The House at Island's End Ch. 10

MARY. November 24 -- six months and twenty-three days.

Mary's breath steamed from her mouth in rhythm with the quick, steady strides she took across the frozen ground of the path that connected her house to the esplanade, before it reached that wooden pergola. As much as it helped to clear her mind, she had to admit that running in the early hours of the morning was turning into an extreme sport. Accustomed to dodging cars stopped at city traffic lights on her way to the park near her home, she wasn't prepared to navigate those island trails so slick underfoot. The snow fell in small, light flurries over the icy ground, but it would still be weeks before it settled on top of an older layer of snow. In the meantime, Nela still showed its green through the pines and, though the ferns had already taken on that deep black, the red berries and a few yellow flowers she didn't recognize rounded out the bunches of holly and rose hips on the island's higher ground.

Sweating from the climb up to the meadow, now far grayer than just a week earlier, Mary tightened her hair tie so her blond ponytail would stay snug and not bother her with every step. Then, after catching her breath, she began the descent, careful not to step on the patches of ice and always keeping to the middle of the trail so as not to put a foot in the puddles that were forming closer and closer to its edges.

Half an hour later, Mary Allen picked up her pace just before she made out, through the pine forest, the first glints of sun on the solar panels mounted on the black slate roofs of the big main house. Her fists white from the effort, she crossed the broad road that branched off toward the dock and took the wooden steps two at a time up to the porch. Once at the top, she stopped the timer on her smartwatch and rested her hands on her knees, thinking about how much she'd miss that hour-long run through completely deserted places once they left the island. That was, of course, if they didn't end up buying that house in Napa Valley she'd shown Liam a few days earlier, surrounded by vineyards, with the California sun warming every corner and room to throw all those parties she'd never been able to host in the city.

Getting her breath back as she felt the sweat on her neck begin to cool too much, Mary walked to the front door of the house looking for the towel Gertrud always left hanging for her near the entrance. The moment she stepped inside, she ran into Roberto, the groundskeeper, coming from the kitchen hallway with the tablecloths for breakfast.

"Good morning, Mrs. Allen."

"Good morning, Roberto. And Mr. Allen?"

"I imagine he's still in his cabin, Mrs. Allen. Want me to send Tom to wake him? The communal breakfast is set for half an hour from now."

Mary waved her hands dismissively. The truth was, she couldn't care less.

"Don't worry about it. If he's not here in ten minutes, send him one of those buzzes over the walkie-talkie. You'll see him come running, scared half to death."

Roberto nodded, taking that for a joke, and went back to what he was doing. Mary dried her neck with the towel before sticking her head into Richard's room. There he sat in his wheelchair, calmly looking out through the three-panel window that took up almost the whole wall. A week earlier they'd taken away that cumbersome harness on the bed to leave him with a lighter one and, little by little, amid shouts of pain, he was managing his first steps, always leaning on a pair of metal crutches while Erica, the Italian servant, tried to keep him upright.

Speaking of Erica, the Italian girl came hurrying from the other end of the hallway. She lowered her eyes when she passed Mary and continued with her short steps into the room, toward the wheelchair.

"Signor Richard, I am here now, forgive me. You want we begin the walk now, or you prefer the shower?"

Richard smiled kindly. There was a certain affinity between them, Mary thought from the doorway. Not for nothing had Erica -- not his wife, Natalia, as it should be in any Christian family -- become his main support for much of the day.

"How are your parents?" Richard asked, pushing the wheels of the chair so he was now facing the door. When he spotted that Mary was there too, he raised a hand to greet her.

"Mary."

"Richard, you look good today. How was your night?" she asked.

Off to one side, Erica had taken advantage of the small exchange to smooth the sheet on the bed with considerable skill.

"Better, thanks, Mary. As long as the weather doesn't turn, anyway. These storms are going to be the death of me. If they don't fix this by the time we leave, I'll ask Nata to move us somewhere tropical. I'd kill to take a stroll along the waterfront of any island in the Pacific with a daiquiri in my hand."

Mary studied the big window for a while, as if she could make out that waterfront in the distance.

"The forecast says we're in for a pretty calm week. Until December. But by then, God knows you'll be doing much better."

Erica finished fluffing Richard's pillow with two very abrupt blows and, grabbing the crutches leaning against the wall, went to his side.

"Your parents?" Richard asked Erica again as the girl bent over the chair to release the lock that let the platform where he rested his feet swivel.

"You remember? I tell you they buy a secondhand pickup?"

"Yes," Richard replied, making a small grimace of pain when she urged him to put his right foot on the floor.

"Well, yesterday my brother drove over my mother with it on the way to make the shopping, and to not hit a cow, they go off the road."

