“My God, what a view,” she said. “If I lived here, young man, I’d spend most of my time out here.”
I don’t know why I spoke like I did, but I said, “No doubt sunbathing and teasing the neighbors.”
Gwen laughed and laughed and then looked up the coast, at Weymouth’s Point. “Hey, you can see Alice Crenshaw’s old house from here,” she said.
Those few words froze me. Gwen could not have surprised me more if she had said that she was originally from Indiana and was my long-lost aunt.
“Say again?” I managed to ask.
“Oh, Alice Crenshaw. That was her place up there, am I right?”
“Yes, you’re absolutely right,” I said, lots of unexpected memories flashing through me from years ago. “That was Alice’s place.”
“Did you know her?”
“We were friends for a while … until she moved out.”
“That’s right,” Gwen said. “There was a scandal back then. Something to do with a body in the marsh from the 1940s, a fisherman getting blown up. Even the head of the chamber of commerce died in the mess. Am I right?”
God, was she ever right. “Yes, you’re pretty much spot on. I had moved in just a while before all that happened.”
“Alice was mixed up in it all, wasn’t she?”
“She was.” And so was I, I thought.
“We weren’t the best of friends,” Gwen said. “But we knew each other from my newspaper work, her being on some town boards and commissions. A real piece of work Alice was.”
I stayed quiet and so did she, and we watched the ocean move its weight and water around, seagulls flapping overhead, other birds floating in the cove in front of us. Gwen stretched out her legs and closed her eyes, and it looked like she had dozed off. “Funny how history just flows along,” she said. “You’re living in a house that saw tremendous excitement and heroism back when it was a lifeboat station, and then a place for officers who shot off those big guns at Samson Point, and then that short time when it was basically a drunken party house.”
She shifted her long legs. “Then life moves on. It’s a quiet, beautiful day, you’ve got a lovely and quiet house, and what happened back there, it’s all in the past. Seeing all this”—and she waved an arm—“hard to believe what happened here. Like sunbathing at the beaches on Normandy. But still …”
Gwen turned to me, face a bit more serious. “What did that Southern writer say, about the past?”
“It was Faulkner,” I said. “He said, ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’”
“Smart fellow.”
“He sure was.”
Gwen smiled. “I was talking about you, sport.” A pause to look at her chunky watch, and she said, “Dear me, time to roll. Look, I’ll get ahold of my old beau, Bobby Turcotte, see if I can pry him out of his rest home to get him to visit you.”
She got up and so did I. “Do you think it’ll be a problem?”
“Nah,” she said. “I’ll promise him a BJ like the good-old days and that should get him running.”
I think she saw me blush, and that got another laugh. “Don’t worry, Lewis, by the time we’re done visiting, he’ll have forgotten everything. Gosh, like I said before, you kids think you invented everything from sex and drugs to rock ’n’ roll.” She checked her watch. “Guess I’ll go walk up to the Lafayette House and see if my niece needs some help beating up her boss.”
At the sliding door leading into my house she turned to me, and like an old vision from years past, she touched my face like Alice Crenshaw did back in the day. “Oh, if only I were some years younger,” she said.
I found it hard to talk. After a moment passed, I said, “That’s sweet of you to say, Gwen.”
“Never been accused of being the quiet one.”
“My turn for a favor?”
“Sure.”
“Where’s Alice now?” I asked.
She took one step into my house, turned back to me. “Oh, you didn’t know?”
“No,” I said.
“Alice moved in with a niece over in Worcester—nowhere near the beach, poor girl—and got Alzheimer’s, that nasty bitch of a disease. Suffered with that for years, and died two years back. By then, it was a mercy.”
My throat was still thick. “I’m sure it was.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Felix gave me a ring later and asked me if I wanted dinner, and I said of course; he said he was bringing company, and before I could ask him what the hell was going on, he hung up.
I next checked in with Paula Quinn. “Poor Rollie, he’s still sick,” she said.
“Poor guy indeed,” I said. “Meaning you’re still the editor?”
“For the foreseeable future, which means I’m off tonight and tomorrow night.”
“Off like in vacation?”
“Like hell,” Paula said. “In a spirit of generosity, a couple of months ago our corporate owners paid for Rollie to attend a two-day conference in Boston, something called the New New Journalism or some idiocy. Poor Rollie, I think it would have been wasted on him, but at least he would have a chance to eat and sleep somewhere nice on the Chronicle’s dime. But with him sick, the owners will be damned if this investment goes to waste. So off I go.”
“Pick me up a nice T-shirt, will you? Extra-large?”
“Sure, I’ll get matching ones, and later this summer we can have a wet T-shirt contest on your deck. How does that sound?”
“Best invite all day—hell, all week.”
She laughed and her voice lowered a bit. “How are you doing?”
“As well as could be expected, and then some.”
“Any report back yet?”
“If I get the energy and verve up, I might make a call today. If not, I’ll take a nap.”
“You all right emptying out your drains?”
“I’ve got a technique
