by Nancy Thayer
Serena shrugs, as if to say, What a silly question. “I like moon shells. They’re whirly. Crabs live in them. And fairies could live in the ones the crabs are through with. They’re like a maze.” Serena glances up at her mother. “Like a mystery, going round and round and in and in.”
Emily sinks onto the sand next to Serena. “I see.” Focusing on the varicolored rocks, with their stripes, streaks, blotches, holes, and bumps, she selects the ones that catch her eye and begins to make her own design.
Mother and daughter work for a while in silence.
“Mommy,” Serena says, not looking up from her pebble moon shell. “I want to live here.”
“Oh, sweetie, you have to go to school.”
“But they have school here.”
“Well, Daddy has to work in the city.”
“Daddy’s always working.” Serena places a gleaming rock polished by the sea in the center of her spiral. “Why can’t we live here and Daddy can come visit on the weekends?”
“Oh, darling.” Emily sighs, unable to come up with an immediate answer. She stares out to the blue water. The tips of the waves catch the morning sun and seem to be flashing a message. “Daddy would be sad not to tuck you in bed at night.”
“But I like it here!” Serena protests.
“I do, too,” Emily agrees.
This makes it more difficult when it’s finally time to return to the house to pack up for the flight back to the city. Nantucket’s Daffodil Weekend is not a national holiday; Serena has preschool tomorrow. Emily has committee meetings.
Back at the house, she finds her parents at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. Morning has never been an easy time for her parents. Emily serves her daughter a proper breakfast and allows Serena to shower with her, both of them washing their hair. After she dresses Serena, she asks her to help pack her little suitcase and her own duffel bag in which she carries the tiny pink Game Boy she’s allowed to play only when traveling. Her parents dawdle around the house, their suitcase at the door. Emily goes through the house, double-checking lights, blinds, window locks, the kitchen.
“Mommy!” Serena calls. “There’s a man at the door!”
Ben, Emily thinks. Her heart races. She looks in the mirror. She’s back in city mode, wearing a loose black dress, high black boots, with a gray cashmere sweater. Her skin still glows from all the spring sunshine—she looks good.
She walks toward the door, knowing it doesn’t make sense for Ben to be here, yet still unable to stop hoping.
It’s not Ben.
“Mrs. Chadwick?” A police officer is at the door, in a navy blue uniform. He’s young, in his early twenties, and the expression on his face is grave. Next to him stands a young woman, also in uniform.
Emily freezes. Police at the door mean bad news. Serena senses Emily’s distress and presses up against her leg, hanging on to her tight.
“Yes, I’m Mrs. Chadwick.”
“I’m Officer Jimmy Patterson. This is Officer Kathryn Stover. May we come in?” His face is flushed; he’s under stress. The woman officer squints sympathetically.
“Why would you want to come in?” Emily asks.
“We need to speak with you. Alone, if you don’t mind.”
She doesn’t want to hear whatever it is they’re going to say. “I don’t understand.”
“We have some news for you,” the female officer says quietly. “About your husband.”
“Well, he’s in New York. You must have—”
“Mrs. Chadwick? Please.”
“I don’t think so.” Emily doesn’t move from the door but she realizes she must protect her daughter. “Serena, would you run and tell Grandmother to make a fresh pot of coffee?”
“Grandmother doesn’t like to work in the kitchen,” Serena argues. She keeps one hand tightly fastened to her mother’s sweater.
“Please do as I ask, Serena.” Emily uses her serious voice.
With a dramatic sigh and drooping shoulders, Serena slowly, slowly trudges down the hall to the dining room.
“What’s happened?” Emily asks.
“We’d like to come in.” Officer Patterson steps forward.
Emily makes a sudden decision. “I’ll come out.” A force deep in her gut insists that this house, this happy house where she was a child, where her child plays and laughs and loves, should not be contaminated by whatever news these officers of the law are bringing to the door. She steps outside and heads down the slate walk to the street. Once on the pavement, she faces the officers, who look slightly unsettled. “All right. Tell me.”
