PART ONE June 1 Barton, Massachusetts Eliza "No," Sheila Rackley was saying, "that's not how it happened at all, you have to listen to this, it was way worse . . ." Just then one of Sheila's children, whose hair was red, whose skin was a pinky brown with freckles, and whose eyelashes were pale, just like his mother's, appeared before the group of women. He cleared his throat like a senator about to introduce a bill, and said, with great ceremony, "Jackie is being mean to me, Mommy." An expression of annoyance briefly crossed Sheila's face; its passage was so fast that Eliza Barnes wasn't sure if she'd imagined it or not. It was June, the last day of school, and already hot. They were at the club. Someone had ordered a round of Bloody Marys, which were sweating as much as the women themselves, though the women did it more delicately. Even the celery in Eliza's drink seemed to have given up, allowing itself to slip in an undignified manner into the tomato juice. Sheila held up a hand to the women and said, "To be continued, " before turning to her son and stage--whispering, "Edward, you did absolutely the right thing, telling me politely instead of screaming, it's just that Mommy was in the middle of a story---" "Is that someone's phone?" asked Jodi Sanders. "I don't care," said Catherine Cooper. "If it's mine, I'm letting it ring and ring. It's summer vacation! I'm off duty." "Actually," said Eliza. "You're sort of on duty, now that it's summer vacation, wouldn't you say?" "I've got two words for you, Eliza," said Jodi. "Summer. Nanny." "Hear, hear," said Sheila. Her Bloody Mary was gone; she flagged the pale wren of a girl who was serving that day and asked her for another. "Kristi Osgood is home from McGill." "I already hired her," said Deirdre Palmer. "Figures," said Sheila. "You need her for your one perfect, well--behaved Sofia." "She does!" said Eliza. "You have no idea how much work this EANY gala is for Deirdre." East Africa Needs You, Deirdre's pet project. Deirdre and Eliza went way back---all the way to a breast-feeding class they took at the hospital soon after Sofia and Zoe were born. Sofia and Eliza's oldest daughter, Zoe, had no choice but to be best friends, really; their friendship had such auspicious, intimate beginnings. "Eenie, meenie, miney, moe," said Sheila, one hand on her son's shoulder. "Anyway. To continue what I was saying. What was I saying?" "Mom," said Eddie. "I mean really mean, let me just tell you what---" Sheila emitted a small frustrated huff, made a sun visor out of her hand, and peered at her son. After a quarter of a minute she stood and led him firmly to a secluded spot farther from the pool where she crouched in front of him and gesticulated wildly. Eliza could see Eddie nodding, then shaking his head, then nodding again, before turning away and trudging back toward the knot of kids by the pool, a doleful sag to his skinny shoulders. Eliza scanned the pool area for Zoe and her other daughter, Evie; Sofia and Zoe were reluctantly and temporarily allowing Evie's ten--year--old earth to orbit their thirteen--year--old sun. Whenever Eliza pointed out that she herself would have given her eyesight or at least three of her toes for a sister when she was growing up, Zoe let her eyes drift into an almost--roll that she always caught at the last second. Because she knew that Eliza's loss of her own mother when she was so very young (only twelve! Younger than Zoe was now!) had induced in Eliza a pain that had faded over time but had never gone away, that still---often---came out of nowhere to strike at her wrathfully and unforgivingly, like a rheumatoid arthritis flare--up. Eliza had not had the vocabulary at the time to define the effects of her mother's death. But she understood, then and now, on a deep and primordial level that every day after the event would become a search for the thing she'd lost. As a result: lots of therefores. *Therefore, Eliza would be the best mother possible, because she was alive to be so. *Therefore, she would appreciate each and every day, no matter what it brought. *Therefore, she would take exquisite care of herself: omega--3s, mammograms, the occasional green juice. *Therefore, she would kiss her daughters good night and tell them she loved them even on days that they infuriated her or left their dirty clothes on the bathroom floor and hair balls in the shower drain. All of which they did. Eliza lifted her face to the sun and let the voices of the women around her fade into the background. Jodi was asking, "Whose phone is that?" Sheila was ranting, "Honestly, if they spend all summer bickering I'm going to hire two separate nannies and spend the whole summer by myself in Hyannis," and Catherine was saying something about how Henry was incensed about the increase in docking fees at the club this year and how some people were starting to look elsewhere; didn't the superior beings who ran the club know that they couldn't just do that without any warning ?---some people did not have unlimited funds with which to dock their boats. Not that it was a problem for the Coopers, of course, but what if it was a problem for others? Eliza breathed in, breathed out. Sun on her face on a June day. Drinks in the early afternoon, carrying with them a sensation of illicitness that made them taste even better, like the women were all teenagers, getting away with something while their parents had their heads turned the other way. Cosseted offspring splashing gleefully about in the safe confines of the yacht club pool, slathered in expensive sunscreen, clad in swimsuits that ranged from adorable (Evie, rocking a mini Boden one--piece with age--appropriate polka dots) to borderline tasteless (Jackie Rackley, also thirteen, in a bikini that looked ready for Copacabana). Who would have thought that this, any of this, was what the future held for a lobsterman's daughter? Eliza didn't want to open her eyes, because if she did, if she caught the glance of Jodi or Catherine or Sheila, one of them might whisper aloud what Eliza was sure they all thought of her secretly. Interloper, they'd say. You don't belong here. That was something she'd been feeling lately a lot more than usual, and for that she blamed Phineas Tarbox. A ridiculous name, Phineas Tarbox. An