On Hurricane Island Read online

  No one should be hit like that. No one deserves that, especially an old lady who has clearly suffered enough already. Austin knows what it feels like. Slapped and punched and lying on a gurney in the health services emergency room the time she needed stitches. Her boyfriend all pale and concerned, explaining to the campus cops how she slipped and landed hard, striking her shoulder and her cheek on the sharp edge of the TV table. Then—as soon as the nurse left the room—the jerk slipped his hand under her shirt and murmured how much he wanted her. Assaulted and humiliated, aroused and shamed, all at once.

  She can’t erase the image of the purple line curving across the woman’s lopsided chest. She has never seen that before, what it looks like after a cancer operation. She crosses her arms against the reassuring symmetry of her breasts.

  But she can’t share any of this with Gran. “I’m just tired,” she says. “The storm is getting bad.”

  “Tell me about it.” Gran laughs. “Your grandfather is in hurricane heaven, glued to the Weather Channel. If the cable goes out, he’ll drive us stark raving. You hungry?”

  That too. She wants to eat until all the hollows inside are filled up. “Starving,” she says, circling her arms around Gran and resting her chin on her gray hair, almost the same color as Gandalf’s.

  When Pops walks into the kitchen, they’re still standing like that.

  “Mushy stuff,” he says, wrapping his arms around both of them.

  Austin breaks away first. “I’m starving and exhausted and I have to be back early tomorrow.” She looks at Pops. “You think Bert’ll be able to get over?”

  “Funny you should ask,” he says. “This is a magnificent storm. Come watch the radar with me.”

  “Go ahead,” Gran says. “I kept your plate warm.”

  Next to her on the sofa, Pops points at the screen. “See that red arrow? Gena is just cruising right along, aiming right up the coast at us.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “She, not it. Still down south, off Cape Hatteras. She’s a big girl.”

  “How big? Like Edna?”

  Gran hands her a steaming plate of spaghetti and a glass of milk, like she’s still six years old. She wishes that she was still a kid, had never heard of detention centers or enhanced interrogation techniques.

  “Really big. We’re already getting the rain even though the eye is twenty-four hours out. But this is nothing yet. It was so bad with Edna that Navy bases all along the east coast ordered their warships out to sea. Safer than the harbor.” Pops stops talking and looks at her. “How come you’re so interested all of a sudden? Yesterday you wouldn’t listen to a word about this stuff.”

  Austin shrugs. “Someone at work. She studies hurricanes, was all excited that you lived through Edna out here. She had a lot of questions. That’s all.”

  Pops smiles. “Tell her to give me a ring. This storm brings back all the details.”

  “That’s not going to happen.” Austin spears a meatball. “You tell me, and I’ll pass it on. How bad was it here?”

  “Bad enough. You got to remember Edna came just a week after Carol, so double whammy. Rivers flooded, trapping folks on top of their houses watching their cars washed downstream. Trees down and power out. That storm killed twenty-nine people, eight of them right here in Maine. Afterwards they retired the name Edna. They do that for the brutal storms, in respect for the lives lost.”

  “Where were you?”

  Pops glances towards the kitchen. The water is running, so Gran must be washing dishes. She doesn’t hear so well these days, but he lowers his voice anyway. “That’s part of why your grandmother hates your little island. I was out there during the storm. Wasn’t supposed to be, and I could’ve died. I spent two days in a quarry cave.”

  “Why?”

  “A dare. My family was frantic.”

  “And Gran?”

  “She thought I was dead.” Pops smiles. “We were sweethearts.”

  Austin is silent for a few moments. “Gabe used to talk about the cave. Where is it, exactly?”

  “There are a series of them along the north and west quarry walls, but they’re pretty shallow and small. The secret one, where I hid, is at the south end of the east rim.”

  “Where, exactly? How do I find it? Come on. I’m not a little kid anymore.”

  He whispers. “It’s well hidden. But you know where the lovers’ initials are, right? The ones you and Gabe found?”

  She nods.

