Chance Harbor (24 page)

“I imagine so. The island has a way of making you feel like nothing can touch you,” Darcy murmured.

“Yes. But then Andrew suddenly announced that he had to go away, to take care of some business in California and then in Berlin. I didn’t believe him, of course.”

“Because Marta’s German.”

“Right. We argued. I said some things I shouldn’t have said, but Andrew kept telling me he loved me, he wanted to be with me, we were a family now.” Eve caught the tremor in her voice and cleared her throat. “He was gone for two months.”

“And you were alone with Catherine in Chance Harbor?” Darcy turned his head to look at her then, his face uncomfortably close. His gray eyes, she noticed, were flecked with gold, like the sea at sunrise. “That must have been excruciating, imagining what he was up to while you were stranded with the baby.”

“Well, to be fair, I had plenty of company,” Eve said. “Too much at times. All of Andrew’s cousins were around, and it seemed like they were dropping in constantly. Catherine had plenty of little playmates, which was good, but I was exhausted, constantly making food and washing dishes and fretting about Andrew. This was before cell phones, of course, so we hardly communicated during that time.”

She paused to take a breath and pulled the blanket higher. “One of his cousins, Malcolm, was a lobster fisherman,” she went on in a rush, determined to finish the story before they docked. “Andrew left in July, and soon after that, it was Landing Day. I met Malcolm at North Lake while Catherine and I were watching the boats. He brought me some of his catch that night, cooked the lobsters for me. After that, he started taking Catherine and me out on his boat and coming around to the house at night.”

She fell silent again, feeling the motion of the ferry and remembering Malcolm’s boat. Catherine asleep in the cabin while she and Malcolm made love out on the deck, on top of the thick nets woven out of ropes, the sun beating down on their bare skin and the boat rocking them, amplifying their motions.

She shook her head and dropped her eyes, not wanting Darcy to read the memories there. “The thing is, I knew from the minute I saw Malcolm that I would sleep with him.”

“Because you wanted a way to get back at Andrew?” Darcy suggested, rousing himself to turn and look at her.

“That was partly it, I’m sure,” she said. “But I think it had more to do with me feeling so inadequate as a woman. Inferior. Because Andrew had desired Marta, I felt I wasn’t enough for him.”

“Sometimes desire is the last reason people have affairs.”

“I understand that better now. But that’s how I felt back then: undesirable, untouchable. Having Malcolm want me so openly, so unconditionally, well. That was a powerful aphrodisiac, just like you described feeling with that inflatable woman of yours.”

When Darcy looked puzzled, Eve prodded him with her elbow. “You know. The Barbie with the implants.”

“Ah,” he said. “Go on.”

“Right. Well, Malcolm and I started seeing each other. Only on his boat, or at night, of course, because the island is a small place, and he and Andrew have family all over East Point.” She took a deep breath as the captain announced it was time for passengers to return to their cars.

“None of this sounds so sinful to me, you know,” Darcy said, folding up the blanket and tucking it under one arm before picking up the dog’s leash. “It sounds like a very common story, really, of a husband and wife who loved each other but hurt each other sometimes, too. We weren’t meant to be married for decades.”

“What?” Eve turned her head to look at him, nearly falling down the last three metal steps. “Why not?”

“Because humans originally lived to be only forty years old,” Darcy said. “Now we’re expected to stay
married
for that long, through thirty years of parenting and five careers? Come on. It’s just not practical. I always thought there should be a renewable marriage contract.”

Eve waited until they were in his truck again before asking, “What do you mean by that?”

“You know. I take thee to be my wife again, for another ten years.”

Eve didn’t know what she thought of this, so she was silent as Darcy navigated the truck up the ramp and off the ferry. Then they were on the road in Nova Scotia, and suddenly she didn’t want to talk anymore, remembering her first trip to Cape Breton, how she’d wept while driving Catherine to Baddeck.

Which, ironically, was where they were headed now. Darcy’s meeting was going to be in an office building in Baddeck, right on Bras d’Or, and he’d booked rooms in an inn overlooking the lake.

“You still haven’t told me why you were afraid to come back here,” he said, as they followed the traffic on the roundabout and headed out to the highway that would take them to the causeway bridge separating them from Cape Breton Island. “Why was the idea of returning so painful? Because you were afraid of thinking about all of this and wondering if you should have chosen Malcolm over Andrew?”

“Malcolm drowned,” she said.

She kept her face to the window, but felt him turn to look at her. “My God, Eve. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right now. It was a long time ago.”

“How did it happen? Was he fishing?”

She nodded. “He and a friend were going out for bluefin. A storm came up, and Malcolm drowned.”

“That must have been horrible. Did anybody else know about the two of you? That must have been tough, if you had to keep your grief a secret.”

“It was. Later, though, I found out that Malcolm’s older sister had guessed about us.”

