The Wild Child
The Wild Child
Judith Bowen
A man with a wild child. A secret child…When Eva Haines first comes to remote (and supposedly deserted) Liberty Island, she has the uncanny feeling that someone's watching her–and she's right. A small wild-looking child with a huge black dog has been following her around. Eva, who's spending a few weeks on the island to deal with an elderly relative's estate, is puzzled. Who is this little girl? Where did she come from?Eva finds out soon enough. Fanny is the daughter of the reclusive Silas Lord. But once she learns this, Eva only has more questions. Why are Silas and his daughter hiding out on Liberty Island? What secret is Silas keeping about this child he obviously adores? And why is Eva falling in love with such a mysterious man?
“Hey!” she called to the child and the big black dog.
Eva waved her hand, smiling. “Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you.”
The child raised one hand in a hesitant response to Eva’s gesture and then slipped off the boulder. Eva stumbled forward, cursing the pebbles that hurt her feet and slowed her progress. Where were they—behind the boulder? Across the creek? Into the woods on the other side?
If not, they’d vanished into thin air again!
Eva didn’t know what to do. This was just too strange. Who was this little kid, out yesterday and today just—just wandering! Where was the mother? The father?
“Oh, how I love Judith Bowen’s stories! Such gutsy heroines and such lovable men! You can’t put the books down and you remember them with a fond, tender feeling. Now, that’s romance!”
—Bestselling author Anna Jacobs
Dear Reader,
The Sunshine Coast of British Columbia is a special place for me. My husband and I met there while I was working for the Sechelt Press and he was working for the Coast News. True love—over a village council meeting!
Liberty Island is fictitious, of course, but most of the other places and islands mentioned in The Wild Child are not. If you take a ferry from Horseshoe Bay today and get off at Langdale, you can meander up the rugged coast on your way to Earl’s Cove, stopping at Molly’s Lane and visiting the gravesite of the mysterious Danish prince at Roberts Creek. You can even poke your head in at the Half Moon Bay store and buy a loaf of bread made by the lightkeeper’s wife.
Eva and Silas meet on an island peopled by ghosts—the legendary but never seen Liberty Island goats, the tangled relationships from the past, living only in dusty love letters and old jewelry now, the remembered games of happy childhood summers spent on the island.
Silas shares his life with his secret daughter now, the wild girl of Liberty Island. Eva knows where her duty lies—but can she betray Silas, the man she’s come to love? I hope you enjoy Eva and Silas’s story. It’s a story very close to my heart.
Judith Bowen
P.S. Write to me at P.O. Box 2333, Point Roberts, WA 98281-2333 or visit me at www.judithbowen.com.
The Wild Child
Judith Bowen
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To fellow BICC Trainsters:
Cherry Adair, Chris Pacheco, Eileen Wilks, Susan Plunkett, Pam Johnson, Lynn Johnson, Ruth Schmidt, Karen Barrett, Myrna Temte and Cheryl Harrington. Thanks, gals! I couldn’t have done it without you.
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER ONE
EVA HAINES hadn’t been on the island a week before she realized she was being watched.
The feeling was unmistakable. Creepy. Eyes on her back, watching her from the forest on the other side of the creek as she scythed the knee-high grass near the house. Or from the wooded area behind the old, overgrown garden as she nailed plywood over broken windows. Or…from somewhere.
The first few days she hadn’t paid much attention. She was too busy getting set up for the summer to worry about weird feelings and imaginings—too busy dusting, cleaning, ferrying over foodstuffs and supplies from Half Moon Bay in the aging fiberglass runabout with its tattered dodger and temperamental Mercury outboard. Besides, she was quite sure she was alone.
The weather had been fine, which had made her frequent trips to the mainland easier, and if there was one thing she’d learned from a childhood spent on or near the water under her sea dog father’s demanding eye, it was how to fiddle with a temperamental outboard. Her unseen companion? Most likely an owl hidden in some monumental cedar tree keeping track of the intruder from the city. Or a vigilant nesting osprey. Or a rabbit. There were no bears on Liberty Island and Eva didn’t believe in ghosts.
Eva was spending part of her summer vacation tidying up affairs for an eccentric distant relation, a cousin of her mother’s, who’d broken her hip in the spring and who, at eighty-six, would not be returning to Liberty Island to live. Be prepared. Eva didn’t want any surprises, so her first task had been to get everything shipshape for the two or three weeks she’d be occupying Doris Bonhomme’s ramshackle house. That meant laying in plenty of oil and wicks for lamps, a spare propane tank for the kitchen range and refrigerator, among other necessities.
She wasn’t bothering with gasoline for the emergency generator, which she didn’t expect to have to use. What constituted an emergency on Liberty Island, where she and her sisters had spent the happiest summers of their childhood? Not being able to get Jeopardy on the ancient rabbit-eared black-and-white Motorola that Doris fired up occasionally to, as she put it, “keep in touch”? Definitely not!
But kerosene and candles were necessary. Jack Haines, who’d spent as much of his life as he could on or near the sea, had taught her well: only fools depend on luck.
Alone? Hey, what was she talking about—she had Andy to keep her company. She smiled, recalling how the ancient donkey had kicked up his heels, baring worn yellow teeth in a joyous hee-haw welcome when she’d first arrived. Then he’d bucked and galloped in an awkward circle just to show her how frisky he still was. Andy had been left to fend for himself when his mistress had been airlifted to the hospital and taken from there to a care home at the insistence of her doctor. Although Doris had reluctantly agreed that she could no longer look after herself in her isolated island home, she insisted that her beloved donkey was too old to uproot.
“I’m not putting that poor dumb creature through what I’ve been through,” she told Eva, during a visit to Saint Mary’s Hospital, shortly after Doris’s accident. “He’s too loyal. He doesn’t deserve such a fate at his time in life. Your dad will know what to do.”
And he had. Jack had arranged for a farmer from a nearby island to check on the animal, dumping off hay weekly, and treats like apples and carrots.
It wasn’t as though either he or Doris would dream of requesting assistance from Doris’s actual neighbor at the other end of Liberty Island. If, indeed, anyone still lived there…
It was so stupid, really. Eva’s gaze strayed to the long thin crescent of land that stretched eastward, curving south, thick dark woods all the way to the rocky headland. The Bonhommes and the Lords hadn’t spoken for fifty years, not since Doris had quarrelled with Hector Lord. What about? No one knew. There’d been a house once, nestled in the trees somewhere. Eva had never actually set foot on the Lords’ side of the island. As a child, she hadn’t dared; as a grown-up, now, she hadn’t gotten around to exploring yet. Her mother, who’d been a girl at the time of the upset, had divulged various details—that the Lord house had been grand, that Hector had been a tall, dark, handsome man, wildly attractive to women, that the family had money, pots of money, as Eva recalled her mother’s expression. Eva and her sisters had always imagined the Lords’ money—pots of it—like pirate booty, gold and jewels spilling out of thick oaken sea chests and massive porcelain Chinese jars.
Doris herself had never spoken of the matter. As far as she was concerned, the island ended where her property did, at the creek, and plunged in a perfectly severed line, as though chopped with an ax, straight into the sea.
Hector Lord was long dead and Eva had no idea who owned that half of the island now. A trust? Heirs? The house had probably fallen into its cellar and grown over with ferns and moss. It wouldn’t take many years to obscure all signs of any habitation in the fecund West Coast climate.
Certainly, there’d been no sign of life in the five days since she’d arrived: no smoke, no lights, no whine of outboards. Eva sighed and headed back to the Edie B. to retrieve the rest of the supplies she’d brought from the mainland that afternoon. How silly of Doris to nurse a grudge for so long. Fifty years!
Speaking of Andy—where was he? The donkey usually met her at the dock when she tied up after a trip to Half Moon Bay but he wasn’t there now.
Eva’s task this summer included finding a new home for the donkey. Most of the old woman’s assortment of worldly goods would be discarded or go to thrift stores, but it was her dearest wish that her property become a marine park eventually, one of a chain that ran north and south through the Gulf Islands of the coast of British Columbia. The Bonhomme half could be signed over to a marine park trust—and that was something else Eva was investigating—but, of course, Doris had no control over the part she didn’t own.
Finding a home for Andy would be a challenge. How long did donkeys live, anyway—forever? This one didn’t look as though he’d suffered spending nearly three months on his own in the company of seals and seagulls and the elusive handful of wild goats that were supposed to live somewhere on the island—that was it!
Eva straightened and put her hands on her hips, blowing a stray lock of hair from her hot face. The half-empty runabout rocked gently, but she adjusted her stance so automatically she didn’t even notice the motion. Why hadn’t she thought of the goats? She gazed inland, past the woods, past the gentle rise where Doris’s house stood, well back from the sea, to Abel’s Peak, the rocky pinnacle that marked the high point on the island a good quarter mile behind the house. The water supply for the house originated up there, in an ancient stone-and-timber dam that funneled spring water to both Doris’s house and, at one time, the residence on the other side of the island.
Of course! It was probably a goat she’d sensed when she’d been so certain someone—or something—was watching her. Like Jedadiah Island nearby, Liberty Island was rumored to be home to long-abandoned goat colonies, which some said went back to the days when the Spaniards cruised the area, Cortes and Valdez and Galiano, mapping the coast for Spain in the 1700s and accidentally losing some of their shipboard livestock in the process.
Eva bent down to heave a carton of tinned goods to the seat of the boat, then supported it against her hip. Balancing carefully, she stepped onto the dock and deposited the box beside the pile she’d already unloaded. No one knew if the story was true. Just as no one knew if the legendary goats were, less romantically, a few escapees from a farm on a neighboring island that had clambered ashore during an especially low tide sometime in the last several decades.
Whatever. Next task—moving everything up to the house. That was a job for the boxy wheelbarrow, equipped with two large bicycle wheels that Eva had found in the woodshed the day she arrived. Doris recycled everything. The homemade cart did an admirable job of transporting freight from the dock. It also handled a decent load of firewood.
Eva began to trundle toward the house. In late afternoon, the building looked dark and rather forlorn under the shadow of the tall cedars and the lofty arbutus trees to the west of the overgrown garden. There were shingles missing from the roof and any paint that had ever existed on the siding had worn off long ago. No need for repairs now, not unless the marine park people wanted to fix it up for a caretaker’s residence, which was highly unlikely.
The crunch of her shoes on the weedy shale and broken rock seemed overloud in the warm not-quite-evening air. There wasn’t a stir of wind. She wished now she’d brought Freddie. Her father had offered his dachshund—“for protection,” he’d said with a wink.
She wasn’t worried about protection; simple companionship was more like it. At least Freddie would bark if anything real was lurking about.
Why hadn’t she remembered the goats earlier, for heaven’s sake? Before she’d gotten herself all worked up over nothing?
THE VISITOR was disturbing. No, not disturbing, more like bothersome. Annoying. A presence on the island that set his teeth on edge when he remembered that not only had she arrived just after mid-month, which was already a week ago, but she seemed to be fixing up the house and settling in. A mere summer visit, he hoped. The briefer, the better.
Only why would anyone in his or her right mind be visiting Liberty Island? Or fixing up the house? The old woman had been airlifted off when he’d found her unconscious and obviously in very bad shape a dozen yards from her back door, her cart overturned and firewood scattered on the rain-soaked ground beside her. He’d stabilized her as well as he could and had called for medical help and, when he was certain it was on its way—he could hear the rotors of the air ambulance—he’d gone inside her house, where he’d found her cellular phone on the windowsill over the sink. He’d tucked it into her limp hand and left.
She’d hate to think she’d needed help, certainly not from him. This way, if she was dazed enough, she might assume she’d had the cell phone in her apron pocket, where she should have kept it at her age, and had actually called for assistance on her own before passing out. Foolish old woman.
That was before Easter. It didn’t appear as though she was coming back, which was just fine by him. He didn’t like company. At least, not company that wasn’t there at his invitation. She was too old and ornery to be here, anyway—a constant worry. How many times had he sent Matthew out to spy on her, make sure she was okay? Had enough firewood? Had tied her boat up properly so it wouldn’t wash away with a coming storm? How often had he told Fanny that, under no circumstances, was she to wander past the creek that separated the properties? Checking up on the old woman wouldn’t have been such a nuisance; it was making sure he and Matthew weren’t seen so they could both—he and his foolish neighbor—maintain the pretence that he wasn’t keeping an eye on her that was wearing.
He didn’t want to look out for her. He was glad she’d stayed away. She was well over eighty; she should’ve left long ago. He didn’t go so far as to wish her dead, just nicely settled into some warm, comfortable nursing home somewhere on the mainland. He imagined her watching afternoon television, cheating at cards, griping about the food, all the while squirreling away crusts of bread and half-eaten apples in her lingerie drawer.
As far as he knew, she had few friends and no close relatives, certainly not young, beautiful ones like this visitor. His first glimpse of her was still seared onto his retinas. At The Baths. No, with any luck, the Bonhomme side of the island would go on the block in the next year or so and he’d be there, ready to scoop it up. He’d always felt that Liberty Island was his, anyway; it was only a matter of opportunity and cold, hard cash.
Now this visitor—this intruder—was on his mind. Was she the new owner? Already? Impossible!
All his life, he’d hunted beauty, wherever it could be found. In the last half dozen years, he created a kind of beauty in gems and precious metals for the select few who appreciated his skill and could pay his price. Chancing upon the visitor when he’d walked to the bathing pools three days ago had been a feeling he ranked among the handful of the most moving experiences he’d ever had. Watching Vivian dance. Seeing Fanny for the first time, a saucy two-year-old. A midwinter blue moon. The otherworldly fire in the center of an uncut ruby….
He’d gone to what they’d always called The Baths, a series of three round hollows carved from the rock by the tides and the action of the sea over millions of years. One of them, the pool farthest from the open water, was where he’d bathed daily, summer and winter, ever since he’d returned almost three years ago. This time, walking along the stony path etched into the lichens, he’d heard a splash. The screech of a raven. A few notes of a song—in a woman’s voice.
He’d paused, cinching his towel tighter around his waist. Then, when he realized that someone was on his island, swimming in his pools, he crept closer. The third pool, the deepest, a basin with stone walls four or five feet above the water even at high tide, was most dangerous. Even though Fanny swam like a fish and never went anywhere without his dog, Bruno, she was forbidden to go near The Baths. Crude steps, hacked out of the rock, led to the water and somebody—some stranger—had obviously found and used them.
Probably a sailor from a passing yacht that had moored in the little V-shaped bay just offshore. He didn’t bother to check, instead strode directly toward the basin. This was posted private property, dammit, no trespassers allowed. Couldn’t people read?
Then he stopped. A mermaid. Wearing nothing but seawater and sunshine. She lay on her back, her hair floating like kelp, hands languorous at her sides, feet moving gently. A raven high in an arbutus tree nearby squawked—it had spotted him.
She didn’t understand what the raven was trying to tell her. As he watched, she stuck her tongue out and waved at the bird. She whistled, splashed with her other hand, then turned and kicked smoothly, gliding forward. Her buttocks were white in the sun, against the still, deep green of the water, her back lightly tanned. He could see the strap marks from a bathing suit.
So she was at least of this world.
He took a deep shaky breath and stepped back, unwilling to show himself. He had no idea then that she was staying at the old woman’s house, that she was, in fact, a real intruder. All he knew was the stab of awareness. Innocence, sensuality, the sinews, shapes and planes of youth, strength, physical perfection. The artist in him was stunned.
God help him, he lingered in the trees like a voyeur until she left the water, climbed to the top of the basin and picked up a towel under the arbutus tree to dry herself. He couldn’t—would never—deny the stirrings of his belly. That, too, was a kind of beauty. And it had been a very long time since he’d been with a woman. But, no, he simply craved more of the primal image before him.
Woman, without shame, alone in this primeval garden.
Then, when she’d laughed and flicked her towel at the raven, which flapped heavily through the trees with hideous cries, he’d slunk away. She hadn’t wanted anyone to see her naked, not even the bird.
It made him feel unclean. So he’d canceled his own daily swim and left, depositing the image in the bank of his memory, an image he knew he would draw on one day….
And that was that. Just serendipity, pure and sweet.
Until two days later, when he discovered she was no passing yachtswoman. She’d actually moved into the Bonhomme house and appeared to have every intention of staying, judging by the number of trips she made to the mainland for provisions.
Which meant she’d become a problem.
CHAPTER TWO
WHERE WAS ANDY?
Eva released the handle of the pump that brought water into the house from the stone cistern and peered out the small square window over the cast-iron pantry sink. The donkey had to be okay. He’d been on his own for months and was hardly going to get into trouble a week after she arrived. She pumped again, filled a pitcher and put the water in the propane-fired refrigerator, along with the eggs, cheese, milk and two bottles of sauvignon blanc she’d bought at the Half Moon Bay Store.
Now, what for supper? Eva opened a tin of cream of mushroom soup and warmed it up on the ancient combination propane-wood range that stood prominently in Doris’s big country kitchen. She was saving the limited supply of propane for the refrigerator, so had kindled a fire in the old range.
How about a grilled cheese sandwich to go with the soup? Why not? She’d had some variation on soup and sandwiches nearly every day so far. Then, just to make a dent in the silence, Eva switched on the transistor radio on top of the refrigerator and rocketed around from cupboard to counter to table, getting out a plate, a spoon, a bowl, half dancing, half walking, until she felt silly and stopped.
A person could go a little silly here. Had Doris gone a bit weird living by herself on Liberty Island? Of course, she wasn’t alone all the time. As a younger woman, Doris had traveled for three or four months every year, usually in the winter. Then there were the many visitors she encouraged. Every summer, Eva’s family had spent several weeks on the island. She remembered her father holding forth in the porch swing, admiring the view, a bottle of rum on the floor and a thick paperback turned over beside it. Or, if the tide was right and he felt like it, he’d be out in Doris’s rowboat, fishing for sand dabs and rockfish.
