Georgia was surprised to see tears in her great-grandmother’s eyes.
“Where do we start?” Abby whispered.
“With us, I suppose,” replied Dana. “You and me. I was never entirely straightforward with you about why I wanted so badly to leave Maine and return to New York.”
“You mean, leave your family,” said Abby.
Dana sighed. “I know that’s how it felt. To you. But that’s not how it felt to me. And it isn’t why I had to go back. I had to go back because of Dad.”
Abby looked sharply at her daughter. “You said you missed New York.”
“You’re right. That is what I said. And it was true, but it wasn’t the whole truth, which is probably why you never quite believed me. I did miss New York. There were opportunities in New York that I couldn’t have while we were traipsing around Maine.”
“I did the best I could for you!” exclaimed Abby.
Francie held up her hand. “Let Dana finish, please,” she said to Abby. “Do we need to use a Talking Stick?”
Georgia giggled, and even Abby smiled. “Sorry,” Abby said. “Go ahead, honey.”
“Such as art school,” Dana continued. “And I really did miss all the museums, Broadway, everything that Manhattan has to offer. But the truth was that I felt I couldn’t be close to Dad unless I was in New York. That was the only place I could feel him, truly feel him.”
“Honey, we all missed your father,” Abby said gently.
“I know, but none of you were standing beside him on the ferry when his hat blew off and he jumped into the water to get it. I was the only one who saw that. I was the only one who watched him disappear. I felt as though I should have been able to pull him back. But I —”
“You couldn’t have!” cried Abby. “You were only a little girl.”
“Still. That’s how I felt. I watched him disappear, and I wanted him back. When we left New York, I felt like the very last little bit of Dad vanished. It didn’t help that I felt like I was suffocating in Maine. But it was Dad I wanted, and I didn’t want to tell you that because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings. Which obviously I wound up doing anyway.”
Abby shook her head, pursed her lips, and silently reached for Dana’s hand. “Oh, honey,” was all she said.
“Now you see, you two?” Dana went on, turning to Georgia and Francie. “This is exactly why you need to talk now, and be perfectly honest with each other. Things can fester for decades. They can fester forever. So talk. Georgia, why don’t you start?”
But Francie held up her hand. “If you don’t mind, I think I’m the one who needs to start.
Georgia, who had studiously not been looking at her mother, suddenly turned to her. She saw that her mother’s hands were shaking. They were shaking so badly that some tea splashed out of the cup she was holding and ran down the side of the couch.
“I can’t believe this,” Francie said.
“Can’t believe what?” Dana asked her daughter gently.
“Can’t believe what I’m about to say, and that I never told you about it, never told anyone.” She drew in a long breath and let it out shakily. “It’s something that happened at the beginning of fourth grade, when I was nine years old.”
“What?” Dana looked more nervous than puzzled.
“Remember Erin Mulligan?” Francie said.
Dana’s frown intensified. “Erin Mulligan?”
“You don’t remember her?”
“No. Why? Who was she?”
Francie looked stricken. “Dana! She was the little girl who was kidnapped! The one they never found? The one they assumed had been murdered?”
“Good lord,” said Dana. “I haven’t thought of her in years.”
“Well, I think of her every day.”
“Why? You didn’t know her.”
“No, but …” Francie’s voice faltered.
“Honey?” asked her mother.
“But about two weeks before she disappeared, a man in a black station wagon tried to kidnap me.”
“What?”
“It’s true.” Francie was crying now. “I was walking home from school by myself and a car pulled up next to me and a man inside told me that you had called him and asked him to pick me up and drive me home. I almost got in the car with him. I almost believed him, even though you and Matthew had told me so many times never, never to get in a car with a stranger.”
“But why didn’t you tell us what had happened?”
