Mrs. E. taps her chin with a finger, brow crinkled. “I had it out just a few days ago to serve tea to dear Beth. I know Joy put them back in the cabinet afterward because she was so cross about having to do so. Really, that woman is unpleasant. I believe I should tell Henry to find another nurse.”
I open my mouth to speak, shut it, open it again.
“You look like a codfish, Guinevere, and are most distracted today. Your young man was also supposed to be pruning the boxwoods and I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him. Is there anything you need to speak with me about? I was young a thousand years ago or more, but I do remember. Sometimes better than I remember what happened yesterday, truth be told.” She reaches over and pulls out the cornflower-blue painted kitchen chair, gesturing to me to sit down, then takes one of my hands in her soft, wrinkled one.
“Does everyone just keep secrets and lie all the time?” I ask at last, my voice loud in the quiet kitchen. “Is that just how it goes?”
She blinks, her gray eyelashes fluttering in surprise.
“Because remember how you told me there were no secrets on Seashell? There are nothing but secrets on Seashell. Everywhere. It seems like this big open place . . . I mean, no one has fences and there are hardly any trees, people leave their windows open, some of them don’t lock their doors. But . . . but it doesn’t matter. There are all these walls and . . . No one knows everything that anyone is doing or they know and aren’t telling or they’re telling the wrong people. I just . . . I just want to get away from this place to somewhere else. Somewhere nothing like that.”
“My dear girl, I fear you will be hard-pressed to find such a place outside of the pages of a book. Even there, what are stories made of but secrets? Look at Lady Sylvia. If she had simply told Sir Reginald that she was the mysterious chambermaid with whom he’d spent that passionate night, the book would have been twenty pages long.”
I don’t want to think about Lady Sylvia and her sensuous secrets. I want what’s true.
Mrs. E. examines my face. “I never thought I’d see you pout, Guinevere. You don’t seem the type.” She reaches for the china cup, takes a sip of uncreamy, sugarless tea, makes a face. “I expect my job at this point is to come up with some of the wisdom one supposedly gains with age.” She taps her chin with her finger again. “This is difficult, as I seem to know less, and be far less sure of anything, in my late eighties than I was in my youth. Tea is dreadful without sugar, Gwen. Just add it from the canister, will you, never mind the silver service?”
“It’s okay, Mrs. Ellington. You don’t need to advise me.”
“How about this, dear girl? It’s about the best I have to offer. Yes, it’s incredibly difficult for two people to be straightforward with each other. We get afraid, embarrassed . . . we all want others to think highly of us. I was married to the captain for five years before he confessed to me that he had never captained a boat at all. That, indeed, boats made him seasick. I’d thought he’d had a bad experience in the war and that was why he didn’t want to go out on the water. But he was never in the Navy at all . . . but I digress. Perhaps, dear Gwen, you could think, instead of what a betrayal it is to be lied to, how rare and wonderful it is when two human beings can tell each other the truth.” She pats my hand, gives me her most joyous smile and then says, “Don’t pout, though. The wind may change and your face could be stuck like that.”
“Mrs. E., your son is taking your things and selling them. That friend of his . . . he’s looked through your silver and your paintings and your chairs and I overheard them . . .”
I trail off.
I wait for her face to darken with rage—at Henry, or more likely me, the eavesdropping bearer of bad tidings. The person who tells things no one wants to know.
But instead, she laughs, deep from the belly, patting my hand again, and leaving me completely confused. “Yes, dear,” she says finally, practically wiping tears from her eyes.
“You know?”
“Yes, Henry and I had a conversation yesterday. But even before that . . . I’m not a fool, dear girl. Gavin Gage is an old friend of Henry’s, but it was hardly likely he’d be popping by for a social call. Everyone on Seashell, if not all of Connecticut, knows Gavin is the man to go to when you wish to discreetly part with a useless family heirloom for a few useful dollars.”
“But . . . But . . . he was always sneaking around and making sure you were napping and worrying about whether you’d notice something was missing.”
