Sometimes Marco would accompany them, but often Maggie would bring the children by herself, sneaking out with them once or twice during her monthlong visit while Lena was busy with something else. Normally Lena strictly limited their sugar consumption, and Maggie liked the feeling of being the naughty aunt, the one who broke the rules and indulged the kids’ desire for marshmallow fluff or gummy bears on their scoops of Superman or Rocky Road. Lena turned a blind eye to the illicit visits, clucking her tongue when they returned sticky and wired with sugar. She’d be waiting at the door with a wet washcloth to clean their smudged faces and fingers.
But today was different. This wasn’t an illicit sugar adventure. It felt more like damage control. Maggie wasn’t even sure Lena was aware they had left. Maggie turned to the children in the backseat. They looked at her solemnly, three faces so alike and so like Marco. She swallowed hard. What was she thinking, trying to single-handedly mend something this broken? The death of a parent couldn’t be fixed with a Butterfinger Tornado or a banana split. Maybe she had made a mistake. What did she know about helping kids through something like this? Her exposure to children, besides the month each year with these three, was solely through the lens of a camera, as subjects for photos. She knew much more about highlighting the problems of the world than solving them, especially when it came to matters of the heart. But it was too late to turn back now. She just needed to do the best she could.
“Okay,” she said again, taking a deep breath, mustering her courage. “This is not just our usual ice cream adventure. This is a challenge. I have prizes, so listen closely. Jonah, I want you to find the ice cream treat that reminds you of Africa. Luca, you find the one that seems most like America. And, Gabby, you find the ice cream treat you think fairies would like. Okay? And if I agree with you, you get a prize I brought back from one of my trips. And we’ll take a picture so we can show your mom your prize-winning ice cream creations.” She paused expectantly, looking at their blank expressions. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea after all.
“What do you have to find?” Luca asked finally.
“Um, the weirdest combination of ice cream possible,” Maggie said, improvising.
That seemed to satisfy them, and they piled out of the car. It was overcast and cool but not raining. Maggie clipped a leash to Sammy’s collar, and he pulled her over to the kids as they stood at the order window, looking at the menu. They were the only ones ordering ice cream at this hour of the afternoon between ferry arrivals. An hour later and the place would be swarmed with tourists just off the boat.
A man puttered into the parking lot on a moped, the stutter of the engine loud on the quiet street. He cut the engine, and when Maggie looked up, she saw he’d stayed seated. He was also staring at them. He looked about her age or a few years older, with tanned skin and straight black hair pulled back in a ponytail. She would have guessed he was Native American, maybe from one of the reservations on the mainland. He didn’t move, and Maggie turned her attention back to the kids.
Jonah stood back slightly, hands in his pockets, reading the menu options silently. Luca pressed his face close to the glass, sounding out the flavors and toppings aloud. “But . . . ter . . . scotch . . . pray . . . leen . . . marsh . . . mallow.”
Gabby stuck her thumb in her mouth, looking doubtful. “But I can’t read the words,” she protested, taking her thumb out of her mouth just long enough to speak before popping it back in. She’d stopped sucking her thumb before she was two years old, but had taken it up again. Maggie squatted down beside her and read the list aloud, pointing to the various options.
“But what if fairies don’t eat ice cream?” Gabby asked.
“Oh, they do. Fairies love ice cream. It’s their favorite,” Maggie assured her.
They all ordered, including a vanilla ice cream cone for Sammy, who would try to steal people’s if he didn’t have his own treat. Maggie led them to a concrete picnic table in a weedy, graveled area near the parking lot, noting that the stranger had finally gotten off the moped and was placing an order at the window. A minute later he took a seat at one of the other tables, the one farthest from them.
Maggie put Sammy’s vanilla cone on a napkin on the ground and wound his leash around the leg of the table. The dog immediately set to work, downing ice cream, cone, and napkin together with abandon. He licked his jowls and eyed the treats on the table. A bit of soggy paper napkin stuck to his nose.
“Is that bad for him to eat the napkin?” Maggie asked.
Jonah shook his head. “It won’t hurt him. He eats paper stuff all the time.” He took a spoonful of his sundae.