actual Boston Brahmin, the real deal. His office was on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston's Back Bay, not far from Judith's home. Judith was Eliza's mother--in--law. In fact, Phineas had been recommended by Judith, of course, like many things in their lives were. Judith was the unseen conductor of their orchestra, always calmly moving her baton. It was after their visit to Phineas Tarbox that Eliza felt something dark, almost sinister, creep into her marriage. An unwelcome guest. It wasn't just that Rob was busy and distracted with a big work project, often too tired at the end of the day to do anything but fall into bed, although that was true, or that the girls gobbled up time and energy from both of them, which was also true, and expected. It was something more. It was that sometimes she looked at him, this man she'd been married to for so many years, this man whose body was so familiar to her that she'd recognize even the crease of his elbow if shown a photograph of only that, and she saw a stranger. "Eliza!" said Sheila. "Wake up, that's your phone that's been ringing this whole time." "What? Oh. Oh geez, sorry." Eliza scanned the pool again, located Evie, who was following Zoe around like a pup tracking its mother, and dug in her mammoth pool bag for her phone. A Maine area code. Only her father called her from Maine, and this wasn't his number on the caller ID. "Hello?" "Eliza?" "This is Eliza." The voice on the other end was familiar in a way that seemed thrice removed from her ordinary life. "Liza, it's Russell." Something somersaulted---one of her organs. Could organs somersault? Many years ago, Eliza had completed two years of medical school at Boston University, so she knew that they couldn't. Not that you really needed the medical training to know that. "Russell Perkins?" She had to get up from her lounge chair and walk away to shield herself from the other women, who had fallen silent, sensing from Eliza's tone, both voice and skin, that something dramatic was about to happen. Or, maybe, had already happened. "That's the one," said Russell Perkins, Eliza Barnes's first love, her knight in shining armor, the Bruce Springsteen to her Mary. Zillions of memories flooded her: a pickup truck, a barn in winter, half of her clothes off, new desire. A nearly deserted island in summer, the inside of a car, a room in Bangor. She was sixteen again, seventeen, eighteen, all in a matter of seconds. She glanced back at the women, who had returned to their conversation but were stealing occasional tastefully curious glances at Eliza, glances that said both We are here for you if you need us and Are we missing something good? "Listen, Liza, you might want to get yourself up to Little Harbor just as quick as you can." Ohmygod, thought Eliza. Her legs almost gave out and she had to lean against the fence that enclosed the pool. It was happening. Her dad was gone. He'd been pulled overboard by a trap. He'd had a heart attack, or a stroke, or a fight that went wrong. He'd rolled his truck over on the way home from the bar. It was bound to happen, each of those evil creatures was waiting in the wings to lay their pronged teeth into Charlie Sargent's skin. Hazards of the job, of the lifestyle, the pay grade. All those years they spent together, just the two of them, leaning on each other. All those chicken cutlet dinners she'd prepared, and now he was gone. She was officially an orphan. Could you be a thirty--seven--year--old orphan? "Liza?" She croaked out something that tried to be a word but didn't make it. "Your dad hit his head on the boat this morning, the Coast Guard had to go out and bring him back in. Val took him to the emergency room, his arm was hurt too." "He called the Coast Guard?" Her dad would never call the Coast Guard, not unless it was a very serious emergency. She italicized the words in her mind because that's the way her dad always said them to her. You take care of things yourself unless it's a very serious emergency, Eliza. "He won't let anyone help him. He'd never tell you himself that he needs you, so I'm telling you. He needs you." Eliza recalculated. She wasn't a thirty--seven--year--old orphan. She wasn't an orphan at all. But her dad needed her. She turned back toward the lounge chairs. She could see that Sheila Rackley was finally completing her story and that it had been a doozy. Deirdre had her hand over her mouth, and her narrow, bronzed shoulders were shaking with laughter. Even Catherine Cooper, who was a tough audience, was smiling. "Liza?" said Russell, and her stomach twisted again in that unsettling way. Nobody else called her Liza. "Okay," she said. She cleared her throat. She turned toward the pool and saw Zoe standing at the edge of the diving board. She felt the same urge she always felt, to call out Don't jump! because bad things could happen on diving boards and she wanted to protect her children from every possible danger. She fought the same impulse each time she watched them buckle themselves into the backseat of a friend's car and wave at her nonchalantly. Don't go! she always wanted to say. Stay here with me, where you'll be safe! The world was full of untold menaces. Zoe executed a perfect swan dive, which had been honed by hours of practice and the assistance of a personal dive coach. Eliza knew that was ridiculous. Yet because of the coaching the dive was gorgeous. Eliza kept her eyes on the water until Zoe's head popped up (because you never knew) and felt the odd combination of pride and wonderment she often felt watching her daughters. It was almost envy, although she'd never say that out loud, because that was embarrassing. The things they knew how to do, the professional instruction they'd received in their young lives! Skiing, tennis, sailing---pastimes that had been so far off Eliza's radar when she was a child that she had thought only kids in movies engaged in them. "Okay," she said again. "Okay, I'll get up there as soon as I can. I just have to figure out a couple of things, make some arrangements for Zoe and Evie. For my daughters." When Eliza was Zoe's age all she knew how to do was row a skiff from the wharf to her dad's boat, the Joanie B, named after Eliza's mother, and how to use the gauge to measure