Samantha stepped out of the limo first. Her mother and David got out on the other side and walked around to stand nearby. They all watched as the men from the funeral home rolled Carl’s casket out onto a wheeled metal stand like a giant TV table or a hospital gurney. A hand landed on Sam’s shoulder and she glanced up at Father Corcoran from St. Andrew’s and smiled thinly, hugging herself in her severe black jacket and skirt.
Cold. Samantha felt very cold.
Whatever solace she had taken from the breeze and the cloudless blue sky and the new growth of spring was gone now. The wind was cold, the late morning rich with color but devoid of compassion for the true emotions in her heart. She watched them roll her father’s casket toward the gravesite and lift it off, moving it to the mechanism that would later lower it into the earth. It occurred to her that they’d arrived too quickly, that in the past when she had attended funerals, the casket was already in place when mourners reached the cemetery.
“Bastard,” she whispered under her breath, biting her lip, glancing sidelong at her mother to see if Tricia had heard.
Mom was crying, David holding her, understanding. How could he be so understanding? He was her husband, but here she was, crying silently over the guy she was married to before he came along. Samantha supposed that was maturity in action. It seemed foreign to her.
Carl Finnin had rarely been home during her childhood, but when he had been, Samantha had loved him desperately, gazed up at him with wide-eyed adoration that can only be given by a daughter to her father. He burned with the electricity of natural charisma and changed the dynamic of every room he entered. The truth was, as a girl, whenever her father had taken her with him on an errand or to the office, she had never felt for a moment that she was a burden. Stuck in a comer, drawing with crayons and stationery, she was just happy to be with Daddy. When he spoke to her, it was like she was the only girl in the world.
Only as an adult did she realize that was the way he talked to all the girls. That she had mattered to him more than anything when she was right in front of him, but when she was out of the room, more than likely he forgot he even had a daughter. Out of sight, out of mind. That old saying applied to Carl Finnin very well. And so much for child-support payments after the divorce, or regular visits of any kind, for that matter.
When it occurred to him, Carl would show up and take Samantha off to dinner or a movie, usually in conjunction with some date he had set up or because he happened to be in the area doing something else. And Christmas. He usually showed up on Christmas, his gifts generic and thoughtless. The sweatshirt or doll or little bracelet might have been for anyone. Like he was buying them for someone else’s daughter, a distant cousin. Samantha had often thought that might be truer than she wanted to admit. Carl might well have bought a dozen of each gift he had ever given her, and presented the others to nieces and the daughters of his girlfriends.
Samantha knew that she had to let go of the bitterness in her heart, but it wasn’t that simple.
She had loved her father. Adored him still, though they rarely spoke. Even after college she had not been immune to his charm, to his easy smile and generous laughter. In part because of that love—and in even greater part due to her fear of his answer—she had never asked him why. Why he had behaved as he did, how he could have treated his only daughter that way, if it ever hurt him to know that they had only the past and their common blood to connect them.
Why?
Car doors slammed, the sound echoing across the grounds of the cemetery, off the gleaming marble facades and weathered granite faces of the true grove in Ashgrove Cemetery. The orchard of the dead.
Mourners began to swarm around her and Sam’s mother moved in close by her now. Aunt Evelyn, her father’s sister, gathered her own family around. Samantha’s cousins were appropriately solemn, but Aunt Evelyn offered her a sweet, sympathetic smile. Her husband, Uncle Ken, stepped over to Samantha and wordlessly kissed her on the top of the head. The people swept in and crowded around the hole in the ground, keeping a uniform distance away from it and the casket suspended above. The flowers had been arranged quickly and expertly by the men from the funeral home, and it occurred to Samantha how mundane they must think all of this. They did it every day; the carrying of the dead, the positioning of the flowers.
Father Corcoran cleared his throat and began to address the congregation around the grave. The stone was there already, Finnin written across the front, engraved deeply and ornate. Samantha had never known her father’s parents, both of whom were buried here, but they had bought a plot large enough for themselves and their children, and their children’s spouses and their children.
