“It’s okay. I only left because I get so nervous when too many people are around. I’ve never been good in a crisis.”
Kevin suggested that Rose sit on the small sofa across from Annie. The woman complied.
“I was also scared to death of that big man,” Rose said. “Rex?”
Annie sat up straight now, fully awake. “Yes. Kevin’s brother-in-law.”
Rose rested her hands in her lap.
Annie thought that, like with the down coat, the bulky mittens could have been hiding anything. Like a knife or a small handgun. She tried not to look nervous.
“Can you tell me why you’re afraid of him?” she asked. “Does he look like someone who . . .” She paused, flashing back to her days teaching third grade and choosing her words accordingly, as if she were speaking to an eight- or nine-year-old. “Does he look like a man who once . . . touched you?”
Shifting on the cushion, Rose looked at Annie, perplexed. “No! Why would you think that?” Her gaze shifted to Kevin as if he knew the answer.
Kevin shrugged, then said, “You’ve got the wrong impression, Annie. Go ahead, Rose. It’s okay to tell her.”
Tightening her thin, pale lips until they were barely visible, Rose hesitated. When she finally spoke, the words came slowly. “Years ago, I had an uncle who lived in West Tisbury. His main job was taking care of some of the island cemeteries.”
Annie tried to look surprised.
“He died back in the eighties,” Kevin interrupted, as if agitated by Rose’s reluctant pace. “He left Rose his house.”
Rose nodded. “He did.”
“That’s how I knew where she was,” Kevin added. “I saw her out there right after Thanksgiving. I’d gone out to Lambert’s Cove to walk on the beach. I needed to think about this business with Rex away from people who knew me. But, lo and behold, I practically stumbled over Rose. She told me her story and she took me to see the house.”
“I was looking for stones,” Rose said. “The heart-shaped ones. Like the ones Bernie and I used to collect. I . . . I write messages on them. For him. Then I toss them into the water out at East Beach back here on Chappy. It’s the closest place on the island to England. Which was where he’d always wanted to go.”
Annie was confused. She had no idea who Bernie was; it sounded like he was the one Rose was asking to come back to her. She sucked in her cheeks so she wouldn’t interrupt.
“Bernie was my boyfriend for three whole summers. I came to the island to be Uncle Clive’s housekeeper because he had a part-time job driving a bus during tourist season, so he was real busy. Bernie was born here; his family lived down the street. That last summer, Bernie graduated from high school. I was sixteen.” She stopped, then added, “We held hands a lot. I liked that. We kissed sometimes, too, but never too often. Uncle Clive warned me about island boys. He said they got excited for all the wrong reasons when they saw a girl from away. I knew what he meant. I’d had a class on sex education in school.” She pulled off her mittens; Annie was relieved to see there was no knife, no gun.
“Maybe at first Bernie did get excited about me because I wasn’t from here. He wanted to leave the Vineyard. His father and older brothers were fishermen; he didn’t want to be one. He wanted to join the Navy and see the world from a big ship. Especially, like I said, England. It’s where his ancestors came from. Anyway, we fell in love. And that last summer we went too far. Nearly ‘all the way,’ they called it back then. It was early in the morning. I’d sneaked out of the house and met him at Lambert’s Cove. I had no idea that Uncle Clive had followed me.”
“And he saw you and Bernie . . . ?” Annie interjected.
Rose nodded. “We were behind a dune. In the beach grass. Just like in a movie.”
Annie didn’t mention the celebrated Vineyard filmJaws, or that it was a good thing Rose and Bernie had not been in the water.
Lowering her head, now intent on Annie’s Grandma Sutton’s braided rug, Rose added, “Even though I was a virgin, it was so nice. And I really loved Bernie. But we never got to finish because Uncle Clive shot him.”
In spite of her best intentions, Annie gasped.
Kevin leaned against the kitchen table and folded his arms.
“He . . . killed him?” Annie managed to ask.
Rose nodded. “He buried him in the West Tisbury cemetery. The one right on the curve on State Road, just before you get to where Edgartown–West Tisbury Road comes out, if you’re heading up-island from Vineyard Haven. I guess nobody would have thought it was weird if they’d seen Clive digging a grave. After all, it was his job.” Her voice was so low now, Annie barely could hear her.
“So . . . your uncle was never caught?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What about Bernie’s family?”
“At the time it was terrifying. People were looking all over for him; police cars were everywhere. Just like they are now. Clive slapped me around . . . called me a slut and told me to shut up if I knew what was good for me. Then he made me pack my things—I remember shaking the whole time. He shoved me into his Boston Whaler, brought me to the Cape, then put me on a bus back to Maine. I never saw him again. I always figured he told Bernie’s family that Bernie and I ran away. They probably would have believed that.”
