He tapped the CHIEF on his cap.
“With the parade, the park, and the beach activities, the general craziness in the village, she could be anywhere, Reed. She could, God, get you in the crosshairs from a window in the Overlook Hotel.”
“She won’t come at me that way. She won’t. It’s personal. She needs to see my face, needs to look in my eyes, and have me look in hers. And she needs to get away with it. Trust me.”
“I am.” She gripped his hands. “I’ll wait for you.”
“At CiCi’s. Stay there tonight. I’ll be there after the fireworks. She’s not here yet. Maybe some of CiCi’s a little bit psychic’s rubbing off, but she’s not here yet.”
It didn’t stop him from searching crowds, picking out women, watching for someone watching him. After the long day, he stood with the crew of volunteer firefighters and watched the sky fill with color, listened to air ringing with blasts like gunfire.
Not yet, he thought as people cheered. But soon.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
She came three days later, sliding the secondhand SUV into the line waiting at the mainland dock. Like many who waited, she stepped out of her car to wander.
She’d let her own hair grow to her shoulders, colored it a beachy blond. She’d used self-tanner religiously over the past few weeks, and with careful layers of makeup, she’d achieved a healthy glow. Under big, stylish sunglasses, contacts turned her eyes into bluebells.
And under her breezy blue summer dress—one with short sleeves to hide the scar under her armpit—she wore a fake baby belly filled to simulate a woman at about twenty weeks. On the third finger of her left hand, she sported an impressive wedding set—cubic zirconia, but sparkly enough to pass for real.
She’d sprung for a good mani/pedi, French for class, and carried a Prada summer bag to go with her sandals.
She looked like a polished young pregnant woman of some means.
She spotted the pair of hikers—man and woman—sitting on their packs while they waited to board. Young, too, she thought, and the woman looked hot and tired.
She wandered over, a hand on her fake baby as she’d observed pregnant women did. “Hi. I hope you don’t mind if I ask if you know any easy—really easy—hiking trails on Tranquility? My husband’s a serious hiker, and when he gets here later in the week, he’s going to be all about it. I’m just not up for the serious hikes.”
She smiled as she said it, rubbing that bump.
“Sure.” The woman answered Patricia’s smile. “You can get a map at the information center back there.”
“You can get them on the island, too,” the man told her. “The ones at the info centers are free, but they have better ones at some of the shops. They don’t cost much, I guess.”
He got a map out of his pack. “We can show you a couple nice, easy beach hikes. The one out to the lighthouse is a little longer and tougher, but it’s worth it.”
“Great. Mostly I just want to sit on the beach, read, watch the water, but Brett loves to hike. Where are you coming from?”
She chatted them up. She—Susan “Call me Susie” Breen—had driven up from Cambridge. Her husband—Brett—had been called out of town suddenly on business, but she was happy to have a couple of days to get the cottage, one they’d rented for six wonderful weeks, ready, lay in supplies, have that time to sit and read and watch the water.
They—Marcus Tidings and Leesa Hopp—chatted right back.
“Say, why don’t I give you a ride over? I have to pay for the car anyway, and they don’t charge for passengers. It would save you the pedestrian fee. Plus I can take you into the village, at least as far as the rental office where I have to pick up my keys.”
Grateful, they walked to her car before Patricia realized she’d missed changing plates at the rest stop with the Massachusetts plates on a Suburu. Smiling as she cursed herself for the slip, she came up with a cover story—borrowed her brother’s car.
But her friendly hikers didn’t notice as she chat, chat, chatted.
She told Leesa to sit in the front with her, so she didn’t feel like a taxi driver.
They embarked, a group of three, having hung out at the rail on the trip over.
When Patricia drove off at Tranquility dock, the deputies on ferry duty didn’t look twice at the SUV with Ohio plates carrying three passengers and a cargo space full of luggage.
*
As Patricia stopped at the rental office for her keys and welcome package, Simone used a blowtorch to heat the bronze until it turned gold. She brushed ferric nitrate over Reed’s hair, over Barney, over areas she wanted hints of red and gold to shimmer with the bronze.
She’d use silver nitrate on the sword, on the collar she’d given Barney to bring out a silvery-gray patina. The work would take hours—but she considered it an improvement on the ancient method of burying the bronze to oxidize it. And this gave her control, allowed her to highlight, add a kind of movement and life.
She’d worked and studied with patineurs in Florence and in New York to learn the art, the science, the techniques. For this, a piece that had become so intimate to her, she called on all she had, asked herself for more.
When she paused in the work, she walked her studio, drinking water, clearing her mind. And she studied the faces on her shelf. More now. Throughout the finishing of the bronze, she’d taken breaks, worked on those faces.
The last one she’d completed looked back at her with wide, smiling eyes. Trent Woolworth, the boy she’d loved—as a young girl loves. He’d never had a chance to become a man. She’d thought he’d broken her heart, but he’d barely pricked it. She knew that now, and felt for him only regret and grief.
She’d join his face with the others, all the others, and cast them in bronze as she had Reed. Cupric nitrate, she thought, for the subtle and beautiful greens and blues, to mirror the water.
She could do this, would do this, not only because she’d finally found it inside her, but because the man she did love helped her open the rest.
She put on her gloves, turned back to the sculpture of Reed.
Hours later, her shoulders stiff from the final steps of sealing—waxing and buffing—she went down to CiCi’s studio.
Through the glass she saw her grandmother at her framing station, so she walked in.
“I wondered if you’d surface.”
“So did I, but I— Oh, CiCi, I love it. Reed’s house, the lupines like a sea of color, the woods, the light! Fairies in the woods, just a hint of them in that dappled shade.” She murmured, “And Reed standing on the widow’s walk with Barney, with me.”
“That’s how I see it. I’m going to give this to him—and, as I see it, you—for Christmas. You’ll be living with him by then unless my granddaughter’s an idiot. Which she’s not. I think this would work in the master bedroom.”
“It’s perfect. You’re perfect.” She took CiCi’s hand. “Can you stop for a minute, come outside?”
“If there’s an adult beverage involved, I can.”
“That can be arranged.”
“Give yourself and Reed a break,” CiCi said as they walked out and across to the patio. “Go to his place tonight. You’ve both been working crazy hours. You’re both tense waiting for that next shoe to drop since that last ugly card arrived. Go, crack a bottle of wine, and have a lot of sex.”
“I’m on that same path because, you see? I finished him.”
CiCi’s breath caught—the artist and grandmother felt her heart soar. “Oh, oh, Simone.” She walked to the counter where it stood in the late afternoon light. “It has life, a pulse, a soul, and more. Oh, the patina, such light and depth and movement. The detailing, the flow.”
She let the tears burning her throat free. “Get me that wine, baby, and a tissue. I’m overwhelmed.”