Page 1 of Trick of Light
Prologue
There was something stirring in the ocean this morning. In that inner kind of knowing, she knew her life was about to change.
Tamara had always been an earthbound person, her hands working the dirt, most at home with plants and all things green. In the absence of human company, four-legged and flying creatures were her closest friends. Over so many years of life on this earth, the boundaries between her and the animals, between past and present and future, had blurred, until now it all seemed to be one.
But the ocean…the ocean still mystified her. It was full of secrets and it never explained. On most mornings, she liked to perch on her favorite flat rock under the spreading pine, holding a cup of tea, and stare into the constantly moving water. If she could understand the ocean, then she could understand time, she thought, and why it seemed to spiral, whether it be in seasons or sun cycles or patterns that echoed across centuries…
Until a sudden event occurred, like a splash that broke the surface. She squinted to make sense of what she was seeing. Her eyes didn’t work as well as they used to, but surely those were hands rising from the cold water. A young person’s arms appeared, then a small head with dark drenched hair.
A boy.
“Help!” he cried. Arms flailing, water churning around him, his head sank back below the surface.
Fear turned her breathless. She scampered down the rocks. She forgot for a moment that she was an old woman, a crone, not a girl anymore, and moved sure-footedly between slick seaweed and clusters of sharp-edged mussels. She reached the edge of the water and crouched there, waiting for the boy to reappear. When he did, he was only a few yards away.
“Just a little farther,” she called to him. “Follow my voice.” She kept talking, sending him words of encouragement. Head above water. Steady on. I’m right here. As if she knew him, as if he were emerging from the ocean to seek her out.
It made no sense, and yet it made all the sense in the world when she finally grasped his icy hand and looked into his face. That was when she understood that the past was still alive and the ocean sometimes did spill its secrets.
1
“If you’ve been following this crazy-ass Sea Smoke Island story, and by our numbers, I know a lot of people have been, you’re going to be super-excited about our show today. We’ve got something big planned for you. You won’t want to miss this, so hang in there while we do some intros here.”
Gabby Ramon smiled reassuringly at the podcast’s special guest, Sasha Mackey, who was perched on the very edge of her chair. She herself was so used to speaking into a mic that she forgot it could be nerve-racking for normal people.
“Normal”—as in not obsessed with digging up stories and bringing them to the public, as she and her co-host Heather both were.
Heather took over the mic. She was sitting cross-legged on the other armchair in their makeshift podcast studio—a cozy corner in the Lightkeeper Inn’s glass-walled conservatory. The acoustics were amazing, and on top of that, they got to feast their eyes on the picturesque summery scene outside. Lush, creamy hydrangeas and jaunty black-eyed Susans overflowed the flower borders, while hotel guests lounged in Adirondack chairs on the endless green lawn.
“You’re listening to Dirty Rotten Bastards, the podcast devoted to meticulous journalistic research into misdeeds, misbehavior, forgotten crimes, and anything else we happen to come across in our investigations.”
“By the way,” Gabby added, “if there’s a dirty rotten bastard in your life who you feel has gotten away with something, our tipline is always open. The email address is in the show description. Okay, where were we?”
Heather made a pointed gesture toward her own chest, then Gabby’s. It was a good thing they were sticking to audio for now. Soon they wanted to put up a video camera and put the pod on YouTube as well. But they’d been so busy they hadn’t gotten to that yet.
“Right. I’m Gabby Ramon, and I’m here with my co-host, Heather McPhee, on beautiful Sea Smoke Island, Maine. A little bit about us—we met in journalism school and have been friends ever since, and even when we argue, which does happen from time to time?—”
“We like arguing,” Heather made a gesture that nearly knocked over her iced tea. “It’s kind of our thing.”
“Mmmm…I wouldn’t say that, but we don’t have time to argue about it now.”
Heather snickered. “I see what you did there.”
“Let me just finish this intro, you mind?”
Heather mimicked zipping her lips. Gabby smiled to herself. She loved recording this podcast, loved it more than she’d ever imagined possible. It was her voice, her platform, her megaphone to the world. When she was working on it, she felt free. As if this was where she could truly be herself with no holds barred. Her mother, a state senator, didn’t understand why she couldn’t find some other passion that didn’t involve potentially controversial topics. If only she could.
“My point is, the one thing we always agree about is that everything we present on this podcast is fact-checked down to the bone. We use primary sources whenever we can. If we don’t know something with a hundred percent confidence, we might present it, but we will always tell you. We try to check our own biases, too, ’cause Lord knows, we all have them.”
“Can’t argue with that,” said Heather.
“But I know you want to.”
“Always.”
“Okay, enough about us,” Gabby continued, laughing. “For the last few episodes, we’ve been working on a huge story here on Sea Smoke Island. This is where Heather grew up, but even she didn’t know about what happened here back in nineteen-twelve.”
“I knew they’d built a resort for the wealthiest of the wealthy here that year. But I didn’t know what they did to make it happen.”
