Summer Light: A Novel Read online

  The man reached out one enormous arm to push her aside. May wondered why, but then she saw him grinning at her. It seemed impossible, crazy on a magnitude worthy of the psychiatric department she and Kylie had just visited, but May thought he had just pushed the beautiful woman away so he could see her better.

  Chapter 2

  THE PLANE’S ROUGH LANDING WAS in all the papers. Someone had disabled the smoke detector to smoke in the bathroom, then thrown a cigarette butt into the trash. The fire had smoldered, then burst into flames. The automatic fire extinguisher had malfunctioned—a freak thing. And the flight attendants had hesitated just long enough for the air intake to fill with thin smoke, circulating it throughout the cabin and cockpit, filling the cockpit as the pilot had tried to land the plane.

  The incident made even bigger headlines than it normally would because several Boston Bruins had been aboard—including their biggest star, Martin Cartier. A flying garment bag had banged his head, requiring that he be checked by the team physician; rescuing the woman and little girl, he had seared his throat and lungs from smoke inhalation.

  The coach was all for keeping him on the bench, but Martin had said hell, no. Emergency landings were what separated the men from the boys. Martin had gotten hurt worse by sticks and pucks; he had experienced much more serious bludgeoning on the blue line than from crash-landing at Logan.

  Driving his Porsche from Beacon Hill to the Fleet Center, Martin heard one sports-radio host talking about “the Cartier Curse.” How Martin’s wife Trisha had left him for that young shortstop from Texas. How his father—the great Maple Leafs star and coach Serge Cartier—was in prison on a gambling conviction. Not to mention the fact that no matter how gifted and industrious a player he was, Martin Cartier—unlike his father—had never led any team to a Stanley Cup victory. Worst of all, the tragedy with his daughter, Natalie. Now the bad-luck flight from Toronto—The Cartier Curse.

  Thinking of Natalie, Martin’s hands shook. He floored the gas pedal, nearly clipping a truck as he turned into the player parking lot. Getting dressed in the locker room, he found the minuscule glass bottle May Taylor had given him after the plane crash. He thought of how her daughter had seemed to know about Natalie, and instead of setting the bottle aside, he stuck it into his pocket.

  Martin Cartier burst onto the ice at the Fleet Center to a combination of standing ovation and loud boos, and he spent the next three periods protecting his team’s goal from attack. Patrolling the slot, he aggressively harassed the Toronto Maple Leafs to keep them from scoring. Always fast on his skates, that night Martin Cartier was a blur.

  Ray Gardner and Bruno Piochelle joined him at his flanks, and they set out to give Toronto nightmares. Martin was viciously rugged on offense, carrying the puck right to the net twice in the first period. He forgot his injuries, forgot the curse, forgot winning or losing, and a power he’d never felt before drove him to the net a third time—he had his first hat trick of the series.

  The Bruins won 3–0, tying the playoffs.

  After the game—which everyone had been predicting they would lose—Martin hit the shower and let scalding hot water pour over his body. He savored the victory, forgetting the negative talk, loving the win. If Serge Cartier had been watching from prison, he could have found no wrong in Martin’s game. Maybe May’s rose petals had brought him luck.

  Ray Gardner, his best friend and teammate, caught up with him by the lockers. They’d been playing together for a long time, first in Vancouver, then in Toronto, and for the last two seasons in Boston. They had both been brought up in LaSalle, Canada, and their bond had been fast and hard: both had been only children with pro-hockey-playing fathers, raised mainly by their mothers in rural farmhouses. Their love for skating had been born on silent mountain lakes under endless skies.

  “You greased them tonight, Martin,” Ray said. “Bang, bang, bang.”

  “Merci, Ray.”

  “You sent him high ones,” Ray said, and both men chuckled, picturing Martin’s three shots whizzing by the Leafs goalie’s head.

  “Thought he was going to skate out of the net the third time.” Martin laughed, still high from the win. He could see the whites of the goaltender’s eyes, hear the thunk as the puck slammed into the right side of his helmet.