“Because of what I just said. I felt stupid. And also because the man knew my name. Someone had just called out, ‘Francie Goldberg!’ and he’d heard. I got away from him then, but he made a threat, and I thought that if he knew my name, then he could come find me. I didn’t know what he’d do to me, or to you and Matthew. So I didn’t say anything. And then two weeks later, Erin was kidnapped, and after that I really couldn’t say anything, because everyone would wonder why I hadn’t spoken up sooner. If I had, maybe Erin would be safe. So I knew I could never say anything about it.”
“Oh my lord,” said Dana, wrapping Francie in a fierce hug. “My Francie. My poor Francie.”
“Mom,” said Georgia with a flash of understanding, “is that why you’re so afraid? Because you don’t want something like that to happen to Richard or Henry or me?”
“I suppose so.” Francie sniffed, and reached for her teacup. “Ever since then I’ve felt that it’s up to me to keep bad things from happening. I know I can’t prevent everything, but …” She shrugged. “I just wanted to keep you from harm.”
“I didn’t know,” said Georgia in a small voice. “I’m sorry.”
“How could you know?” Francie replied and offered her daughter a smile. “It certainly isn’t your fault.”
“I guess our mothers aren’t what they seem to be,” said Abby.
“You mean our daughters,” said Dana.
“Well, both. But in this case I mean our mothers.”
“I don’t understand,” said Francie.
“I think I do,” said Georgia, “but you tell, Great-Grandma.”
Abby smiled. “Georgia and I have been keeping a secret of our own. Except ours is a little lighter.”
“Yours is,” said Georgia in a small voice. “I have another one, as long as we’re airing things out, and it isn’t light. But you go first.”
Abby eyed Georgia curiously, but said simply, “It starts with a stack of old diaries. Why don’t you go get them, honey?”
“Really?” said Georgia.
“Really.”
So Georgia disappeared into her room and returned to the porch with Nell’s diaries.
Abby eyed them. “Five?” she asked.
Georgia nodded.
They took turns telling Francie and Dana about the diaries and Nell and her secret romance. They even showed them the hidey-hole. But when they had settled on the porch again, Abby said, “Apparently, Georgia has a secret to share with us, too. When she told me about the diaries she only showed me four. It appears that there’s another.”
Georgia nodded. “A final one. The last one Nell kept before she …” She looked helplessly at her great-grandmother. “Um, my secret about Nell is sort of awful. That’s why I didn’t want you to know about it. But now I see that keeping secrets isn’t always a good thing. It’s just that I didn’t want you to …” She trailed off. “You know what? There’s no real reason for you to know this.”
“Tell me,” said Abby quietly. “Enough secrets.”
“All right.” As gently as possible, Georgia related the final months of Nell’s life, and finished by saying, “So I don’t think she just got sick and died. I think she — I think she killed herself.”
Everyone was silent for a long time. They watched Abby, who remained dry-eyed. At last she said, “I guess this explains why my father never wanted to talk about her death. He must have felt responsible, whether he should have or not. I suppose, too, that he thought he was protecting my sisters and me.”
&nbs
p; “Your mother really loved you,” said Georgia. “You can tell that from all the diaries, but especially the last one. But she didn’t know what to do about the way she felt. I think she stayed around longer than she might have if she hadn’t been your mother.”
“If she’d lived today,” said Dana, “she could have gotten help. But back then people didn’t understand about depression.”
“Are you sorry I told you?” asked Georgia.
Abby shook her head. “No. I feel as though I know her better now. And maybe I know my father better, too. Thank you, honey.”
Georgia clasped her grandmother’s right hand with her left hand, and her mother’s left hand with her right hand. She saw her mother reach for her great-grandmother’s hand, and her great-grandmother reach for her grandmother’s hand.
They sat that way for a long time, in the little cottage on Blue Harbor Lane, four generations linked together. Unified.
“How do I look?” Georgia asked Ava.
Ava Norwood stood back and studied her best friend. “Perfect. How do I look?”
“Perfect.”
“I can’t believe this day is here. I mean, we’ve been waiting to graduate forever, and now the ceremony is” — Georgia checked her watch — “fifteen minutes away, and suddenly I wish we could do our senior year all over again.”
