Chapter I: St. Barnabas Sound

If she stayed, she would be dead.

They didn’t have much. A single white backpack, a handmade quilt for her baby, a leather bound hymnal, and a diaper bag stuffed to bursting. Everything a young mother and her son owned in the world fit into two bags. She stepped off the train, taking the first step into her new life. The rich smell of the sea was close, and she breathed it in. A drastic change from the rich mountain air of Kentucky. The salty air and breeze were colder than she realized it would be. The early April winds were cold and there was still snow on the ground. She would need to get herself a real coat before she froze. 

The station was on the outskirts of town. According to the wooden signpost, St. Barnabas Sound was four miles north on the water. With no other choice, the mother and child walked on. She stepped briskly along the two-lane road, the only way in and out of the seaside community that called to her.

Coming down the main road the town started to come into sight: an all in one gas station, mechanic, and bait and tackle shop was right out of photograph. At the fork in the road there was a general store. People milled outside, chatting while their children played near large lobster tanks filled with the fresh catch of the day. A food truck was parked outside, Brewer’s Lighthouse Cafè and Family Catering painted along the side in bright, welcoming colors.

She found herself in the center of downtown of St. Barnabas Sound, if you could call it that. There was a chain bank branch, a hair salon, a liquor store, post office and a flower shop clustered about a tree-lined square. The village teemed with quiet life, such a simple thing that dug sharply at both her hope and her fear. She breathed slowly as she left the square and found another set of roads. One led down the wharf towards a lighthouse, the harbor, and several other buildings along the cliffside, the other towards houses and larger buildings that were likely schools or a hopefully a library. 

As she stood at the intersection, huddled against the wind coming from the sea, she saw two girls close in age leading a gaggle of children. Teachers, she suspected, leading their charges on a walk. The children’s ages varied but they all looked fairly young. The child that caught her eye the most was a little girl of maybe four or five. Her long dark blonde curls hid under a woolen cap. Red rain boots covered rainbow tights, a denim bib dress, fairy wings on her back and a butterfly wand in hand completed the look. She couldn’t help but smile as the free spirit jumped in every puddle she came across. Looking down before someone noticed her watching, kept walking. 

St. Barnabas Sound was significantly smaller than Lexington. People here not only knew each other, a stranger would stick out and she was a stranger. Despite that, St. Barnabas Sound, Maine felt welcoming. It reminded her of the small towns featured in travel magazines and stock photo calendars. 

“I think this place will be good for us, young man,” she smiled down at the sleeping baby. “I think you’re going to like it here.” 

The smell of the sea and the distant roaring waves filled her with new life. She walked down the street and felt free for the first time in, well, ever. Even before she met him, her life was fraught with difficulties. Her mother was unstable and unable to cope with the world. That left her isolated with limited contact with the outside world, a father that could have been an apparition for all the times he was around, and a sister that ran away the first chance she got. 

A chance meeting at a bar where she worked to support her mother when the welfare checks stopped gave her the opportunity to be free of the isolation and overwhelming unhappiness. And that’s when Levi Thompson rode in like a knight in shining armor, to save her from the loneliness. He showered her with attention, dazzled her with his charm and his promise of a life beyond the doors of a run-down dive bar. He took her from the cloistered shack on the outskirts of a coal town no one ever heard of and whisked her to the big city. He moved her into his fine three-bedroom house, bought her an entire wardrobe of simple yet alluring clothes. He owned a fine wine collection, shelves of leather-bound books, a gleaming black baby grand piano. He promised her light and warmth. He told her he loved her.

Fate, it seemed, was a cruel and vile mistress. She merely traded one hell for another.

The first time he hit her, she left. She couldn’t believe the love of her life would do that to her. It must have been an accident, one she wouldn’t allow herself to suffer through again. She went to the hotel and begged the night manager to let her stay there for the night. There was nowhere else for her to go. She couldn’t go home, not to the sadness and despair that was her mother's house. She sobbed herself to sleep, never realizing that the night manager reported to him. 

He brought gifts and flowers, begging for forgiveness. He gave promises and vows that it wouldn't happen again, that it was an error in judgment and he adored her. He loved her. He was stupid. He loved her. He kept saying he loved her. He loved her. He wanted her to come home. He loved her. Like a mantra, a hypnotist’s chant, brought her back under his spell.

She believed him. And he took his time with her, creating  her to be exactly what he wanted her to be: docile, subservient, completely dependent on him. He made her doubt herself, doubt her memory of ever hitting her. Made her desperate for any scrap of affection or approval, which he dangled tantalizingly before her but never gave. He concealed his inherent cruelty and used her own fears and old habits against her. He whittled down what independence she gained being away from her mother, bending her will to his until he no longer needed the façade to woo her. Once he knew she broken his true nature burst forth, with cutting words and stinging blows and worse. So much worse. The loneliness that was her mother’s house was a distant dream to the hell she found herself in.  

She stayed for five years. Five long, tormented years. She was scared, and miserable, and convinced herself he loved her. Why else would he spend so much time on her? Or goad her to clean more, eat less, stand up straight and keep her mouth shut? It was for the best. When things weren’t perfect, it obviously was because she wasn’t good enough. And things were never perfect. That’s why he’d scold her. That’s why he….. That’s why he had mistresses. If only she were good enough. She was never enough. 

She touched the strange necklace she wore. On a thin leather cord were three coins: A quarter, a dime and a penny. Thirty-six cents. The book that saved her life was Tina Turner’s memoir. The horrors that she endured spoke to her in a way that no other self-help book she read could. The thought that someone as famous and well known as Tina Turner could endure and survive, gave her hope. She clung to the thirty-six cents around her neck like a talisman. She decided that as long as she had thirty-six cents and hope, she and her son would persevere. Hope was worth thirty-six cents. 

