The Cottage at Glass Beach (19 page)

Chapter Sixteen

E
lla didn't remain on the beach for long. She waited for Nora to leave the cottage, then went inside, shutting herself in the bedroom, retreating behind the pages of
Little Women
, “literature as armor,” as their mother called it. Annie stayed where she was. She built a fort of driftwood, made castles of sand, cairns of stone, an architect of the shore. The sun was breaking through the clouds. Clear skies were still a possibility. The ocean too seemed calmer, the underside of its waves a lovely shade of turquoise. Annie studied the herky-jerky progress of a hermit crab over the sand. He could make his home anywhere, soldiering on. She would do the same. She would choose to be happy.

A shadow fell over her: Ronan, a bracelet of seaweed around his wrist. He wore the same shorts. She wondered if he had another pair, or if they were all identical. “You're back,” she said, picking up the thread of their conversation, as if they'd stopped speaking moments, rather than days, before. “I was wondering where you'd gone.”

“Visiting relatives,” he said.

“A family reunion?”

“Something like that.”

“We don't have much family left for those kinds of gatherings.” Her father's side had many relatives, but they mainly saw each other at weddings and funerals, his sisters, except Aunt Ro, having moved far away. “Though we've found some here. Maire.”

“The woman in the big house? I've seen her working in the garden.”

“I could introduce you.”

“You're the only one I can talk to.”

“Does your mother know about me?”

He shook his head.

“I'd like to meet her sometime.”

“Maybe, someday. How long will you be here?”

“Probably for the summer.”

“Same here. We travel from place to place.”

“Sea gypsies.”

“And what about you? Where did your father go? I saw him with you on the beach.”

“I wondered if you had. I looked for you.”

“I was hiding.”

“You're good at that,” she said, adding, “We took him out in the coracle. It was fun, mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“When my parents weren't arguing. They don't know how to be together, but they don't know how to be apart.”

“It's like that sometimes.”

“What about your father?”

“He's gone.”

“Gone? Did your parents get divorced?”

“They were never married.”

“Oh. What was he like?”

“You already know.”

“What do you mean?”

“You've met him. He's the man you know as Owen.”

“Annie?” At the sound of Ella's voice, Ronan dove into the surf with barely a splash.

“Who were you talking to?” Ella clambered down the bank. “I heard voices.”

“I thought you wanted to be alone.” Annie was still processing the startling piece of information Ronan had given her, which she couldn't mention, not even to Owen himself. The secret was getting bigger, almost too big for her to contain. But she had to. She'd promised. She'd already slipped that one time with Aunt Maire. She couldn't slip again.

“What can I say? I got bored.” Ella sat down beside her. “So? What's going on?”

“Nothing. Playing with one of my imaginary friends. I have lots of them, remember?” Her heart pounded. It was hard to deceive Ella. Her eyes were sharp. Sometimes it seemed as if she could read Annie's mind.

“Didn't sound so imaginary to me. I could have sworn there was someone else talking. And I thought I saw something in the water.”

“I guess you're seeing things too.” She smiled. “Because there's no one here but me.” And there wasn't, not any longer.

Ella grunted.

“Are you still mad?”

“I wish we could go home.” Ella sighed. “That things could be the way they used to be.”

“But they aren't. They've changed. Things are always changing.”

Ella took Annie's hand, interlacing her fingers, the way she used to do when they were small. “Promise me you won't change, not in the ways that matter.”

Another promise she would do her best to keep. “I promise.”

P
olly was late with the mail that day. Her hair color was less vivid. “At least my hair doesn't look like grape Kool-Aid anymore. My husband has been singing the song from the old commercial every time I walk into the room.”

“What's he calling you now?” Nora asked. She sat on the porch with a cup of coffee, mulling over what Maire had told her in the orchard. She still couldn't get her mind around it. Perhaps it was another family myth, a smokescreen for that which no one wanted to confront. She was happy to be distracted by Polly. She always lightened the mood.

“Lavender. Soon I'll be back to Poll, which would be fine with me.”

“I'll miss it. The hair.”

“Maybe I'll do it again sometime—on Halloween.”

“You're later than usual.” Polly generally came by late morning. “Did something happen?”