Eve pictured Jane as she’d been after Malcolm’s death, stumping up the steps to the deck of their Chance Harbor house the following year, when Eve had returned—against her wishes—with Andrew and the two girls. Andrew was out in his workshop.

Jane had thrust a pie in Eve’s direction and said, “All sorted out with your husband, is it?” gesturing with her chin in the direction of the barn.

“Mostly.” Eve waited for the rebuke, guessing from her expression that Jane knew about Malcolm.

None came. Instead, Jane had wiped her eyes and said, “At least Malcolm knew happiness before he went. His wife wasn’t much for love. You gave my brother that. I’m grateful.” Then she’d turned and hurried back to her car, shoulders hunched, without even saying hello to Andrew.

“Did Andrew ever find out?” Darcy asked.

Eve nodded and pressed her face to the window, taking a small stab of pleasure in the chilly slick feel of the glass against her forehead. “Yes. I might not have told him anything. Why would I, when it would only hurt him? I suppose I was a coward, just like you said before about all of us. But soon after Malcolm drowned, I realized I was pregnant. And Andrew would have to know the baby wasn’t his, because he and I hadn’t had sex in months.”

She turned to glance at Darcy but couldn’t read his expression. He was staring straight ahead at the road.

Eve focused on the road as well, on the trees covering the hills in a rich carpet of orange and red. She remembered this landscape now, how she had thought at first that this part of Nova Scotia didn’t look that different from Vermont, with its lakes and rivers and hills. She’d been vaguely disappointed not to see something more novel despite her state of confusion and grief. But then, once she crossed the causeway to Cape Breton Island, the hills had begun to rise so steeply that they soon towered over the sea and tiny villages, the road reduced to a thin gray ribbon winding around them.

“I came here alone after I told him everything, because I needed to think about what to do, and I wanted to be in a place I’d never been before,” Eve said. “A place I’d never been with Andrew. I was still trying to decide whether to stay with him. That’s what Andrew wanted. He said none of it mattered, that he loved me and would raise the baby as his own. It was his cousin’s baby after all, and Andrew was a good man. A man with a big heart. And he did try to love the baby. My younger daughter. But Zoe looked and acted so much like Malcolm, whom he’d known since they were children, that Andrew once told me it was the hardest thing he’d ever done, being her father.”

Finally, Eve dared to look at Darcy. “Please say something.”

“I’m sorry,” he said softly.

“For what?”

Darcy reached over and took her hand. “That you had to go through all that. That you ever had to feel unloved or undesirable. That you had to feel alone and ashamed and scared. That you lost Malcolm. And that now you’ve lost Andrew and Zoe, too. I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”

Eve couldn’t speak. She looked down at Darcy’s hand clasping her own. For this moment, she was not alone, and she was grateful.

“E
xtreme Agony Weekends.” That’s what Willow had started calling her time with Russell. She didn’t dare sneak out to see Zoe. Not with Russell trying to be all Dad of the Year and Nola throwing fits because Russell kept wanting to do things like play games that Willow was lots better at than Nola. Apparently Nola’s parents had never played games with her. She had never even played Monopoly!

Meanwhile, there was Zoe—her mom, though Willow had trouble thinking of her that way—and having her come back had completely freaked her out. The night she’d figured things out, her mom had sat there on the ground and cried forever, tears and snot running down her face like she was a little kid. Finally, Zoe wiped her face on the shawl, which looked ridiculous once she took off the black dreadlocks and rainbow hat. With her real hair, which was cut short now but still blond and curly, she looked like a little boy dressed in old clothes for Halloween. Dressed like a hobo, which apparently she wasn’t.

“I’m not really homeless,” Zoe had said. “I’m not as much of a loser as I used to be. Promise.”

It was her mother’s voice, but a stranger’s face. In Willow’s mind, her mother had long hair and big blue eyes, smooth skin, and the kind of body you saw on movie stars who worked out 24-7. She was sexy and funny and unafraid, unless she was on something, and then she was either giggling like a maniac or nodding off and super calm.

Everything was wrong about this sad, scared person sitting on the damp grass of the Common. Willow’s mind had buzzed with questions she wanted to ask but couldn’t, because her mother looked like she might fly apart into little sparkling pieces of glass beneath the streetlamp. Zoe was trembling and talking too fast and trying to tell her everything was fine. She’d always been a great liar. Willow remembered that now.

“I know you’ve been having a hard time,” Zoe said, “but I’m here now to take care of you.”

“What are you talking about?” Willow said.

“I wasn’t going to interfere in anything. But now I see I could make your life better.”

How the hell would she do that? Willow wondered. Her mother had hardly managed to put food on the table and keep the electricity on even when she was working. Now she was homeless. “It’s okay. You don’t have to worry. I’m fine.”

Zoe had blinked in surprise. “But you’re not! You told me Catherine and Russell split up. That you had to change schools and leave your friends. That’s why I gave you the puppy.”

