thought of your grandmother. She seemed okay.”
Ursula took up the tale. 'I couldn't imagine who was cal ing me at such an hour. Duncan wanted to know if you were there and of course you weren't. I told him I'd be right over.' What Ursula did not say was that she knew immediately something was very very wrong. It was a summer out of sync and the disappearance of her daughter and granddaughter had to be serious. She stopped at their house to make sure and found it dark, completely empty.
“It's amazing what we can do when our adrenaline gets going,' Pix marveled, thanking God that she had not known at the time her octogenarian mother, who had not driven for years, was racing from The Pines across the causeway to the Athertons in the dead of night in her venerable
'Woody'—a 1949 Plymouth Suburban wagon.
“Fortunate that I had just had the car serviced for Arnie and Claire to use while they're here. Anyway, Duncan had been doing some investigating of his own while I was on my way. When I arrived, he told me there were many things missing from the house—valuable things—and the lobster boat was gone; the Whaler was at the mooring. I cal ed the police, then decided to take the canoe out. Duncan had found some rope and your purse on the floor in one of the rooms upstairs and we were both convinced that you'd been taken someplace under duress”
Pix liked her mother's choice of words—a quaint way to describe the terror that she and Samantha had just suffered.
She looked at the group. It was very late and they were al in one stage or another of extreme exhaustion.
“I think we'd better go home, especial y because it seems a storm is on the way. I know Earl was coming here, but surely the state police have been in touch with him and told him we're al right. He'l know we went home —and al of us are sticking together for the rest of this night, anyway”
When Duncan had reached Earl, the sergeant had immediately launched a search of the area around the camp, including the quarry, cal ing back to tel the boy to stay put with the Mil ers if they turned up at the house.
There was one more thing Duncan wanted to say.
Everyone was being so nice and he felt guilty. 'I didn't think Mrs. Rowe should go out in the canoe like that, but I don't know how to paddle one, and she was pretty insistent.”
Mother had won the Women's Singles Canoe Trophy at various events on the Concord River for more years than Pix could remember and had been paddling the Penobscot since she was a child. And 'pretty insistent' was definitely a euphemism.
“She's very good at it, in fact, she'l teach you'
Samantha thought it was time Duncan had some new interests and she ful y intended to take her rescuer under her wing, if he would let her.
“That would be great,' he said, then mumbled, 'except I don't know if I'l be here.”
Pix had studiously been avoiding any reference to Duncan's parents. It did not seem the moment to break it to the boy that his mother was a murderer, including of his natural father, and that both Jim and Valerie were involved in larceny up to their shirt-pocket emblems. Seeing him on the dock, as soon as they were within shouting distance, they'd cal ed to him to phone the state police and get the Coast Guard to stop Jim's boat. Other than this, al mention of their captors had been moot.
“But Granny, why did you go to the island?' Samantha asked the one question that had not yet been answered.
Pix felt foolish not to have thought of it. Why indeed?
“It was the only place that made sense. Their boat was gone. If you were stil alive, and I believed you were, they had to put you someplace, but it couldn't be close to the camp. So, I simply started paddling along the shore, then out toward sea. Plus, I heard you shouting.”
Sgt. Earl Dickinson was surprised and happy to see a group of laughing, obviously healthy friends as he drove up.
Someone had been in time.
“Start throwing things overboard!' Jim shouted to his wife.
“What?' She couldn't hear him above the gale-force winds and rain that had greeted them farther out to sea.
He motioned with his hands and spoke louder, 'Get rid of some of this stuff. We're too heavy.'
“Are you crazy?”
He left the cabin, went to the back of the boat, and started tossing bags into the water. Valerie fel upon him, screeching, 'My boxes! My col ection of Battersea boxes!
What are you doing!”
He slapped her hard across the face. 'Shut up! I'm going to try to make for shore. We can't ride it out and we're not exactly in a position to radio for help.”
She began to cry. 'I'm scared, Jim.'
“So am I. Now, do what I said and come back under cover.' They were both soaking wet.
She threw the wicker hamper over the side and then the silver. We can always buy more, she told herself. We can always buy more.
At the wheel, Jim reached for a handkerchief to dry his face and found Pix's car keys in his pocket. She won't be needing these, he thought, and lobbed them in a long arc into the churning water. Then he turned the boat toward land, looking for a safe harbor.
The raging storm hampered the Coast Guard's search for the next few days. It was not until the sun broke out on Saturday that some children found a life buoy with the name VAL 'N JIM washed up on the shore—along with an empty wicker picnic basket.
“It's a great party,' Faith Fairchild said to her friend, Pix. They were sitting side by side on the back steps of the Mil ers' house, watching a variety of activities. A large convivial group—with Pix's brother, Arnie, at the center —
continued to consume lobsters at the large picnic table.
'Frankly, at my age I'd rather have a talking frog' was obviously the punch line to a very funny joke. They al burst into laughter. Sam, who had once again made a mad dash for his loved ones, arriving early Thursday morning, started to tel one of his.
“He never gets this one right,' Pix told Faith, 'but he laughs so much while he's tel ing it that everybody laughs with him, anyway.' Faith nodded. As far as she was concerned, the world was divided into people who could tel jokes and people who couldn't. Total y unable to remember even the most sidesplitting gem, she didn't even try, and kept to strictly off-the-cuff.
Another group was playing croquet. Pix watched her mother tap some poor person's bal miles off course, recal ing that even when they were children, Ursula had played to win. 'Otherwise, you won't learn,' she'd explained with triumphant sweetness. Claire, Arnie's wife, had obviously drunk from the same wel . Her bal hurtled through a hoop, smashed into another, which she briskly sent into the tal grass. Claire had been out for a long bicycle ride and stil wore her black Lycra biking shorts with a bright periwinkle blue oversized linen shirt. She was one of those petite, nicely-put-together women who always made Pix feel much tal er and much clumsier than she actual y was—
like Alice after eating the first cakes. Pix never knew what to do with her hands and feet when someone like Claire was around. Pix had assumed that in middle age you'd stop caring about what other people thought of you.
Supposedly, it was one of the perks. She was stil waiting.
The children were al over the place. Samantha and Arlene had immediately taken command of the Fairchild offspring, to Faith's unabashed delight. They seemed to be playing a game that involved a great deal of running and screeching, with little Amy riding piggyback and the dogs racing at their heels, barking happily. Duncan was with them. There had been no sudden transformation. He stil wore a black concert T-shirt and black jeans, but his hair was clean and he and Fred were joining the game with every appearance of friendship.
There had been no word about the Athertons, other than the finding of the life buoy, and they were assumed lost. Duncan's paternal grandparents had been notified and were only too happy to have him come live with them.
