Well, but he had run through all these thoughts a thousand times during the drive. All the scenarios led to a break point beyond which it was hard to imagine. He had to go to work on Monday. Or he should. And so
He finished his lunch and walked around a little. Southwest Harbors harbor was a small bay surrounded by forested hills, and filled with working boats and working docks, also a small Coast Guard station out on the point to the left. It was quiet, icy, empty of people; picturesque, but in a good way. A working harbor.
He would have to risk dropping in on her. The wand said he was clean. Edgardos friend had said his van was clean. He had driven all night, he was five miles away from her. Surely the decision had already been made!
So he got back in his van, and drove back up the road to the Somesville fire station, where he took a left and followed a winding road through bare trees. Past an iced-over pond on the right, then another one on the left, this one a lake that was narrow and long, extending south for miles, a white flatness at the bottom of a classic U-shaped glacial slot. Ponds End. Soon after that, a left turn onto a gravel road.
He drove slower than ever, under a dense network of overarching branches. Houses to the left were fronting the long frozen lake. Carolines friends place was on the right, where it would overlook a second arm of the lake. The map showed a Y-shaped lake, with the long arm straight, and the other shorter arm curving into it about halfway down.
Her friends house had no number in its driveway, but by the numbers before and after it, he deduced that it had to be the one. He turned around in a driveway, idled back up the road.
The place had a short gravel curve of driveway, with no cars in it. At the end of the driveway to the left stood a house, while to the right was a detached garage. Both were dark green with white trim. A car could have been hidden in the garage. Ah; the house number was there on the side of the garage.
He didnt want to drive into the driveway. On the other hand it must look odd, him idling out on the road, looking in if there was anyone there to see. He idled down the road farther, back in the direction of the paved road. Then he parked on the side at a wide spot, cursing under his breath. He got out and walked quickly down the road and up the driveway to the house in question.
He stopped between the house and the garage, under a big bare-limbed tree. The snow was crushed down to ice shards on the flagstones between the house and garage, as if someone had walked all over them and then there had been a thaw. No one was visible through the kitchen window. He was afraid to knock on the kitchen door. He stepped around the side of the house, looking in the windows running down that side. Inside was a big room, beyond it a sun porch facing the lake. The lake was down a slope from the house. There was a narrow path down, flanked by stone-walled terraces filled with snow and black weeds. Down on the water at the bottom of the path was a little white dock, anchored by a tiny white boathouse.
The door of the boathouse swung open from inside.
Caroline? Frank called down.
Silence. Then: Frank?
She peeked around the edge of the little boathouse, looking up for him with just the startled unhappy expression he had feared he would cause
Then she almost ran up the path. Frank, what is it? she exclaimed as she hurried up. What are you doing here?
He found he was already halfway down the path. They met between two blueberry bushes, him with a hand up as if in warning, but she crashed through that and embraced him held him hugged him. They clung to each other.
Frank had not allowed himself to think of this part (but he had anyway): what it meant to hold her. How much he had wanted to see her.
She pushed back from him, looking past him up to the house. Why are you here? Whats going on? How did you find me?
I needed to warn you about that, Frank said. At least I thought I should. My friend at NSF, the one who helped me with the election disk you gave us? He has a friend who was looking into who your ex is, and what hes doing now, you know, because they wanted to follow up on the election thing. So he wanted to talk to you about that, and my friend told him that you had disappeared, and this guy said that he knew where you probably were.
Oh my God. Her hand flew to her mouth. Another body response common to all. She peered around him again up the driveway.
So, I wanted to see if he was right, Frank continued, and I wanted to warn you if he was. And I wanted to see you, anyway.
Yes. They held hands, then hugged again. Squeezed hard. Frank felt the fear and isolation in her.
So. He pulled back and looked at her. Maybe you should move.
Yeah. I guess so. Possibly. But well, first tell me everything you can. Especially about how this person found me. Here, come on up. Lets get inside. She led him by the hand, back up the garden path to the house.
