I started the car and headed toward Eastclaw Point Road. When I reached it, I drove slowly, checking the names on the mailboxes and signposts to my left and right. Fortunately, it was a time of year when there was next to no traffic, so there were no impatient drivers fuming behind me. The vegetation had died back, making the signs easier to read. At the fork in the road, I took the spur toward the Bennetts’ house and slowed down even more. Eastclaw Point Road was met by private roads and long, winding driveways. I got all the way to the end of the road, where steel gray waves crashed up over boulders; turned around; and started back.
This time, at the fork I went the other way, practically crawling. No car had passed me the entire time. I was almost at the end of the road when I spotted a wooden sign. It was so weathered, at first it appeared to be blank, but when I was almost on top of it, it came into focus. RABBLE POINT ROAD. PRIVATE WAY.
I turned my car onto the road and bumped down it. It was more potholes than asphalt. As Fee had said, there were no buildings, just low scrub, now devoid of leaves, and a few pine trees bent by years of wind. It was hard to imagine the thriving summer colony Caroline had described. I stopped the car about halfway down the road so I could get out to explore. The wind slapped my cheeks and I hurriedly pulled up the zip of my coat to my throat.
At first, it appeared there was nothing to see as I walked along the road. But then I spotted a break in the natural landscape. I thought I was seeing tumbled-down New England stonewalls, but the rock piles were spread apart, not continuous.
I went to the edge of one and pushed the dry brush aside with my boot. It was the corner of an old foundation. Only two sides still stood, but I imagined it had supported a sizable summer cottage. I continued down the road, zigzagging across it to look at the remains of foundations on either side. They weren’t deep enough to be true cellars. Summer cottages wouldn’t have had them, but in Maine, where the earth froze and thawed and froze again, you had to dig down to build up.
By the time the road terminated in a barely distinguishable cul-de-sac, I’d counted a dozen foundations, six on each side of the road. I tried to envision Rabble Point as Caroline had described it, lined by houses, each one set back and a bit askew to maximize everybody’s view of the ocean. I pictured the adults moving from house to house, patio to deck, drinking and smoking, while the kids ran free along the lane. Fee had said there was a tennis court. I searched the scrub for it but couldn’t find the remains.
A gust of wind came up, so fierce it nearly knocked me backward. I did a little jig to stay on my feet, and looked up. On the other side of the scrub, a manicured lawn stretched, dry and dead now, but obviously well kept. Beyond that loomed the backside of a house. Three-stories tall, with shingled sides and a stone foundation.
The Bennetts’ house.
I recognized the French doors leading to the lawn. The ruined foundations of Rabble Point Road were in the Bennetts’ backyard, one of the reasons their home had views to the water in three directions. What hadn’t been apparent when I’d entered the house from the other side was that the facade facing Rabble Point Road was the original front of the house. The Bennetts lived in the old Lowe house, the home of the owners of Rabble Point Road.
What did this mean, if anything? I thought about asking Deborah Bennett, who’d been so warm and accommodating, but didn’t want Phil to call Binder again. I stood, absorbing the atmosphere, willing the road to tell me something. But it didn’t.
I walked back to the Caprice, climbed in, and cursed its broken heater once again.
*
Bumping down the broken road, I hoped the Caprice wouldn’t bottom out before I hit hardtop. I drove back toward town with more questions than answers, unsure of what my trip out to the end of nowhere had taught me.
As I approached the fork in the road, I was astonished to see Deborah Bennett flagging me down. She had on a headscarf and an outsized pair of sunglasses despite the gloomy day, but it was impossible to mistake the trim figure under the well-tailored coat. I tapped the brakes and stopped. I’d seen no cars during the whole journey, so I didn’t bother pulling to the side of the road. I lowered the window.
“Julia, thank you for stopping.” She came up to the driver’s side door and ducked so we met at eye level.
“No problem, Deborah. Can I help you with something?” I wanted to talk to her about the photo, but I remembered Binder’s warning about Phil.
“Caroline called to say you’d come by asking questions about that old photo from the yacht club.” My face must have betrayed my surprise. Caroline had just told me she hadn’t spoken to Deborah, or anyone in the photo besides Henry, for years. How did she even have the Bennetts’ number?
“We’re in the book,” Deborah said, as if she’d read my mind.
The phone book. We stared at each other for a moment across a generational divide. It would never occur to me that the Bennetts’ number was in the phone book, or that they had a landline, for that matter. But if they’d kept the old number from the days when the shingled beauty was their summer house, they would be in the book. The question remained, Why had Caroline called?