Gathering Lies Read online

  “It can’t be good for us that Victoria got hit,” I said, when the broadcast was over. “They’re the closest city to us, but they’ll be busy with their own rescue efforts. It’ll be a while before they expand those efforts out here to the San Juans—if at all.”

  “But they will do a search and rescue, won’t they?” Dana said. “I mean, I know they’re Canadian, not U.S., but they’re so close. And they’ve got ferries that come over here all the time.”

  “With tourists,” Grace pointed out, “and to the bigger islands, not to these little private ones. As for a search and rescue, with more than one hundred seventy islands to cover…”

  She shrugged, and Jane made a sound of despair.

  “Still,” I added quickly, “there may be hope from Vancouver.”

  Grace shook her head. “They’ll be sending their people to Victoria.”

  “Well,” Luke said brusquely, flipping the radio off, “we’ll just have to pull together and start helping ourselves.”

  “Does that mean you’re sticking around?” Grace said.

  “I don’t exactly have a way off the island,” he answered irritably.

  He and Grace were definitely not hitting it off.

  Dana put an arm around Jane, who was dry-eyed but shaky. “Things aren’t so bad, now,” she murmured soothingly. “We’ve got this place, and it’s a roof over our heads—” She looked questioningly at Luke. “It’s all right if we stay here, right? I mean, with Thornberry in such bad shape…”

  Luke nodded. “Of course. In fact, let me see if I can find some rain gear for us to wear on the trip back to Thornberry. I’ve always kept some in the outside pantry.”

  He went through the back door, closing it tight as a gust of wind nearly ripped it from his hand.

  “See, Jane?” Dana went on. “We’ll be warm at night. We’ll bring as many supplies as we can find from Thornberry, and I’m sure we’ll be all right till help arrives.”

  “But—”

  “No ‘buts.’ We have to believe your children have shelter and food, too. We have to know they’re all right. Do you understand?”

  Jane didn’t respond. Dana looked up, sighing.

  “Meanwhile, Grace, I have to agree with Sarah. Your lousy comments, not to mention your vulgar use of one particular four-letter word, are making things worse. I really wish you’d shut the hell up.”

  “Fine.” Grace’s mouth formed a thin, hard line. She turned to Kim, her pose defiant, hands on her hips. “I suppose you have an opinion you’d like to share, too?”

  “Only that I’ve had co-stars who are almost as bad as you. Just not quite,” Kim said.

  Grace turned on her heel and stalked off in the direction of the living room. “To hell with you all.”

  Before she was out of sight, another aftershock hit. Old pros now, Dana, Kim, Jane and I hit the floor. We were in open space in the kitchen, where anything that could fall from shelves had already done so. Still, the floor was covered with debris, and my knee, where I’d cut it earlier on broken glass at Thornberry, struck something sharp. I stifled a cry.

  Grace had stopped short in the doorway, bracing herself against it on either side.

  When the aftershock was over, we got to our feet again. Kim brushed off her hands and said in a helpful tone, “Standing in doorways isn’t always the best way, Grace. We found that out in the Northridge. If the wall hadn’t been braced right, it and the doorway could have collapsed on you.”

  “Well, it didn’t,” Grace responded ungraciously. “And isn’t that just too bad? I could be dead now, and you’d all be happy with that, I’m sure.”

  Ignoring her, I winced as pain ran through my knee. My own nerves weren’t all that good, and I hated to think what all these aftershocks were doing to Thornberry.

  “I wonder how Timmy and Amelia are holding up,” I said. “I’ll feel better once we get them back here.”

  “Just one thing,” Kim said in a cautionary tone. “We were lucky this time. Sometimes aftershocks can bring down a house that was undamaged, or seemingly undamaged, in the first tremor.”

  “My, aren’t we the little expert now,” Grace said, folding her arms. “And just where did you go to earthquake school?”

  “In L.A.,” Kim snapped. “And if you and I were the only people here, I wouldn’t even bother to try and save your miserable ass!”