She entered it by way of the sun porch door. The sun porch was separated from the living room by diamond-paned windows above a wainscoting. An old vacation home, Frank saw, hand made, scrupulously clean, with old furniture, and paintings on every wall that appeared to be the work of a single enthusiast. The view of the lake seemed the main attraction to Frank.
Caroline gestured around her. I first visited my friend Mary here when we were six.
Man.
But we havent been in touch for years, and Ed never knew about her. I never told him. In fact, I cant quite imagine how your friends friend tracked down the association.
He said you called a number of an old roommate, and this was her place.
She frowned. Thats true.
So, thats how he tracked this place down. And if he could, so could your ex, presumably. And besides, he added sharply, surprising them both, why did you tell me that he was your boss?
Silence as she stared at him. He explained: My friends friend said you were actually your husbands boss. So I wanted to know.
She glanced away, mouth tight for just an instant.
Come on, she said, and led him through the living room to the kitchen.
There she opened the refrigerator and got out a pitcher of iced tea. Have a seat, she said, indicating the kitchen table.
Maybe I should move my van into the driveway, Frank remembered. I didnt want to shock you by driving in, and I left it out on the road.
That was nice. Yeah, go move it in. At least for now.
He did so, his mind racing. It was definitely foolish of her to remain exposed like this. Probably they should be leaving immediately.
He re-entered the kitchen to find her sitting at the table before two glasses of iced tea, looking down at the lake. His Caroline. He sat down across from her, took a drink.
She looked at him across the table. I was not Eds boss, she said. He was reassigned to another program. When I first came to the office, I was part of his team. I was working for him. But when the futures market program was established I was put in charge of it, and I reported to some people outside our office. Ed kept doing his own surveillance, and his group used what we were documenting, when they thought it would help them. Thats the way it was when you and I met. Then he moved again, like I told you, over to Homeland Security.
She took a sip of her drink, met his eye again. I never lied to you Frank. I never have and I never will. Ive had enough of that kind of thing. More than youll ever know. I cant stand it anymore.
She took a sip of her drink, met his eye again. I never lied to you Frank. I never have and I never will. Ive had enough of that kind of thing. More than youll ever know. I cant stand it anymore.
Good, Frank said, feeling awkward. But tell me I mean, this is another thing Ive really wondered about, that Ive never remembered to ask you what were you doing on that boat during the big flood, on the Potomac?
Surprised, she said, Thats Eds boat. I was going up to get him off Roosevelt Island.
That was quite a time to be out on the river.
Yes, it was. But he was helping some folks at the marina get their boats off, and we had already taken a few down to below Alexandria, and on one of the trips he stayed behind to help free up a boat, while I ferried one of the groups downstream. So it was kind of back and forth.
Ah. Frank put a hand onto the table, reaching toward her. Im sorry, he said. I didnt know what to think. You know we never have had much time. Whenever weve gotten together, theres been more to say than time to say it.
She smiled. Too busy with other stuff. And she put her hand on his.
He turned his palm up, and they intertwined fingers, squeezed hands. This was a whole different category of questions and answers. Do you still love me? Yes, I still love you. Do you still want me? Yes, I still want you. Yes. All that he had felt briefly before, during that hard hug on the garden path, was confirmed.
Frank took a deep breath. A flow of calmness spread from his held hand up his arm and then through the rest of him. Most of him.
Its true, he said. Weve never had enough time. But now we do, so tell me more. Tell me everything.
Okay. But you too.
Sure.
But then they sat there, and it seemed too artificial just to begin their life histories or whatever. They let their hands do the talking for a while instead. They drank tea. She began to talk a little about coming to this place when she was a girl. Then about being a jock, as she put it how Frank loved that and how that had gotten her into various kinds of trouble, somehow. Maybe it was a matter of liking the wrong kind of guys. Guys who are jocks are not always nice. Theres a certain percentage of assholes, and I could never tell in time. Reading detective stories when she was a girl. Nancy Drew and Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky, all of them leading her down the garden path toward intelligence, first at the CIA (I wish I had never left), then to a promotion, or what had seemed like a promotion, over to Homeland Security. That was where she had met Ed. The way at first he had seemed so calm, so capable, and in just the areas she was then getting interested in. The intriguing parts of spook work. The way it had let her be outdoors, or at least out and about at first. Like a kind of sport. Ah yeah, Frank put in, thinking of the fun of tracking animals. I did jobs like that too, sometimes. I wanted that too.
