Riptide

Chapter 9

Doris Bowditch, licensed Realtor, strode briskly up the front steps of 5 Ocean Lane. The old boards of the porch groaned beneath the unaccustomed weight. As she bent forward to try the front door key, a vast assortment of silver bracelets cascaded down her forearm with a jingling that reminded Hatch of sleigh bells. There was a brief struggle with the key, then she turned the knob and threw the front door open with a little flourish.

Hatch waited until she had stepped through the door, muumuu billowing out behind, then followed her into the cool, dark interior of the house. It hit him immediately, like a blow to the gut: the same smell of old pinewood, mothballs, and pipesmoke. Though he hadn't inhaled that scent for twenty-five years, it was all he could do not to step back into the sunlight as the intense scent of childhood threatened to bypass all his defenses.

"Well!" came Doris's bright voice as she shut the door behind them. "It's a beautiful old thing, isn't it? I've always said, what a shame it was shut up for so long!" The woman swept into the center of the room in a swirl of pink. "What do you think?"

"Fine," said Hatch, taking a tentative step forward. The front parlor was just as he remembered it, the day his mother had finally given up and they'd left for Boston: the chintz easy chairs, the old canvas sofa, the print of the HMS Leander over the mantelpiece, the Herkeimer upright piano with the circular stool and braided rug.

"The pump's been primed," Doris continued, oblivious. "The windows washed, electricity turned on, propane tank filled." She ticked off the items on long red fingernails.

"It looks very nice," Hatch said distractedly. He moved to the old piano and ran his hand along the fallboard, remembering the wintry afternoons he had spent struggling over some Bach two-part invention. On the shelf beside the fireplace was an old Parcheesi set. Next to it lay a Monopoly board, its cover lost long ago, the pink and yellow and green rectangles of play money worn and creased from countless contests. On the shelf above lay several grimy packs of cards, held together by rubber bands. Hatch felt a fresh stab as he remembered playing poker with Johnny, using wooden matches as chips, and the vigorous arguments about which was higher, a full house or a straight. Everything was here, every painful reminder still in place; it was like a museum of memory.

They had taken nothing but their clothes when they left. They were only supposed to stay away a month, at first. Then the month turned into a season, then a year, and soon the old house receded to a distant dream: shut up, unseen, unmentioned, but waiting nevertheless. Hatch wondered again why his mother had never sold the place, even after they'd fallen on hard times in Boston. And he wondered at his own, deeply buried, reasons for a similar reluctance, long after his mother's death.

He passed into the living room and stepped up to the bow window, letting his gaze fall on the infinite blue of the ocean, sparkling in the morning sun. Somewhere out on the horizon lay Ragged Island, at rest now after claiming its first casualty in a quarter century. In the wake of the accident, Neidelman had called a one-day halt to the operation. Hatch's eyes dropped from the sea to the meadow in the foreground, a green mantle that fell away from the house toward the shoreline. He reminded himself that he didn't have to do this. There were other places to stay that didn't come with the added burden of memory. But those places wouldn't be in Stormhaven; driving to the house that morning, he'd seen perhaps a dozen Thalassa employees clustered outside of the town's sole bed-and-breakfast, all eager to book the five available rooms. He sighed. As long as he was here, he had to do it all.

Dust motes drifted in the banners of morning sunlight. As he stood before the window, Hatch could feel time dissolving. He remembered camping out in that meadow with Johnny, their sleeping bags sprawled across the damp and fragrant grass, counting shooting stars in the dark.

"Did you get my letter last year?" the voice of Doris intruded. "I was afraid it had gone astray."

Hatch turned away from the window, tried to make sense of what the woman was saying, then gave up and moved back in time again. There in the corner was a half-finished needlepoint seatcover, faded to pastel. There was the shelf of his father's books—Richard Henry Dana, Melville, Slocum, Conrad, Sand-berg's life of Lincoln—and two shelves of his mother's English mysteries. Below were a stack of tattered Life magazines and a yellow row of National Geographics. He drifted into the dining room, the Realtor rustling along in his wake.

"Dr. Hatch, you know how expensive it is to keep up an old house like this. I've always said, this is just too much house for one person . . ." She let the thought die away into a bright smile.

Hatch walked slowly round the room, his hand trailing on the drop-leaf table, his eyes roaming the Audubon chromolithographs on the walls. He passed into the kitchen. There was the old Frigidaire, trimmed in thick round pieces of chrome. A piece of paper, curled and faded, was still stuck to it with a magnet. Hey Mom! Strawberries please! it read in his own teenage hand. He lingered in the breakfast nook, the scarred table and benches bringing back memories of food fights and spilled milk; memories of his father, straight-backed and dignified in the midst of friendly chaos, telling sea stories in his slow voice while his dinner went cold. And then later, just he and his mother at the table, his mother's head bent with grief, the morning sun in her gray hair, tears dropping into her teacup.

