He’d gone to what they’d always called The Baths, a series of three round hollows carved from the rock by the tides and the action of the sea over millions of years. One of them, the pool farthest from the open water, was where he’d bathed daily, summer and winter, ever since he’d returned almost three years ago. This time, walking along the stony path etched into the lichens, he’d heard a splash. The screech of a raven. A few notes of a song—in a woman’s voice.
He’d paused, cinching his towel tighter around his waist. Then, when he realized that someone was on his island, swimming in his pools, he crept closer. The third pool, the deepest, a basin with stone walls four or five feet above the water even at high tide, was most dangerous. Even though Fanny swam like a fish and never went anywhere without his dog, Bruno, she was forbidden to go near The Baths. Crude steps, hacked out of the rock, led to the water and somebody—some stranger—had obviously found and used them.
Probably a sailor from a passing yacht that had moored in the little V-shaped bay just offshore. He didn’t bother to check, instead strode directly toward the basin. This was posted private property, dammit, no trespassers allowed. Couldn’t people read?
Then he stopped. A mermaid. Wearing nothing but seawater and sunshine. She lay on her back, her hair floating like kelp, hands languorous at her sides, feet moving gently. A raven high in an arbutus tree nearby squawked—it had spotted him.
She didn’t understand what the raven was trying to tell her. As he watched, she stuck her tongue out and waved at the bird. She whistled, splashed with her other hand, then turned and kicked smoothly, gliding forward. Her buttocks were white in the sun, against the still, deep green of the water, her back lightly tanned. He could see the strap marks from a bathing suit.
So she was at least of this world.
He took a deep shaky breath and stepped back, unwilling to show himself. He had no idea then that she was staying at the old woman’s house, that she was, in fact, a real intruder. All he knew was the stab of awareness. Innocence, sensuality, the sinews, shapes and planes of youth, strength, physical perfection. The artist in him was stunned.
God help him, he lingered in the trees like a voyeur until she left the water, climbed to the top of the basin and picked up a towel under the arbutus tree to dry herself. He couldn’t—would never—deny the stirrings of his belly. That, too, was a kind of beauty. And it had been a very long time since he’d been with a woman. But, no, he simply craved more of the primal image before him.
Woman, without shame, alone in this primeval garden.
Then, when she’d laughed and flicked her towel at the raven, which flapped heavily through the trees with hideous cries, he’d slunk away. She hadn’t wanted anyone to see her naked, not even the bird.
It made him feel unclean. So he’d canceled his own daily swim and left, depositing the image in the bank of his memory, an image he knew he would draw on one day….
And that was that. Just serendipity, pure and sweet.
Until two days later, when he discovered she was no passing yachtswoman. She’d actually moved into the Bonhomme house and appeared to have every intention of staying, judging by the number of trips she made to the mainland for provisions.
Which meant she’d become a problem.
CHAPTER TWO
WHERE WAS ANDY?
Eva released the handle of the pump that brought water into the house from the stone cistern and peered out the small square window over the cast-iron pantry sink. The donkey had to be okay. He’d been on his own for months and was hardly going to get into trouble a week after she arrived. She pumped again, filled a pitcher and put the water in the propane-fired refrigerator, along with the eggs, cheese, milk and two bottles of sauvignon blanc she’d bought at the Half Moon Bay Store.
Now, what for supper? Eva opened a tin of cream of mushroom soup and warmed it up on the ancient combination propane-wood range that stood prominently in Doris’s big country kitchen. She was saving the limited supply of propane for the refrigerator, so had kindled a fire in the old range.
How about a grilled cheese sandwich to go with the soup? Why not? She’d had some variation on soup and sandwiches nearly every day so far. Then, just to make a dent in the silence, Eva switched on the transistor radio on top of the refrigerator and rocketed around from cupboard to counter to table, getting out a plate, a spoon, a bowl, half dancing, half walking, until she felt silly and stopped.
A person could go a little silly here. Had Doris gone a bit weird living by herself on Liberty Island? Of course, she wasn’t alone all the time. As a younger woman, Doris had traveled for three or four months every year, usually in the winter. Then there were the many visitors she encouraged. Every summer, Eva’s family had spent several weeks on the island. She remembered her father holding forth in the porch swing, admiring the view, a bottle of rum on the floor and a thick paperback turned over beside it. Or, if the tide was right and he felt like it, he’d be out in Doris’s rowboat, fishing for sand dabs and rockfish.
Eva’s mother, Felicity, gossiped with her older cousins and whoever else happened to be visiting, pulled weeds in Doris’s garden, and, if they came in August, helped her pick blackberries and put up her garden produce.
Eva recalled helping her mother and Doris, or playing with her sisters in the treehouse behind the garden. Was it still there? When there were other cousins around, they’d played house and cowboys, pirates and princesses—
What in the world? Eva stopped at the window over the sink, spoon forgotten in her hand, dripping soup onto the old linoleum floor.
There in the distance, halfway to where the ground began to rise to Abel’s Peak, was a small child and Andy and—and some kind of enormous black dog!
Eva rushed to the door and flung it open. “Andy!”
She caught her breath, wishing she hadn’t shouted, not wanting to frighten the child but…there was no one there. She blinked and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, like a cartoon character.
No child. No dog. Just the old donkey clip-clopping over the rocky ground as he trotted toward the house.
EVA WENT TO BED that night thoroughly rattled. The wind had come up in the evening and she could hear loose shingles banging on the roof. She hoped it wouldn’t rain, and if it did, she hoped the leaks weren’t near her bed. If necessary, she’d move to the other bedroom across the small landing at the top of the stairs.
Eva had always prided herself on being a calm, sensible woman. She had grown up the unflappable one in a chaotic family. Her father, a professor of literature at the University of British Columbia, spent every spare moment on whatever boat he happened to own at the time, ignoring his wife and drinking too much. Felicity Haines, a sad, gentle person, had died of an aneurysm when Eva was twelve, and Eva still missed her desperately. Kate, her oldest sister and very much her father’s daughter, had sailed away on a tall ships adventure when she was eighteen, had settled in Africa and was doing something noble for world peace, Eva believed. She hadn’t seen Kate for three years. Her other sister, Leona, had married a farmer and now raised ostriches, organic field peas and children—five of them, at last count—in Alberta.
Eva, the youngest by six years, had steered a steady course, graduating from high school with honors, working in a doctor’s office for two years and then taking a degree in education. She’d just finished her first year as a substitute teacher in three different elementary schools in Burnaby. The two terms with grade one and two classes had convinced her she’d made the right career choice. She’d adored her little gap-toothed charges and was almost sorry when June was over. In the fall, she hoped to land a permanent job, preferably in the Lower Mainland or Vancouver Island and preferably teaching kindergarten, although it didn’t much matter, and she’d sent résumés all over the province.
It would be nice, though, to settle somewhere near her father, who was alone and sometimes lonely, she thought, retired and living on his houseboat