Richard sat motionless, trying to make sense of that sentence. Mary, in the doorway, furrowed her brow deeply.

"My God, you mean he ran her over?" Richard asked, leaning on the servant's arm. "And is she okay?"

Erica, bent a little to help him better, just stared at him as if she didn't understand.

"What you say, Signor Webb?"

"Your mother. I'm asking if she's okay."

"Yes, they just go off the road."

"But your brother... Running someone over with a car is very dangerous," Richard said, now with a crutch tucked under his right arm.

Erica then let out a small laugh that threw both Richard and Mary off. Then Mary understood what was going on and stepped into the room to help Richard with his other arm while Erica tried to keep his pajama pants from leaving his backside hanging out.

"It's 'drove my mother over,' not 'drove over my mother,' Erica. You're going to have to improve your English if you want to work as a nurse, because you could scare somebody to death."

Erica nodded, much more serious now, but Richard brushed her arm.

"Don't listen to her, your English is perfect. But be careful with phrasal verbs, all right?"

Erica smiled at him for a second before giving him a small, affectionate pat on his good leg.

"Come on. On the count of three?" she asked.

"One, two, and three," Richard and Erica said at the same time.

Richard wobbled uncertainly forward and then back. But with the help of the crutches and, above all, by shifting a good deal of his weight onto Mary, he managed to keep his balance. He had taken another step.

"Don't go sniffing me, I just got back from running," Mary warned, pulling her neck away from Richard's nose.

"Mary, believe me, your smell is the least of my problems right now."

"Signor Webb, today we try to reach the end of the hallway? No hurry, but yesterday we turn the first corner, so maybe you want to keep going."

Richard nodded. Immediately, Mary felt him stop leaning on her so much and strain to take a step forward with the help of the crutch. The grimace of pain on his face made it clear that there was still a long way to go before Richard could manage on his own; still, it was very encouraging that the milestones the doctor had set were starting to be met.

Feeling freer of Richard's weight, Mary helped him lower his shoulder so he could grip the crutch better.

"Are you sure you can do it on your own?"

"Erica can handle me, thanks, Mary. See you at breakfast?" Richard asked.

"Of course," Mary replied, already a few steps away from them.

"Have you seen Natalia this morning?" Richard asked as he struggled to move one crutch ahead of the other.

Mary shook her head.

"No, not yet. It's early. Want me to tell her anything?"

"No. Maybe I can surprise her if I walk all the way to the table. Better not say anything."

"We continue?" Erica asked.

Mary stepped to one side, put the towel around her neck, and took the other hallway, the one that led to the bathroom, to shower and get ready while she waited for the communal breakfast to be ready in the main living room. In the bathroom, she turned on the hot water in the shower to let it warm up and, when she closed the small window, she leaned forward and peered out with interest. The guest room faced southwest, from where you could make out the start of the dock ramp and, a little farther back -- about twenty yards away -- the building next to the tool shed that Mike's crews usually used as a storeroom. As far as she could remember, that little building had always stayed completely shut. So, what the hell was Natalia doing coming out its door? The building had two entrances: the main one, the most exposed to the path, and that other one Natalia had come out of, deeper in shadow.

With the faucet running hot water at a temperature that had already turned it to steam, Mary stretched her neck as far as she could to the right to watch the back area of the dock from a wider angle. Natalia was wearing that same old yellow puffer, but she seemed not to have zipped it up properly and, what's more, she gave the impression of having thrown it on in a hurry. Under the puffer she had on an ivory-white turtleneck sweater. The tight black thermal leggings, the running shoes, and that strained look on her face might make you think she'd just come back from her morning walk. Oblivious to Mary's scrutiny and sure she wasn't being watched, Natalia lit a cigarette, leaned her back against the wall of the shed, and blew the smoke out into the morning breeze. Though from there Mary couldn't make out all the details, she would have sworn that some dirt had stuck to Natalia's knees.

The steam from the water began to flood the bathroom like a geyser, forcing Mary to wipe the glass with her hand to defog it. When she finished, Natalia was no longer there. However, out of that same shed now came Matteo, the New York cook who had replaced Henrik a couple of weeks earlier. Wrapped in the steam, Mary furrowed her brow even more. Could it be true? she wondered, a little scandalized. And she had the urge to cross herself. With her own husband just a few yards away and bedridden... she thought, believing it was all a misunderstanding, or wishing it were. It was obvious that her husband's accident was affecting that girl's behavior, more dolled up every day, more makeup, with that white hair longer than it should be and that bolder pose toward anyone who came near her. But from there to cheating on her husband with the cook was a very long way to go, and if there was one thing she knew, it was that people didn't change that fast. However much Natalia might be exploring other ways of being, deep down she was still that know-it-all, distant, somewhat haughty girl she'd always been. Because there were things that could never change. God brought each of us into the world in one very particular way, and then we would turn to dust; that's what she used to say to herself.