Eva’s mother, Felicity, gossiped with her older cousins and whoever else happened to be visiting, pulled weeds in Doris’s garden, and, if they came in August, helped her pick blackberries and put up her garden produce.
Eva recalled helping her mother and Doris, or playing with her sisters in the treehouse behind the garden. Was it still there? When there were other cousins around, they’d played house and cowboys, pirates and princesses—
What in the world? Eva stopped at the window over the sink, spoon forgotten in her hand, dripping soup onto the old linoleum floor.
There in the distance, halfway to where the ground began to rise to Abel’s Peak, was a small child and Andy and—and some kind of enormous black dog!
Eva rushed to the door and flung it open. “Andy!”
She caught her breath, wishing she hadn’t shouted, not wanting to frighten the child but…there was no one there. She blinked and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, like a cartoon character.
No child. No dog. Just the old donkey clip-clopping over the rocky ground as he trotted toward the house.
EVA WENT TO BED that night thoroughly rattled. The wind had come up in the evening and she could hear loose shingles banging on the roof. She hoped it wouldn’t rain, and if it did, she hoped the leaks weren’t near her bed. If necessary, she’d move to the other bedroom across the small landing at the top of the stairs.
Eva had always prided herself on being a calm, sensible woman. She had grown up the unflappable one in a chaotic family. Her father, a professor of literature at the University of British Columbia, spent every spare moment on whatever boat he happened to own at the time, ignoring his wife and drinking too much. Felicity Haines, a sad, gentle person, had died of an aneurysm when Eva was twelve, and Eva still missed her desperately. Kate, her oldest sister and very much her father’s daughter, had sailed away on a tall ships adventure when she was eighteen, had settled in Africa and was doing something noble for world peace, Eva believed. She hadn’t seen Kate for three years. Her other sister, Leona, had married a farmer and now raised ostriches, organic field peas and children—five of them, at last count—in Alberta.
Eva, the youngest by six years, had steered a steady course, graduating from high school with honors, working in a doctor’s office for two years and then taking a degree in education. She’d just finished her first year as a substitute teacher in three different elementary schools in Burnaby. The two terms with grade one and two classes had convinced her she’d made the right career choice. She’d adored her little gap-toothed charges and was almost sorry when June was over. In the fall, she hoped to land a permanent job, preferably in the Lower Mainland or Vancouver Island and preferably teaching kindergarten, although it didn’t much matter, and she’d sent résumés all over the province.
It would be nice, though, to settle somewhere near her father, who was alone and sometimes lonely, she thought, retired and living on his houseboat on the Fraser River. Now that Eva was an adult and entirely independent, she’d grown fond of Jack Haines, willing to forgive him the excesses that had alarmed her as a child.
At twenty-five and a trained teacher, Eva Louise Haines was definitely not the sort of person who imagined things. She did not see dogs and children and then, the next minute, not see them. There was nothing wrong with her eyes.
The child had been there most definitely. Red shorts, a dirty once-white T-shirt, no shoes. Dark hair, lots of it, a large black dog. Maybe strayed from a party of picnickers that had landed on the island that afternoon while she was away? She’d been surprised to see that Andy was with them, especially considering the presence of the dog….
She’d seen them. Obviously, the child and the dog had run away before she could open the door to call the donkey. They’d disappeared into the Lord forest on the other side of the creek, not into thin air. Campers, picnickers, boaters, whatever—someone besides her was on the island. That little boy or girl belonged to someone.
Eva finally dozed fitfully, wishing yet again that she’d brought Freddie. First someone—or something—watching her. Now children and dogs that were there one minute and gone the next.
IN THE MORNING, Eva took a brisk walk to the western end of the island. She often walked that route along the shore, looking for things the tide had yielded overnight. Sometimes there was an odd-shaped bit of driftwood or an old running shoe or a clock, washed up from who knows where. Once she’d found a coconut. It amused her to imagine how these things had ended up in the water. That coconut—had it arrived at Liberty Island after months adrift from Tahiti or had it rolled off a yacht deck from a grocery bag? Often, sadly, all she found was garbage—soft drink bottles and plastic bags, chunks of Styrofoam and torn fish net.
This morning, what she wanted to find was evidence of whoever had brought the child and dog. But there was nothing. No spent campfires on the beach, no tracks in the sand, no dinghy pulled up on the beach or launch anchored offshore. The visitors had most likely left the island before nightfall.
Somewhat relieved, Eva spent the rest of the morning in the small parlor, sorting through stacks of music books and sheets of looseleaf with snatches of songs penned on them. Doris had been an accomplished musician in her youth. According to Eva’s mother, she was a fine pianist with a lovely voice, who’d had a brief career as a professional singer. Why had a woman as talented and beautiful and flamboyant, by all accounts, isolated herself on Liberty Island at thirty-six years of age, after her husband’s death? Eva wished she’d paid a little more attention to her mother’s stories.
By noon, Eva had filled only one box for the thrift store at Sechelt. She kept stopping to play one or another of Doris’s little songs on the ancient Mason & Risch piano, which, from the sound of it and the sticking E and F keys, hadn’t been looked after in years. By two o’clock, when she’d resolved to go for a swim, she’d filled three boxes to give away and another box of photos and personal items.
Funny how Jack Haines, who’d been so indifferent to his own wife while she was alive, was so solicitous of his wife’s elderly cousin now. Guilt, maybe? Her father’s lack of interest in his family had always hurt Eva. She was glad their relationship was steadier now. Of course, with Kate and Leona far away and their mother dead, who did Jack Haines have to neglect anymore? Just her. And, these days, he tended to lean on her instead. She didn’t mind.
Dependable Eva.
Andy accompanied her to the water’s edge. Normally, when the tide was out, as it was now, Eva would have gone to the pools on the other side of the island, a place mysteriously known as The Baths when she was a child. The pools were in a sort of no-man’s-land between the Bonhomme and Lord properties. After the strange experience of yesterday, plus the feeling she’d had that she was being watched, Eva didn’t want to walk through the tangle of dark woods between the house and The Baths.
Silly, she knew. As a result, she had to wade a considerable distance over rocks and barnacles before the water was deep enough to swim. Then she forgot all about Andy and his mysterious friends, putting in, first, her usual swim between the shore and Angler’s Rock, a large outcrop that marked the entrance to Doris’s little harbor even at high tide; then she spent a pleasant half hour climbing around, looking for the Coast Salish petroglyphs she remembered from long-ago outings. One day, before the summer was over, she intended to bring paper and charcoal and take rubbings of the figures, which were old, possibly ancient images pecked into the surface of the rock by Indians who’d inhabited the area.
Andy cropped the short grass just up from the beach as Eva swam in. She raked back her streaming hair as she emerged and, peering through the clear, green water to avoid stumbling, navigated carefully over the kelp stones and mussel-encrusted rock on the bottom of the small bay. There were very few sandy beaches in the Gulf Islands.
When she looked up, the visitors were back, regarding her from the top of a large boulder at the tide line, fifty feet from the old wharf. The little girl—or was it a boy?—had on blue shorts today and a red-and-white striped T-shirt. No shoes, as yesterday. The sudden appearance of the pair surprised Eva, but at the same time she felt huge relief.
So she wasn’t losing her mind. And the child obviously had someone taking care of her, providing clean clothes. The family must be camped on the other side of the island….
“Hello!” Eva called and waved. There was no response. She veered toward the boulder, still stepping carefully. He—or was it a she—couldn’t be more than four or five years old.
The big black dog bounded toward Eva then stopped stiff-legged and barked. It wasn’t a friendly bark, either. Andy butted his head comically against her left hip, nibbling at her swimsuit, seeking the treats she usually had for him. For once, Eva wasn’t amused.
“Hey!” she called again, waving her hand and smiling. “Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you.”
The child raised one hand in a hesitant response to Eva’s gesture and then slipped off the rock. Eva stumbled forward, cursing the pebbles that hurt her feet and slowed her progress. Where were they—behind the boulder? Across the creek? Into the woods on the other side?
If not, they’d vanished into thin air again!
Eva didn’t know what to do. This was just too strange. Who was this little kid, out yesterday and today just—just wandering! Where was the mother? The father?
She needed to get dressed quickly and do some exploring. Find out, once and for all, where these people were camped and why no one was keeping an eye on this child.
EVA USUALLY RINSED OFF in the small, cramped bathroom off the kitchen, the only one in the house. Doris’s bedroom had been downstairs, too, a more convenient arrangement for an elderly woman. Today, though, Eva just grabbed a towel from the bathroom cupboard and hurried up the stairs to her small bedroom under the eaves.
She stripped out of her bathing suit and toweled off, glancing out the small, paned window toward the sea. The rough, line-dried cotton almost hurt her skin. Andy had followed her and was grazing on the sparse grasses that grew between the house and the beach. No sign of the other two, though…
Eva’s heart was racing. Ordinarily, she was a person who very much minded her own business. Live and let live, was her guiding principle. It had helped her survive a difficult family, demanding employers and several classes full of fractious six- and seven-year-olds.
Doris Bonhomme owned half of this island. As her agent, in effect, Eva had a duty to make sure that everything was all right, and that included checking up on any small visitors who might be lost or need her assistance.
Even if she hadn’t been standing in for Doris, she would have wanted to get to the bottom of this.
Eva pulled on a pair of khaki shorts and a long-sleeved T-shirt and grabbed a tube of sunscreen from the top of the small antique dresser. She had sneakers by the kitchen door.
She paused before she left the room, catching a glimpse of herself in the spidery, ghosted mirror over the dresser—face hot, eyes bright, wet hair hanging in dark, thick ropes. She was actually going to the other side of the island….
The forbidden side.
Eva ran down the steeply pitched stairs in her bare feet.
“Hi.”
The child—a little girl—was in her kitchen!
CHAPTER THREE
EVA WAS SO SURPRISED she didn’t even notice that the sunscreen had slipped out of her hand and bounced down the last two steps onto the floor. The dog, who’d accompanied the girl into the house and parked himself at the door, growled menacingly.
“Oh, don’t mind him. He’s just my silly old dog. He’s Bruno,” the girl said airily, favoring Eva with a casual wave of her small hand. “He’s ’bout as scary as a fruit fly, that’s what Auntie Aggie says. Who’re you? Are you the old lady? You’re old but you don’t look that old—”
“I-I’m Eva,” Eva said, bending down to pick up the sunscreen. The dog, apparently a Newfoundland, now that she saw him up close, rumbled again and Eva gave him a hard look. He flopped onto the floor, stretched his massive black head over his paws and sighed. “What’s your name?”
“Fanny. Do you live here?” Fanny gazed admiringly around the kitchen, although Eva couldn’t see what there was to admire. “I thought somebody named Doris lived here. She’s the old lady, I guess. That’s a nice mirror.” She pointed to the spidery, cracked, unframed mirror over the dry sink. “I always wanted to go in this house but I’m not allowed.” She leaned toward Eva and covered her small mouth with her hand for a few seconds, then whispered loudly, “I’m not sup-posed-ta be here so don’t tell anybody, okay?” She frowned at her dog, too, but the Newfoundland ignored them both.
“Would you like some lemonade?” The girl and her dog were her first visitors.
“Got any pop?” The girl looked hopeful. Her skin was a pale mocha, not from the sun. She was obviously of mixed racial heritage—Caucasian? Caribbean? Hawaiian?—fine-boned and fragile-looking, but judging from the way she talked, probably older than she seemed. Her eyes were big and honey-brown, her hair a riot of ringlets and curls. “I like pop!”
“Sorry,” Eva said, opening the refrigerator. “Just lemonade.” She reached for the pitcher, then realized the girl had moved deftly under her arm and was standing in front of her, gazing at the refrigerator’s contents.
“Too bad,” the child said, glancing up. “I like lemonade, all right, but I really like pop and I’m not allowed to have any. It’s nice in here! I like fridges. What’s that? Is that wine? My dad likes wine.”
She pointed to a large green bottle of Perrier.
So does my dad, Eva thought. “No, it’s water. Fizzy water. Do you want some with your lemonade?”
The girl considered, one finger on her lower lip. “Sure!” she said, brightly, then added, “I mean, yes, please!”
Eva poured two glasses, three-quarters lemonade, the rest Perrier, leaving the refrigerator door open. Who’d have dreamed the contents of an ordinary fridge could be so entertaining? Then she returned the bottle and pitcher to the fridge, shut the door and handed the child a glass.
“Cheers!” Fanny held up her drink, then laughed. It was a magical sound, sheer delight, and Eva couldn’t help responding with a smile of her own. “Now we can be friends! People friends,” the child added mysteriously. She sniffed at her drink cautiously and wrinkled her nose before taking a sip.
“To people friends.” Eva clinked her glass gently against the child’s. She supposed that was in contrast to dog friends. “Are you visiting the island with your family?”
“Oh, no. I live here.” The girl gestured with one hand. “It’s really my island. Mine and my dad’s. You’re the one who’s the visitor, right, Bruno?” The dog opened one eye briefly and shut it again.
“You live here?” Eva stared. “Where?” If the child was staying on this island, if her parents were squatters or summer campers, that might account for the feeling Eva’d had of being watched for the past week. This child, who seemed to pop up out of nowhere, had probably been observing her from various hiding places. Or her parents or caregivers had. Eva felt a shiver trickle down her spine.
“Over there,” Fanny said, waving vaguely in the direction of the creek. She marched to the cabinet beneath the mirror and wrenched open a drawer. “Boy, it’s fun talking to you! Is that your lipstick?” She smiled and held up a tube, then pulled the top off. “Auntie Aggie has lipstick but she never puts it on unless she’s going to the store or the doctor or something. Can I put some on?”
Before Eva could stop her, the girl had drawn a big red arc across her mouth. “That’s not my lipstick, it belongs to the old lady who owns this house. But,” Eva finished lamely, “I guess she wouldn’t mind if you tried it out.” The drawer still held an assortment of Doris’s cosmetics, brooches and hairpins, most destined for the trash when Eva got around to cleaning it out. Anything of a personal nature that Doris wanted had already been taken to her new home at Seaview Lodge.
“Lift me up.” Fanny held her arms out to Eva. “I want to see how I look.”
Eva obliged, feeling the thin warmth, the litheness of the squirming child in her arms as she held her up to the mirror. A small brown face gazed back at them both, the small, pursed mouth ribaldly framed in what Eva had always thought of as an old lady color—not orange, not red, not coral. Something useful that “went” with everything.
“Oh! It’s funny!” Fanny laughed and drew the back of her hand across her lips, smearing the lipstick. Eva laughed and briefly hugged her tight before putting her down.
Whoever this child was, wherever she’d come from, Eva was utterly charmed.
“I suppose you’ve got jewels and beads and earrings and all kinds of pretty things. Maybe you could let me play with them some—hey, is this your piano?” Fanny had headed into the small parlor. “We have a piano. Dad’s teaching me to play.” She sat on the wobbly stool and plunked out “Old Macdonald Had a Farm.” Eva clapped and the girl’s eyes shone.
“Let’s go into your yard now,” Fanny suggested. “We could have a picnic for the birds with stuff out of your fridge.”
“Hold on.” Eva decided it was time to get some answers. Someone would—should—be looking for Fanny soon. “Do you live with your mom and dad?”
“Just my dad,” the girl said, shooting a look Eva’s way as she examined the covers on several magazines piled on the sofa. “And Auntie Aggie and Uncle Matthew and Bruno and the squirrels and George the big black bird that lives in our tree and—”
“Are you camping? Do you live in a tent or a boat?”
“A boat?” She giggled. “We have a big house and I have my own room and a playhouse in a tree and everything.” Fanny frowned at Eva as though she was particularly dense. “I told you, this is my island. Mine and my dad’s.”
“But where is everyone? Who’s looking after you now?”
“Bruno.” Fanny was obviously surprised by the question. “I’m not supposed to go anywhere without Bruno. He’s my good old dog, aren’t you, Bruny?” The Newfoundland had accompanied her to the parlor; he glanced adoringly at the girl as she patted his broad head. “And Auntie Aggie looks after me, too. She looked after my dad when he was little. And sometimes Uncle Matthew and my dad look after me, too, but my dad works a lot and I’m not supposed to ’sturb him—”
The sudden sound of a mechanical doorbell clanging, a horrible rusted sound that blended with a loud series of barks from Bruno, made Eva jump. Doorbell? She didn’t even know there was one.
“Yikes!” The child’s eyes were huge. “I bet that’s Uncle Matthew.” She tore through the French doors that stood open to the back garden. Her dog bounded after her.
“Anybody here?” An angry male voice preceded another insistent buzz, followed by the hammering of fists on the door. “Open up!”
Fanny—
Eva ran to the door, putting her hand on the knob just as it burst open.
“You see a little girl around here?” A man stood in the doorway. His eyes, blue-green as the sea, blazed into hers.
“Yes! I mean—no!” Eva swallowed. She hadn’t heard the entire story from Fanny yet. She didn’t have a good feeling about any of this. If this was the uncle who was in charge, why did he allow the child to wander—
“Which is it?” His eyes darted around the kitchen and he took a step forward. Eva grabbed his arm and he stared down at her. “Yes or no?”
“I haven’t invited you in, sir,” she managed to say through clenched teeth. His arm was rock hard. He was tall and strong and looked to be in his mid-thirties, handsome in a careless way, with several days’ growth on his face and unruly sunbleached brown hair. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”
He shook off her hand. “Where’s Fanny?”
“She’s not here,” Eva burst out, truthfully, adding, not so truthfully, “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
Then she yelped as he pushed past her and strode into the parlor. Outraged, Eva was right on his heels, relieved to glance out into the sunny overgrown garden behind the house and see neither girl nor dog.
“I swear I heard the damn dog bark,” the man muttered, almost to himself. He stepped to the open French doors. “Fanny! Where are you?”
Eva held her breath. There was no answer. She didn’t think there would be.
Without a backward glance, the man stepped into the yard and purposefully set off toward the tumbledown fence that surrounded the yard and garden, Doris’s pitiful attempt to keep out rabbits and other marauders. “Fanny!” He vaulted the fence and continued toward the creek.
