Page 54 of Under the Stars

Meredith

Winthrop Island, New York

“Mr. Walker,” says Meredith. “What a nice surprise.”

“I’m sorry to disturb you. I was hoping for news, that’s all.”

He stands on the doorstep, looking frail and worried. His white hair floats in the evening breeze. In one hand, he carries an old leather messenger bag. The dog wriggles between Meredith’s legs and lavishes salutations on him, which Mr. Walker bends stiffly to return.

“Why, who’s this good boy? Look at you. Looking after your mistress, are you?”

“He’s not my dog. He’s Audrey’s.”

Mr. Walker straightens. The soft, delighted look on his face returns to sorrow. “How is she? Have they found her?”

Meredith folds her arms. “She’s fine. They stopped the car north of Springfield. She’s a little banged up but otherwise okay, according to Mike. He’s bringing her home tomorrow.”

“Oh! Thank God.”

A little color comes back to his cheeks. He offers her a relieved smile that suggests some kind of shared sympathy. At his feet, the dog settles comfortably and leans against his leg, smiling.

Meredith opens the door and motions him in. “Won’t you come in? I’m afraid it’s a little more complicated than that.”

—

She can’t offer him a real drink, but there’s plenty of herbal tea.

He says mint will be fine. Meredith finds a bag of lavender chamomile for herself.

They sit down in the sunroom together, him on the sofa and her on the wicker armchair on which Isobel used to soak up sunsets, as Meredith soaks up this one.

She explains about the paintings.

“Yes,” says Harlan Walker. “I saw one propped against the bar, when I stopped by earlier today. You’re saying it’s stolen?”

“It’s not stolen. It belongs to Mike. It’s been sitting in his damn cellar all this time.”

“How long, exactly?”

“I don’t know. Since some shipwreck,” she says, without thinking.

Mr. Walker sets his mug on the coffee table. “You mean the Atlantic ?”

“Yes, I guess you’re right. I don’t recall the details. But I think—as I understand it, anyway—she and Mike think this woman in the paintings, the woman who posed for Irving, and then apparently murdered him, wound up on the Atlantic .”

“Shipwrecked here in 1846,” says Mr. Walker.

Meredith shrugs. “Apparently. But there’s no proof. So the Irvings claim the paintings still belong to them.”

“And they claim that Audrey stole them.”

“Technically,” she says, “just the one her husband grabbed before he kidnapped her. Of course, the bastard’s saying it was all Audrey’s idea. The first time in history a man doesn’t claim the credit.”

Harlan Walker frowns. He glances down at the messenger bag at his feet and back to Meredith. Long and steady, as if he’s studying her.

Meredith sips her tea. At her feet, the dog lifts his head to look at her, sighs, and sets his muzzle back down on his paws.

Mr. Walker speaks slowly. “Just so I understand what’s going on here. It’s Audrey’s word against her husband’s, correct?”

“More or less.”

“And even if the authorities side with Audrey—the jury, if it comes to that—the paintings still belong to the Irvings.”

“We’ll fight it, of course.”

“But that’s expensive. Could take years. Paintings like those—priceless—people will fight to the death.” He smiles faintly. “In my legal experience.”

“Audrey will have all the resources she needs,” Meredith says sharply.

“I’m sure you’ll do whatever it takes. On the other hand, if you had proof.”

“There is no proof, Mr. Walker. That’s the trouble. It was almost two hundred years ago.”

Mr. Walker sets both hands on his knees and pushes himself up. He swipes his mug from the table and walks to the French doors to stare through the glass at the cantaloupe horizon. “I went to see all your movies,” he says. “You’re a fine actress.”

“Gosh, thanks.”

“Sometimes I said to myself, what makes an actor good at what he does? And I think, well, you’ve got to have something in you you’re trying to get away from. Something that makes you want to inhabit somebody else for a change.”

“I guess that’s fair,” Meredith says.

He turns his head to her. “You know, I’ve spent a lot of time wondering what happened to my son that night.

But lately—I’m getting old, you know, and it changes your perspective—lately I’ve started to think that maybe it was just as bad for you.

And you’ve had to live with the consequences, every single day since.

Just like me, only worse. Because you can see it in your head. I can only imagine.”

Meredith sets down the mug. “I get along just fine.”

“One day at a time, as the saying goes. You remember what a miracle it is to be alive at all.”

“Some miracle,” she says.

“But it is. We’re so damn lucky to be alive, Meredith. Just to be conceived, to be born. Each day is given to us against astronomical odds. You’ve won the lottery, just to stand on this planet and watch this sunset.”

Meredith stares at him. A little stooped, his face hidden by the light at his back. There is a frailty to his shoulders, a hollowness in his bones. He nods at the scene over his shoulder.

