Chapter 17
Punkin sits Ben down at the kitchen table and takes his coffee order. Edouard cracks a couple more eggs for another omelet.
“It was four in the morning and I couldn’t sleep,” says Ben, “so I texted Sedge to explain the situation—”
“Explain how?”
“Just that you and Elise were all alone for Christmas and I was worried about you, so I decided to jump in my car and see if I could make the early ferry. Only to find out that someone had already come to your rescue.”
“Who? Oh, them.”
“Yes, us,” says Matthias. “So if you break her heart again, you’ll have me to answer to.”
Ben turns his head to my brother, who is about five foot nine and wears thick tortoiseshell eyeglasses like he just stepped out of a café on the Left Bank, poetry magazine tucked under his arm. “Bro,” he says, “trust me. You’re worried about the wrong heart.”
While I am busy suffering a cardiac event, Maman raps the side of her coffee cup.
“Can we return to the subject of the intruder, please? This is very serious.”
Ben looks at me. “What intruder?”
—
We head outside. Ben wants me to show him exactly where the man stood. Which tree he ducked behind. Where he parked his car along the side of Club Road.
“All right, DCI Ressler,” I say. “Are you satisfied?”
“DCI?”
“Detective Chief Inspector. Kind of a British crime show thing.”
“You’re not taking this seriously.”
“Trust me,” I say. “I took it very seriously at the time. I just don’t know what we can do at this point, short of a police investigation.”
He pulls out his phone. “Then let’s call the police.”
I grab his wrist. “Don’t be dramatic. Punkin’s right. It’s just some pirate weirdo. He literally bolted as soon as I started after him. He’s not…you know. An assassin or something. Plus, it’s Christmas Eve.”
“What does Christmas Eve have to do with it?”
I release his wrist and shove both hands into the pockets of my coat.
“I don’t know. I’m just tired. Let’s go back inside, okay? Before the crew drinks all the wine? It’s freezing out and I need to get the dinner prep going.”
We start back toward Windward. “Maybe you need one of those Ring cameras,” Ben says. “You’re at the school all day. Anyone could just break in.”
I point toward Summerly. “Look. You have a clear view of the house from your place. Now that the trees are all bare. You would notice something going on.”
“Luce, much as I’d love to spend my entire day staring at your window, I do sometimes have other stuff to do. Basketball. I don’t know why you’re not more worried about this. He’s a fucking stalker.”
“I was worried. But now my family’s here. You’re here. Gary’s on the case. Plus, I have my squirrel gun.”
“Oh. Bam. Forgot about the squirrel gun. I guess we’re good, then.” He bumps my elbow with his. “What about looking on his computer? Check out those pirate forums he was on?”
“His computer?”
“You know. His laptop. He was always on that damn laptop.”
I come to a stop. So does Ben. We look at each other with puzzled faces. The wind blows in off the water and ruffles his hair.
“Do you know where he might have kept it?” I ask.
—
Punkin is the one who invites Ben to sleep over. “Because it’s Christmas Eve,” she says magnanimously.
“Girl, I’m right over there. Across the meadow. You can wave at me from your window.”
“You want to wake up by yourself on Christmas? Are you crazy?”
Ben looks at me. I look at the ceiling. We’re sitting around the dining room table for once, which Punkin and Tatiana have painstakingly laid with the china in the corner cabinet—the silver is long gone—eating duckling and Black Sea caviar smuggled in Tatiana’s suitcase, mince pies with brandy sauce, some extremely expensive Burgundy.
Everyone except Punkin has eaten too much and drunk too much and slept too little—even Ben had a glass of wine—and a certain recklessness has entered the air.
“Nobody wants to wake up alone on Christmas,” says Amélie, “so I am certainly sleeping with my sister tonight. But I think there are a dozen bedrooms upstairs, Ben. You will find an empty one, not a problem.”
—
When the table’s been cleared and the dishes washed and put away; when the beds have been fitted with fresh, aging sheets and everyone has taken a turn in the one working bathroom; when I have tucked Punkin into bed and smothered her with Christmas kisses, I tiptoe down the stairs.
Punkin and I spent most of the day sneaking around the house, looking for items to wrap up as presents. Now I have a bag of them, ready to put into stockings and leave under the tree.
In the darkness at the bottom of the stairs, I stumble into Ben.
“Ouch!” he says.
“What are you doing down here?” I whisper.
“Just putting some stuff under the tree.”
“Me too.”
“Let me give you a hand,” he says. “It’s pretty dark down here.”
We fumble our way to the front parlor. Ben carries the bag, an L.L.Bean tote on which the salt and sand and sun of a hundred summers has worked into the canvas.
I find Punkin’s stocking above the mantel and fill it with candy and mittens and socks; together we put the rest of the presents under the small tree, decorated with ornaments we found in a box in the basement.
“That was fun tonight,” Ben whispers. “Finally meeting the tribe. The Russian one cracked me up.”
“Tatiana. She’s great. You were great. They can be a lot.”
“There’s a lot of love there. They’ve got your back, for sure.”
“They needed me,” I say. “And I needed them.”
“Can I ask you a question?” whispers Ben. “Did your dad spend Christmas here by himself every year?”
“Pretty much. I always invited him to join us, but he never came.”
He doesn’t reply. I wonder what he’s thinking. Whether he thinks that if you’re lucky enough to have a dad who’s not in prison for attempted murder, you should find a way to spend Christmas with him.
“I should have flown out here with Punkin,” I whisper. “I should have realized I was the one who had to come to him.”
“Maybe,” he says. “Or maybe you just needed him to care enough to come to you, for once. It’s not like bro couldn’t board an airplane.”
“Maybe we both needed the same thing from each other, and we never got it.”
“This is getting pretty deep for Christmas Eve,” says Ben. “We should probably call it a night.”
“We should.”
We’re sitting on the rug next to the tree. My eyes are getting used to the dark and I can see his shape against the wallpaper. The glint of his eyes.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” I whisper. “All those years.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Makes you wonder.”
“Wonder what?”
“Nothing.”
He climbs to his feet and reaches for my hand to pull me up.
My mother’s voice sails down the stairs. “Lucy! Darling, is that you?”
Ben swears softly and melts into the shadows. I call back, “Maman? Just putting the presents under the tree.”
“I thought I heard someone.”
“I was talking to myself. What’s the matter? Is Punkin still awake?”
“No,” she says. “I just remembered something. You said something about a key.”
“A key? You mean the key Dad left me? The one we can’t find the lock for?”
“Do you have it with you?”
“Not with me, no. It’s upstairs in my room. Maman, let’s talk tomorrow. We’re going to wake up Punkin and ruin Christmas forever.”
She lands with a sightless thump at the bottom of the stairs and leans against the newel post. “Is it a key with a round head? Number engraved at the base? 8238, isn’t that it?”
“That’s it!” I whisper. “Do you know what it’s for?”
“It’s the key to the safe-deposit box at our old bank in New London.”