Half an hour later, the communal breakfast was marked almost exclusively by Richard's first big steps. Even so, Mary kept turning over Natalia's possible infidelity. Her behavior during breakfast had been too cold and a bit distant, despite the great news that her husband had crossed the threshold of the hallway for the first time in months -- news that, in theory, should have meant something to her. There were still several more weeks of convalescence and rehabilitation to go, but witnessing Richard manage one step after another gave most of them back some of that optimism that had been fading over the last few weeks, surrounded by storms.

While Natalia spread a Maison Dutriez currant preserve on a slice of toast -- brought expressly for her from abroad and surely worth hundreds of dollars -- Mary set about watching her closely, always looking away whenever she turned. To her right, Richard was eating a bowl of cereal with milk, Ioanna beside him, very quiet and staring off into space. Liam, on the left, was stuffing himself with glazed donuts fresh out of the kitchen. Trying to go unnoticed, Mary grabbed the platter of turkey slices from the middle of the table and helped herself to a couple. She didn't have much appetite, but the gesture gave her an excuse to turn her head even more and study Natalia's neck, hidden behind the ivory sweater. Were those reddish marks, almost violet, the indecorous evidence she was looking for? Natalia must have realized she was being watched, because she immediately rearranged the collar of her sweater as if it were a natural gesture, and the marks were hidden again. Shortly after, Matteo, the cook, arrived with the tray of fried eggs that Ioanna and Richard usually ordered. Mary took the chance to keep an eye on the two of them. Matteo was a guy roughly Mary's age, with plenty of wrinkles on his forehead from years in front of the stove and a rather strange charisma: sometimes very dry and other times very open. According to what he'd confided in Mary one of those nights when he was teaching Natalia and her to cook mushroom sauce, he had come to the country when he was quite young, so he didn't have the slightest Italian accent. Quiet when he had to be, but very loud if you walked through the kitchen at peak hours, Mary found him, on the whole, much more likable than his predecessor, Henrik, that Dane in his fifties, more sedate than the white tablecloth they usually ate breakfast on.

Matteo waited for Erica and Tom to clear away some empty plates to make room and, with a smile, set the tray of fried eggs down in the center.

"Can I get you anything else?" he asked.

"No, thanks, Matteo. You can go," Natalia ordered without lifting her eyes from her plate, using that same cutting tone she'd adopted with the staff.

"As you wish," Matteo replied, bowing his head obligingly before heading back to the kitchen.

Mary was sure she had picked up on something between those two. She couldn't have put it into words; maybe it was the way Matteo had glanced at her out of the corner of his eye when he set the plate on the table, or that tense moment between Natalia's order and his reply. Or maybe she was imagining the whole thing. Christ on the cross, Mary, she told herself, Natalia would never do that to her husband. In all their years she'd never seen a couple more united than those two, especially after the setbacks they'd both had to face.

"So, Richard, are you going out for a run tomorrow?" Liam asked, trying to make a joke.

"I think I'd rather go water-skiing, Liam," Richard replied, displaying the good mood that crossing the hallway had left him in.

"Ha, that was a good one," Liam replied, raising a glass of pineapple juice. "I'm glad you've finally been able to get out of that room. What do you say to that, huh, Nata? Your husband will be good as new in a few weeks."

Natalia nodded, flashing a token smile as she pulled the fork from her mouth after cutting a piece of white cheese. Her hair was still the color of snow, curly now and with a few darker streaks that Luna had dyed a few days earlier. As she'd been doing for a few months, Natalia had done her makeup with care, above all around her eyes. The black ringing her pale pupils made them look like completely frozen islands, besieged by the darkest storm.

"He has to take it slow," she said, to no one in particular. "The doctor said no rushing. Little by little."

Richard shook his head to confirm it and, stretching his arm over the tablecloth, reached over to take Natalia's hand. She pulled hers back at once to reach for the jar of preserve again.

"Erica, can you bring more juice?" she then asked the Italian girl.

"Please," Richard added, a little annoyed by Natalia's manners.

"Please," Natalia repeated half-heartedly.

Liam finished breakfast quickly and was the first to stand up. Ioanna, beside him, watched him for a moment before getting up too. Since Liam had saved her from that man on the stairs, Ioanna and he had buried the hatchet and, though by no means would they keep anything like a conventional father-daughter relationship, there were small gestures between them that betrayed an intention to get through the months that remained with some peace and normalcy.