“The radiator overheated,” Polly explained. “What a to-do. Had to stay put until Dozer McGettigan lent a hand. Have you met him? We called him that in school, because he always fell asleep during math class. Never did have a head for numbers, that one. But he's good with anything mechanical, including dealing with my recalcitrant vehicles. He put in some Stop Leak, which should do until I can get it into the shop.” She turned to address the van directly. “I might have to sell you, if you keep this up, though I doubt anyone would have you.”

The van hiccuped dolefully.

“Ah, that's right. All penitent now, aren't we?” She turned to Nora. “Got an important letter for you. Looks official—you have to sign for it. Never happens around here.”

The papers, at last? Nora scribbled her signature at the
X
, an all-too-apt designation, she thought ruefully, wishing she'd set things in motion herself.

“I'll file this”—Polly waved the receipt—“when I get back.”

As Malcolm must be filing for divorce. What conditions would he set? She didn't want to be in the same room with him again, facing off across a table, attorneys by their sides. What stories would he spin to cloud the issue, to get the advantage?

Polly's eyes darted from the letter to Nora's face, inquisitive as ever.

Nora didn't open it, not then. She didn't know when she would—that letter, a Pandora's box of legal motions.

“I'm sorry I missed you the other night,” Polly said.

“The other night?”

“At Cis McClure's. Alison said you'd been in. Da too. You made quite an impression on him. He's talked of little else since.”

“He jigged me around the room.”

“He didn't! Lord, that man.”

“It was endearing.”

“Thank you for putting up with him. Did you have a chance to learn anything?”

“Not as much as I would have liked. I left early.”

“I heard the Connellys were making a nuisance of themselves. You didn't let them intimidate you?”

“Dark alleys aren't the best setting for testing one's courage, but no. And Owen showed up, though I had the situation in hand.”

“I'm sure you did, though it's nice to have a knight in shining armor about; not many of them in evidence these days. Is there something else on your mind? You seem distracted.”

Nora sighed. She shared what Maire had told her about Maeve. “Did you know anything about this?” she asked.

“There are always rumors of one sort or another on the island, though there was certainly an otherworldly quality to Maeve no one could quite explain.”

“I'm trying to figure out where that leaves me.”

“Right here, on the front step of your cottage. Solid ground—and don't you forget it. We all have our genetics, our myths, don't we? They shape us, inform us, but they aren't the essence of our identity, unless we want them to be. You are your own person. You always have been.”

“Thanks, Polly.”

“No need to thank me. I'm on your side, Nora. We all are—Alison, Maire, and me. No matter what.” She glanced down at her watch. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I'm running late. I'd best push on. Remember what I said, eh?” She hopped in the driver's seat and roared away, the van belching exhaust, leaving Nora to contemplate the letter in her hand.

W
hat's that?” Ella had apparently been spying from around the side of the house. Her feet were caked with dirt.

“El, I told you to wash off your feet with the hose before coming inside,” Nora said. She hadn't been able to bring herself to open the letter, which she'd set before her on the kitchen table.

Ella swiped it before Nora could stop her. “Solomon & Gates,” she read. A Boston address, the perfect name for a firm handling divorce cases. One of Malcolm's law school classmates was a partner there.

Nora snatched it back. A corner of the envelope ripped. The triangle of paper fluttered to the floor. “I don't want to get into this right now. The letter is addressed to me, and I'll deal with it when I'm ready.”

“It affects me too.”

“Yes, but I'm in charge.”

“Are you in charge of Dad not being here?”

“That was his choice.”

“You've made choices too.”

Because there were no viable alternatives. Nora would not be the side-wife. She would not share him. The other woman apparently wouldn't either, Malcolm stringing them both along. The humiliation had been the hardest thing to deal with. Nora didn't know if she could forgive him that—what he'd put her through, continued to put her through. Perhaps he thought it worth the cost; he came out of it with a new love, a second life, or the prospect of one. And she, what did she get?

Ella balled her hands into fists. “All this stuff is happening, and there's nothing I can do about it.”

“I know this is hard.”

“No, you don't.” Her voice cracked with anguish. “You're not me. You don't know how it feels.”

“How does it feel?”

