Gathering Lies Read online

  I spoke his name a third time, my voice rising—and he stirred. His eyes fluttered open and fixed on mine, then widened.

  “Sarah?”

  I took both his hands, warming them between mine. “Hi. Yes, it’s me. Are you all right?”

  He looked at the five other faces staring down at him. “I…My boat. Heavy winds. It went down.” He rubbed his head and began to sit up. “I must have hit something when I went overboard.”

  “Help me get him onto dry land,” I said. Several hands supported his arms and grabbed him around his waist. We half carried him the few feet onto the beach, where he sat, gathering his strength.

  I studied him, between waves of relief. Luke’s hair was as curly as ever, but shorter, collar length, and tinged along the edges with gray. There were deep lines in his face, as if he’d spent a lot of time in the sun. Other than that, he seemed much the same as the last time I’d seen him, twenty-two years ago.

  “God, you look good, Sarah,” he said, still dazed but focusing on me.

  I flushed as the other women looked curiously at us both.

  “I’m over at Thornberry,” I said. “We all are.”

  I introduced Dana, then Kim, Grace and Jane. “Luke and I are old friends, from long ago,” I said.

  Then, to him, “What are you doing here?”

  “I was over at Orcas when the quake hit. I started out early this morning in my friend’s boat, to see what kind of damage the house had taken. But it’s gusty as hell out there. When I tried to get in here to dock, I got stuck on a sandbar.”

  He turned and looked at the wrecked boat, shaking his head. “All I remember is a flash of pain, then I was on the dock.”

  His gaze shifted to the house. “Oh, God. Sarah? Have you been up there?”

  I nodded. “It isn’t good.”

  “Damn. I didn’t dare hope it would be, but—”

  He winced as pain apparently shot through his head.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, as rain began to fall. “Let’s just get you up there. We need to find you some dry clothes and take care of that cut.”

  We were a miserable, wet lot, entering Ransford together. Dana and Jane made all the appropriate, sympathetic sounds, as Luke stood in the living room, looking around. Grace took a stance with her arms folded, an expression of disgust on her face as she took in the condition of the house.

  “Don’t start,” I muttered under my breath, certain she was about to embark on a diatribe about people who didn’t make sure their homes were up to code. She turned and walked off, staring through the front doorway at the rain pouring down.

  “One good thing,” I said to Luke, walking over to stand by his side. “You still have a roof. Most of Thornberry was demolished.”

  He frowned. “I’m sorry to hear that. What about Timmy? Is she all right?”

  “Yes, she’s fine. But Lucy, the cook…”

  I let the rest of the sentence hang, and he rubbed his face wearily. Blood smeared from the cut on his temple, and I reached into my pocket and pulled out a wad of clean but damp Kleenex. Dabbing the cut, I told him to press the tissue against it for a few minutes. He did, wincing as the Kleenex began to soak up blood.

  “God, Sarah, what a mess. I’m afraid I didn’t know Lucy. I haven’t spent a lot of time at Thornberry lately.”

  I wanted to ask him where he had been, and what he’d been doing all these years, but this definitely wasn’t the time.

  “We haven’t been upstairs yet,” I said. “Kim and I got here first, and we only managed to check out the downstairs. We couldn’t find a cell phone or a battery-operated radio, and we thought there might be something like that in one of the bedrooms.”

  Luke walked over to the stairway. “It shouldn’t be too hard to clean this up. But I doubt we’ll find anything. My parents stopped leaving things like phones and radios through the winter a long time ago, because the batteries only went dead.”

  He shook his head. “I’m afraid I’ve been doing the same, out of habit. I take everything with me when I leave here.”

  “What about that boat?” Grace said sharply.

  Luke turned to her. “What about it?” he said, with nearly as much of an edge in his voice.

  “Don’t tell me you started over here from Orcas, after a major earthquake, without a cell phone or a radio.”

  “All right, I won’t tell you,” Luke said testily. His lips tightened. Then, in a quieter voice to me, he said, “What’s her problem?”

