Shining Sea (27 page)

He touches the photo with a blistered finger. “You're right. We're all here.” They had just gotten home from Palm Sunday mass. Eugene was waiting on the doorstep. “Even my best friend. He was the one who took the picture.”

“Your best friend? You mean as a kid? What was his name? Where's he now?”

He hasn't done everything right in his life. He's done a lot that was wrong. The first half of his life, he felt like a marionette with strings pulling him in every direction. He wanted to be a hero, like his dad, then failed every test he was given. But he's a husband and a father, and he has just put up almost 6,500 gallons of syrup. In the end, he's done at least that.

“His name was Eugene. He died during the Vietnam War. He killed himself.”

Mia puts her hand in front of her mouth. “Oh, Daddy.”

“I forgot it was in there,” he says. “All those years I was carrying this guitar around, I never noticed it. Here: do you want it?”

Mia accepts the yellowed photo delicately, as though it's more than mere paper, a piece of history she is taking into her fingers, as though it is a butterfly that might either fall to dust or suddenly fly away. She looks up at him. He nods. She slides it carefully into his grandfather's medical diary.

“You can keep the diary, too,” he says.

She holds it close to her chest. “Are you going to get this guitar fixed?”

He shakes his head.

“The past is the past. There are no resolutions,” he says. “There are just stories.”

Mia doesn't ask him to explain. Instead, she leans her head against his shoulder.

He puts an arm around her. Her body becomes weightier, and soon her breathing is rhythmic with sleep. He leans back against the hay, cradling her.

“We were an American family,” he says softly.

His eyes grow heavy, and he closes them.

Pressure from Georgina's hand on his shoulder awakens him, the light of the sun slanting in through the open barn door behind her.

“Darlings,” she says, her still-blond hair feathery around her face, a tall pair of boots on under her nightie. “It's time to come in.”

A sea of thanks

 

to Judy Clain and Gail Hochman,

 

to Reagan Arthur and all the smart, hardworking people at Brandt & Hochman and Little, Brown & Co., starting but not ending with Amanda Brower, Liz Garriga, Julianna Lee—who designed this book's beautiful cover—and Betsy Uhrig,

 

to Anita Chaudhuri, Susan Jane Gilman, Eva Mekler, and Mina Samuels,

 

to James Laurence Farmer, David Foster, Dorian Frankel, Beth Phelps of Sweetbrook Farm, the Phoenix Public Library, Ed Roston, Richard Roston, Laurel Zuckerman, and, of course, my mother, MaryAnn Roston, in/of the United States,

 

to Sheila Friel of Imagine Media Productions, Anne and Norman Rowe, Janet Ruddock, Robin Ruddock for sharing boatloads of goodwill, time, and his seemingly limitless maritime knowledge, and Anne Wilson for sharing the story of her own currach voyage, in/of Northern Ireland,

 

to Ash and sleepy Quinn, on the Isle of Mull,

 

to David of the Heritage Garden Café, Sarah of the Heritage Center, the watercolorist, the minister and the minister's wife, Wendy and Rob MacManaway of the Argyll Hotel, and the crofter who showed me the way—literally, on the Isle of Iona,

 

to Kevin Byrne, Rodger Meiklejohn and Kathryn Edds, Dell for the chat, Sarah for the cake, and Lucy Hamilton and Bee Leask for the craic, on the Isle of Colonsay,

 

to Gillian Rodger and Grant Thompson of Historic Scotland, Katrina of the National Trust for Scotland, and Dru Heinz and the International Retreat for Writers at Hawthornden Castle, through whose fellowship I first encountered Scotland,

 

to Jim Gallie, Erin Coughlin Hollowell, and Country Joe MacDonald,

 

to Elizabeth Coleman, Jenny Colman and her lovely family, Carolina Garcia, Susan Malus, Pam Moore and Charlie Rose, Stephen Morallee, Chris Reardon, Louise Farmer Smith, and Ronna Wineberg,

 

to whoever that guy was who carved up a full smoked salmon on the train to Oban, Scotland, and shared it out amongst all of us fellow passengers,

 

to Susanna and Laura for all,

 

to Antti for everything.

Anne Korkeakivi is the author of the novel
An Unexpected Guest
. Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous publications in the United States and Britain, and she is a Hawthornden Fellow. Born and raised in New York City, she has lived in France and Finland, and currently resides in Geneva, Switzerland, where her husband is a human-rights lawyer with the United Nations. They have two daughters. Please visit her at annekorkeakivi.com.

An Unexpected Guest

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