“Like everything is falling apart.” Her voice dropped a note lower.

Nora reached for her, but she spun away and shut herself in the bedroom. Maybe it was better that way, before they said things they regretted. Her head throbbed from the effort of keeping her temper in check.

Annie tiptoed inside. She'd been playing with the cats on the deck. “When is she going to stop being angry?” She glanced at the bedroom door—she must have heard the slam, the raised voices—with caution.

“She has a right to her feelings.” Nora pulled her close, the one daughter who would let herself be embraced. The other, who needed consoling as much if not more, closing herself off.

Annie slipped away, a movement smooth as water. She would not be held this way for long, would not take sides.

She sat across from Nora and toyed with a piece of sea glass. “Can we make something?” She held a piece of glass up to the light. “You can't see through it, not like other glass. It's misty.” She turned it over.

But once she found the right angle, it glowed.

Chapter Seventeen

N
ora threw the pages across the room. It was night outside, the sky black, cobwebbed with clouds, like a large, unoccupied room. She'd held off until now, while the girls were playing quietly in their room, to slit open the envelope and peruse its contents. All day she'd avoided it as it lay on her bedside table, the compass alongside, needle twitching.
North. North
. The papers fluttered at her, making reasonable arguments, stating the case. The document pertained to a formal separation. Malcolm wanted it his way, to have them in his life according to his terms, no question as to what Nora desired. A personal note inside, written on a piece of memo paper in his scrawling script. “This is a compromise that should suit all of us.” No closing, just “Malcolm.” For what would he have said:
sincerely, yours truly, best regards
? Certainly not
love
, not anymore.

The pages skittered, animate. She sat on the edge of the bed and dug her fingers into the lace spread, into the intricacies of threads that joined, that bound, unraveling now, here and there. She wished she'd filed for the separation herself, rather than going the informal route, that she'd kept control. She thought she had, by coming to the island, giving herself time and space. She wondered how what's-her-name felt about the arrangement. Had he told her the truth, or was he letting her think he'd filed for divorce? It was untenable, this in-between, this matrimonial limbo, these steps he took without consulting her.

The bedroom door opened with a hinged whine. Ella stood on the threshold. “Does he want a divorce?” she asked, looking at the fallen sheets of paper with their cold typed legalese.
The first party
,
the second
—as if they described a gala Nora and Malcolm might once have attended.

“No.”

Ella's eyes shone with tears. Nora's heart broke at the sight of her dear, troubled face.

“Then what are you upset about?” Ella asked.

“Nothing.” Nora couldn't tell her that a petition for divorce would almost have been a relief, an absolute. “The wind blew them off the dressing table.”

The sea breeze obligingly stirred the curtains.

Nora wouldn't sign the agreement, not right away. She'd decide what she wanted, what was best for the girls, then she would act. Not on cue. Not according to his rules. But her own.

A
nnie plopped the book of fairy tales on Nora's lap when she came into the room to get the girls settled for the night. “It's time to read.”

“Is it?” Nora was beginning to feel they had been written into the pages of the collection, their lives increasingly entwined with the stories depicted within.

“It's dark out. Didn't you see? The darkest dark.”

It was. How long had Nora sat there in the bedroom before being summoned by her children? Minutes. Hours. Probably the former, and yet it seemed interminable—time, her very self, suspended.

“Have you been playing statue in your room? Like in freeze tag?” Annie asked.

Nora shook her head, though in a way she supposed she had been.

Annie tapped her arm. “There. I freed you.”

If only it were that easy.

“Now we can read, right, El?” Annie turned toward her sister.

“I'm busy.” Ella picked up her own book.

“Anti-gone.” Annie sounded out the cover.

Nora suppressed a smile. Greek tragedy as laundry detergent. “It's
Antigone
, honey.”

“What a weird way to spell it. Why are you reading that, anyway?” Annie asked.

“It can't be a summer reading assignment,” Nora said. The title seemed far too demanding, even for the honors program.

“I came up with my own list,” Ella informed them. “I'm improving my mind. I have to be ready for fall term.”

“That's pretty heavy subject matter,” Nora said.

“It has more relevance than you might think.” Ella held Nora's gaze for a moment before looking away.