  “Like a deer caught in the headlights.” Ray grinned. “Couldn’t get out of the way fast enough. You want to have dinner with me and Genny?”

  “I want to catch some sleep,” Martin said. “I’m getting old. Thirty-eight. I’d better retire soon. I want to win this year. It’s time, eh?”

  Ray nodded. He knew how much Martin wanted to win the Stanley Cup. All the other accolades seemed secondary, with that grand prize still eluding him. Shaking Ray’s hand, Martin stuck the little glass bottle into his jeans pocket before heading out to his car.

  Lying awake that night, he thought of Natalie, couldn’t get her out of his mind. But he was picturing that little girl from the plane. Her liquid eyes, her insistent whisper: “Will you help us? No matter what happens, when the plane lands, will you help me and my mother?”

  How had she known?

  Rushing through the smoke, Martin had felt a deep compulsion directing him. He had run right past the open door into the smoke-filled cabin to find them, to grab the mother’s hand and lift the child into his arms. He hadn’t thought twice—it was as if he hadn’t had a choice.

  Fifteen minutes altogether in their company.

  He couldn’t get them out of his mind—the girl or her mother. Was it the child’s similarity to Natalie, the way she had guessed he’d had a daughter? The mother’s beauty? Martin shook his head hard. He didn’t know why he was thinking these things.

  For so long, he had left people alone—especially women with kids. Hockey groupies came around, and he dated them—he wasn’t proud of himself, that was just the way things were. He had wanted no part of nice women with little girls. Life was dangerous, and the only place his world felt safe was on the ice.

  But then he’d see Ray with Genny, or he’d get tired of talking to his dates about the same meaningless garbage, and he’d imagine a different kind of connection. He’d imagine really caring for someone, wanting the best for her, trusting her enough to tell her his hopes and dreams. In his fantasy, she would care for him, too. She’d hold him at night, tell him he wasn’t alone.

  He kicked off his covers, rolling onto his back to stare at the ceiling. With all the women he had ever met and dated, all the beautiful models and famous actresses, Martin Cartier found himself obsessed over a woman he didn’t know. He couldn’t stop picturing her face—those guarded eyes, that brilliant smile, her messy reddish-brown hair. He wondered how far Black Hall, Connecticut, was from Boston. And then he fell asleep.

  The barn stood in the midst of an orchard. Three miles from Trumbull Cove, bathed in the seaside light that had attracted artists to this part of Connecticut for a hundred years, the land was bright with mountain laurel and dark with granite ledges.

  Four cars were parked under the apple trees, and inside the barn, the bride and her mother and bridesmaids milled around, talking as they looked at pictures.

  May’s grandmother, Emily, had built this barn with her husband Lorenzo Dunne, but she had run the wedding-planning business—The Bridal Barn—with her only daughter, May’s mother Abigail. Their books, diaries, and photo albums lined the shelves built into the barn’s silvered wood walls. A yellow cat skulked along the floor, guarding against mice.

  Standing by the window, May talked quietly to Tobin Chadwick. May’s oldest and still-best friend. Tobin had stayed in Black Hall after getting married; she had started working at the Bridal Barn the year her youngest son started school. She was small and strong, with dark hair and a ready, wonderful smile. She and May loved to bicycle together through hilly back roads, staying in shape by racking up the miles, racing on the straightaways.

  “Start with Toronto,” Tobin said. “Or start with the plane crash. I can’t be
lieve what a day you had yesterday.”

  “It was eventful.” May rubbed a bruise on her elbow.

  “What did they say—the doctors?”

  “They tested her,” May said. “They showed her two cards, one red and one blue, then mixed them up and put them facedown on a table and told her to say which was which. Over and over again.”

  “Sounds more like a casino.” Tobin frowned.

  “That’s how it felt,” May said. “They had her try to predict number sequences, first on paper, then on a Ouija board. She didn’t miss any—not even one! Then they handed her a pen and told her to write with her left hand—”

  “She’s right-handed.”