Maggie glanced over at the man sitting at the far table. He had ordered a Coke but wasn’t drinking it. He was just watching them. She met his eyes, and he looked down quickly. He wasn’t a threat; she sensed that. After so many years of travel in foreign places, Maggie had a finely honed intuition about danger. His stare wasn’t sinister in any way, but it was puzzling. She felt as though she was missing something. Had they met before? Should she recognize him from somewhere? There was something about him . . .
She squinted at his bowed head, trying to pinpoint what it was that intrigued her. His features, with high cheekbones and dark eyes, were striking, but there was something else compelling about him. With his faded camouflage pants and black T-shirt, he looked like just another normal island resident, a mechanic or a construction worker, but there was something incongruous Maggie couldn’t put her finger on. There was more to him than met the eye.
“Auntie Maggie, my ice cream is melting.” Gabby’s voice drew her attention back to the children.
Maggie turned away from the man, dismissing him from her mind. “Okay, let’s see who got what. Jonah, how’d yours turn out?”
Jonah shrugged. “I got coconut with bananas and marshmallow ’cause coconuts and bananas grow in Africa, and ’cause I like marshmallows.” He looked down at his shoes, not meeting her eyes. He had always been the most serious of the children, introverted and thoughtful, while Luca and Gabby tended to be far more animated and chatty. His introversion had become more pronounced since her last visit, now bordering on the sullen. She wondered what was going on inside his head. His shoulders were slumped, as though bearing a weight far too heavy for his age. He was growing up too soon. She wanted to say something more, reassure him in some way that things would be okay, but she couldn’t find the words. How could she guarantee something she wasn’t sure of herself?
“That’s great,” Maggie affirmed. “Very tropical. Here, let me take a picture of you.” She took her camera from the bag, adjusted the focus, and snapped a few shots of Jonah with his ice cream. It made her feel better to have her camera in her hands. Life made more sense when she could see it through a viewfinder.
Jonah didn’t smile, just stuck his spoon into his ice cream and took a big bite.
“I got a sundae with vanilla ice cream and strawberries and blueberries on top,” Luca volunteered. “See? Red, white, and blue, like the flag. And peanuts. We learned in school that peanuts grow in America.” He tucked into his bowl with the plastic spoon, taking a gigantic bite.
“Wow!” Maggie surveyed his creation, impressed. “Very nice. Let’s document this very patriotic ice cream sundae.” She snapped a few photos of him, smiling at his cute face mugging for the camera, mouth already rimmed with vanilla ice cream. “And how about you, Gabby?”
“I got strawberry with sprinkles ’cause it’s pretty, and fairies like pretty,” Gabby said decidedly, then stuck her thumb back in her mouth.
“Very pretty,” Maggie agreed. “Do you want me to take a picture of it?”
Gabby nodded, and Maggie took a photo of the little girl and her pink ice cream.
“What’d you get, Aunt Maggie?” Luca asked, his mouth full.
“Well, I thought the weirdest thing I could get would be Rocky Road with pineapple and pecans.”
The three eyed her creation doubtfully. “That’s not weird,”
Jonah said, expressing what they all seemed to be thinking. The other two nodded.
“Oh, come on,” Maggie protested. “Chocolate, marshmallow, peanuts, pineapple, and pecans? That’s weird.”
Luca shook his head. “Not weird enough.” He pulled two small plastic dinosaurs out of the pocket of his jeans and engaged them in mortal combat over the melting ice cream in his bowl.
“You don’t get a prize,” Gabby announced, eating a spoonful of her ice cream.
“Oh, fine. Well, I’ll just have to give you your prizes, then.” Maggie put her camera away and fished around in its bag, pulling out three small packages wrapped in newspaper and tied with twine. She’d brought them back from a photo shoot in Kenya earlier in the year and had mailed them to Lena from Chicago, asking that they be left in the guest room until August when she could give them to the children. She’d found them in the top dresser drawer the night before. Now seemed like a good time to give them out. Maggie glanced up at the far table, but the stranger was gone. She turned her attention back to the children and the presents in her hands.
“These came all the way from Kenya in Africa.” She handed each a package. After a minute of fumbling with twine and paper, they pulled out their presents. For Jonah a curved wooden knife in a leather sheath decorated with geometric patterns. For Luca a small drum made of wood and goatskin. And for Gabby a baby hippo made of colorful knit yarn and stuffed with rags.
