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  Nell could be genial—she’d learned a lot from Thom during their marriage—but never with the ease that he had. Like now. She had thought of the things to say to Velma, but only when it was too late, with Velma already at the library counter checking her books back in.

  Nell joined her, putting her books down just as a crack of thunder boomed overhead.

  Marion, the librarian, flashed a quick smile at her as she checked in Velma’s books.

  “Wow! Dinosaurs,” came Rayburn’s voice from the children’s corner.

  “Rayburn, you be quiet,” his mother shushed him.

  “It’s okay, let him enjoy his dinosaurs,” Marion said. “Just us in the library right now.”

  Nell glanced at the stack of books Velma was returning. Several children’s books clearly for Rayburn, quite a few romances—Nell wondered if Velma was a romance reader, then remembered the romances in her own to-be-returned pile. She had just one teenage daughter and Velma had several.

  Someone looking at her stack of books might have had a few questions about the reading taste of Naomi Nelligan McGraw, Editor-in-Chief of the Pelican Bay Crier. At least Marion the librarian knew the truth. She knew the romances and makeup books Lizzie had picked out, the animal stories and bicycling books for Josh, and which books Nell chose.

  Nell had always liked Marion, sensed that they might become friends some day. So far their meetings had been only during Nell’s weekly library trips and a few social events here and there. And Thom’s funeral. Marion had been there.

  Nell watched her as she checked in Velma’s books. Marion was an attractive woman and Nell wondered why, at thirty-four, she’d never married. Attractive in a bookish way, she had to admit. Marion’s dark hair was cut in a short, practical style, her glasses a rounded tortoise shell, the kind that branded her as a serious book reader. She was tall. Nell, at five-seven, had to look up to her.

  She wondered if Marion remained in Pelican Bay to care for her mother. Thom’s mother and Marion’s mother were close friends, and Nell had occasionally heard them discussing and comparing their children. Peyton Nash, Marion’s father, had died a while ago and Nell knew that Erma, her mother, was in frail health. Her two brothers had moved on, one in the military and the other working in computers out in California. Marion, the single daughter, had returned.

  Nell had gathered all this information from Mrs. Thomas, Sr., not from Marion herself, and the information suffered from Mrs. Thomas’s way of looking at the world.

  “C’mon, Rayburn, get your favorite books ’fore the rain starts,” Velma called to him.

  He spun up to the desk with a handful of books, one of them hanging open showing a picture of “our friend, the policeman.” Running seemed to be his preferred method of locomotion.

  Nell left her returned books on the countertop and wandered over to the New Books shelf. Nothing really caught her interest, but she hadn’t been planning on taking out any books; today’s errand was really just to avoid missing the return deadline. She’d bring Josh and Lizzie to get new books. She’d have leisure then to look for herself while Josh searched for books about whales or bicycling, his two current obsessions. Lizzie could spend ten minutes looking at one book, measuring it in ways that Nell couldn’t fathom, before deciding whether it was worthy to be carried home or not.

  The purpose of her dawdling, Nell admitted, wasn’t the books, but to take the first tentative steps past acquaintanceship to friendship. The immobility of her grief at Thom’s death was lifting and loneliness was seeping in. She decided that when Velma and the boisterous Rayburn left and there was a quiet moment, she would ask Marion to go for coffee sometime.

  Nell had had one of those nights last night, lonely and discontented, far enough past the numbness to know how empty the bed was. The sleepless night had firmed up her resolve to cut away some of the loneliness.

  For Thom, it would have been easy. He’d just plop the books on the counter and say, “How about coffee? I’d love to talk about books with you.”

  But Nell was too deliberate, too cautious just to brazen into friendship. Sometimes she wondered if she was mythologizing Thom, erasing his faults, giving him a perfection that real life would never challenge.

  With a shake of her head, Nell decided, I don’t need to do that, his mother does it well enough for both of us. Her relationship with Thom’s mother had never been easy, but now there was a subtle, unspoken war between them over … over what? Thom’s memory? What he might have done, might have said? His soul?

  “Do you think Thom would really agree with that editorial?” his mother would politely ask. Or, “Thom’s father never would have done that. I suppose it’s something he learned in journalism school.” Nell heard the unspoken “in journalism school and from you, because he certainly didn’t learn it from us.”

  Clearly I need someone to talk to, Nell thought as she turned from the book shelves.

  “Any new books you’d recommend?” she asked Marion.

  “Plenty I’d recommend. But you’ll have to go to a bookstore for them. The first thing to go in the city budget is the library.”

  “If you’ve got Dickens and Shakespeare, what more do you need, right?”

  “As if our city councilmen know who Dickens and Master Will are. No, they like the latest bestsellers, so that’s the direction my meager funds go. Do I buy the most interesting books or the books that more people will read?”

  “It’s a book-eat-book world,” Nell replied, getting a smile from Marion. “How about going out for coffee sometime? Lizzie and Josh have at least a decade to go before we can talk about the same books.”

  “Coffee?” Marion repeated slowly, possibly with hesitation but Nell wasn’t sure. Maybe I’m seeing more here than there really is, Nell suddenly thought, but then Marion continued, “That would be nice—if we can work it into our hectic schedules.”

