by Grace Palmer
“What for?”
“We’re going out. You, me, and Sara. Gonna go down to the bar. If you’re gonna be drinking, you might as well drink with family.” Her tone was firm.
“To the bar? Little early for that, sis.”
She laughed hollowly. “Early? It’s almost six in the evening, Brent.”
Brent furrowed his brow and held the phone away from his ear to check the time. “Well, I’ll be damned.” She was right. He’d slept the whole day away. He didn’t feel rested at all. Felt like death warmed over, actually, but that was mostly par for the course this summer. No better or worse than normal. He’d pretty much gotten used to it.
Well, if Eliza insisted, he’d be amenable to getting a dinnertime beer. Maybe he’d be able to scarf down some wings or oysters to get a little substance in his stomach before returning home to down another twelve-pack or two on the couch alone.
“All right,” he said, pulling the toothbrush out. His voice cracked when he spoke. “Meet you there.”
Eliza hung up without saying anything.
“You look awful, bro,” was the first thing Sara said to him when she and Eliza strolled into the bar to meet him.
“Good to see you, too, my lovely siblings,” Brent said. He raised his glass in a mock toast. He hadn’t waited for them to arrive before ordering. Eliza was pregnant, and he wasn’t sure if Sara was still doing her nunnery thing where she abstained from vices of all stripes. She’d kept it up for a bit since Dad’s … thing, but it had been a few weeks now since he’d checked in with either of them, despite them all once again living on the same island.
The girls had both pretty much stayed put on Nantucket since the funeral. They’d made one trip back to NYC together to gather their things, but since then, they’d just been hanging around, living at home and helping Mom run the Sweet Island Inn whenever they had time. Eliza was doing some business thing to help increase bookings, and Sara was cooking dinners for the guests here and there. Neither one seemed concerned about money at the moment. Must be nice.
For his part, Brent was broke as a joke with little prospect of changing it and even less interest in doing so. He’d been picking up odd handyman jobs here and there, and Marshall had been harassing him to be a crew member on one of his charter fishing trips, but he wanted to do the bare minimum necessary to skate by. If he could keep the fridge stocked with cold beer and scrounge up sufficient cash for rent, he figured that was good enough.
“What’ve you been doing, Brent?” Eliza asked. She settled down onto the stool on one side of him and ordered a seltzer from the bartender. Sara came around to the other side and asked for a glass of chardonnay. Guess she wasn’t teetotaling anymore, then.
“You’re lookin’ at it.”
“Charming.”
“Nothing like the love of a sister to brighten your day.”
Sara butted in. “Jeez, you are really a black hole tonight.”
Brent raised his glass. “I’ll drink to that.” He knew both Eliza and Sara were rolling their eyes, but he didn’t care. He was long past caring at this point. His dad was gone and it was his fault, so what else was there to do but drink? Amen. Bottoms up. Rinse and repeat.
What was worse than self-pity was the pity of others. Yeah, Brent knew that his life had gone from not much to nothing at all, but that was his problem, not theirs. Why wouldn’t they get off his back? Every time he thought he’d convinced them that he would be just fine sooner or later if they would just leave him be, they came storming back, knocking on his door with platters of food or insisting that he come join them on some outing or another. He tried to refuse—he didn’t want to walk downtown, or go to the beach, and he sure as heck did not want to take a boat out on the water. He couldn’t possibly state that last one firmly enough. His mom was the only one who didn’t push him, and even then, he knew that she was worried to death about him.
He felt worst of all about that. Lord knew his mom had been dealt an awful hand this spring. He was well aware that he was doing not a darn thing to make it any easier, either. Still, he was glad that she was busy with the inn. What had Dad always called her? That silly pet name. His … hummingbird, that was it. It suited her. Mae Benson loathed idleness. She was the little engine that could, and if she ever ran out of steam or train track, Brent had no idea how she would operate. Aunt Toni’s offer had come at the right time for Mom’s sanity, that was for sure. Thank God for small blessings, he supposed.
