The Second Mother

by Jenny Milchman

  David was coming in on the next ferry.

  Nearly dropping the phone, Julie scrolled frantically through the call log.

  When had that message been left? What did Tim mean by the next ferry? This morning’s? Was David on Mercy already?

  Standing on the patch of road where her phone had come to life, Julie hit the receiver symbol to call Tim back. “Come on, come on,” she muttered as the burr of a ringtone sounded in her ear. “Pick up.”

  “Jules!” Tim said. “It’s good to hear your voice.”

  Till then, Julie hadn’t realized how much she had missed him. “Yours too. But Tim, what’s this about David?”

  For a chief of police, Tim was woefully spare on details. All he knew was that David had remained in town after Julie had left, camping out in his office. And according to the postal worker, a packet of information had been sent to him about Mercy Island. When Tim asked David about it, he’d said he had ferry tickets reserved.

  For this afternoon’s crossing.

  “What the what,” Julie said on a breathy rush of surprise.

  She could not imagine why David would be making a personal trip. Divorce papers could be mailed. All communication was going through their lawyers now anyway. Julie glanced at the time on her phone. She needed to find Callum, tell him their outing would have to be postponed.

  “How is it out there?” Tim asked. “Everything you hoped?”

  “Better,” Julie replied. “And, well, worse too,” she added honestly.

  “Oh yeah? How’s that?”

  Julie would lose signal if she went to the dock to look for Callum. But the answer to Tim’s question was complicated. “Mercy is kind of like Wedeskyull, back when the old guard was still in power. Uncle Vern and his father before him.”

  “Really?” Tim said. “I remember those days. That doesn’t sound good.”

  “It’s good and it’s bad,” Julie responded. “People trying to keep things as they were.”

  Until that moment, Julie hadn’t been able to find a mote of empathy for the grandmother’s position, but she suddenly understood it. Resisted her stance, knew it wasn’t fair or just, and would never work ultimately, but now got a glimmer of the reasoning behind it.

  How people who had survived tough conditions bred of a tough land couldn’t be expected to greet with unalloyed joy an influx that was going to cast Eve out of Eden, introduce new creatures to a roiling, tumultuous stew of the unknown, painting the old, whitewashed sameness with a rainbow of change. It was a brutish, battle-filled process, the tug-of-war between old and new. Julie suddenly missed her hometown, and felt proud of it with a sharp, fierce pang. The locals might frequent the diner, the expats the pricey café, but at least both existed side by side. The pristine homogeneity on Mercy had yet to be complicated by the humps and fissures and crenulations Wedeskyull had tolerated, summoned, welcomed to its fore.

  “I’m having trouble following you,” Tim said. “Are you all right out there?”

  All the way from the mountains of her homeland to the tiny, sea-swept island that had become her home for now, a swell of doubt quested, then fell. “I’m better than all right,” Julie told him. “I’m needed again for the first time since Hedley died.”

  “I haven’t heard you say her name like that in over a year. Just right out loud.”

  How sad that was, Julie thought. For Hedley, and for her too.

  “What do you mean about being needed?” Tim asked.

  Julie started to walk, hoping the connection would hold. “I have this student I’m trying to help. He seems to be in trouble.” She hadn’t expected it, but suddenly she was pouring out the whole story, Peter’s behavior, his history, the entrenched forces at work on the island. In addition to being her oldest friend, Tim was also a cop, and a damn good one, so any perspective he might have on the situation would be valuable.

  “Have you been in touch with the old teacher?” Tim asked once Julie had finished. “I bet she’d have some information to offer.”

  The idea was so good, and so obvious, Julie wondered why she hadn’t thought of it herself. It was as if the island had become not just her whole world but the whole world, nothing and nobody existing beyond it.

  “Should I be worried, Jules?” Tim asked. “You’re all alone out there.”

