She looks around. The panoramic views of the harbor are almost enough to get her out of her funk. But not quite. When she was a child she used to stand in this very spot and think about all the ships that had depended on that lighthouse since it was first lit in 1825. She would think about the smallness of herself and her problems in this vast, vast universe—in the face of this vast, vast ocean. She tries to replicate that feeling now.
It doesn’t work. She’ssoangry! She’s angry at her father, yes, of course she is—although she’s not sure how to be angry at someone who is no longer present. But she’s also angry at her mother. She might bemoreangry at her mother, because her mother is more available to be angry at.
She takes it more slowly down the steps than she took it up. When a couple of teenage boys knock into her as she’s going down she almost elbows them. She left her gin and tonic half full on the porch, and now she needs a drink. She drives home, still angry. She passes the post office and the general store that makes phenomenal egg sandwiches and eventually pulls into the driveway at Ships View. It’s quiet inside the house; there’s just some clanking from the kitchen as Pauline works on dinner.
She calls “Hello?” and nobody answers. The children might be in their rooms, or they might be on the rocks. The tide will be going out now. Then she hears her mother’s voice from the porch: “Still here.”
Louisa greets Pauline, then reaches into the refrigerator for abottle of white wine. She pours herself a giant glass and carries it out to the porch. She sits on the rocker. Her mother has refilled her own drink. Her eyes dart over to Louisa’s and then rest again on the water.
“I’ve got some questions,” Louisa says.
“Go ahead.” A small tip of the head, a concession.
“Were there others, before or after?”
“No.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I’m sure, Louisa. Believe me. I’m sure.”
Louisa takes a deep breath. “How much money did you send?”
Annie picks at a loose piece of wicker and says, “I don’t want to talk about that. That was my concern, not yours.”
“If you hadn’t sent money all those years, would you need to give up the house now?”
Annie takes her time with this one. She sips her drink, and Louisa gulps her wine, and the rocker creaks gently back and forth, back and forth, and a sailboat has enough time to come from the east and disappear to the west before Annie answers. She puts her glass down on the table beside her. “I don’t know. Maybe. But maybe not quite so soon.”
“Okay, final question. How did you forgive him? I getwhy,I guess. Buthowis harder to understand.”
“Here’s how, Louisa.” Annie holds up a thumb and a forefinger about an inch apart. “Out of more than forty years of marriage this relationship lasted a few months. That’s how.” Annie brings her thumb and finger closer together. Now they could hold a pencil. “It was this much time, in the middle of an eternity. That’s how.”
Later, after dinner, when Louisa is in her bedroom, sitting cross-legged on her bed, her Pitcairn notebook open on her lap, Annie knocks on the door. The house is quiet now, the children are in their rooms, either sleeping or pretending to sleep, and Martin is inbed for the night too. Louisa has been staring at the same sentence fragment for the longest time:Pitcairn, with its wild, ravaged beauty,
Oh, who cares. It’s a relief to hear the knock. She says, “Come in,” and when Annie enters she’s carrying two glasses of whiskey, two fingers each. She hands one to Louisa and says, “I came to say good night. And I brought you this. This is the good stuff. Twenty-one-year-old single malt.”
“‘I’m not sure I’m worthy,” says Louisa. Her parents have always ended their days this way, as long as Louisa can remember. Two fingers at night to “slay the dragons and settle the nerves,” as her mother says. Well, at least Louisa now understands what the dragons were.
“You’re worthy,” says Annie. She kisses Louisa on the forehead, just the way she used to when Louisa was little. Louisa catches a whiff of Shalimar, and of something more nebulous and mysterious. Secrets.
24.
Matty
Matty is lacing up his running shoes outside the front door when his grandmother appears behind him. When he turns, she’s dangling her car keys.
“I’d like you to come with me on an errand, Matthew,” she says. (Annie is the only person in the entire world who calls him Matthew.)
“Me? Now?” It’s an easy day, just four miles, recovery pace, but still he wants to get it done.
Annie smiles thinly. “I don’t see anyone else around, do you?”
He surveys the yard. “No.” Just Danny, always Danny. Today he’s scraping old paint off a shingle on the side of the house.
“Well, then. Hop in the car.”
Annie is not the type of person you tell that you were just about to go out for a run, and can you please do the errand with her later.Matty looks with dismay at his running shorts. They’reshort. With a slit up each side! Does he have time to change?
