B000FC1MHI EBOK (22 page)

Julia let out another breath, feeling uplifted, at least a little bit. She hitched her chin toward the rabbit. “Go on. I’m watching.”

Starting at a spot at the rabbit’s rump, Zoe formed her hand into a loose fist, took the longest fiber between her thumb and the curl of her forefinger, and gently pulled. The fiber came out easily. She repeated the procedure, working systematically along the rabbit’s body, always pulling in the direction of the natural growth of the coat. As each piece was removed, she laid it in a tissue-lined box, adding a new tissue when one layer was filled. She demonstrated the way the nonplucking hand could ease trauma to the rabbit by holding its body not far from the area being plucked. She showed Julia how to separate out lower-grade matts from that considered prime pluck.

After a bit, she yielded the grooming table to Julia, and, as she took her turn, Julia was mellow. The ocean, ever in the background, sang a soothing rhythm, and the whispers inside the barn were few. It was a peaceful Friday morning. For a time, the worries of her life were far away.

You’re like Janet in a way, you know. When something is troublesome, you opt out.

Julia thought about what Zoe said a lot in the ensuing hours. Molly slept on. It was only when noon neared that Julia realized she was doing precisely what Zoe had accused. Sitting back passively, waiting for Molly to wake up, was opting out. So she went to Molly’s room, quietly opened the door—and found her daughter wide awake, propped up in bed, reading.

“Hey,” Julia said with a smile. “And here I thought you were still asleep.”

Molly didn’t return the smile. Her eyes said,
So I’m awake. What do you want?

Julia hadn’t seen that look in years. “Hungry?”

“No.” She returned to her book.

“Not even for fresh strawberries? I just picked a quart.”

“No,” she said without looking up.

“How’s work going?”

“Fine.”

“Will it be a good experience?”

“Yes.”

“What’re you reading?” Julia tried and—
again
—realized she was opting out, in this instance trying to cajole Molly into speaking her mind, rather than raising the issue herself.

“Stephen King,” Molly said. “You wouldn’t like it.”

Julia left the door and went to the bed. “We need to talk.”

Molly pushed the book down. “Not you and me. You and Dad. If you’re cheating on each other, that’s your choice. But don’t let me go on thinking everything’s fine. It’s em
bar
rassing to be told one thing and see another.”

“I am not cheating on your father,” Julia said. She didn’t care that Molly was young and upset. She would not be wrongfully accused. “I have
never
cheated on your father. You’ve seen me talking with men before. I do it all the time when I’m out places. I’ve seen
you
talking with men. Does that mean you’re sleeping with them?”

“I have male friends. You don’t.”

“I do. I just don’t happen to go to lunch with them, because I don’t have an excuse to do it that won’t raise eyebrows—like
yours,
” she couldn’t help but add, “and I think that’s too bad. Noah Prine is an interesting man. I could have a very interesting lunch with him.”

“That’s your choice,” Molly said dismissively, but when she tried to raise her book again, Julia held it down.

“Talk to me, Molly. Tell me what happened when you got home last Monday night.”

Molly stared across the room, her lower lip protruding the slightest bit. It was the same pout she’d worn occasionally as a child—nowhere near as cute now, nor taken as lightly. Petulance was one thing, unhappiness another.

Julia saw unhappiness, and suddenly the possibility of raising doubt seemed less risky than keeping silent. “I think someone was there. With him. Your father may not have explained it well—”

Molly’s eyes stopped her cold. “She was in his
bed
. What other explanation could there
be
?”

There. Confirmed. Julia let out a dismayed breath and hung her head. Her heart was beating fast enough to acknowledge this as another life-changing moment. Turning marginally away from Molly, she sank down on the bed.

“Didn’t you
know
?” Molly asked. “Didn’t you have
any
idea that he’d be with someone else? What did you
think
would happen when you went away for two weeks?”

Julia was a minute in processing her daughter’s words. Disheartened, she looked back. This young woman with the boy’s haircut and the accusatory look felt like a stranger. “Are you blaming
me
? Like, if I’d been there, this wouldn’t have happened? Do you think this is the first time?” she asked, gloves off now. The cat was out of the bag, Molly was an adult, and half-truths were dangerous things. “Well, it’s not, Molly. It’s happened before, and it may well happen again, and that’s something I have to deal with. Me. Not you. Me.”

Molly folded her arms over her chest. It might have been a belligerent pose had her eyes not filled with tears. “Are you divorcing him?”

“I don’t know.”

The book fell aside when Molly sat up quickly. “And you’re going to find out
here
? I was right last night. You have to go back. Didn’t you always tell me that I should go after what I wanted? Isn’t the same true for you? You have to fight for him, Mom. Maybe that’s not the way it’s supposed to be, but if you want your marriage to last, you’re going to have to let him know. Go back. If you catch the afternoon ferry, you could fly out of Portland and be there for dinner.”

Julia could—and she might, another day. But not today. Quietly, she pushed herself up. She was halfway across the floor when Molly said, “Will you do it?”

From the door, Julia looked back, and the pleading on the girl’s face nearly broke her heart. Julia understood. No child wanted her parents to divorce. Had Molly been younger, Julia would have done most anything to keep the marriage intact. She
had
done just that, all those years.

But Molly was grown and increasingly gone from home, and Julia had to think about herself. Unfortunately, she hadn’t had much practice at it.

Stay and argue? Leave and wait?

Unsure, she let herself out of the room.

Close the door? Leave it open?

She started to close it, reconsidered, and left it ajar.

Molly slammed it shut when she was barely halfway down the hall.