"Hell, I think we've got internet again," Liam said suddenly, waving his phone with a slightly theatrical flourish. "Ladies, if you want to buy something or catch up on the news, now's the time."

"Will Netflix work?" Ioanna asked.

"No," Richard replied. "I tried it this morning when I woke up. The connection's very slow."

"Shit," Ioanna complained. "And what if the ferry doesn't come this week? I'm tired of watching the same thing over and over."

"Look on the bright side, my dear," Mary commented, breaking off some sesame bread onto a plate so she wouldn't crumb the tablecloth. "The number of shows and movies you'll be able to watch when you get out of here will last you an eternity."

Her daughter pressed her lips together without answering. All the resentment she no longer showed toward her father, she took out on her. But it didn't matter, Mary told herself, self-sacrificing. If it made Ioanna more comfortable on the island, she could hate her all she wanted.

After the communal breakfast, Mary joined Richard and Erica for their short tour of the house -- no more than fifteen feet before he decided to stop because of the pain -- and then she sat down in one of the armchairs in the living room to read, for the umpteenth time, one of those patchwork magazines the last ferry had brought her. A few minutes later, Richard passed in front of her while Erica pushed the wheelchair, and Mary moved her feet so he could get by. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Erica wheel him over to the back door and, after opening it, guide him carefully out onto the porch. Mary leaned forward in the armchair, looking for Natalia, who was out there smoking a cigarette by herself. Still holding the magazine, she stood as if she were looking for her glasses and sat down again in another armchair, closer to the half-open window Roberto usually left that way to air out the living room after breakfast. Stationed there, Mary pricked up her ears, trying to hear the couple's conversation.

"I just can't understand it, Nata, really," Richard was saying, not moving much in the wheelchair. "It seems unbelievable to me."

Natalia, a few yards from him, had leaned on the railing to take in the calm sea.

"Goddammit, Richard, I explained it to you the other day. It's temporary. It calms my nerves. When we get off the island, I'll quit. I don't see what the big problem is."

"The big problem is that you know perfectly well how bad it is. Your mother died because of that shit. It's ridiculous that you're doing it now. Not to mention the disgusting smell you leave everywhere. Just so you know, when I'm near you, you reek, Nata."

Natalia blew out the smoke, visibly annoyed.

"Then don't come near me, for fuck's sake. The last thing I need right now is a lecture, Richard. Leave me alone, all right? You're not the only one locked up in here."

Richard moved his hands in the air.

"Are you seriously comparing yourself to me? Fuck, Natalia, let me remind you that I'm the one lying here in this fucking chair waiting for a year to pass so I can have a bunch of surgeries that might not even do any good."

"That's not my fault," Natalia replied, dead serious. "Don't blame me for putting you to work at something so dangerous when all you had to do was sit still and wait for the year to be over. You could have done what Liam and Mary did, for fuck's sake. Have you ever seen them doing anything remotely risky? Christ, you could have played golf, taken a cooking class, I don't know, planted a damn vegetable garden. But no, you had to become a construction apprentice with people who've spent their whole fucking lives doing what they do."

Richard tried to push the wheels of the chair to face his wife, but for some reason he couldn't get the right wheel to turn. Natalia didn't help him.

"I haven't blamed you for anything, Natalia," Richard said, giving up a moment later. "I'm fully aware that if we'd gone to the mainland that night, nothing would have changed."

"Then why does it feel like I'm the bad guy?" Natalia murmured before taking another deep drag on the cigarette.

"What the hell are you talking about, Nata? Do you see how you're behaving? It's not normal. What's happened these past months to make you...? Fuck, Nata, I don't recognize you. This isn't you."

Natalia let the smoke out slowly, as if she were thinking about other things.

"I refuse to have this conversation again," she said, trying to put the matter to rest.

Richard narrowed his eyes a little against a ray of sun hitting him directly. Shielding himself with his hand, he studied his wife's face.

"And the makeup? It's ten in the morning, for God's sake, who are you getting made up for? And what's with all... all that layer of stuff you've taken to wearing? A Rolex, fuck, Nata, you've got a fucking Rolex on your wrist and sneakers that... are those big Cs Chanel? Didn't you say that what we brought from home would be enough and that we didn't need to waste money?"

Natalia clenched her jaw before answering.

"If you're going to get like this with me every morning, I swear I'd rather stay in the cabin, do you hear me? Stop preaching at me and focus on walking better, goddammit."

Mary watched as Richard shook his head, helpless. In their own way, each had a point, she thought. Natalia shouldn't have to explain her behavior to anyone, but Richard had every right in the world to ask his wife why she'd changed. As for Natalia's harsh manner, she preferred to chalk it up to the worry still hanging over the house at the possibility that the man would never again walk the way he used to for the rest of his life.