A place for me, Samantha thought, grim and cynical. Such a comfort to know.
The priest spoke, but she did not hear him. His voice was like a low buzz in her ears. Instead she heard the rustle of stiff, starched suits and skirts, the sound of soft weeping, the low cough of Uncle Ken, getting over a cold. The grass rippled with the breeze and Samantha stared at the casket.
Why? she asked again, fully aware that it was a question that could never be answered. Her temples hurt, a dull ache that seemed to pulse all through her head. Her left hand fluttered up to her still-burning eyes and came away moist.
Only then did she realize she was crying. And she had no idea when the tears had begun.
Suddenly she was even angrier with her father. Bastard, she thought as she glared at the cherrywood box draped in flowers and an American flag to mark his service during the Vietnam War. He didn’t deserve these tears, but she could not stop herself from giving them to him.
‘ Father Corcoran droned on and Samantha wept freely, jaws clenched tightly together, staring at flowers and headstones and the ground, but not at faces. Her stepfather slipped an arm around her and Aunt Evelyn reached out to take her hand, which only made her cry harder.
Through her tears the perfect blue day seemed stormy and gray.
At last, breathing deeply and trying to calm herself, Samantha wiped at her eyes and glanced around at the mourners. So many faces, friends and colleagues of her father and mother, relatives both close and only slightly familiar, her own friends from high school and college.
And Brian.
Samantha stopped, swallowed hard and tasted the salt of her tears, and stared a moment at Brian Knapp, He wore dark, round sunglasses and his hair was cut almost too short. His suit was gray with thin stripes and he did not look at all comfortable in it. Brian gazed at her from behind those Secret Service-man glasses, face etched with shared sorrow and compassion, and yet the edges of his mouth ticked upward in the hint of a smile, no more. Just a moment of reassurance for her.
It helped. Samantha took a long breath and let it out, and she returned that glimmer of a smile he had given her.
She had not seen Brian in five years, not since the summer after they had graduated high school. Not since Scottie’s house in Biddeford Pool and the ghost games and Monument Island
The island.
Sam’s face went slack and what little color she had retained drained from her face. Pieces of memory like shards of broken glass tumbled out of the past.
2
It’s the end of June, officially summer by a handful of days, and eighteen-year-old Samantha has a fine buzz on thanks to a quartet of rum & Cokes made with Captain Morgan, which she has just discovered and likes far too well. They’re on the beach, or the little stretch of sand that passes for beach there in Biddeford Pool.
Freshly graduated from Boxford High School, Scottie has himself the ultimate graduation present: the keys to his parents’ beach house for a long weekend without any adult interference. Samantha thinks it’s almost funny. They’ve got to know that the place is going to be a party for four days straight; if they don’t they’re either painfully naive or complete morons. But they go for it anyway.
It crosses her mind that maybe the Guilfords just figure Scottie’s eighteen now, a high school graduate, and he’s going to
have to start making his own decisions and taking the consequences as they come. Sam’s given this some thought since graduation, actually. It’s pretty liberating. It’s also terrifying.
On the other hand, she’s staggered past buzzed now and is well nigh on to shitfaced. Not quite hammered. She’d rather not get too hammered, actually, because then there’s the vomiting and the hanging on people and saying things that will embarrass her later. She’s witnessed that one too many times, and done it a few as well. It’s never good.
So no more alcohol for Samantha tonight.
None.
Dan and Traci run far ahead, bare feet kicking up sand behind them. They laugh and Dan starts tickling her, trying to prod her toward the water as if he’s going to throw her in. Traci gets serious, wags a finger at him. Don’t you fucking dare, Daniel. He gives her that trademark grin and throws up his hands. As soon as she drops her guard he tackles her on the sand and they roll around and a second later they’re all over each other yet again.