Officer Patterson takes a deep breath. “We regret to inform you that we’ve received word that a private plane crashed early this morning in the Adirondacks. Mr. Cameron Chadwick was on the plane. There were no survivors.”
Perhaps everyone’s first instinct is to disagree. Emily crosses her arms over her breasts defensively. “Cameron wasn’t going to the Adirondacks. He’s in New York.”
“Ma’am, we have the flight manifest. Cameron Chadwick was on the plane that left from LaGuardia at six-fifteen this morning, headed for the Adirondacks Airport at Saranac Lake. It crashed on landing.”
Emily’s fingers are numb as her mind tries to compute their words.
The female officer interjects helpfully, “The plane belonged to the Endicott, Streeter, and Towle investment firm, based in New York City. Seven people were on board. We don’t have the cause of the crash yet, but it seems faulty landing gear was involved.”
These young people in their crisp uniforms look terribly uncomfortable delivering this news. Endicott, Streeter, and Towle is the firm Cameron works for. Still, Emily thinks they must be wrong.
She shakes her head, trying to figure it out for them. “All seven people on board died?”
“Fire,” Officer Stover gently informs her. “The fire consumed the plane before the rescue trucks could get there.”
Emily is silent for a long moment. Then she strains toward Officer Patterson and Officer Stover. “But I was happy this morning. Serena and I were on the beach, happy to be here, to be on the beach. Cameron has never enjoyed this island like I do, and he was a good sport to join us for Daffodil Weekend, but what you’re saying, let me be clear, Cameron’s plane from Nantucket to New York didn’t crash last night, it was another plane, a smaller plane, a private plane, probably the company plane that crashed. So that’s all right, then. I mean, it’s not my fault.”
“Mrs. Chadwick?” Officer Barrett steps forward. “You’re shivering. Let’s go inside and have some coffee, okay?”
“Yes, but—” Emily’s head is all muddled. “You see, my daughter is in there, Serena, you saw her, she’s only five years old, and I don’t want to upset her. I really don’t think we should give her this kind of news until we know for sure.”
“Ma’am, we do know for sure.”
Emily smiles gently. Officer Patterson is young. Such a sweet fresh face. “I don’t see how. You haven’t seen Cameron. Perhaps he wasn’t on the flight, or he’s still home—” Yanking her cell from her pocket, she punches his number. Unpleasant beeps meet her ear, followed by a robotic voice telling her this number is not in service at the moment.
Please try again later.
But she notices several messages have arrived for her this morning, which is unusual. They’re all from wives of the investment firm employees. And from Edward Towle, one of the partners. Edward never calls her. Why would he call her? She listens to his voicemail, which begins, “Emily, we are grievously sorry …”
She drops the phone.
Behind her, the front door of the bluff house opens. Her mother stands in the doorway, holding the house phone.
“Emily, honey? A call for you. From a John Endicott.”
Oh, Cam, Emily thinks, with your golden hair and your gleaming smile, with your kindness, your courtliness, your determination to be a good husband and father, how can this happen, how can all of your shimmering brightness be gone from the earth?<
br />
She can’t remember whether she told him she loved him when he left.
She doesn’t think she did.
Part Seven
Warrior Princess
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Emily heard somewhere that during such tragedies, time blurs. For her, time progresses with a hyper-vivid jerkiness, like a clock with faulty batteries. Like scenes from 1950s Kodachrome home movies with lines through the middle and sudden blank patches. Telling her parents. Calling Cameron’s parents, who have been informed. Speaking with John Endicott. Thanking him for sending a company plane, but advising him (with a completely regrettable lapse of manners as she began to laugh, slightly hysterically, at the situation) that she’d made reservations with her parents on the Cape Air Flight that was leaving for LaGuardia at three and she’d rather take that plane than a company plane. Allowing her father to take the phone from her so he could speak with Mr. Endicott to give the conversation the solemnity it deserved.
The flight back is bouncy. Serena talks incessantly. Emily hasn’t told her yet. She doesn’t want to tell her until they are away from the island. Nantucket was never Cameron’s place. His death should not be allowed to dim the luster of the island’s magic for Serena. Plus, she doesn’t want to tell Serena until after they’re out of the plane.
