The Life Of Reilly

Because Delphine had died five years ago of a stroke.

Delphine smiled. “You could at least say, ‘Hi, Aunt Delphine. It’s been a while.’”

Instead, Lynn said, unable to wrap her mind around what was happening, “You’re supposed to be dead.”

“Pah!” Delphine replied, frowning. “Death is far overrated, dear! And by the way, you’re wrong about the number of dimensions.”

Lynn’s knees started to give way and she sagged onto the nearest chair. Was she really discussing quantum physics with her dead aunt? Shaking her head in shock, she asked, “Okay, so how many are there?”

“Sorry, dear,” Delphine said. “You’ll have to earn your Nobel Prize on that one.”

And that was Delphine, as enigmatic in the afterlife as she had been in life. Wasn’t she supposed to be playing harps with angels or something? How could God have let her escape from heaven to come to Treasure Island?

But then, given Delphine’s nature, the better question might have been: How could God have prevented her?

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Lynn said lamely.

“Probably true.” Delphine said. She was wearing her favorite green dress which was covered in huge red cabbage roses, and settled onto the other wicker chair. Well, not settled, exactly. She almost…floated. “But I thought I’d drop in anyway.”

“How soon can you drop out?” Lynn asked pointedly.

God, this was impossible. She loved Delphine. How could she not? The woman had raised her from the age of ten, when her parents had died in an accident. But she shouldn’t be here. Lynn was a scientist. Reality didn’t behave this way.

Did it?

“Lynn, honey. You and I need to talk.”

Uh oh, Lynn thought. Whenever Delphine said that, she was in for the Lecture.

“I can’t understand why in the world a young woman your age, with your training and credentials, would move to a tiny island to teach little kids. You should be at Stanford or MIT. There are hardly any eligible men here!”

“Delphine…” But then Lynn bit her tongue. She had had this discussion with Delphine before. Too many times. When she’d decided to major in physics and mathematics, Delphine had told her she would alienate men. When she had graduated summa cum laude and decided to pursue a Ph.D rather than a Mrs., Delphine had told her she would surely end up a lonely old woman.

“Oh, don’t purse up at me,” Delphine scolded. “Do you have any idea how blessed you are?”

Blessed? Lynn sat up straighter. Blessed? Blessed to have the world’s most interfering and manipulative aunt returned from the grave? Not that she didn’t love Delphine to pieces, but the last five years had been undeniably…calmer. More rational. Because nobody had been trying to make Lynn over into her own image.

Even as she thought it, Lynn realized she was verging on tears. Interfering and manipulative, yes, but so, so loving. Part of her wanted to fly across the room and try to hug her aunt just one more time. But the scientist in her erupted in a state of armed rebellion. This could not be real. It had to be an hallucination, and giving in to it would be dangerous to her sanity.

“I’m going to take a walk,” Lynn said, clutching frantically at the straws of her mental health. “I expect you to have vacated the premises by the time I return.”

“But we’re not finished!” Delphine said.

“Oh yes, Aunt Delphine,” Lynn said. “We are. Go juggle some comets, or pick a star to send into supernova…or whatever else you might have to do. But let me live my life, okay?”

Without waiting for an answer, Lynn rose and stormed out, tamping down irritation and fear, pondering the inevitability of what had just happened.

Of course Delphine would do this. Even if she was an hallucination.

REVEREND JACK MARKS was in his driveway, washing the ancient, cranky Jeep that was his emergency transportation. The island’s salt air made rust a constant problem, and keeping the Jeep clean was a near daily chore, at least when they weren’t having a drought. At the moment, car washing was limited to once a week.

But it wasn’t really a chore, for it gave Jack time to think about life, God and his place in the universe, time to meditate as he went through the repetitive, mechanical motions of scrubbing and rinsing, scrubbing and rinsing.

Nearby, the island’s pet alligator, Buster, waited on the grass for a spray from the hose. Buster, who’d lately been spending most of his time up at the airport, had apparently been driven into town by the island’s recent lack of rain. Jack obligingly hosed him from head to tail, listening to Buster’s groans of pleasure.

“Oooh, that feels good,” Jack said to the gator. Grinning, he hosed the beast yet again, even though he was well aware that he was wasting precious water. Even Bridal Falls had shrunk some for lack of rainwater. The pool beneath looked smaller, too. But Buster was a living being who needed his share of water, too, and as Jack thought about it, he decided Buster needed the water more than the Jeep. So he turned the hose back on the gator until the beast was in the midst of a muddy puddle.

Buster approved, rolling in it. So much for the scrubby lawn.