“I love the dog. But my life isn’t that bad,” Willow said, ticked off now because she was reassuring her mother like always. “I’m okay, Mom.”

The word “mom” nearly stuck in her throat. She was used to avoiding it with Catherine, out of loyalty to Zoe. Out of some delusional—or
not
, as it turned out—idea that her mother wasn’t really dead. Catherine would have a royal fit if she knew Zoe was alive and here, talking about taking care of Willow.

Oops. There was Catherine now, texting her, asking where she was.

“Shit,” Willow said. “I need to go home.” Desperately, she had grabbed her bag. “Will I see you again?”

Zoe had nodded without standing up. “I’m always right here. Every day, I’m waiting for you.”

Okay, so that was a creepy stalkerish thing to say, Willow thought now, as she heard Russell calling her from inside Nola’s house.

She didn’t answer. She was tired of everybody. Of every pathetic, so-called adult in her life.

Right now she was hiding in the courtyard of Nola’s house, sitting on the bench while Mike nosed around the garden, snorting like a piglet. Russell probably didn’t even know this courtyard existed. Not with the maid, Carmen, always taking care of things in the kitchen. Carmen arrived early every day, even on Sundays, to make food and pick up after them. It was nice in a way. But also weird. Very weird.

Willow had lied to Catherine about staying after school and using the darkroom. Instead, she’d been seeing Zoe. She had brought her mother food, clothes, and things she’d made: a bright blue scarf she’d knitted in middle school, which Zoe immediately started wearing; a mug she’d made in pottery class last year.

She had learned to ask only a few questions at a time. Otherwise her mom got all speed freaky. So far Willow had discovered that her mother had hitchhiked to Florida after taking the bus to Washington. Since then she’d worked jobs under the table at motels and restaurants.

“If you speak English, you’re a shoo-in,” she had explained.

She’d told Willow about Key West, where she’d spent the first two years. About how she’d visited Hemingway’s house and his double-pawed cats, and about the chickens that roamed the streets, even sitting on the tables in restaurants where she worked with Cubans and Dominicans and Haitians.

Then, when some detective came around, showing pictures of her, Zoe had moved to West Palm Beach and worked cleaning houses there for a while. Finally, she went to Homestead, a suburb of Miami. “It’s the palm tree life,” she said. “Can’t complain. I even had a little house in a mango orchard. You could hear mangoes falling to the ground all night long. First time it happened, I thought there were monkeys in the damn trees.”

Willow knew from the way Zoe pressed her lips together that she was trying to make her life sound postcard-pretty. Happy. Willow hoped her mother
had
been happy. But why hadn’t her mom taken her south to live the palm-tree-and-mango life, too?

Her anger was mixed in a thick soup of other emotions more difficult to name, since her mom was so obviously trying to help her now. She’d given Willow the puppy and had scared off that guy trying to steal her money. And just yesterday after school, Zoe had explained how, in the bus station, she hadn’t really left Willow alone.

“I wouldn’t have done that, baby!” she said, blue eyes so wide and bright that Willow could see them gleaming beneath the sunglasses, which Zoe still wore, making Willow wonder if she was high and hiding it.

“I was really scared,” Willow said. “Why didn’t you tell me someone was with me? Who was it?”

Zoe shook her head. “I was afraid of being found. I had to disappear. My friend Sandra? You remember her, the one with the little boy who had that crazy Mohawk?”

“Yeah, sure.” Willow pictured a gangly, dark-skinned woman with short black hair, but Sandra’s face was blurry. It was the boy she remembered better. Sandra’s son was a year younger than Willow and mean. He broke her stuff and once even hit her across the face with a metal travel mug while their moms got high together.

“Okay, well, Sandra stayed at the bus station with you until Catherine came,” Zoe said. “I couldn’t tell you she was there, because I was afraid you’d tell Catherine. And I knew Sandra would never keep her mouth shut if Catherine started asking her questions.”

“Where was she?”

“Wrapped in a blanket and sitting on one of the benches near you. See? I never left you alone. I looked out for you any way I could, right?”

“Right,” Willow had said, thinking,
That’s a laugh.
Sandra was a crack addict, nodding off while her kid ran wild. “I still don’t get why you had to leave without me.”

“Oh, honey, because it was so much better for you,” Zoe said. “I knew Catherine would take good care of you,” she added fiercely.

Zoe had gone back to wearing her wig and rainbow hat, and yesterday she’d had that big red shawl on over some kind of men’s baggy overalls. That bugged Willow. Why couldn’t her mother dress like a normal person?

Then it dawned on her: maybe Zoe was in hiding from somebody. From the police, even. Was that why she’d really left? Had she done something that could get her sent to jail?

“I’m happy enough, Mom,” Willow had said, and patted her mother’s shoulder. “You did the right thing.” She was still stuck reassuring her mom. But what else could she do?