  “No problem,” Grace—who had clearly heard him—said. “I’m just a bit sick of people who don’t think ahead.”

  He glared at her. “And I should care about that exactly why?”

  Grace frowned and went back to staring out the doorway. I looked at Luke and just rolled my eyes. Don’t bother, I mouthed.

  “I wouldn’t mind checking out the bedrooms, anyway,” Jane said. “Just in case you forgot and left something here.”

  “I tend to agree,” Dana said. “Besides, you need some dry clothes. For that matter, we could all use some—if, by chance, you’ve got anything up there we could use? Like maybe old stuff, clothes you leave behind between summers?”

  Luke hesitated, seemingly reluctant. I put this down to his still feeling rocky after having been beached.

  “We women can clean off the stairs ourselves,” I began, “if you—”

  “No, I’m all right,” he said. “I’m just certain you won’t find much of any use up there. But, okay. Let’s get started on these stairs.”

  I looked over at Grace, who still wasn’t facing us. Even so, I could see from her profile that she continued to frown.

  And what the hell is that all about? I wondered.

  Original works of art and statuary lined the hallway upstairs. One statue had toppled over and broken in half; two paintings lay on the floor. Oddly enough, however, there was less damage up here than downstairs—fallen plaster, as usual, and chandeliers that hung by a single wire, looking as if they were about to fall. A glimpse into the first two bedrooms also showed some damage, but not as much as we had expected.

  Luke went ahead of us, opening doors and explaining that these were guest rooms and had seldom been used in recent years. Furniture was covered with sheets, and had that kind of musty smell rooms take on when they’ve been closed up for a long time. At one point Luke moved ahead of us, out of sight around a corner, and Grace pulled us to a stop.

  “We could move in here,” she said. “Instead of the farmhouse. It’s dry, and like Sarah said, it’s got a roof. We’d be better off.”

  “I agree,” Dana said. “We can go back to the farmhouse and get Amelia and Timmy, and move back here. That’s if Luke will let us.” She turned to me. “Do you think he will?”

  “I don’t see why not,” I said, hesitating only a moment. “I just wonder if we really would be better off, though. This house is on the northern side of the island, and if there’s a major storm, it could hit a lot harder here than at Thornberry.”

  “Even so,” Kim said, “if it storms, it storms. Thornberry couldn’t be any better than this, given the condition it’s in. I say we ask your friend, and if he says it’s okay, we’ll go back and get Timmy and Amelia.”

  “No!” Jane interrupted in a high, trembling voice.

  She had been standing back from us, unusually quiet until now. We all turned, surprised at her outburst.

  “They’ll be looking for us at Thornberry,” she said plaintively. “We have to stay at Thornberry.”

  “And just who do you think will be looking for us?” Grace said impatiently.

  “The rescue teams, Grace! For God’s sake, use your head! They won’t know where to find us if we’re not there!”

  “You really think there are going to be rescue teams anytime soon?” Grace said. “Besides, we’ll leave them a note.”

  “But they might not find it! What if they don’t find it?” Jane’s voice rose hysterically.

  I put an arm around h
er shoulders and said, “Why wouldn’t they find it, Jane?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. I just know they won’t.”

  Grace made an irritated sound and threw up her hands. “We’ll tack it to a goddamned tree!”

  Dana said, “Look, I’m sorry, Jane, but this time I agree with Grace. It would be foolish to stay at Thornberry when there’s better shelter here.”

  Jane’s mouth worked, and tears rolled down her cheeks. “Then we have to find a phone!” she cried, spinning away from me. “There’s got to be one here!”

  She ran down the hall and around the corner, past Luke, who was coming back our way.

  “What is she doing?” he called out. “Hey! Come back! There’s nothing down there!”

  When she didn’t respond, he went after her. We were close on his heels.

  Luke stopped short before a door at the end of the hall. It was standing open, and Jane’s soft cries issued from it.

  “Damn!” Luke said softly. His face was rigid, his jaw clenched.

