"If he won't tell me anything, what makes you think he would tell you?"
"Then maybe you shouldn't work here anymore," he said.
"Maybe i shouldn't. Maybe I shouldn't have let you talk me into coming back to the Cape in the first place."
I had run away when Grandma Olivia told me about Mommy being raised a Logan. I had gone back to Sewell, but that was when I found out Papa George had died and Mama Arlene had gone to live with her sister in North Carolina. I had no one in Sewell, either, except my best friend Alice Morgan. But I couldn't live with her. Her mother couldn't understand how a daughter of hers would befriend someone raised in a trailer park.
"Of course you should have come back. This is where you belong," Cary insisted. "People care about you here."
"People care about me? I've got a grandmother who wishes I would wash out to sea so I don't embarrass her; an uncle, your father, who thinks I'm the daughter of Satan; a man who could be my father but is unwilling to tell me--"
"I care about you," he said. "A lot."
I tried to hold on to my anger but instead I took a deep breath and let my shoulders sag. I believed Cary, but somehow it wasn't the same. I needed someone to love me the way my daddy did. Of course this thought made me feel guilty, as if I were trying to replace him in my heart. But wasn't that exactly what I was doing?
"It's all just confusing," I said. "Confusing and frustrating."
He nodded.
"Well, you've been here a while. You clean his house, see his things. Are there any hints, clues? Pictures, letters?"
"Nothing I've seen." And then I remembered. "There's only one place I haven't looked."
"Where's that?"
"Remember I told you about that door he has locked in the studio?"
"Oh, yeah. Let me look at it," he said. My heart began to pound.
"Kenneth doesn't like anyone going into his studio when he's away."
"He keeps it unlocked, doesn't he?"
"Yes, but--"
"We won't touch anything. Let me just look," he said.
I looked toward the dune road and thought about Cary's plan. Kenneth had said he would be away for hours.
"Okay," I said, "but don't touch any of his things in the studio. Even though it's usually a mess, he would know if something had been moved an inch."
"Fine," Cary said.
We walked to the studio, pausing momentarily to look into the fish pond
"When did he add the turtle?" Cary asked.
"I don't know. Maybe last weekend. He calls him Shell."
Cary laughed and we went into the studio. He saw the block of marble and asked about it immediately. I explained the artistic vision just the way Kenneth had explained it to me, but Cary squeezed his eyebrows toward each other, smirked, and asked, "How can you see anything in a block of marble?"
"You can if you have an artist's eyes," I said. He shrugged again and then went to the closet door. For a few minutes, he studied the lock and the hasp.
"Just a combination lock, but it would take forever to figure out the combination. However . ."
"However what?" I asked coming up beside him.
"This hasp is attached with only these four screws. It would he easy to unscrew them, take off the hasp, leave the lock in place, and open the door. I could do it in five minutes," he claimed. I started to shake my head. "And I can put it back just the way it is so no one would notice. It's easier than finding seaweed on the beach."