Bill slowly opened his eyes.
"There he is," Matty smiled, as she kissed his lips quickly.
"You need your teeth brushed."
Bill looked around.
"I'm in the living room."
"Yea. It was late last night when I finished the proposal for Hirst. When I came and checked on you, you were sound asleep and snoring and I didn't want to wake you, so I just covered you up and went to bed."
Bill sat up on the couch.
"What time is it?"
"Its just after nine."
"I was suppose to meet with the council at nine."
"I already talked to Joyce and John. I told them the meeting was off until further notice, given the circumstances of the last week."
Bill nodded and stood up, stretching.
"I need a shower and a change of clothes."
"You go and do that. I will put on some fresh coffee and print out the proposal."
When Bill returned from his shower, Matty was in the living room, talking to Nanny Dove.
"Morning, Nanny."
"Ise see dat youse slept on da couch last night. Youse and Matty bes fighting?"
"Leave Bill alone, old lady. He's had a rough week. Go and bother Tanya for a while."
Nanny Dove grunted and left.
Matty walked to the kitchen and came back with a mug of coffee for Bill.
"Here, have this. I want you to look over the proposal I have written up."
Bill nodded, as he sipped the coffee.
"You got smokes?"
Matty passed him a pack of cigarettes.
"We have to pick up some later. That's our last pack."
Matty looked at the cellphone, that was vibrating in her hand.
"Cameron?"
Matty declined the call and dropped the cellphone on an armchair.
"Yea. He's been calling every half hour or so for the last couple days. Seems our Mr. Hirst is anxious to get this shit over with."
"Well, fuck him," Bill snapped, as he lit a cigarette.
"He can wait. After all he put us through, he can sit in that hotel room and go insane for all I care."
"I talked to Nick this morning. Henry is doing much better. He doesn't think they will have to do the pacemaker thing right now, but he still wants all the stress taken from Henry. He even suggested that perhaps he take a vacation and go somewhere."
Matty laughed.
"Of course that is not happening, but he has agreed to do everything that Nick tells him to."
"When will he be able to come home?"
"Nick figures, probably Sunday. He is going to stay with Henry in Corner Brook and then on Sunday, he is going to fly back to St. John's."
"He never even got to see his house," Bill sighed.
"He says he is coming back in two weeks, with Nina and Colin."
Bill snuffed out his cigarette.
"I will talk to the crew working on his house and see if we can get this thing ahead of schedule. I'd like to get it finished before the snow sets in."
"Well they have all the water and sewer lines in. Outside walls are done and it is framed inside. Electrical and heating is almost done. They are hopefully starting on the outside tiling on Monday and also the shingles on the roof. They are really moving on this thing, but it is costing a fortune in overtime for the crews. Joyce told me that the salary budget is all gone to hell in a hand basket."
Bill let out a long sigh.
"So, are we broke yet?"
Matty smiled slightly.
"No. Not even close, but we do have a lot of expenditures over the next year or so."
"Well, let's just hope we are not just throwing money away."
Matty bent down and kissed Bill.
"We are more than fine, my love. Don't worry about it."
A knock came to the patio door.
Matty looked outside.
"Its Frank."
She opened the patio door.
"Come in Frank."
Frank quickly came inside.
"Chilly out there."
Matty took his coat and gave him a quick hug.
"You want a coffee?"
"Sure," he replied, as he shook hands with Bill.
"Didn't expect to see you," Bill remarked.
"I tried to call a couple times over the last few days, but always went to voice mail. I finally got hold of Harry and he told me about the shit that went down here last Monday."
Matty passed Frank a coffee.
"Yea, it was certainly an unexpected chain of events."
Frank sat back on the couch.
"I can't believe that Hirst pulled a stunt like that."
Matty sat in an armchair, across from the couch.
"It was an ordeal, to say the least."
"How is Henry doing?"
"He will be fine, Frank. Hopefully he will be home this weekend."
"And you, Matty? Harry said one of the men assaulted you?"
"Well, he threatened me and he did grab my arm, but its not that bad.
Threw me for a bit of a loop, but the situation was brought under control pretty quick."
"Wow. So what happens now?"
Matty shrugged.
"That will be up to Hirst."
"Well I hope you nail his ass to the wall," Frank remarked.
"Big time."
"That is the plan," Matty assured him.
Her cellphone vibrated again and she declined the call again.
"So, what brings you here, Frank. Nothing urgent, I hope."
Frank shook his head.
