She pours me a dram of the golden nectar. “Is it hard?” I ask, and she takes my meaning—working in a bar when you don’t drink anymore.
“Not really,” she replies. “At least once a day some drunken pinhead says or does something that reminds me just how fargin’ glad I am to be sober.”
We chat about the weather for a bit, for the usual avoidant reasons, but also because, in a storm like this, it’s really the only topic.
“I went by the house,” I finally say, amending it to “your house.”
“You probably shouldn’t do that, Finn,” she says, losing her bantery tone. She looks around, confirming there’s no one within earshot. “Listen, I came to see you last night, but I hope I didn’t do anything to give you the impression the door was in any way open between... you know…” Us. “Because that ship sailed, sank, ran aground, and washed back out to sea a long time ago.” Jesus with the metaphors, Jeannie. “We both agree on that, right?”
Piss. Fuck. Shit.
“Of course,” I say. “No, I didn’t get any other impression. I just...” I find I can’t trot out the I-needed-to-borrow-your-Internet excuse, now that I’m talking to her face to face. “I just wanted to see how you were doing, how your life turned out.”
“Turned out? Crikey, I hope it’s still a work in progress.”
As she goes back to slicing lemons, she gives me the sanitized, Cliff Notes version of her life since I do-si-doed. No, she didn’t stay with AssTurd del ClownFace. Hallelujah. Yes, she has a daughter, Bree, who’s spending the holiday on the mainland with Jean’s sister. Bree will turn three next month. A quick calculation dashes any hope that she might be, well, a blood relative. The numbers don’t add up. Jeannie had one other brief relationship after TurdAss de la FaceClown, she says, and that was the one that prompted her come-to-Jesus reckoning with herself. Since then she has lived dude-free and alcohol-free and has been putting all her attention on herself and her daughter. She’s finally taking her writing seriously too, and has had two horror stories published. Wow, amazing what a little non-Finn time can do for a person.
And me? Oh, right, forgot this was a quid pro quo. I try to put a charitable spin on my life of the last few years, essaying valiantly not to make it sound like, “After we split up, my life went rocketing down the shitter so fast you’d think it was fired from a bazooka,” though I’m pretty sure that’s what comes across anyway.
When I’m done my awkward PR spiel, Jeannie leans on the bar, stares me in the face, and says, “So why’d you come back to the island, puffin boy? Real reason.”
I draw a deep breath and lift the whiskey glass to my mouth with a hand that’s taken on an unwelcome tremor. Some alien form of terror must be lurking in the black of my pupils as I stare back at her, because Jeannie drops her lemon on the floor and says, “Jesus, Finn, what the hell happened to you?”
“Not here... not now.”
I order the fisherman’s platter, hold the fisherman.
Chapter 16
Miles rings me as I’m finishing lunch and says he’s coming to pick me up. He’s suddenly getting Internet reception at the house, he tells me, even though the storm seems to be worsening by the minute. The rest of his family is at a holiday charity event at “the club,” so we’ll have the place to ourselves for a few hours. I’m still worried about the possibility of leading my stalkers to Miles’ house, but a live Internet signal seems like an opportunity too good to pass up.
I say goodbye to Jeannie and am about to leave when, to my own surprise, I hear the words, “When do you get off work tonight?” leap from my mouth.
She shoots me a suspicious look. Why?
“If I were to show up at your place around seven with a garlic, mushroom, and artichoke pizza from The Barnacle, would you slam the door in my face?”
“Not without grabbing the pizza first.” The Barnacle makes seriously good pizza. Not just good-for-an-island-off-the-coast-of-Maine good, but good good. “But I don’t know if that’s a wise idea, Finn.”
“Just two friends sharing a pizza,” I say. “Unless you’ve got other plans.”
She is silent for a few seconds, then says, “I guess it wouldn’t kill me to throw together a salad and stick a dessert in the oven.” Jeannie bakes now too? Peace in the Middle East. “Just as long as we agree that…”
“Yeah, yeah. See you at seven?”
. . . . .
The rain buffets us in sheets as Miles and I tool down partially flooded Island Avenue in his canvas-topped golf cart. I’m not thinking about ancient bottles of scotch and bad guys in Davy’s grey raincoats, as good sense dictates I should be; I’m thinking about dinner tonight. I’m both fired-up and scared to death about spending some time alone with Jean, but I also can’t help feeling disheartened by the way she characterized our relationship. I certainly couldn’t have expected otherwise, though, could I? The fact is, until an hour ago I didn’t even know she was unattached. Until forty hours ago, I had no reason to think I would ever see her again. And until my attempted murder a week ago, I had no clear idea I even wanted to.
So I can hardly expect her to be laying down a trail of rose petals to her bed. But still, “sailed, sank, ran aground, and washed back out to sea”?
The memory of her words triggers a thought. I ask Miles to drive up Lighthouse Road. We park at the top of the hill and I walk to the seaward edge. I tell him to follow me down the steep path that descends to Table Rock. Miles is reluctant to brave the rain and the slickened trail, but he eventually brings up the rear. We stop partway down and take in the scene below. The Shipwreck—our Shipwreck, Jeannie’s and mine—has shifted its angle again and worked its way two or three yards closer to the edge of the great bed of slate. The whole bow of the K.C. Mokler is now jutting out over the water. The waves continue to assault it.