Brent, on the other hand, didn’t want to do anything. He just wanted to sit in a quiet corner and drink his beer unbothered. Eliza and Sara didn’t seem to have gotten that memo.
“When did you last take a shower? You smell god-awful,” Sara said. She wrinkled her nose. Never too subtle, that one.
“Have you been working?” Eliza asked.
He straightened up and raised his hands to both of them. “Look,” he began, “I’m gonna say this one time and one time only: I’m fine. I don’t want your help, money, or pity. I just want to drink my beer in peace. Is that so much to ask?” He could sense Eliza and Sara making eye contact and doing their sisterly telepathy thing he’d always hated so much. He used to pitch a fit whenever they did it around him when they were young. Dad! They’re doing it again! Make them stop! He wished Pops was around to cajole his sisters into using words around him. Then again, maybe it was for the best that Brent couldn’t hear what they were saying. It would only piss him off further.
Sighing, Eliza and Sara settled into the bar and nursed their drinks for a while. They chitchatted about people they’d seen around town, about Holly, who was back home in Plymouth with Pete and the kids, about guests at the inn. Stuff seemed like it was going well, relatively speaking. Brent chimed in often enough to keep them off his back, but for the most part he just kept his thoughts to himself. He was an extrovert by nature, but he hadn’t felt like much social interaction lately.
After an hour or so had passed, Brent decided that he’d had his fill of sibling bonding. He made his excuses, said his goodbyes to Eliza, Sara, and Big Mack behind the bar, then strolled out. He could feel everyone’s eyes on his back as he left, but he didn’t much care.
He’d held himself to a pair of beers, so he felt plenty confident in getting behind the wheel of his truck again. He fired her up and started home, but when he got to the third intersection, he had a sudden change of heart and went right instead of left. A few more minutes brought him to the marina. The sun had set maybe forty-five minutes ago, so the place was mostly empty and the boat ramp was chained up, with the CLOSED ’TIL TOMORROW sign hanging from its post. But the night was clear and the moon was full, so he could see well enough to hitch up his trailer and back Jenny Lee into the water. From there, it was only a few short minutes until he was out on the ocean.
He knew where he was going, even though he hadn’t ever consciously decided to go there. But it was no surprise to him that he ended up at the Garden of Eden, the little spot out by the underwater drop-off where his dad had wanted to go on that fateful day.
It was only the second or third time Brent had been out on the boat in the last four months. The first couple times he’d tried it, he’d been a nervous wreck. Every bump of an unexpected wave sent tremors racing down his spine, and he’d wanted to turn back just as soon as he’d left.
But tonight, he felt none of that. He didn’t feel much of anything as he surveyed the dark, rocking waters. The stars were out, and he could see for miles out here. There was little to see. Just water and Nantucket night sky. He killed the engine and sat down with a heavy sigh. Reaching into one of the side hatches, he pulled out a cooler in which he kept an emergency twelve-pack.
“This one’s for you, Dad,” he said, cracking open a can and raising it to the heavens.
What in the world was he doing out here? There were no answers forthcoming; he knew that. He’d never been much of a believer in anything he couldn’t lay his hands on. It had taken his third-grade teacher, Mrs. Reese, se
veral days and a number of apples dropped on his head to convince stubborn Brent Benson about the existence of gravity. All of which was to say that he knew darn well his dad’s ghost wasn’t about to speak to him out of the clouds or anything like that. No one was gonna answer any of the questions he’d spent four months running from. But for some reason, he felt like asking them anyway.
“Why’d this happen to us, Dad?” he called out to nobody. He took a sip of his beer and continued. “Why didn’t I try harder to stop you? You shouldn’t have gone out there, I knew that. You’d been drinking and you were frustrated and I was being a crab. But I knew that storm wasn’t good. I should’ve tried harder to stop you. It’s my fault you’re gone.”
