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20.
Connie woke the next morning in her tiny apartment and realized instinctively that she no longer belonged there. The noise of the city outside her window was like a nagging headache – a sound she had become so accustomed to now grated – and the need to be away from New York was like an itch that irritated beneath her skin.
She spent time on the phone, listened to her sister sob more happy joyful tears, and then asked Jean to transfer forty thousand dollars of the money Duncan had paid into her own account. That would leave a quarter of a million to cover the ongoing costs of their mother’s nursing home care. The burden of responsibility that had buried Jean’s life in a misery of work and worry had been forever lifted.
Then Connie called the movers, arranged to have the few bulky items she owned put into storage, and began to pack what she could carry downstairs to the trunk of her car.
The apartment was leased in Duncan’s name and Connie had no doubt that he had already taken vindictive steps to have her removed. She wanted to be gone, away from him and the cloying odors of smog and fumes – away from the destructive memories of her life with him.
Her heart was calling her.
Connie had never considered herself a lover of the ocean. She had spent her childhood in the Midwest. Vacations to the coast had been infrequent, and never special. But now the salty air, the cleansing breeze, and the unbridled majesty of the waves was like a haunting siren of the sea, beckoning her with a sound that seemed to touch at her very soul.
She had driven more miles in the last few days than she could ever recall. She climbed behind the wheel one last time – and that knowledge was enough to compel her.
One last time.
She was heading north, back to Maine, not merely to start her life over again…
She was starting anew.
21.
By the time Connie crossed the bridge back into Hoyt Harbor, night had fallen, and the waterfront promenade was lit with a string of gaily-colored lights. There were crowds of vacationers on the foreshore gathered beneath a sky filled with stars, enjoying the balmy breeze that whispered across the rippling velvet of the harbor. Connie drove slowly past and found herself smiling, as though the vibrations of the night were somehow infectious.
She was paid up for another week at the vacation house she had rented, so she pulled wearily into the driveway. The car seemed to give a groan of relief, and Connie climbed from behind the wheel, stiff as an old woman. Her eyes were blurred, her mind numbed by the endless hours, and yet she couldn’t help but feel her spirits lift. She stood for a moment, and just let herself be carried by the sense of elation that washed over her. But there was also a trace of fear, like menacing rocks that lurked beneath calm water. This was a new life, and it came with no promises, no guarantees. All she had to carry her along was her dream of her own little gallery.
“Uncertainty is just another word for adventure,” she told herself bravely.
She had an unbidden image then – a vision of Blake McGrath that seemed to swirl in the fog of her weary imagination. And like tendrils of mist, he was impossible to hold; an enigmatic mystery that eddied in her mind, never quite leaving, but never entirely filling out, becoming vivid. All she could remember clearly was the man’s smile.
She was still thinking about him when she curled up in bed and fell into the black death-like sleep of exhaustion.
22.
When the doors to the grocery store opened at 9am the following morning, Connie was waiting on the steps amidst a small group of tourists who had gathered in need of milk and bread or newspapers. She went straight to a pretty young girl behind one of the cash registers and asked to speak to Warren Ryan.
He came to the front of the store after just a few minutes, already looking harried. When he saw Connie there was a spark of instant recognition, followed by a flicker of trepidation in his eyes. His steps faltered, and then he came on with something like grim concern.
“Hello,” he said. “Nice to see you again. Is everything all right?” He had already spent the money Connie had paid for the paintings, clearing up pressing debts with suppliers and placating the banks. Now his features were pale with dread.
“No,” Connie said. She looked up into the man’s face. “I need to speak with you in private. It’s about those paintings.”
Ryan’s shoulders slumped. “Miss, I’m sorry, but we had an –”
Connie cut him off. “Please,” she insisted. “I assure you, what I have to say will only take a minute.”