“Come on, El,” Nora wheedled. “Tragedy can wait, can't it?”

“I suppose.” She made a show of relenting.

And so both girls crawled into Annie's bed, as they had on other nights in Boston, when everything was changing and they didn't want to be alone. They huddled against Nora, snuggling into the blankets like kits in a burrow. She basked in their warmth. There could be moments like these. There could—

Annie turned the pages.

“Which one?” Nora asked.

“El can pick,” Annie said.

“All right. This one.” Ella chose a story that recalled the
Odyssey
, about a man who'd become lost and struggled to find his way back to his family. “ ‘Nial woke one morning in the middle of the sea, far from land and everything he knew. He had only one thought: Home. . . .' ”

N
ora heard the chatter of the girls in the meadow the next morning. She glanced at the clock: 9:30 a.m. She hadn't meant to sleep so late. Still groggy, she pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and brewed a cup of coffee. The world outside the cottage was a blur of sky and land, all greens and grays, mottled blues and dashes of yellow, the daisies blooming, cheerleaders of the floral world.
Rah-rah-rah
. A bouquet on the table too, which Annie and Ella had picked the previous day, filling the place with a clean, grassy perfume.

She slipped on a pair of flip-flops and filled a watering can at the sink. The window boxes needed watering. The plants were looking peaked, given the recent run of nice weather. She considered the front yard, such as it was, scrub mostly, the meadow grasses encroaching. The beds had been neglected for too long, Maire's influence not having extended to this section of the property. A new scheme took shape in Nora's mind, to be undertaken if they stayed—a mix of perennial grasses and lavender, easy to care for, dancing in the sea breeze. She'd discuss it with Maire. There were so many improvements that could be made, given the proper time and incentive.

Her gaze swept toward the drive, and the SUV parked there. The Cunningham family car. She stopped, midstride. There was a word scrawled on the windshield. It must have happened during the night. She drew closer, eyes darting to the tree line, to the road. Sometimes she thought she saw Maggie Scanlon watching the house, but she knew she was only imagining things. Maggie was ill, after all, the cottage too far from the village for her to reach in her present condition—though she'd gotten as far as the berry field. . . . Nora drew closer. She couldn't make out the word at first. She had to shade her hand against the sun's glare for the meaning to become clear:
Bitch
.

She felt as if the word had flown through the air and punched her in the stomach. Heart pounding, she fumbled for the chamois cloth in the glove box and set to work wiping the letters away. The girls mustn't see.

Sensing movement in the copse, she froze. She was reminded, yet again, of how isolated they were on that part of the island. A golf umbrella lying on the back seat was the only weapon handy.

The figure advanced with purpose, against the wind, along the path, exiting the woods. She felt an overwhelming sense of relief when she realized it was Owen. His hair had grown shaggier over the past few weeks, grazing his collar (one of her cousin's shirts, a dark green plaid), hanging in his eyes, yet his gaze was still piercing. He was carrying a creel.

“Washing the car, eh?” he said, setting the basket down.

“Sort of.” She couldn't stop her hands from shaking.

“What's wrong?” He touched her cheek, then glanced at the cottage windows and took his hand away.

“Some island vandalism.” She gestured at the windshield.

A faint outline of the word was still visible on the glass. “When did this happen?” he asked.

“It must have been last night or early this morning.”

“You didn't hear anything?” He took the cloth from her and scrubbed the remaining residue away.

“Not a sound.”

He thought for a moment. “When I was talking to Maire this morning, she mentioned that Maggie Scanlon drove her son's truck into the ditch about a mile north of here last night. It's within the realm of possibility that she might have been returning from paying you a visit.”

That woman. Was there no end to her obsession? “Is she all right?”

“Bumps and bruises, apparently.”

“I didn't know she was still driving.”

“Her son reported the truck stolen. He didn't realize she was the one who took it until they found her. Are you going to call the authorities?”

She shook her head. “We erased the evidence, and besides, I'm not sure that's the right thing to do. There's something that's driving her, that hasn't been resolved. Something that she's fixated on. If I can find out what that is, maybe that will put an end to it.”