Silence. Waves slapped the side of the boat, but there was no rhythm or meaning to it. It was just noise, nothing more than that.
He wasn’t sure how long he went on like that, hollering nonsense to no one, before he got tired and lay down, but he’d been yelling for long enough that his throat was sore and it was good to be quiet for a while. He hadn’t gotten a single answer to any of his questions, but that was fine. He felt a little more settled anyway. Like something that had been shaken up in his chest had clicked back into place and everything around it could ease up now. Like he could finally take a real, deep breath.
Oddly enough, he felt somewhat at peace for the first time in months.
He fell asleep like that, under the stars.
18
Sara
Eliza and Sara turned to each other as soon as Brent left the bar. They each had the same worried expression on their face. He was getting worse and worse every day. If something didn’t change, and soon, they knew their baby brother was headed for a brutal crash landing at rock bottom.
“What are we going to do?” Sara asked. Eliza would know the answer. That was how she’d been for their whole lives. Big sister, know-it-all, control freak. Things usually turned out well when Eliza was in charge. Well, not so much lately, what with the baby and the breakup. But, up until now, her track record had been pretty good.
Which was why Sara’s worry ticked a notch higher when Eliza sighed, rubbed her temples, and said, “I honestly do not know.”
Sara took a sip of her wine. She thought clearing her head of all externally induced demons would be good, but she hadn’t felt better after a few months of abstaining from all vices, so she’d figured she’d at least enjoy a little buzz if she was going to be worried and sad. “He looks awful.”
“Horrible.”
“Terrible.”
“Train wreck.”
“Dumpster fire.”
Eliza chuckled and swatted Sara. “Hey now, that’s my brother you’re talking about.”
Sara raised her wrists towards Eliza. “Guilty as charged. Lock me up, officer.”
The girls laughed together and took another sip of their drinks. But the laughter felt forced. The truth was that Brent really was in a bad way. Not to say that either of their lives was going much better. Sara hadn’t been back to Lonesome Dove since the Melissa Question was answered with sickening finality. She’d had Benny empty out her locker and relay a message to the head chef, Carlo, that she was going to be taking a break for a while. It wasn’t such a big deal—the restaurant industry was full of flighty people who took off at a moment’s notice—but Sara didn’t like being unreliable. Still, faced with a choice between putting a dent in her career trajectory and facing Gavin again, she’d take the hit ten times out of ten.
She’d done her best not to think about him in the days and weeks since returning to the island. It had been a mostly successful effort. He’d texted a few half-hearted things, which she ignored. She knew he didn’t really mean them. He’d been interested in her as a little weekend fling, nothing more. He didn’t deserve her attention. Melissa didn’t deserve her jealousy. Sara felt bad for Melissa, actually. It must be hard to live with that cognitive dissonance of hitching her wagon to a man who’d shown her his true colors in gruesome fashion. Still, everyone had to make tough choices sometimes in life. It wasn’t a black-and-white kind of world.
“Maybe Brent needs a wife,” Eliza mused.
Sara cackled at that. “Baby Brent? Married?! That’ll be the day. There’s not a single woman in Nantucket that would shack up with that one right now. Not until he cleans himself up, at least.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right. What about a dog?”
“To own or to marry?”
“Oh jeez, that’s dark,” Eliza said, rolling her eyes and burying her head in her forearms.
“He can barely take care of himself,” Sara went on. “The last thing he needs is another living creature to feed and shelter.”
“Two strikes. Should he become a monk, then?” Eliza smiled wryly.
Sara laughed again. She had noticed her sister becoming a little—well, looser wasn’t quite the right word, but more relaxed, maybe? Like someone had eased the tension on the guy wires that propped up Eliza Benson. She wasn’t sure whether to chalk it up to the wreckage of her sister’s life plans, the magic in the Nantucket air, or a little bit of both. But no matter what the cause, Eliza definitely seemed a little less Eliza-ish since they’d both returned home. It was an odd change, to be sure, but not necessarily an unwelcome one.
