The Night Mark(77)

“I’d file that under ‘It’s complicated.’”

“Are you taking me to the grocery store or not?”

“Depends on what you’re gonna make me.”

“Peach pie with a saltine cracker crust.”

“Oh, hell yes, then. We’re going right now.”

The pie was simple enough—crushed crackers, butter and sugar for the crust, and peaches and more sugar for the filling. Faye didn’t have a recipe. She had nothing to work from except her memory, but as she crushed the crackers and kneaded them with the softened butter, she knew she could do this. Although she’d never made a peach pie before in her life—in this life—she knew how. As she crushed the crackers and kneaded the dough, memories leaped out of her mind like dolphins breaching for air. She remembered Dolly’s blue gingham apron and the yellow scarf she wore in her hair, not like a stereotypical housemaid’s scarf but in a big bow over her right ear like a fifties-style pinup girl. She remembered the flour dusting Dolly’s beautiful face, leaving a smattering of freckles on her smooth, dark skin. Dolly hummed as she worked sometimes, and Faye thought of that soothing tuneless sound as the sound track of the home—like an engine purring. Between the two of them, they’d managed to finish all the housework by two or three in the afternoon. They’d gone out collecting seashells one day and sat on the front porch the next reading and drowsing in the heat. Dolly read Sherlock Holmes short stories. Faye read Villette by Charlotte Bront?, a book she’d always meant to read but had never taken the time to. But in 1921 she’d taken the time, because she could. Because she had all the time in the world.

“‘I believe that life is not all,’” Faye whispered to herself as she pressed the crust into the pie pan. “‘Neither the beginning nor the end. I believe while I tremble. I trust while I weep...’”

She paused and looked up. She’d read Villette at the keeper’s cottage. How would she remember lines from a book she’d never read?

Faye looked out the open kitchen window behind the sink. Crickets woke to sing, and flashing lightning bugs darted and danced under the Spanish moss hanging from the branches of the backyard’s live oak trees. If she closed her eyes and listened, she could pretend she was back at the cottage again. Evening meant cooking dinner and waiting for Dolly’s father to come fetch her. He’d pull up to the dock in his metal fishing boat that spewed diesel fumes they could smell all the way up at the house. Carrick would catch his rope and tie it to a pillar. Her father, a fisherman named Wallace, always brought them something from his catch—grouper or snapper or flounder—and Faye would give him something from their garden, corn or squash or onions. And without fail, every day he’d doff his hat and say, “Thanks to you and the chief for taking good care of our girl.” And without fail, every evening Faye would reply, “We don’t know what we’d do without her.” Every evening, that was the ritual. It was so deeply embedded in her mind that when she’d passed a display of saltwater fish for sale at the grocery store, her nose had conjured the scent of diesel.

When the pie finished baking, Faye took it out of the oven and set it on the trivet to cool. It looked like Dolly’s peach pie and smelled like Dolly’s peach pie, but she wouldn’t know for certain she’d made it correctly until she tasted it.

“Something sure smells good in here.”

Faye looked over her shoulder and saw Miss Lizzie come into the kitchen, her broom and dustpan in hand. She cleaned the house almost as obsessively as Dolly had cleaned theirs.

“Peach pie,” Faye said. “I hope you don’t mind. I used one of your mixing bowls and your pie pan.”

“I don’t mind a bit as long as you wash them and give me a piece of your pie.”

“Soon as it cools, it’s all yours.”

Miss Lizzie walked over to the oven and gave the pie on the trivet an appraising look.

“Looks good. You make it with the cracker crust? That’s the way to do it.”

“I think so, too. You’ve had it like that before?” Faye asked as she washed her hands.

“Many, many times,” she said wistfully as she walked over to the broom closet and opened the door. “My grandmother always made it like that. Still my favorite.”

Faye froze with her hands under the faucet. She picked up a towel, turned around and saw a faded blue-and-white-gingham apron hanging inside the broom closet on the back of the door.

“Didn’t you tell me the furniture in my room was from the Bride Island lighthouse?” Faye asked.

“The desk is and the side table. Few other pieces around the house.”

“How did you come to have them?”

“Passed down. They were my mother’s first and she gave them to me.”

“And your grandmother’s before that?”

“They were. She worked out at the lighthouse, and they gave her some of the furniture when they automated the light. Same grandmother who taught me to bake pie, as a matter of fact.”

“Dolly,” Faye said, her blood chilling, her heart leaping.

“Dorothy,” Miss Lizzie said. “Although I do think she was called Dolly as a girl.” Miss Lizzie narrowed her eyes at Faye. “How do you know my grandmother’s name?”

Faye walked over to her, shaking a little. There it was—Dolly’s pretty nose right on the center of Miss Lizzie’s face. Same eyes, too, wide with a little upturn at the corners—Diana Ross eyes.