the lobsters, and how to V--notch the pregnant females. She could also crack a lobster like nobody's business, pull every scrap of meat out, wasting not even a fraction of an ounce. Not exactly a useful skill set in Barton, although once, admittedly, at a midsummer yacht club clambake she'd had one too many gin and tonics and had made the rounds with her double--jaw lobster crackers, allowing herself to be timed by Deirdre's husband, Brock. (In her defense, the gin and tonics at the club were very strong.) "Okay? Thank you for calling, Russell. Thank you, really." Her organs did that strange gymnastics again. Last she knew of Russell he'd moved up to Bangor and was training to go into sales. Life insurance, or something equally necessary and staid. Life insurance! Russell Perkins, one of the best lobstermen Little Harbor had ever seen. It was outrageous. Must be that that hadn't stuck, that he'd come back. The good ones always came back. They couldn't really figure out any other way to live---they didn't want to. Eliza stood for a moment holding the phone. She wasn't sure what to do next, call the children over to her, or go back to her bag, to start getting her things organized, or call Rob, who she knew was in the middle of a meeting with his client, the indomitable Mrs. Cabot. Eliza was for a moment quite paralyzed. Fresh Bloody Marys had arrived at the table, and Deirdre brought one to Eliza, first putting it into her hand, and then closing Eliza's fingers around the plastic cup. "You look like you saw a ghost," said Deirdre. "I did, sort of," whispered Eliza. "Thank you, Deirdre." Her father, who never needed anyone, needed her. Russell Perkins, who never called her, had called her. If she left in an hour she'd be in Little Harbor before sunset. Cue the Springsteen. There were ghosts in the eyes of all the boys you sent away. Eliza tipped the cup back; she downed the whole drink in three gulps. 2 Little Harbor, Maine Eliza Zoe had called Eliza twice when she was going through New Hampshire, where cell phone use while driving was not allowed. Then Zoe had texted her twice but Eliza had been disciplined and had not looked at her phone, thinking of a very effective campaign she'd recently seen in the supermarket that featured a driving texter failing to see two elderly people crossing the road. The third time Zoe called Eliza was passing through Ellsworth. Three teens from Ellsworth had died on this road when Eliza was in high school---for the longest time there had been three wooden crosses there, adorned with flowers, teddy bears, bright strings of beads. Now Eliza slowed significantly on the curves, centering her car---Rob's car; she'd left hers behind for kid--related reasons---exactly between the yellow lines and the edge of the road. Once she had passed the danger zone outside of Ellsworth she called Zoe back. She listened to her for a while and then said, "Oh, sweetie." Jackie Rackley had started doing extremely enviable things with certain friends and posting the photos on Instagram and then tagging other girls who weren't included. Just to hit them over the head with their un--includedness. (Zoe had had to explain this to Eliza twice.) "All this happened in the last four hours? I'm perplexed. We were just with Jackie this afternoon." Maybe, thought Eliza, most friendships had an element of treachery to them---grown-ups were just better at hiding it. "No," said Zoe. "The pictures were taken at different times. She's just posting them now." "It's okay to be upset," said Eliza carefully. She had read that you were supposed to validate your kids' shifting emotions as they were growing, so they would continue to confide in you. "I'm not upset, " said Zoe. "I'm mad. She's being a jerk." If this had been Evie it would have been a waterworks show, but Zoe wasn't crying. She never cried. She snarled. She snorted. She seethed. Sometimes she raged. But she didn't cry. Even as a young child she'd borne insults and injury stoically, blinking hard and going internal. This was probably unhealthy, but Eliza didn't know how to change it. You couldn't force someone to cry, could you? Even so. If Eliza could have, she would have turned the car around, driven back to Barton, parked in the Rackleys' driveway, rung the doorbell, and unleashed a bucketful of venom on Jackie. For many obvious reasons, that wasn't practical. But also. You had to be so careful with teenagers. Your children wanted you to save them. Or they didn't want you involved at all. They wanted you to tell everyone. Or they'd die if you told anyone. Because she was nearing Little Harbor, Eliza opted for a practical, efficient approach: "Do you want me to talk to her mother?" "No! No, do not do that. You have to promise me you won't do that." "I won't," said Eliza. "I promise. But you really can't waste any mental energy on it. You're a smart girl, you don't need friends who would do something like that." "She's not my friend," Zoe snarled. "Exactly!" said Eliza. "You know who your real friends are, and they don't treat you this way." "That's not the problem." "So what's the problem?" "The problem is that now everyone who follows me can see that I wasn't included. And I can see that I wasn't included. That's the problem. It sucks." When Zoe was born and had finally stopped screaming like a fisher cat (she hadn't had a problem crying that day) long enough for Eliza to breast-feed for the first time, the careworn nurse had said, "Here's your daughter." Ah, thought Eliza. Lovely. And then the nurse had said, "I've got four of them. Good luck!" Eliza had looked at her newborn little girl and thought, Maybe you needed the luck, Nurse Whoever--You--Are, but I have good sense on my side. Then, after some sustained effort, Zoe had latched on for her very first meal. She'd been so small and fragile (she'd been born almost four weeks early), Eliza had felt like she was holding a collection of raw eggs. Eliza wanted to knock the teeth out of the world that had turned that trusting, slurping little thing into a girl left out of someone's stupid In-stagram post. "Zoe, sweetie? I'll call you soon. For now, go do something! Get your mind off of it. I promise Jackie Rackley isn't worth an ounce of your anything." "What should I do?" "Ride your bike!" "You