Stone Cove Island

by Suzanne Myers

Genres: YA Mysteries & Thrillers; YA Romance

Synopsis

When a catastrophic hurricane devastates Stone Cove Island, a quaint New England resort community, everyone pulls together to rebuild. Seventeen-year-old Eliza Elliot volunteers to clean out the island’s iconic lighthouse and stumbles upon a secret in the wreckage: a handwritten letter.

On first glance, it hardly makes sense. But the longer Eliza studies it, the more convinced she becomes that it’s an anonymous confession to a thirty-year-old crime: the unsolved murder of a local teen named Bess Linsky.

Soon Eliza finds herself in the throes of an investigation she never wanted or asked for. As Stone Cove Island fights to recover from disaster, Eliza plunges the locals back into a nightmare they believed was long buried.

Everybody is a suspect. Everywhere she turns, there might be an enemy. And everything she ever believed about her hometown is false.

A Blackstone Audio production.

Release date: November 11, 2014

Publisher: Soho Teen

Print pages: 272

Sample

ONE

Of course we knew that Hurricane Victor was going to be a big storm. But there hadn’t been a storm like this in anyone’s living memory, so we weren’t prepared for the damage it would do.
        I live on a small island a few miles off Cape Ann, about an hour north of Boston. Our closest mainland towns are Rockport and Gloucester. When you grow up on an unprotected island facing Atlantic storms, you’re supposed to know what to do when things get serious. But we’d had so many false alarms, so many calls to evacuate to the mainland, only to return to find no damage or, much worse, that thieves had taken advantage of a day they knew they could work pretty much undisturbed. No one on Stone Cove Island evacuated for a storm warning anymore.
       The morning after, I opened the front door to find a fifty-foot oak tree lying across our porch. I squeezed through the narrow gap the tree allowed and stood outside. Its trunk came up to my waist. The island was silent, as though all the sound had been sucked away by the force of the hurricane as it ripped through. There were no birds chirping, no insects. I couldn’t even hear the waves, though I could imagine how wild the ocean must be.
       I could hear my mom, banging pots and dishes inside as she worked herself into a panic, trying to figure out how to make breakfast in a kitchen with no power or water. She was the oatmeal-and-eggs type, not the cold-cereal type, and definitely not the roll-with-the-changes type. Dad was asleep. He’d been up all night, moving furniture up to the second floor as the water rose, trying to make extra sandbags out of freezer bags and flour, taping and re-taping the windows as the wind sucked the glass in and out.
       Who knew glass could bend like that? The porch light lit the pea-soup-green night, and the trees screamed as they blew sideways. No wonder the big oak had come down. It was amazing more trees hadn’t. I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep, but I’d finally nodded off on the floor in my room, well away from any outside wall. My bed and the rug in my room were soaked. The rain had poured under the closed bottom window forming a waterfall, as if someone was holding a hose to the glass. I was scared, but I knew my dad was busy doing all he could to keep the house together, and my mom would make me more freaked out, not less. So I just lay there, waiting for it to be over. I tried pretending it was tomorrow already, and that all this was behind me.
       “Eliza?” I could hear my mom calling me from the kitchen.
       “I’m out front, Mom. Just checking things out.” I didn’t mention the oak. My dad’s best at handling bad news with her. “I’m going to walk into town and see how everyone is. Maybe they have power. Do you want me to get coffee or anything if they have it? Or more bottled water?” She was a worrier, so bottled water was one thing I was pretty sure we had plenty of.
       “Eliza, no. I don’t want you going out there alone,” she called back. The clattering in the kitchen was getting more frantic.
       “It’s fine, Mom. The storm’s over.”
       “What if a branch falls? It’s not safe for you to be out there. Nate?” I heard my father’s exhausted voice from the next room. “Let her go. She’s fine. Eliza, walk down the middle of the streets, stay out of the park and don’t go near the water. Get extra batteries from Harney’s if he’s not sold out.” Then he rolled over and went back to sleep, or so I guessed. It was a familiar pattern: Mom, looking for a reason to panic; Dad, reeling her back in. I hadn’t figured out his magic formula. Usually my attempts to calm her down only made things worse.
       I turned my attention back to the oak and to how I was going to get off the porch. The trunk was wide and blocked my view of everything beyond it. I was dreading what I would find on the other side, but putting it off would only make my imagination run wild. It was better to face it, however bad things might be, then figure out what to do next.
       I threaded my way to the edge of the porch, grabbed a sturdy branch, climbed out and dropped to the ground. It wasn’t that difficult, but coming and going this way would not work with groceries. The bay window off the kitchen would have to become our temporary entrance, unless Dad wanted to get into it with the back door. Its seizedup lock hadn’t worked since I had been in fourth grade. I looked out at the formerly cozy little street, and felt like Dorothy landing in Oz.