  We drew up beside him and looked into a room that was nearly the size of a ballroom. It boasted a canopy bed swathed in white netting. A huge bay window looked out over the Sound, and wallpaper of red gilded roses was interspersed with floor-to-ceiling gold-framed mirrors. Several mirrors had cracked, and perfume bottles had fallen from a vanity table. Face powder had spilled from a Coty’s box and dusted the floor. A big, square, Jacuzzi tub stood in the middle of the room, and one side had split open like a huge, gaping wound.

  Jane was sitting on the edge of the canopy bed, jabbing at the buttons on a cell phone. As her fingers struck each time, her sobs grew louder, her voice more strident. “Jenny, Peter, where are you? Oh, my God, where are you? Answer me! Answer me, do you hear? What have I told you about not answering when I call!”

  Jane shook the phone, then listened, and shook it some more. I crossed over and pried it from her white-knuckled grasp, holding it to my ear. It was completely dead. I punched the power button over and over, but no go.

  “What kind is it?” Kim asked, coming up behind me. “Maybe there’s a battery around here somewhere.”

  I shook my head. “I doubt it. It’s an older model, the kind that uses a large nicad. They aren’t easy to find these days. Luke?”

  We looked around, but he wasn’t there.

  “Anyone see where Luke went?”

  “He said something about finding some dry clothes for himself,” Dana said.

  “I’ll go look for a battery,” Kim offered. “Maybe in the kitchen, around the refrigerator. Some people store them there.”

  “Keep an eye out for Sarah’s friend while you’re down there,” Grace said to her departing back. “Looks to me like he’s skipped out on us.”

  In the bedroom, we found a walk-in closet full of women’s clothes. While Grace was all for taking what we wanted and putting them on right there and then, I insisted we ask Luke first.

  “Not me,” Grace said, shrugging out of her jean jacket and into a green women’s sweatshirt that had seen better days. “What if he never shows up again?”

  “Don’t be silly,” I said, though I went along with her, tossing a white cable-knit fishermen’s sweater to Dana. “Maybe he just remembered another phone.”

  “And maybe you’re being naive,” Grace said scornfully. “If you ask me, something bad happened in this room. He never even set foot in here. For all we know, it might even be haunted.”

  Dana made a sound of irritation. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Grace. What are you, a mystery writer? You can make a plot out of anything.” She did wrap her arms around herself and shiver, however, and Grace laughed.

  “This used to be Luke’s mother’s room,” I said, coming across a summer dress I remembered Priscilla Ford wearing. “She died a couple of years ago. Maybe it upset him to be reminded of her.”

  Grace hooted. “More likely it’s his wife’s now, and she’s left him, so it brings back things he’d rather forget.”

  Though I didn’t let on to Grace, I had to admit that could be true. My mind had been running in circles the past few minutes. Where was Luke? And why had he been upset when Jane found this room?

  Was he married? Did this room bring back bad memories of some sort? Or—I had a sudden thought—didn’t he want Jane to find the cell phone? After all, he couldn’t have known it was dead.

  Now you’re really being crazy, Sarah, I thought. Luke is hardly part of some vast conspiracy to keep us from contacting the mainland.

  Dana had crossed over to a nightstand. Suddenly, she let out an exclamation. “Paydirt! Look!”

  We crossed the room, and she held it up—a tiny but state-of-the-art portable radio. She pressed the on switch.

  Nothing.

  “See if it’s got batteries,” I said.

  Dana turned the radio over and opened the battery compartment. There were four empty spaces where size AA batteries would ordinarily be.

  “Wouldn’t you know?” Grace muttered.

  “People take them out if they’re not planning to use them for a while,” I noted.

  Kim, who was still foraging through the kitchen, yelled out, “I’ve got batteries, but not for the phone.”

  “What kind?” I called back.

  “Energizers. They were in the freezer.”

  Dana and I looked at each other.

  “What size?” I called out.

  “Cs and double As. Four each.”

  “God, is something going right for a change?” Grace threw up her hands. “I’ll go down and get them.”

