And so, before leaving that morning, I ran up to my room and got an old kite I hadn’t flown in years. At the beach I taught Mary Reed how to string it, then to run against the wind so that it would be taken up. For a long time we watched it soar beneath the blue, and I will always remember the small, thin smiles that sometimes rose precariously to her lips, then vanished without a trace, her face darkening suddenly, so that I knew the darkness came from deep within.
“It was because they suspected that Mr. Reed might have been plotting to kill his wife, that’s why they took Mary,” my father told me many years later when I was a grown man, and he an old one, the two of us sitting in the tiny, cluttered room he used as his private chamber. “To make sure she was safe, that’s what Mr. Parsons told me when he drove me over to Mr. Reed’s house that morning.”
What my father witnessed on Black Pond a few minutes later stayed with him forever, the anguish in Mr. Reed’s face so pure, so unalloyed by any other feeling, that it seemed, he told me, “like something elemental.”
At first Mr. Reed had appeared puzzled to find so many men at his door, my father told me. Not only himself, Mr. Parsons, and Captain Hamilton, but two uniformed officers of the Massachusetts State Police as well.
It was Mr. Parsons who spoke first. “We’d like to talk to you for a moment, Mr. Reed.”
Mr. Reed nodded, then walked outside, closing the door behind him.
“We’ve been looking into a few things,” Mr. Parsons said. He glanced inside the house and saw Mary’s face pressed against the screen of an otherwise open window. “Let’s go into the yard,” he said, taking Mr. Reed by the elbow and guiding him down the stairs and out into the yard, where he stood by the pond, encircled by the other men.
“Mr. Reed,” Mr. Parsons began. “We’ve become concerned about the welfare of your daughter.”
It was then, my father said, that Mr. Reed appeared to understand that something serious was upon him, though he may well not have grasped exactly what it was. “Concerned about Mary?” he asked. “Why are you concerned about Mary?”
“We’ve heard some suggestions,” Mr. Parsons told him. “Having to do with your relationship with Mrs. Reed.”
“What suggestions?”
“There’s no need to go into them at this time,” Mr. Parsons said. “But they nave caused the commonwealth to feel some concern about your daughter.”
“What kind of concern?”
“For her safety.”
“She’s perfectly safe,” Mr. Reed said firmly.
Mr. Parsons shook his head, then drew a piece of paper from his jacket pocket and handed it to Mr. Reed. “There’s been enough death. We can’t take the chance on there being any more.”
Mr. Reed stared at Mr. Parsons, still vaguely puzzled. “What are you talking about?” he asked. He glanced at the paper. “What is this?”
“We’re going to take custody of your daughter,” Mr. Parsons told him. “Mr. Griswald has agreed to look after her until certain things can be cleared up.”
Mr. Reed thrust the paper toward Mr. Parsons. “You’re not going to take Mary,” he said. “You’re not going to do that.
Mr. Parsons’ voice hardened. “I’m afraid we are, Mr. Reed.”
Mr. Reed began to back away, the men gathering around him as he did so. “No,” he said, “you can’t do that.”
Captain Hamilton stepped forward. “Mr. Reed, your daughter doesn’t need to see us use force, does she?”
Mr. Reed glanced toward the porch, where Mary now stood, a little girl in a pale blue dress, staring down at him. “Please, don’t do this,” he said in a desperate whisper, his attention now riveted on Mr. Parsons. “Not now. Not with her mother just—” He gazed imploringly at my father. “Please, Mr. Griswald, can’t you—”
“It’s only until we can clear things up,” Mr. Parsons said, interrupting him. “But for now we have to be sure that your daughter is safe.”
Suddenly, Mr. Reed shook his head and began to push his way out of the circle. The men closed in upon him, and as he thrashed about, he lost his grip on his cane, crumpled to the ground and lay sprawled before them, laboring to get up, but unable to do so. It was then, my father said, that a cry broke from him, one that seemed to offer up the last frail measure of his will.
“He looked like a different man when he got to his feet,” my father told me. “Like everything had been drained out of him. He didn’t say anything. He just looked over to the porch, where Mary was, and waved for her to come to him. At first she wouldn’t. She was so scared, of course. All those men she didn’t know. The way they’d surrounded her father.” He shook his head. “You can imagine how she felt, Henry.”
But at last the child came. Mr. Reed met her, lifted her into his arms, kissed her softly, then handed her to my father, his words oddly final as he did so:
Only an hour or so after those harrowing events, Mary walked to the beach with me, the two of us flying my old red striped kite until the first line of thunderclouds appeared on the horizon, its jagged bolts of lightning still far away, so that we’d gotten home well in advance of the rain.
By nightfall the rain had subsided, but a few hours later it began again. It was still falling when Dr. Craddock’s car came to a halt in front of our house. The doctor was wearing a long raincoat and a gray hat which he drew from his head as he mounted the stairs to where my father sat in a wicker chair a few feet away, I in the swing nearby.
“I’ve come about the little girl,” he said. “Mary Reed.”
My father got to his feet, puzzled. “Mary Reed? What about her?”