Summer is our big season. Growing up on the island, you get used to the time before Fourth of July and the time after. It’s like living on two different planets. In the off-season, you can ride your bike across the whole island until your fingers are frozen to the handlebars and not see another person. There is only one school with about forty kids in each grade. We all go there, our parents went there, and mostly their parents did too. The ferry runs once a day and when the harbor is iced over, there are lots of weeks it doesn’t run at all.
       In the summer, crowds stream off the ferries hourly. They juggle beach chairs, umbrellas, Radio Flyer wagons packed with groceries for their summer rentals. The inn is full. People pack Water Street, the main drag that curves along the harbor, wearing bathing suits under their T-shirts and sundresses, licking their dripping ice-cream cones. By the way, don’t ever let anyone talk you into working in an ice-cream parlor as a summer job. It sounds fun, but it’s actually grueling, charley-horse-inducing work. I always go for day camp counselor: sailing, Capture the Flag and campfire songs.
       You would think summer would be our total focus, that we would be holed up like hibernating bears waiting for beach weather, but it’s not like that at all. You get used to the silence and sense of belonging that we few residents have. It’s like throwing a party. You’re excited before, decorating and getting things ready. It’s fun while the  party lasts, but eventually you just want the guests to go home so you can put on your pajamas and sit around the kitchen, rehashing the highlights.
       That morning, Stone Cove Island didn’t look like any version of itself I’d ever seen before, summer or winter. Our street was smothered with downed trees and broken branches. It would be a while before any cars could make it through. My dad had said to stick to the middle of the roads, but I had to zigzag around or climb over whatever blocked my way. I couldn’t choose the path. I turned down the hill toward Water Street, my breath catching in my throat. It felt like watching a movie about someone else’s ruined life. Houses were missing roofs, walls were caved in. In some cases, only the rubble of the brick foundation was left. Furniture, clothes and belongings were scattered
everywhere.
       Those personal things tugged at me the most: the stuffed tiger that no doubt some toddler was unable to sleep without; the royal-blue leather family photo album, assembled over decades and destroyed in one night. I pulled my sleeves down over my hands and folded my arms across my stomach. It was cold, and I felt the chill in the small of my back. I wished I had not come down to face this alone.
       When I reached the harbor, normally the busiest section of town, I kept my eyes on the water. The beach had ugly, deep gashes in it, like a monster had bitten away hunks of flesh and left bleeding mud behind. I tried to put it back together in my mind to the way it was supposed to look, but I couldn’t. Tears began to sting my eyes. I felt the destruction, as though I was the one who had been hurt.
       Where the ferry came in—or used to come in—the docks were all but gone. The few weekend people who hadn’t made it over in time to prepare for the storm were rewarded by having their sailboats either washed up and overturned on the village green, a hundred yards from the water, or shattered into kindling-sized strips, floating beside the broken pilings they’d once been secured to.
       The village green was charred a yellow brown, the grass burned by the salt water that had flooded it. The shops that were on the bay side of Water Street were either gone or ripped open like dollhouses, their sun hats and saltwater taffy boxes floating in murky, possibly electrified standing water. Businesses on the up-island side of the street fared a little better. At least the water had receded.
       The whole island seemed to be without power except for the Picnic Basket, the sandwich and coffee shop on Laurel Lane. Nancy and Greg appeared to have rigged a generator. I could smell coffee brewing and theirs were the only lights glowing on the main street. So they’d been lucky too. I felt a quick rush of relief. If the Picnic Basket were dark, I would have panicked. Nancy and Greg were known to be the source of all news, official and unofficial, on the island. They prided themselves on always being first to know. They were also usually first to gossip. The Picnic Basic was probably the nerve center for Hurricane Victor information by now.
       I wiped my tears with the sleeve of my sweater just in time to hear my name.
       “Eliza? Is that you?”
       When I turned, Charlie Pender was standing behind me.
       What is he doing here? That was my first thought. Charlie had graduated from Stone Cove High last December, a semester early. I had not seen him since. I remembered that he was taking a year off before college to intern at a newspaper in Boston or Providence and wondered if he might be on some kind of assignment. He seemed taller,