  “That’s the cave, right there. The entrance is narrow, with a sharp turn so it looks blind.” He shakes his head. “I’d feel better if you didn’t mention this to your Gran.”

  “What’s her beef with the place?”

  “It’s her story and it’s complicated, all mixed up with her family and the quarry company out there.”

  “But that was a hundred years ago.”

  “People may forget some kinds of history, but not family pain. Betrayal and shame don’t go away. What happened to her family on Hurricane Island shaped your grandmother. I hope she’ll tell you about it someday, or maybe you’ll figure it out on your own, but I can’t say any more.” His voice changes back to normal. “How was work?”

  “My turn to be stubborn.” Austin stands and picks up her dishes. “You know I can’t talk about that.”

  But really, she wishes she could tell him all of it. About the awful cold and stripping prisoners naked. About how she felt when Tobias interrogated Gandalf—and hit her—like the bones in her own arms and legs were melting into mush. Lots of men on the islands smack their wives around. They wouldn’t think twice about Tobias’s actions. But Pops made it clear what he thinks about men hitting women after Austin loaded her duffle bags into the Greyhound bus and came home in the middle of spring semester, her bruises murmuring the shame of her boyfriend’s idea of foreplay.

  Pops speaks softly, doesn’t take his eyes off the television screen. “You don’t have to keep the job if you hate it so much.”

  “Did I say I hate it?”

  “Don’t have to. Anyway, what’s so important to save money for? You still want to go to Texas? I guess the good news is after this job experience you can always join the Texas Rangers.”

  Austin can’t help smiling at him. “Do they still exist?”

  “Sure. Chuck Norris didn’t die.” Pops flutters his hand in her direction. “Go to sleep. You’re interrupting the hurricane coverage.”

  22. RAY, 9:02 P.M.

  “Okay, Pops. I’ll leave you to your storm.” Austin leans down to kiss the bald spot on the top of his head. “Goodnight.”

  “Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

  It’s an automatic response, but every time Ray says those words he remembers the morning Austin came to live with Nettie and him. Their daughter Abby marched into their kitchen with four-year-old Austin draped over her shoulder. She dropped the duffle bag on the floor with a dull thud and slid her sleeping child onto a chair. Arranging the girl’s limp arms on the table and easing her head down on her grungy stuffed giraffe, Abby tossed her keys onto the Formica.

  “I’m leaving. Taking the noon ferry,” she said. “My apartment is paid up until next week. Throw out whatever crap you don’t want.”

  Ray had a hard time finding his voice. “What do you mean? Where are you going?”

  “Probably Boston. When I find a place to live and a job, I’ll come back for her.”

  Nettie shook her head. “You can’t just leave. You have responsibilities.”

  “If I stay one more hour, I’ll die.” Abby smoothed the snarls in Austin’s dark hair and walked out of the house.

  Ray had often wondered if they should have stopped her. Simply refused. Would she have dragged the child with her, into whatever foolish life she was looking for and would that have been better? But they didn’t argue. Instead, they took the Bob Marley posters off the walls and made Abby’s old room into a bedroom for Austin. Every morning Nettie took the girl to school with her. Ev
ery evening Austin sat at the Formica table and did puzzles or colored pictures or homework while Nettie cleaned up after supper and packed everyone’s lunches for the next day. Every night, after two stories and a glass of water, Ray tucked her in with her giraffe and kissed her forehead and recited, “Goodnight. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

  For years after Abby left, he and Nettie asked themselves what they did wrong. How could they have raised a daughter who could abandon her child like that? Abby had always pushed the limits, broken every family rule, but Ray tried not to dwell on how strict Nettie had been in response. Sometimes when she tried to teach their daughter the importance of honesty and telling the truth, she could be, well, harsh.

  There was one time, Abby must have been five or six, when she took a dollar from Nettie’s purse to buy candy, and Nettie caught her with the half-eaten evidence. Abby lied about taking the money—what kid wouldn’t—and that infuriated Nettie more. “If you can’t follow the family’s rules, you can’t be part of the family,” Nettie said. She locked the child in the hall closet, banished there with the winter jackets and rubber boots, broken skates and single mittens. Ray didn’t know how long Nettie would have continued the punishment, but after fifteen minutes he couldn’t stand listening to Abby’s choking sobs and opened the door.

