He lowered himself to the sofa. “I’m sorry Maggie told you the way she did,” he said. “I wanted to wait until a better time.”
I shook my head, sinking into the chair behind me. I had no time to wallow, I told myself. Right now, I just needed to focus on Andy. “We should go out and look for them,” I said.
“We wouldn’t be able to see two feet in front of my pickup.”
Again, he was right. I rubbed my arms with my hands, watching the hurricane lantern flicker on the mantel. “What do you think?” I asked. “Could Keith have set Andy up?”
“But then we come back to the question of why he’d get trapped by the fire if he set it himself.”
“Ben!” I said suddenly, getting to my feet and grabbing the wireless phone from the coffee table. “Maggie and Andy might be with Ben!”
“With Ben? Why?”
“Well, here’s the other piece of terrific news I got today,” I said. “Dawn called to tell me that Ben and Maggie have been seeing each other for nearly a year.”
“Seeing each other?” Marcus’s eyes grew wide. “You mean…intimately?”
“That’s exactly what I mean. That’s why Maggie got mad at me. I talked to her about it and I was furious. She—”
“Ben?” Marcus was incredulous. “I saw him with Dawn the other day, all lovey-dovey. And he’s pushing thirty, for God’s sake.”
“I know it. I’m going to strangle him.”
“I’ll beat you to it.”
I sat down again, glad to have something to do. Some action to take. “Do you know his phone number?” I hit the talk button on my phone, but there was no dial tone. Of course. “The power,” I said, holding the dead phone in the air.
Marcus pulled his cell phone from his belt. “Cells are iffy tonight,” he said, frowning at the display. “I only have one bar.”
I watched as he dialed. He listened, shaking his head. “Voice mail,” he said to me. Into the phone, he said, “Ben, it’s Marcus. Call me.”
I leaned back against the chair, feeling defeated. “It’s my fault, Marcus,” I said. “Maggie and Ben. I’ve been a terrible mother to her. An absent mother. I made her parent Andy with me without giving much thought to her needs. Jamie raised her until he died and then I let her be. I expected her to take care of herself.”
“She seemed really good at it.”
“How could I not have known she was seeing Ben? And for so long?”
“Man!” Marcus got to his feet, pacing toward the stairs and back again. “I’m going to flatten him!”
“Could they be over there?” I wondered. “At Ben’s?”
“Since it’s actually Dawn’s house, not likely.”
I massaged my forehead. A headache was starting, or maybe I’d had it for hours and hadn’t noticed. “This thing about the containers,” I said. “It makes no sense.” I rubbed my temples harder. “But if Maggie had a secret life, maybe Andy did, too.” There was no other way to explain it all. “I think about the mothers of those kids who shoot up schools. I’m sure they never suspected their child could do such a thing.” I dropped my hands to the arms of the chair. “Marcus, I knew there was something on his shoes,” I admitted. “I hoped it was fluid from his lighter. You know, how he put it in his sock when we were at the airport? With all the time and attention I gave Andy, did I still screw up with him? Is there a side to him he’s managed to keep hidden from me?” Just then, I felt as though everyone in my life had deceived me.
“Don’t you start doubting him, all right?” Marcus stopped pacing. “You’re the one person who can’t afford to ever doubt him.”
“But how do you explain it?” I raised my hands in the air, palms up. “He needed to feel powerful and looked up to. He loved being a hero. Maybe he—”
“How can you even think that?” he asked.
I looked across the room at the man I’d mistrusted for the last fifteen years. “Because,” I said, “today I learned that I don’t know a thing about the people that I love.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Maggie
THE UNIVERSE WOULD HAVE TO PICK THIS night for a storm. I parked on a side street at the northern end of the Island. The rain sounded like nails hitting the roof of my car. The houses were dark: people must have gotten the word about the weather and stayed away from the beach. That was totally fine with me. The darker and emptier, the better.
“Where are we?” Andy asked when I made no move to get out of the car.