or maybe it was just because I felt so beaten down that morning. I saw that same feeling reflected in his eyes; they were faraway, cloudy. In fact, he looked like he was in the same state I was—dazed, distracted, his sandy hair unbrushed, dressed in dark jeans, a sweatshirt and low-top black Converses. That was funny: we had the same shoes on. But I could feel the space he’d put between himself and the island. It made him seem like a stranger.
       Of course, there had always been some distance. While he and I were friendly, our families weren’t. That is, my mom and Charlie’s mom made clear their lack of interest in being friends. His parents owned the Anchor Inn, one of the oldest and definitely the biggest of the hotels. They lived by the success of the island as a summer destination. My mom thought Cat Pender was manipulative, a “climber,” she called her, always sucking up to the richest guests at the inn. I didn’t know what Cat thought of Mom, but I could easily project my own complaints: too nervous, too shrinking, too fragile. My dad and Charlie’s dad were neutral at best. As one of the few local contractors, my dad often worked on projects at the inn, but I don’t think they’d ever so much as shared a beer.
       “This is crazy, huh? Everyone okay at your house?” He sounded wired and a little scared, just like how I felt.
       We hugged hello. I was glad for the company, even if he had almost caught me crying.
       “Yeah. Big tree came down on the porch. But everyone’s fine. This is unbelievable,” I said. “How’s the inn?”
       “It has some damage. That’s a pretty exposed spot up there on the hill. My parents are trying to make the best of it. They don’t want their guests to panic.”
       The inn sat on the bluff, perched above the harbor. Every spring it was repainted a perfect, gleaming white. Next door was the famous Anchor Club, known for its grass tennis courts and the croquet tournaments, where members dressed in the white, traditional clothes of the 1920s, when the club was founded. I pictured the howling winds I’d heard the night before, raking through the white clapboard walls, rattling the slate rooftops—as if fighting to tear apart the years of island history. I felt a sinking in my belly. Everything about my life on the island had seemed permanent until last night.
       “Are you here to do a story? You’re working at a newspaper, right?” I asked.
       “The Boston Globe. I don’t get to write much though. A little for the website but it’s mostly research and whatever anyone else doesn’t want to do. I was coming back this
weekend to see my parents anyway, so I thought I’d stay in case it turned out to be big.”
       We both took in the mangled shore. It was big.
       “I feel bad,” he said. “I almost feel like I willed it. Looking for a story.”
       “Weather’s not that mystical,” I said, mostly to myself. “It’s just weather. This just happened. It’s not like we asked for it.”
       “Huh. You haven’t changed. That’s nice.” I felt a weird flutter as he said it. I didn’t know he thought of me as being any particular way. It was uncomfortable, the compliment amid the destruction.
       “Yeah, well, I’m still here,” I said quickly. “Things don’t change that much. You’re the one who left for the big city, right?”
       “True,” he said. He looked at me a minute, like he was going to say something else. “Should we go see what’s going on? Nancy and Greg have probably set up a war room down there.”
       “Or at least they’ll have some coffee.” I’d been drinking coffee, black, since I was twelve and hanging around my dad’s construction sites. My mom didn’t know about it until much later. Of course she disapproved. My feet were wet. My nerves felt raw. I realized right then I was actually dying for some coffee.
       “That sounds good,” he agreed.
       We turned and headed back up the street to the Picnic Basket. Slowly people were starting to come out to take in the damage. On the steps of the Congregational Church,
Mrs. Walker, the minister’s wife, was sweeping uselessly at huge fallen roof tiles and wood fragments from the steeple. Lexy Morgan and her father were bailing water out of his candy and souvenir shop. Charlie and I paused at the surreal lake of floating  jawbreakers and Atomic Fireballs and offered to help. Mr. Morgan shook his head, too upset and too focused to talk. Mrs. Hilliard, my history teacher, stood in the middle of the street, staring at her car. It had been flattened under a giant maple tree, and now was an accordion of red metal and spiderwebbed glass. She looked confused, as if she’d just awakened from a dream, as if she weren’t sure what she was looking at was real. I knew the feeling. I couldn’t shake it.
       Nobody even noticed when we entered the Picnic Basket. The stove was unlit, but Greg was toasting bagels in a toaster oven and there was a huge pot of coffee brewing,
both plugged into the portable generator. Nancy was at her computer, finding out everything she could about the storm. She called out headlines to the dozen or so people huddled around her.
