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12.
1947
Winter
She is eighteen and shivering in the dark.
A few low-lying clouds have crept in to smudge the face of the moon, and the air is biting cold where it slides through the opening of her coat. She has a lantern in her hand but doesn’t dare light it. Not yet. Not until she passes beyond the garden wall, where the flick and flare of the match will be hidden from the restless occupants of the grand house, now half-burned, that stands high above the bay.
It’s been eight weeks since the terrible fires that swallowed nine towns and a quarter of a million acres of forest, leaving ash and ruin in their wake. Great swaths of the island are black and bald, the beautiful wilderness burned all the way to the ground, nothing left behind but the charcoal spikes of broken trees and the odd chimney where a house once stood. The seventy majestic cottages that lined Frenchman Bay, once known as Millionaires Row, are gone, including the stately shingled manor where Miriam was sitting at luncheon on the daywhen the fire whistle sounded its alarm. The Chandlers’ seaside estate is nothing but rubble, rotting away under a light dusting of new snow. When Miriam’s mother had wondered aloud whether some of the society families might rebuild their seasonal homes and come back next year, her father snorted.
“Rebuildwhat, do you imagine? Will they scoop the ashes into a little mound and plant a flag in it?” He shook his head. “The ones who live here all year round, of course they’ll rebuild. What choice do they have? It’s their home. But just look at it, Evie. The ruin of it. It’ll be years before this place is even a ghost of what it was. And your Chandlers and your Vanderbilts and your Pulitzers, they’ll be off to some new playground.”
“And the Days?” Mother asked. “What shall they do?”
“Well,” he mused, “the way I see it, the Days should stay right where they are. After all is said and done, it seems we’re the proud owners of the finest damn house on this island.”
“Half a house, you mean,” Mother said, gesturing in the direction of the door, the foyer beyond, and the ashen wreckage beyond that. Through some divine intervention, or perhaps just the caprice of a changing wind, the fire had cleaved through the Whispers as cleanly as a blade, ravaging the north wing while leaving the rest largely untouched. But far from despairing at the destruction, Papa had seemed invigorated by it, suddenly infused once more with the fierce and hungry spirit that used to animate him as a younger man. Perhaps it was no surprise. Roland Day had always known how to make a fortune on the back of a tragedy, to see opportunity where others saw only obstacles. This was no different.
As angry as he’d been at Smith for letting Miriam vanish on the day of the fire, he wasted no time dispatching his old friend to spearhead the rebuilding, hiring contractors and carpenters and sourcing new lumber from the forests up north—and Smith, eager to prove he could still be trusted, had managed it all with lightning speed. The project would begin just as soon as the last snow melted. But for now,the house was like Mother said: half a house, and half the charred stone skeleton of what used to be the north wing’s outer walls.
“‘Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is,’” Papa replied, quoting Corinthians.
Mother raised an eyebrow. “And I suppose the fire revealed your manifest destiny to own the finest damn home in Bar Harbor?”
“Obviously.” He paused to take a sip of whiskey. “And who am I to argue with the will of the Almighty?”
“Mmmm,” Mother said, pursing her lips. “Well then, what does the Almighty say about installing a modern heating system in this very fine damn house?”
Papa had laughed and laughed then, with his head thrown back and both hands on his belly, as if he were afraid it would burst. But when he was done laughing, he’d patted his wife’s hand. “You’ll have the best that money can buy. And of course I know what worries you, my dear. For everything to go up in smoke like this, and after all your efforts, too. But”—and here he glanced in Miriam’s direction—“I think that New York society will do well enough for our Mimi’s prospects, when the time comes.”
Miriam thought, and still thinks, that there was something in that glance. A knowing little gleam—or perhaps that’s just her own guilty conscience, winking back at her from behind her father’s eyes. Society or not, Mother’s efforts have indeed been all for nothing, and they’ll surely go to waste, because Miriam will not marry any of those eligible young men with their neat haircuts and tailored jackets. Not if they begged her a hundred times. There’s only one man she wants, just one, and he is already hers.
Theodore Caravasios. Theo. Her Theo.
If what happened that summer at the pond had been a spark, what she feels now is a wildfire, one that could smolder for a thousand years, sustained by nothing more than the memory of his lips meeting hers that day, the taste of him lingering there amid the flavors of salt waterand smoke. Her hero. Her savior. His boat had carried her—and Patches, too, plucked from the water and seemingly none the worse for wear—around the cove and up the river to Ellsworth, where she was reunited with her parents amid a throng of a thousand refugees from Mount Desert Island. Their elation and relief at finding Miriam safe was so great that they barely remembered to scold her for disappearing in the first place, and they had nothing but tears and thanks for the young man who had saved her life. Even Smith doffed his cap, smiled his awful brown smile, and shook Theo’s hand. It wasn’t until many days later that Mother suddenly seemed to grow suspicious and asked just how it was that she’d been so lucky, that Theo had happened to be there at exactly the right place and time to rescue her.
“Why, I’ve no idea,” Miriam had said, blinking with wide-eyed innocence. “I imagine he was on his way to the town pier to help with the rescue effort and saw me go into the water.”
Miriam had comforted herself with the knowledge that this was not a lie, even if it wasn’t the entire truth, either. The roads off the island had been overtaken by fire, and several hundred people had been rescued by boat from the town pier by local fishermen—a group that surely would have included Theo if he hadn’t been there to pull her out of the water. She had his friend to thank for that, the one with the prominent ears; he’d run into Theo on the ridge where a hundred men were working to contain the fire and told him where she went and why. He’d left at a dead run to get to his boat and arrived just in time. Meanwhile, her parents had lingered in town, berating Smith for losing sight of her and hoping she’d turn up, until they had no choice but to join the slow caravan of cars winding precariously through the wreckage and rubble of the burned island up to Ellsworth. The drive had begun well after dark and taken the better part of the night, with arcing flames and raining sparks threatening to engulf them all the while. Miriam, traveling by sea, had beaten them to safety by many hours.
What she didn’t mention was how she’d spent those hours—those long dark chaotic hours wrapped up in Theodore Caravasios’s arms, sococooned by the tragedy unfolding around them that prudence seemed wholly unnecessary. Who would ever notice or remember one young couple embracing as the world burned down? He’d kissed her again and again and again even as the sky began to lighten and murmurs ran through the crowd, heralding the arrival of the first cars from the caravan. And while she felt deliciously invisible then, her mother’s questioning look made her wonder. Maybe she was too certain. Maybe they had been seen, after all.
And so she is careful.
She has been meeting him in secret for many weeks, ever since the Day family returned to find the Whispers half-burned but still habitable. Waiting for sundown, watching from her window for the light of his boat out beside the wreckage of the pier, waiting for his signal: two short flashes, three long. Then she steals away, down the staircase and through the darkened kitchen, where she collects the lamp that she takes care not to light until she’s down beyond the garden wall. A right turn takes her into the small copse of unburned pines that still stands by the water’s edge and then to a quarter-mile walk down the path to the narrow inlet where the sea lavender grows in the summer. This is where they meet as often as they dare, for as long as they dare, shivering in each other’s arms against the deepening cold.
But tonight is different. Even in the dark, she can see the unhappiness written across his face, the furrow of his brow as she reaches for him.
“The reach has frozen over,” he whispers against her cheek. “I barely made it into the cove tonight, and then only because of the moonlight. I can’t risk it again, Miriam. We won’t be able to meet this way again until spring.”
“Spring,” she murmurs back. “It’s too long. There must be another way.”
“Only if you’re ready to meet me where people can see us.”
“And what if I am?”
“You say that now, but you don’t mean it,” he says gently, and she pulls back, wounded.