Samantha gets a mental image that makes her want to laugh and makes her a little nauseated at the same time—last night Traci and Dan took off down the beach to fool around. Drunk off her ass, she started to give him a blowjob only to gag and throw up all over him. This morning Traci had hardly blushed telling Samantha and the twins the story—she thought it was a riot. At the time, Samantha had thought it disgusting, but in retrospect, it’s pretty fucking funny.
Seeing them tussling on the sand like that gets her giggling to herself. The twins, Kara and Kat, are walking on either side of her and they shoot her matching inquisitive looks. Samantha makes a low gagging noise and pretends to throw up, and the other two girls begin to giggle uncontrollably.
Scottie frowns at them like they’re out of their minds. He and Tim stop and sit on the sand, stretching out. Brian joins them, putting down the boom box he’s carrying. Sheryl Crow’s sexy voice rasps on the radio. The waves roll in with a soft, constant hiss that Samantha can feel inside her. The ocean breeze blows through her too-short blond hair and it’s chilly all of a sudden. Colder than it should be. Hell, it’s summer now, after all, and it had been plenty hot that day.
But the chill isn’t an illusion and it’s not brought on by the Captain Morgan either. Beneath the fabric of her lime-green bikini top her nipples harden and she wishes she had worn a sweatshirt.
“Fucking cold out here,” she murmurs.
“Sit down, I’ll warm you up.” This from Tim, who has wanted to get in her pants since the first day of high school. Not that this puts her into any special category, for the same could be said of most of the girls at Boxford High.
Tonight, though, Samantha chooses to ignore the lascivious tone of his words. She plops down on the sand beside him and lets him slip an arm around her, and she’s grateful for the warmth. For his part, Tim is the perfect gentleman, just as she knew he would be. He’s all talk, or almost all. A good guy, underneath all that hominess. And not half bad looking, with pitch-black hair a little too long, just like her own latest cut was a little too short.
Brian sets down a six-pack of cold Coronas in their midst. They’re all carrying drinks already except for Samantha and she glances nervously at the other houses on the beach. Little cottages really. Some of them are lit inside, mostly older couples according to Scottie, but the only other people they see on this stretch of beach are a pair of fortyish women jogging.
He glances at her, indicates the beer. She shakes her head, but she smiles sweetly at him. Brian is her best friend, bar none. She can’t talk to him the way she does to her girlfriends; but then she can’t talk to them the way she talks to Brian, either. There have been times in the past four years where knowing she had him to talk to, to hold her when she cried, was the only thing that got her through without completely losing her mind.
Every heartbreak, Brian was there. When her parents’ divorce was final, Brian was there. When she was in the hospital with mono, Brian was there. When she embarrassed herself after too many drinks and threw up in the bushes in the twins’ backyard, Brian held her hair away from her face. He knew her better than anyone. Samantha likes to think she has been that kind of friend to Brian as well.
She watches him now as he slips up beside Kat and puts an arm around her waist. Kat smiles and kisses him quickly. Kara turns around and puts her hands on her narrow hips and stares out at the surf crashing on the sand and the streak of moonlight that cascades across the water.
The moon seems cold to Samantha. It isn’t like the sun. It doesn’t warm her. Like a ball of ice in the night sky, it seems to glow with a halo of frost.
“Look at all the gulls,” Kara says. “They’re so gross.”
Samantha frowns and glances up to where Kara’s pointing. A small egg-shaped island stands perhaps two hundred yards from shore. Its coast is rocky and jagged, not at all inviting despite the woods that sprout from the island farther inland. Kara’s right about the seagulls, too. Samantha has seen pictures of St. Mark’s Square in Venice and all the pigeons there. This is far worse than that. Seagulls soar and turn and glide on the wind above those trees, but there are only a few in the air at a time. The rest of them are spread out across the jagged, inhospitable face of the island, roosting on every rock and tree Samantha can see.
“There must be thousands of them,” Kara adds.
Samantha shudders. Kara said they were gross, but she thinks they’re also pretty creepy, so many of them just sitting there.