always say that. Riding your bike is your solution to everything." Eliza did always say that; she loved bike riding. "That's because fresh air and exercise clear your head." "Fine," said Zoe. "I'll ride my bike." "Wear your helmet," said Eliza, and at the exact same time Zoe said, "I know. Wear my helmet." "I'll call you soon, little bunny. I love you." "I'm not a little bunny," said Zoe. And then, maybe reluctantly but then again maybe not: "I love you too." Eliza hung up the phone the exact second she crested the last hill and the harbor opened up before her. She gasped the same way she always did. It was so beautiful, it really did take her breath away, the craggy shoreline, the stands of pine, the gray--blue water. To the right, she knew, just out of view, was the wharf, and off to the side, all of the lobster boats rocking on their moorings. If they were in for the night. Would they be in? She checked the clock on the dashboard: six thirty, yes, they'd all be in. She opened her window and took a deep, cleansing breath. Even the air felt different here: unadulterated and pure, like air from biblical times. She pulled over, for just a minute, and got out of the car. When Eliza had first brought Rob to Little Harbor she'd stopped the car here and made him get out just like this and she'd said, "Breathe. Breathe. " Rob had breathed, and then he'd looked at Eliza like she was a teacher and he was a student afraid of getting the answer wrong, and then he'd said, "Yes!" although she never really knew if he was pretending or not. Not that she'd blame him if he were: Rob was from away, and there were certain things you just didn't know if you were from away . Such as: what the sky looks like when the boats go steaming out at dawn, a bright white ball just above the waterline, and around it a yellow glow like a halo, the sky going from black to gray to orange in just a blink. You didn't know the way the town feels before the first set of the season, the whole place lit up from within. That Christmas Eve shiver, when you're waiting to see what's going to get brought to you. You didn't know what a boat looks like setting out with a full load of traps stacked six high and six across; you didn't know what it was like to see a little boy of seven or eight, sitting on top of a pile of his daddy's traps, grinning like there was no tomorrow, wondering how long it would be before he'd grow into a big strong man too. You didn't know the way you can look at a man who's been out on the water his whole life and see nearly every trap he's hauled and every line he's tossed over just in the set of his eyes, the pleats in his face. Of course growing up here she couldn't escape fast enough. If it had been possible to put wings on her shoes and fly up and out she would have done it. What were the chances that the motherless daughter of a lobsterman would get into an Ivy League school, would actually figure out how to go ? She'd not only beaten the odds, she'd downright obliterated them. She'd had to take out student loans from here to eternity, but she'd done it: she'd gone. At Brown, in her freshman composition course, Eliza had described her hometown as " a tight knot on the edge of the Atlantic--an angry little knuckle ." Beautiful ! the teaching assistant had scribbled in the margins. So vivid ! "An angry little knuckle," indeed. What a pretentious college freshman she'd been. Luckily she'd abandoned the writing when she'd decided to go to medical school. Although she'd always thought she might have liked law school too. She thought of Phineas Tarbox and shuddered. Next to Eliza on the car's seat was her Givenchy bag, and inside the bag was a letter her mother had written her as she lay dying. She'd left it with Val with strict instructions to give it to Eliza on her sixteenth birthday. When she was home, the letter lived in Eliza's nightstand drawer. But anytime she left the house for more than a night she took it with her. It was thirteen pages long, single-spaced, written on yellow legal paper, and the handwriting was terrible, but that didn't stop Eliza from reading it over and over again. Not that she needed to read it anymore; she'd long ago memorized every single word. In it, Joanie laid out four lessons. She'd meant to lay out ten (Val told Eliza) but she'd died somewhere between four and five. Sometimes when her heart ached and she felt lost Eliza wondered what the other lessons were. My dearest, dearest Eliza, began the letter. The first thing I need tell you is that cancer sucks. Everyone knows that. But I didn't really know it, not for real, not until it came for me. The cancer itself sucks, and so does that awful heartbroken look in your dad's eyes that he tries to hide but can't, and the brave expression on Val's face, and the well-meaning hospice volunteer who speaks to me so that I want to haul off and punch her. If only I had the energy. I am thirty-one years old, Eliza, and you are twelve, and I won't be here when you turn thirteen and that, as they say, is the long and the short of it. Thirty-one! I thought I would live twice as long, maybe even three times as long, and the fact that I won't is just so incredibly surprising to me. Like it can't be right. There must be some mistake! I want to call out every time I see a nurse, a doctor, anyone. Excuse me, ma'am? Sir? You have the wrong person, I'm only thirty-one and my daughter is only twelve. And she needs me. But people die all the time, young and old, short and tall, black and white, parents of infants and toddlers and preteens and teenagers and adults. It's the circle of life, it's all perfectly natural. I just never knew the circle would be so very small in my case. I have to write this letter in little bits and pieces, Eliza, because I tire so easily. So don't hold it against me if it reads as somewhat disjointed. I myself am disjointed now, and I expect I will be until the end. Whenever that may be. I don't want Val to give you this letter right away, my darling Eliza. I'm going to ask her to wait until you're sixteen. Sixteen seems like the right age. You'll have a lot of questions you'll need answered when you're sixteen. When you die, Eliza, which I know you will do many many many happy years in the future, I strongly advise