"Anyway," came the voice, "what I wrote you about was this young couple from Manchester, with two children. A lovely couple. They've been renting the Figgins place for the last few summers, and are looking to buy."

"Of course they are," Hatch murmured vaguely. The breakfast nook looked out over the back meadow, where the apple trees had grown wild and heavy. He remembered the summer mornings when the mist lay on the fields and the deer came up from the woods before sunrise to eat apples, stepping through the timothy with nervous precision.

"I believe they'd pay upwards of two hundred fifty. Shall I give them a call? No obligation, of course—"

With great effort, Hatch turned toward her. "What?"

"I was wondering if you had any intention of selling, that's all."

Hatch blinked at her. "Selling?" he asked slowly. "The house?"

The smile remained on Doris Bowditch's face, undented. "I just thought that, you being a bachelor and all... it seemed, you know, impractical." She faltered a bit, but stood her ground.

Hatch repressed his first impulse. One had to be careful in a small town like Stormhaven. "I don't think so," he said, keeping his voice neutral. He moved back into the living room, toward the front door, the woman following.

"I'm not talking about right away, of course," she called brightly. "If you find the—the treasure, you know . . . Well, it couldn't possibly take that long, could it? Especially with all that help you have." Her expression clouded for a moment. "But oh, wasn't it awful! Two men being killed yesterday, and all."

Hatch looked at her very slowly. "Two men? Two men weren't killed, Doris. Not even one. There was an accident. Where did you hear this?"

Doris looked slightly bewildered. "Why, I heard it from Hilda McCall. She runs the beauty parlor, Hilda's Hairstyling. Anyway, once you get all that money you're not going to want to stay here, so you might as well—"

Stepping forward, Hatch opened the front door for her.

"Thank you, Doris," he said, trying to muster a smile. "The house is in wonderful shape."

The woman stopped well short of the frame. She hesitated. "About this young couple. The husband's a very successful lawyer. Two children, you know, a boy and a—"

"Thank you," said Hatch, a little more firmly.

"Well, you're welcome, of course! You know, I don't think two hundred fifty thousand would be unreasonable for a summer—"

Hatch stepped out on the porch, far enough so that she would have to follow if she wanted to be heard. "Real estate prices are up right now, Dr. Hatch," she said as she appeared in the doorway. "But like I've always said, you never know when they'll drop. Eight years ago—"

"Doris, you're a love, and I'll recommend you to all my many doctor friends who want to move to Stormhaven. Thanks again. I'll be expecting your bill." Hatch quickly stepped back inside and shut the door quietly but firmly.

He waited in the parlor, wondering if the woman would have the audacity to ring the bell. But she only stood irresolutely on the porch for a long moment before returning to her car, the muumuu floating behind her, the irrepressible smile still plastered across her face. A six percent commission on two hundred and fifty thousand, Hatch thought, was quite a lot of money in Stormhaven. He vaguely remembered hearing that her husband was a drinker who'd lost his boat to the bank. She cant possibly know how I feel, he thought, managing to find some compassion in his heart for Doris Bowditch, Realtor.

He settled on the little stool in front of the piano and softly struck the first chord of Chopin's E-minor prelude. He was surprised and pleased to find the piano had been tuned. Doris had at least followed his instructions carefully: Clean the house, get everything ready, but don't touch or move anything. He played the prelude dreamily, pianissimo, trying to empty his mind. It was hard to comprehend that he had not touched these keys, sat on this stool, or even walked across these floorboards for twenty-five years. Everywhere he looked, the house eagerly offered up memories of a happy childhood. After all, it had been happy. It was only the end that was unendurable. If only . . .

He stepped down hard on this chill, persistent voice.

Two men dead, Doris had said. That was pretty imaginative, even for a small-town rumor mill. So far, the town seemed to be accepting the visitors with a kind of hospitable curiosity. Certainly it would be good for the merchants. But Hatch could see that someone would have to step in as community spokesman for Thalassa. Otherwise, there was no telling what bizarre stories might spring from Bud's Superette or Hilda's Hairstyling. With a sinking feeling, he realized that there was really only one person for the job.

He sat at the piano for another long minute. With any luck, old Bill Banns would still be editor in chief of the local paper. Sighing heavily, he stood up and headed for the kitchen, where a can of instant coffee and—if Doris hadn't forgotten—a live telephone were waiting.