Emily wishes time would blur. Instead, it becomes staccato, it drags, it seems to reverse itself, she checks her watch and it’s 5:05 and when she checks it again minutes later, it’s still 5:05. Eons pass as they wait for their luggage. Civilizations rise and fall as she sits in the car driving them into the city. Her head aches hideously. Serena sings a maddeningly high-pitched silly ditty. Her parents discuss their coming week, both of them fastening their eyes to their iPhones, comparing calendars, clearing calendars, making calls, using euphemisms so Serena will not be alarmed.
Her parents ask her to stay with them for a few days, and Emily is glad.
Finally they arrive at the Porter apartment. The doorman greets them cheerfully. Emily returns a rubber smile. As they walk into the apartment, Emily switches off her cell.
Now, Emily thinks. She has to do it now. A force is rising up within her, violently pushing its way out. She has nowhere else to go. It has to be done. She has to tell Serena the sad news about her daddy.
“Mom? I’m going to take Serena into the guest bedroom for a little while.”
“That’s fine, dear. I’ll make some drinks,” Cara offers.
“Serena? I need to talk to you,” Emily says, amazed that it was only this morning she and her daughter played on the beach. With her arm around Serena’s shoulders, she leads her into the room and closes the door. They’re alone, just the two of them, together.
Five days later, Emily’s in her own kitchen, making another pot of coffee for the people in her living room—her parents, Cameron’s parents, a couple of lawyers—when her cell phone rings. The number is one she knows by heart.
“Emily?” After all these years, Maggie’s voice is as familiar to Emily as her own.
“Oh, Maggie.”
“I just read it in the paper. About your husband. I’m so sorry.” The honest warmth in Maggie’s voice breaks open Emily’s heart.
Voices rise in conflict in the living room. Emily opens the door to the broom closet, slips inside, shuts the door, and sinks to the floor. “Maggie, it doesn’t seem real. I can’t believe it.”
“Are you okay? Do you want me to come?”
“No, no, don’t come. It’s crazy here. Cameron’s parents. My parents. His colleagues, their wives. No room to breathe.”
“Come to Nantucket. Bring Serena.”
“Oh, God, how much would I love to do that.” Emily’s silent. “Maggie, I have such a lot of stuff to do. You know. Wills, legal crap, phone calls. Right now it seems endless.”
“How’s Serena?”
“Okay. She’s okay. I mean, she loved her daddy, but she didn’t see him all that much, it’s possible she hasn’t grasped the—the finality of it yet. And people are being kind, Maggie. Preschool moms are having Serena over for sleepovers and taking her on little jaunts. We have enough food for a millennium, and flowers, you’ve never seen so many flowers, although I said in the paper no flowers, all donations to charity.”
“Are you having a funeral?”
“Memorial service tomorrow. Honestly? I don’t know whether to take Serena or not. She’s such a wiggle worm, she can’t sit still for a minute, and she talks all the time. The three heads of Cameron’s firm all want to speak, you know they’ll drone on and on, I mean I don’t want to go, isn’t that awful? Then we’ll all go to the club and they’ll get drunk and maudlin, and how does that help? How does that possibly help?” Emily can hear a mild hysteria in her voice.
“They say it brings closure,” Maggie says.
“Cameron’s closure came the moment that plane crashed,” Emily declares.
“But what about you?” Maggie asks, sounding sensible, almost brisk. “I mean, what are you going to do after the service and the reading of the will and all that?”
“I haven’t thought that far ahead. These days I consider it an incredible accomplishment if I don’t walk into the walls.” Emily wants to cry, but she’s exhausted, and she’s sick of crying, so sick her stomach cramps, so sick her eyes and throat burn as if she has a terrible flu. Will she ever have anything in her life but weeping again?
Is she a horrible person, a wicked, unloving wife, to think that thought?
“When is the will and all that?”