"No. Just some news about the supposed gold findings at Tuckamore Mountain. Seems there was a Parsons involved in the findings, but not among the ones from the fifties.
I got in touch with a woman by the name of Helen Gould. Now Helen was a sister of another woman, Betty French."
"Were they Parsonses before they got married?" Matty wondered.
Frank shook his head, as he lit a cigarette.
"No, but Betty French's first marriage was to a man by the name of Xavier Parsons. Apparently the marriage only lasted for a few years. Poor Xavier died in a hunting accident, but somewhere along the way, he and several other men from Parsons Pond, managed to somehow get to Tuckamore Mountain and they were able to drill and get some samples."
Matty shook her head.
"Impossible. Nothing happens in the Bay without someone knowing about it."
Frank took out his cellphone and opened to his photos. He passed the cellphone to Matty.
"These are pictures I took of photos that Betty had, that belonged to her first husband."
"They look like the same photos that you got for us."
Matty passed the cellphone to Bill.
"So did this Betty French still have the sample and the other papers."
Frank shook his head, smiling.
"She did, up to a couple years ago, when she got a visit from a relative of Xavier Parsons, who convinced her to give him all of Xavier's personal belongings so he could return them to his relatives.
And guess who that relative was?"
"You've got to be kidding?"
"It was the newly elected representative for this district, Calvin Parsons."
Bill passed the cellphone back to Frank.
"So Parsons has all the documentation, including the sample."
Frank simply nodded, as he turned off his cellphone.
"All of it. All Betty had were those handful of pictures, her husband took."
Bill stood up and walked to the kitchen.
"Anyone want more coffee?"
He brought back the carafe and topped up the coffees, then returned to the kitchen.
"This just doesn't make any sense."
Bill sat back on the couch.
"Like Matty said earlier, there is literally no way anyone could sneak into Tuckamore Bay."
"Bill, you have miles of coastline and miles of forests. If someone were so inclined, they could come ashore down the coast a spell and hike up to the Bay. Or park a few miles up the highway and cross country.
The prospect of gold can make men do pretty extreme things."
Frank sat forward, putting his coffee mug on the coffee table.
"And you would need an army to protect the boarder of this village."
"We have an army, Frank," Matty sighed, as she stood up. She walked to the bar and put scotch into her coffee.
"What do you mean? An army."
Frank looked at Bill.
"Is this one of the little secrets that you told me the Bay hides."
Bill looked at Matty.
"He should know, sweetie."
"Do we really want to do this now. We have enough on our plate, as it is?"
Frank looked at both of them strangely.
"What is going on? You two are making me think there is something ominous that goes on here in the Bay."
Matty walked back to her chair and sat down.
"Remember when you and Julie were here and Julie said she felt something strange about the Bay."
Frank nodded.
"Yea, she still talks about the feeling that came over her, like she was at peace."
"And you have never had that feeling in the visits you have made here?"
Frank shrugged.
"I don't know. I guess, if the truth be known, I did feel something. But I don't know what it was."
"A feeling like you were home?" Bill offered.
Frank stood up and walked to the bar. He held up a bottle of scotch.
"You mind?"
"Not at all," Bill answered, as he lit a cigarette.
"Knock yourself out."
Frank poured some scotch in his coffee and turned slowly, staring at the two.
"I never told anyone this before, because I didn't want people to think I was crazy. But when I was here the first time, checking out the water filtration system, I thought I saw someone, at the far end of the pond.
I waved to them and they waved back, so I never thought anything more of it. I walked maybe three feet and looked up again and they were gone. But there was no way they could have disappeared so quickly."
Frank walked back to the couch and sat down.
"Again, I never thought much about it but just a minute or so later, I saw the figure again. This time he was no more than fifty feet away from me. It was a young boy, maybe fifteen or sixteen, it was hard to tell. He was dressed in clothing that looked like something from the middle ages. You know. Hand made clothing.
I said hello to him. He smiled and I started to walk toward him, but Freddy came along calling my name. I turned to greet Freddy and when I turned back, the young boy was gone."
Frank laughed nervously.
"I asked Freddy if he saw the young boy, but he said he hadn't seen anyone.
I looked all around the pond, but I couldn't see him.
Freddy asked me what I was looking for and I told him."
Frank lit a cigarette.
Bill could see that his hands were shaking slightly.
"What did Freddy say, Frank."
Frank stared at Bill for a moment, laughed nervously and finally said, "he told me it was probably just one of the ghosts that lived in the village."