In her wanderings through the town, she found the local library. The wind picked up and she didn’t want the baby exposed any more than he already was. Libraries were always safe places. It was as good a place as any to start her search for somewhere for her and the baby to go. She’d need to find a job. Thirty-six cents wouldn’t buy a banana. 

The St. Barnabas Sound Public Library was built in the manor of founder Jeremiah Bartholomew Hastings, Commodore of His Majesty’s Navy, 1756. She walked up the steps and through the warped front door, the bell jingling her arrival. Inside was just as homey and inviting as she hoped it would be. Wooden shelves of neatly-organized books lined the rooms. Cozy benches and small tabletop displays filled the space without cluttering it. A spiral staircase led up to a bright reading area, a grand chandelier with crystals making rainbows kiss the hardwood floor. The little girl she saw earlier danced in the rainbows.

She ducked around a corner, wanting to remain invisible. She spotted one of the young women she’d seen earlier, standing near the entrance to the children’s section.  Her long black hair was pulled up in a tight braid that hung down her back. She wore a heavily-embroidered green linen tunic that draped down to her knees over black leggings, and so many clinking bangles she was convinced that when she took them off she’d float away. Her pronounced Indian accent was lovely to her ears. 

“Brewer kids! We have to get home. Gillian and I have to get to work soon. Five more minutes.”

“One more book, please Anushka!” A little girl with blonde pigtails, using crutches came up to the girl. 

“Lexie, you already have five here. You won't have room in your book bag for more.”

“Auntie Gilly! Auntie Nu!” the dancing little girl called out, skipping towards them. “Look it's a b—b—bunny b—b—b—book!”

“That's great, Temperance,” the other girl said. “We have to get home now. So please stay with Anushka and I.”

She hid behind a bookshelf before they caught her staring. He always told her that she stared at strangers too much. But they seemed so wonderful! Going to the library in the morning to get books. Freely. With joy! No squeezing a hurried trip in between work and rushing home to do chores, no hiding one measly book so it wouldn’t be seen and start a scolding or worse. It was just too good to be true.

She wandered back away from the families and others, looking through the shelves for something to help. A newspaper, or a phone book. Anything. She longed to take one of the seemingly endless novels or, good lord, cookbooks! But she and and her son needed a place to stay. Not finding what she was looking for, she looked around for someone who she hoped might be sympathetic to her plight. She waited until the lady at the information desk was alone. Ashamed of what she needed to ask for and ready to run away again at the first hint of danger, she swallowed her fear and stepped up to the desk. I can do this. For Ethan. It’s not for me. 

It’s for Ethan. 

“Um, excuse me,” she said, softly, barely a whisper. 

“Can I help you, love?” the older woman at the information desk asked.

“Yes, um. Do you, um, have a phone book?”

“A phone book!” the woman chuckled, and she flinched. But her laughter was warm with nostalgia, not cold or mocking. “Not much call for those, these days. People rarely look things up in the phone book these days, not in the age of Google. We keep them behind the desk and use them more often than not for the little ones to sit on.”

“Oh,” she didn’t know what else to say. 

“Can I help you find something, dear?” the woman asked. “I know St. Barnabas Sound like the back of my hand.”

“I don't know if you can help me but I'm looking for a - somewhere safe?” She asked, her arms clutched tight around her baby sleeping in his sling, her eyes down and afraid. “We don't have anywhere to - I don't know where-”

“Don't say another word, dear. I understand,” the older woman smiled softly. “I am going to make a call for you, okay? You go find somewhere comfy to relax in and I'll come find you. I'm Suzanne if you need anything.”

“Audrey,” she said. “And thank you.”  

Audrey’s meek smile was grateful. The woman, Suzanne, pointed her to a quiet reading nook near the big picture window. She sat on the edge of a wicker chair, gazed out at the town, and tried to just breathe. He wouldn’t find her here. She hoped. She so desperately hoped.

Suzanne watched Audrey sit so timidly in the wicker rocker and slowly curl into herself. She knew she should call Rhiannon at the shelter, and she would, but the sheer lost and defeated look on the girl's face screamed that she needed a mother to love her. And the best mother in the whole of St. Barnabas Sound, possibly Maine and maybe even the world, was Bonnie Brewer. Bonnie had a knack for taking in strays and healing them from the horrors and despair they experienced. None of the kids or young adults that Bonnie and her husband Gus loved and cared for left without being completely transformed to the best possible versions of themselves. Suzanne needed both hands to count the kids she’s seen Bonnie pull from the darkness and help bloom. If anyone needed a light out of darkness it was this young mother with ghosts behind her eyes. Yes, what this girl needed was a mom, and Suzanne was going to give her the best one.

Suzanne picked up the phone and tapped out the number she knew by heart.“Hey Bonnie, it's Suzanne. I'm great, thanks. Listen, I have this girl in the library, early twenties, looks like she's running from something or someone. She’s got a baby. Newborn from the looks of him. I’ll call Rhiannon at Haven, of course, but do you have room at your place? Oh Bonnie, she looks so lost.” 

Suzanne watched Audrey as she spoke to Bonnie on the phone. While the redheaded girl stared out at the horizon, she was still mindful of her surroundings, jumping at any sound or person walking past. If someone came too close she would curl inward, shielding her face and her son from view. Suzanne saw behavior like that before, and she'd be damned if she didn’t do something to help.