"You know what? Every day you're more like that idiot Mary," she heard Richard say then.

Natalia blew the smoke out into the morning air once more. She looked quite angry and uncomfortable. As if, of all the places in the world she'd like to be that morning, this was the one she wanted least.

"Look, Richard, drop it," she replied wearily. "Everyone handles this island however they can, all right? And what happened, you brought on yourself, so leave that poor woman alone, would you? Mary may be whatever she is, but she's trying to help you with everything, so be more grateful to her," she said, stubbing out the cigarette in the ashtray before walking back to the house.

Mary stopped snooping and pretended to read when she heard the outside door open.

"Nata, seriously, I don't know what's happening to you, but you're scaring me," Richard called from a distance, craning to follow her with his eyes because the chair was still stuck.

"See you later, Richard," Natalia replied very curtly as she closed the door from the inside. Then, when she looked up, she spotted Mary near the door.

"Mary, you're going to catch cold standing so close to the window."

"Yeah, it's quite a bit colder today," Mary murmured, reaching out to close the window. She wanted to thank her for defending her, but she didn't know what to say. "At least it's not raining," she added without much conviction.

Natalia blinked with her hands inside the yellow puffer and headed for the inner hallway. Richard was still on the porch, breathing out steam and struggling awkwardly to turn the chair. When Mary thought about going out to help him, Erica crossed the living room very fast, as if she'd noticed she'd left Richard out there, and brought him back in. For an uncomfortable instant, Richard's eyes met Mary's before Erica pushed the chair to the other end of the living room.

What had Richard meant by that "idiot" comment? God knew she'd tried to help him every day after the accident, and that since they'd arrived on the island she'd done everything possible to make living together as calm and friendly as possible. She didn't think she deserved that remark. At least Natalia had noticed. In the end, that girl was turning out to be far nobler than she'd ever thought.

After stopping by the kitchen to drink a glass of water, Mary mulled over whether the best way to spend the morning would be to get to work on the sweater she was knitting for her daughter Ioanna, or go back to the cabin to tidy the clothes drawer and get it ready for the impending winter. Do you really want to be like that woman? she thought again suddenly. Richard had no idea what she was like. How dare he judge her? More irritated now, she decided to go back to the cabin to get out of the way and lose sight of everyone. However, turning down the hallway, she came face to face with that guy from the crew, Caleb Ward, a sturdy man of forty-three, about six feet tall, with a somewhat serious but decidedly pleasant look about him that had struck her as interesting from the very first moment she saw him get off the ferry.

The collision between them was inevitable. She was walking, thinking about her own things, and he was going a little faster, meaning to tell Mike that on the next ferry they should request a thermal camera to check the heating he'd just fixed. In the collision, Mary nearly lost her balance and, if not for Caleb's arm, would have fallen face-first against the little table where a very ornate tea set rested. Mary's glass of water had emptied completely over that man's gray flannel shirt, sleeves rolled up, and he took a few seconds to feel the cold on his chest.

"Forgive me, Mrs. Allen," he said with that accent so typical of the mainland. And though he tried to wipe some of the water off the fabric with his hand, the damage was already done. Mary, for her part, recovered her composure and, suppressing the urge to snap at him about what the hell he was doing there, stood still for a second studying the rather large scar that ran vertically across that man's left arm.

"My God, you're soaked through," Mary said, pointing at the dark water stain on the shirt. "Mr. Ward, you need to go slower through the house. God knows anyone could come around any corner. Or, worse still, you could run into Richard. That would be a serious misfortune."

Caleb didn't answer, though it seemed he was about to.

"Come on, go on, you're going to catch a cold," Mary ordered, walking past him toward the patchwork room.

"Mrs. Allen, don't worry. I've got another shirt in the shed. It'll take me a second to go get it."

"It's no trouble. Besides, if you get sick, who's going to fix the heating for us next time?"

Caleb nodded out of politeness at the same time Mary ran a hand through her hairsprayed hair to tidy it a little. Despite having crossed paths with that man several times over the past month, until that moment she hadn't noticed how his gray eyes seemed to gleam when the ceiling light hit them at a certain angle. A little uncomfortable and out of place at feeling attracted to Mike's helper, she tried to look away.

"Wait here a second," Mary ordered, stepping into the room. When she came out, she showed him one of Liam's long-sleeved polos that she'd brought from the cabin a few days earlier.

"Here, be careful with the left elbow because it might tear even more."

Caleb examined the blue polo with some distrust.

"Don't make that face, Caleb, it's from when my husband had less of a belly. That's why he doesn't wear it anymore. I was going to use it for scraps, you know? But I'm sure it'll fit you better. Come on, what are you waiting for? That water came from the fridge; it's going to freeze you down to your navel."