  “Mine’s kids and the paper. How about Friday? That’s best for me. The paper’s out and I’d just as soon not be near a phone to hear about things like misspelled names or our editorial page being run by leftists to the left of Marxist-atheistic Communists.”

  “Friday, let me think …” Marion again replied slowly.

  “Or you can get back to me, if you like,” Nell added, still sensing hesitation on Marion’s part. She didn’t know the woman well enough to be able to judge whether this was just the way she did things or if she had some reservations about seeing Nell outside of their limited library meetings.

  “Friday doesn’t work. How about sometime this weekend? I was just trying to remember Mama’s schedule,” Marion said. “I’ll call and let you know what works.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Nell said, giving Marion her cell phone number. The work one. She’d eschewed having to juggle two cell phones, so her official Crier one, an ancient flip phone, did double duty.

  Just then a gaggle of school children rushed in. They surrounded Marion at the main desk and bombarded her with questions about the settling of this part of the Gulf Coast. It had the unmistakable earmarks of research paper due tomorrow.

  Nell couldn’t see herself being heard above their cacophony. She gave Marion a smile and a wave and headed out the library door.

  As she opened the door of the city hall building to leave, the rain came down, windy sheets that made an umbrella useless.

  The storm had come.

  two

  It would be the last time, he thought, waiting in the woods. The wet leaves glistened as the final rays of the sun returned from the clouds.

  Rayburn Gautier watched his mother get in the car to go to work at Dad’s place. Dolly, the sister charged with watching him, had gotten on the phone the second his mother stepped through the door.

  Rayburn felt it was her duty to watch him. If she didn’t, it wasn’t really his fault if he slipped away. From past experience, he knew she’d not n
otice him gone much before dinnertime. He just had to reappear as she was dumping a can of spaghetti into a sauce pan. He could ask, of course, and she’d probably say yes, but it was more fun to slip away. Sometimes she said no, or worse, wanted to go with him.

  He wasn’t supposed to cross the street, but it wasn’t a busy street, not like near the school or the library. Still, Rayburn carefully looked both ways, then ran quickly across to give any car less of a chance at him. Rayburn felt that the less time he took in a transgression, the less of a transgression it was.

  The sun had come back out after the heavy rain. Rayburn skipped around the puddles the storm had left. Wet shoes might be hard to explain.

  He headed quickly up the street to the turn onto the dead end road. It was a rarely used street. Only by Old Man Young—all the kids liked to call him that because it sounded so funny, Old Man Young, Young Old Man. He was old and he lived alone in the only house on the road. It was an old oyster shell track, not kept up because of its limited use. Only Old Man Young’s beat-up truck used it.

  Rayburn crept quietly by his house. Old Man Young had once been out on his porch and, on seeing Rayburn, had asked him where he was going. Not even waiting for an answer, he’d told Rayburn that he should be heading back to his home. The woods behind the harbor wasn’t a good place for kids to be playing. Rayburn didn’t want to be caught again.

  He had promised that he would be there.

  The road ended at a grand old oak tree, its black, heavy limbs spreading out like a giant spider. One Halloween, some of the older kids in the neighborhood had decorated its branches with grinning skulls and severed limbs, using flashlights covered with green plastic to light the gristly props.

  Rayburn considered getting past the oak tree to be his greatest challenge. He thought of it as the monster tree and was always ready for another bloody hand to suddenly be reaching out for him.

  He scurried under the low-hanging limbs, slipping once on the rain-slicked leaves and getting his left knee dirty and wet. But he was safely beyond the threat of grasping fingers.

  The harbor, a natural one, was a small L-shaped inlet, petering out to a shallow swampy stream. The town had slowly developed around it, especially at the beach end. It was a natural beach, unlike many on the coast, man-made with dredged sand. But this tail end of the harbor had never been developed. It was too low and marshy originally to do anything with, so the houses had been built around it. Nowadays, too many well-to-do property owners liked having their backyards end in woods to let any developer in. They argued that it was flood control, this low-lying wooded area not far from the center of town.

  Past the oak tree, the ground slanted down. Rayburn carefully picked his way across the slippery oak leaves. It wouldn’t do to get too muddy or dirty. One knee could happen in the backyard, but both knees and his behind would be suspicious.

  At the center of the woods was the ruin of a long-abandoned house—the hermit’s place, the kids in the neighborhood called it. One crumbling wooden wall still stood, held in place only by the tree it was leaning against and the vines that encased it. Half a chimney remained, only barely taller than Rayburn. The bricks were soft and crumbling, every bit of wind and rain creating another pile of dust and ashes. A less densely overgrown patch between the wall and the chimney was the only other indication that some long-ago time, a person had lived there.

  Parents warned children to stay away from the old house, afraid that the wall might escape its vine shroud, or that someone would step into the well that was now hidden in the underbrush behind the chimney and crumbling into the same dust. All manner of things were said to be at the bottom of the well. A doorway to China, or a treasure chest, or a dead body.