Then the ways things had changed, and gone wrong, in both work and marriage. How bad it had gotten. Here she grew vague and seemed to suppress some agitation or grimness. She kept looking out the window, as did Frank. A car passed and they both were too distracted by it to go on.
Anyway, then you and I got stuck in the elevator, she resumed. She stopped, thinking about that perhaps; shook her head, looked out the kitchen window at the driveway again. Lets get out of here, she said abruptly. I dont like Why dont we go for a drive in your van. I can show you some of the island, and I can get some time to think things through. I cant think here right now. Its giving me the creeps that youre here, I mean in the sense of And we can put your van someplace else, if I decide to come back here. You know. Just in case. I actually have my car parked down at the other end of the lake. Ive been sailing down to it when I want to drive somewhere.
Sailing?
Iceboating.
Ah. Okay, Frank said. They got up. But do you think we even ought to come back here?
She frowned. He could see she was getting irritated or upset. His arrival had messed up what she had thought was a good thing. Her refuge. Im not sure, she said uneasily. I dont think Ed will ever be able to find that one call I made to Mary. I made it from a pay phone Ive never used before or since.
But if hes searching for something? For an old connection?
Yes, I know. She gave him an odd look. I dont know. Lets get going. I can think about it better when I get away from here.
He saw that it was as he had feared; to her, his arrival was simply bad news. He wondered for a second if she had planned ever to contact him again.
They walked up the road to Franks van, and he drove them back toward Somesville, following her instructions. She looked into all the cars going past them the other way. They drove around the head of the sound, then east through more forests, past more lakes.
Eventually she had him park at a feature called Bubble Rock, which turned out to be a big glacial erratic, perched improbably on the side of a polished granite dome. Frank looked at the rocky slopes rising to both sides of the road, amazed; he had never seen granite on the east coast before. It was as if a little patch of the Sierra Nevada had been detached by a god and cast over to the Atlantic. The granite was slightly pinker than in the Sierra, but otherwise much the same.
Lets go up the Goat Trail, she said. Youll like it, and I need to do something.
She led him along the road until it reached a frozen lake just under the South Bubble, then crossed the road and stood facing the steep granite slope flanking this long lake.
Thats Jordan Pond, and this is Pemetic Mountain gesturing at the slope above them. And somewhere here is the start of the Goat Trail. She walked back and forth, scanning the broken jumble of steep rock looming over them. A very unlikely spot to begin a trail. The pink-gray granite was blackened with lichen, had the same faulted structure as any granite wall shaved by a glacier. In this case the ice resting on it had been a mile thick.
My friends father was really into the trails on the island, and he took us out and told us all about them, Caroline said. Ah ha. She pointed at a rusted iron rod protruding from a big slab of rock, about head high. She started up past it, using her hands for balance and the occasional extra pull up. This was the first one, he said. Its more of a marked route than a real trail. Its not on the maps anymore. See, theres the next trail duck. Pointing above.
Ah yeah. Frank followed, watching her. This was his Caroline. She climbed with a sure touch. They had never done anything normal together before. She had talked about being a bicyclist, going for runs. This slope was easy but steep, and in places icy. A jock. Suddenly he felt the Caroline surge that had been there waiting in him all along.
Then the dark rock reared up into a wall of broken battlements thirty or forty feet high, one atop the next. Caroline led the way up through breaks in these walls, following a route marked by small stacks of flat rocks. In one of these gullies the bottom of the crack was filled with big flat stones set on top of each other in a rough but obvious staircase; this was as much of a trail as Frank had yet seen. Marys father wouldnt even step on those stones, Caroline said, and laughed. He said it would be like stepping on a painting or something. A work of art. We used to laugh so much at him.