  “Nobody’s tried to hurt me,” Julie assured him. “I think Peter actually likes me. His actions have been limited to a bird that, I’m sorry, isn’t exactly an endangered species around here, I can hear about a zillion squawking overhead right now, and—”

  “—your dog?”

  “I’ll watch out for Depot,” Julie said firmly.

  The signal was getting spotty; it took a moment before Tim’s reply came through.

  “Do you want me to come out there? Because I will. I don’t have any authority or jurisdiction obviously, but I’m owed some vacation time, and I could be there as a friend.”

  The quiet hush of home, from what seemed a million miles away, brought tears to Julie’s throat. Luckily, the connection was probably poor enough by now that thickness in her voice wasn’t audible. “I’ll call you if I need to, I promise.” No response from Tim, hopefully he could still hear her. “Anyway, at the moment, I’m not even here by myself. I’ve got a date to delay and a soon-to-be ex-husband to contend with.”

  Before Tim could say anything about the date part, the call dropped.

  Julie couldn’t find Callum on the dock, and squinting between sunspots toward the sea where the lobster boats were moored, Julie didn’t see the Mary Martin. Hoping Callum would think to come get her at the schoolhouse, Julie led Depot in that direction.

  It was time to track down last year’s teacher.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  When they reached the school, Depot yawned hugely, refusing Julie’s offer of food and staggering around in a circle before dropping onto the floor in the cramped space of the teacher’s room, where he promptly fell asleep.

  Julie searched the filing cabinets, the drawers of the teacher’s desk, and even the supplies stowed under the stage, but she couldn’t find anything that identified the prior teacher by name. Then she realized she already knew it. The teacher had to be the person listed in the grandmother’s ledger above the entry for Julie. She too had been given a free residence, and there’d been details about her compensation begging an explanation that Julie still couldn’t supply. A stipend. Whereas Julie had been given a salary jump.

  The grandmother preferred Julie as teacher for some reason, which after reading the ledger, was the opposite of gratifying. Instead, the fact seemed to present a strangling hand.

  Julie closed her eyes and tried to picture that spider’s scrawl, those vicious, life-invading letters. Zoë Manning. That was it. She booted up the computer, but any Zoë Manning who was a teacher either had an extremely limited online life, or else all her social media accounts were set to private. There was a Zoë Manning hand model, and one who had a lifestyle blog.

  Julie finally stooped to LinkedIn, figuring that if Zoë had just left a position, she was probably networking hard. There she found a Chloe Manning who listed educator for her profession. Upon further thought, Chloe did seem like the name she’d seen in the ledger. Julie sent a message explaining who she was and sharing a little of her experience on Mercy, before asking if the woman had any relevant details she could add. Then Julie went to check on Depot, still wedged into a spot on the floor, the high arch of his side rising and falling in sleep.

  Walking back to her desk, Julie decided to take care of some grading and student assessments, and was soon lost to a pile of papers. The work-induced stupor didn’t shatter until a reply from Chloe popped up on the screen.

  r u in a place where yr phone works? id rather not put this in writing

  She had sent Julie her number.

  Julie stood up slowl
y behind the desk. On the one hand, it was a more receptive response than she had anticipated; the most she’d been hoping for was that Chloe might send along a few thoughts, maybe agree to trade email addresses. On the other hand, Chloe’s note was almost sinister in its terseness, and implication of scrutiny.

  Depot was still sound asleep. Julie stooped to drop a kiss on his head, setting out food and water for when he woke up. Then she left the school, heading toward the part of the winding path by the library where Wi-Fi would kick in.

  * * *

  Chloe Manning answered the call the instant it went through, her greeting lighter than Julie’s initial impression had suggested.

  “So you’re the new victim,” she said.

  “Yikes,” Julie replied. Then, “Thanks for agreeing to talk to me.”

  Chloe let out a laugh. “I don’t mean to alarm you. Mercy Island is just a weird place.” A pause. “Isn’t it?”