“Only if he’s one of those monks who makes beer. He might actually fit in there.” It was Sara’s turn to sigh. “The Benson family fortunes have really taken a downturn, haven’t they?”
Eliza smiled thinly. “I knew I never should’ve made that deal with the devil. Stupid monkey’s paw.”
“I hope you got something good out of it, at least.” Sara laughed.
“Definitely. The associate on my team with the bad breath got shipped off to London.”
“That’s a dark joke, too, Lizzy,” Sara replied, shaking her head.
Eliza shrugged. “Such is life these days.”
She wasn’t wrong. The Benson family was indeed struggling a bit. Between Brent’s downward spiral, Sara finding herself out of a job, Eliza somehow winding up pregnant and single, and Holly getting frustrated with the domestic life she’d chosen for herself, Mae was the only one who was actually coping with their trauma in anything that resembled a healthy manner. Their mother was sad, of course, but she responded to her grief by staying busy and being helpful. The Benson children had taken the opposite tack.
Sara shivered. It was freezing in here all of a sudden. Trust a Nantucket bar to keep the A/C on an absolutely frigid setting during the summer. “I’m gonna go outside and get a breath of fresh air,” she told her sister.
“I’ll be here.”
Sara nodded and wove her way through the dinnertime patrons and outside. Over the last four months, she had been getting weirdly claustrophobic at the randomest times. Like, she’d just be sitting around, perfectly fine—or at least, whatever passed for perfectly fine lately—and then boom, it would feel like the walls were bulging inwards and the roof was about to collapse right on her head. She’d be possessed by an overwhelming need to be outside immediately, and nothing else could calm her down.
She stepped through the doors and was hit at once with the smell of ocean salt on the breeze. There wasn’t much of that smell in NYC, which seemed to specialize more in eau de sewage. She hadn’t realized how much she missed the sea scent. It had a calming effect on her. She was home here. At peace. She closed her eyes and let it drift over and through her. Her hair trailed in the breeze. She’d been growing it out a little longer than she did normally, and keeping it down. It was almost to her mid-back now. It felt nice not to have to put it up in a severe bun every night so she didn’t fry it off over an open flame at work.
“Nothing like that smell, am I right?” came a voice from her right.
Sara nearly jumped out of her skin. She’d thought she was alone. But there was a man sitting on the bench next to her, smoking a cigarette. She whirled around, eyes wide, only to realize that she recognized him.
“Ru
ssell Bridges?”
“Oh wow!” he said, looking back at her with the same astonishment on his face. “Sara Benson! Ain’t that something.”
The decade since high school had treated Russell well. He’d lost the baby fat on his cheeks—the beard helped with that—and his face had a lean, angular look. His hair had the faintest dusting of salt in it now, but mostly the thick black locks were the same as she remembered. He must’ve picked up exercise or some outdoor hobby, too, because his Nantucket red button-down shirt clung tightly to his chest and biceps.
“You look great,” she gushed. She wasn’t even fawning; it was just the truth.
“You, too,” he said with a grin. “I thought you were in New York, though? I saw your name in an article a little while back.”
“I was,” Sara replied, waving a hand behind her as if to say, That’s all in the past now. “Back home for a bit, though.”
“Oh. Oh right.” Russell’s eyes widened and he looked sad all of a sudden. “I forgot. I heard that news, too. I’m so sorry about your dad. He was a great guy.”
“Yeah.” Sara’s gaze fell to her feet. She nudged a leaf with the toe of her shoe awkwardly. She was still so bad at this, no matter how many times she’d had an identical conversation over the last four months. What was she even supposed to say? Thanks? Yeah, he was? I miss him more than life itself? Those answers were all equally terrible for one reason or another. Eliza and Mae were much more adept than her at navigating these small-talk waters, so she usually deferred to them whenever possible. When it was just her, she retreated inwards like a turtle until the moment passed.
A beat or two went by before Sara looked up again. “I didn’t know you smoked.”