Eva was torn. On the one hand, if this was Fanny’s Uncle Matthew, everything must be okay. He was just searching for the child, who had obviously strayed without telling anyone where she was going. Eva couldn’t blame him for being a little angry.
On the other hand, she didn’t like his attitude, charging into her house the way he had….
Making up her mind, she ran after him. He had several minutes’ head start and she saw him break into a lope thirty yards beyond the fence and veer toward one of the shallower creek crossings. He was fit and he clearly knew where he was going. And he had shoes on.
Eva didn’t. Ouch! She stumbled on a rocky patch of ground, wishing she’d taken the time to retrieve her sneakers, which were still standing by the kitchen door. Too late now. If she didn’t hurry she’d lose him—she’d lose them both—and, just in case the little girl needed her, Eva wanted to be on the scene when the man caught up.
If he did.
Secretly, Eva was rooting one hundred per cent for Fanny and the Newfoundland dog….
BY THE TIME Eva crossed the creek, stepping from rocks at the Bonhomme side, onto a slippery half-buried log festooned with algae, then onto several water-polished stones on the Lord side, Fanny’s uncle had disappeared into the woods. She hurried along a faintly visible path etched into the stony soil.
“Excuse me?” she called, realizing how hopelessly ineffective her query was. “Yoo-hoo! Hello?”
All she heard back, faintly, was the sound of the man’s voice calling the girl’s name again, then whistling, presumably for the dog.
Eva was hot and her feet hurt. Why hadn’t she just stayed home? She heard a crash behind her— My God!
She wheeled. Andy appeared at the end of the path behind her, bobbing his head and breaking into a trot as he spotted her. Oh, for goodness sake. Eva’s heart was pounding.
The uncle was chasing Fanny and the dog, she was chasing the uncle and now Doris’s donkey was chasing her!
She let Andy catch up. He nuzzled the pocket of her shorts and she scratched his soft whiskery nose. “No snacks today, Mr. Andy.”
This was ridiculous. She’d turn around and go back to the house and change into some jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, grab a hat, put on some socks and proper shoes. Then she’d thoroughly search the Lord half of the island. She wouldn’t be able to sleep another night on this island not knowing what was going on with the little girl.
Okay. That was a plan. Accompanied by the donkey, Eva began to limp toward the creek again. She’d stepped on a thorn, probably from a rosebush or a blackberry thicket somewhere, blown onto the path. She leaned against a tree and inspected her heel, balancing on one leg. Her foot was so dirty she couldn’t see where the thorn had gone in her foot.
“Hey!”
She turned. The man who’d burst into her kitchen was standing at the bend in the path she’d abandoned. Eva straightened and faced him. “Did you find her?”
“No.” He shrugged, apparently not that worried. “She’s probably home already.”
“Home?”
“She knows these woods better than I do,” he said, ignoring her question. He gave her a cursory glance, from her toes to still-damp hair hanging in ropes. “Something wrong with your foot?”
“Nothing serious,” she said, instinctively rubbing her heel against her leg. “Just a rose briar. I’ll be fine.”
He surveyed her again, his eyes icy. “Shouldn’t run around the woods without shoes on.”
“I didn’t know I’d be leaving so quickly!” She felt a trickle of perspiration inch toward her nose and wiped it with the back of her hand. “What do you mean by bursting into my house like that?”
“I thought Fanny might’ve gone in there alone, to play. You weren’t answering the door—”
“I would have! If you’d had the courtesy to give me a few seconds!”
He shrugged again. “Sorry. Look, can I accompany you back to the house?”
“I’ll be fine. I think you should take better care of that child. Today isn’t the first time I’ve seen her. She can’t be more than five or six. What kind of uncle are you, letting her run around by herself like that? She could get lost or hurt….”
“Uncle?” He frowned. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Aren’t you her uncle Matthew?”
“Uncle Matthew?” He grimaced, an attempt at a smile. “Hell, no! I’m her father.”
CHAPTER FOUR
THUMP!
Agnes Klassen winced as she smacked the lump of pastry with the side of her rolling pin. She didn’t usually treat pie dough like this. “So what’s your daddy going to say when he hears all that?”
The child’s eyes were big and brown. “You going to tell him, Auntie Aggie?”
The housekeeper’s glance slid sideways. “You think I should?” She wasn’t sure what to make of Fanny’s news. The girl had spent the past half hour chattering about her new friend at the other end of the island, the woman Aggie’s husband, Matthew, caretaker of the Lord estate, had mentioned shortly after her arrival ten days ago. Matthew had said the visitor was harmless, just someone using the old woman’s house for a holiday, and Aggie believed him.
Fanny was thrilled about the lipstick she’d tried, the magazines she’d looked at, even the contents of the visitor’s fridge. Poor child! All alone and no playmates her own age. Was it any wonder she was starved for anything new?
Fanny said Silas had come looking for her, but she’d run through the visitor’s back door and away through the forest, managing to get home first. The incident hadn’t been mentioned at dinner the previous evening. Silas, of course, could be extremely absentminded. He had plenty to think about. Besides, he didn’t tell his housekeeper everything, did he?
“I guess so,” the child responded slowly, sticking her thumbs into the pastry Agnes had given her. “’Less I tell him first,” she added quickly, then nodded, as though pleased with her decision. “How ’bout that? Maybe I better, since he was chasing me ’n’ Bruno most of the way home. It was fun!”
With renewed enthusiasm, she began pressing her pastry into the five-inch tart pan Aggie reserved for Fanny’s pies. “I know!” Her face was bright. “I’ll tell him at the party today.”
Aggie rolled out one quarter of the dough in front of her. She was making two pies this morning, one for their evening meal and one for the freezer. Both Silas and Matthew were inordinately fond of blueberry pie. What man wasn’t? Aggie smiled at Fanny. You couldn’t stay mad at the little rascal, she thought. No, you couldn’t. Fanny had her—and Matthew and Silas—twisted around her pinkie finger, always had.
Fanny’s pie was for the party she was having that afternoon, presumably for her father and Bruno and the squirrel Aggie had never seen but knew all about—even that it went by the name of Kelly. A dog and a squirrel! Fanny needed more people in her life, the dear motherless waif.
Also on the menu were raw vegetables and cheese dip, Aggie’s suggestion, and toast and cake and soft drinks, Fanny’s request. Silas didn’t believe in feeding children a lot of sugar, so that would mean carrot cake and cream cheese icing and juice boxes, not pop. Sometimes Aggie wondered where a man like Silas, who’d surely never expected to be a father, got so many definite notions about childrearing.
Actually, now that she thought about it, Aggie was glad Fanny had met the young woman staying in Doris Bonhomme’s old house, although she disapproved of the way it had come about. She didn’t like Fanny and that dog of hers skulking about the island, spying on folks. A five-year-old, no matter how clever for her age, should not be roaming around freely, talking to birds and chipmunks, hair uncombed, not even properly dressed half the time.
But you couldn’t argue with Silas Lord! A more stubborn man had never lived. Aggie ought to know; she’d helped raise him herself, as housekeeper to Silas’s parents many years ago. Of course, in those days, she’d been constantly busy, cooking and cleaning for the Lord household both on Liberty Island and at their home in West Vancouver, as well as raising Ivor, their own boy. Matthew had done the outdoor work, still did although he was pushing seventy now.
They both were. She was sixty-eight and feeling every minute of it some days. She sighed and wiped one cheek with a floury wrist, aware of the aches that had crept up over the past few years. Silas was thirty-two, just a little younger than their Ivor, all grown-up, too, and in an assisted-living home in Gibsons, making his way, such as it was, in the world….
As a boy, young Silas had been as cheeky and charming as his small daughter was today.
“What’s a good time for my party, Auntie?” Fanny stared at the wall clock, pretending to read it, a pencil crayon in one hand and a piece of paper in front of her on the table.
“How about two o’clock?” Aggie suggested. “That way you won’t spoil your supper.”
“The big hand is on the twelve for an ‘o’clock,’ right?” Fanny took a fresh pencil crayon, orange, and drew a large circle on the piece of paper in front of her. The child didn’t really know how to tell time, but she understood about the big hand and the small hand. Aggie had watched Silas coach her patiently, right there at the big wooden table in the kitchen, going through the A-B-C’s, teaching her to tell time, name the days of the week, tie her own shoes. He’d started music lessons recently on the old out-of-tune player piano in the parlor—Aggie had often heard her plunking out “Old Macdonald” after breakfast—and he’d taught her to swim and play croquet.
“And the little hand is on the?” The housekeeper waited, floury hands held high as she crossed to the sink.
“Two!” Fanny triumphantly held up two fingers, then added a 2 to her drawing, not exactly in the right spot, but close enough.
“And what is that you’re drawing, honey?”
“It’s a ’vitation,” Fanny said earnestly. “You know—that you send out? This gives when. I’m going to draw my little gypsy house for the place. When you have a party, you have to send ’vitations, don’t you?”
“Well, of course you do,” Aggie agreed, rinsing her hands in a basin in the sink. She wondered where a squirrel got mail. Fanny’s “little gypsy house” was the caravan playhouse Silas had built for her under the trees in the old orchard. The girl wanted for nothing money could buy. “Anything else you’ll need?”
“Some wool,” the girl returned promptly. “I need a ball of that nice yellow wool you’re knitting me a sweater with. Can I have some?”
“For decorations?” Aggie reached for a kitchen towel, mystified, doubly so as she observed Fanny’s sudden self-conscious, rather evasive expression.
“Well…” The girl nibbled on the end of the pencil crayon for a few minutes, examining her drawing. Then she looked up, dark eyes dancing. “Something like that!”
EVA SLEPT amazingly well, considering the events of the previous afternoon, and it was nearly ten when she awoke to the sound of shingles banging on the roof again.
After breakfast, she dragged the cumbersome wooden ladder from the shed to the house and climbed up to drive in a few nails. There was a musty stack of shingles in the shed, of various patterns, as well as other odds and ends. Pieces of lumber, screws and nails in jam tins, wire screening, rusted tools of various kinds. Eva wondered if Doris had done all her own repairs. She was coming to a new appreciation of what it took to live here all alone, as Doris had for so long.
At least the riddle of the child and dog was solved, and Eva could focus on the task ahead of her, tidying up Doris’s affairs. Fanny obviously lived with her father, Silas Lord, at the other end of the island. Simple. There were Lords using the old family place. She should’ve been told. Why hadn’t Doris said anything?
“Uncle” Matthew, Eva’d been informed, was the caretaker; “Auntie” Aggie was his wife, the housekeeper. Fanny’s father hadn’t offered much more than that before he’d turned abruptly, at her repeated refusal of his help, and headed back down the path.
She’d hobbled home and managed to dig the briar out but her heel was still sore. What a strange man. What a strange child! Eva still wasn’t sure she believed Fanny and her family were actually living on Liberty Island year-round. A summer could seem like a very long time to a young child. Spending the summer here alone, probably bored, could account for Fanny’s interest in Doris’s house. Of course, little girls were interested in lipstick and jewelry and dress-up, but the contents of fridges? Old broken mirrors? Magazine covers?
She’d been more than inquisitive, positively nosy. In a way, Eva admired her brashness. Ask and ye shall receive…. A contrast to what Eva remembered of her own childhood. She’d been on the shy side, polite and accommodating—too polite, Doris had always said, teasing both her and her mother, Felicity, so inaptly named, a woman who’d had more than her share of unhappiness in her short life.
Eva finished sorting through the sheet music and other musical paraphernalia in the so-called music room, a glass-enclosed room that looked to the sea on the south and had French doors leading to the patio on the north. Instead of a swim, she decided to go for a run along the beach. She’d be ready for a late lunch when she returned.
Eva ran in shorts, a tank top and sneakers. The pebbly beach, interspersed with grassy areas and patches of sand, was too rough to run in bare feet, even if she hadn’t had a sore heel. The breeze was welcome, light against her overheated face, and as she approached the house on her way back, she slowed to a brisk walk, reaching up to whip off the scarf that held back her hair.
Whew! Looked like another summer scorcher of a day. A shower, a sandwich and then—
What was that? A square of colored paper lay just inside the door of the house. The door was always unlocked; Eva wasn’t even sure there was a lock. What was there to keep out? Just Andy and the rabbits that nibbled Doris’s garden…
Eva stooped to pick up the envelope, and smiled as she turned it over. It was clearly handmade, a little crooked and dripping with glue. From Fanny. Eva opened it and a small loop of yellow wool fell out.
She bent to retrieve it. Inside the envelope was a much creased piece of paper, which Eva unfolded, her smile widening.
There were no words. Just a drawing of a playhouse of some sort, with a table and chairs outside and various kinds of food on the table—a huge cake, drinks with straws. Nothing was in proportion; it was a typical four- or five-year-old’s drawing. A clock face, drawn in orange, showed two o’clock. It was just past one now. There was a patch of glue with telltale yellow wisps caught up in it next to the rendition of a clock face. Eva glanced at the yellow loop on her wrist, the yarn that had fallen out of the envelope. Aha!
Then she turned to gaze toward the creek that separated the Bonhommes’ from the Lords’. A yellow loop waved gently in the breeze, suspended from a bush on the far side of the creek.
While she’d been gone, someone had been very busy….
CHAPTER FIVE
SILAS HAD A STUDIO set in the trees well away from the house in a building that had once been reserved for staff. The Klassens lived with him and Fanny in the main house, a large shingle-sided two-and-a-half-story dwelling, built in a rather grand post-Victorian style nearly one hundred years before by his great-grandfather. The Lords and the Bonhommes, who’d settled at the other end of the island, had been business partners once, lumber barons cutting virgin timber on Vancouver Island at the turn of the century, a time when many family fortunes had been made in British Columbia.
Because there was no electricity on the island and because the studio was some distance from the house, which had a generator for essential electrical needs, Silas created jewelry as it had been created for thousands of years, using hand tools to work the precious metals and a propane-fired forge. At present, he was working on a commission from a Toronto auto parts mogul, a gift for his wife’s fortieth birthday. Six months earlier, Silas had delivered a magnificent diamond-and-opal bracelet to the same man—for his mistress’s birthday.
The current project incorporated tanzanite, a gemstone Silas particularly liked, set into the silver-and-gold neckpiece, bracelet and earrings. Without artificial light, daytime hours were precious and Fanny knew she could only interrupt him in his studio if it was important. This morning when he’d come back from The Baths—no sign of the visitor today—he’d found one of Fanny’s handmade envelopes in the willow basket outside his open studio door.
Silas shook his head. Parties! Was his daughter turning into a social animal like her mother? Fanny seemed to generate an excuse to have a party every couple of days.
Not that he minded. And he always humored her. Silas never forgot that he was the one who’d brought his daughter into these isolated circumstances on Liberty Island nearly three years ago and he’d do anything in his power to make sure she was happy here. Summer was a fine time, when Fanny could be a free spirit, safely wandering the forest and the shore with her dog. Winters were much harder.
Today’s event was most likely because of what had happened yesterday. Fanny hadn’t mentioned the incident at dinner—and neither had he—but he suspected the party was by way of an apology. She knew the old woman’s house was forbidden, whether vacant or occupied. Indeed, that entire end of the island was off-limits; she wasn’t even to cross the creek.
But he could understand that she’d been tempted. The newcomer must have been too much to resist. He didn’t blame Fanny. No other children around. No guests. Silas had no appetite for society, and it had been many months since he’d invited anyone to Liberty Island, other than the Klassens’ son, Ivor. His occasional trips to his studio in Vancouver fulfilled any needs he might’ve had for company, male or female. Nor had he intended to meet the island’s visitor, never mind under such odd circumstances. Busting into her kitchen and tearing through her house, no less! He was a little embarrassed about that.
Hell, he’d been scared. He’d looked everywhere for Fanny, in all her usual places, but she hadn’t been in any of them. Not in her tree house at the bottom of the garden. Not in her playhouse he’d built for her in the old orchard. Or in her room, playing with dolls, or up in the attic, where she’d found trunks of old clothes that had belonged to Silas’s grandmother and often played dress-up, sometimes draping even Bruno with a hat or scarf.
Silas had hoped the visitor would simply leave and that would be that. He admitted to some curiosity—why hadn’t she come wandering to the eastern side of the island before this? Why had she kept—as far as he could tell—so carefully to the Bonhomme property, except for that excursion to The Baths? He’d only seen her there once and the bathing pools, admittedly, had always been a sort of neutral territory. Still, how could she know that?
Silas glanced at the old-fashioned Rolex he wore. He’d freed himself from many of his big-city habits, including locking doors, which made no sense on Liberty Island, but he’d never been comfortable without the Rolex, which he’d worn ever since his grandfather, Hector Lord, had given it to him a few months before the old man had died.
Silas didn’t miss much of his previous life. The days of catching an afternoon flight to Paris for the weekend, or disappearing to Mexico at a moment’s notice to share a workbench with the silver masters in Taxco for a few months, or flying to Amsterdam twice a year to buy the rough diamonds he used in his work, then whisking off to Singapore to have them faceted and ground. Now that he’d begun living on Liberty Island again, he didn’t miss the once essential Palm Pilot, but the Rolex, one of the few personal mementos he had of a scattered family, stayed on his wrist.
Silas remembered clearly the day the old man had given it to him. He’d arrived home from university to announce he’d dropped out of business school and was going to Milan to study art. His parents had been furious—as Silas had expected—but the old man had beckoned him into a back room, where he’d taken off the watch and handed it to him with a chuckle. “Here, my boy. It belongs to you.” No further explanations.
Hector Lord had been dead for nearly fourteen years.