Caleb went off to the bathroom on the other side of the hallway and closed the door. Mary stayed there, in the middle of nowhere, waiting without really knowing for what. That was when she heard Natalia's voice. Puzzled, she took a few steps over the carpet to the door of that room where Liam had been setting up his second home since he arrived on the island. Careful not to be discovered, Mary peeked through the small crack left between the frame and the door itself.

"... that way everything stays much more cohesive. And besides, clearing all this part here, five or six more cabins would fit," Natalia was explaining, pointing with a white, rather sharp fingernail at an enormous map of the island printed by joining several small sheets with clear tape. "The golf course would then be farther to the right, shifting the clubhouse in this direction. The sun sets over here in the summer, right where this opening is, and it would give at least an extra hour of light."

Beside her, Liam studied the map, nodding at each of Natalia's explanations.

"But according to this, then the carts couldn't reach the last hole."

"Unless you build a bridge over some lake around here," Natalia corrected, her back to the door and almost on tiptoe to reach the upper part of the map.

With a pang of jealousy, Mary noticed how her husband kept shifting his gaze between Natalia's hand and her rear end. Natalia, far from being annoyed, seemed even to encourage him.

"I've calculated that, doing all of it, twelve suite-type cabins and two luxury ones would fit in the southern zone."

"But those sons of bitches at the town hall will tell me the fucking island is protected," Liam commented with a look of contempt. Then he crossed his arms while he studied the plan in silence, completely caught up in his delusions of grandeur.

"There's always someone who knows how to appreciate a trade-off," Natalia said beside him, also studying the map.

"What's that?"

"The town hall," Natalia clarified. "In a few months the same laws won't apply to us, don't you think? When you own an entire island, there will be certain privileges, I mean."

Liam, his back turned and now very close to Natalia, seemed to nod several times, very slowly.

"Wow. I didn't know this side of you, Nati," he said, bringing his hand to Natalia's waist. She let him. "And I really like the idea of moving the course toward the beach. Have you really never worked designing maps? I could make you a map, if you'd let me, of course," he added, bringing his mouth close to Natalia's ear.

She smiled as if that were a compliment, letting Liam's hand slide down her tight Lycra pants until it rested on her left buttock. A second later, Natalia gave him a light, playful slap on the hand to make him take it away.

"Do you really think your husband will give it the go-ahead?" Liam asked. "The people at Wilkins & Wilkins already warned us that any modification to the island's plans has to be approved by a majority. At least that's what old Max left in writing."

"You worry about your wife; if Mary is in favor, it won't matter what my husband thinks," Natalia commented, combing that white hair of hers in a slightly artificial way.

Liam turned now toward the door, and Mary, afraid of being discovered, quickly pulled back. Then, slowly, she peeked through the crack again.

Liam had taken out a cigarette and was offering it to Natalia, who accepted it at once. Then he flicked the lighter, but he couldn't get a flame. Natalia walked over to the table and took her silver one out of the pocket of her yellow puffer. Liam snatched it from her hands with a somewhat violent gesture.

"Is this an island?" he asked, examining it closely. "Where did you get it?"

Natalia didn't answer; she waited for him to light the flame and then blew the smoke to one side. Liam lit his own and handed the lighter back to Natalia.

"You're a fucking box of surprises, Nati, I have to admit it. A few months ago I thought you were another one of those idiot feminists from the city, but girl, fuck, how I love being wrong."

Natalia walked to the window and opened one of the panes to air out the room.

"You're going to catch cold," Liam said.

"I'll warm up when I get back to the cabin," Natalia commented in the least decorous way possible.

Liam moved closer to her, but Natalia dodged him before he could touch her. After taking a drag on the cigarette, she blew the smoke toward the map while she pointed out another area.

"In these caves you could put a bar, have you thought about it? Open it only in summer and, if you build a pier..."

"We build," Liam corrected, watching her with desire.

"If we build a small pier, it would be sheltered from the tide. Of course, the tunnel would have to be made wider and the ceiling secured. But can you imagine what it would be like to be able to go from the house to the beach through a perfectly outfitted tunnel? We could even make it exclusive for VIP clients."

Once again, Liam tried to put his hand on her rear end, but she gave him another playful smack to make him take it away.

"I said no," Natalia said, much more serious now.

Liam stepped back a second without saying anything. Mary, behind the door, furrowed her brow. She'd had enough. Far angrier with Liam than with that Natalia whom, as was the case with Richard, she didn't recognize, but hating them both equally, she leaned her back against the hallway wall for a second. What the hell was that girl playing at? Was she hatching a plan, or had she really decided to become -- God forgive her for thinking it -- a real whore?