“That’s Monument Island,” Scottie says as he uses his key chain to pop the cap off a Corona. “Supposedly there’s an old monument out there. My father says it must be Native American, but Mom told me she’d read it’s supposed to be left there by the Vikings.”
“That’d be sort of cool to see,” Brian says. “The Vikings were here way before any other European settlers, but there isn’t a lot of evidence of it.”
Tim laughs. “Yeah, all right, Indiana Jones. We’ll check it out first thing in the morning. For now, just shut up and drink, motherfucker. Jesus.” He rubs Sam’s shoulder and though she likes the contact, something in his laugh makes her wince.
“Can’t,” Scottie says.
Brian and Tim glance at him. Samantha does, too. She realizes that they’re all looking at him now.
Scottie shrugs. “You can try if you want. It’s pretty shallow at low tide. But I’ve gone out there a couple of times and those fucking birds won’t let you within ten feet of the shore. They’re brutal, man. Peck your goddamn eyes out.”
“Get the fuck out of here!” Tim snorts.
“Come on, Scott,” Kat says, hugging herself as she comes over to take a Corona and sit down next to Sam.
Even Traci and Dan sit up now. Her tank top is twisted around and she’s smiling mischievously as she reaches up under it and snaps her bra back into place, but she’s paying attention.
“Serious,” Scottie tells them. “I’ve seen it. I shit you not, I swear. They’re maniacs, all of those birds. Probably their nesting grounds or something, but they won’t let anybody on the island. I saw some bird-watching asshole get his arms all torn up last summer. He ended up having to dive into the water. One of the damn gulls even took his hat.”
Samantha can’t help laughing. It’s a deep laugh, and she snorts. “They took his hat?”
Scottie laughs, too. “You had to see it.” Then he pushes his fingers through his brown hair, blue eyes glistening in the moonlight, and he smiles. “My mother said the story was that the Vikings lost so many warriors or sailors or whatever to disease and battles with the Indians and shit that they had to build a monument to them. They’d take them out to the island and build a big… what do you call that, the bonfire when they put the corpse on it?”
Brian doesn’t even smile. “A funeral pyre.”
Scottie snaps his fingers. “Exactly. So they burned the bodies on these bonfires and the fates or the Valkyries or whatever would come and get them.”
Samantha shudders as she st
ares out at the island. “So it’s like a cemetery out there?”
“No, you’re missing the point,” Scottie says. “They burned them. Maybe there’s bones out there, but the way my mother tells it from what she read, probably not even that. The Vikings believed that the remains of their warriors were purified in the fire and then they were brought back to life, returned to the battlefields from heaven.”
“Valhalla,” Brian corrects him, turning now to stare out at the island. “They would have been taken to Valhalla, the hall of dead heroes and warriors, before being returned to battle.”
“How is it you spend so much time in the library and still have time to parry with us?” Tim teases him.
Brian shrugs, smiling. He had glasses for a long time, but he wears contacts now and his blue eyes are sparkling. He’s always been a big guy, a little too doughy maybe, but in the last year he’s slimmed down and now he’s just tall and broad-shouldered, enough so that he might intimidate someone who didn’t know him.
Kat kisses his cheek. “Don’t worry, babe. Being smart might be considered uncool in high school, but college starts in a couple of months. Smart is sexy now.”
“Yeah, you better watch it, Kat,” Kara said. “The girls are gonna be all over Bri the first week.”
Samantha thinks they might both be right, but not just because Brian’s smart. He doesn’t look like the old Brian anymore. In his way, he’s the best looking among the guys in their group; only she’s never really noticed it before. He looks more like a man, and the other guys, well, they’re just the guys. Kids, still.
Just like me, she thinks.
But then her gaze drifts toward the island again and she thinks of bodies burning and she trembles.
“Jeez,” Tim says quietly, kindly, beside her. “You really are cold. You want my shirt?”
Samantha smiles. “No. I’m good, thanks.”
“What you need is a beer,” Tim assures her.
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