Almost two o’clock…
Idly, Silas wound the watch as he strode toward the orchard. When Fanny had begun staging her little events earlier that summer, he’d sometimes offered to help carry her supplies to wherever she was holding the party. Her playhouse. The promontory where they had picnics. Or, most difficult for him, her tree house behind his studio. He couldn’t climb up there as easily as he’d done when the tree house had belonged to him and Ivor. Fanny was always deeply offended at his suggestion, as only Fanny could be, insisting she could—and would—do everything herself. She was independent, all right. Sociable and sassy. Loving.
She was everything in the world to him, the center of his life.
When he arrived, five minutes early, she was setting out cups and plates on a table in front of the playhouse, which he’d designed and then had built and painted, with Matthew’s help, to resemble a miniature gypsy caravan. Everything was built on a three-fifths scale, perfect for a child.
“Hi, Dad!” Fanny had a temper but she couldn’t hold a grudge for very long. It was another of her characteristics he adored. She certainly didn’t get it from his side of the family. No matter what had come between them—and they had plenty of disagreements—her sunny spirits would bubble over and she’d forget her outrage in a minute.
“What’s the occasion?” He took one of the solid and squarely built little wooden chairs ranged around the small blue-painted table and sat down. “Kelly’s birthday?”
She gave him an arch look and continued setting out cups and plates, places for six, he observed. “It’s a surprise, Daddy. I can’t tell you,” she said, then continued a little worriedly, “I don’t know when Kelly was actually borned so I don’t know when to have a party for him.”
Silas’s personal theory was that the little gray squirrel Fanny was so fond of was already a generation or two past the original “Kelly.” How long did squirrels live? “Born, honey, not borned,” he automatically corrected.
“Born,” she repeated under her breath, counting out the cutlery. Silas watched as she went to the nearby doll carriage and pulled out a Tupperware container. “You can take the lid off this, please.”
Silas pried the top off. “Mmm, cake.”
Fanny nodded, looking pleased. “With icing. Auntie Aggie made it. What time is it now, Daddy?”
Silas checked his watch. “Five past two.”
“No, ’xactly. What time is it ’xactly?”
“Okay.” He studied his watch again. “It’s six and a half minutes past two.”
Fanny nodded, her face sober. She sighed, then put the cake in the middle of the table and went back to the doll carriage and pulled out more Tupperware containers. Vegetable strips. Some kind of nutritious-looking dip—trust Aggie. What would he have done these past few years without her and Matthew? Juice boxes. A plastic jug of water alive with ice cubes—
“Now what time is it, Daddy?”
“Ten past. Shall we get started?” Silas glanced at the five other places set at the table. “Is Auntie Aggie coming?”
“No. She said she’s too busy. This one’s for Bruno—” Fanny touched one plate, part of an unbreakable set she kept in the caravan. “And this one’s for Kelly, ’cept I’m not sure he’s coming.” Silas hadn’t heard the squirrel. Kelly rarely “visited” but, when he did, he made his presence known by his loud chirruping from the huge Orenco apple tree behind the playhouse.
“Matthew’s gone over to Half Moon Bay, if you’re expecting him,” Silas told her. “He won’t be back until just before dinner.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Auntie Aggie told me that already so I didn’t make him a ’vitation. What time is it now—hey!”
There was a distinct clip-clop on the packed earth of the path that led toward the wharf. The donkey! Of course.
Silas turned to see the grizzled old beast clatter into view, head bobbing. He’d been a fixture on their side of the island, off and on, for months. Harmless enough, from what Silas had seen. Probably lonely, too, although Silas knew someone had made arrangements for weekly hay drop-offs in the spring. Bruno sat up, ears perked, eyes interested.
This was the “surprise”?
“Andy!” Fanny cried out. The animal had a name? How did Fanny know—“—and Eva!”
“Am I late?” The woman who’d moved into the Bonhomme house stepped from the wooded path into the clearing. She was dressed in jean shorts and a pink T-shirt and had her dark hair tied back in a ponytail. Her left arm, oddly, was festooned with what seemed to be loops of yellow yarn. Eva. Silas stood automatically, as he’d been taught to do when a member of the opposite sex entered the room—he supposed this arrangement under the apple tree qualified as a room.
Fanny clapped her hands in delight. “Surprise!” she crowed. “Surprise! Surprise!” Silas heard the squirrel start to chatter in the tree overhead. So Kelly had joined them, after all….
The afternoon, which had promised to be just another hot, somewhat boring July afternoon, had suddenly become interesting.
EVA’S FIRST THOUGHT—that Fanny’s father might have had something to do with the party invitation—evaporated when she saw his expression, as dismayed, she was sure, as her own. He hid his surprise instantly and stepped forward, hand extended. “We weren’t properly introduced yesterday. Maybe we should start again. I’m Silas Lord.” He nodded. “Welcome.”
“Eva Haines.” She shook his hand briefly, aware of the heat of his skin, the hard, dry strength of his fingers….
At his reference to their previous encounter, the way he’d practically thrown her to the side as she grabbed his arm to prevent him from barging into her kitchen, her lips thinned, and she answered him coolly. “I’m sorry I’m late.”
“You’re limping,” he said bluntly, leading her toward the small table.
“Yes.” She didn’t elaborate. The briar she’d removed must have left something behind, because her heel had begun to throb that morning. She’d stuck on a Band-Aid after her run and had worn thick socks with her sneakers.
“It’s a party!” Fanny, at least, was delighted to see her. “This is my dad, I guess you know that—” Silas nodded again “—and this is my playhouse he builded for me and this is Bruno, well, you know him!” She waved toward the branches overhead. “And that’s Kelly up there, he’s my squirrel.”
Eva dutifully peered up but didn’t spot the source of the scolding. She waved and called softly, “Hi, Kelly!” then felt rather silly, knowing Silas Lord was watching. Her initial impulse had been to enter into the child’s game, her play “world,” just as she’d have done with one of her students at school.
When she turned, Fanny’s father was indeed watching her.
He gestured toward a small chair opposite his, and Eva approached. “Are you in the habit of talking to squirrels? And what, if I might enquire, is that unusual bracelet you’re wearing? It’s very attractive. Did my daughter make it for you?”
“Dad!” Fanny giggled.
Eva lifted the loops from her wrist and set them on the table. “You could say that. I found my way here by following the yarn Fanny left on the bushes. That was very clever of her.”
Fanny beamed. “I wanted you to draw me a map, Dad, but then it wouldn’t be a surprise.”
Silas met Eva’s eyes. “I’m guessing you got an invitation, just as I did.”
“Yes.”
“And you followed the clues. Kind of like Hansel and Gretel.”
Eva laughed. “Exactly. Except the birds didn’t eat up all the clues, like they ate the crumbs—”
“I know that story!” Fanny interrupted, coming to the table and looking important as she picked ice cubes out of the beverage container with her fingers and put one in each of the three plastic glasses in front of her. “Dad reads that story to me.”
“No birds to eat up all the crumbs,” Silas said in a low voice, his eyes on Eva’s, “and no big bad witch at the end of the trail, either.”
Eva hesitated for a split second, then shook her head. “No.” Fanny’s father seemed very different today from the man she’d met yesterday. Then he’d been brusque and determined, angry and arrogant, with the exception of those few minutes on the trail when he’d returned, almost as an afterthought, to offer to escort her back to Doris’s house. Was that to make sure she left the property? This afternoon he seemed deliberately friendly, even jovial.
“Except Auntie Aggie, of course,” he teased, with a glance at his daughter. The half smile transformed his face, changing it from grim and rather formidable to handsome, even boyish. Which was the real Silas Lord?
“Dad!” Fanny shouted. “Don’t say that! Auntie Aggie’s not a big, bad witch. Here, have some.” She pushed a glass toward her father.
Silas took a sip. “Mmm,” he said, with a smile at his daughter over the rim. “Champagne! I suppose that’s in honor of our visitor.”
“It’s not champagne, Dad,” Fanny said seriously. “It’s fizzy water and lemonade, just like I had at Eva’s.”
“Aha!” Silas put his glass down firmly. “So you were in the house, you little rascal!”
CHAPTER SIX
“YEP!” Fanny laughed. “Eva gave me a drink, only she didn’t have any pop in her fridge, just like us. And me ’n’ Bruno ran out of there when we heard you coming. Ha!”
Fanny gave her father a triumphant look. “And we beated you home, Dad!”
“Beat, honey,” Silas corrected, his eyes locked on Eva’s astonished gaze. “Not beated. And I think you should call our guest Miss Haines, don’t you, Fanny? It is Miss, I presume,” he continued smoothly.
“I’m not married,” Eva blurted out, about to take a sip of the lemonade. She was astonished at the rapid interchange between father and daughter, then the sudden switch to her. She was beginning to feel like Alice at the Mad Hatter’s picnic. “Miss is rather old-fashioned, isn’t it? And, of course, Fanny, I want you to call me Eva. It’s my name.”
“And what does Ms. Haines do when she’s not visiting Liberty Island?”
“I’m a teacher.” Why was she answering this man’s nosy questions so willingly?
“A teacher?” Fanny’s father sounded genuinely interested. He studied her across the blue table and reached for his glass again. Fanny was busy serving pieces of cake on small plates. “High school?”
“No, elementary. I had grade one and two classes last year.”
“Substitute?”
“Yes. I’m applying for several full-time positions for this fall, though.”
“How is it you’ve come to Liberty Island? Are you related to Doris Bonhomme?”
Eva stared at him, her lips pressed firmly together. She felt her cheeks warm under his steady gaze.
“I wish I could go to school,” Fanny said sadly. She licked icing from her fingers.
“Oh, you’ll be in school soon enough,” Eva said, glad to change the subject. “How old are you, Fanny?”
“Five-goin’-on-six,” she responded, holding up one hand, fingers spread. That had been Eva’s estimate, although the child was small for her age.
“You’ve just turned five, Fanny,” her father said quietly and his daughter frowned. “That’s hardly almost six.”
“Well, I suppose you’re going into kindergarten, then,” Eva said hastily, aware that the subject of school seemed to have cast a pall on their little party for some reason.
“Nope.” Fanny shook her head and sighed. “Kids in books go to school.” Eva thought that was a strange comment but Silas immediately stood up and stepped away from the table.
“Would you like to see Fanny’s playhouse? We can eat our cake and vegetables later. You’ll have to bend over, I’m afraid, as it’s not designed for grown-ups.”
The awkward conversation was successfully derailed and Eva followed Fanny to the Dutch doors of the playhouse, which looked very gypsyish, even to the point of having wooden wheels, nonfunctional, she assumed. Silas didn’t accompany them, which was a good thing, Eva realized, once she was inside. The small structure consisted of one rectangular room with two small upholstered chairs, a brick-look plywood false fireplace complete with painted flames and braided hearth rug, miniature rose-sprigged curtain-hung cupboards and a child-size bed, covered with a quilt and tucked into a nook in the wall. There was even a tiny wrought-iron shelf above the bed, with half a dozen books. Bent over as she was, Eva managed a quick glance at the titles: several worn Curious George stories, Goodnight, Moon, two tiny Beatrix Potter volumes, including Eva’s personal favorite, The Tale of Two Bad Mice, and a well-thumbed older edition of Mother Goose nursery rhymes.
This place was a child’s dream come true!
When she emerged from the caravan, she stumbled as she put her weight on her sore foot, and Silas came forward quickly and grabbed her arm.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.” Eva felt embarrassed. “I don’t think I got all the rose briar out of my heel last night.”
“What have you got on it?”
“A Band-Aid.”
He sent her a derisory look and offered the cake plate. Eva took a piece and bit into it. Carrot cake with cream cheese icing. Delicious. “Did you make this, Fanny?”
“You’re funny!” Fanny laughed. “Isn’t she, Daddy?”
“I wouldn’t say funny, exactly,” Silas said slowly, choosing a carrot stick from the vegetable tray. “More like interesting or mysterious or maybe crazy for not looking after that infected foot.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Eva said. “Fanny,” she went on briskly, “watch out for Andy. Behind you. Would you like to give him some carrots before he invites himself?”
The donkey was leaning over the table. He’d discovered the open Tupperware container with the vegetables and had already knocked over a glass.
After the cake, Eva thought she could politely leave but when she stood, the pain from her foot shot up her leg and she grimaced, shifting her weight onto her right leg.
“That settles it,” Silas said. “Come up to the house. I’ll put some antibiotic cream on that.”
Eva hesitated.
Was she being foolish? If Doris had a first aid kit, Eva had no idea where to find it. Maybe some antibiotic cream was a good idea. “Well, all right. I appreciate your concern. If you really think it’s necessary.”
“I do,” he said.
Ten minutes later, Eva sat in the large, dim, old-fashioned but well-equipped kitchen and looked around. She felt rather self-conscious sitting there all by herself with her bare foot in a basin of steaming water. Silas had drawn the water, put a handful of salt in it and then disappeared down the hall. A clock on the wall ticked softly. The counters, a mid-century speckled grey Arborite pattern, were spotless and the porcelain-and-brass pump handle by the huge stainless steel sink gleamed. The kitchen was shipshape.
A door slammed somewhere and a few seconds later, Fanny and Bruno entered the room. “Is my dad fixing your foot yet?”
Eva bobbed her foot in the water. “I guess so.” She wished now that she hadn’t let Silas talk her into coming inside the house. An infected splinter was hardly a life-threatening injury.
“Is the water real hot?”
“Yes.” Eva smiled and lifted her foot, which was quite pink already. She wiggled her toes. Where was Silas with the first aid cream he’d promised?
“Did you like my party?”
Eva nodded. “It was lovely. Thank you for inviting me—”
“I made the ’vitations myself,” Fanny interrupted. Her eyes glowed.
“You did a beautiful job.”
“I did, didn’t I?” she agreed.
“Oh, my goodness! No one told me you were here.” An older woman, obviously the housekeeper, came in through a side door. “You must be the young lady staying in the house on the other side.”
Eva extended her hand awkwardly. “I’m Eva Haines. Doris is a cousin of my mother’s.”
“I see. So she’s your second cousin then?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Agnes Klassen.” Mrs. Klassen put a knitting bag on the table and bustled toward the stove. She glanced at the hall and lowered her voice. “How is she, by the way?”
“Doris?”
The housekeeper nodded. “I don’t know her well, of course, just to say hello if I saw her shopping or whatnot on the mainland, but I do know she had a bad spell earlier this spring.”
“She broke her hip but she’s doing quite well now. She’s in a nursing home in Sechelt. Seaview Lodge.”
“Is she? I’m glad to hear it,” the older woman said hastily, then glanced again at the doorway to the hall. “You’ll have a cup of tea?” she continued in a normal tone.
“Oh, no, thank you,” Eva said. “I’m just on my way—” She looked helplessly at her foot, immersed in the rapidly cooling water. “I’m just—”
“She’s got a sore foot, Auntie Aggie,” Fanny explained. “My dad’s gonna fix it up.”
“Silas should have told me you were here. Honestly!” The elderly housekeeper settled into a rocking chair by the window with her knitting. She took out a small piece, yellow, with blue ducks knitted into the yoke of what looked very much like the back of a child’s cardigan. The color was suspiciously familiar.
The clack-clack of the knitting needles filled the silence for a long minute. Eva desperately wished again that she’d just gone home. “Are you here for the summer?” she asked, casting about for something—anything—to say.
The housekeeper raised her head abruptly. “No, we’ve been here, me and my husband, for nearly three years now.” She sighed. “This latest time, anyway. I worked for Silas’s parents before, too, you know. Here and at their place in West Vancouver. That would be some years ago, of course.”
“I see.” So Fanny and her father—and the Klassens—really were living on the island year-round. What did one do here in the winter? “It must be lonely.”
“Sometimes.” Mrs. Klassen shook out a strand of yarn from her work bag. “Oh, but there’s always something to do and I go over to the mainland regular to visit our son—goodness, child, what are you after now?”
Fanny had opened the refrigerator door and was inspecting the contents. “I wish we had some of that fizzy water like Eva has in her fridge. Or pop.”
“So you’ve had a look in our guest’s fridge, have you, you nosy little dickens, you?” the housekeeper asked with a cheerful smile. “Come here, honey, I want to measure this on you again.”
The girl went obediently to the window, carrying a juice box, and stood quietly while Mrs. Klassen fussed with the garment, pulling and pushing until it fit, in a manner of speaking, on the child’s back, over her T-shirt.
“There! Thank you, dear.” The housekeeper flopped the piece she was working back to front and began on a purl row. It had been years since Eva had knit anything. Her mother had taught her. She’d knit a pair of slippers for Girl Guides, once. And a scarf as a Christmas gift for her sister Kate.
The Newfoundland’s sudden focus on the hall entrance alerted Eva to Silas’s return. He carried a towel and a handful of first aid supplies, including the tube of ointment he’d gone for.
“How’s the foot?”
“It’s fine, really. I feel rather foolish going through all this just for a sliver….”
“You can’t be too careful. We’re on an island here with no doctors, no nurses, no medical help of any kind. It’s best to avoid emergencies.”
“This isn’t an emergency,” Eva insisted.
“No. But if your foot had become badly infected, it could be. Would you have come to us for help?” His eyes, a stormy-sea-color, not blue, not green, were intent on her.
“My cousin managed,” Eva grumbled, realizing she was being difficult and not exactly sure why.
“Did she?” Silas’s look was challenging as he hunkered down in front of her and held out the towel. Obediently she raised her foot and he dried it gently.
“Yes. She was airlifted off, you know. She was a very resourceful woman. She used her cell phone to call for help.”
“Did she?” Silas repeated, not meeting her eyes. “So you’re related to Doris Bonhomme—”
“I’m her second cousin.”
“Sounds like you admire her.”
“I do,” Eva retorted hotly, realizing she’d just answered the questions Silas had posed in the orchard. “I’ve always admired her independence. I think she’s a wonderful woman.”