  This was the most outspoken Kim had been with any of the women, and Grace’s mouth dropped open.

  “Lady,” she said when she’d recovered, “you don’t even want to think of taking me on.”

  Kim snorted, shaking her head. “I could whip you faster than a rum cream pie. If I cared to—which I don’t.”

  “Enough,” I said, groaning, “please, will you both stop? I suggest we get going—the sooner, the better. And when we get back here, let’s assemble some furniture in the living room to dive under, just in case the walls do come down.”

  Jane’s chin went up. “If you insist we stay here, then I’m not making that walk back to Thornberry. Not in this storm, and with trees coming down all around.”

  Dana’s arm had begun to bleed again, and she held it close to her chest while saying gently, “How do you know there are trees coming down, Jane? We didn’t see anything like that. Besides, look—the rain has almost stopped.”

  “No, it’ll start again. And there’s more wind now than ever,” Jane insisted, her voice rising to a near-frantic pitch. “Just listen to it! When the earth is unstable and the winds are this high, that’s what happens. Especially when it’s been raining. The trees come down.”

  Grace seemed about to make a snide comment, but looked at me and Kim, and apparently thought better of it.

  “I’ll go find Sarah’s disappearing friend,” she said, “if, in fact, he is out there getting us rain gear and hasn’t just run off somewhere. Then I’m out of here.

  Anybody who wants to come can come, but I’m leaving.”

  Kim, Dana and I agreed that we should all take advantage of this lull—minor though it was—and leave for Thornberry immediately. Though the hard rain had stopped and there was now only a steady light downpour, we knew all too well that things could get worse.

  Nothing we said, however, could convince Jane to come with us, and she was obviously in such bad shape we didn’t feel right pressuring her further. We finally helped her to settle into the living room with blankets from the upstairs closets, a flashlight and a bottle of water. Luke came in moments later with two packages of crackers he’d found in the outside pantry, and a small kerosene lamp filled with oil.

  “There’s some other stuff,” he said. “Cornmeal, cookies, that sort of thing—but rats got into them. That’s why we stopped keeping stuff out here.”

  Grace followed him in. “Rats the size of a cat,” she said with an uncharacteristic shudder. “We were almost attacked by one.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. “You don’t like rats?”

  Grace tossed me a yellow slicker and didn’t answer.

  “I checked the generator out back,” Luke said as he took one last look around. “I was pretty certain I used up all the fuel before leaving last fall, though, and I’m afraid I was right.”

  He did find enough slickers and weatherproof jackets, however, for all of us. We suited up, saying goodbye to Jane and leaving the radio with her. She agreed not to turn it on more than once, at the top of each hour, to hear the news. We could only hope she would stick to that agreement. Once the batteries in that radio were gone, our connection to the outside world would be gone, as well.

  “If anything happens,” I said, “even a small tremor, take the radio and get under that table over there. Okay?” I pointed to a long, high table behind a sofa. Both had slid across the room into the dining area.

  There was no response. “Jane…you’ll do that, won’t you?”

  A bare nod. She was sitting cross-legged on the ivory carpet in the midst of rubble, looking forlorn. Beside her was the kerosene
lamp Luke had found in the pantry. It would ward off the dark until we got back.

  I looked at the others, shook my head and shrugged. We left Jane that way, though no one felt good about it.

  “Jane’s probably safer staying there,” Kim said, as the five of us reached the shoreline, with Luke in the lead. “But I’m worried about her state of mind. I saw this after the Northridge quake—that shocked, stunned look, the fear of moving in any direction. It’s worrisome.”

  Grace repeated, “Worrisome? I’m warning you, you let somebody like that get out of hand, and she’s a danger to everyone.”

  “Someone ‘like that’?” I said.

  “She’s nuts, Sarah! Totally gone. Can’t you see that?”

  “I can see she’s panicked about her children. Most mothers would be.”

  “I don’t suppose you have any,” Dana said to Grace.

  “Any?”