“Cool!” Luca set down his dinosaurs and thumped the drum experimentally. Jonah didn’t say anything, but he slid the knife in and out of its sheath several times, the corner of his mouth turned up in a small smile. He stuck it in the pocket of his cargo pants and turned back to his ice cream.
“No sticking people with that thing,” Maggie admonished him.
“Why’d I get a hippo?” Gabby piped up, examining her gift.
“Well, they love the water just like you, and they even make their own sunscreen on their skin. How cool is that?”
“Do daddy and mommy hippos love their baby hippos?” Gabby asked.
“Absolutely,” Maggie declared. “And they keep their baby hippos safe from crocodiles and all sorts of bad things.”
“But sometimes bad things still happen,” Gabby countered, stroking the hippo’s head. “Sometimes bad things happen to the daddy or mommy hippo.”
Maggie hesitated, unsure how to answer. She was fairly certain Gabby wasn’t talking about hippos anymore.
“That’s true,” she said carefully. “Sometimes bad things do happen. But the big hippos do whatever they can to keep the baby hippos safe. They love the baby hippos and try to protect them.”
“Are you going to eat your ice cream?” Jonah interrupted abruptly. “It’s melting.”
They all turned back to their treats. “Don’t worry, little hippo,” Gabby said, wedging the small animal into the pocket of her dress as she scooped up a spoonful of pink ice cream. “I’ll keep you safe. You’ll see.”
When they returned at sundown, Ellen had dinner waiting. Mashed potatoes, peas, and baked chicken casserole. Lena didn’t eat with them and continued canning.
With unwavering cheer, Doris Day was still singing “Love Me or Leave Me” in the background as they ate a silent supper. No matter the song, she sang it with the same peppy goodwill.
After dinner Gabby begged to play Candy Land. For an hour Maggie refereed fights between Luca and Gabby because Gabby refused to play cards in colors she didn’t like. Jonah didn’t join them. He read a comic book on the couch. At last it was bedtime. Ellen shooed the three kids upstairs and followed to oversee baths and story time. Maggie put the game away, then reluctantly ventured into the kitchen. She glanced around. All the counter space was covered in orderly rows of pint glass jars glinting in a rainbow of colors.
“What are those?” Maggie asked, pointing to ones that shimmered translucent green, like emeralds in Mason jars.
“Oh, don’t touch those. They aren’t set yet. That’s mint jelly,” Lena answered without looking up from the stove.
“But you don’t like mint,” Maggie said, surprised.
Lena frowned. “Some people love it.”
Marco had loved it, served with a leg of lamb. His chosen birthday meal every year. “Want some help?” Maggie offered.
“Yes.” Lena nodded, stirring the contents of the pot vigorously. “Next I was thinking another batch of spiced plum.”
A half hour later Maggie peered dubiously into a pot of rock-solid plum segments. The plums were mostly unripe, just starting to tinge purple, difficult to get off the pit and mouth-puckeringly sour. The jam had every likelihood of being completely inedible, but as Maggie watched Lena bustle about the kitchen, she acknowledged that the quality of the canning was not the point.
“Que sera, sera,” Doris belted out heartily in the background. Maggie rolled her eyes. She didn’t know how much more of Doris she could handle.
“Are you stirring?” Lena asked her, back turned as she stood in front of the sink. It was like she had eyes in the back of her head, a trait she’d perfected as a mother.
“I’m stirring,” Maggie assured her, giving the jam a cursory pass with the spoon. The pieces of plum sat like little lumps of granite, unmoved. “Maybe it needs more heat,” Maggie suggested.
Lena shook her head. “It will be fine. It will all be fine. Just keep stirring.”
So Maggie stirred. It was a bizarre scene, and one she couldn’t wrap her mind around. Just a few days before, she’d been traveling in the high, lush mountains of Nicaragua, eating oranges so ripe the juice ran down her arms to her elbows, free as a bird. And now here she was in a kitchen watching her best friend preserve anything she could get her hands on in a mad attempt to stave off the reality of her husband’s death and the subsequent financial unraveling of their entire life. It was horrible. It was surreal. She kept stirring.
