Elaine carefully. By the time Rebecca reappeared Elaine was ready.
“Can you really cook on that stove?” she asked, making the question almost a challenge.
Rebecca looked blank for a second, then burst into laughter.
“It isn’t nearly as difficult as it looks,” she said. “Come here and I’ll show you what happens.” She bent over the stove with Elaine, demonstrating how the various vents worked and how to control the fire so that the burners would operate at various levels of heat.
“The main trick is to keep the fire fairly small so that you can move it around and control it Otherwise the thing gets so hot you can’t even get close to it But if your husband is anything like mine,” she finished, “you won’t have any problem — there won’t ever be enough wood to build a really big fire.”
Elaine shook her head doubtfully. “I don’t know,” she said. “Something tells me we’re going to be eating out a lot.”
“We can’t,” Rebecca said. “And even if we could, we wouldn’t. Much as I hate to admit it, I’ve gotten to the point where I actually enjoy cooking on this thing. The worst part of living on the beach is bathing.”
“My God,” Elaine breathed, closing her eyes as if to shut out a hideous vision. “I hadn’t even thought about that!”
“You’ll learn to
Elaine turned to her husband. “Did you hear that, Brad?”
“I heard.” Brad looked unconcerned. “And I know perfectly well that I’m capable of getting myself spotless in one small pan of hot water. And after I’ve bathed in it, I can shave in it.”
Elaine gaped at him. “You? You’re the one who loves to use up all the hot water with twenty-minute showers.”
“If it’s available, why not?” Brad countered. “But loving to do it and having to do it are two different things. Just give me a couple of quarts of hot water — I’ll be fine.”
“Good,” Elaine said sarcastically. “Then you can boil a gallon at a time and I’ll use what’s left.”
“Before we get too involved in the glories of primitive living,” Glen interrupted, “I have a question. How on earth did you get Harney Whalen to rent you the old Baron house? We tried, and he absolutely refused.”
“Maybe he didn’t want to rent to someone with children,” Elaine suggested.
“That old house?” Rebecca said. “I don’t mean to sound negative — God knows it’s a lot better than this — but still, it isn’t a place children can do much damage to.”
“It was something else,” Glen said. “I’m still not sure exactly what it was. I thought it had something to do with us personally at first, but then I changed my mind I figured he just didn’t want to rent the house at all, especially to strangers. I guess I was wrong.”
“I’m not so sure,” Brad said pensively. “He wasn’t eager to rent to us either. When he finally did he was acting strange, almost as though he was thinking about something else entirely.”
“That
“This whole place is strange,” Brad offered. “I think I’ll write a book about it.”
“A book?” Glen looked at Brad critically, then shook his head. “Nope. You don’t look like a writer.”
“I’m not,” Brad said. “But I’ve been kicking around an idea for a book for a long time. Now seems like a good time to do it, and Sod Beach seems like a good place. So here we are.”
“Just like that?” Rebecca asked.
“Well, not quite,” Elaine replied. “We have to go back to Seattle and dose up our house. But I should think we’ll be moving out here in a couple of weeks.”
“Two weeks,” Rebecca said, almost under her breath. “I can make it that long.” She hadn’t intended to speak out loud, but everyone in the room heard her. Glen looked embarrassed, but Brad decided to probe.
“I’m not sure what that means,” he said with a tentative smile that he hoped would put Rebecca at her ease.
Rebecca flushed a deep red and tried to recover herself. “Nothing, really,” she began. Then she changed her mind. “Yes, I do mean something by it,” she said. “It’s damned lonely out here and sometimes I’m frightened. You have no idea how glad I am that you’re going to be living just down the beach. I know it may sound strange since I barely know you, but sometimes this place gets to me. Now I won’t be the only one.”
“The only one?” Elaine repeated Rebecca’s last words.
“The only stranger here,” Rebecca said. Then she looked from Brad to Elaine, her expression almost panicky. “You
“I see,” Elaine said, leaning back and relaxing. She smiled at Rebecca. “No, we don’t know a soul here except you, and we’re not related to anybody, and,” she added in a rush, “I know exactly what you’re talking about It’s not easy to be a stranger in Clark’s Harbor, is it?”
“It’s terrible,” Rebecca said softly. “Sometimes I’ve wanted to just pick up and leave.”
“Why haven’t you?” Elaine asked.
“Lots of reasons,” Rebecca said vaguely. “We’ve got most of our money tied up here — not that there’s very much of it. If we were to leave now we wouldn’t have anything left.”
“And, of course, there’s Robby,” Glen added quietly.
Rebecca looked almost embarrassed but Brad picked the subject of Robby up with apparent eagerness. “The change in him is almost unbelievable. In fact, if I hadn’t seen him myself, I wouldn’t have believed you. And you don’t have any idea what caused it?”
“Not the slightest.” Glen shrugged. “But we aren’t about to question it either. As long as Robby stays the way he is now, we’ll stay in Clark’s Harbor, come what may.”
“How bad has it been?” Elaine asked. “Or am I prying?”
“You’re not prying at all,” Rebecca said emphatically. “In fact, maybe it would be good for us to talk about it, just to hear what someone else thinks. Sometimes we think we’re paranoid about Clark’s Harbor. But frankly, I hate to subject you to it — it’s so depressing.” She picked up the bottle of wine and refilled everyone’s glass.
“Oh, come on,” Elaine said. “If nothing else at least it’ll let us know what we’re in for.”
Softly, almost as if she were ashamed, Rebecca explained how they had come to feel that the whole town was somehow united against them. “But there’s never anything you can put your finger on,” Glen finished. “Every time something goes wrong there’s always a reasonable explanation. Except that I always have the unreasonable feeling that if I weren’t a stranger here none of it would ever have gone wrong at all. And then, of course, there was this morning.”
“This morning?” Elaine thought a moment. “Oh, you mean Mrs. Shelling?”
Glen nodded and Rebecca’s face tightened.
“Did you know her?” Brad probed.
“Not really,” Glen said. “I ran into her last night on the beach. Apparently just before she did it.”
“Just before she did it?” Elaine echoed. “You don’t mean—?”
“It happened on our property,” Glen said. “Our land goes back into the woods to the road, then parallels the road for a hundred feet or so. Miriam Shelling hanged herself from one of our trees.”
“Oh, God,” Elaine said softly. “I’m so sorry. Rebecca — it must have been terrible for you.”
“I keep seeing her,” Rebecca whispered. “Every time I close my eyes I keep seeing her. And the kids — what if one of them had seen her?”
“But it wasn’t anything to do with you,” Brad said.
“Wasn’t it?” Rebecca’s face was bleak. “I keep wondering. We talked to Miriam yesterday. She came to the gallery and started ranting at us. We thought she was just upset—”
“Obviously she was,” Brad pointed out.
“She kept saying ‘they’ got her husband and ‘they’ were going to get us too. And then last night—” Rebecca broke off her sentence and fought to keep from bursting into tears. While she struggled to hold herself together, her husband spoke.
“So you can see, it hasn’t been easy.” He laughed self-consciously. “Some welcome we’re giving you, huh? Really makes you want to settle down here, doesn’t it?”
“Actually, yes, it does,” Brad said. The Palmers stared at him. “You mentioned paranoia, and I’m not sure you were so far off base. You two have been living in pretty much of a vacuum out here as far as I can tell. Odd things happen in vacuums. Things get blown all out of proportion. Things that would seem small in ordinary circumstances suddenly seem terribly important And the longer it goes on, the worse it all seems to get But the key