With that nagging thought circling in her head, Mary returned to the living room feeling a little out of place. A second later, she stopped again to examine the small bronze horse on the shelf. It took her a good while to realize what was going on. It was turned from its usual position and now faced the window, not the hallway.

"Mrs. Allen, do you want me to take the big cloth basket to the room?"

Mary shook her head to answer no to Erica and, with a serious, slightly worried look, headed straight down the path toward the house's basement. The wide wooden stairs curved upward to the private bedrooms, but they narrowed lower down, at the main vestibule heading toward the basement. Down there, another equally elegant hallway ended in an open space that served both as a garage for the small snowplows and as storage for old junk and a pile of boxes of spare parts. Between that garage and the last of the pantry rooms was the little room where Tom spent his hours of rest.

Mary looked at both ends of the hallway, checking that no one was there, and knocked on the door with her knuckles.

"Tom, it's Mrs. Allen," she murmured. Getting no answer, she knocked again.

The door opened slowly, leaving only a crack through which Tom stuck his nose to make sure it really was Mrs. Allen. More confident, he opened it a little and poked his whole little head out to make the same gesture in a slightly more comical way. Then he opened the door all the way and let Mary in before closing it again.

It was a simple room, with a small high window facing the landing stage and a narrow bed right beneath it. It smelled of damp wood and, given the enormous number of books scattered all over, of paper. They were piled up there in disorder, from sci-fi tomes and old comics to war-themed novels. A small table on the right held a closed notebook with a pen and, beside it, a small radio with its antenna extended next to a green library lamp.

"Did you move the horse like I told you to, Tom?"

Tom nodded over and over. But when he said nothing more, Mary grew impatient.

"Well, Tom? What do you have to tell me?"

"Mrs. Allen...," Tom whispered as if someone might be listening. "You shouldn't come down here. You know we're not allowed to talk to you in the house. They could fire me."

Mary put her hand on the boy's arm to calm him. Upstairs everyone was busy, in fact, too busy, she told herself, thinking of Liam and Natalia. Tom watched that gesture from Mary in silence, not quite understanding it.

"Tom, nobody but God knows I'm here, all right? So the sooner you tell me what you've found out, the sooner I'll go back up."

Tom took a few seconds to react. His face hadn't kept pace with his actual age and, for that reason, he looked quite a bit younger than he was. The problem was that the same thing had happened with his intellect.

"Miss Allen seemed very nervous when she talked to Miss Luna last night," he explained very diligently. "I recorded everything on the recorder Mr. Matteo uses to note down the monthly grocery order. But then I wrote it in the notebook just in case Matteo needed the recorder again, and I erased the tape."

Then Tom seemed to realize something was wrong and screwed up his face, worried.

"What's wrong, Tom?"

"Did you want to listen to the tape, Mrs. Allen?"

"Tom, it's all the same to me whether I read it or hear it; what I want is to know what my daughter said."

Tom shook his head and, with a certain innocent boldness, went over to the little table to reach his notebook. Then he came back to Mary, opened to one of the pages, followed the text with his finger and, when he was sure he was on the paragraph he wanted, began to read.

"And the tides?" he recited in a slightly high-pitched voice. Then he raised his eyes to Mary. "Miss Ioanna asked this one... We'd have to make the most of the high tide so I could... get... get myself up from... the..." Tom stopped when Mrs. Allen interrupted him, glancing at the door. Someone seemed to be walking down the hallway. Both of them stayed very still until some knocks on the door filled the whole room.

Tom, visibly frightened, opened his eyes wide, ready to say anything. Mary, frightened too, but for different reasons, slowly raised her finger and brought it to Tom's lips.

"Tom? You are there?" they heard Erica ask in that thick Italian accent. The hallway, lined with fabric and wood, muffled her voice.

Mary stared hard at Tom and nodded slowly, waiting for him to repeat the gesture out loud.

"Say yes, Tom," Mary whispered when it became clear that he'd frozen up.

"Yes!" Tom shouted, but far less sure of himself than before.

"Mrs. Gertrud says that you accompany Mike to the north with the van!"

Mary made the same confirming gesture with her head again while Tom repeated it in his own way but without saying anything.

"Tom? You hear me? Gertrud wants that you come up!" Erica shouted again after another moment of silence.

Mary was getting really nervous.

"Say yes, Tom, for God's sake," she whispered, closer to him.

"Yes!" Tom repeated, this time much louder.

"Okay!" Erica replied before heading back upstairs.

Alone and relieved, Mary was finally able to let out her breath. However, she noticed that Tom was too nervous to read. Determined to know what he'd written, she reached out her hand and snatched the notebook from him quickly. Tom got a little scared and took a step back. Mary then read the notes, this time to herself.

