The Last Will of Moira Leahy (4 page)

I thought of Noel, touring European castles and museums, searching for dusty treasures and digging into a more personal kind of ancient history.

It’d been a long time since I’d had any sort of adventure.

Avventura
.

How easily that word had rolled off my poppy’s tongue, become the mantra for his life. I knew what he’d do with a mystery, no matter the size. Research. Dig. Figure it out.

Why not shun work tonight? It was a holiday, after all.

I turned on the computer and Googled, “What is a
keris?”
And when the screen lit with knowledge, I leaned in, took another swallow of wine, and gave thanks to technology.

Out of Time

Castine, Maine

OCTOBER 1995

Moira and Maeve are eleven

“No humming at the table, Maeve,” Mama said as they sat down to Moira’s favorite meal of crab salad and corn on the cob and mashed potatoes and salad with ranch dressing.

“It’s a new song about a hungry fox,” Maeve said as she reached for the corn.

Moira grabbed an ear, too. “It’s sad, though.”

“Yeah,” said Maeve. “The fox is trying to get—”

“This had better not be about the baby again.” Mama clutched her small round belly and made her neck tall and taut.

“No, it’s about gooses,” Maeve said. “The fox thinks they’re tasty, so he’s trying to get them all.” She bit into her corn. Butter dripped down her chin.

“Geese.” Mama shook her head. “I’m sorry for being so jumpy, Maeve. It’s my hormones.”

Daddy smiled but said nothing. Gorp, not as wise, barked. “Quiet, dog,” he said, but Gorp kept howling and then ran out. Daddy stood, followed the dog. Maeve followed Daddy, the corn still in her hand.

Noise erupted—Gorp barking; the front door opening; Mama’s chair scraping against the wood floor; Maeve whooping; Daddy saying, “John, what a surprise,” as Mama exclaimed, “Dad! Why didn’t you tell us—?”

Moira rounded the corner and landed beside her sister in their grandfather’s open arms, his coat sleeves scented with the unfamiliar.

“Has my daughter been feeding you two magic growing beans again?” Poppy squeezed them, and they giggled and squeezed back.

“You’ve burned yourself.” Mama touched his pink face. “Where did you come from?”

“Oh, just Cairo. I don’t suppose anyone would be interested in having some real, ancient Egyptian papyrus?” He shrugged out of his coat, smiling, as Maeve and Moira squealed.

“You’ve made it in time for supper,” Mama said. “I’ll fix you a plate.”

“I’ll get your bags,” Daddy told Poppy.

“Mama’s having a baby. Just one this time,” Moira said, when she and Maeve were alone with their grandfather.

“Yes, I’ve heard!” Poppy ruffled her hair with his big hands. “Are you excited?”

“Wicked excited!”

“And do you want a brother or a sister, Moira?”

“A sister.”

“And you, Maeve? What would you like?”

“I don’t know,” Maeve said. “I think something’s wrong with the baby.”

Poppy’s smile drooped. “Wrong? Abby didn’t say—”

“Shh!” Moira poked her sister with her elbow, and Maeve’s corn dropped to the ground. Gorp was out the door with it within seconds.

“Thanks a lot, Moira. That was good corn.”

“Sorry, but you know Mom doesn’t want you talking about your funny feelings anymore.”

Poppy bent close to them and whispered, “Lucky for us those funny feelings don’t always pan out. Last year, you thought something might be wrong with me!”

Maeve smiled. “I’m glad I was wrong about that.”

THAT NIGHT,
poppy told stories of lost cities and found pyramids. He showed them photographs of rediscovered passageways and dark-skinned people and old paintings. Maeve asked a relentless stream of questions: “What did you eat? Did the natives dance and make sacrifices? Were there poisonous spiders? Snakes?” Poppy answered between frequent outbursts of laughter.

After dinner, while everyone recovered from big pieces of blueberry pie, Maeve played her saxophone. Moira closed her eyes and saw Egypt, felt it: the dance of a cobra in a minor-key melody; the whip of sand in a brief ascension; the persistent hot sun in a wavering high note; the tension of a dig and maybe a fall in a quick-drop scale.