you to choose a different path. Heart attack. Stroke. Something quick. Slipping away blissfully in the night at the age of ninety-four. There are so many better options than this endless, useless, goddamn painful suffering, which takes so long and at the same time goes by so, so quickly. There. I've finished complaining. I want you to remember me as strong and beautiful, not as ugly and suffering and whiny. Being beautiful has always been important to me, maybe more important than it should have been. (That, my mother, your grandmother, would say, is how I got myself in trouble in the first place.) If I have to die young (thirty-one! I can't stop repeating the age, as if repeating it will make whoever is in charge Up There reconsider), then I would like to die a much prettier way, not wasted down like this, not with mouth sores and throat sores with my beautiful hair shorn close to my head. Shorn! What a deliciously descriptive, awful word. Do you know, Eliza, when I was a student at The Baldwin School (Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania, a place you have never been and I suppose now you will never go) I won the prestigious Baldwin Creative Writing Award? Diane Douglas thought she had it all tied up, but in fact she did not.. I was meant for wonderful things, that's what my senior English teacher, Ms. Collier, she of the stylishly cropped gray hair and nonchalant printed scarf, always told me. I was meant to go off and write Something Important. The Great American Novel, maybe, or a small but meaningful book of poetry. Do you know what I've written, Eliza? Almost nothing. Shopping lists. Recipes. Thank you notes (you can't escape your upbringing, no matter how you try). A couple of letters home that went unanswered, early on. That's it, until now. Now, I am writing my magnum opus, my masterpiece. My letter to you. In her father's driveway Eliza saw the familiar blue pickup and Val's ancient, rusty Civic. That car had been brand new when Eliza was a senior in high school, two thousand years ago. Frugal didn't even begin to describe the way Val was about cars. Val had been Eliza's mother's best friend: a BFF before BFFs existed. You might have thought them an unlikely pair: Val, native to the bone, Joanie, a Main Line Philadelphia transplant who'd washed up on Little Harbor's shores (not literally) and never left. Val ran one of the two restaurants in town--well, one of three, now, if you counted the new café, The Cup. Four, if you included The Wheelhouse, which was really just a bar. Although a lot of the locals turned their noses up at The Cup, Eliza was not planning on turning hers. She could tell from her father's descriptions ("fancy pants coffee," "avocado smoothies" "bread with little seeds and things stuck in it") that she would embrace the menu at The Cup with guilty, open arms. After Joanie died, Val had stepped into the role of Eliza's proxy mother--she never got married, never had her own kids. It was Val who bought Eliza her first box of tampons, her first real bra, her one and only prom dress. It was Val who helped get together the application to Brown, and Val who watched every one of Eliza's cross country meets when Charlie was hauling. It was Val's house Eliza went to after school each day the first dreadful year after Joanie died, when Eliza couldn't bear to go to her own empty house. And it was Val who'd taken Eliza on that awful trip to Bangor in that car, all those years ago. Eliza felt a little spasm of something terrible when she thought about that. She parked behind her dad's pickup and had no sooner gotten out of the car than Val appeared, wrapping Eliza in a giant hug. Val smelled like maple syrup and cinnamon (the pancakes at Val's were to die for --Evie always got two servings and ate them both); she smelled like the ocean and vanilla. She smelled like home. It was unnerving how much Val made Eliza think of what she'd lost and at the same time about what she'd gotten instead. "I'm so glad you're here. I need to run home to feed Sternman, but I didn't want to leave your dad." Sternman was Val's stout old Lab, teetering on the edge of extinction. "He doesn't know you're coming," said Val. "After you called me I decided not to tell him, thought he could use a surprise." She looked at Eliza with an expression that Eliza couldn't quite read, and then she said, "Oh, Eliza. I'll come in with you for a minute." Eliza wasn't sure what she was expecting when she walked into her childhood living room, where her dad was dozing on his old leather recliner, circa 1982, a rare gift to himself after a good season. Val entered before Eliza and went to stand protectively behind Charlie. She touched Charlie gently on the shoulder of his good arm and said, "See who's here!" Charlie opened his eyes and looked around with a startled expression that reminded Eliza of a bewildered old dog who'd been flung out of sleep. She felt a ball of dread begin to form in her stomach. Eliza knew about the sprained arm so she wasn't surprised by the sling; she knew about the gash on the head so she wasn't surprised by the bit of shaved scalp and the line of stitches above Charlie's temple. She knew that head wounds bled like crazy and often looked worse than they were. But something else wasn't right. Charlie had just visited Barton in March, only three months before, and he'd been his regular old self then. He'd even gone into Evie's class with a lobster trap and a V-notch to show the kids. (Every iteration of both kids' classes had seen this routine numerous times but they never tired of it.) Now he looked frail--not at all like the big strong ox who had hoisted her up on his shoulders so she could work the hydraulic hauler for the first time; not like the man who'd won the trap race three years running at the lobster festival; not like the man whose big hand had taken hers at her mother's funeral and had crouched down and whispered, "We're gonna be okay, me and you." Charlie Sargent was sixty-four years old now but after one fall on the deck of his boat he looked one hundred and ninety. "Hey, Dad," she said. She bent and kissed him very carefully on the cheek, avoiding the stitched-up area on his head, avoiding the sling. "It's so good to see you. Russell had me worried there