  Rayburn had occasionally dared to peek down the well, but he’d only seen leaves and slime that thickened into a dense blackness. He usually stayed away from the skeleton house, preferring the fiddler crabs and salamanders to be found at the stream’s edge.

  Once there had been a big and very dead gar floating there. Rayburn had come back three days in a row, watching how quickly the crabs chewed away pieces of the dead flesh. Rain had kept him away for two days, and when he’d come again, there was no sign, nothing to indicate that a dead fish had been there. Rayburn had been hoping to at least get the skull and add it to his collection. One of his father’s friends had given him the jaws of a shark.

  But today he turned into the woods instead of heading down to the stream.

  It would be the last time, he thought, as he heard the whoosh of leaves that let him know someone was coming. It was getting too dangerous. It felt too easy, and for him that was always a danger sign. It was the initial approach and seduction, the feint and parry, that kept him sharp and always watching. When everything was at risk, he was at his best, senses flashing and alert, ready to jump at the slightest shift of wind. He liked being unsure, testing himself.

  Now he expected the soft shush of footsteps through the woods. Knew there would be only one set of feet gliding along the leaves.

  It had become too easy. It was time for it to end.

  three

  Nell glanced out her window, surprised to see that the sun had returned. It had been a downpour when she’d sat down.

  Well, the story was edited. Carrie wasn’t a bad reporter, but it was obvious that she’d been an English major, not a journalism major—voice superseded “just the facts.” She’d probably done her thesis on Wuthering Heights and was now trying to write Wuthering Harbor, one article at a time.

  Josh wouldn’t be upset if she was a little late; he loved hanging out at the bike shop. But Nell didn’t know if Kate Ryan, the new owner, would like to be both shopkeeper and babysitter.

  She sat a moment longer, trying to decide whether to come back to the office after getting Josh and dropping him at home, or just going home with him.

  Leaving Lizzie and Josh together could always be volatile. At twelve, or almost thirteen as he constantly pointed out, Josh didn’t much like being reminded that he still needed to be babysat—a word that Nell avoided at all costs. Lizzie, at fourteen, was in the early stages of adolescent rebellion, and her reaction to being given the last-minute assignment of watching her younger brother could range from an “Ah, Mom, I’ve got things I need to do” to wheedling for compensatory allowance to an outburst of “This isn’t fair! Why do I get stuck with him? I didn’t make you have another kid!” Every once in a while she’d say “Okay, no problem,” just to keep the mix in constant flux.

  Most of the items left on Nell’s to-do list were phone calls. Better to make those the next morning, she decided. She did want to contact Ella Jackson about her granddaughter—she’d looked up the number in the phone book and called twice already, but there was no answer and Ella Jackson either couldn’t afford an answering machine or didn’t believe in them. Despite her brave words to Harold Reed, Nell also questioned whether it was better to probe publicly into someone’s grief or just let them suffer the loss without the prying of a newspaper reporter, no matter how altruistic her motives. And if she really wanted to talk to Ella Jackson, she should probably visit her in the evening when she was likely to be home from work. Nell just didn’t know if she wanted to.

  On the more mundane level, she’d mostly dried off from her hurried dash in the rain earlier, but her shoes and socks were still soggy. Happy children and dry feet were enough incentive to go home.

  Leaving the edited story on Carrie’s desk—another chore postponed until the morning was placating Carrie’s stricken look at the number of red marks on her prose—Nell crossed the newsroom. Her wet feet squashed in a less than dignified manner.

  Jacko looked up as she walked by his desk. He and Carrie were the cub reporters. A paper the size of the Pelican Bay Crier didn’t have too many bear reporters. Nell had accepted it as one of her duties: to mentor the young, then watch them move on. The Crier was a start-out-at p
aper, not an end-up-at paper, unless you ended up owning it. It had its rewards and challenges, and at this particular time Jacko was the reward and Carrie the challenge.

  He didn’t call himself Jacko, but his blond, earnest good looks and youthful enthusiasm had demanded a diminutive of Jack.

  “What are you working on?” she asked, hoping it came across as a friendly question and not the inquiry of the editor.

  “The fast-paced, exciting city council meeting,” he answered.

  “Drainage ditches and trash pick-up?”

  “Oh, no, this one had sex in it.”

  “Sex? Enlighten me.”

  “Cat mating. Very serious problem. Cats yowling through the night. The city council, in a very bold move, voted to allot the funds to purchase two cat traps—humane ones, of course. Concerned citizens can check out the traps kept at either the police station or the sheriff’s department, to be decided by who’s better at ducking out of being know as the Pussy Trapper of Pelican Bay.”

  Jacko suddenly blushed, clearly just realizing not only what he’d said, but that he’d said it to the older woman who was his boss.

  What do they think, that I’m forty-one and some tight-assed prude? Nell wondered. Having two children had considerably cleaned up the language of her younger days, but she still knew what the words meant. Or, she wondered, because I’m a widow, do they think I’m asexual?

  “Maybe we should solve the problem for them and offer to keep the cages here,” Nell said. “We could even start a Pussy Trapper column. Who brought in the most. Best places to find … cats.”

  Jacko half-smiled, as if he was pretty sure she was joking. He was still blushing slightly.