Poppy applauded when she finished. “You never sounded like that, Abby.” He winked at his daughter.

“No, all my squeaking probably sounded more like …”

“Gooses?” Maeve set down the instrument.

“Yes, Maeve,” Mama said with a smile. “Geese.”

Poppy leaned back in his chair. “I’ve missed the Atlantic,” he said. “I hear you girls can handle the sails yourselves now.”

They nodded in unison, said, “Yes, Poppy.”

“Shall we go sailing tomorrow, bright and early?”

“Ayuh!” Maeve said without even asking Daddy. “We’ll take you to a new spot on the island that has the best jasper ever!”

Moira stayed in Maeve’s room that night, as she always did when Poppy came to visit. They cleared the floor of books and clothes and tapes, and made room for Moira’s sleeping bag.

“You sure you don’t want to stay up here with me?” Maeve peered over the side of her creaky bed to look at her twin.

“No, your bed’s broke.”

“Just broken in, like a baseball glove.”

“Because you jump on it too much. I’ll sleep here.”

“Okay, but you’re missing a good bed.”

Moira read
Jane Eyre
by moonlight until her eyes hurt, then fell into a fitful sleep as dream pythons squeezed her middle. She woke to her sister’s moan.

“You’re sick,” Moira whispered. “You shouldn’t have had two pieces of pie.”

Maeve groaned again, clasped her stomach.

“Should I get Mama?”

“No, if she finds out, she won’t let me have pie tomorrow. You go back to sleep. I’ll block.”

“Don’t block. It’s not that bad.” Worse than pain’s shadowpart would be feeling cut off from her sister. The effort of blocking would make Maeve extra tired, too.

Moira curled beside her twin, and slept until she felt a tap on her shoulder. Mama, rimmed in faint yellow, stood over them with a question in her eyes. Moira looked at Maeve, whose cheeks were two red splotches in a pale face. She no longer felt an undercurrent of pain but knew from the tight, hollow feeling in her chest that Maeve had blocked after all. It felt, almost, like hunger. “Maeve’s sick,” she explained.

Mama touched Maeve’s forehead, frowned. “Go on down and have some eggs,” she said. “Daddy has to work on Dan Brooks’s windjammer today, but you and Pops go have fun on the boat.” She left, taking wide steps to avoid shuffled piles of room rubble and muttering something about the thermometer.

“Feel better,” Moira whispered, and kissed her sister on the head.

THE SUN HADN’T
yet cleared the mist when Moira and Poppy set out twenty minutes later. Moira’s anxiety over Maeve lingered as well, though it unfurled some when the first gust of crisp, salted wind filled their sails. Poppy managed the mainsail and tiller, while Moira kept her hand on the small jib sheet and monitored the wind vane Daddy had put on top of the mast.
Always know where the wind is coming from
, he’d said.
It’s the first lesson for sailors and the most important
. Moira watched the wind vane.

“What did the Atlantic Ocean say to the Indian Ocean?” Poppy asked once they’d been sailing awhile.

“What?”

“Can you be more Pacific?”

Moira giggled.

“Do you know what the Indian Ocean said in response?”

“No.”

“Nothing, he just waved.”

She had another fit of laughter and he chuckled along with her, as they adjusted their sails at a change in the wind.

“So tell me how school has been. Do you like your teacher?”

“She’s very nice.” Moira chatted about Mrs. Keeler and her classmates for a while, then adjusted the jib again and stopped to listen to the irregular cadence of rippling sails.

The wind had picked up as they’d sailed farther into the heart of the bay and closer to the mouth of the open sea. Waves had grown larger and the fog thicker, like a blanket over the whole of the sky, a clot over the sun. Moira shivered. She could see no landmarks. Hear no other sailors.

“Poppy, should we should go back? Maybe a storm’s coming.”

Poppy didn’t answer. His face looked funny, like it was coated in chalk. Moira watched, horrified, as he slumped against the side of the boat, then fell, headfirst, into the sea. The boat lurched on a splash.

“Poppy!” she screamed, as his body bobbed to the surface, his face framed in the sun-faded life preserver she’d teased him into wearing. His eyes were closed. He didn’t speak, didn’t move except with the waves. Moira’s mind felt suspended, too, as she drifted away from him.