“Holy shit,” says Miles Sutcliffe in an awed whisper.
“A few years ago,” I say, “if you’d asked me to name the two most iconic sights on Musqasset, I’d have said Fish Pier and The Shipwreck. Looks like they’ll both be gone soon.”
We exchange a look that encapsulates our entire history on the island.
Not long after I came here on that painting excursion nine years ago and ran into Jeannie, I moved here. I loved the island for many reasons, not the least of which was that it was my discovery, my place. Not Miles’. Miles had barely even heard of Musqasset when I talked him into visiting me here a year or so later, even though Beth was a Maine native and the Sutcliffes had become full-time residents of Vacationland. Miles’ decision to buy a summer home on the island was based almost entirely on my relentless hammering.
And boy howdy, did he make me regret it. Where I saw beauty and balance and thriving community on Musqasset, he saw economic opportunity. Where I wanted to preserve the place like a lost Winslow Homer painting, he immediately set about trying to change it.
Miles turns and heads back up the trail. I follow him. We make our way toward his electric cart, wet and winded from the climb. I ask him if I can drive. He knows where I’ll be taking him, and he doesn’t like it, but he signals be my guest.
I might not make it off this island alive, but I refuse to go to my final fishing grounds without saying some things that have needed saying for years. Tonight with Jeannie and right now with Miles. Before he and I do another thing together.
I take the road to old Fish Pier, now marked with a bright new sign pointing to the “Marina and Yacht Club at The Meadows.” Miles sighs as I make the turn.
I park the covered cart on a hillock overlooking the landward side of the new marina complex. The white-capped ocean churns beyond it. Gazing out at the rain-soaked cluster of stained-wood buildings that looks as if it belongs in
a different locale, I no longer feel the same anger I felt last night but rather a sad sort of resignation. About what? The inevitability of money winning every battle, I guess. My feelings are not even directed at Miles at this point. Today I feel as if we’re just two actors in an ancient play mankind has been staging and restaging since the first coin was minted.
I don’t feel a need to speak for a while, and neither does Miles.
At last I break the silence. “I said some shitty things to you when I left the island, and I’m sorry. One of my many, many, many—did I mention many?—flaws is that I hold things in, and then when I finally blurt them out, I say more than I intend to. ...But you do understand why I felt betrayed by you?”
Miles takes his time replying. “This thing was never about you and me.”
“It was always about you and me. At least to me it was.”
“That’s why you’ll never be a businessman, Finn. You don’t understand that business isn’t personal.”
“You don’t understand that it is. Especially in a place like Musqasset. I invited you to this island. That’s personal. I talked you into buying a house here. I introduced you to people here who could make things happen for you. That’s personal. When you came up with your original development plan, I put my ass on the line to help you sell it to the locals. A lot of people hated the idea of a yacht club on Musqasset—hated it—but I opened their minds by pointing out how great it could be for Fish Pier. And for the fishermen. And the island.”
“It was a good plan, Finn.”
“Was. What happened?”
“Things change. I had partners. They wanted a surer return on their investment. They saw a better way to leverage the assets at hand.”
“Assets at hand? Fish Pier wasn’t just a chunk of planks and pilings. It had meaning to people, history. It was the heart of the island’s economy.”
“The old economy. Time marches on.”
“It was the soul of the island, Miles. The anchor. The root system. Couldn’t you see that? This is a working island, not some trust-fund babies’ playground. Generations of islanders docked their fishing boats and lobster boats at that pier. Island kids caught their first fish there. Hundreds of artists painted it, in every light and every season. Fish Pier was Musqasset.”
“I did fight for the pier, Finn. I know you don’t believe that, but I did. But I was outnumbered and out-moneyed. The other partners didn’t live here. They had no sentimentality about Fish Pier whatsoever. But I fought my damnedest for it.”
“Did you give them the letters?”
He glares darkly at me. “I gave you my word, didn’t I? The letters didn’t matter. You don’t know these people. You didn’t see what went on behind closed doors. I had no influence. I didn’t have any real skin in the game, I was just the front man. I don’t know how much money you imagine I have, Finn—Beth’s the one with the real money in our marriage—but the vast majority of the financing came from people who gave not one shit about Musqasset tradition.”
“Then why’d you throw in with people like that?”
“Not everything in my world is as pure and simple as it is in Finn World.”
“Don’t do that, Miles. Don’t dismiss me as some kind of moral purist who doesn’t live in reality. Can you not see the position you put me in? I was a newcomer myself, but there were people here who had grown to like and trust me. I used that trust to help you. Can’t you see that when you abandoned Fish Pier, you abandoned me? How could I stay on the island after that?”
“So it’s my fault you left the island? Breaking up with Jeannie had nothing to do with it?”
“Maybe we wouldn’t have broken up if this thing hadn’t put so much strain on our relationship.”