“The day after tomorrow. I know what it says, of course, but I should be there.” Emily is caught in a small dark room, a room full of grief and obligation to Cameron’s relatives, his co-workers, his friends … she giggles at her thoughts. She really is in a small dark room, she’s in the broom closet.
“Have you been sleeping?”
“The doctor gave me some pills. Yes, I’ve had some sleep.”
“And eating?”
“Not much. The thought makes me gag.”
“Are you pregnant?”
“What? Surely you jest.”
“I don’t see what’s funny about that. You are married. Were.”
“Our sex life hasn’t been the most … active … recently. No, I’m definitely not pregnant, Maggie.” An abrupt storm of tears sweeps through Emily. “But I wish I were, Maggie. Oh, I wish I were. I wanted another baby.”
“You’ll have another one someday,” Maggie prophesies. “For now, you have Serena. Now listen to me. When I hang up, I’m making a plane reservation for you two on the noon flight from LaGuardia to Nantucket next Monday. Are you paying attention? I’ll meet your plane.”
“Oh, Maggie—”
“You and Serena can stay with us, or you can stay at your ’Sconset house, wherever you feel more comfortable. You know I’m married now—”
“What?” Maggie’s casual announcement shocks Emily out of her tears. “Who?”
“Tyler Madison. Remember him?”
“Tyler Madison? That boy with the glasses? Jesus, Maggie.”
Maggie breaks out into a full-bodied joyous laugh. “He’s changed, Emily. Wait till you see him. He’s dreamy.”
“Tyler Madison is dreamy?” Emily realizes she’s standing up now, with her hand on the doorknob, ready to move.
“You have no idea,” Maggie is saying. “I’ll text you with the flight information. That will be easier than trying to reach you by phone. Okay?”
“I’ll give you my credit card number.”
“Emily, I’ll pay for the flight. You have enough to deal with.”
“You’ll pay for the flight?” Emily’s head is swimming.
Maggie laughs again. “Emily. It’s been five years. We have a lot to catch up on. See you Monday.”
“Yes. Maggie, thank you. I can’t imagine why you’re doing this.”
“It’s the least a sister can do,” Maggie says.
Because she’s six months pregnant, Maggie�
��s had her hair cut short again, into the pixie cap she wore when she was eleven. She remembers all too vividly how Heather as a baby would grab strands of Maggie’s long hair and tug. How strong the little girl was, and how red-faced and howling she became when Maggie struggled to open her fat little fingers and release the hank of hair.
She’s sure Emily will recognize her anyway. She hasn’t changed that much in five years, except that she’s happier than she’s ever been in her life.
For this first meeting, with all of the possible emotional scenes—for how can she and Emily not cry, seeing each other again on such a sad occasion?—Maggie sends Heather to a friend’s house to play. Maggie will have enough to cope with, keeping her own tears in check. Poor Emily, and her poor little girl.
Maggie’s not all sweetness and generosity, though. She’s nervous, anxious about how she’ll appear to Emily, who has been married to such a compelling, seductive, successful man, who has lived the life of a wealthy New Yorker for the past five years. Maggie isn’t sure how to dress. Everyone on the island is casual, jeans or khakis, cotton tops, sneakers, and Maggie needs sneakers these days when she’s becoming off balance as her belly grows. She settles on an old, loose navy blue cashmere pullover that sets off her bright coloring, and applies only mascara for makeup. No lipstick. She’s always kissing Heather, who hates to get “that red stuff” on her face.
So here she is. Plain and simple. She parks her beloved Bronco, which seems determined to live forever, in the airport parking lot and heads for the terminal. Her heart pounds.
She waits by the luggage rack at the arrivals door and watches a small blue and white aircraft angle down from the clear blue sky. It bounces as it lands, turns, slows, and sputters up to the gate. The crew unlatch the door, which becomes the steps, and passengers slowly file off.
Emily is last. She’s thinner than Maggie remembers ever seeing her, dressed in a black tunic, low-heeled black shoes, her blond hair tied back with a black ribbon. She’s holding a little girl’s hand, guiding her down the steps.