They finished at almost eleven that night. Lena had not stopped for hours, insisting she had to keep canning. She hadn’t eaten and seemed to be subsisting on Earl Grey tea laced with a spoonful of sugar. Maggie saw the glint in Lena’s eyes and the set of her jaw and didn’t cross her. They didn’t talk much, working in a silence punctuated only by Doris’s voice, the sounds of the wooden spoon against the pot, and the occasional happy pop as a full jar sealed itself on the counter.
Soon Lena would break. She was strung as tightly as a violin bow, resonating with suppressed emotion, taut and completely self-contained. Her jaw was clenched, her back straight. The atmosphere was thick with sugary steam and denial. Maggie just hoped she could be with Lena when she snapped. And then, just when Maggie was about to call it quits and head for bed, Lena dropped a tray of jam. It was another batch made with plums from the seemingly inexhaustible supply in the garage. She was transferring the still-hot jars to a little space she’d cleared by the sink when the tray nosed forward. They both watched in horror as the jars slid in orderly lines down the tray, falling one by one onto the tile floor and shattering.
“Oh no. No!” Lena dropped to her knees and began scooping the entire mess, glass fragments and steaming jam, onto the tray. Maggie grabbed for her wrists.
“Lena, you’ll cut yourself. Stop!” She squatted across the debris from Lena, gripping her forearms. Scalding jam ran down Lena’s wrists and between Maggie’s fingers.
Doris crooned gently above them, her voice warbling about dreams and saying good-bye.
“But it will be ruined. I can’t let it be ruined.” Maggie could hear the panic in Lena’s voice as she struggled to extricate herself from Maggie’s grasp.
“Lena, listen to me.” Maggie shook her gently, keeping a firm hold on her arms. Lena twisted in her grasp, but Maggie held on, waiting until finally Lena looked up and met her eyes. Her pupils were dilated; she had never looked so lost.
“It was ruined before we even started,” Maggie said softly. Lena looked at her for a long moment and then slowly sank back on her heels. She covered her face with her hands, stic
ky with inedible jam, and then she began to cry.
Chapter Ten
THE NEXT MORNING, WHEN MAGGIE TIPTOED INTO the master bedroom with a cup of tea and a pancake in the shape of a hot-air balloon, Lena was awake, curled up as Maggie had left her the night before, staring out at the water. She didn’t look up when Maggie entered. Maggie set the plate on the nightstand, lingering for a moment in the hope that Lena might acknowledge her presence. Gaining no response, she turned to go.
“I didn’t know it was good-bye,” Lena whispered, her voice hoarse.
“What?” Maggie turned back to face her.
“I didn’t know, when it happened . . . I didn’t know it was goodbye. I wasn’t prepared. If I had known . . .” Lena twisted the corner of the quilt in her hands. Her face was pale and tear-streaked. “Instead, I just asked him if he wanted squash or green beans. The pie was in the oven, and I was running late. I went up to his studio to ask if he wanted squash or green beans with dinner. He said squash, and I left. I knew the timer was going off and the pie was getting overdone. But I could have taken a moment to tell him I loved him. It would have been so simple.” She drew a deep, shuddery breath. “But I was angry with him. We’d been having an argument. I went back to the kitchen and took the pie out, and then I heard Jonah on the back deck yelling that there was a man in the water. Marco heard him and ran past me, telling me to call the police. I did, and by the time I got to the beach, Marco had his kayak in the water and was paddling out. We could see the man was in trouble. He couldn’t get righted, and the currents were so strong . . .”
She stared out the window as though seeing the scene replaying before her. Her voice was distant, her eyes unfocused as she recounted the events of that day. “It was windy. I remember that. There were whitecaps on the water. Marco got to the man and was trying to help him up. They were both struggling, but then Marco’s kayak capsized too. I don’t know what happened. They weren’t that far out. And Marco was such a strong swimmer. The other man managed to hold on to his kayak, but Marco went under. The police told us he hit his head when his kayak flipped over. The man was trying to pull him up but couldn’t. Marco went under . . . and then he didn’t come back up . . .” Her voice trailed off into a little gasp of a sob.
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