Something about that slamming door turned a switch inside Julia—and the first thing she thought of was Molly’s hair. She liked Molly’s hair long, had thought it elegant and versatile. But it was Molly’s hair, Molly’s life, Molly’s choice. Julia accepted—graciously, she felt—that Molly had decided to cut it. Molly was an adult. Julia had to respect that.

She wanted the same respect from Molly. She wanted respect and trust and even the smallest allowance for her own personal whims. Lord knew she had given that to Molly for years. That Molly couldn’t give it back made her angry—and Julia didn’t know how to deal with anger. It left her feeling frustrated and with a distinct lack of control.

Needing an escape, she got in the car and drove to the studio of Tony Hammel. Dominated by wide windows and large skylights, it was a rambling contemporary structure high on Dobbs Hill. Small cabins of a similarly contemporary style dotted the rim of the woods, housing for those of his students who had come to attend weeklong workshops. Had it not been for the crash of the
Amelia Celeste,
Julia would have been one of those students. Wandering through the studio now, catching bits of lectures given by Tony and others, studying the photographs on the walls and those on worktables, she was inspired.

Late that afternoon, determined to take advantage of the drama of oblique light and long shadows, she drove to the harbor with her camera. By the time she reached it, though, fog had rolled in, which meant that there would be no drama in the pattern of dock pilings, stone walls, or wood shingles. There was color in the newly painted buoys hanging on one arm of the dock, but no drama. There was continuity in the row of trucks waiting for owners to return from the sea, but no drama. These were the kinds of things Tony’s students had photographed. Truth be told, Julia was more interested in watching the lobstermen return from a day’s work.

So she wandered down the dock. She was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and Zoe’s Foss Fish and Lobster hat, and even with her blonde ponytail spilling from the hole in the back, she must have looked local enough to pass muster, because people glanced at her only in the most natural of ways. She didn’t feel conspicuous, as she had the other day. The clothes, perhaps? Her own confidence? The presence of tourists who did look like tourists, making her one of the guys by comparison?

If she felt singled out, it was in her own mind and had more to do with having been given the gift of life than with her walk on the pier now.

A pair of lobstermen pulled into a slip. One was gray-haired under a ratty baseball hat, weathered and large in his oilskins; she guessed him to be in his late forties. The other was smaller and, even with no hair at all, clearly younger. Looking at two high foreheads, snub noses, and round chins, she pegged them to be father and son.

They secured the boat, produced scrub brushes and hoses, and began to clean. Within minutes, a lather was spreading, raising the same clean smell she remembered from Noah’s boat. One man used the brush, the other the hose. They had the job down to a science.

Unable to resist, Julia went closer. “Do you pump fresh water out from shore to do this?”

The younger man looked up, but it was the older who spoke. “No sense doin’ that, when salt water’s just fine.” Words and intonation— both were pure Maine. “There’s a sea chest on the bottom of the boat. We got a belt-driven pump running off the engine. That brings it up.”

“Do you have to use special soap?”

“Well, the wife calls it that when she tries to con me into doin’ the dishes.”

“This is dish soap?” Julia asked in surprise.

The older looked at the younger. “What’s your mother use? Joy?”

“Dawn,” said the son and told Julia in a milder accent, “It’s one that’ll lather in salt water.”

“Ah,” Julia said with a smile. “Thanks.”

She would have loved to take pictures of them working, but she was grateful enough for their friendliness not to push her luck. With the camera hanging idly from her shoulder, she watched them work a little longer, then moved on.

Other boats returned, some to slips, some to moorings. Sitting on the edge of the dock with her legs hanging down, she watched several of the latter as the fishermen cleaned up, gathered their coolers and sweatshirts and the occasional lobster trap, tossed them into waiting dinghies, and motored to the pier. One such returnee, a young man working alone, pulled in not far from where she sat. Having seen enough of the others to know the drill, she scrambled to her feet, went to his boat, and took the line from him. She looped it once around the piling, and held it until he killed the outboard motor and jumped onto the dock. He unlooped the line and looped it again—securely, this time—so quickly that she had to laugh.

“How did you
do
that?” she asked, more an expression of admiration than a request for an answer. But the man untied the line and tied it more slowly, showing her the wrist motion as he went. She could see what he did. Didn’t know if she could do it herself. But the method was there. “Thanks,” she said sincerely.

He gave a small nod, slipped down into his boat, and began shifting his belongings to the dock.

“That camera work?” asked a voice.

Julia turned to see a man approaching. He wore glasses and a shirt splotched with green paint the color of his buoys. He was from one of the other boats she had watched. “It does.”

He gestured that she should follow, and led her down another arm of the pier to where several men stood in a clump. When she arrived, they parted. Two lobster traps were on the dock, both badly damaged.

“We need pictures for evidence,” said the man who had fetched her. His voice was quiet, but it held a certain strength.

“No seal made this kind of mess,” said the father from before.

And his son. “It’s man-made, made to look like seal.”

Julia took one picture, then a second. She moved to a different angle for a third, moved in closer and took a fourth.

“See how the net inside’s been torn?” asked the bespectacled man. “Can you get a picture of that?” While Julia did, he talked quietly, illustrating what he said with work-worn hands. “The net’s called the head. See the funnel shape? Ideally, the lobster comes in through the wide part and gets the bait. When he can’t go back, he goes through the next funnel into the other part of the trap, and he’s stuck here. Problem is, with the net torn like that, he eats my bait, turns around, and walks out. These traps came up empty—no lobster, no bait. When do you think you can get us some pictures?”