“Really?” asked Ava.
“No. But you know what I mean.”
Ava smiled. “I wish I could keep my cap and gown.”
“Me, too. Oh, well. You know our parents will take a million pictures of us. That will be almost as good.”
Georgia looked around the crowded gymnasium at the seniors, who in five minutes would line up for their graduation, after which they would officially be members of the Barnegat Point Central High School class of 2013.
This time the year before, she and her family had been sitting in the bleachers on the playing field, waiting for Richard and his classmates to file outside, waiting to hear Richard’s name called: Richard Burley Noble. With high honors.
With high honors. It had been hard to believe. Georgia suspected that Richard had had the hardest time of anyone believing what he had achieved. But he’d spent his junior and senior years working hard, and had been accepted at Colby College. He’d turned his back on a lot of his former friends (Georgia’s parents were fond of saying, “Were they ever truly your friends, Richard?”), had made a few new friends, and had worked with his physical therapist until he could walk without a limp. He had also told Georgia that he thought about the accident and about Mr. Elden every single day.
Georgia felt a hand on her shoulder.
“Wake up,” Ava said. “Come on. It’s time to get in line.”
Georgia made her way through the room of flapping blue gowns and excited, chattering, laughing, about-to-be graduates. As rehearsed, she took her spot behind Wray Nissen. Ava stood directly behind her. Georgia turned to look at her and burst into tears.
“No! Don’t start!” exclaimed Ava. “You’re going to make me cry, too. Turn around so I can’t see you.”
Georgia flashed her friend a trembling smile and turned toward Wray’s back. She tried to envision her family in the bleachers outside. Her parents and Henry were there, of course, and so was Richard. He’d been home from his freshman year at Colby for several weeks. All four of her grandparents were also there, and so were Great-Grandma and Orrin. Once again, four generations of Georgia’s family were present, a claim that not many of her friends could make. Georgia felt supremely grateful.
She thought back to the night two years ago (two years ago) when she, her mother, her grandmother, and her great-grandmother had sat on the porch at the cottage and poured out their secrets. When the evening had ended, Georgia felt like a pond that had been drained. She was empty — although not in a bad way — and, she thought, more tired than she had ever been in her life.
Everyone had been tired, and Great-Grandma had even spent the night, sleeping in Georgia’s bed while Georgia slept in a sleeping bag on the floor. When Georgia had awakened the next morning, the first thing she’d thought about was her mother and her secret, about keeping such an awful secret for such a long time. She thought about the guilt that must have built up, and her mother’s desire to make things right, or at least her desire never to let anything bad happen again.
In the days that followed, after Nana Dana and Great-Grandma had gone home, and after Georgia had returned to school, she’d sensed a shift in her mother. It was hard to pinpoint at first. She noticed that the atmosphere in the cottage seemed lighter. Then Francie began asking Georgia’s father for his opinion, when opinions were called for, and she stopped saying no quite so often. One day Henry asked permission to go on a camping trip with the Quigley boys and their parents, and Mr. and Mrs. Noble simply glanced at each other and said, “Yes.”
Georgia’s mother had added, “Have fun.”
Period. The end.
Eventually, Richard had gone off to college. To Georgia’s surprise, he’d said he wanted to leave for his freshman year on his own. Not that he didn’t want his parents along on that first day; he just wanted to prove to himself that he could be entirely independent without getting into trouble. And he had been.
Henry had begun his freshman year at BPCHS, and Georgia had sailed through her senior year, continuing guitar lessons with her new teacher and discovering that she enjoyed volunteering at a school for children with developmental delays — using her guitar to draw them out, teaching them songs to expand their vocabulary.
She was remembering the music class she’d taught the previous week, all the children shouting (Georgia really couldn’t call it singing, as joyful as it was) “Hot Chocolate” from The Polar Express, when once again she felt a hand on her shoulder.