  Julie took a look around the tiny patch of library lawn as she thought about how to answer. It’s a place I’ve fallen in love with. It’s a place that scares me. It’s a place where I’ve found people to tether me to the earth once again. And that comes at the cost of worrying about those people, caring about them so much it may hurt. In the end she settled on, “It definitely offers challenges for a teacher.”

  Chloe snorted. “Understatement.”

  “What were those challenges like for you? If you don’t mind sharing.”

  “Not at all,” Chloe said breezily. “That’s why I wanted you to call.” She took a breath. “So, at first I was all loving on the island, just like you are right now. I’m a person who has a lot of get up and go, and I like putting my own stamp on things.”

  Julie was just picturing how well that would go over on Mercy when a pair of women she thought she recognized—perhaps they had older children in the school—came walking up the path, pushing toddlers in strollers.

  Julie smiled as she stepped aside to let them pass, and they gave terse nods in return.

  “Are you there?” asked Chloe.

  Julie wasn’t sure whether she imagined the look one of the women gave her as she turned back in the midst of wrestling her stroller up a stack of stone steps to the door. Questioning, maybe even disapproving. As if Julie didn’t have the right to be talking on the phone, were doing something wrong, or unseemly. Probably she was just being paranoid. Still, the encounter made her take a few steps away from the populated library path—story hour was about to begin—and conceal herself in a grove of trees.

  “Yes,” she said hurriedly. “I’m here.”

  “Anyways, then I started to get some pushback,” Chloe said. “You know, not our way, do it more like this, no, like that, kind of thing. Which was fine. I’m the sort of person where if I get kicked, I just get right back up again, you know?”

  “Uh-huh,” Julie said. In her experience, the kind of person who tended to get right back up after being kicked had never been kicked very hard.

  Chloe pitched her voice low. “At least I used to be.”

  “What do you mean?” Julie asked.

  “Well, none of that is the reason they fired me,” Chloe said.

  “Fired you?” Julie echoed, thinking back. “I thought you resigned.”

  “Is that what you were told?” Her tone darkened further.

  “Um…” Julie wasn’t sure why she was protecting Laura Hutchins, or the grandmother. “Maybe it was more like implied.”

  Chloe went on as if Julie hadn’t spoken. “Because my compensation package was all these soft things, housing and a stipend, I can’t even collect unemployment. Not to mention the lack of references. I asked Maryanne Hempstead for one, and you know what she did? She laughed in my face. That awful, queenly laugh she has… Have you heard it?”

  Julie wasn’t sure that she had. The grandmother was such an ice pillar of control. Restrained amusement was as far as Julie could recall her going in terms of humor.

  “That place ruined me, Julie… That’s your name, right?” Chloe spoke in a hiss. “It ruined my life. You should really watch out, Julie. And I should probably go.”

  Chloe’s account, albeit dramatic—this island seemed to pull for that—had stirred the hairs on the back of Julie’s neck. A breeze coming in off the ocean peppered her skin with goose bumps. She peeked between a screen of leaves, making sure she was alone.

  “Wait,” Julie said, almost pleaded. “What was the reason they fired you?”

  “What?”

  “You said none of the new stuff you tried was why they fired you.”

  Chloe’s response, though disturbing, didn’t surprise Julie; it was almost like having something confirmed.

  “They fired me because one of the students liked me too much. And how fucked up is that? I was doing too good a job. A kid was talking more than usual in class, asking if he could stay after school, and I let him. He was dealing with some shit at the time, a death in the family. They let me go because I tried to help. Try explaining that as a résumé gap!”

  The library door opened, noise spilling out from within, a barrage of young voices and clapping and laughter. Story hour was still going on obviously, but the mother who’d passed Julie before appeared on the stone stoop, without her child in tow.