  “Children,” Dana said.

  “No,” Grace answered. “I’ve never had that so-called thrill.”

  “Well, aren’t they the lucky little kids,” Dana replied sharply, “not to have to live with you.”

  Remarkably, Grace held her tongue, and I was grateful. If even Dana was losing her patient, peace-keeping nature, God only knew what things would be like by tomorrow.

  We were returning to Thornberry from the opposite direction Kim and I had come. This way was a bit shorter, Luke had told us. It had only taken Dana, Grace and Jane longer because they had stopped to check out the two cabins along the way.

  As we passed those cabins, I realized that with all that was happening, we hadn’t asked them what they had found.

  “Not much,” Dana answered. “Like Timmy said, they’re obviously summer places, pretty much empty except for furniture. We can come back again and look, if you want. There might be something we can use.”

  “Both of them were in bad shape,” Grace added, “from the earthquake. Broken windows, fallen beams. Like Thornberry and Ransford, both had generators. According to the fuel gauges at both cabins, though, one was empty, the other less than a quarter full. And the lines to both were broken, just like at Thornberry.”

  “Toward the end of the summer,” Luke said, “most of us only order enough fuel to get by till we leave. Traditionally, we’ve all agreed that it’s best not to have too much fuel on the island when we aren’t here. That tends to discourage squatters, since winters can get pretty bad here without heat.”

  “How does fuel get delivered here?” I asked.

  “There’s a private company that brings it to us in fifty-gallon drums. We order it as we need it, and they usually come out several times a year. Not much chance of them getting here now, of course.”

  “Somehow, I thought the twentieth century might have caught up with Esme Island,” I said. “I should have realized there wouldn’t be power lines, much less phones, but the thought never occurred to me.”

  “Well,” Luke said, “there are some benefits to being self-sufficient. In the cities, if the power goes out, things fall apart pretty quickly. Here, we at least know not to depend on modern amenities. We get by pretty well.”

  “Unless there just happens to be a nine-point-one quake,” Grace muttered.

  “Yes. Unless there’s a nine-point-one quake.”

  Luke strode ahead of us again, and we were all silent the rest of the way back to Thornberry. With time to think, I couldn’t help wondering what was going on in Luke’s head. When he’d first regained consciousness, he’d seemed glad to see me. Since then, however, he had seemed polite but distant. Not at all what I might have expected from someone I’d once spent a summer making wild, passionate love with—even if it had been twenty-two years ago.

  What had come between us, since that moment when we first met again on the dock?

  We arrived back at the farmhouse just before dinner, and Dana and Kim took Luke directly into the living room to survey the damage there. Grace and I found that Timmy and Amelia had managed to clean most of the debris out of the kitchen. They had even unearthed the long wooden table, and the picnic-style benches were back in place on either side. In the middle of the table was a small bunch of daffodils from the garden, a bright, touching reminder that some things had survived. Candles flanked it.

  “We got the generator out of the rubble, too,” Timmy said, clearly proud of the job they’d done while we were gone.

  “We haven’t been able to get it working, though,” Amelia said. “It seems full of fuel, so it must be damaged, somehow.”

  She pushed back her gray hair, which was matted to her forehead from perspiration; her arms were black with soot. Both women looked dusty and disheveled. Even so, they seemed energized by their day’s work.

  “We thought we could at least use the fuel,” Amelia continued, “but we can’t get it out. There’s some sort of theft-proof device to prevent that.”

  “You had your fuel locked up so nobody could steal it?” Grace said to Timmy, shaking her head. “Out here?”

  Timothea opened her mouth, but Amelia answered defensively, “She didn’t know it was on there! It’s not like she ordered the tank that way.”

  “Then, why didn’t she have the damned thing taken off?” Grace threw up her hands. “Oh, never mind. Nothing makes sense around this place.”

  “Not everyone has the kind of money you apparently do to hire help—” Amelia began.

  Timmy interrupted. “Hush! It’s none of her business.”