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Judith Bowen
A man with a wild child. A secret child…When Eva Haines first comes to remote (and supposedly deserted) Liberty Island, she has the uncanny feeling that someone's watching her–and she's right. A small wild-looking child with a huge black dog has been following her around. Eva, who's spending a few weeks on the island to deal with an elderly relative's estate, is puzzled. Who is this little girl? Where did she come from?Eva finds out soon enough. Fanny is the daughter of the reclusive Silas Lord. But once she learns this, Eva only has more questions. Why are Silas and his daughter hiding out on Liberty Island? What secret is Silas keeping about this child he obviously adores? And why is Eva falling in love with such a mysterious man?
“Hey!” she called to the child and the big black dog.
Eva waved her hand, smiling. “Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you.”
The child raised one hand in a hesitant response to Eva’s gesture and then slipped off the boulder. Eva stumbled forward, cursing the pebbles that hurt her feet and slowed her progress. Where were they—behind the boulder? Across the creek? Into the woods on the other side?
If not, they’d vanished into thin air again!
Eva didn’t know what to do. This was just too strange. Who was this little kid, out yesterday and today just—just wandering! Where was the mother? The father?
“Oh, how I love Judith Bowen’s stories! Such gutsy heroines and such lovable men! You can’t put the books down and you remember them with a fond, tender feeling. Now, that’s romance!”
—Bestselling author Anna Jacobs
Dear Reader,
The Sunshine Coast of British Columbia is a special place for me. My husband and I met there while I was working for the Sechelt Press and he was working for the Coast News. True love—over a village council meeting!
Liberty Island is fictitious, of course, but most of the other places and islands mentioned in The Wild Child are not. If you take a ferry from Horseshoe Bay today and get off at Langdale, you can meander up the rugged coast on your way to Earl’s Cove, stopping at Molly’s Lane and visiting the gravesite of the mysterious Danish prince at Roberts Creek. You can even poke your head in at the Half Moon Bay store and buy a loaf of bread made by the lightkeeper’s wife.
Eva and Silas meet on an island peopled by ghosts—the legendary but never seen Liberty Island goats, the tangled relationships from the past, living only in dusty love letters and old jewelry now, the remembered games of happy childhood summers spent on the island.
Silas shares his life with his secret daughter now, the wild girl of Liberty Island. Eva knows where her duty lies—but can she betray Silas, the man she’s come to love? I hope you enjoy Eva and Silas’s story. It’s a story very close to my heart.
Judith Bowen
P.S. Write to me at P.O. Box 2333, Point Roberts, WA 98281-2333 or visit me at www.judithbowen.com.
The Wild Child
Judith Bowen
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To fellow BICC Trainsters:
Cherry Adair, Chris Pacheco, Eileen Wilks, Susan Plunkett, Pam Johnson, Lynn Johnson, Ruth Schmidt, Karen Barrett, Myrna Temte and Cheryl Harrington. Thanks, gals! I couldn’t have done it without you.
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER ONE
EVA HAINES hadn’t been on the island a week before she realized she was being watched.
The feeling was unmistakable. Creepy. Eyes on her back, watching her from the forest on the other side of the creek as she scythed the knee-high grass near the house. Or from the wooded area behind the old, overgrown garden as she nailed plywood over broken windows. Or…from somewhere.
The first few days she hadn’t paid much attention. She was too busy getting set up for the summer to worry about weird feelings and imaginings—too busy dusting, cleaning, ferrying over foodstuffs and supplies from Half Moon Bay in the aging fiberglass runabout with its tattered dodger and temperamental Mercury outboard. Besides, she was quite sure she was alone.
The weather had been fine, which had made her frequent trips to the mainland easier, and if there was one thing she’d learned from a childhood spent on or near the water under her sea dog father’s demanding eye, it was how to fiddle with a temperamental outboard. Her unseen companion? Most likely an owl hidden in some monumental cedar tree keeping track of the intruder from the city. Or a vigilant nesting osprey. Or a rabbit. There were no bears on Liberty Island and Eva didn’t believe in ghosts.
Eva was spending part of her summer vacation tidying up affairs for an eccentric distant relation, a cousin of her mother’s, who’d broken her hip in the spring and who, at eighty-six, would not be returning to Liberty Island to live. Be prepared. Eva didn’t want any surprises, so her first task had been to get everything shipshape for the two or three weeks she’d be occupying Doris Bonhomme’s ramshackle house. That meant laying in plenty of oil and wicks for lamps, a spare propane tank for the kitchen range and refrigerator, among other necessities.
She wasn’t bothering with gasoline for the emergency generator, which she didn’t expect to have to use. What constituted an emergency on Liberty Island, where she and her sisters had spent the happiest summers of their childhood? Not being able to get Jeopardy on the ancient rabbit-eared black-and-white Motorola that Doris fired up occasionally to, as she put it, “keep in touch”? Definitely not!
But kerosene and candles were necessary. Jack Haines, who’d spent as much of his life as he could on or near the sea, had taught her well: only fools depend on luck.
Alone? Hey, what was she talking about—she had Andy to keep her company. She smiled, recalling how the ancient donkey had kicked up his heels, baring worn yellow teeth in a joyous hee-haw welcome when she’d first arrived. Then he’d bucked and galloped in an awkward circle just to show her how frisky he still was. Andy had been left to fend for himself when his mistress had been airlifted to the hospital and taken from there to a care home at the insistence of her doctor. Although Doris had reluctantly agreed that she could no longer look after herself in her isolated island home, she insisted that her beloved donkey was too old to uproot.
“I’m not putting that poor dumb creature through what I’ve been through,” she told Eva, during a visit to Saint Mary’s Hospital, shortly after Doris’s accident. “He’s too loyal. He doesn’t deserve such a fate at his time in life. Your dad will know what to do.”
And he had. Jack had arranged for a farmer from a nearby island to check on the animal, dumping off hay weekly, and treats like apples and carrots.
It wasn’t as though either he or Doris would dream of requesting assistance from Doris’s actual neighbor at the other end of Liberty Island. If, indeed, anyone still lived there…
It was so stupid, really. Eva’s gaze strayed to the long thin crescent of land that stretched eastward, curving south, thick dark woods all the way to the rocky headland. The Bonhommes and the Lords hadn’t spoken for fifty years, not since Doris had quarrelled with Hector Lord. What about? No one knew. There’d been a house once, nestled in the trees somewhere. Eva had never actually set foot on the Lords’ side of the island. As a child, she hadn’t dared; as a grown-up, now, she hadn’t gotten around to exploring yet. Her mother, who’d been a girl at the time of the upset, had divulged various details—that the Lord house had been grand, that Hector had been a tall, dark, handsome man, wildly attractive to women, that the family had money, pots of money, as Eva recalled her mother’s expression. Eva and her sisters had always imagined the Lords’ money—pots of it—like pirate booty, gold and jewels spilling out of thick oaken sea chests and massive porcelain Chinese jars.
Doris herself had never spoken of the matter. As far as she was concerned, the island ended where her property did, at the creek, and plunged in a perfectly severed line, as though chopped with an ax, straight into the sea.
Hector Lord was long dead and Eva had no idea who owned that half of the island now. A trust? Heirs? The house had probably fallen into its cellar and grown over with ferns and moss. It wouldn’t take many years to obscure all signs of any habitation in the fecund West Coast climate.
Certainly, there’d been no sign of life in the five days since she’d arrived: no smoke, no lights, no whine of outboards. Eva sighed and headed back to the Edie B. to retrieve the rest of the supplies she’d brought from the mainland that afternoon. How silly of Doris to nurse a grudge for so long. Fifty years!
Speaking of Andy—where was he? The donkey usually met her at the dock when she tied up after a trip to Half Moon Bay but he wasn’t there now.
Eva’s task this summer included finding a new home for the donkey. Most of the old woman’s assortment of worldly goods would be discarded or go to thrift stores, but it was her dearest wish that her property become a marine park eventually, one of a chain that ran north and south through the Gulf Islands of the coast of British Columbia. The Bonhomme half could be signed over to a marine park trust—and that was something else Eva was investigating—but, of course, Doris had no control over the part she didn’t own.
Finding a home for Andy would be a challenge. How long did donkeys live, anyway—forever? This one didn’t look as though he’d suffered spending nearly three months on his own in the company of seals and seagulls and the elusive handful of wild goats that were supposed to live somewhere on the island—that was it!
Eva straightened and put her hands on her hips, blowing a stray lock of hair from her hot face. The half-empty runabout rocked gently, but she adjusted her stance so automatically she didn’t even notice the motion. Why hadn’t she thought of the goats? She gazed inland, past the woods, past the gentle rise where Doris’s house stood, well back from the sea, to Abel’s Peak, the rocky pinnacle that marked the high point on the island a good quarter mile behind the house. The water supply for the house originated up there, in an ancient stone-and-timber dam that funneled spring water to both Doris’s house and, at one time, the residence on the other side of the island.
Of course! It was probably a goat she’d sensed when she’d been so certain someone—or something—was watching her. Like Jedadiah Island nearby, Liberty Island was rumored to be home to long-abandoned goat colonies, which some said went back to the days when the Spaniards cruised the area, Cortes and Valdez and Galiano, mapping the coast for Spain in the 1700s and accidentally losing some of their shipboard livestock in the process.
Eva bent down to heave a carton of tinned goods to the seat of the boat, then supported it against her hip. Balancing carefully, she stepped onto the dock and deposited the box beside the pile she’d already unloaded. No one knew if the story was true. Just as no one knew if the legendary goats were, less romantically, a few escapees from a farm on a neighboring island that had clambered ashore during an especially low tide sometime in the last several decades.
Whatever. Next task—moving everything up to the house. That was a job for the boxy wheelbarrow, equipped with two large bicycle wheels that Eva had found in the woodshed the day she arrived. Doris recycled everything. The homemade cart did an admirable job of transporting freight from the dock. It also handled a decent load of firewood.
Eva began to trundle toward the house. In late afternoon, the building looked dark and rather forlorn under the shadow of the tall cedars and the lofty arbutus trees to the west of the overgrown garden. There were shingles missing from the roof and any paint that had ever existed on the siding had worn off long ago. No need for repairs now, not unless the marine park people wanted to fix it up for a caretaker’s residence, which was highly unlikely.
The crunch of her shoes on the weedy shale and broken rock seemed overloud in the warm not-quite-evening air. There wasn’t a stir of wind. She wished now she’d brought Freddie. Her father had offered his dachshund—“for protection,” he’d said with a wink.
She wasn’t worried about protection; simple companionship was more like it. At least Freddie would bark if anything real was lurking about.
Why hadn’t she remembered the goats earlier, for heaven’s sake? Before she’d gotten herself all worked up over nothing?
THE VISITOR was disturbing. No, not disturbing, more like bothersome. Annoying. A presence on the island that set his teeth on edge when he remembered that not only had she arrived just after mid-month, which was already a week ago, but she seemed to be fixing up the house and settling in. A mere summer visit, he hoped. The briefer, the better.
Only why would anyone in his or her right mind be visiting Liberty Island? Or fixing up the house? The old woman had been airlifted off when he’d found her unconscious and obviously in very bad shape a dozen yards from her back door, her cart overturned and firewood scattered on the rain-soaked ground beside her. He’d stabilized her as well as he could and had called for medical help and, when he was certain it was on its way—he could hear the rotors of the air ambulance—he’d gone inside her house, where he’d found her cellular phone on the windowsill over the sink. He’d tucked it into her limp hand and left.
She’d hate to think she’d needed help, certainly not from him. This way, if she was dazed enough, she might assume she’d had the cell phone in her apron pocket, where she should have kept it at her age, and had actually called for assistance on her own before passing out. Foolish old woman.
That was before Easter. It didn’t appear as though she was coming back, which was just fine by him. He didn’t like company. At least, not company that wasn’t there at his invitation. She was too old and ornery to be here, anyway—a constant worry. How many times had he sent Matthew out to spy on her, make sure she was okay? Had enough firewood? Had tied her boat up properly so it wouldn’t wash away with a coming storm? How often had he told Fanny that, under no circumstances, was she to wander past the creek that separated the properties? Checking up on the old woman wouldn’t have been such a nuisance; it was making sure he and Matthew weren’t seen so they could both—he and his foolish neighbor—maintain the pretence that he wasn’t keeping an eye on her that was wearing.
He didn’t want to look out for her. He was glad she’d stayed away. She was well over eighty; she should’ve left long ago. He didn’t go so far as to wish her dead, just nicely settled into some warm, comfortable nursing home somewhere on the mainland. He imagined her watching afternoon television, cheating at cards, griping about the food, all the while squirreling away crusts of bread and half-eaten apples in her lingerie drawer.
As far as he knew, she had few friends and no close relatives, certainly not young, beautiful ones like this visitor. His first glimpse of her was still seared onto his retinas. At The Baths. No, with any luck, the Bonhomme side of the island would go on the block in the next year or so and he’d be there, ready to scoop it up. He’d always felt that Liberty Island was his, anyway; it was only a matter of opportunity and cold, hard cash.
Now this visitor—this intruder—was on his mind. Was she the new owner? Already? Impossible!
All his life, he’d hunted beauty, wherever it could be found. In the last half dozen years, he created a kind of beauty in gems and precious metals for the select few who appreciated his skill and could pay his price. Chancing upon the visitor when he’d walked to the bathing pools three days ago had been a feeling he ranked among the handful of the most moving experiences he’d ever had. Watching Vivian dance. Seeing Fanny for the first time, a saucy two-year-old. A midwinter blue moon. The otherworldly fire in the center of an uncut ruby….
He’d gone to what they’d always called The Baths, a series of three round hollows carved from the rock by the tides and the action of the sea over millions of years. One of them, the pool farthest from the open water, was where he’d bathed daily, summer and winter, ever since he’d returned almost three years ago. This time, walking along the stony path etched into the lichens, he’d heard a splash. The screech of a raven. A few notes of a song—in a woman’s voice.
He’d paused, cinching his towel tighter around his waist. Then, when he realized that someone was on his island, swimming in his pools, he crept closer. The third pool, the deepest, a basin with stone walls four or five feet above the water even at high tide, was most dangerous. Even though Fanny swam like a fish and never went anywhere without his dog, Bruno, she was forbidden to go near The Baths. Crude steps, hacked out of the rock, led to the water and somebody—some stranger—had obviously found and used them.
Probably a sailor from a passing yacht that had moored in the little V-shaped bay just offshore. He didn’t bother to check, instead strode directly toward the basin. This was posted private property, dammit, no trespassers allowed. Couldn’t people read?
Then he stopped. A mermaid. Wearing nothing but seawater and sunshine. She lay on her back, her hair floating like kelp, hands languorous at her sides, feet moving gently. A raven high in an arbutus tree nearby squawked—it had spotted him.
She didn’t understand what the raven was trying to tell her. As he watched, she stuck her tongue out and waved at the bird. She whistled, splashed with her other hand, then turned and kicked smoothly, gliding forward. Her buttocks were white in the sun, against the still, deep green of the water, her back lightly tanned. He could see the strap marks from a bathing suit.
So she was at least of this world.
He took a deep shaky breath and stepped back, unwilling to show himself. He had no idea then that she was staying at the old woman’s house, that she was, in fact, a real intruder. All he knew was the stab of awareness. Innocence, sensuality, the sinews, shapes and planes of youth, strength, physical perfection. The artist in him was stunned.
God help him, he lingered in the trees like a voyeur until she left the water, climbed to the top of the basin and picked up a towel under the arbutus tree to dry herself. He couldn’t—would never—deny the stirrings of his belly. That, too, was a kind of beauty. And it had been a very long time since he’d been with a woman. But, no, he simply craved more of the primal image before him.
Woman, without shame, alone in this primeval garden.
Then, when she’d laughed and flicked her towel at the raven, which flapped heavily through the trees with hideous cries, he’d slunk away. She hadn’t wanted anyone to see her naked, not even the bird.
It made him feel unclean. So he’d canceled his own daily swim and left, depositing the image in the bank of his memory, an image he knew he would draw on one day….
And that was that. Just serendipity, pure and sweet.
Until two days later, when he discovered she was no passing yachtswoman. She’d actually moved into the Bonhomme house and appeared to have every intention of staying, judging by the number of trips she made to the mainland for provisions.
Which meant she’d become a problem.
CHAPTER TWO
WHERE WAS ANDY?
Eva released the handle of the pump that brought water into the house from the stone cistern and peered out the small square window over the cast-iron pantry sink. The donkey had to be okay. He’d been on his own for months and was hardly going to get into trouble a week after she arrived. She pumped again, filled a pitcher and put the water in the propane-fired refrigerator, along with the eggs, cheese, milk and two bottles of sauvignon blanc she’d bought at the Half Moon Bay Store.
Now, what for supper? Eva opened a tin of cream of mushroom soup and warmed it up on the ancient combination propane-wood range that stood prominently in Doris’s big country kitchen. She was saving the limited supply of propane for the refrigerator, so had kindled a fire in the old range.
How about a grilled cheese sandwich to go with the soup? Why not? She’d had some variation on soup and sandwiches nearly every day so far. Then, just to make a dent in the silence, Eva switched on the transistor radio on top of the refrigerator and rocketed around from cupboard to counter to table, getting out a plate, a spoon, a bowl, half dancing, half walking, until she felt silly and stopped.
A person could go a little silly here. Had Doris gone a bit weird living by herself on Liberty Island? Of course, she wasn’t alone all the time. As a younger woman, Doris had traveled for three or four months every year, usually in the winter. Then there were the many visitors she encouraged. Every summer, Eva’s family had spent several weeks on the island. She remembered her father holding forth in the porch swing, admiring the view, a bottle of rum on the floor and a thick paperback turned over beside it. Or, if the tide was right and he felt like it, he’d be out in Doris’s rowboat, fishing for sand dabs and rockfish.
Eva’s mother, Felicity, gossiped with her older cousins and whoever else happened to be visiting, pulled weeds in Doris’s garden, and, if they came in August, helped her pick blackberries and put up her garden produce.
Eva recalled helping her mother and Doris, or playing with her sisters in the treehouse behind the garden. Was it still there? When there were other cousins around, they’d played house and cowboys, pirates and princesses—
What in the world? Eva stopped at the window over the sink, spoon forgotten in her hand, dripping soup onto the old linoleum floor.