“Georgia!” Now Ava’s voice was more insistent. She gave her friend a little shove, and Georgia realized that Wray Nissen was several yards ahead and her classmates were filing out of the gym and onto the playing field.
Georgia ran to catch up, and moments later she was blinking in the bright sunshine of a June afternoon in Barnegat Point, Maine.
Graduation day.
* * *
The sun beamed down on the bleachers at the edge of the playing field. Sitting in a line four rows from the front were Georgia’s family: Her grandpa Matthew and his wife, Maura, Nana Dana, Great-Grandma Abby, Orrin, Georgia’s mother, her father, Richard, Henry, and her other grandparents. They took up an entire row.
Francie blinked back tears as she watched Georgia and her classmates take their places on the playing field. She remembered her own graduation from Princeton High School as she accepted her diploma, and thought of a little girl who would never become a grown woman and would never receive a high school diploma of her own.
Dana remembered her graduation from Manhattan High School for the Arts, an event that couldn’t have been more different from the one she was attending now. It had been held in the auditorium of her large New York City school on a rainy day, and her family had traveled from Maine to be there with her. Her beloved aunt Adele had been there, too — everyone applauding Dana as she received her diploma and dreamed of a future as a famous artist.
Abby smiled as she watched Georgia and her classmates. She had graduated from this very same school seventy-three years earlier. The ceremony hadn’t been anything like this. For one thing, her class had been just a fraction the size of Georgia’s. And although she couldn’t see them from the bleachers, she knew that some of the students wore nose rings (Abby would never understand the appeal of looking like a bull), lip rings, and other things she and her classmates couldn’t have contemplated in 1940. But still. Here was her great-granddaughter graduating from her very own alma mater — and, unlike Abby, going on to college.
On the playing field, Georgia stood nervously behind Wray and waited to hear his name called. When at last Wray stepped forward, Georgia reached behind her and gripped Ava’s hand. Ava squeezed back.
Georgia waited.
“Georgia Eleanor Goldberg Noble,” called the assistant principal, and Georgia walked the short distance across the field to the podium that had been set up. Standing in front of the podium was the principal. As she handed Georgia her diploma, the assistant principal added, “With highest honors.”
A cheer went up from the stands, a cheer too loud to have come just from Georgia’s family, as large as it was. Georgia turned toward the bleachers, waved her diploma in the air, then gleefully shifted the tassel on her cap from the right to the left. She had done it.
She was a member of the class of 2013.
* * *
The lights in the cottage on Blue Harbor Lane shone across the scrubby front lawn. Georgia sat on the porch with her mother, Nana Dana, and Great-Grandma Abby. Inside the cottage, and spilling out the back door into the tiny yard beyond were the rest of her family. Georgia heard laughter, heard Richard shout, “Aw, man. No way!” She heard the sound of the refrigerator open and close — and open and close and open and close. She smelled hot dogs and s’mores and the salty ocean air.
She looked at the women who surrounded her on the porch, looked from face to face to face.
“Here we are again,” said Great-Grandma. “Four generations.”
“Under happier circumstances,” said Nana Dana.
“Much happier,” agreed Georgia’s mother.
Georgia said nothing. She was about to cry for the fiftieth or sixtieth time that day.
Wordlessly her mother handed her a tissue. “You should have seen me when I graduated from high school,” she said.
“She was like a faucet,” added Nana Dana, and Georgia laughed through her tears.
“What is it with graduation? Why am I so emotional?” she asked.
“Because it’s a beginning,” said Nana Dana.
“It feels like an ending,” said Georgia.
“It’s both, I suppose,” said Great-Grandma. “But think about what’s coming up for you, honey.”
Georgia nodded and blew her nose. She actually couldn’t wait for what was coming up — and not just college. Before that, there was the summer. Georgia’s parents had given her permission to live in Portland for six weeks, teaching music at a school for physically challenged children. She would be earning an actual paycheck and she would be playing her guitar, singing, teaching guitar, and, she hoped, opening up the world of music to children who might not have had any experience with music before.