  “I know. They called it ‘spirit writing.’ ”

  “Did she contact any spirits?” Tobin asked with a slight smile. She sometimes seemed not to know what to think. To most people, even Toby, it seemed bizarre that a renowned university would have a department devoted to psychic phenomena, even stranger that May’s daughter would be part of a study there. To May, with her background of herbs and roses and love spells, it was less so.

  “Well, not at the university,” May said. “But on the plane—”

  “What happened?”

  “It seems she knew there was a problem with the plane before anyone else. She says she saw an angel. She walked right up to one guy,” May said, gazing into the middle distance, remembering the look in his eyes. “And asked him to help us when the time came. She told him his daughter told her to—”

  “His daughter?”

  “She’s dead.” Glancing over at the bridal party, May saw that decisions were being made, that the women had found pictures they liked in the books. The bride waved at May, and she waved back. Her stomach lurched as she thought of Kylie: what if it wasn’t family magic, but schizophrenia?

  “She’s so imaginative, May,” Tobin said gently. “That’s all it is.”

  “She talks to people who aren’t there.”

  “So did your grandmother, to herself, anyway. And remember when we were kids? How whenever we read books about kids with imaginary friends we wished we had them?”

  “We had each other,” May said.

  Tobin hugged her. “She doesn’t belong in a study,” she said. “You know that. She got freaked out, finding that body at the Lovecraft.”

  “I know,” May said.

  “I’d have nightmares if I found that, and she was only four.” Tobin shivered. “I’m surprised they’re not studying you. You were there—you saw it, too.”

  “I did,” May said. Closing her eyes, she saw the grinning skull, mouth open as if to implore them to do something. Kylie had dreams about death’s-heads, all begging her to help them. May opened her eyes, looked at Tobin.

  “She’s going through a phase,” her best friend continued. “It’s a little lonely out here in the country, no girls for her to play with. I should have had daughters instead of sons.”

  “I knew it was your fault,” May said. “The doctors want to see her again in July. They want me to continue keeping that journal of her sightings.”

  “She’ll outgrow it all. You’ll see.”

  “Or maybe she’ll become an actress or writer—when they use their imaginations, no one says anything,” May said.

  “That’s right,” Tobin agreed.

  But then the bridal party began moving toward them and it was time to get back to work. Dora Wilson, the bride-to-be, introduced everyone to May: her mother, her best friend Elizabeth Nichols, and two old friends from college.

  “May, will you please talk some sense into her?” Dora’s mother called. “She wants a Friday night wedding, and I keep telling her it’s impossible. Half the family will be flying in from Cleveland, and the other half will be driving up from Baltimore. A lovely afternoon ceremony—”

  “Mother,” the bride said shakily. “You know I want a candlelight ceremony. I always have. I—”

  “They’re outdated,” Mrs. Wilson said, waving her hand. “They’re so boring—people had them in the seventies. Are you afraid of daylight? Because I promise you, no one, not one soul will guess your age. May has a marvelous makeup artist; I saw what she did for Shelley Masters. So did you—and we both know Shelley’s older than you are!”

  May glanced at Tobin, and exactly like a well-seasoned team of cops they split up the pair. While Tobin took Mrs. Wilson, May went over to Dora.

  Starting out, May had thought she would be hired mainly by young women, unsure of their own taste. Instead, she had found many of her clients to be thirty-five or older, established in their own careers. They came in carrying briefcases and cell phones. Dora Wilson, today’s bride, was forty-one. A successful businesswoman, she wore an Armani suit and Prada shoes. She had expensive hair—cut and color by Jason of Silver Bay—and a worked-out body. But like most new clients—almost to a woman—she looked to her mother when the important questions were asked: number of attendants, nighttime or day, church or not.

  “I think she’s right,” Dora said as May walked over. “Saturday afternoon would be better. More practical.”

  “No.” May looked Dora square in the eye. “She is wrong.”

  “But the relatives are coming from far away—”

  “She is wrong,” May repeated. She held Dora’s gaze and refused to look away. Dora blinked, as if trying to resist hypnosis. “It is your wedding. You will be the bride; your mother already had her chance. You have dreamed of a candlelight ceremony your whole life.”