  Chloe’s voice splintered, high-pitched, almost hysterical. “And why do you think they didn’t want me to get close to this kid? What do you think they were trying to keep me from finding out? I don’t know, Julie, but I bet it’s big. I bet it’s really, really—”

  Chloe broke off. There was a fearful quality to the sudden stop; it was as if she were trying to bring herself into line because wherever she had gone after fleeing Mercy didn’t matter, couldn’t get her far enough away from the person who was listening, watching, observing with a hawkish eye.

  The mom on the library stoop took the stone steps as one, an acrobatic leap.

  Julie stepped deeper into the trees. She couldn’t tell if the mom had seen her here or not.

  “Peter Meyers isn’t who you think he is,” Chloe went on at a whisper, as if the mere act of saying his name might bring down retribution. “One thing I can tell you is that whatever he’s up to, it’s not what you think.”

  “What is it then?” Julie whispered back.

  This was ridiculous. She was hiding in the trees like a little kid herself—or a criminal—and why? Because she was on the phone? She walked back onto the path.

  The mom headed down it at a fast clip, almost as if getting a running start.

  “I don’t know, but Peter’s not just a grieving, loss-stricken boy. And not a diagnosable, oppositional defiant one either. I mean, cruelty to animals, is that what you said in your note? How textbook is that? Peter wasn’t that bad when I had him; he’s obviously getting worse. Or acting worse.” Chloe let her emphasis settle in the air. “He’s playing you, Julie, just like he played me. Every single thing that boy does is false. Peter Meyers is always putting on a show.”

  The mother rushed past then, bumping into Julie so hard that her shoulder rattled and the phone flew out of her hand.

  And Julie stood there, listening to the echo of Chloe’s words in her ear. That last statement had been said with such dire derision that it momentarily blotted out the question of whether the woman’s attack had been heedless, or premeditated and deliberately staged.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Julie heard the grandmother’s phantom order in her head, like a line from a movie, as she rubbed her sore arm and stared after the mother, aghast. You must end that phone call at all costs.

  Impossible. Even if the grandmother did somehow know that Julie was on her phone—had eyes and ears all over Mercy—how could she possibly have learned who Julie was talking to? Unless any call was off-limits, constricted, the island a world unto itself not only because Julie needed such a place, but also becaus
e it needed to be so for its inhabitants.

  The mother turned around on the path, still in a hurry, jogging backward, hand clapped to her mouth. “I am so sorry, Ms. Weathers! Diaper emergency during story time!”

  Also impossible. There were other moms in there with diaper bags.

  Although the mothers of Mercy did seem less loaded down with detritus, the accoutrements of early childhood, than parents were in other locales. Their strollers not supersized, a morning’s activity not cause to pack as if for an around-the-world cruise.

  “It’s okay,” Julie called back. She went and retrieved her phone.

  The call had ended, so Julie texted Chloe a quick explanation, before saving her as a contact and beginning to walk away from the library. At least any told-you-so text from Chloe wouldn’t come through for a while.

  A few seconds later, the mournful wail of a foghorn announced the ferry’s arrival.

  * * *

  Julie walked toward the dock, watching for David to disembark. The sight of him struck her like a club to the knees. Not with memories, or still extant love. Instead what nearly bowled her over was how hard it was to believe that she had married this man, had a baby with him.

  He looked like a stranger.

  She worked up a smile as David stepped off the ferry, placing one hand on the looped rope of the railing to steady himself once he was back on dry land.

  “Rough crossing?” she asked, reaching to take the backpack he wore.

  David shrugged the pack off gratefully. “I didn’t think you’d know to come.”

  Julie slipped the straps over her shoulders. She recognized this backpack; they’d taken it on many a hike. “You were clearly aiming for the element of surprise.”

  “Not really,” David said. “You’re just a difficult person to get hold of these days. And I didn’t want to say this in a message or email.”

  Julie acknowledged the point. “Say what? What made you come?”

  David’s face was starting to look less sallow. “Is there somewhere we could go and get a—”