  Was that bad parenting, what Nettie did? What he did? He didn’t know. They loved their daughter and never spanked her, but still. He wondered if Abby remembered that day and the closet as clearly as he did.

  He also remembered the way his wife’s tears seeped into Abby’s hair as she read Margaret’s letters, shards of pain that caught the lamplight. What was Nettie thinking that night? He wondered if she learned something important from the letters. When Abby left Austin with them, Nettie was a much gentler mother the second time around. Hopefully they did a better job.

  But maybe not. Because here’s their girl, looking spooked out of her skin with this new job and yearning to go off on some futile search for her no-good father.

  “Why so serious?” Nettie sits on the sofa and picks up the canvas bag she once carried to and from school, now stuffed with promotional leaflets for the Three Sisters Land Trust. “You worried about that storm?”

  He shifts over and burrows his face into her neck, where the faint aroma of rosemary lingers. Nettie never wears perfume. “My scent is Eau de Garden Herbs,” she chided him the year he bought cologne for her birthday.

  She takes his face in both hands. “Tell me.”

  He shakes his head free. He can’t explain his premonition, but something is very wrong. The rumors don’t help. All that gossip about something nasty happening on Hurricane Island, something involving Homeland Security and the military. His Austin doesn’t belong mixed up in that crap. And Austin’s curiosity about the initials and the bad old days, that doesn’t help his worries.

  It’s probably nothing. Or maybe he’s simply responding to the atmospheric changes ahead of the storm. All animals feel the danger by instinct.

  Even as a fourteen-year-old, he knew that Edna was deadly. And yup, it had been crazy to take the dare and doubly crazy to row over to the island, with the hurricane almost upon him. He will never forget those two days, huddling in the cave with the howling of the storm outside, knowing that Nettie would kill him if the storm didn’t. Because even back then, long before cell phones and texting and Facebook, there was no such thing on the island as private business. Everyone knew he’d taken the dare and gone to Hurricane. Nettie was there when his cousin dared him. “You’d better not go,” she warned Ray. “Please don’t go.” But he did it anyway.

  He pats Nettie’s hand. “Nothing to tell. It’s just when she gets home from that job every night, she looks half empty. It scares me.”

  Nettie leans her head on his shoulder. They listen together to the surges of rain and wind ramming against the window.

  “I know,” she says. “Me too.”

  23. HENRY, 11:14 P.M.

  He is locked in his home office with the computer off, the green-shaded desk lamp the only illumination. Cat’s footsteps upstairs are almost obliterated by the wind-blasted surges of rainstorm outside. He stares at Dr. Cohen’s cell phone in the center of his desk blotter. An ordinary device that is absolutely where it shouldn’t be, making it extraordinary, and dangerous. He has never before broken the chain of evidence, never willfully broken Bureau rules and protocols. And the action he is contemplating could be considered a possibly worse violation: abuse of power.

  He wishes he understood more clearly why he is jeopardizing his career for a math professor. The only explanation he can come up with is that something smells wrong, and he joined the Bureau to do the right thing. He can’t imagine proceeding with the interrogation of Dr. Cohen. Tomorrow he’ll have Tobias take over and he’ll monitor the man closely. A compromise, he reassures himself; that’s what being an adult is all about.

  Compromise and compassion, which is not a concept he has ever thought much about. But maybe that’s what it is, the thing that’s eating him up: knowing that his prisoner’s friend, or partner, or whatever they call her, is waiting in fear.

  He reaches for Dr. Cohen’s phone, turns it on, and presses the photo icon labeled Jess.

  A female voice answers on the second ring. “Gee?”

  “No,” he says.

  “Who’s there? Is Gandalf there?”

  This is crazy. What can he possibly say to her?