  “But I might have made a mistake. The more I think—” Dora began.

  May gazed at Dora. Today she wore jeans and an L.L. Bean sweater—navy blue with white dots resembling stars. “Know what my mother used to tell me at times like this?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t think more. Think less.”

  “Less? My God, there’s so much to think about, so many details!” Dora said, her voice rising. “When I sell a house, believe me, I don’t tell the buyer to think less—there’s the contract, the appraisal, the inspection…a wedding’s even more complicated!”

  “Less, Dora,” May said quietly. Her own head had been spinning with worries about Kylie, memories of the hanging man, comments the psychologists had made. But as she thought of her mother, she felt a little of the tension slip away. Across the room, Tobin was talking firmly to Mrs. Wilson, her voice and eyes steady.

  “We have to plan, make lists,” Dora said almost hysterically. “How do you expect me to plan without thinking?”

  May sat very still. She cared about this middle-aged bride so much. She wanted to find a way to help her do this. Suddenly May found herself thinking of the hockey player.

  Their hands had brushed when he’d picked up Kylie, and his blue eyes had seemed to look straight into her heart. No man had helped May like that in a very long time. Wanting to support Dora now, May thought of Martin Cartier’s eyes and cleared her throat.

  “With your gut,” May said. “With your heart.” She reached out and touched Dora’s breastbone. Her hand was steady, and she could feel the warm energy flowing from her fingertips into the trembling bride. Dora was brash and sharp, and all her forty-one years showed in the lines around her thin mouth. But at that instant the years fell away, and she looked about sixteen and very vulnerable.

  “You have always dreamed of a candlelight wedding,” May said.

  Dora gazed at May, and her eyes suddenly flooded with tears. “I have,” she whispered back.

  “Then you will have one.”

  “But my mother…”

  “Breathe,” May said, hearing her mother’s voice.

  “But she—”

  “Breathe,” May said. “And then tell her no.”

  “They’re divorced,” Dora said, the tears starting to fall. “My father lives in Watch Hill with his second wife. I don’t have any sisters—I’m her only daughter. She wants me to do things a certain way, she has dreams too, I don’t want to disappoint her…”

 
“I know,” May said quietly.

  Dora hugged her, but May hardly felt it.

  Turning, she walked across the open barn. She locked herself in the bathroom and turned on the water in the sink. It ran hard and fast, loud enough to drown out the wedding party’s voices outside. She made the water hotter, leaning over as she breathed in the steam. She envisioned the mist washing away the knots inside herself. Her mother had always told her to believe in her own power, to know that magic was an everyday thing.

  Don’t be an escape artist, her mother had always told the brides: Don’t hide in wine, shopping, exercise, or work. Stay awake, present, and connected. When May raised her head, she saw the mirror clouded with steam. Clearing a window with the heel of her hand, she stared into the eyes of a burned-out wedding planner. She wished she could conjure her mother’s spirit, take comfort in one of Kylie’s visions.

  People were talking just outside the bathroom door. Their voices drifted through the heavy wood, into May’s consciousness. Dora and her mother were making up; the wedding would take place on a Friday night, after all.

  May closed her eyes. What so many brides hoped: that the perfect dress, the perfect day, the perfect man would add up to the perfect life. Those had been May’s own dreams once. She had fallen in love, hoping to get married. So much for her own power, the magic of love! Sometimes she felt she could choke on her own bitterness.

  But then she thought of Kylie. Love hadn’t passed May by; it had just come in a different package. She dried her face, then walked out of the bathroom. Tobin walked over with an armful of pink roses, Aunt Enid trailing right behind.

  “Are they for Dora?” May asked. Sometimes men would send flowers to their brides-to-be at the Bridal Barn, a gesture May found incredibly romantic.

  “Not exactly,” Enid said. She was May’s grandmother’s youngest and only surviving sister, with similar blue-white hair, light blue eyes, and gentle manners that disguised a deep curiosity for what went on in other people’s lives.

  “They’re for you,” Tobin told her. Some of the bridesmaids had gathered around, and they leaned closer to see who May was getting flowers from.