“I still think about those poor souls on that ship, dragging anchor all the way across that channel of water, knowing they were going to wreck in a matter of hours. Knowing they were about to die.” He shakes his head.

“And some did die. And some lived and married and bore children, like Mike’s ancestor.

Providence Dare. Can you imagine? Against the odds, she lives.

Lives to have children, whose children have children. And so on to the present day.”

The question hangs in the air with the dust motes that gleam in the aging light.

“If you’re asking me whose daughter Audrey is,” says Meredith, “the answer is, I don’t know. Probably Mike. She reminds me of him in all kinds of ways. But maybe not. Maybe I’m just projecting. I can’t say for sure. That’s the truth. That’s all I can tell you.”

“You never thought to get one of those DNA tests done?”

“I thought about it. And then I thought, maybe I don’t want to know. She’s mine, that’s all that matters. I’m sorry I can’t give you what you need.”

“That’s not what I need from you, Meredith. I used to think it was. But now it doesn’t seem so important.”

A thought nags her. She shuts her eyes and walks back the soundtrack of the conversation. Opens her eyes again. “Hold on a second. How did you know her name?”

“Whose name?”

“Providence,” she says. “Providence Dare.”

Mr. Walker stares into the mug and swishes the liquid around.

Meredith remembers how her grandmother used to read tea leaves, how the artists who joined them in the summer used to bring her their cups, one by one, and have their fortunes read.

Mr. Walker doesn’t seem to be reading the future in his cup.

He seems to be reading the past. He looks up and smiles at Meredith.

Steps forward and sets down his mug next to the black nylon backpack.

“I have something that might interest you,” he says, reaching for the backpack. “You and Audrey.”

—

The manuscript is not long. Mr. Walker kept it in its original red leather folio because, he says, that was how it was handed down to him.

“I found it among my father’s papers,” he says.

“My mother kept them in the attic. Couldn’t ever bear to go through them.

After she died, I opened up all the boxes and trunks and there it was.

Read it through a few times, but I didn’t realize what it was, at the time.

The names meant nothing to me, back then. ”

Meredith spreads her fingers over the first page. The handwriting is delicate and even, the way people used to write when they had no other way to communicate ideas. No phones or internet. No movies or television. Just words on a page.

An Account of the Sinking of the Steamship Atlantic, it says at the top. By Providence Dare.

“You’re saying this has been in your family all this time? And nobody ever—I don’t know, donated it to a museum? Sent it to the history department at Harvard or someplace?”

“There was a note attached. It’s in there somewhere. It was sent to my great-great-grandmother, near the end of her life. The contents were to be kept secret.”

Meredith looks up. “But why secret? And why your great-great-grandmother?”

“Secret because—well, I think you’ll discover that for yourself, when you read it. I would guess she wanted to protect the Irving family from scandal.”

“But then why would she want your great-great-grandmother to know about it?”

Mr. Walker looks at the soft red leather in her lap, the color of an old barn. “Because her brother died when the Atlantic wrecked that night in 1846. His name was John Starkweather. And he was the policeman charged with apprehending Providence Dare.”

There is something in his voice, a note Meredith recognizes.

How many times has she sat across some table and made a bargain?

A dinner table, a conference table. A coffee table, like this one.

A stack of papers, a stack of words, a statement of terms. I have something you want, you have something I want. Let’s make a deal.

Meredith folds the red leather back over the manuscript pages.

“I’m sure you could prove Audrey’s innocence without it,” Mr. Walker says, in firm, quiet tones that remind Meredith he’s a lawyer. “But not without a lot of time and money. The stress of legal proceedings. The public airing of a lot of private details.”

“And here I thought you cared about her.”

“I do. But not as much as I want to know what happened to my son before I die.”

Meredith raises her famous eyebrow. “Die?”

“Like I said, every day is a miracle. I’m lucky to make it this far. Or not, depending on how you look at it. Every day—every moment I’ve outlived my son.” He lowers his head.

A tactical mistake, Meredith thinks. Never bring your emotions into a negotiation. The leather is cool and smooth beneath her palm.

“What if I take this now? Would you fight me for it?”

Mr. Walker gives her a thin, predatory smile. “Aren’t you in enough legal trouble already?”

Meredith strokes the red leather a last time and hands the folio back to Mr. Walker, across the table. He glances at it, then back at her. Fixes his desperate eyes on her face.

“Just tell me,” he says. “That’s all you need to do. Tell me how it happened. Give me the truth.”

“You want the truth?” she asks. “You’re sure about that?”

He exhales. “I do.”

Meredith sets the folio on the table and closes her eyes.