  “No,” I said, “let’s all go down. I think we’ve done as much as we can up here for now.”

  Pulling another heavy, dry sweater out of the closet for Kim, I turned to leave. It was only then I realized that Jane was still sitting on the bed, motionless, her eyes on the dead phone. She hadn’t said a word in all this time.

  Now she looked at me and half whispered, “They’re dead, too, aren’t they. Jenny and Peter.”

  Her voice rose. With a violent motion, she hurled the phone to the floor. “They’re as dead as this god-damned phone!”

  We got Jane downstairs with the promise of news on the radio, and found Luke in the kitchen with Kim. He had gone to his own room on the third floor, he told us, to get a dry pair of shoes he kept there, along with dry jeans and a shirt. He’d also found a bandage for the cut on his temple.

  It was Kim, however, who’d found the batteries in the freezer.

  “I completely forgot about those,” Luke said. “I’d even forgotten about this radio.”

  Standing at the breakfast bar, he slipped the batteries in and pressed the on switch. Music blared forth, a Barbra Streisand rendition of “Stormy Weather.” Dana looked at me, then at the windows—where a torrent of rain was streaming down—and laughed.

  “Do you realize what this means, though?” she said excitedly. “If this station is coming from Seattle, things can’t be as bad there as we thought.”

  “Maybe the early reports exaggerated the situation,” Kim said. “They do that, sometimes.”

  “Or it’s coming from Canada,” Luke pointed out.

  No sooner had the words left his mouth than Barbra’s singing ended and an announcer came on. “You’re listening to CKNW, Vancouver, British Columbia.”

  The disappointment was palpable—especially in Jane, who had begun to show a bit of cautious hope.

  The station was at its top-of-the-hour break, however, and when Barbra finished, the news began. We stood around the breakfast bar and listened to the newscaster tell of the “most devastating earthquake ever to have been recorded in Seattle, at least in recent times—the most devastating in the entire United States of America, in fact.”

  At 9.1, he said, it was far bigger than the 1906 quake in San Francisco, the 1989 in San Francisco, and the Northridge in L.A. It was even more devastating than the 8.3 to 8.6 quake to hit Alaska’s Prince William Sound on Good Friday in March of ’64. That one had
sent a tsunami coursing hundreds of miles south to Crescent City, California, nearly demolishing that small coastal town.

  “Apparently,” the Canadian newscaster went on to say with an edgy tremor in his voice, “this is the long-predicted Big One.”

  Rescue teams from all over the world had been standing by for hours to fly to Seattle, he added, but there was so much damage at Sea-Tac and nearby smaller airports, they were on hold. In addition, train tracks had buckled, trains had been derailed, and freeways were damaged from as far south as Portland, Oregon, to as far east as Idaho. There seemed no easy way in to Seattle or surrounding towns, except by boat. And with the ferry slips and marinas damaged, it would be a while before those could be used.

  Looting was rampant, the newscaster continued, and throughout the night people had been shot for food and water. There was talk that the National Guard might make an attempt to land on the Seattle waterfront, from amphibians. This was only a rumor, however. The newscaster pointed out that details were scarce, since the usual lines of communication into and out of Seattle, including telephone service, were down. Even cell phones were useless in some areas, because towers had collapsed. Amateur radio operators, “hams,” were manning their radios from their homes—those who still had homes—and getting information out as quickly as possible. Some of the CBC’s information came from ham radios in Seattle, some from private parties and some from the city’s earthquake preparedness center.

  “Oddly enough,” the newscaster continued, “we here on the mainland, in Vancouver, have been relatively untouched by the quake. However, the city of Victoria has suffered extensive damage.” He went on to describe the damage to Victoria, on Vancouver Island, B.C. “Victoria lies on a peninsula that juts south toward Puget Sound, and this, geologists believe, is why it was especially hard hit.”

  He finished with “For the most part, this quake—now being called the Great Seattle Quake—seems to have affected Washington State, Victoria, B.C., and points south, while leaving mainland Canada relatively unscathed.”

  There was no mention of the San Juan Islands.