“I’m so grateful I’m not a man,” Mrs. Ellington says. “We women are proud, but honestly, men! Yes, Henry and I had a long discussion yesterday when I asked him to show me the balance books to see if I could give you a little something for being such a help so far this summer. I’ve never seen such hemming and hawing, and finally he had to confess that he’d made some unwise investments and that we are now, like half the families on Seashell, asset rich and cash poor. As if I’d rather he work himself into a heart attack than sell that hideous ring that belonged to my mother-in-law.”
She tosses back the last of her tea, then says cheerfully, “It’s chilly today. Too cold to go to the beach. The ladies will no doubt be wanting to hear more of Lady Sylvia’s sins. Can you make some of Ben’s sauce for them? He sent Marco to me last night with a perfectly cooked lobster.”
Nic has been gone for a whole day of work now, edging into evening. Tony and Marco haven’t even called to check on him. Manny must have said something. Mom goes to clean that office building in town. Because it’s Thursday, and that’s what she does on Thursday. Grandpa heads out to bingo night. Viv has a wedding rehearsal to cater for Almeida’s. Emory had speech and occupational therapy and he’s tired and wants to watch Pooh’s Big Adventure. So I’m sitting here with my little brother, staring blankly at the screen, remembering Nic and me always trying to figure out why on earth Pooh had a shirt but no pants. I want Nic. I want Cass. I want the things I thought were sure things. The thing I was thinking, finally believing, would be a real thing. Rewind. Redo.
“Hideout loves you,” Emory whispers, burrowing into my side, nudging his hermit crab into my armpit.
I’m crying over a stuffed crustacean.
I think this is what they call rock bottom.
“What in God’s name is Emory doing awake at this hour?” Dad asks. I jolt awake. Myrtle groans. Dad is dragging in his laundry bag and tossing it in the usual spot.
I have no sense of time at all. It’s dark. Emory’s sitting beside me, eyes like saucers, still watching Pooh. Have I been asleep for minutes? Hours?
The digital clock reads 11:20. Nic’s been gone now for more than twenty-four hours. We can report him missing, now, right? Or does it have to be forty-eight? The fact that I am even wondering about this makes my stomach hurt.
Mom and Grandpa are at the table, flicking out cards. Gin rummy? Really? We all start talking at once, including Em, who gets up, walks over, and puts his arms around Dad’s waist, wailing, “Niiiiicky!”
Dad ruffles his hair absentmindedly, looking at Mom. “Luce, don’t get yourself into one of your swivets. Gwen, I’d think you’d be smarter. Ben, he’s fine. Calm down, all of you. I’ve got him. He’s at my house. He’ll be back tomorrow.” Tomarra. Hard on the accent. Dad’s not as casual as he sounds.
Our voices are still overlapping, asking if Nic’s okay, telling Dad how worried we were, all about swim captain and “Why didn’t you call and tell us, Mike?” This last from my mother, in such a loud voice that Emory murmurs, “Be nice to Daddy.”
“It’s fine, Emmie,” Dad says. “I know all about the captain thing and the girl. He came over yesterday to Castle’s wicked messed up, but I had a busload of tourists getting ice cream, so I told him to head to my house, get ahold of himself and take this the way a man does.”
“How exactly is a man supposed to handle finding out that the girl he’s loved all his life likes somebody else, Dad?”
Mom’s and Grandpa’s mouths drop open.
“Don’t get
all dramatic about this, pal. I expect better from you,” Dad says, but then he gives me a grin that makes him look unexpectedly boyish, the eighteen-year-old Mom fell for. “Like a man takes everything. By drinking a beer, watching sports on television, feeling sorry for himself. For one night only. He was doing all three when I left him. He’ll be fine. Christ, what a bunch of drama queens.”
I grab Dad’s sleeve as he’s climbing into his truck, to thank him, yes, but also to ask why he let us worry for so long. Dad doesn’t do the cell phone thing, but still . . . how hard would it have been to say it would all turn out okay?
“Don’t worry about the kid, Gwen. He’s a bit of an ass right now, but he’ll be fine. Sometimes we all need to cut loose. I told him if he didn’t knock off being such a hothead he was gonna wind up just like me.” He gives me that young-boy grin again. “That should scare him straight.”
He peers at me. “You look like you could use a drive, pal. Maybe a getaway of your own.” He pauses, still squinting. Then leans over, flicks open the passenger-side door, tips his head to welcome me.