for a minute, but you look fine to me. Right as rain." She could hear the falseness in her words rolling around her throat in the same way that the Bloody Marys from earlier in the day were rolling around in her stomach. She never said things like right as rain. ( Who did, really, besides Mary Poppins?) She sat down on the edge of the worn-to-bits sofa. She'd wanted to buy him a new one the previous year but he wouldn't have it. She'd wanted to do lots of things for him at all different times and he wouldn't have most of them. He said things like, "What I have'll do just fine" and, "You and Rob don't need to spend your money on me," and she couldn't get him to understand that in Rob's world you didn't spend money and then find it was gone--it was practically a renewable resource, like sunlight. "He's going to be just fine," said Val, but there was a catch in her voice that made Eliza look more carefully at her. Val handed Charlie a cup of water and shook two pills out of a bottle that was sitting on the side table and said, "Here, Charlie, it's been four hours." To Eliza she said, "For the pain." If Eliza didn't know better she'd think they were an old married couple. Charlie took the cup unsteadily. She leaned forward to help him lift the cup to his lips but he regained the balance in his arm and did it on his own. "I'll be just fine," repeated Charlie, when he'd swallowed the pills and handed the cup back to Val. "Might have to take a couple more days off of hauling, that's all." He smiled and looked a little bit more like himself. Eliza thought, a couple more? I think it's going to take longer that that. She could see Charlie casting about for a way to change the subject: he asked about the girls, and about Rob. Then he said, "I keep telling Val that she's going to have to get a cappuccino maker down to Val's, to keep up with the competition over at The Cup." Val made a soft hissing sound and said, "Believe me, that place is no competition to me. And I don't know of any fisherman who wants his coffee served up with a boatload of foamed milk, a sprinkle of cinnamon on top. No sir. Do you, Charlie?" "No," said Charlie. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. "No, I don't guess that I do." Val woke up each day even earlier than the fishermen, since she was the one who served most of them their breakfasts. By this time in the evening she was always, in Eliza's memory, showing her fatigue. All the lobstermen (and two women, though they usually got called lobstermen too, that was the way they wanted it) were too; it was a funny life, up before dawn, in bed not too long after sunset. But now Val looked more than tired. She looked like her body had been taken apart and then put back together haphazardly, with some of the pieces not tightened all the way. And if Eliza had to put Val's expression into a single word, she might say that Val looked scared. She thought of her phone ringing at the club, Russell telling her she'd better come home, the ten seconds when she'd thought her father was gone. Wait, was that today , the Bloody Marys at the club? It seemed like another world suddenly, to Eliza, like someone else's life. 3. Little Harbor, Maine Mary Mary Brown wiped table four with the cloth. The cloth was bamboo and reusable, although she always forgot the reusable part and had had to dig them out of the garbage more than once under the slightly kind, slightly judgmental eyes of Andi and Daphne, the café's co-owners. Mary thought that it wouldn't kill them every now and then to wave a hand and say, "Don't worry, Mary, it's only a silly cloth!" but they never did; they just let her keep on digging. That was the only part of Mary's job she didn't love. Sometimes when she made mistakes like that she sang a little song to herself: Mary Brown get out of town, Mary Brown go upside down . It helped get her mind off the embarrassment. Mary embarrassed extremely easily. That was her cross to bear (an expression she inherited from her mother, as in: Single motherhood, that is my cross to bear ). One of Mary's other crosses to bear was the fact that her name was the absolute plainest thing anybody could dream of. And yet at the same time so very easy to make fun of. Bloody Mary. Virgin Mary. Mary Queen of Snots. Trevor Spaulding, awful boy, had come up with that last one in the fifth grade. Mary's own mother was named Vivienne, which was, in her own words, a name that turned out to be way too extravagant for the life she'd ended up in. A mother at eighteen, married at nineteen, divorced at twenty. Now she worked in a salon in Ellsworth called A Cut Above where she highlighted hair and waxed eyebrows. Mary's mother had made lots of mistakes (in general, not with the hair and the eyebrows) and she liked to remind Mary about it. "Don't screw up like I did, Mary." "It's not worth it, Mary." "Five minutes of pleasure for a lifetime of pain, Mary." And then, realizing that she was talking to her own daughter , the result of the five minutes of pleasure, she tried to walk it back. "That's not what I meant, Mary. I just meant: stay in school." No wonder Mary was so easily embarrassed. "Table three needs a wipe down!" sang Daphne from the other side of the café. "When you get to it." "Of course," said Mary agreeably. She liked wiping down the tables--she found it very soothing and satisfactory. You could see where the work began and where it ended. Unlike most things. Daphne and Andi were lesbians, and they were married. To each other. (Mary had to clarify the married part more than once for her mother, who tagged Daphne and Andi's sexual preference at the end of their name like a suffix, always with Andi's name first: Andi and Daphne the Lesbians. Mary didn't care a nickel about what people did together in bed--she was really very open-minded. Not exactly adventurous (her boyfriend Josh said) but definitely open-minded. Even so, sometimes she did have to fight back a giggle when Daphne and Andi used the word wife to describe each other, only because of how proudly they said it, how they lifted their chins a fraction of an inch as though saying, Go on, challenge us, we dare you. We have a marriage certificate and we file our tax returns jointly. Honestly, Mary didn't really know much about tax returns (she was seventeen) but Daphne and Andi talked about them like they were a very important marker of a real relationship. "Earth to Mary!" said Andi now. Sometimes Andi snuck up on Mary like a ghost, startling her right out of her thoughts. Mary's thoughts had a nervy habit of wandering. This had often been a problem at school, except in math. She didn't even have to pay attention to the teaching in math, not really, she just looked at the work after and it made a sort of automatic sense; the numbers floated right where they were supposed to be. Her spelling, on the other hand, was atrocious. Last year's math teacher, Ms. Berry, had pulled Mary aside at the end of year and asked her if she knew what an aptitude for math she had and if she understood how critical girls with good math skills were going to be to America's ability to keep up with other countries. "Just think about it, Mary," Ms. Berry had said, two weeks before graduation. Mary thought about it. But by then Mary already knew what her future held, and it wasn't more math classes. Her cell phone in her apron pocket buzzed and she stole a look at it. Josh: WHEN R U COMING? "Customers, Mary, all hands on deck!" said Andi. Mary put the phone back in her pocket and glanced out the window of the café--there were only two customers approaching, it was hardly an all hands on deck situation, but Andi and Daphne had relocated to Little Harbor from New York City and they liked to use nautical phrases whenever they could. Not that the fishermen Mary knew ever actually said all hands on deck . And Mary knew a lot of fishermen. "I'm on it!" Mary called out. She took her place behind the counter, depositing the bamboo towel correctly in the to-be-washed bin, and waited for the door to open. "I am at your service," she told Daphne. Under cover of the counter she slid her phone out and texted Josh back SOON, BABY . She felt a little thump of anticipation when the bell on the door jangled. The sound reminded her of Christmas, those first couple of minutes after you open your eyes and you think, anything could happen today! Vivienne said Mary was more optimistic than she had a right to be. Mary loved waiting on customers. She loved the way the café made her feel: competent and valuable, in a way that nobody else made her feel. "You wouldn't last a minute in New York City," Daphne always told Mary. "You're way too trusting and sweet. And I mean that as a compliment." The way she said it, though? Somehow Mary didn't take it as a compliment. She'd never been to New York City. In the summer the café was open until eight; they served dinner salads and "small plates," mostly to summer people just off their sailboats, and they had just gotten a beer and wine license, which, to hear Andi tell it, had been like pulling fucking teeth. Sometimes Andi didn't have the nicest language. " Small plates?" said Vivienne scornfully when she'd come in at the beginning of the summer to get a look at the place. When Vivienne was growing up in Little Harbor the lot where the café was now had been a dying gas station. "Smaller than what?" Vivienne refused to call Daphne and Andi's place a café, she insisted on saying coffee shop , even though it was right there on the sign, same font but smaller letters as the name of the place. The Cup , it said, a café for all. "A coffee shop for some," Vivienne called it, because she said that only the summer people went there. (True.) And then she laughed in that way she had, that made her sound older than she was. Smoker's laugh. Another mistake. "Don't even start, Mary, once you get in the habit it's impossible to stop." If she ever saw Mary with a cigarette, she said, she would smack her from here to next week. That was just an expression, of course. The Cup served two different kinds of white wine, two kinds of red, one champagne ("Technically," said Andi, "It's not champagne, it's not from France, so it's sparkling wine , but call it what you want."), and a light beer and a dark beer, both from the Atlantic Brewing Company in Bar Harbor. Local. The summer people loved local beer. They loved local everything, local marmalade and chutney from Nellie's in Blue Hill, fair trade organic coffee beans from Wicked Joe in Topsham, lobsters pulled from traps right in Little Harbor and sold straight off the boat at the co-op. They liked local until the summer ended and the days got shorter and the wind got colder and they high-tailed it back to Boston or New York or Philadelphia or their winter ski condos in Colorado or Park City, Utah. One of the customers coming in now was Russell Perkins. Mary wasn't sure she'd ever seen Russell Perkins in The Cup--he was definitely the type to go to Val's. Obviously. The Cup wasn't open early enough for the lobstermen. ("Not our target market," said Andi, shrugging.) But here he was, dressed in regular clothes, not in fishing gear. Mary squinted at him and tried to be offended by his presence. Was he walking in like he owned the place, sort of? This question was out of an attempted loyalty to Josh, who despised Russell Perkins. Russell was one of those guys who always dropped his traps in the right place, always sensed the movement of the lobsters before they knew where they were going themselves, always caught more than everyone else. Well, more than Josh, anyway, who had bad luck dropping his traps. "Not that I'm keeping track," said Josh. Though of course he was. Mary got nervous when Josh had a bad day out on the water. He was like a little boy on the edge of a big tantrum, his face screwed up with confusion and pain. Sometimes it felt like a full-time job, making him feel better. Sometimes it felt impossible: it felt like the kind of job she didn't want to spend her life doing. But despite her efforts Mary found Russell sort of charming. Okay, very charming, extremely charming. Look at him now, smiling at her, in a way that wouldn't let her not smile back. He was so handsome. For an older man. (" Never date an older man," was Vivienne's advice. Another mistake. They were only after one thing. ) Too late for that: Josh was twenty-four. Russell was with a woman Mary didn't recognize. A summer person? The woman was wearing white shorts and a silky looking tank top that said: I have money. She had