There in the distance, halfway to where the ground began to rise to Abel’s Peak, was a small child and Andy and—and some kind of enormous black dog!
Eva rushed to the door and flung it open. “Andy!”
She caught her breath, wishing she hadn’t shouted, not wanting to frighten the child but…there was no one there. She blinked and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, like a cartoon character.
No child. No dog. Just the old donkey clip-clopping over the rocky ground as he trotted toward the house.
EVA WENT TO BED that night thoroughly rattled. The wind had come up in the evening and she could hear loose shingles banging on the roof. She hoped it wouldn’t rain, and if it did, she hoped the leaks weren’t near her bed. If necessary, she’d move to the other bedroom across the small landing at the top of the stairs.
Eva had always prided herself on being a calm, sensible woman. She had grown up the unflappable one in a chaotic family. Her father, a professor of literature at the University of British Columbia, spent every spare moment on whatever boat he happened to own at the time, ignoring his wife and drinking too much. Felicity Haines, a sad, gentle person, had died of an aneurysm when Eva was twelve, and Eva still missed her desperately. Kate, her oldest sister and very much her father’s daughter, had sailed away on a tall ships adventure when she was eighteen, had settled in Africa and was doing something noble for world peace, Eva believed. She hadn’t seen Kate for three years. Her other sister, Leona, had married a farmer and now raised ostriches, organic field peas and children—five of them, at last count—in Alberta.
Eva, the youngest by six years, had steered a steady course, graduating from high school with honors, working in a doctor’s office for two years and then taking a degree in education. She’d just finished her first year as a substitute teacher in three different elementary schools in Burnaby. The two terms with grade one and two classes had convinced her she’d made the right career choice. She’d adored her little gap-toothed charges and was almost sorry when June was over. In the fall, she hoped to land a permanent job, preferably in the Lower Mainland or Vancouver Island and preferably teaching kindergarten, although it didn’t much matter, and she’d sent résumés all over the province.
It would be nice, though, to settle somewhere near her father, who was alone and sometimes lonely, she thought, retired and living on his houseboat on the Fraser River. Now that Eva was an adult and entirely independent, she’d grown fond of Jack Haines, willing to forgive him the excesses that had alarmed her as a child.
At twenty-five and a trained teacher, Eva Louise Haines was definitely not the sort of person who imagined things. She did not see dogs and children and then, the next minute, not see them. There was nothing wrong with her eyes.
The child had been there most definitely. Red shorts, a dirty once-white T-shirt, no shoes. Dark hair, lots of it, a large black dog. Maybe strayed from a party of picnickers that had landed on the island that afternoon while she was away? She’d been surprised to see that Andy was with them, especially considering the presence of the dog….
She’d seen them. Obviously, the child and the dog had run away before she could open the door to call the donkey. They’d disappeared into the Lord forest on the other side of the creek, not into thin air. Campers, picnickers, boaters, whatever—someone besides her was on the island. That little boy or girl belonged to someone.
Eva finally dozed fitfully, wishing yet again that she’d brought Freddie. First someone—or something—watching her. Now children and dogs that were there one minute and gone the next.
IN THE MORNING, Eva took a brisk walk to the western end of the island. She often walked that route along the shore, looking for things the tide had yielded overnight. Sometimes there was an odd-shaped bit of driftwood or an old running shoe or a clock, washed up from who knows where. Once she’d found a coconut. It amused her to imagine how these things had ended up in the water. That coconut—had it arrived at Liberty Island after months adrift from Tahiti or had it rolled off a yacht deck from a grocery bag? Often, sadly, all she found was garbage—soft drink bottles and plastic bags, chunks of Styrofoam and torn fish net.
This morning, what she wanted to find was evidence of whoever had brought the child and dog. But there was nothing. No spent campfires on the beach, no tracks in the sand, no dinghy pulled up on the beach or launch anchored offshore. The visitors had most likely left the island before nightfall.
Somewhat relieved, Eva spent the rest of the morning in the small parlor, sorting through stacks of music books and sheets of looseleaf with snatches of songs penned on them. Doris had been an accomplished musician in her youth. According to Eva’s mother, she was a fine pianist with a lovely voice, who’d had a brief career as a professional singer. Why had a woman as talented and beautiful and flamboyant, by all accounts, isolated herself on Liberty Island at thirty-six years of age, after her husband’s death? Eva wished she’d paid a little more attention to her mother’s stories.
By noon, Eva had filled only one box for the thrift store at Sechelt. She kept stopping to play one or another of Doris’s little songs on the ancient Mason & Risch piano, which, from the sound of it and the sticking E and F keys, hadn’t been looked after in years. By two o’clock, when she’d resolved to go for a swim, she’d filled three boxes to give away and another box of photos and personal items.
Funny how Jack Haines, who’d been so indifferent to his own wife while she was alive, was so solicitous of his wife’s elderly cousin now. Guilt, maybe? Her father’s lack of interest in his family had always hurt Eva. She was glad their relationship was steadier now. Of course, with Kate and Leona far away and their mother dead, who did Jack Haines have to neglect anymore? Just her. And, these days, he tended to lean on her instead. She didn’t mind.
Dependable Eva.
Andy accompanied her to the water’s edge. Normally, when the tide was out, as it was now, Eva would have gone to the pools on the other side of the island, a place mysteriously known as The Baths when she was a child. The pools were in a sort of no-man’s-land between the Bonhomme and Lord properties. After the strange experience of yesterday, plus the feeling she’d had that she was being watched, Eva didn’t want to walk through the tangle of dark woods between the house and The Baths.
Silly, she knew. As a result, she had to wade a considerable distance over rocks and barnacles before the water was deep enough to swim. Then she forgot all about Andy and his mysterious friends, putting in, first, her usual swim between the shore and Angler’s Rock, a large outcrop that marked the entrance to Doris’s little harbor even at high tide; then she spent a pleasant half hour climbing around, looking for the Coast Salish petroglyphs she remembered from long-ago outings. One day, before the summer was over, she intended to bring paper and charcoal and take rubbings of the figures, which were old, possibly ancient images pecked into the surface of the rock by Indians who’d inhabited the area.
Andy cropped the short grass just up from the beach as Eva swam in. She raked back her streaming hair as she emerged and, peering through the clear, green water to avoid stumbling, navigated carefully over the kelp stones and mussel-encrusted rock on the bottom of the small bay. There were very few sandy beaches in the Gulf Islands.
When she looked up, the visitors were back, regarding her from the top of a large boulder at the tide line, fifty feet from the old wharf. The little girl—or was it a boy?—had on blue shorts today and a red-and-white striped T-shirt. No shoes, as yesterday. The sudden appearance of the pair surprised Eva, but at the same time she felt huge relief.
So she wasn’t losing her mind. And the child obviously had someone taking care of her, providing clean clothes. The family must be camped on the other side of the island….
“Hello!” Eva called and waved. There was no response. She veered toward the boulder, still stepping carefully. He—or was it a she—couldn’t be more than four or five years old.
The big black dog bounded toward Eva then stopped stiff-legged and barked. It wasn’t a friendly bark, either. Andy butted his head comically against her left hip, nibbling at her swimsuit, seeking the treats she usually had for him. For once, Eva wasn’t amused.
“Hey!” she called again, waving her hand and smiling. “Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you.”
The child raised one hand in a hesitant response to Eva’s gesture and then slipped off the rock. Eva stumbled forward, cursing the pebbles that hurt her feet and slowed her progress. Where were they—behind the boulder? Across the creek? Into the woods on the other side?
If not, they’d vanished into thin air again!
Eva didn’t know what to do. This was just too strange. Who was this little kid, out yesterday and today just—just wandering! Where was the mother? The father?
She needed to get dressed quickly and do some exploring. Find out, once and for all, where these people were camped and why no one was keeping an eye on this child.
EVA USUALLY RINSED OFF in the small, cramped bathroom off the kitchen, the only one in the house. Doris’s bedroom had been downstairs, too, a more convenient arrangement for an elderly woman. Today, though, Eva just grabbed a towel from the bathroom cupboard and hurried up the stairs to her small bedroom under the eaves.
She stripped out of her bathing suit and toweled off, glancing out the small, paned window toward the sea. The rough, line-dried cotton almost hurt her skin. Andy had followed her and was grazing on the sparse grasses that grew between the house and the beach. No sign of the other two, though…
Eva’s heart was racing. Ordinarily, she was a person who very much minded her own business. Live and let live, was her guiding principle. It had helped her survive a difficult family, demanding employers and several classes full of fractious six- and seven-year-olds.
Doris Bonhomme owned half of this island. As her agent, in effect, Eva had a duty to make sure that everything was all right, and that included checking up on any small visitors who might be lost or need her assistance.
Even if she hadn’t been standing in for Doris, she would have wanted to get to the bottom of this.
Eva pulled on a pair of khaki shorts and a long-sleeved T-shirt and grabbed a tube of sunscreen from the top of the small antique dresser. She had sneakers by the kitchen door.
She paused before she left the room, catching a glimpse of herself in the spidery, ghosted mirror over the dresser—face hot, eyes bright, wet hair hanging in dark, thick ropes. She was actually going to the other side of the island….
The forbidden side.
Eva ran down the steeply pitched stairs in her bare feet.
“Hi.”
The child—a little girl—was in her kitchen!
CHAPTER THREE
EVA WAS SO SURPRISED she didn’t even notice that the sunscreen had slipped out of her hand and bounced down the last two steps onto the floor. The dog, who’d accompanied the girl into the house and parked himself at the door, growled menacingly.
“Oh, don’t mind him. He’s just my silly old dog. He’s Bruno,” the girl said airily, favoring Eva with a casual wave of her small hand. “He’s ’bout as scary as a fruit fly, that’s what Auntie Aggie says. Who’re you? Are you the old lady? You’re old but you don’t look that old—”
“I-I’m Eva,” Eva said, bending down to pick up the sunscreen. The dog, apparently a Newfoundland, now that she saw him up close, rumbled again and Eva gave him a hard look. He flopped onto the floor, stretched his massive black head over his paws and sighed. “What’s your name?”
“Fanny. Do you live here?” Fanny gazed admiringly around the kitchen, although Eva couldn’t see what there was to admire. “I thought somebody named Doris lived here. She’s the old lady, I guess. That’s a nice mirror.” She pointed to the spidery, cracked, unframed mirror over the dry sink. “I always wanted to go in this house but I’m not allowed.” She leaned toward Eva and covered her small mouth with her hand for a few seconds, then whispered loudly, “I’m not sup-posed-ta be here so don’t tell anybody, okay?” She frowned at her dog, too, but the Newfoundland ignored them both.
“Would you like some lemonade?” The girl and her dog were her first visitors.
“Got any pop?” The girl looked hopeful. Her skin was a pale mocha, not from the sun. She was obviously of mixed racial heritage—Caucasian? Caribbean? Hawaiian?—fine-boned and fragile-looking, but judging from the way she talked, probably older than she seemed. Her eyes were big and honey-brown, her hair a riot of ringlets and curls. “I like pop!”
“Sorry,” Eva said, opening the refrigerator. “Just lemonade.” She reached for the pitcher, then realized the girl had moved deftly under her arm and was standing in front of her, gazing at the refrigerator’s contents.
“Too bad,” the child said, glancing up. “I like lemonade, all right, but I really like pop and I’m not allowed to have any. It’s nice in here! I like fridges. What’s that? Is that wine? My dad likes wine.”
She pointed to a large green bottle of Perrier.
So does my dad, Eva thought. “No, it’s water. Fizzy water. Do you want some with your lemonade?”
The girl considered, one finger on her lower lip. “Sure!” she said, brightly, then added, “I mean, yes, please!”
Eva poured two glasses, three-quarters lemonade, the rest Perrier, leaving the refrigerator door open. Who’d have dreamed the contents of an ordinary fridge could be so entertaining? Then she returned the bottle and pitcher to the fridge, shut the door and handed the child a glass.
“Cheers!” Fanny held up her drink, then laughed. It was a magical sound, sheer delight, and Eva couldn’t help responding with a smile of her own. “Now we can be friends! People friends,” the child added mysteriously. She sniffed at her drink cautiously and wrinkled her nose before taking a sip.
“To people friends.” Eva clinked her glass gently against the child’s. She supposed that was in contrast to dog friends. “Are you visiting the island with your family?”
“Oh, no. I live here.” The girl gestured with one hand. “It’s really my island. Mine and my dad’s. You’re the one who’s the visitor, right, Bruno?” The dog opened one eye briefly and shut it again.
“You live here?” Eva stared. “Where?” If the child was staying on this island, if her parents were squatters or summer campers, that might account for the feeling Eva’d had of being watched for the past week. This child, who seemed to pop up out of nowhere, had probably been observing her from various hiding places. Or her parents or caregivers had. Eva felt a shiver trickle down her spine.
“Over there,” Fanny said, waving vaguely in the direction of the creek. She marched to the cabinet beneath the mirror and wrenched open a drawer. “Boy, it’s fun talking to you! Is that your lipstick?” She smiled and held up a tube, then pulled the top off. “Auntie Aggie has lipstick but she never puts it on unless she’s going to the store or the doctor or something. Can I put some on?”
Before Eva could stop her, the girl had drawn a big red arc across her mouth. “That’s not my lipstick, it belongs to the old lady who owns this house. But,” Eva finished lamely, “I guess she wouldn’t mind if you tried it out.” The drawer still held an assortment of Doris’s cosmetics, brooches and hairpins, most destined for the trash when Eva got around to cleaning it out. Anything of a personal nature that Doris wanted had already been taken to her new home at Seaview Lodge.
“Lift me up.” Fanny held her arms out to Eva. “I want to see how I look.”
Eva obliged, feeling the thin warmth, the litheness of the squirming child in her arms as she held her up to the mirror. A small brown face gazed back at them both, the small, pursed mouth ribaldly framed in what Eva had always thought of as an old lady color—not orange, not red, not coral. Something useful that “went” with everything.
“Oh! It’s funny!” Fanny laughed and drew the back of her hand across her lips, smearing the lipstick. Eva laughed and briefly hugged her tight before putting her down.
Whoever this child was, wherever she’d come from, Eva was utterly charmed.
“I suppose you’ve got jewels and beads and earrings and all kinds of pretty things. Maybe you could let me play with them some—hey, is this your piano?” Fanny had headed into the small parlor. “We have a piano. Dad’s teaching me to play.” She sat on the wobbly stool and plunked out “Old Macdonald Had a Farm.” Eva clapped and the girl’s eyes shone.
“Let’s go into your yard now,” Fanny suggested. “We could have a picnic for the birds with stuff out of your fridge.”
“Hold on.” Eva decided it was time to get some answers. Someone would—should—be looking for Fanny soon. “Do you live with your mom and dad?”
“Just my dad,” the girl said, shooting a look Eva’s way as she examined the covers on several magazines piled on the sofa. “And Auntie Aggie and Uncle Matthew and Bruno and the squirrels and George the big black bird that lives in our tree and—”
“Are you camping? Do you live in a tent or a boat?”
“A boat?” She giggled. “We have a big house and I have my own room and a playhouse in a tree and everything.” Fanny frowned at Eva as though she was particularly dense. “I told you, this is my island. Mine and my dad’s.”
“But where is everyone? Who’s looking after you now?”
“Bruno.” Fanny was obviously surprised by the question. “I’m not supposed to go anywhere without Bruno. He’s my good old dog, aren’t you, Bruny?” The Newfoundland had accompanied her to the parlor; he glanced adoringly at the girl as she patted his broad head. “And Auntie Aggie looks after me, too. She looked after my dad when he was little. And sometimes Uncle Matthew and my dad look after me, too, but my dad works a lot and I’m not supposed to ’sturb him—”
The sudden sound of a mechanical doorbell clanging, a horrible rusted sound that blended with a loud series of barks from Bruno, made Eva jump. Doorbell? She didn’t even know there was one.
“Yikes!” The child’s eyes were huge. “I bet that’s Uncle Matthew.” She tore through the French doors that stood open to the back garden. Her dog bounded after her.
“Anybody here?” An angry male voice preceded another insistent buzz, followed by the hammering of fists on the door. “Open up!”
Fanny—
Eva ran to the door, putting her hand on the knob just as it burst open.
“You see a little girl around here?” A man stood in the doorway. His eyes, blue-green as the sea, blazed into hers.
“Yes! I mean—no!” Eva swallowed. She hadn’t heard the entire story from Fanny yet. She didn’t have a good feeling about any of this. If this was the uncle who was in charge, why did he allow the child to wander—
“Which is it?” His eyes darted around the kitchen and he took a step forward. Eva grabbed his arm and he stared down at her. “Yes or no?”
“I haven’t invited you in, sir,” she managed to say through clenched teeth. His arm was rock hard. He was tall and strong and looked to be in his mid-thirties, handsome in a careless way, with several days’ growth on his face and unruly sunbleached brown hair. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”
He shook off her hand. “Where’s Fanny?”
“She’s not here,” Eva burst out, truthfully, adding, not so truthfully, “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
Then she yelped as he pushed past her and strode into the parlor. Outraged, Eva was right on his heels, relieved to glance out into the sunny overgrown garden behind the house and see neither girl nor dog.
“I swear I heard the damn dog bark,” the man muttered, almost to himself. He stepped to the open French doors. “Fanny! Where are you?”
Eva held her breath. There was no answer. She didn’t think there would be.
Without a backward glance, the man stepped into the yard and purposefully set off toward the tumbledown fence that surrounded the yard and garden, Doris’s pitiful attempt to keep out rabbits and other marauders. “Fanny!” He vaulted the fence and continued toward the creek.
Eva was torn. On the one hand, if this was Fanny’s Uncle Matthew, everything must be okay. He was just searching for the child, who had obviously strayed without telling anyone where she was going. Eva couldn’t blame him for being a little angry.