I climb in.
He backs up, screeching, zooms forward. The electric Seashell gate is primed to lift when you get close enough. But dad always barges through that. Every time I think he’s just going to ram right through it, knock it down, but it lifts just in time.
I love that we’re sheltered in Mom’s and Grandpa’s caring hands. But sometimes—like now—Dad’s wildness is a relief too. Like jumping off a bridge. A rush.
I flick up the sound on his CD. In the Bronco, it’s always soothing music Emory likes. Elmo, low-key Disney, more Sesame Street, Raffi. Grandpa’s snappy, romantic songs from long ago.
With Dad, when it’s not talk radio, you can count on the angry rasp of the Rolling Stones, or the frustrated yell of Bruce Springsteen.
“Tramps like us, baby we were born to run . . .”
“Dad. There’s something I need to tell you about the Ellingtons,” I start. “It’s not good.”
He turns down the music only slightly. “Jeez, you and Nic, disaster-wise . . . a mile a minute. What now, Guinevere?”
I explain about Henry Ellington.
Dad gets increasingly angry. Thank God, not at me.
“He said he was counting what? His lobster forks?” Lobstah.
“But that’s what you told me to do, Dad. Keep an eye out for opportunity. That’s what you said. ‘My chance.’ But I didn’t take it. I would never. Couldn’t. Did you want me to? Really?”
He pulls over to the side of the road, halfway to the causeway. Rakes his hands through his hair. Looks anywhere but at me.
“Pal,” he says finally. “I was eighteen when your mom had you. We get to the hospital and she’s screaming and she’s crying and she’s in pain and there’s blood and there’s just . . . I only wanted to run. It all seemed a million miles away from how it started, fun on the beach, a bonfire, cute girl . . . whatever. But . . . they hand us this kid—you, with your serious eyes. This little worried crinkle thing you did with your eyebrows, like you already knew we aren’t the best, and it’s . . . like . . . like we’re supposed to know what do with all that. How to fix that. And hell if we do. Luce knew how to clean stuff up. I knew how to fry stuff up. Gulia was already a disaster—pills, booze, dumbass boys. We knew what was coming our way there, and it was Nic. Another kid. We were his only chance. There was no other way. So, you know, we took it. Nic. You. Emory, with all his . . . whatever. I just want it to be easier for you guys. Something just a little bit easier. Maybe I picked a stupid way to tell you that. I just didn’t want my way to be yours. ’Cause mine . . . well . . . I just want better for you. That’s all.”
Dad’s starts the truck up again, heading to his house on the water.
He takes a deep breath.
Pause.
Another deep breath.
I’m waiting for major Dad wisdom.
“Pal.”
“Dad . . . ?”
“So Nic’s here. And you’re here. Don’t try to make the guy spill his guts. A time for talking, sure, but Mario Kart goes a long way.”
Nic’s crashed out in front of the TV, clicker outstretched in hand. Dad throws a blanket on him, too short for his long legs, pulls out the couch bed for me. I text Mom, Viv, and Grandpa before I fall asleep at like two in the morning. Grandpa has nothing to do with cell phones and Mom always erases messages while trying to retrieve them. Viv will get it, though.
Someone is shaking my shoulder, none too gently.
I bolt upward in bed, smacking the top of my head against Nic’s chin. Both of us yelp.
Then, “C’mon, cuz,” he says, his voice hoarse with sleep.
I slope off the couch, dragging the quilt with me, following him out the door to the slatted wide boards that run from the house over the salt marsh to dry land. Nic sits down heavily, wearing a pair of Dad’s faded Red Sox boxers, dangling his feet over the edge of the small bridge, flicking his toe into the water, scattering ripples. He looks awful. Dark circles under his eyes, which are a little bloodshot, his hair rumpled. He’s wearing one of Dad’s plaid flannel shirts too, too tight on his wide shoulders, the front straining at the buttons. I wrinkle my nose. Beer and sweat. Ugh.
He clears his throat.
“Wanna hit the pier?”
“I want to hit you! I looked everywhere, Nic. I thought . . . We all thought you’d drowned yourself in the creek!”