Ryan trudged down the long aisles like a man on his way to the gallows, and went heavily up the steps to his office with Connie close behind him. She sat across from his desk, and Ryan dropped into his chair. He flicked on the desk lamp and then his eyes seemed to furtively search the room as though looking for a concealed escape.
“When I paid you three thousand dollars for the two paintings I purchased, I did so based on my impressions of their value,” Connie began politely. She was enjoying herself. Behind her reserved demeanor and calm tone was a gleeful delight that she worked hard to suppress. “Well, it turns out that wasn’t the case…”
Ryan bounced up from his chair as though he had been waiting for this moment to launch into his defense. He shook his head, hitched up his sagging trousers, and propped his hands on his hips. “We arrived at a fair price,” the man’s voice rose an octave and became insistent. “You saw the paintings – you… you even made a phone call. I was happy with the agreement and, let me say, you were happy with the agreement also.”
Connie nodded. “But that was before I had an understanding of their fair value,” she smiled sweetly and at last she let the twinkle of pleasure reach her eyes. “That’s why I want to write you a check, Mr. Ryan. For an additional forty thousand dollars.”
Warren Ryan’s mouth fell open in disbelief. Dazedly he dropped down into his chair, and cuffed away tears that misted in his eyes.
23.
The road south along the coast looked very different to Connie as she put the car through a series of bends and sweeping curves. It was midday and the sun flickered through the tops of the pines and dappled the blacktop in shade and light.
She recalled the night of the storm, and passed fallen trees that had been dragged to the gravel shoulder. The memory of that night made her irrationally wary, and despite the perfect weather and the dry road, it was well over an hour of cautious driving before she finally saw the sign-posted turn off to Jellicat Road. Then, quite suddenly, a wave of fear and panic overwhelmed her.
She pulled off the road at the green mailbox and the car jounced along the dirt trail. Connie went only a hundred yards and then had to stop.
Her palms were sweating, and she was shaking like a leaf. She could feel every breath jag anxiously in her throat, and the beat of her heart was an erratic pounding. She got out of the car, surrounded by the dense press of woods, and stood in the still air, forcing herself to breathe, willing her body to relax. Through the long miles and longer days since they had first met, Connie had played out this moment in her imagination time and time again, until it had become so unaccountably significant that it had taken on the weight of a life-changing moment. She shook her head, annoyed.
Blake McGrath was just a man, she told herself.
As a distraction, s
he opened the trunk and drew the briefcase towards her. Slowly, she counted out five hundred dollars, and tucked the roll of bills into her pocket. She concealed the briefcase under a bundle of blankets she had brought from her apartment, and then closed the trunk.
Connie wandered a short way along the trail, hearing the distant percussive rumble of surf along the beach and the songful call of birds high up in the branches. There was a muddy puddle ahead of her and she stepped towards it. The water had shrunken under the baking heat of the sun so she could see a surround of dark wet dirt like an ebbing tide. She peered into the few inches of shallow water, made blue by the reflected sky. For a moment, all she could see were brown lumps of gravel, and then, quite miraculously, she was able to conjure up the image of Blake. He was smiling at her, his mouth in a quirky teasing grin and the corners of his eyes crinkling with pleasure. It was so clear, so vivid in every detail that she blinked, and took a step back. After a moment she peered into the puddle once more and tried to project Duncan’s face, yet when she did, the surface of the puddle seemed rippled so that the pieces of her memory could never quite come together.
Connie got back behind the steering wheel and stared at her own face in the rearview mirror. She could see the nervousness in her reflection, and the smudges of fatigue that hung like soft shadows below her eyes. She practiced her smile, then tried to compose her features into an expression of cool and calm. She dabbed the tip of a finger at her lipstick, and abruptly decided the coral color was too much – too overt. She wiped her lips clean of paint and sighed a regret that she had chosen to wear a shirt and jeans instead of the pretty yellow dress left behind at the rental house. Finally in frustration, she slumped back in the seat, dark and brooding with confusion and turmoil.