On the other hand, she didn’t like his attitude, charging into her house the way he had….
Making up her mind, she ran after him. He had several minutes’ head start and she saw him break into a lope thirty yards beyond the fence and veer toward one of the shallower creek crossings. He was fit and he clearly knew where he was going. And he had shoes on.
Eva didn’t. Ouch! She stumbled on a rocky patch of ground, wishing she’d taken the time to retrieve her sneakers, which were still standing by the kitchen door. Too late now. If she didn’t hurry she’d lose him—she’d lose them both—and, just in case the little girl needed her, Eva wanted to be on the scene when the man caught up.
If he did.
Secretly, Eva was rooting one hundred per cent for Fanny and the Newfoundland dog….
BY THE TIME Eva crossed the creek, stepping from rocks at the Bonhomme side, onto a slippery half-buried log festooned with algae, then onto several water-polished stones on the Lord side, Fanny’s uncle had disappeared into the woods. She hurried along a faintly visible path etched into the stony soil.
“Excuse me?” she called, realizing how hopelessly ineffective her query was. “Yoo-hoo! Hello?”
All she heard back, faintly, was the sound of the man’s voice calling the girl’s name again, then whistling, presumably for the dog.
Eva was hot and her feet hurt. Why hadn’t she just stayed home? She heard a crash behind her— My God!
She wheeled. Andy appeared at the end of the path behind her, bobbing his head and breaking into a trot as he spotted her. Oh, for goodness sake. Eva’s heart was pounding.
The uncle was chasing Fanny and the dog, she was chasing the uncle and now Doris’s donkey was chasing her!
She let Andy catch up. He nuzzled the pocket of her shorts and she scratched his soft whiskery nose. “No snacks today, Mr. Andy.”
This was ridiculous. She’d turn around and go back to the house and change into some jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, grab a hat, put on some socks and proper shoes. Then she’d thoroughly search the Lord half of the island. She wouldn’t be able to sleep another night on this island not knowing what was going on with the little girl.
Okay. That was a plan. Accompanied by the donkey, Eva began to limp toward the creek again. She’d stepped on a thorn, probably from a rosebush or a blackberry thicket somewhere, blown onto the path. She leaned against a tree and inspected her heel, balancing on one leg. Her foot was so dirty she couldn’t see where the thorn had gone in her foot.
“Hey!”
She turned. The man who’d burst into her kitchen was standing at the bend in the path she’d abandoned. Eva straightened and faced him. “Did you find her?”
“No.” He shrugged, apparently not that worried. “She’s probably home already.”
“Home?”
“She knows these woods better than I do,” he said, ignoring her question. He gave her a cursory glance, from her toes to still-damp hair hanging in ropes. “Something wrong with your foot?”
“Nothing serious,” she said, instinctively rubbing her heel against her leg. “Just a rose briar. I’ll be fine.”
He surveyed her again, his eyes icy. “Shouldn’t run around the woods without shoes on.”
“I didn’t know I’d be leaving so quickly!” She felt a trickle of perspiration inch toward her nose and wiped it with the back of her hand. “What do you mean by bursting into my house like that?”
“I thought Fanny might’ve gone in there alone, to play. You weren’t answering the door—”
“I would have! If you’d had the courtesy to give me a few seconds!”
He shrugged again. “Sorry. Look, can I accompany you back to the house?”
“I’ll be fine. I think you should take better care of that child. Today isn’t the first time I’ve seen her. She can’t be more than five or six. What kind of uncle are you, letting her run around by herself like that? She could get lost or hurt….”
“Uncle?” He frowned. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Aren’t you her uncle Matthew?”
“Uncle Matthew?” He grimaced, an attempt at a smile. “Hell, no! I’m her father.”
CHAPTER FOUR
THUMP!
Agnes Klassen winced as she smacked the lump of pastry with the side of her rolling pin. She didn’t usually treat pie dough like this. “So what’s your daddy going to say when he hears all that?”
The child’s eyes were big and brown. “You going to tell him, Auntie Aggie?”
The housekeeper’s glance slid sideways. “You think I should?” She wasn’t sure what to make of Fanny’s news. The girl had spent the past half hour chattering about her new friend at the other end of the island, the woman Aggie’s husband, Matthew, caretaker of the Lord estate, had mentioned shortly after her arrival ten days ago. Matthew had said the visitor was harmless, just someone using the old woman’s house for a holiday, and Aggie believed him.
Fanny was thrilled about the lipstick she’d tried, the magazines she’d looked at, even the contents of the visitor’s fridge. Poor child! All alone and no playmates her own age. Was it any wonder she was starved for anything new?
Fanny said Silas had come looking for her, but she’d run through the visitor’s back door and away through the forest, managing to get home first. The incident hadn’t been mentioned at dinner the previous evening. Silas, of course, could be extremely absentminded. He had plenty to think about. Besides, he didn’t tell his housekeeper everything, did he?
“I guess so,” the child responded slowly, sticking her thumbs into the pastry Agnes had given her. “’Less I tell him first,” she added quickly, then nodded, as though pleased with her decision. “How ’bout that? Maybe I better, since he was chasing me ’n’ Bruno most of the way home. It was fun!”
With renewed enthusiasm, she began pressing her pastry into the five-inch tart pan Aggie reserved for Fanny’s pies. “I know!” Her face was bright. “I’ll tell him at the party today.”
Aggie rolled out one quarter of the dough in front of her. She was making two pies this morning, one for their evening meal and one for the freezer. Both Silas and Matthew were inordinately fond of blueberry pie. What man wasn’t? Aggie smiled at Fanny. You couldn’t stay mad at the little rascal, she thought. No, you couldn’t. Fanny had her—and Matthew and Silas—twisted around her pinkie finger, always had.
Fanny’s pie was for the party she was having that afternoon, presumably for her father and Bruno and the squirrel Aggie had never seen but knew all about—even that it went by the name of Kelly. A dog and a squirrel! Fanny needed more people in her life, the dear motherless waif.
Also on the menu were raw vegetables and cheese dip, Aggie’s suggestion, and toast and cake and soft drinks, Fanny’s request. Silas didn’t believe in feeding children a lot of sugar, so that would mean carrot cake and cream cheese icing and juice boxes, not pop. Sometimes Aggie wondered where a man like Silas, who’d surely never expected to be a father, got so many definite notions about childrearing.
Actually, now that she thought about it, Aggie was glad Fanny had met the young woman staying in Doris Bonhomme’s old house, although she disapproved of the way it had come about. She didn’t like Fanny and that dog of hers skulking about the island, spying on folks. A five-year-old, no matter how clever for her age, should not be roaming around freely, talking to birds and chipmunks, hair uncombed, not even properly dressed half the time.
But you couldn’t argue with Silas Lord! A more stubborn man had never lived. Aggie ought to know; she’d helped raise him herself, as housekeeper to Silas’s parents many years ago. Of course, in those days, she’d been constantly busy, cooking and cleaning for the Lord household both on Liberty Island and at their home in West Vancouver, as well as raising Ivor, their own boy. Matthew had done the outdoor work, still did although he was pushing seventy now.
They both were. She was sixty-eight and feeling every minute of it some days. She sighed and wiped one cheek with a floury wrist, aware of the aches that had crept up over the past few years. Silas was thirty-two, just a little younger than their Ivor, all grown-up, too, and in an assisted-living home in Gibsons, making his way, such as it was, in the world….
As a boy, young Silas had been as cheeky and charming as his small daughter was today.
“What’s a good time for my party, Auntie?” Fanny stared at the wall clock, pretending to read it, a pencil crayon in one hand and a piece of paper in front of her on the table.
“How about two o’clock?” Aggie suggested. “That way you won’t spoil your supper.”
“The big hand is on the twelve for an ‘o’clock,’ right?” Fanny took a fresh pencil crayon, orange, and drew a large circle on the piece of paper in front of her. The child didn’t really know how to tell time, but she understood about the big hand and the small hand. Aggie had watched Silas coach her patiently, right there at the big wooden table in the kitchen, going through the A-B-C’s, teaching her to tell time, name the days of the week, tie her own shoes. He’d started music lessons recently on the old out-of-tune player piano in the parlor—Aggie had often heard her plunking out “Old Macdonald” after breakfast—and he’d taught her to swim and play croquet.
“And the little hand is on the?” The housekeeper waited, floury hands held high as she crossed to the sink.
“Two!” Fanny triumphantly held up two fingers, then added a 2 to her drawing, not exactly in the right spot, but close enough.
“And what is that you’re drawing, honey?”
“It’s a ’vitation,” Fanny said earnestly. “You know—that you send out? This gives when. I’m going to draw my little gypsy house for the place. When you have a party, you have to send ’vitations, don’t you?”
“Well, of course you do,” Aggie agreed, rinsing her hands in a basin in the sink. She wondered where a squirrel got mail. Fanny’s “little gypsy house” was the caravan playhouse Silas had built for her under the trees in the old orchard. The girl wanted for nothing money could buy. “Anything else you’ll need?”
“Some wool,” the girl returned promptly. “I need a ball of that nice yellow wool you’re knitting me a sweater with. Can I have some?”
“For decorations?” Aggie reached for a kitchen towel, mystified, doubly so as she observed Fanny’s sudden self-conscious, rather evasive expression.
“Well…” The girl nibbled on the end of the pencil crayon for a few minutes, examining her drawing. Then she looked up, dark eyes dancing. “Something like that!”
EVA SLEPT amazingly well, considering the events of the previous afternoon, and it was nearly ten when she awoke to the sound of shingles banging on the roof again.
After breakfast, she dragged the cumbersome wooden ladder from the shed to the house and climbed up to drive in a few nails. There was a musty stack of shingles in the shed, of various patterns, as well as other odds and ends. Pieces of lumber, screws and nails in jam tins, wire screening, rusted tools of various kinds. Eva wondered if Doris had done all her own repairs. She was coming to a new appreciation of what it took to live here all alone, as Doris had for so long.
At least the riddle of the child and dog was solved, and Eva could focus on the task ahead of her, tidying up Doris’s affairs. Fanny obviously lived with her father, Silas Lord, at the other end of the island. Simple. There were Lords using the old family place. She should’ve been told. Why hadn’t Doris said anything?
“Uncle” Matthew, Eva’d been informed, was the caretaker; “Auntie” Aggie was his wife, the housekeeper. Fanny’s father hadn’t offered much more than that before he’d turned abruptly, at her repeated refusal of his help, and headed back down the path.
She’d hobbled home and managed to dig the briar out but her heel was still sore. What a strange man. What a strange child! Eva still wasn’t sure she believed Fanny and her family were actually living on Liberty Island year-round. A summer could seem like a very long time to a young child. Spending the summer here alone, probably bored, could account for Fanny’s interest in Doris’s house. Of course, little girls were interested in lipstick and jewelry and dress-up, but the contents of fridges? Old broken mirrors? Magazine covers?
She’d been more than inquisitive, positively nosy. In a way, Eva admired her brashness. Ask and ye shall receive…. A contrast to what Eva remembered of her own childhood. She’d been on the shy side, polite and accommodating—too polite, Doris had always said, teasing both her and her mother, Felicity, so inaptly named, a woman who’d had more than her share of unhappiness in her short life.
Eva finished sorting through the sheet music and other musical paraphernalia in the so-called music room, a glass-enclosed room that looked to the sea on the south and had French doors leading to the patio on the north. Instead of a swim, she decided to go for a run along the beach. She’d be ready for a late lunch when she returned.
Eva ran in shorts, a tank top and sneakers. The pebbly beach, interspersed with grassy areas and patches of sand, was too rough to run in bare feet, even if she hadn’t had a sore heel. The breeze was welcome, light against her overheated face, and as she approached the house on her way back, she slowed to a brisk walk, reaching up to whip off the scarf that held back her hair.
Whew! Looked like another summer scorcher of a day. A shower, a sandwich and then—
What was that? A square of colored paper lay just inside the door of the house. The door was always unlocked; Eva wasn’t even sure there was a lock. What was there to keep out? Just Andy and the rabbits that nibbled Doris’s garden…
Eva stooped to pick up the envelope, and smiled as she turned it over. It was clearly handmade, a little crooked and dripping with glue. From Fanny. Eva opened it and a small loop of yellow wool fell out.
She bent to retrieve it. Inside the envelope was a much creased piece of paper, which Eva unfolded, her smile widening.
There were no words. Just a drawing of a playhouse of some sort, with a table and chairs outside and various kinds of food on the table—a huge cake, drinks with straws. Nothing was in proportion; it was a typical four- or five-year-old’s drawing. A clock face, drawn in orange, showed two o’clock. It was just past one now. There was a patch of glue with telltale yellow wisps caught up in it next to the rendition of a clock face. Eva glanced at the yellow loop on her wrist, the yarn that had fallen out of the envelope. Aha!
Then she turned to gaze toward the creek that separated the Bonhommes’ from the Lords’. A yellow loop waved gently in the breeze, suspended from a bush on the far side of the creek.
While she’d been gone, someone had been very busy….
CHAPTER FIVE
SILAS HAD A STUDIO set in the trees well away from the house in a building that had once been reserved for staff. The Klassens lived with him and Fanny in the main house, a large shingle-sided two-and-a-half-story dwelling, built in a rather grand post-Victorian style nearly one hundred years before by his great-grandfather. The Lords and the Bonhommes, who’d settled at the other end of the island, had been business partners once, lumber barons cutting virgin timber on Vancouver Island at the turn of the century, a time when many family fortunes had been made in British Columbia.
Because there was no electricity on the island and because the studio was some distance from the house, which had a generator for essential electrical needs, Silas created jewelry as it had been created for thousands of years, using hand tools to work the precious metals and a propane-fired forge. At present, he was working on a commission from a Toronto auto parts mogul, a gift for his wife’s fortieth birthday. Six months earlier, Silas had delivered a magnificent diamond-and-opal bracelet to the same man—for his mistress’s birthday.
The current project incorporated tanzanite, a gemstone Silas particularly liked, set into the silver-and-gold neckpiece, bracelet and earrings. Without artificial light, daytime hours were precious and Fanny knew she could only interrupt him in his studio if it was important. This morning when he’d come back from The Baths—no sign of the visitor today—he’d found one of Fanny’s handmade envelopes in the willow basket outside his open studio door.
Silas shook his head. Parties! Was his daughter turning into a social animal like her mother? Fanny seemed to generate an excuse to have a party every couple of days.
Not that he minded. And he always humored her. Silas never forgot that he was the one who’d brought his daughter into these isolated circumstances on Liberty Island nearly three years ago and he’d do anything in his power to make sure she was happy here. Summer was a fine time, when Fanny could be a free spirit, safely wandering the forest and the shore with her dog. Winters were much harder.
Today’s event was most likely because of what had happened yesterday. Fanny hadn’t mentioned the incident at dinner—and neither had he—but he suspected the party was by way of an apology. She knew the old woman’s house was forbidden, whether vacant or occupied. Indeed, that entire end of the island was off-limits; she wasn’t even to cross the creek.
But he could understand that she’d been tempted. The newcomer must have been too much to resist. He didn’t blame Fanny. No other children around. No guests. Silas had no appetite for society, and it had been many months since he’d invited anyone to Liberty Island, other than the Klassens’ son, Ivor. His occasional trips to his studio in Vancouver fulfilled any needs he might’ve had for company, male or female. Nor had he intended to meet the island’s visitor, never mind under such odd circumstances. Busting into her kitchen and tearing through her house, no less! He was a little embarrassed about that.
Hell, he’d been scared. He’d looked everywhere for Fanny, in all her usual places, but she hadn’t been in any of them. Not in her tree house at the bottom of the garden. Not in her playhouse he’d built for her in the old orchard. Or in her room, playing with dolls, or up in the attic, where she’d found trunks of old clothes that had belonged to Silas’s grandmother and often played dress-up, sometimes draping even Bruno with a hat or scarf.
Silas had hoped the visitor would simply leave and that would be that. He admitted to some curiosity—why hadn’t she come wandering to the eastern side of the island before this? Why had she kept—as far as he could tell—so carefully to the Bonhomme property, except for that excursion to The Baths? He’d only seen her there once and the bathing pools, admittedly, had always been a sort of neutral territory. Still, how could she know that?
Silas glanced at the old-fashioned Rolex he wore. He’d freed himself from many of his big-city habits, including locking doors, which made no sense on Liberty Island, but he’d never been comfortable without the Rolex, which he’d worn ever since his grandfather, Hector Lord, had given it to him a few months before the old man had died.
Silas didn’t miss much of his previous life. The days of catching an afternoon flight to Paris for the weekend, or disappearing to Mexico at a moment’s notice to share a workbench with the silver masters in Taxco for a few months, or flying to Amsterdam twice a year to buy the rough diamonds he used in his work, then whisking off to Singapore to have them faceted and ground. Now that he’d begun living on Liberty Island again, he didn’t miss the once essential Palm Pilot, but the Rolex, one of the few personal mementos he had of a scattered family, stayed on his wrist.
Silas remembered clearly the day the old man had given it to him. He’d arrived home from university to announce he’d dropped out of business school and was going to Milan to study art. His parents had been furious—as Silas had expected—but the old man had beckoned him into a back room, where he’d taken off the watch and handed it to him with a chuckle. “Here, my boy. It belongs to you.” No further explanations.
Hector Lord had been dead for nearly fourteen years.
Almost two o’clock…
Idly, Silas wound the watch as he strode toward the orchard. When Fanny had begun staging her little events earlier that summer, he’d sometimes offered to help carry her supplies to wherever she was holding the party. Her playhouse. The promontory where they had picnics. Or, most difficult for him, her tree house behind his studio. He couldn’t climb up there as easily as he’d done when the tree house had belonged to him and Ivor. Fanny was always deeply offended at his suggestion, as only Fanny could be, insisting she could—and would—do everything herself. She was independent, all right. Sociable and sassy. Loving.
She was everything in the world to him, the center of his life.