“Oh wow, Finn. This is classic. You’re actually blaming me for your break-up with Jeannie.”
“I’m not, Miles. All I’m saying is your actions have consequences. Human consequences. Sometimes I wonder if you’ve ever really understood that.” Again I’m tempted to blurt out some things that must remain unsaid.
“Here’s what I think,” Miles says. “Much as I miss Fish Pier, I think this new complex is saving Musqasset’s ass. It brings in more income, and employs more people, than half the rest of the island combined. Ten, twenty years from now, people will look back on this development as a turning point for Musqasset. A positive one. And Fish Pier will be a quaint bit of history.”
“You don’t get it.”
“You don’t. The future of Maine’s coastal economy is tourism, not fishing. That’s a fact. I’m sure when the printing press was invented, the people who ran Scribes R Us thought the world was ending. Change sucks, until the money starts rolling in.”
“It’s more complicated than that, Miles. And if you don’t know that, you don’t know Musqasset.”
“See that flat rooftop over there?” he says, pointing. “You know what that is? A helipad. We threw it in as a gift to the island. People can now be safely medevacked to the mainland in an emergency. Two lives have been saved this season already.”
I don’t respond. We stare down at the rain-drenched marina complex, and I’m sure we’re each seeing a wholly different sight. If I’d known what sort of atrocity this thing was going to morph into, the fight Miles and I had four years ago might have involved dueling pistols.
“I do recognize you stuck your neck out for me,” Miles says at last. “And I am forever grateful for that... So let’s get back to the house and get to work.”
I could hyper-analyze the subtext of his final remark—he’s helping me because of what, a sense of duty?—but at this point I don’t feel like arguing anymore. I’ve said all I can say. I need an ally, and I’ll take one any way I can get it.
. . . . .
As we’re stepping into Miles’ house, an email arrives on his phone with a jingle. Random delivery from the weather deities. It’s from Angie. Good thing I gave her Miles’ email address and asked her to cc him. His phone caught the email, my antique piece of crap didn’t.
The email contains a Word attachment. Ange’s message is, “Kinda concerned about why you want this information. Promise me we’ll talk about it ASAP. Hope it helps you with whatever you’re working through.” Working through? I guess she thinks I’m still in psychiatric crisis. Take a number in that line, sister.
“Can I get you anything to drink?” Miles calls from the kitchen, as I pull up a chair at the desk in his oak-infested study.
“I’ll take a beer, thanks.”
“How ‘bout Diet Coke or O.J.?”
“Just give me a fucking beer, Miles.”
He brings two. I move aside Beth’s Power of Words Journal—which she has been diligently filling with entries, I see—to make some space on the desk. We print up two copies of Angie’s Word file. My sister seems to have done quite a bit of research and synthesis in a short time. Getting dirt on people is her mutant superpower. Her write-up:
As you already know, the Abelsens and Edgar Goslin were involved in a highway accident in the early hours of May 13, 1999. The Wentworth Tribune said the cause of the accident was under investigation.
An article in the Trib several days later said the cops had found evidence that an unidentified glass container, possibly tossed from the Carlisle Road overpass, may have contributed to/caused the accident.
Paul and Laurice Abelsen were mega-boojie types who lived in Bridgefield. Paul grew up there and had family there. Went to Bridgefield Academy. Owned a startup software company. Father, Gary, is a Mr. Moneybags. Started a scholarship & memorial 5K run in his son’s name. Also offered a fat reward for information that would help in the accident investigation.
Edgar Goslin
suffered head and pelvic injuries. Was hospitalized and unconscious for weeks. After he came to, he told police—S2S—that something had broken his windshield and caused him to lose control of the car. Was wheelchair-bound at first but then had some surgeries and rehab, got his legs back. Arrest record—DWIs, drunk-and-disorderlies…
That’s the quickie version. I may be able to get more, but first I would need to know what you’re up to and where you’re headed with this. – Angie
So Miles and I were right about pieces of the bottle being found. Yay, us. Any sense of self-congratulation is dampened by the ominous implications of same.
There’s something in the note that’s bugging me too: “S2S.” Sorry to say? Is that what she meant? Why put that in there? Ah well, screw it, time to dig into our work. Angie’s research gives us a good place to start. We divvy up the workload along unspoken lines: Miles will look into the Abelsens, as they seemed to dwell in his socio-economic stratum. I will look into Edgar Goslin because, well, he’s a Wentworth bottom-dweller.
Miles decides to work upstairs, where he says the Wi-Fi is better, so for the next hour or so, we split up and put Google through the wringer. At around three, we reconvene in the study to review our notes together. I turn on my VoxFox app to record our conversation.
Miles says he has learned that Gary Abelsen, Paul’s father, was a bit of a crusader, at least in the year or two after the accident. At first he praised the police and asked the public to come forward with information. Later he ranted in op-ed pieces about how his family had been forsaken by the cops. A surprising new detail Miles has uncovered is that Paul and Laurice Abelsen had a second child who was not in the car with them that night—a boy named Theo, three years old at the time, who was later adopted by his maternal grandparents. My heart lightens a bit upon hearing this; I don’t know why.
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