“Seriously? I would never do that, Gwen.”
“Nic—”
“Not here,” he orders. “Come on.”
He already has Dad’s truck out in front, engine purring. So unlike Nic to premeditate. Everything is different now.
I slide into the passenger seat with the torn upholstery inadequately patched by duct tape. Nic adjusts the rearview mirror, fastens his seat belt, moves his seat back, doing all these safety checks as though he’s about to take off in a Cessna rather than a battered Chevy.
Silence as we ride down to the bridge. Nic doesn’t slow on Ocean for the speed bump, and the truck bounces hard as we go over it. Driving like Dad. He pulls in sharply, spraying sand, then turns to me.
“Did you know?” he asks, at the exact same time I blurt out the same question.
“About Vivie?” I press, because Nic doesn’t. “Had no clue. I would have . . .”
I don’t know what I would have done.
We slide out of the truck, pick our way down to the beach, the sand so cold and wet, I’m shivering. Cass would have grabbed a sweatshirt for me, offered me his. In this short time, I’ve gotten accustomed to these little things, little watchful courtesies, enough for their absence to feel strangely like a presence.
At the creek’s edge, Nic sits down heavily. I fall into place next to him. He shifts sideways, reaches into his pocket, pulls out a flat rock, balancing it in the flat of his hand as though weighing it, staring at it as though he’s never seen such a thing.
I reach for it, planning to snatch it from him, throw it into the rush of water, not to skip, just to get rid of it, wipe out the memories Nic must be leafing through, wondering what signs he missed . . . how what he thought was true turned out to be nothing like the truth at all.
But Nic curls his fingers around the rock before I can take it.
“So, I’ve been a douche lately,” he begins.
“Well, yeah. You sure have,” I say. “But that’s not why Vivie—”
He opens his mouth to answer, then closes it, a little muscle jumping in his jaw. “I’m not talking about Vee.”
“Nico—” I start, but he shakes his head, stopping me.
“Last year—even this spring—you never for a moment would have thought I’d offed myself in the creek. That’s true, right?”
His brown eyes pierce mine. I nod.
“Did you know?” I ask. “About Spence?”
He shakes his head, kicks at the water. “Yes. No. Something wasn’t right. She was . . . I was . . . I just figured I’d
fix it later. I mean, she’d be there. Of course. Get the captain thing squared away, then deal. But . . . I mean . . . what happened on the beach. Pretty clear that ship had sailed while I wasn’t even looking.”
I wait, quiet. Dad said not to push.
“I . . . couldn’t face you guys, after . . . Aunt Luce, Grandpa . . . you . . . You’d be all sorry for me.” He rolls his shoulders as though shrugging off our imagined sympathy. “Knew Uncle Mike wouldn’t be like that.”
“Did you get the What a Man Does lecture?”
“Hell yeah,” he says. “I knew you’d be freaking. Told him to call you. He said a man spoke for himself. If I wasn’t ready to talk to you, he sure as shit wasn’t going to do it for me.”
Again I open my mouth, but he shuts me down with the wave of a hand. Or in this case a fist, since he’s still holding the stone.
“Do you remember,” he asks, “when Old Mrs. Partridge had that skunk under her porch, cuz? When we were, like, seven? And she called your dad to handle it? He threw a towel over it and tossed it to me and it bit me through the towel?”
I do. I remember Viv holding his hand in the clinic, crying the tears Nic would never let himself cry.
Oh Nic.
“And Vivien—”
“This is not about Vivien. I had to get rabies shots, ’member? And the nurse was standing there with this wicked big needle. Aunt Luce and Vovó were crying, and Grandpa Ben was praying, and you were asking if it would work if you took it instead. I asked if it would hurt . . . Grandpa and Aunt Luce started to say no and Uncle Mike said it was gonna hurt like a motherfucker. Do you remember that?”
I do, partly because I’d never heard that particular word before.
“Thing is, he was right. It did. But it helped. Knowing how I was going to feel. Can’t deal with the truth if no one tells it, right?”
I nod.
“I’ve loved that girl all my life,” Nic says.
“I know.”
He weighs the stone in his hand, angles his wrist, flips it across the water. A double skip, not one of his best.