  “Is Gandalf alright? Who are you?”

  He can’t speak. How can he reassure her, without getting himself deeper in trouble? What was he thinking?

  “Please. Whoever you are. Can you at least tell me if she’s alive or dead?”

  Panic flails in his chest. Panic and pain. He has to hang up. Someone might trace the call back to him. But still, he owes this woman something, doesn’t he? He clears his throat.

  “She’s alive.” The words come out as a croak.

  Immediately, he disconnects and powers down the phone, slipping it into his jacket pocket. He collapses forward onto his desk blotter, letting his head fall into the cradle of his folded arms. Compassion or not, that was a stupid, stupid thing to do. His brain is unraveling. He’s letting his emotions hijack his judgment, just like Tobias says. His thoughts spiral wildly, careening from Dr. Cohen’s blue-tinged skin to the frantic voice of her friend on the phone, from the unsatisfactory interrogation to the approaching hurricane. Not to mention his worries about Tobias.

  Things are falling apart, his dreams eroding under his feet. All he ever wanted to do was keep the world safe and prove to his father that he can make a difference working for the Bureau. Instead, he’s losing control of his staff. His leadership is weakening. He can tell by the way people look at him. Not only Tobias, the other guys too. Do other men feel this way? Useless and empty? Do they ever worry about the ethics of it all?

  To be fair, it’s not entirely his fault. It’s a complicated constellation of events and reactions. The place itself doesn’t help, so isolated and dilapidated, with its history of conflict and betrayal and violence. He warned the Bureau bigwigs about Hurricane Island, but they never listen.

  He stands up and stretches. His muscles feel stiff and old. He knows he should exercise more, maybe lug that stationary bike up from the basement. Not that his being in shape would have any effect on the Bureau or on his job. Because bottom line, after all the excuses are said and done, he is in charge and he will be defined by the failure.

  He walks towards the window, listens to the onslaught of rain, turns back again. It really isn’t fair. He gets no logistical support from the Regional Chief. His only experienced field agent is Tobias, who is getting more and more out of hand. The guy almost killed the math professor today and who knows what he’ll do tomorrow in search of information the woman almost certainly doesn’t have. In the morning, he’ll talk to Tobias, take him off the Cohen case entirely. Yes, that makes sense. Maybe he was wrong earlier. Maybe he will finish the
interrogation himself and do it right.

  He paces faster. Twenty years and he understands Tobias less and less. They worked well together and moved together up the ladder, always first and second in command, until Tobias started requesting advanced counterterrorist training. He even did three months at Bagram with the CIA during the short window when the military intelligence agencies shared information and technical know-how. It will be difficult to reprimand the guy, but it has to be done. That’s what leadership is all about, isn’t it? Doing the difficult tasks. Taking responsibility.

  The red message light on the computer starts blinking on and off, on and off. Probably the Regional Chief again, demanding results from the interrogation. The familiar ache starts up in his chest, the pesky rodent burrowing in there, gnawing on the inside of his breastbone and trying to chew its way free. No way can he take the Chief’s arrogance tonight, or his contempt. He turns his back on the computer, locks the office behind him, and feels his way upstairs in the dark. He’ll deal with the message in the morning. Maybe he’ll be lucky; maybe the storm will cut off the power, and he’ll have a few days’ respite.

  Tonight, right now, he needs to cast off this catastrophe of a day, to shed his work skin and forget he made that inexplicable telephone call. He slips into bed next to Catherine, kisses the flannel sleep mask across her eyes. He moves his pillow closer and tries matching his respirations to her soft snoring.

  It doesn’t work. He isn’t sleepy. His arms and legs feel squirrelly and charged. He thinks about the tabs of chewable Benadryl in the bedside table, but he can’t afford to be dopey at work in the morning.

  He touches Cat’s shoulder. Maybe he can wake her up with the feather light touches she calls fern-kisses and just maybe, she will be in the mood. Or he can go to his other love, to his beautiful things. Why can’t he have both? For months he’s been aching to share his true self with his wife.