“We’re near The Sea Tender. You know. We’ve driven past it a couple of times.”
“The circle house where I lived when I was a baby?”
“When you were little, yes. That’s the house. We’re going to stay there tonight. It’ll be fun.”
“Cool,” Andy said. He peered into the dark rain. “Where is it?”
“Just a short walk away.” It didn’t seem as though it would stop raining anytime soon, so I grabbed the flashlight and a trash bag I’d filled with clothes for each of us, along with Andy’s iPod. “We’re going to have to get wet.” I opened the door, hanging on to the handle to keep the wind from tearing it from my hands. The ocean roared in my ears as if I’d parked right on the beach. “Be careful getting out!” I shouted, too late. The wind grabbed Andy’s door and he went sprawling onto the sandy side of the road. He got up, laughing. He was clueless. About tonight. About tomorrow.
I was practically blinded by the rain as I walked around the car to help him shut the door. The wind was like a living being, pushing the door toward us. It spooked me, like we weren’t alone out there. Everything I was doing spooked me, but I had to do it. This wouldn’t be the first crazy thing I’d done. I wished Mom had told me how bad things were! I would have done something sooner. Made a better plan. Something. Tomorrow, Andy was supposed to sit through a hearing he could never understand that could lead to him being locked up and the key thrown away. I would not let that happen. I hadn’t thought things through past tomorrow, but if they couldn’t find Andy for the hearing, they couldn’t lock him up. That was all that mattered.
“Can you carry the food?” I shouted, handing him a brown paper bag I’d filled with bread and peanut butter and fruit. There was nearly a case of bottled water in the cottage. That would last us through tonight and tomorrow. “Hold the top closed so everything doesn’t get soaked,” I said as he took the bag from my hand. I swung the garbage bag over my shoulder and we started walking toward The Sea Tender.
“I can’t see anything!” Andy said.
“We’re almost there.” I could hardly make out one house from another. I squeezed my eyes nearly closed to keep out the wind.
We walked right past the narrow boardwalk that led to the house and had to backtrack.
“Come on,” I said, turning onto the boardwalk. “Stay close to me.”
We reached the puny dune in front of the house. Even in the darkness, I could see the waves crashing into each other as they raced toward the beach. I shone the flashlight toward the sand below The Sea Tender. Something was different, and it took me a moment to realize that the silvery glow in the beam of my flashlight was not sand at all but swirling water. The ocean churned around the pilings of the cottage, tossing foam and spray up to the deck. I’d never seen the water so high on this beach. I didn’t want to let Andy know how it freaked me out.
“The rain is biting me!” Andy shouted.
“It’s the sand blowing.” The sand stung my face and hands. “Come on,” I said, jumping down the sharp angle of the dune.
“This bag’s—” The wind cut off whatever Andy said, and I didn’t ask him to repeat it. I was too busy reminding myself that the cottage had survived dozens of hurricanes and plenty of nor’easters. It would survive this one, too.
I found the cinder block and moved it into place beneath the front stairs. “I’ll go up first, then I’ll help you up,” I shouted. It took me three tries to throw the heavy trash bag onto the little front deck. Then I climbed on the block and hoisted myself onto
the steps.
“I can do that,” Andy shouted. “I don’t need help.”
“Okay, hand me the bag of food.”
He lifted it toward me, and I grabbed the top edge of the bag. It was soggy and before I could get a better grip, the wind ripped it from my hands, spilling everything onto the wet beach.
“I’ll get it all, don’t worry, Maggie!” He scrambled around on the sand, the wind tossing the loaf of bread in the air like it was made out of feathers.
“I’ll be down in a sec, Panda!” I shouted. I unlocked the door and tossed the trash bag into the house. Then I jumped off the deck, and together we picked up as much of the food as we could find.
Once we were both up on the deck, Andy made me shine my flashlight on the sign.
“Condem-ned,” he read.
“Condemned,” I shouted. “When we were kids, Hurricane Fran demolished a lot of the island.”