       “No prediction of how long to restore ferry! Freak softball-sized hail across the border in New Hampshire! Coast guard expects delays of supplies and building materials to island residents in region! Lady Gaga plans Martha’s Vineyard storm victim fund-raiser with Diane Sawyer and Carly Simon.”
       She snickered at that last one. A few others grumbled. Stone Cove Island’s rivalry with Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket goes back a long way. Locals insist our island has a more low-key, discreet reputation, but a lot of people feel jealous of the glitzier image of the other two. When the president vacations in Nantucket, islanders here make a big point of saying how thankful they are for the peace and quiet of Stone Cove.
       “Nancy, what about the power?” called Jim McNeil, the mechanic in town.
       “Thursday at the earliest, they’re saying.”
       That was three days from now. I could see everyone mentally calculating their supplies: water, canned food, batteries, extra blankets. So far the weather had been warm for October, but at this time of year, it could be below freezing tomorrow. I’d heard my mother worrying about that just last night, and wondering if we had enough firewood on hand. Greg looked up from his bagel station and nodded at us.
       “Charlie, Eliza, you okay? Everybody good at home?”
       “We’re fine, Greg. Thanks,” I said.
       “Your dad’s about to be busy, I guess. Lots of work to be done.”
       “Yeah, I guess it looks that way,” I answered.
       Charlie handed me a cup of coffee and gestured to the door. I followed him outside.
       “That’s about the worst way I can think of to find out what’s really going on. Local news sites and gossip magazines. Let’s go over to the Gazette and see if Jay will let us look at their wire service. Even just their Twitter feed would be better info than this.”
       Jay Norsworthy was the editor of our local paper, the Stone Cove Island Gazette—an island fixture. Charlie had interned for Jay at least one summer, and I could tell how happy Jay was to see him the second we walked in the door.
       It was chaos in the tiny office. Jay was racing between his computer and the AP wire printout. His only companion was his black Lab, Sparkler. The Gazette had its own generator, and Jay had gotten their Internet connection half working, but there were no landlines up anywhere on the island. For a dizzying, manic moment, I felt a wave of relief. It was amazing that Jay was still managing to get the paper out on schedule, by himself, despite everything that was going on that morning. Maybe things weren’t as bad as they seemed.
       “Charlie, I could really use your help with the Wi-Fi. It’s been on and off, creeping like a snail when it does work. Maybe you can work your magic.”
       “I can try.” Charlie pulled the latest printout from the wire and handed it to Jay, then passed me his coffee and stooped down to take a look.
       “Jay, is your house okay?” I asked. Jay lived in a cottage near the west bluffs; there was worry about erosion out there even in an ordinary storm.
       “Slept here,” he answered, his eyes still on the computer screen. “I knew I’d have to get the paper out early today once I saw what we were in store for last night. I hope it’s still standing. It might be halfway to Rockport by now though.” He laughed, but I didn’t hear any humor in his voice. Here he was trying to jury-rig his Internet connection to get the town paper out and he didn’t know if he still had a place to live.
       Unconsciously my gaze went to Charlie. We exchanged a look. No one, I realized, really knew how bad things were yet. We would only find out by degree. My relief faded, leaving a dark hole in its place. What if people had died?
       “Was anyone . . .” I hesitated, then choked out my question.
       “How soon will we know if anyone is missing?” I wasn’t
       Jay’s expression was grim. “No one has been reported missing yet, as far as I’ve heard. But everyone’s still taking stock. We should know more this afternoon. The churches are setting up check-in stations with hot food and drinks—the ones with propane stoves that can make hot food, anyway—and there’s an evacuation center at the high school. They said only about fifteen people stayed there last night, but I’ve heard lots more are moving over this morning, the ones that can’t stay in their homes.”
       “Do we know how many?” asked Charlie. He was squinting at the tiny copper pins in the USB ports, his fingers working to reattach the haphazard wiring in the block of drives and modems.
       “Not yet. That’s my next stop.”
       “This thing is flaky,” Charlie complained. “Even on a good day.”
       “Don’t I know it,” muttered Jay.
       Suddenly I felt the full weight of how powerless I was. Sparkler padded up to me, eyeing me as if I might have brought kibble as well as coffee. It seemed crazy that we were inside, reading reports off the wire service about what was happening to us, right now, right outside. I wanted to get back out and do something, anything, so I wouldn’t feel so useless.