“Will it be a boy or a girl?”
Faye shrugged. She hoped for a boy. For herself, for William, so Maeve would have a brother. She tried to shake off her ambivalence about having a girl. On one hand, it might be nice for Maeve to have another girl in the house. But the thought of sisters sent Faye to a place she didn’t want to be or to think about anymore.
“It will be a surprise!” Faye said. “Now, let’s talk about that list.” The three of them, plus baby on the way, sat on stacked crates among William’s growing collection of woodworking projects, toppled bean pots and crocks, antiques, and rusted tools, and they talked about kittens and pennies and dolls and all the ways their family might grow.
Molly was born the day after Thanksgiving, bleating like a lamb, William’s red hair curling off her waxy scalp. Though she was smaller than Maeve, labor had been harder and longer. Torn and depleted, Faye could hardly move her head from the pillow when William brought Maeve into the room. She scrambled onto the hospital bed to be close to Faye and the baby who rested against her. “Careful, careful. Mommy’s a little sore and tired,” Faye said. Maeve touched the baby’s swaddling, and a tiny arm escaped, wrinkled fingers clenched to fight.
“I wanna hold her,” Maeve said. She stiffened, stuck her arms out. “Can I hold her?”
Faye petitioned William with a raised brow, and he replied with an easy nod. Faye swiveled and placed the baby in Maeve’s arms. “Be gentle. She’s very tiny.”
The baby fussed, and Maeve brought her knees up and curled her arms around the flannel blanket. “I’ll be careful,” she whispered, cooing until the baby settled again.
From a green metal chair next to the bed, William stroked Faye’s hand. “They’re pretty cute. She’s a natural, that one.”
Faye put her arm around Maeve, snuggled her daughters closer. She felt a serenity that bordered on euphoria, though every part of her throbbed. “You’re not disappointed? That it’s not a boy?”
“What? No!” William said. “Look there. One of you holding one of me. They’re perfect. Keep hold of her head there, Maeve. Don’t let go.”
Maeve pipped her lips, made kissy faces. “Don’t worry. I won’t let go, Daddy. Not ever. I’ll be a good big sister. I promise.”
Faye covered her mouth, quieted a sigh, let a water-drenched memory wash over her. Two girls—indigo skirts, billowing peasant tops, blistered hands carrying tin pails—blurred together in a greenwashed field. New life and old ghosts. And second chances.
Part Two
1976–1995
Chapter Eleven
1976
Faye held Molly’s hand as they passed the ice cream parlor and hair salon on the way to the five-and-dime for a new hair ribbon. She had never seen more red, white, and blue. Maine, like all of America, was crazy for the bicentennial celebration. Every house was festooned with buntings, and flags of every era—thirteen stars, forty-eight, fifty—hung from porch rails and makeshift flagpoles. Planning had been going on for a year or more, so decorations went up before the snow was gone. Aldo at the flower shop where Faye used to work had died two years short of his own centennial, and his granddaughter had taken over—first the shop, then the local Chamber of Commerce. Hers was the first business to go all in on patriotic trinkets and spinners and carnations dipped to match.
As much as Faye loved America, she struggled with the celebration, especially the fireworks. Bursts of mortar, fire raining from the sky. She wanted to thrill in the display the way William and the girls did, but in truth, each explosion shook her to the core, surfacing childhood fear she could hardly name anymore. She’d dared ask William once if the fireworks brought back memories of war, and he’d brushed the question off, said that they signified endurance and victory to him. She wishedshe had even one fond memory of when she was a little German girl, of Elisabeth and Mutti and Vati, when they weren’t dodging bombs, hunting for butter and coffee on the black market, averting their eyes for fear of being questioned. There had been a train ride with Mutti and Elisabeth to the countryside where they ran through fields to the shelters when the sirens blared. Maybe she had smiled over pea soup in some kitchen there, maybe there were games and pranks and laughter. But every memory Faye retained seemed to end in an explosion, with Mutti unfurled in the street. Even blue skies sometimes glistened silver with phantoms of whistling bomber formations circling overhead.
And then there was the matter of that song. Even now, “America the Beautiful” followed her and Molly down the street, piping from crackling speakers hung from phone poles. Faye knew it by heart, of course, had learned it in elementary school. But every time she heard it performed—and so often in July—she was reminded that Fiadh had spat that phrase to the ground. What Fiadh might have made of America, or America of her, Faye could not know. But three decades later, the song still felt more like an accusation than an anthem, reminding Faye that the freedom she celebrated, and her own beautiful life, had been meant for another girl.
Molly struggled to keep on her new sandals—flip-flops with a rattan foot bed and a puffy thong—and her gait alternated between halting and skipping. Faye, her shoulder sore from the yanking, had grown testy with the music and rising heat. “Honey,” she said, exasperated. “Try to keep up.” The last thing they needed was for Molly to stub a toe. Distracted, Faye didn’t see the woman before she ran smack into her.
“I’m so sorry!” Faye said before she recognized her. “Oh!”
“Glenda,” the woman said. “Hi, Faye.”
Was it possible she’d grown more colorful since Faye had seen her last?
“Glenda! No, of course. Hello. So much happening here.” She laughed awkwardly. “Good to see you.”
Their lives had been blissfully free of Conor O’Kane for years. After Jean died, he’d gone back to Ireland, resurfacing only for a couple unwelcome visits to Thomas at the house on the cove, each time trying to gloss over the past. William had run into him once a few years back in Boothbay and had been shocked by his appearance, both eyes swollen and black, his arm in a sling. “What you get when you mess with a man’s woman. You shoulda seen the other guy,” was what William told Faye he’d said. Taking it apart, it wasn’t clear whether Conor had been the affronter or the affronted. All he’d said otherwise was that he moved back to Boston and implied connections William wanted no part of. They hadn’t seen or heard from him since. And now here was Glenda.
She looked the same, old and ageless at the same time. She’d caught the bicentennial fever, an eagle and flag T-shirt over cutoff jeans, star-shaped sunglasses tucked into the cleft between her boobs. “This the baby? She got big. How old is she now?”
“Six. Going into first grade.” Faye looked around. O’Kane must be lurking somewhere.
Glenda followed her gaze. “I don’t know where he is. He was supposed to pick me up.”
“Conor?”
“Yeah. Actually, I’m surprised to see you here. He said he was heading to your place.”