Jack was not the stereotypical image of a clergyman. He eschewed clerical garb for Hawaiian shirts, khaki shorts and leather sandals, even when he was leading worship. It wasn’t that he disrespected God. Far from it. He simply knew that God looked beyond what clothes a man was wearing, and was more interested in the cleanliness of the soul than the cleanliness of the suit. Treasure Island suited his view to a T: liberal and laid-back.

He glanced up as his new neighbor, the pretty dark-haired schoolteacher, emerged from the front of her house. So much for cleanliness of the soul. He fought down the urge to take a third glance, because upon the second one, he realized she certainly was fetching in bicycle shorts and a sports bra. He told himself not to notice, that women on Treasure Island often exercised in such garb, as the tropical heat would permit little else. And to be honest, with most of the women he saw dressed in that way, it wouldn’t have disturbed him.

But there was something about this woman that made his heart skip a beat. Maybe it was the dark eyes that seemed at once placid and deep, or the smile that could easily have substituted for the island’s power plant or even—so much for cleanliness of soul again—the long legs that seemed to carry her with such effortless grace. Whatever it was, this woman was certainly worth a fourth and fifth glance, if not an outright stare. Not the sort of thing a man of the cloth ought to do. But then, he was a man like any other, and he had the sneaking suspicion heaven would understand.

He was about to call out a friendly hello—having convinced himself that he meant nothing by it beyond the sort of neighborliness that typified the community here on Treasure Island—then hesitated when he realized she was not moving with her usual, casual grace. She was almost stomping, which, he could not help but notice, gave ever the slightest bounce in her…pectoral region. She was upset. Even angry, maybe. Certainly disturbed. Not the time for a friendly hello.

His first instinct was to mosey over that way and ask if something was wrong. But before he could make up his mind about a proper approach to something which might prove to be delicate, Lynn Reilly turned around and walked back into the house. Looking, Jack thought, rather like a woman determined to face a great unpleasantness. She disappeared inside and the screen door slapped closed behind her. Shrugging, Jack started washing his Jeep again.

A moment later, his head snapped up as he heard Lynn Reilly’s voice float clearly through her open windows.

“You,” Lynn said loudly, “were supposed to dissipate!”

TREASURE ISLAND RESIDENTS rarely minded their own business. Indeed, on this island, if you suggested that someone should mind own business, hewas likely to look at you as if you had inquired about the marital status of a tuna sandwich. It was one of those places where, if you didn’t know what you were doing, someone else surely did. Jack had only a few more scruples. In short, if he learned something in confidence, he held it in confidence. On this island that rarely happened.

Still, he hesitated. He hadn’t yet met the schoolteacher. She’d arrived just before the opening of the term, and he’d been away on a rare vacation. Bursting into her house demanding to know if something was wrong seemed hardly likely to endear him to her.

But curiosity had sunk its teeth into him, and if Jack had any significant flaw, it was his curiosity. Since his childhood, people had been saying that curiosity killed the cat, but that hadn’t slowed Jack any. Piqued, he stepped over Buster with a muttered apology and strode straight toward the new schoolteacher’s house. Behind him, Buster lifted his head from the mud curiously.

After all, he told himself, the sanity of one of the island’s very few teachers was a matter of concern. So was her safety. Either one constituted ample excuse to butt in. Especially on Treasure Island.

He supposed he didn’t look very reputable, pretty much wet as he was and covered with soap stains and grime from scrubbing the Jeep’s wheels. His nails would have shamed a coal miner. So as soon as he rang Lynn Reilly’s bell, he shoved his hands into his pockets.

She appeared on the other side of the screen door, looking harried and maybe even a tad frightened. “Yes?”

“Ms. Reilly, I’m your neighbor, Reverend—”

“Yes, I know,” she interrupted. “Jack Marks. I’m sorry, but this isn’t a good time for a social chat.”

Give her points for being blunt, he thought. He always liked that in a person. “Social chatting can wait,” he said, giving his best ministerial smile. “I understand that just dropping by can be inconvenient, although on this island it’s hard to escape.”

“Then what?” she asked.

Maybe she was a little too blunt. And there was something about the way she was standing, as if she were trying to block something from his view. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I heard you while I was washing my car, and I thought you sounded…distressed.”

To his amazement, color rose to the roots of her hair. Had he interrupted some kind of tryst? But no, he was absolutely certain that she had sounded as if someone were bothering her.

“I…uh…” Words appeared to have utterly escaped her, surely a strange state of affairs for a middle-school teacher. Her color deepened even more, reminding him of a freshly boiled lobster…although he had long since sworn off eating anything that had to be cooked alive.