She had to turn, or Poppy would be lost to fog and sea.

Her hands had just begun to follow her brain’s orders when a strong gust hit. The boom moved, the boat leaned, her hair flew into her eyes. She grabbed the jib sheet, uncleated it. It luffed, blaring in the wind, but the boat stabilized.

“Poppy! Wake up!” His shape grew smaller behind her as panic beat hard and painful in her chest.

She lunged for the tiller. This had never been her job, but she’d seen it done, knew the steps:
Haul in the jib, cleat it tight, push the tiller, haul in on the mainsheet
. The boat began to turn and tip slightly. She muttered steps—“turn into the current, adjust the mainsheet”—and tried to keep her eyes on the wind vane and Poppy both.

He lay far to the left of her. She couldn’t get to him in a straight line; she’d pull closer in one direction and move farther away in another as minutes lapsed. She battled frustration as she worked.
Imagine the line between you, pull as close as you can this way, uncleat the jib
. It seemed to take forever, and when she thought she was close, she braced herself to come about.
Push the tiller away
—she ducked under the boom—
trim the main sheet, move the jib, cleat it
. The boat turned for the last time.

Poppy floated in front of her now, and the boat moved forward, closer … closer. A wave covered her gloved fingers as she leaned, reached beyond the boat—

“Poppy!” She grabbed his life jacket, but it caught halfway down his arms, the straps unfastened. She made fists in his shirt and hair instead, and pulled his body against the boat. With a glance back at the wind vane, she maneuvered them enough to point the boat into the wind. The sails stalled. The jib flapped deafeningly as it lost air. The liberated lines jumped and pinged against the mast, and the boat stilled.

Moira hugged Poppy’s body and sobbed. His chest moved—he breathed—but his skin felt like ice and his lips were blue. She knew she had to get him out of the water, but his heavy body, covered in layers of soaked clothes, lifted only a little when she tucked her arms under his and pulled. The boat leaned when she tried again, straining as hard as she could, but he barely moved with her efforts. She stopped, panting, and the boat settled back into the sea.

“Help! Can anyone hear me?” she shouted. “Is anyone there?” Only the wind shrieked in response, and the boat pitched dangerously with the hard gust. Moira reached a hand toward the sail but wasn’t fast enough. The vessel tipped.

Her lungs seemed to deflate as she hit the frigid water. She gasped in shallow breaths, coughed, kicked. Somehow her hands found what they needed: her grandfather, the boat. Her fingers slid on the slimy underside of the craft as she tried to right it. Failed. She grabbed some floating line, managed to wrap it around Poppy and her own wrist to make a clumsy knot.

“Help! Please, someone, help us!” Her voice jangled like bones in their sockets as the sea slapped and sucked against the inside of the boat. She’d never felt more alone.

Time slurred until she heard a noise that was not the sea.
Help
. She could not holler or even raise her arm to wave. She tried to pinpoint the source and couldn’t. She no longer felt the cold; her body no longer shivered. She tried to open her eyes, but they felt heavy with the sting of salt as she drifted in the dark space behind her eyelids.

SHE WOKE IN
an unfamiliar bed, covered in blankets.

“Can you hear me, sweetie?”

Was that Mama? Moira fell back asleep.

She woke briefly to the sound of her parents’ voices:
incapacitated, therapy, recovery
. The words were indecipherable to her. Again, she slept.

At some point she became aware of a thin tube along her arm. Her eyelids felt like anchors as she pulled them partway up. Darkness filled the room.

“Poppy?”

The word came from her raw throat as a rasp. Glass pressed against her lips. She sipped water, then sunk back into the void, still feeling the greedy surge of the sea in every breath.

Then it was day once more. Moira noticed white walls, a green curtain over a wide window, a machine with red lights. Maeve sat beside her, the pale skin beneath her eyes lined in shadow. Moira didn’t need to ask the question.

“I felt it somehow,” Maeve said, “even with the block. It was terrible, cold, the worst feeling ever. Mama said it was the sickness, but I knew it wasn’t, so I ran and found Daddy getting ready to leave, and he believed me and we found you.”