When he arrived, five minutes early, she was setting out cups and plates on a table in front of the playhouse, which he’d designed and then had built and painted, with Matthew’s help, to resemble a miniature gypsy caravan. Everything was built on a three-fifths scale, perfect for a child.
“Hi, Dad!” Fanny had a temper but she couldn’t hold a grudge for very long. It was another of her characteristics he adored. She certainly didn’t get it from his side of the family. No matter what had come between them—and they had plenty of disagreements—her sunny spirits would bubble over and she’d forget her outrage in a minute.
“What’s the occasion?” He took one of the solid and squarely built little wooden chairs ranged around the small blue-painted table and sat down. “Kelly’s birthday?”
She gave him an arch look and continued setting out cups and plates, places for six, he observed. “It’s a surprise, Daddy. I can’t tell you,” she said, then continued a little worriedly, “I don’t know when Kelly was actually borned so I don’t know when to have a party for him.”
Silas’s personal theory was that the little gray squirrel Fanny was so fond of was already a generation or two past the original “Kelly.” How long did squirrels live? “Born, honey, not borned,” he automatically corrected.
“Born,” she repeated under her breath, counting out the cutlery. Silas watched as she went to the nearby doll carriage and pulled out a Tupperware container. “You can take the lid off this, please.”
Silas pried the top off. “Mmm, cake.”
Fanny nodded, looking pleased. “With icing. Auntie Aggie made it. What time is it now, Daddy?”
Silas checked his watch. “Five past two.”
“No, ’xactly. What time is it ’xactly?”
“Okay.” He studied his watch again. “It’s six and a half minutes past two.”
Fanny nodded, her face sober. She sighed, then put the cake in the middle of the table and went back to the doll carriage and pulled out more Tupperware containers. Vegetable strips. Some kind of nutritious-looking dip—trust Aggie. What would he have done these past few years without her and Matthew? Juice boxes. A plastic jug of water alive with ice cubes—
“Now what time is it, Daddy?”
“Ten past. Shall we get started?” Silas glanced at the five other places set at the table. “Is Auntie Aggie coming?”
“No. She said she’s too busy. This one’s for Bruno—” Fanny touched one plate, part of an unbreakable set she kept in the caravan. “And this one’s for Kelly, ’cept I’m not sure he’s coming.” Silas hadn’t heard the squirrel. Kelly rarely “visited” but, when he did, he made his presence known by his loud chirruping from the huge Orenco apple tree behind the playhouse.
“Matthew’s gone over to Half Moon Bay, if you’re expecting him,” Silas told her. “He won’t be back until just before dinner.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Auntie Aggie told me that already so I didn’t make him a ’vitation. What time is it now—hey!”
There was a distinct clip-clop on the packed earth of the path that led toward the wharf. The donkey! Of course.
Silas turned to see the grizzled old beast clatter into view, head bobbing. He’d been a fixture on their side of the island, off and on, for months. Harmless enough, from what Silas had seen. Probably lonely, too, although Silas knew someone had made arrangements for weekly hay drop-offs in the spring. Bruno sat up, ears perked, eyes interested.
This was the “surprise”?
“Andy!” Fanny cried out. The animal had a name? How did Fanny know—“—and Eva!”
“Am I late?” The woman who’d moved into the Bonhomme house stepped from the wooded path into the clearing. She was dressed in jean shorts and a pink T-shirt and had her dark hair tied back in a ponytail. Her left arm, oddly, was festooned with what seemed to be loops of yellow yarn. Eva. Silas stood automatically, as he’d been taught to do when a member of the opposite sex entered the room—he supposed this arrangement under the apple tree qualified as a room.
Fanny clapped her hands in delight. “Surprise!” she crowed. “Surprise! Surprise!” Silas heard the squirrel start to chatter in the tree overhead. So Kelly had joined them, after all….
The afternoon, which had promised to be just another hot, somewhat boring July afternoon, had suddenly become interesting.
EVA’S FIRST THOUGHT—that Fanny’s father might have had something to do with the party invitation—evaporated when she saw his expression, as dismayed, she was sure, as her own. He hid his surprise instantly and stepped forward, hand extended. “We weren’t properly introduced yesterday. Maybe we should start again. I’m Silas Lord.” He nodded. “Welcome.”
“Eva Haines.” She shook his hand briefly, aware of the heat of his skin, the hard, dry strength of his fingers….
At his reference to their previous encounter, the way he’d practically thrown her to the side as she grabbed his arm to prevent him from barging into her kitchen, her lips thinned, and she answered him coolly. “I’m sorry I’m late.”
“You’re limping,” he said bluntly, leading her toward the small table.
“Yes.” She didn’t elaborate. The briar she’d removed must have left something behind, because her heel had begun to throb that morning. She’d stuck on a Band-Aid after her run and had worn thick socks with her sneakers.
“It’s a party!” Fanny, at least, was delighted to see her. “This is my dad, I guess you know that—” Silas nodded again “—and this is my playhouse he builded for me and this is Bruno, well, you know him!” She waved toward the branches overhead. “And that’s Kelly up there, he’s my squirrel.”
Eva dutifully peered up but didn’t spot the source of the scolding. She waved and called softly, “Hi, Kelly!” then felt rather silly, knowing Silas Lord was watching. Her initial impulse had been to enter into the child’s game, her play “world,” just as she’d have done with one of her students at school.
When she turned, Fanny’s father was indeed watching her.
He gestured toward a small chair opposite his, and Eva approached. “Are you in the habit of talking to squirrels? And what, if I might enquire, is that unusual bracelet you’re wearing? It’s very attractive. Did my daughter make it for you?”
“Dad!” Fanny giggled.
Eva lifted the loops from her wrist and set them on the table. “You could say that. I found my way here by following the yarn Fanny left on the bushes. That was very clever of her.”
Fanny beamed. “I wanted you to draw me a map, Dad, but then it wouldn’t be a surprise.”
Silas met Eva’s eyes. “I’m guessing you got an invitation, just as I did.”
“Yes.”
“And you followed the clues. Kind of like Hansel and Gretel.”
Eva laughed. “Exactly. Except the birds didn’t eat up all the clues, like they ate the crumbs—”
“I know that story!” Fanny interrupted, coming to the table and looking important as she picked ice cubes out of the beverage container with her fingers and put one in each of the three plastic glasses in front of her. “Dad reads that story to me.”
“No birds to eat up all the crumbs,” Silas said in a low voice, his eyes on Eva’s, “and no big bad witch at the end of the trail, either.”
Eva hesitated for a split second, then shook her head. “No.” Fanny’s father seemed very different today from the man she’d met yesterday. Then he’d been brusque and determined, angry and arrogant, with the exception of those few minutes on the trail when he’d returned, almost as an afterthought, to offer to escort her back to Doris’s house. Was that to make sure she left the property? This afternoon he seemed deliberately friendly, even jovial.
“Except Auntie Aggie, of course,” he teased, with a glance at his daughter. The half smile transformed his face, changing it from grim and rather formidable to handsome, even boyish. Which was the real Silas Lord?
“Dad!” Fanny shouted. “Don’t say that! Auntie Aggie’s not a big, bad witch. Here, have some.” She pushed a glass toward her father.
Silas took a sip. “Mmm,” he said, with a smile at his daughter over the rim. “Champagne! I suppose that’s in honor of our visitor.”
“It’s not champagne, Dad,” Fanny said seriously. “It’s fizzy water and lemonade, just like I had at Eva’s.”
“Aha!” Silas put his glass down firmly. “So you were in the house, you little rascal!”
CHAPTER SIX
“YEP!” Fanny laughed. “Eva gave me a drink, only she didn’t have any pop in her fridge, just like us. And me ’n’ Bruno ran out of there when we heard you coming. Ha!”
Fanny gave her father a triumphant look. “And we beated you home, Dad!”
“Beat, honey,” Silas corrected, his eyes locked on Eva’s astonished gaze. “Not beated. And I think you should call our guest Miss Haines, don’t you, Fanny? It is Miss, I presume,” he continued smoothly.
“I’m not married,” Eva blurted out, about to take a sip of the lemonade. She was astonished at the rapid interchange between father and daughter, then the sudden switch to her. She was beginning to feel like Alice at the Mad Hatter’s picnic. “Miss is rather old-fashioned, isn’t it? And, of course, Fanny, I want you to call me Eva. It’s my name.”
“And what does Ms. Haines do when she’s not visiting Liberty Island?”
“I’m a teacher.” Why was she answering this man’s nosy questions so willingly?
“A teacher?” Fanny’s father sounded genuinely interested. He studied her across the blue table and reached for his glass again. Fanny was busy serving pieces of cake on small plates. “High school?”
“No, elementary. I had grade one and two classes last year.”
“Substitute?”
“Yes. I’m applying for several full-time positions for this fall, though.”
“How is it you’ve come to Liberty Island? Are you related to Doris Bonhomme?”
Eva stared at him, her lips pressed firmly together. She felt her cheeks warm under his steady gaze.
“I wish I could go to school,” Fanny said sadly. She licked icing from her fingers.
“Oh, you’ll be in school soon enough,” Eva said, glad to change the subject. “How old are you, Fanny?”
“Five-goin’-on-six,” she responded, holding up one hand, fingers spread. That had been Eva’s estimate, although the child was small for her age.
“You’ve just turned five, Fanny,” her father said quietly and his daughter frowned. “That’s hardly almost six.”
“Well, I suppose you’re going into kindergarten, then,” Eva said hastily, aware that the subject of school seemed to have cast a pall on their little party for some reason.
“Nope.” Fanny shook her head and sighed. “Kids in books go to school.” Eva thought that was a strange comment but Silas immediately stood up and stepped away from the table.
“Would you like to see Fanny’s playhouse? We can eat our cake and vegetables later. You’ll have to bend over, I’m afraid, as it’s not designed for grown-ups.”
The awkward conversation was successfully derailed and Eva followed Fanny to the Dutch doors of the playhouse, which looked very gypsyish, even to the point of having wooden wheels, nonfunctional, she assumed. Silas didn’t accompany them, which was a good thing, Eva realized, once she was inside. The small structure consisted of one rectangular room with two small upholstered chairs, a brick-look plywood false fireplace complete with painted flames and braided hearth rug, miniature rose-sprigged curtain-hung cupboards and a child-size bed, covered with a quilt and tucked into a nook in the wall. There was even a tiny wrought-iron shelf above the bed, with half a dozen books. Bent over as she was, Eva managed a quick glance at the titles: several worn Curious George stories, Goodnight, Moon, two tiny Beatrix Potter volumes, including Eva’s personal favorite, The Tale of Two Bad Mice, and a well-thumbed older edition of Mother Goose nursery rhymes.
This place was a child’s dream come true!
When she emerged from the caravan, she stumbled as she put her weight on her sore foot, and Silas came forward quickly and grabbed her arm.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.” Eva felt embarrassed. “I don’t think I got all the rose briar out of my heel last night.”
“What have you got on it?”
“A Band-Aid.”
He sent her a derisory look and offered the cake plate. Eva took a piece and bit into it. Carrot cake with cream cheese icing. Delicious. “Did you make this, Fanny?”
“You’re funny!” Fanny laughed. “Isn’t she, Daddy?”
“I wouldn’t say funny, exactly,” Silas said slowly, choosing a carrot stick from the vegetable tray. “More like interesting or mysterious or maybe crazy for not looking after that infected foot.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Eva said. “Fanny,” she went on briskly, “watch out for Andy. Behind you. Would you like to give him some carrots before he invites himself?”
The donkey was leaning over the table. He’d discovered the open Tupperware container with the vegetables and had already knocked over a glass.
After the cake, Eva thought she could politely leave but when she stood, the pain from her foot shot up her leg and she grimaced, shifting her weight onto her right leg.
“That settles it,” Silas said. “Come up to the house. I’ll put some antibiotic cream on that.”
Eva hesitated.
Was she being foolish? If Doris had a first aid kit, Eva had no idea where to find it. Maybe some antibiotic cream was a good idea. “Well, all right. I appreciate your concern. If you really think it’s necessary.”
“I do,” he said.
Ten minutes later, Eva sat in the large, dim, old-fashioned but well-equipped kitchen and looked around. She felt rather self-conscious sitting there all by herself with her bare foot in a basin of steaming water. Silas had drawn the water, put a handful of salt in it and then disappeared down the hall. A clock on the wall ticked softly. The counters, a mid-century speckled grey Arborite pattern, were spotless and the porcelain-and-brass pump handle by the huge stainless steel sink gleamed. The kitchen was shipshape.
A door slammed somewhere and a few seconds later, Fanny and Bruno entered the room. “Is my dad fixing your foot yet?”
Eva bobbed her foot in the water. “I guess so.” She wished now that she hadn’t let Silas talk her into coming inside the house. An infected splinter was hardly a life-threatening injury.
“Is the water real hot?”
“Yes.” Eva smiled and lifted her foot, which was quite pink already. She wiggled her toes. Where was Silas with the first aid cream he’d promised?
“Did you like my party?”
Eva nodded. “It was lovely. Thank you for inviting me—”
“I made the ’vitations myself,” Fanny interrupted. Her eyes glowed.
“You did a beautiful job.”
“I did, didn’t I?” she agreed.
“Oh, my goodness! No one told me you were here.” An older woman, obviously the housekeeper, came in through a side door. “You must be the young lady staying in the house on the other side.”
Eva extended her hand awkwardly. “I’m Eva Haines. Doris is a cousin of my mother’s.”
“I see. So she’s your second cousin then?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Agnes Klassen.” Mrs. Klassen put a knitting bag on the table and bustled toward the stove. She glanced at the hall and lowered her voice. “How is she, by the way?”
“Doris?”
The housekeeper nodded. “I don’t know her well, of course, just to say hello if I saw her shopping or whatnot on the mainland, but I do know she had a bad spell earlier this spring.”
“She broke her hip but she’s doing quite well now. She’s in a nursing home in Sechelt. Seaview Lodge.”
“Is she? I’m glad to hear it,” the older woman said hastily, then glanced again at the doorway to the hall. “You’ll have a cup of tea?” she continued in a normal tone.
“Oh, no, thank you,” Eva said. “I’m just on my way—” She looked helplessly at her foot, immersed in the rapidly cooling water. “I’m just—”
“She’s got a sore foot, Auntie Aggie,” Fanny explained. “My dad’s gonna fix it up.”
“Silas should have told me you were here. Honestly!” The elderly housekeeper settled into a rocking chair by the window with her knitting. She took out a small piece, yellow, with blue ducks knitted into the yoke of what looked very much like the back of a child’s cardigan. The color was suspiciously familiar.
The clack-clack of the knitting needles filled the silence for a long minute. Eva desperately wished again that she’d just gone home. “Are you here for the summer?” she asked, casting about for something—anything—to say.
The housekeeper raised her head abruptly. “No, we’ve been here, me and my husband, for nearly three years now.” She sighed. “This latest time, anyway. I worked for Silas’s parents before, too, you know. Here and at their place in West Vancouver. That would be some years ago, of course.”
“I see.” So Fanny and her father—and the Klassens—really were living on the island year-round. What did one do here in the winter? “It must be lonely.”
“Sometimes.” Mrs. Klassen shook out a strand of yarn from her work bag. “Oh, but there’s always something to do and I go over to the mainland regular to visit our son—goodness, child, what are you after now?”
Fanny had opened the refrigerator door and was inspecting the contents. “I wish we had some of that fizzy water like Eva has in her fridge. Or pop.”
“So you’ve had a look in our guest’s fridge, have you, you nosy little dickens, you?” the housekeeper asked with a cheerful smile. “Come here, honey, I want to measure this on you again.”
The girl went obediently to the window, carrying a juice box, and stood quietly while Mrs. Klassen fussed with the garment, pulling and pushing until it fit, in a manner of speaking, on the child’s back, over her T-shirt.
“There! Thank you, dear.” The housekeeper flopped the piece she was working back to front and began on a purl row. It had been years since Eva had knit anything. Her mother had taught her. She’d knit a pair of slippers for Girl Guides, once. And a scarf as a Christmas gift for her sister Kate.
The Newfoundland’s sudden focus on the hall entrance alerted Eva to Silas’s return. He carried a towel and a handful of first aid supplies, including the tube of ointment he’d gone for.
“How’s the foot?”
“It’s fine, really. I feel rather foolish going through all this just for a sliver….”
“You can’t be too careful. We’re on an island here with no doctors, no nurses, no medical help of any kind. It’s best to avoid emergencies.”
“This isn’t an emergency,” Eva insisted.
“No. But if your foot had become badly infected, it could be. Would you have come to us for help?” His eyes, a stormy-sea-color, not blue, not green, were intent on her.
“My cousin managed,” Eva grumbled, realizing she was being difficult and not exactly sure why.
“Did she?” Silas’s look was challenging as he hunkered down in front of her and held out the towel. Obediently she raised her foot and he dried it gently.
“Yes. She was airlifted off, you know. She was a very resourceful woman. She used her cell phone to call for help.”
“Did she?” Silas repeated, not meeting her eyes. “So you’re related to Doris Bonhomme—”
“I’m her second cousin.”
“Sounds like you admire her.”
“I do,” Eva retorted hotly, realizing she’d just answered the questions Silas had posed in the orchard. “I’ve always admired her independence. I think she’s a wonderful woman.”
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Judith Bowen
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: A man with a wild child. A secret child…When Eva Haines first comes to remote (and supposedly deserted) Liberty Island, she has the uncanny feeling that someone′s watching her–and she′s right. A small wild-looking child with a huge black dog has been following her around. Eva, who′s spending a few weeks on the island to deal with an elderly relative′s estate, is puzzled. Who is this little girl? Where did she come from?Eva finds out soon enough. Fanny is the daughter of the reclusive Silas Lord. But once she learns this, Eva only has more questions. Why are Silas and his daughter hiding out on Liberty Island? What secret is Silas keeping about this child he obviously adores? And why is Eva falling in love with such a mysterious man?