“I know that,” Andy yelled back at me. “I learned it. And condemned means keep out, but we’re not going to keep out.”
“You’ve got it,” I said. I pushed the door open again and ducked under the sign.
“Are we doing a bad thing?” Andy asked as he walked into the living room. His tennis shoes squeaked on the floor, and I knew he was twisting his feet to make them squeak louder.
I picked up a second flashlight from the kitchen counter. “Here’s one for you.” I handed it to him. “About this being a bad thing, some people will think so, but I don’t.”
“Will Mom?” Andy turned the flashlight on and off, shining it in my face.
“Stop that.” I pushed it away. “You’re blinding me.”
“Sorry. Will Mom think this is bad?”
“There’s a bunch of candles all around this room. Let’s light them and then I’ll answer your question.” I handed him a box of matches.
“Can I use my lighter?” He reached into his pocket and I shone my flashlight on the green lighter in his hand.
“You still have that thing? I thought the security people at the airport took it away from you.”
“This is a different one.”
My baby brother had some rebel in him after all. “Why?” I asked. “Are you still smoking?” I thought I’d smelled smoke on him a few days ago, but since the night of the fire, the whole world smelled like smoke to me.
“Don’t tell Mom,” he said.
“I won’t. But it’s so bad for you, Panda Bear. I wish you wouldn’t.”
“I lied to Mom,” he admitted.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve done some of that myself.”
“I told her I didn’t suck smoke into my chest, but I do.”
“Great for your asthma.” I lit one of the candles on the counter.
“I like to make it come out of my nose.”
I tried to picture him smoking. “Where do you smoke?” I asked. He was always supervised, really. We’d smell it if he smoked at home and he sure couldn’t do it at school.
“I do it when I’m hanging in with my friends on the days I don’t ride home with you.”
“Hanging out,” I corrected him. I pictured him waiting for the bus with other kids from school, kids he thought of as his friends but who probably bummed cigarettes off him and called him names behind his back.
“If a fire started in this house, I could jump out this window onto those boards out there.” He shone his flashlight through one of the living room windows onto the back deck.
“Right,” I said. “And there’s a door in the kitchen we could use to get out on the deck, too.”
“Deck, I mean. Not boards.”
He sounded embarrassed by his mistake. “It’s okay,” I said. “I knew what you meant. And decks are made out of boards, so you were technically correct.”
“We have a big deck at home.”
“Yes, we do.”
“When do we go home?”
I set out the food on the kitchen counter. “We’ll stay here tonight, and then decide what to do tomorrow.” I opened the bag of bread. “You want some bread and peanut butter?” I asked. I should have figured out a way to bring the pizza with us. What would Mom think when she saw the whole pizza on the counter?
“Okay.”
In the candlelight, he watched me spread peanut butter on two slices of bread. I handed one to him.
We sat on the couch together facing the dark window, eating the bread and peanut butter and drinking from bottles of water. “The ocean’s out there,” I said. It was so dark and we were up so high that I couldn’t see the white froth of the waves.
“I know that. I’m not an imbecile.”
“Good word, Panda,” I said.
We munched our bread in silence for a while. I kept imagining how Mom would feel when she walked into the house to discover Andy wasn’t there. I’d dumped all the stuff about Daddy on her when her day had been crap to begin with. Then she had to drive home in the wind and rain worrying about tomorrow and then discover that her children had disappeared. There were two voices in my head, one telling me to let her know we were okay, the other telling me to keep quiet. My tattoo burned into my hip every time I thought of her worrying.
“I’m going to call Mom and let her know we’re okay,” I said when I’d finished eating. I got his iPod out of the trash bag and handed it to him. Then I checked my phone. No bars at all. Weird. I could usually get reception in the cottage. The storm, probably. I wondered if Ben had been trying to call me. I didn’t want to think about Ben. That would totally mess me up right now.
Andy’s phone was on the counter, but he had no reception either. I pictured Mom growing more frantic by the minute. Why why why had I told her about Daddy? I had such a mean side to me. I’d wanted to turn the tables on her. Get her off my back about Ben.