Russell was calling her, his voice getting louder. “Willow? Willow, where are you?”

“Here,” Willow said, finally giving up on having any time to herself. “In the courtyard with Mike.”

“Oh.” Russell appeared in the doorway. He had stubble on his face, and his white button-down shirt was wrinkled and untucked over too-tight blue jeans. Hipster jeans and suede sneakers. Jesus. Nola must have taken him shopping with her daddy’s credit card, tried to make him look cool. It almost worked, except Russell still walked like a nerd, tipping forward over his feet.

“What’s up?” Willow asked.

“Just wondered where you were, pumpkin.”

“Please don’t call me that.”

“Right. Forgot. Sorry.” As Russell stepped into the courtyard, Mike trotted over to greet him, stubby tail going like a pendulum.

“Mike’s glad to see you, anyway,” Willow said, hoping Russell got the real message:
I’m not. Leave me the F alone.

“I’m glad to see him, too. Mike and I have done a lot of bonding while you’ve been at school, huh, big fella?” Russell scooped the dog up.

Mike licked his face and neck, his tail still sending that signal:
love me, love me, love me.
Or maybe it was
feed me, feed me, feed me.
You could never tell with dogs.

Russell set the dog down again and sat on the bench next to Willow. She scooted over so she wouldn’t have to feel him touching her. God, why did guys want to be close to you all the time? She was never going to have a boyfriend. She was probably going to be a nun. Or maybe a lesbian.

“Where’s Nola?” she asked.

“Taking a nap. Pregnancy makes women tired.”

“Apparently.” This was, like, Nola’s third nap of the day. Unless she was doing something else in her room, like posting more Instagram photos of her stupid belly. Fine with Willow. She was just counting the hours until she could go home.

“Look, while we’re alone, I just wanted to say again how sorry I am about all this,” Russell said. “Especially about you having to change schools. How’s it going in Cambridge?” He turned to face her on the bench, one foot crossed over his knee, putting his hipster shoe on full display.

Willow looked away and noticed how all the leaves on the ivy crawling up the bricks of the building had fallen off, leaving only the vine. It looked like the vine was trying to choke the building. Or maybe that’s just the way she was feeling. “School’s okay.”

“I know it’s not what you’re used to,” Russell said. “I’m sure it’s a big adjustment. I went to public school for two years, and believe me, I know the difference. It’s a factory, right? The upside is that if you can survive public school, you can survive anything in life.”

“The corollary being that if I can’t survive public school, I can’t survive anything in life,” Willow said.

Russell laughed. “Nice use of logic there. No. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m sorry. I misspoke. I was just trying to convey my opinion that it takes real moxie to change schools, especially when you’re going to a big, more impersonal institution. It wouldn’t be surprising, or at all abnormal, if it took you a while to like it.”

“I like public school,” Willow said. “It’s pleasingly anonymous. Nobody knows what a freak show I am.”

“You’re not a freak show!”

Willow rolled her eyes. “Joke, okay? Really. I’m okay.”

“Good. Glad to hear it.” Russell’s voice was louder now. His confident classroom voice. He went on about the importance of a good education, saying, “Any school is what you make of it,” and that Willow had to stay in honors classes and take a prep class for her SATs if the school offered one,
blah, blah, blah
.

“Of course,” he added, “many fine colleges are now eliminating standardized testing from their admissions requirements. And you can always do an electronic portfolio to beef up your résumé—you know, send in your art and English papers and whatnot.”

Willow stared at him. What the hell was he telling her all this for, when she was only a sophomore? And why was he sweating like that?

Finally she got it: Russell was having a mini panic attack. He was talking about school because school was all he knew, and he didn’t know what else to say to her. Pathetic.

“How about you?” she interrupted suddenly.

“Me?” He touched his shirt pocket to be sure.

“Yeah. How are you doing?”

Russell straightened up on the bench beside her. “Fine, I guess. But I wish I had a job. I’ve never been without a job. Not since I was your age.”

“Yeah? Are you interviewing at places? I mean, other than your friend’s school in New Hampshire?”

He shook his head. “Nothing else has come up. But I’m hoping I’ll get that job. My friend is the headmaster there.”

Of course he was, Willow thought: all of Russell’s friends were headmasters or deans. He was old and had been teaching for a long time. But who would want him, after what he did?

“How’s your mom doing?” Russell asked.

Her mom? Willow’s mind flitted around, trying to find a place to hide. Then she remembered: Russell didn’t know. To him, “mom” meant Catherine.

“She’s fine,” Willow lied.

“Good. I’m glad.”

Willow knew she shouldn’t say more—why kick a guy when he was down?—but she couldn’t help it: she wanted to pour salt on whatever wounds Russell had inflicted on himself. “You know she’s dating somebody now, right?”