“She also thought we were going to get roofied any time we went out.”
“Upon reflection,” says Natalie, “I guess a person can get kidnapped from anywhere.” Now that she has kids of her own she’s much more understanding of her parents’ fears. There isso much to be afraid of.
“And then we’d have to wake up early and sneak upstairs to our rooms.”
“But we’d wake up early anyway, because of the sunrise.”
The sunrises at Jenness are absolute stunners, throwing prisms of color over the water, backlighting the really early surfers in red-gold, shining a spotlight on the humps of the Isles of Shoals, six miles out to sea. You can’t sleep through that, and there is absolutely no better way to wake up.
The sisters are quiet for a minute, remembering the long-ago mornings, the sandpipers skittering across the sand. They never slept as well as they thought they would on a patio chair so they’d crawl into their actual beds and sleep for a few more hours, emerging when the rest of the family was well into their day. “Morning, lazybones,” Theresa might say to them, and they’d let her think that so the night could remain their secret.
Natalie helps Jordan gather blankets from the basket in the sunroom and carry them out onto the patio. She helps her wipe the dew from the cushions, and when Jordan is settled in one of the loungers, she covers her with the blankets. This is the second sister she’s tucked in tonight! It’s just past two o’clock by now; first light is less than three hours away. The stars are bright and close, and the moon, one day away from full, is mighty.
Thursday
Interstitial
“Do you think I’ll have a ticket?” Mae and Calvin are driving to pick up Mae’s car. It’s nine o’clock in the morning. Calvin takes the scenic route, up 1A. Mae feels like a preteen again, getting picked up from a sleepover with scratchy, tired eyes. But not exactly like a preteen, because she has a solid hangover, respectable but manageable. She’d woken up at seven in Jordan’s bed with no Jordan. When she’d taken Leo for his morning training Jordan was fast asleep on one of the patio loungers. Mae laid another blanket on top of her and kept Leo from sniffing her. She took him to the far end of the beach, videoed him coming back to her five times in a row as she’d backed up a little farther each time. The long leash was there, but she’d never needed to reach for it. Leo’s recall is really improving. By the time she’d returned, the household was waking up.
“Sorry?” says Calvin. “Did you ask if I think you have rickets?”
Oh my god, thinks Mae, is he losing hishearing? But she glances at him and sees the smile playing at his mouth. She rolls her eyes, but she laughs a little bit too. “Is it actually illegal to park overnight in Portsmouth?”
“I don’t know,” Calvin muses. “I’ve never tried it. But if you do, it won’t be much. They wouldn’t tow.”
Mae hadn’t even thought about the possibility of an expensive tow. She pretends that her father’s answer is a soothing one. She doesn’t want to tell Calvin that anything, anything at all, would betoo much for her right now. The constant worry about a place to live is a little knot that will never loosen. She felt better in the middle of the night, after she told her sisters, but then it tightened right up again—because they were concerned, and they listened, but listening and concern do not equal a solution.
They pass a sign for Petey’s and Calvin says, “It’s been ages since I was at Petey’s. Remember how often we used to go?”
“Of course,” says Mae. “Cups of chowda all around.”
They turn inland and continue on, passing a cemetery, a playground, an auto center. Her phone buzzes with a text. She looks surreptitiously and sees that it’s from Human Leo. It’s long! She’s dying to know what he thinks of all the videos she’s been sending, but she doesn’t want to be rude to her father. Is Human Leo impressed? Disappointed? Does he think that the board-and-train has been a good investment? Does he regret letting Mae take Leo so far away? Her fingers are itching to tap the screen and read the text, but her dad is asking her a question.
“So you three had fun last night?”
“Sure,” she says. Then, because her voice quavered a little, sounding uncertain, and she thought that would make him sad, “Definitely.”
“Natalie seemed a little—subdued this morning. If that’s the word.”
Mae laughs. “That’saword.”
“What’s another word?”
“Hungover.”
“Ah.”
“Natalie doesn’t get out much. I think it was good for her.” Then: “I told them I was at the wedding.”
Calvin glances at her. “I thought you didn’t want them to know.”
“I didn’t, and then I did. Well, I didn’t, and then I still didn’t and then I sort of accidentally told them anyway.”
A deep sigh issues from the driver’s seat. “Ho, boy. How’d they take it?” They turn onto State Street.
“Not well,” says Mae. She reflects on this, and then adds, “Not well at all.”
“I’m sorry, Mae.” Mae looks over and sees his worried-dad face. It’s the face of a man who would rebuy the ice cream that slipped off a daughter’s cone (a cliché, but it happened to Mae more times than it should have); a man who practiced parallel parking with Natalie fourteen days in a row so she could (finally) pass her driver’s test; a man who barely left his wife’s side to go to the bathroom or eat when she was dying. A man who wants everything to be okay for everyone, always.