  “You’ve got that, lady,” Grace said, and stomped away.

  “Timmy?” I turned to her. “Are you in some sort of trouble?”

  She, Amelia and I were the only ones left in the kitchen; Grace had joined Dana, Kim and Luke in the living room. My question to Timmy was only out of concern for a friend—I didn’t mean to pry.

  Still, she clamped her mouth shut and walked away.

  I turned to Amelia, who was sitting at the table passing a weary hand over her eyes. Since the quake, it seemed her sharp retorts had been softening a bit. We all, in fact, except for Grace, had been losing our initial irritability with each other. There were far too many other things to worry about now.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Timmy’s nearly broke,” Amelia answered heavily. “She’ll hate me for telling you that, but it’s true, and she needs to face up to it.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, sitting down across from her.

  “This place hasn’t made a profit in years. For a while, she was able to get by on her savings, and then there was the insurance money after John died. But that only lasted so long.” Amelia blinked back tears. “You have no idea the things she’s been forced to do, the way she’s had to live.”

  “I never would have guessed,” I said. “The way she dresses, the diamond rings…”

  “The clothes are classic, they never go out of style. The rings? Fake. She sold off all her jewelry months ago.”

  “But this place—the free room and board, all the luxurious touches.”

  One new improvement since I’d been here in my teens was the bathhouse nestled in the woods, made of cedar and fir, with stained-glass windows and sea-blue tile. Though we had commodes and sinks in our cottages, the bathhouse, with its showers and claw-foot bathtubs, was available to all of us. It was in shambles now, like the cottages—but before the quake we could shower surrounded by trees, birds and even deer. No expense had been spared to make the residents at Thornberry feel welcome and comfortable.

  “It hasn’t been entirely free up until now,” Amelia said. “Residents usually pay a fee. The fees don’t cover everything, though, and I’ve been helping Timmy out a bit with expenses.” She shook her head. “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind. Timmy and I have been friends forever. But I’m about at the end of my own resources. The truth is, she’s going to have to shut down. And that’s what she won’t face up to.”

  “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

  “Well, she won’t even belie
ve it herself, dammit! I thought I had her convinced to close down last month. Then all of a sudden she’s inviting people right and left and getting all excited about it, like nothing’s wrong and never was.”

  “Inviting people. You mean us?”

  “Well, yes. I mean no offense, but how she’ll pay the bills for expenses this month is beyond me. I told her I couldn’t help this time, and she said it was all right, she’d found an investor.”

  “An investor? Who?”

  Amelia shook her head. “That’s what worries me. She’s shutting down on me these days, not confiding in me as much.”

  “I should talk to her,” I said. “Maybe I can help, somehow. Do you know how she got into this mess?”

  “Spending too much, like everybody else,” Amelia said. “Timmy has too much heart. She loves running this place, loves helping new writers.”

  “I know, she always did. But couldn’t she cut down on expenses, even charge more for room and board? She doesn’t have to do it all alone.”

  “That’s just it,” Amelia said. “Timmy thinks she does. She would die rather than admit she’s not making it on her own.”

  “But she’s not—not if she’s taking help from you.”

  Amelia shrugged. “That’s different. Timmy and I have been friends forever, and I’m probably the only person she trusts anymore—though sometimes I wonder if that’s even true.”

  Luke, Dana, Grace and Kim came back into the kitchen, and a few minutes later Timmy joined us. Both she and Amelia were relieved to hear we had found Ransford with its roof still intact, and Timmy was especially glad to see Luke. She and he talked for a few minutes privately, off to one side.

  We gathered around the table, and Amelia wiped her hands on the apron she’d dredged out of the debris. “I really wanted to surprise all of you with a hot dinner,” she said apologetically. “I hated to think of you out in that storm and coming home to canned peas and raw carrots—that’s all we could find for now.”

  She put plates of cold vegetables before us. The “plates” were napkins that she’d shaken the dust out of. Every single one of the dishes, she told us, was broken. Only a few heavy mugs had survived.