CHAPTER 1
There was no lollygagging in the feathers on Big Sister Island. Not in July. Not when the sun came beaming through the skylights in Mitch’s sleeping loft at five-thirty in the morning. Not a chance. These days, Mitch Berger, creature of the darkness, got up when the sun got up.
And he loved every glorious minute.
He loved the cool, fresh breezes off Long Island Sound that wafted through his antique post-and-beam carriage house no matter how hot and sticky the day was. He loved the blackberries that grew wild all over the island and the fresh vegetables that he had brought to life in his own garden. He loved mowing his little patch of lawn with an old-fashioned push mower, which had to be one of the great lost pleasures of the modern age. He loved parking his pudgy self in a shell-backed aluminum garden chair at sunset, cold beer in hand, waiting for Des to come thumping across the rickety wooden causeway in her cruiser. He loved the bracing dips in the Sound they would take together. He even-and this was the truly amazing part-loved those disgustingly healthy dinners of grilled fish, brown rice and steamed vegetables she would cook for them.
If he didn’t know any better Mitch would have sworn he was turning into somebody else.
Every day he learned something new about the sun-drenched natural world around him. Goldfinches are attracted to sunflowers, hummingbirds to the color red. The male osprey stays behind to teach the fledgling how to fly while the female migrates south on her own. Many of these things he had learned from Dodge Crockett, unofficial head of the unofficial walking club Mitch had fallen in with at the beginning of the summer-four local men who hiked thethree-mile stretch of beach that ringed the Peck’s Point Nature Preserve every morning at seven so as to exercise, to bird watch and to chew each other’s ears off.
There was no getting around this: Mitch Berger, lead film critic for the most prestigious and therefore lowest paying of the three New York city metropolitan dailies, was in a male bonding group. Or so Des called it. Mitch simply described it as four Dorseteers who liked to walk together, eat fresh-baked croissants and discuss life, love, and women-three subjects they freely admitted they knew nothing about.
Besides, today he had a serious career-related matter to discuss with Dodge.
At the sound of Mitch stirring around in the kitchen Quirt came scooting in the cat door for his breakfast. Quirt, who was Mitch’s lean, sinewy hunter, liked to sleep outside during the summer on a bench under the living room bay window. Clemmie, his lap cat, still preferred the safe confines of the house, but slept downstairs in his armchair as opposed to upstairs on Mitch’s bed, snuggled into his collarbone. Mitch had grown accustomed to her being there at night and missed her terribly, but he had also come to understand cats and the high priority they placed on their own comfort. When autumn blew in, and Clemmie felt the need for Mitch’s considerable body warmth, she would return to his bed as if she’d never left.
Right now, she yawned at him from his chair and stretched a languid paw out toward him, which was her way of saying good morning.
Mitch was otherwise alone this morning. Des had taken to spending three or four nights a week with him, the rest at her own place overlooking Uncas Lake. Bella Tillis, her good friend and fellow rescuer, had moved in with her on a trial basis, which meant Des could stay over with him and not fret over her own furry charges.
While Quirt hungrily munched kibble Mitch squeezed himself a tall glass of grapefruit juice. As he drank it down he stood before his living room windows that overlooked the water in three different directions, savoring the quiet of early morning on his island in theSound. A fisherman was chugging his way out for the day. Otherwise, all was tranquil. Mitch dressed in a faded gray T-shirt and baggy khaki shorts. Shoved four blue tin coffee mugs in his knapsack, along with an eight-ounce plastic water bottle filled with that see-through low-fat milk Des had him drinking-he himself vastly preferred whole milk of the chocolate variety. But Des was absolutely determined that Mitch take off some excess poundage this summer. And a determined Des was no one to trifle with. Ever since she’d turned his kitchen into a No Fry Zone he’d gone down two whole waist sizes.
He started out the door, binoculars around his neck, and headed down the footpath lined with wild beach roses and bayberry toward the causeway that connected Big Sister with Peck’s Point. The island had been in the Peck family since the 1600s. It was forty square acres of blue-blooded paradise at the mouth of the Connecticut River just off Dorset, the historic New England village. There were five houses on the island, a decommissioned lighthouse that was the second tallest in New England, a private beach, dock, tennis court. Mitch had been only too happy to rent the converted caretaker’s cottage, and to eventually buy it. During the cold months he’d had the whole island to himself. Right now one other house was in use-Bitsy Peck, his garden guru, was living in the big Victorian summer cottage with her daughter, Becca.
