Doris herself had never spoken of the matter. As far as she was concerned, the island ended where her property did, at the creek, and plunged in a perfectly severed line, as though chopped with an ax, straight into the sea.
Hector Lord was long dead and Eva had no idea who owned that half of the island now. A trust? Heirs? The house had probably fallen into its cellar and grown over with ferns and moss. It wouldn’t take many years to obscure all signs of any habitation in the fecund West Coast climate.
Certainly, there’d been no sign of life in the five days since she’d arrived: no smoke, no lights, no whine of outboards. Eva sighed and headed back to the Edie B. to retrieve the rest of the supplies she’d brought from the mainland that afternoon. How silly of Doris to nurse a grudge for so long. Fifty years!
Speaking of Andy—where was he? The donkey usually met her at the dock when she tied up after a trip to Half Moon Bay but he wasn’t there now.
Eva’s task this summer included finding a new home for the donkey. Most of the old woman’s assortment of worldly goods would be discarded or go to thrift stores, but it was her dearest wish that her property become a marine park eventually, one of a chain that ran north and south through the Gulf Islands of the coast of British Columbia. The Bonhomme half could be signed over to a marine park trust—and that was something else Eva was investigating—but, of course, Doris had no control over the part she didn’t own.
Finding a home for Andy would be a challenge. How long did donkeys live, anyway—forever? This one didn’t look as though he’d suffered spending nearly three months on his own in the company of seals and seagulls and the elusive handful of wild goats that were supposed to live somewhere on the island—that was it!
Eva straightened and put her hands on her hips, blowing a stray lock of hair from her hot face. The half-empty runabout rocked gently, but she adjusted her stance so automatically she didn’t even notice the motion. Why hadn’t she thought of the goats? She gazed inland, past the woods, past the gentle rise where Doris’s house stood, well back from the sea, to Abel’s Peak, the rocky pinnacle that marked the high point on the island a good quarter mile behind the house. The water supply for the house originated up there, in an ancient stone-and-timber dam that funneled spring water to both Doris’s house and, at one time, the residence on the other side of the island.
Of course! It was probably a goat she’d sensed when she’d been so certain someone—or something—was watching her. Like Jedadiah Island nearby, Liberty Island was rumored to be home to long-abandoned goat colonies, which some said went back to the days when the Spaniards cruised the area, Cortes and Valdez and Galiano, mapping the coast for Spain in the 1700s and accidentally losing some of their shipboard livestock in the process.
Eva bent down to heave a carton of tinned goods to the seat of the boat, then supported it against her hip. Balancing carefully, she stepped onto the dock and deposited the box beside the pile she’d already unloaded. No one knew if the story was true. Just as no one knew if the legendary goats were, less romantically, a few escapees from a farm on a neighboring island that had clambered ashore during an especially low tide sometime in the last several decades.
Whatever. Next task—moving everything up to the house. That was a job for the boxy wheelbarrow, equipped with two large bicycle wheels that Eva had found in the woodshed the day she arrived. Doris recycled everything. The homemade cart did an admirable job of transporting freight from the dock. It also handled a decent load of firewood.
Eva began to trundle toward the house. In late afternoon, the building looked dark and rather forlorn under the shadow of the tall cedars and the lofty arbutus trees to the west of the overgrown garden. There were shingles missing from the roof and any paint that had ever existed on the siding had worn off long ago. No need for repairs now, not unless the marine park people wanted to fix it up for a caretaker’s residence, which was highly unlikely.
The crunch of her shoes on the weedy shale and broken rock seemed overloud in the warm not-quite-evening air. There wasn’t a stir of wind. She wished now she’d brought Freddie. Her father had offered his dachshund—“for protection,” he’d said with a wink.
She wasn’t worried about protection; simple companionship was more like it. At least Freddie would bark if anything real was lurking about.
Why hadn’t she remembered the goats earlier, for heaven’s sake? Before she’d gotten herself all worked up over nothing?
THE VISITOR was disturbing. No, not disturbing, more like bothersome. Annoying. A presence on the island that set his teeth on edge when he remembered that not only had she arrived just after mid-month, which was already a week ago, but she seemed to be fixing up the house and settling in. A mere summer visit, he hoped. The briefer, the better.
Only why would anyone in his or her right mind be visiting Liberty Island? Or fixing up the house? The old woman had been airlifted off when he’d found her unconscious and obviously in very bad shape a dozen yards from her back door, her cart overturned and firewood scattered on the rain-soaked ground beside her. He’d stabilized her as well as he could and had called for medical help and, when he was certain it was on its way—he could hear the rotors of the air ambulance—he’d gone inside her house, where he’d found her cellular phone on the windowsill over the sink. He’d tucked it into her limp hand and left.
She’d hate to think she’d needed help, certainly not from him. This way, if she was dazed enough, she might assume she’d had the cell phone in her apron pocket, where she should have kept it at her age, and had actually called for assistance on her own before passing out. Foolish old woman.
That was before Easter. It didn’t appear as though she was coming back, which was just fine by him. He didn’t like company. At least, not company that wasn’t there at his invitation. She was too old and ornery to be here, anyway—a constant worry. How many times had he sent Matthew out to spy on her, make sure she was okay? Had enough firewood? Had tied her boat up properly so it wouldn’t wash away with a coming storm? How often had he told Fanny that, under no circumstances, was she to wander past the creek that separated the properties? Checking up on the old woman wouldn’t have been such a nuisance; it was making sure he and Matthew weren’t seen so they could both—he and his foolish neighbor—maintain the pretence that he wasn’t keeping an eye on her that was wearing.
He didn’t want to look out for her. He was glad she’d stayed away. She was well over eighty; she should’ve left long ago. He didn’t go so far as to wish her dead, just nicely settled into some warm, comfortable nursing home somewhere on the mainland. He imagined her watching afternoon television, cheating at cards, griping about the food, all the while squirreling away crusts of bread and half-eaten apples in her lingerie drawer.
As far as he knew, she had few friends and no close relatives, certainly not young, beautiful ones like this visitor. His first glimpse of her was still seared onto his retinas. At The Baths. No, with any luck, the Bonhomme side of the island would go on the block in the next year or so and he’d be there, ready to scoop it up. He’d always felt that Liberty Island was his, anyway; it was only a matter of opportunity and cold, hard cash.
Now this visitor—this intruder—was on his mind. Was she the new owner? Already? Impossible!
All his life, he’d hunted beauty, wherever it could be found. In the last half dozen years, he created a kind of beauty in gems and precious metals for the select few who appreciated his skill and could pay his price. Chancing upon the visitor when he’d walked to the bathing pools three days ago had been a feeling he ranked among the handful of the most moving experiences he’d ever had. Watching Vivian dance. Seeing Fanny for the