore list: a call to the National Weather Service for confirmation, with follow-ups on the radio reports. If he was right about the storm, and he was almost sure he was, the list of chores would grow in a hurry.

The oak branch hanging overhead would have to wait for now. No one in their right mind would come across the bay in a maritime high. Not for a tree, not for anything.

And no one would be leaving the island.

He sighed, climbed the front porch steps, and knocked on the front door.