“Andy, I’m going out on the deck because I can’t get a phone signal inside.”
“Okay.” He didn’t look up from his iPod.
On the deck, I had to grab the railing to keep my balance in the wind. Even if I could get a signal—which I couldn’t—I’d never be able to hear her. I’d have to call from my car.
In the kitchen again, I tore a hole for my head in the trash bag and put it on like a poncho.
“Be back in a few minutes, Andy,” I said, glancing at the candles scattered around the room to make sure they were burning safely. Just what we needed was my brother in another fire.
I made it to the car, but still had no signal, so I started driving. There was water on the road and I drove very slowly, afraid of skidding into the sand. Getting stuck. What if something happened to me and Andy was left alone at The Sea Tender? Oh God, I told myself. Stop thinking that way!
I didn’t see a single light in any of the houses and knew the power was out. I was all the way to the huge condominium building, Villa Capriani, before I got a signal. I had three messages from Mom. She sounded scared to death, her voice shaking, and I knew I was making the right decision to call her. I pulled into Villa Capriani’s nearly deserted parking lot and dialed my mother’s cell number.
“Maggie! Where are you?” She sounded so bad. I knew she’d been crying. I should have called earlier or at least left her a note.
“I’m just calling to let you know Andy and I are fine,” I said. “We’re perfectly safe.”
“Where are you, Maggie? What are you doing?”
“I can’t tell you. I just wanted you to know that we’re fine.”
“She won’t say,” Mom said to someone.
“Who’s there?” I was afraid it was the police.
“Maggie?” It was Uncle Marcus on the phone now. “What’s going on? Are you with Ben?”
“No,” I said. Oh God. So now Uncle Marcus knew about Ben and me, too. “He doesn’t know anything about this, so leave him out of it. I just wanted to let Mom know that Andy and I are fine.”
“Why are you doing this?” he asked. “Come home. You’re only going to make things worse, babe.”
“How could they get any
worse?” I asked. “Can you picture Andy in a jail cell without bail? Waiting a year for a trial, like you said? Getting picked on and maybe beaten up and maybe raped by the other prisoners? And not really getting it?” My voice broke as the images ran through my mind. “Not understanding what’s going on?”
“I know, Mags,” he said. “But try to calm down, all right? Maybe the judge will see reason tomorrow and not lock him up. Maybe he’ll even let him stay in the juvenile system.”
“Oh, sure,” I said. “That’s not what you said a couple of hours ago. Especially now that they have his fingerprints on that container.”
“If he doesn’t show, it’ll be worse for him,” Uncle Marcus said.
“I’m hanging up.” I turned my phone’s power off so I wouldn’t have to hear it ring when they tried to call me back. I wondered if, by now, even Mom and Uncle Marcus believed Andy had done it. Was I the only one who knew he was innocent?
I was scared driving back to the cottage. I drove faster and faster, thinking again about the candles. I was so relieved when I saw that The Sea Tender was still standing. I parked the car on New River Inlet Road this time and ran as fast as I could back to the cottage. Inside, Andy had his earbuds in and barely seemed to notice when I burst into the living room.
I talked him into playing a game of Concentration with the sticky old deck of cards from one of the kitchen drawers. We spread them out between us on the sofa, and my hands shook when it was my turn to turn over a pair. Now that we were here, with my brother fed, my mother called and nothing more that needed to be done, I was starting to freak out. What was I doing? What had I done?
“I win!” Andy shouted, when we counted our pairs. For once, I envied his ability to see life so simply.
We played a few more hands. Then I blew out the candle on the windowsill and we watched the rain and salt water tap against the glass in front of us. The cottage vibrated, I guessed from the water swirling around the pilings. My nerves were going to snap any minute.
Andy had kicked off his shoes and now he put his feet on the windowsill. “I wish we could see the ocean,” he said.
I leaned forward to see if the white water was visible.