“Whatever you think,” he said, clearly unconvinced. “I almost forgot. I brought you this.” He flipped open the lid of the basket revealing a catch of rockfish. “I was in the north end this week.”

“I was wondering what to make for dinner,” she replied, then, “You've been away a lot lately. I was beginning to think you might have left the island.”

“I'm not like him,” he said. “I wouldn't leave without saying good-bye.”

Nora heard the voices of the girls behind them, louder now, as they attempted to extricate the kite from the tree. Ella wouldn't give up. She didn't want another kite, though Nora had offered to buy one at Scanlon's. Only this one would do. Her father's kite, an emblem of all that was broken, all that might be mended.

“What are you talking about?” Annie cantered up to them.

“That's a fine gallop,” Owen said, evading the question.

“I'm an Arabian horse. I thought if I stood on my hind legs, I could get the kite, but it's not working.”

“Of course it's not working,” Ella called. “The kite's too high, and you're not a horse. Though if you were, I'd hitch you to a carriage and make you drive me into town.”

“I'd kick you and run away,” Annie said. She turned to Owen. “Can you get it down?”

“You don't have to,” Nora interjected.

“Let's have a look.” He set the basket down at Nora's feet, the fish staring up at her mutely. She felt a current run through her as he touched the small of her back and set off toward the tree.

“We don't want your help,” Ella told him.

“Do you want it down or not?” he asked.

She fell silent, her gaze alternating between him and the kite that continued to dangle out of reach. “Maybe,” she admitted.

The tree stood before them, its splintered branches reaching toward the ocean, bark rough as hide. The kite remained lodged in the crown, an effigy. Its wings rattled in the breeze, bits of red paper scattered on the ground, confettied by marauding crows and heavy winds.

Owen circled the base, studying the network of needled boughs, gauging distances.

“We don't have a ladder,” Nora said, thinking that would put an end to it.

“Wouldn't reach high enough anyway,” he replied.

To her surprise, he began to climb, moving higher, until he was lost in the upper boughs, a shaking among the branches the only indication of his presence.

“He's going to fall,” Ella said, anticipation in her voice.

“No, he's not,” Nora said, with more vehemence than she intended. “He's doing this for you, you know.”

“Is he?” She gave her mother a probing look.

The kite nosedived into a hedge of broom, yellow petals exploding, then luffed in the wind, as if drawing its last breaths.

“Oh, no!” Annie cried.

One of the wings had split in two—recent or old damage, it was hard to say. Ella, however, had reached her own conclusions. “You broke it,” she said, when he came down, hands sticky with pitch.

A cloud moved across the sun, and a shadow fell over the meadow and those who faced each other there.

“It was already like that,” Annie pointed out.

“No, it wasn't,” Ella said.

“We can get another,” Owen offered.

“I want the old one,” Ella said. “I want the old everything.”

“At least Owen got it down. That was what you wanted,” Nora said, which Ella clearly took as a criticism of her father, her face darkening. “Stop being rude and say thank you.”

“That's your department,” Ella said.

“What is?”

“Expressing gratitude.”

Nora felt her face grow hot. “If you mean being polite, that would be true. I expect the same of you.”

“Oh, sure. Be polite. Look where that's gotten us. Everyone else seems to say whatever they want,” she said. “Even stupid people on the Internet who don't know us.” She grabbed the kite and retreated to a rock a short distance away, where she sat and glared at them.

“Sorry about that,” Nora said to Owen.

“Don't take it personally. She's mean to everybody,” Annie added. “We're waiting for her to outgrow it.”

“No worries. I'd be mad too, if it were mine.” His kite, his young life.

“Where have you been, anyway?” Annie asked. “You haven't been around in a few days.”

“I had business at sea.”

Annie opened her mouth to ask him something else, then changed her mind. “It's so magical deep, the sea,” she said instead.

Ella cradled the kite in her arms. She cast a baleful eye on the basket. “We're not having fish for dinner again, are we? They smell. I won't eat them.”

“All the more for the rest of us then,” Nora said.

“All we ever eat is fish. Fish, fish, fish.”

“Ella Grace Cunningham.”

“How about if you help me gather some mussels?” Owen asked Annie.

“You already have them,” Annie said.