"And the tides? We'd have to make the most of the high tide so I can get myself up from the beach. At night the sea will be frozen. Do you think Robin will be able to reach the shore without the two of you getting stuck? Those two guys almost ran aground on the reef last month."

"Relax, gorgeous, Robin knows how to handle a launch. But we'll bring blankets and dry clothes in case you end up having to get in the water. You know how to swim, right, Ioanna?"

"Are you an idiot?"

"Hell, I've never even seen you swim. Can you believe it? Imagine coming all this way and watching you drown at the shore. What a disappointment that would be."

(Laughter), Mary read.

"Goddammit, I can't believe we're really going to do this, girl. If it were closer, I'd have walked out of here the first week. I can't wait to get off this fucking island."

"Robin said the trip would last about the same as the ferry, an hour and a half, as long as there are no storms. We'd have to do it around one in the morning; that way we'll have time to get you on the train to Canada. You know they're going to look for you to the ends of the earth, right? Especially your father. If that inheritance thing is true, he'll be capable of killing you, Ioanna."

"For fuck's sake, Luna, I've told you a thousand times. Has anyone explained to you what we're doing here? I bet not. And what about the video of those guys, huh? No way. I don't know what this is, but it's nothing good. And nobody's going to hand us that pile of money just for our pretty faces, that's for damn sure. You mean to tell me this Robin can't do it sooner? We could take advantage of the good weather we're having now."

"No, honey. When I talked to him, he was on a ship from Halifax to Saint John. Ioanna, I told you, Robin has to stop in Eastport before going home. Anyway, two weeks go by fast. You've been here a long time, so fifteen more days won't kill you. Since I'm going to the mainland a few days early with the excuse that my mother is sick, if Robin gets ahead of schedule, we'll grab his parents' launch and come over."

"But you won't be able to warn me."

"We can use the walkie-talkie. Mike has a few for the crew; I saw them charging batteries the other day in the fishermen's room. They're the same as yours. Do you have it there? That wheel changes the frequencies. We'll use a different one. No one will be able to listen in."

"Luna, you're saving my life."

"All for my favorite brunette on the island."

(Laughter and strange sounds)

Mary looked up at Tom, visibly frightened. Was her daughter really planning to escape the island? Without saying anything more, she tore the pages out of the notebook and stuffed them in her pocket.

"You did great, Tom, thank you very much for the favor. On the next ferry I'll ask them to send me all those books, how about that? But you can't tell anyone about any of this. Not even Mrs. Gertrud, or Roberto, or any of the others. Do you understand me? No one can know."

Tom, nervous about going up to carry out Mrs. Gertrud's orders, said yes far more times than necessary. Then he opened the door of his room and disappeared through it toward the vestibule. Mary drew a deep breath. That girl was leading her through the valley of despair, she told herself. And the problem was that, besides ruining her own life, she was going to ruin everyone else's.

A few minutes earlier, when Mary had gone down to Tom's room, she'd done so feeling how a storm was beginning to form over the routine life she'd managed to lead until then. However, stepping back out into the hallway, she did so knowing that the storm wasn't just over her head already; it had broken, and the gale was about to sweep her away. Liam, Natalia, Richard, and now her own daughter, all seemed to have agreed to twist the lines of a story that, until a few weeks earlier, seemed to be running on rails.

Commending herself to her God, Mary decided to leave the house through the big garage door instead of going up the main staircase. She didn't want anyone to suspect what she'd done down there. And she did it thinking about how she could thwart that absolutely insane idea of her daughter's. Whatever happened, that girl, Luna, could never come back from the mainland by launch. Because the plan God had reserved for them still stood, and would keep standing: to become the heirs of Sir Maximilian Turner III, even if for that she had to lock up her whole damn family in one of those basement rooms and throw away the key until the year was up.

Stepping back out into the far-from-bright morning sun, and while she turned everything over in her head, Mary spotted Caleb as he pulled with determination on a thick rope at the far end of the dock. He was wearing that old polo of Liam's, a gift from years back, and, mother of God, she told herself, that garment really suited him. When Caleb finished, he dropped the rope to the ground and ran a hand through his blond hair, breathing deep with his eyes closed and letting the little warmth autumn had left bathe his sturdy body. For an instant that lasted almost as long as an alternative life beside that man, the worries Mary had been carrying for only a few hours vanished completely from her mind.

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Author's note:

Beyond the midpoint of the story, tensions begin to surface. Thanks to everyone still wandering around the island, and even more to those of you who comment. As an author, it helps a lot to know what you think about the story. See you in the next one.