He didn’t have much, she thought, for a man who had lived in the same
house at least since Carrie was born. Where were the elegant suits he had worn
in the old photographs of the Kingfisher Inn during its shining years? Where
were the silk ties, the expensive shoes? Locked away somewhere in the past,
she guessed, in the ghost of the old inn. What he bothered to keep in drawers
was frayed, worn. There was no word to express the state of his socks. She did
find a few things her mother had given him in the years when she still liked
him: beads for his hair, a gold earring, a piece of butter-colored amber on a
leather tie.
All signs of his previous life he had left elsewhere; only the Merle that
Carrie thought she knew lived in that house with her.
But I don’t really know you at all, she told him, and kept looking.
She found the photo in a cardboard box of papers shoved into a corner of his
bedroom closet. It was buried under old check stubs and statements from the
years when he actually kept a bank account, tax forms from when he actually
had jobs, outdated receipts that should have been tossed long ago. A handful
of photos lay at the bottom: herself as a toddler on Merle’s shoulders, her
parents in their wedding finery, her mother, very young, with long, wild hair
and feathers hanging from her earlobes; she was standing beside one of the
winding tidal streams, lifting her skirt above her muddy boots as she watched
the water.
The final photo startled her: Hal Fisher and Merle in all their glory, both in
tuxes beneath the enormous chandelier with every light in it ablaze, and the
reception room around them filled with women in heels and dark lipstick, men
in suits and ties with jeweled pins. Hal and Merle were both smiling. It might
have been opening night at the Kingfisher Inn as they welcomed the first
guests. Behind them, a chef stood at the open doors of the huge dining hall,
all its tables bright with cutlery, glassware, candles, and vases full of
roses from the old gardens. The chef wore an old-fashioned cream-puff hat,
black stovepipe pants; he, too, was smiling. Carrie, studying his smile, felt
her skin constrict. She peered more closely at him. The warm, wide-set eyes,
the Greek athlete’s profile looked oddly, disturbingly familiar.
Todd Stillwater’s father, it had to be. He must have done something so
unspeakably wicked that every mention of that name, his history at the
Kingfisher Inn, was forbidden even unto the unborn generations. She crouched
over the photo for a long time, gazing at the three of them: Hal, Merle, the
chef. Finally, the idea floating around in her head became coherent.
No way could she ask Hal. Her father refused to talk.
Maybe Stillwater would.
She took the photo with her when she drove to his restaurant on her day off.
She went in midafternoon, in the calmer hours between lunch and dinner. No
wolf chased the pickup through the streets, nor did Merle fling himself
between her and Stillwater’s name on the door. Why? she wondered. Where was
he, if he felt so strongly about protecting her from some horribly lurking
menace? She slammed the truck door a little crossly, climbed the worn marble
steps, and opened the door to find Todd Stillwater sitting at the tiny bar,
surrounded by paperwork.
“We open at seven for dinner,” he said absently, without turning around.
Carrie, surprised to find such cool elegance in the genial patchwork of
downtown Chimera Bay, looked curiously at the black linens, the red cut-
crystal vases, the thick marble walls of the early bank that stood sentinel
against sound from the busy highway.
“Pretty,” she said, and he turned.
“Carrie,” he said, smiling, and stood up. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
“Is this a good time?”
“Perfect.”
In the light of day rather than streetlamps, so was he, she thought dazedly.
His black tie was loosened around his unbuttoned collar, his sleeves rolled
halfway up forearms lightly furred with gold against a darker gold that, her
fingers anticipated, would be warm and textured to the touch. She swallowed,
wondering why she had never noticed forearms before, or the amazing bones of
the wrist.
“I just came to talk,” she said uncertainly.
“Good idea. I’m just going over accounts, nothing that can’t wait.” He
rose, pulled out a couple of chairs at one of the tables beside the windows.
“Sit down. Or would you like to see the kitchen? Sage is out shopping; she
should be back anytime now to help me plan the dinner menu. Much as it ever
gets planned. I’m impulsive, like you with your bites. You’d be welcome to
stay for that. In fact, it might—”
“I came to ask a question,” she interrupted.
“What’s that?” he asked promptly, and she sat down awkwardly, with a thump,
laying the envelope on the cloth between them. He sat, too, looking at it
expectantly. “One of your recipes?”
She shook her head and drew out the photo.
He sat silently a moment, gazing at it. His brows peaked; he bent closer to it
suddenly. “Is that—is that Hal Fisher? In a tux? Wow. Where— Wait. Is that
— That’s the chandelier in the Kingfisher bar.”
“It’s the old hotel.” She tapped Merle’s smiling face. “That’s my
father.”
“I’m damned.”
Her finger shifted to the face under the cream-puff hat. “That looks,” she
said steadily, “like you.”
He picked up the photo wordlessly, angling the old black and white to deflect
the light from the window. “It does,” he breathed. “It could be me.” He
dropped it onto the table, stared at her. “I had no idea.”