Chapter 6 - The Search on the River
By morning, Caroline was gone from her room by the harbor.
The landlord, a man with a gray beard and a shirt that smelled of fish scales, told Walter she had left her key on the table and taken nothing but her yellow coat and a small canvas bag.
"She owed me three weeks," the landlord said, spitting into the gravel. "But she left her daddy's tool chest in the closet. I figure that’s worth twenty bucks."
"I'll give you fifty," Walter said, reaching for his wallet.
He carried the chest back to his truck. It was small, made of white oak with brass corners, the joinery so tight you couldn't have slipped a razor blade between the corners. Inside were six chisels, three small planes, and a wooden mallet with the initials T.B. carved into the handle.
At the bottom of the chest, wrapped in a piece of oiled sheepskin, was a second windup music box.
This one was unfinished. The bluebird on the lid was only sketched in pencil, the wood beneath it still white and clean.
Walter drove back to the house.
Margaret was waiting on the porch, her arms crossed over her apron. "She’s not here," Margaret said. "And the baby’s hungry."
"I know," Walter said.
He sat at the kitchen table and set the tool chest down. "The girl is the mother, Margaret."
Margaret didn't look surprised. She simply sat down in the opposite chair, her old hands folding over her lap. "I knew the first day. She has the same ears. That little fold at the top."
"Why didn't you say anything?"
"Because you needed to find out yourself," Margaret said. "And because she needed to trust you. A girl like that... she’s been chased by everyone she’s ever met. If I’d have said something, she’d have run before she could see that the baby was safe."
"She’s run now," Walter said.
"Then you go find her," Margaret said. "She won't go far. Not with her heart in this cradle."
Walter spent three days driving the back roads of Beaufort County. He went to Arapahoe, to the empty lot where Thomas Bennett’s shop had stood. He went to the ferry landing at Minnesott Beach, where the wind blew cold off the Neuse River and the salt marshes were turning the color of old copper.
On the fourth day, he found her.
She was sitting on the wooden steps of an abandoned crab house near the mouth of the creek. Her yellow coat was dirty, her face pale and drawn. She was watching the ferry move across the water, her hands tucked deep into her pockets.
Walter parked the truck and walked down the path. The ground was spongy with pine needles and wet peat.
He didn't say anything when he sat down on the step below her. He simply took the unfinished music box from his pocket and set it between them.
Caroline looked at it. She didn't move her hands.
"I bought your father's chest," Walter said. "The landlord was going to sell it to a man who wanted to make a planter out of it."
A small, sharp line appeared between her eyebrows. "He didn't have the right. It was my father's."
"It’s in my truck," Walter said. "It’s safe."
He reached out and wound the key on the unfinished music box.
The tune was different this time—not Hush, Little Baby, but an old Scotch-Irish air her father must have brought down from the mountains. The notes were clear and thin, carrying over the water to where the gulls were wheeling in the gray sky.
"She’s gaining weight," Walter said. "Margaret has her on seven ounces now. She’s got two teeth coming in on the bottom."
Caroline closed her eyes. Two large tears ran down her cheeks, leaving clean streaks through the salt and dirt on her face.
May you like
"I can't go back, Walter," she said. "The state... they’ll take her anyway. I don't have a home."
"Yes, you do," Walter said.