super long legs, lots of freckles and masses of dark curly hair that Mary (who was, after all, her mother's daughter), could tell was tamed by an experienced hair stylist and probably some very expensive product. Her bag was baby blue leather; it looked soft as butter and had a little gold tag with a word Mary couldn't read. She was stunning, actually. What was Russell Perkins doing coming into The Cup with a stunning summer person? "Hey, Mary," said Russell, and Mary said, "Hey, Russell." The summer person looked up at the menu and squinted in a way that made little lines pop out at the corners of her eyes. Now that the woman was closer Mary could read the word on her bag: Givenchy. "I can't believe it," she said to Russell. "You can get a cappuccino in Little Harbor! Knock me over with a feather. Val is freaking out, though she won't admit it." The woman reached into her blue butter bag and pulled out a long brown wallet with a bright gold zipper. "My treat, get whatever you want. Are we doing coffee or beers?" She smiled at Mary in a friendly way, and then said, "You look so familiar to me. Why is that?" "That's Vivienne's girl, Mary," said Russell. "Looks just exactly like her mama." He winked at Mary and Mary tried even harder to dislike him but she couldn't help it: she smiled. To the woman Russell said, "Better make it drinks, I'm up at four tomorrow, no coffee for me." "Vivienne?" The woman closed her eyes and put one finger on her chin like she was drawing a memory out of it. "Vivienne Brown, a year behind us." Russell rocked back on his heels and stretched his hands in front of him and cracked his knuckles. "Oh!" said the woman. "Right. Vivienne. Of course. I remember her, such a pretty girl. You do look just like her, wow." Her voice was deep and musical and seemed to travel all over the place in just that one sentence. Mary's phone buzzed again, another text. HURRY UP IM LONLY It was only six-thirty. They were still open for another hour and a half and then there was cleanup to do. She wouldn't get to Josh's until almost eight. He went to bed before ten to be up at four to haul, just like Russell, just like all the lobstermen. Josh wanted her to quit her job at The Cup, get something with hours that matched his better. "See if Val's hiring," he said. "Work the breakfast shift, it'll be perfect." Mary didn't want to work the breakfast shift, didn't want to get up at four, didn't want to spend all of her time around a bunch of stinky lobstermen, didn't want to give up Andi and Daphne and her own personal apron with a screen print of a coffee cup with steam coming off the top. So she had told Josh she'd asked and Val didn't need anyone. (Another flag: that she needed to lie.) "We have decaf," said Mary now, in her best customer service voice. Andi, who was counting bags of beans, nodded her approval. "Drinks," said the woman firmly. "Beer, Russell? What kind? Do you mind if I have something else, I can't drink beer anymore, it gives me such a bloated belly, let's see, wine, or...ooooh, you have champagne? Do you close soon? Eight? Okay, good, I need to get back to my dad anyway, we'll be quick, promise." She smiled even more brightly and said, "I'll pound my champagne." "Not necessary, Eliza. What would your dad say?" Russell laughed. Eliza. Okay, now it was coming together. Eliza Sargent, Charlie Sargent's daughter. Charlie Sargent had been taken in by the Coast Guard yesterday, Josh told her all about it the night before in that weirdly happy voice that he used when he talked about other people's misfortunes. This was a red flag, a small one. Mary was trying ignore the small red flags, considering the situation. Charlie Sargent came into The Cup sometimes in the early evening and bough a few of the lobster cookies. The cookies were shaped like lobsters, not made out of them. He always winked at Mary when he paid and said, "Don't tell Val." He must be okay enough, if Eliza Sargent was here at The Cup with Russell Perkins. Mary hadn't told anybody about her secret, not even Josh. She would tell him soon. Maybe not tonight, maybe tomorrow. The ringing of a cell phone interrupted her thoughts and Charlie Sargent's daughter reached into her bag and pulled out a phone. "Sorry," she said in Russell's direction, before she answered, saying, "Hi, honey. Sweetie--Evie? Evie, I can't quite understand you...Evie, you have to stop crying if you want me to be able to understand you." There was such kindness and love in Eliza Sargent's voice that Mary felt, ridiculously, tears rise to her eyes. She was so emotional lately, she cried over the stupidest things. Just the other day that blonde woman with the ringlets getting kicked off The Bachelor , that got her going. Eliza moved away from the counter so Mary could no longer see her expression. After a couple of minutes she returned to Russell's side, slipping the phone back into her bag. She rolled her eyes in an exaggerated way that indicated she didn't mean any harm by it and said to Russell, "Evie. She got to the end of Bridge to Terabithia . I don't blame her, I felt the same way, when I read it." Russell said, "Never read it." He winked at Mary again. Funny how winks could be creepy from some people and perfectly acceptable from others. Russell's were acceptable, even enchanting. "Did you order?" asked Eliza. "I'll have a glass of Cabernet after all, not champagne. I know, it seems crazy, it's summertime, we should all be drinking white or Rosé. So sue me." She shrugged like someone who didn't expect to get sued at all. A rich woman with a blue butter bag, a woman who moved through the world so easily--though she was technically a local, this was every summer person Mary Brown had been brought up to dislike. ("Thinks she walks on water," Vivienne would say, even though, if Eliza Sargent showed up at the salon, she'd treat her like royalty, give her one of those hand massages while her color set, expect a twenty percent tip.) But Mary didn't dislike this woman, as much as she wanted to. In fact it was the opposite. This, she realized, was exactly the kind of person, exactly the kind of mother , Mary Brown wanted to be. Excerpted from The Captain's Daughter: A Novel by Meg Mitchell Moore All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