Not a day went by when Mitch didn’t tell himself how extraordinarily lucky he was to be here. He’d been a total wreck after he lost his beloved wife, Maisie, a Harvard-trained landscape architect, to ovarian cancer when she was barely thirty. He had needed somewhere to go and heal. And it turned out that somewhere was this place. Slowly, he was healing. Certainly, Des Mitry’s arrival in his life was a huge reason why. So was his determination to plunge himself headlong into new experiences-for Mitch Berger, a socially challenged screening room rat, walking in the sunshine every morning with three men who he’d only recently met qualified as a huge leap into the unknown.
He could see them waiting for him there at the gate as he crossedthe narrow quarter-mile wooden causeway-a trio of middle-aged Dorseteers in sizes small, medium, and large. Will Durslag, who towered over the other two, was the fellow who’d brought him into the group. Will and his hyperkinetic wife, Donna, ran The Works and Mitch was a huge fan of their chocolate goodies, or at least he had been until Des put him on his diet. Standing there in his tank top and baggy surf shorts, knapsack thrown carelessly over one broad shoulder, thirty-four-year-old Will looked more like a professional beach volleyball player or Nordic god than he did a jolly chef. He was a tanned, muscular six foot four with long sun-bleached blond hair that he wore in a ponytail. Early one morning, Mitch had encountered him on the bluff hiking with Dodge Crockett and Jeff Wachtell. Introductions had been made, a casual invitation extended. Next thing Mitch knew he was not only joining their little group every morning but looking forward to it.
It was a loose group. If you were there at seven, fine. If you couldn’t make it, that was fine, too. No explanations required. There was only one rule: you could not take yourself too seriously. Any subject was a legitimate topic of conversation. The group had no name, though Mitch was partial to the Mesmer Club in tribute to The Woman In Green, one of his favorite Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films. Not that he had bothered to mention this to any of them-they would not understand what he was talking about. They had not, for example, grasped the origin of the Rocky Dies Yellow tattoo on his bicep.
“Good morning, men,” he called out to them.
“Another beautiful day in paradise,” said Dodge, his face breaking into a smile.
“Ab-so-tootly,” piped up Jeff, an impish refugee from a major New York publishing house. Jeff ran the Book Schnook, Dorset’s bookstore.
They set out, walking single file down the narrow footpath that edged the bluffs. Beach pea grew wild alongside of them. Cormorants and gulls flew overhead. Dodge set the brisk pace, his arms swinging loosely at his sides, his shoulders back, head up. Mitch fellin behind him, puffing a bit but keeping up. When he’d first joined the group, Mitch could barely cut it. He was definitely making progress, although his T-shirt was already sticking to him.
Dodge was far and away the oldest of the group. Also the wealthiest. He came from old Dorset money, had been a second-team All American lacrosse player at Princeton, and remained, at fifty-four, remarkably vigorous and fit. Dodge was also the single most rigidly disciplined person Mitch had ever met in his life. So disciplined that he never needed to wear a watch. Thanks to his strict, self-imposed regimen of daily activities Dodge always knew within two minutes what time it was. What made this especially amazing was that Dodge had never held a real job in his life. Didn’t need to. And yet he was never idle. Each day he awoke at six, walked at seven, lifted weights at eight, read The New York Times and Wall Street Journal at nine, attended to personal finances at ten and practiced classical piano at eleven. After lunch, the remainder of his day was given over to meetings. Dodge was president of the local chapter of the Nature Conservancy as well as commissioner of Dorset’s historic district. He served on the Wetlands Commission, the executive board of the Dorset library, and the Youth Services Bureau. Some years back, he had also put in two terms as a state senator up in Hartford. A few of the old-timers around John’s barbershop still called him Senator.
And yet, Dodge was no tight-assed prig. Mitch had heard him do some pretty amazing things with “Great
