Mary could hardly breathe. “Yes?”
“That wasn’t an accident.”
Another text: MARY? EVERYTHING OKAY? DIDN’T HEAR BACK? This time she said, “Sorry,” to Charlie Sargent, “I just have to—” And she texted back, ABSOLUTELY.
Mary looked at Charlie Sargent and her heart was throbbing in her chest, a little bird beating its wings, and she said, “Tell me.”
32
One month earlier…
LITTLE HARBOR, MAINE
Charlie
This is it, thought Charlie Sargent. The last everything. The last cup of coffee, the last time rinsing the mug and leaving it to dry, the last time starting the truck, switching off the kitchen lights, blowing on his hands while the truck warmed up—because even though it was summer now it was still damn cold in the hours before sunrise when only the fishermen were out.
Of course he felt good today, of all days. (You feel well, Eliza would tell him. Not good. You are good, but you feel well.) He never really understood that. You got your point across, who cared how you did it. But Eliza sometimes came at him for his grammar. He had to accept that about her, it was just the way she was, got it from her mother, like she got everything else, her curly black hair, her freckles, her long legs, the way she squinted in bright sunlight and the way one of her feet was a half size bigger than the other. Sometimes if he looked at her too quickly now he could believe that Joanie was still alive.
If Eliza was there she would, after she fixed his grammar, laugh in that way she had, the way that made you want to laugh with her, and say something about how wasn’t that always how it went, your hair behaved itself on the day you were going to get it cut.
Not that Eliza’s hair ever behaved itself. Just like her mother’s—just like Joanie’s.
Last time pulling in at the wharf, turning off the truck, tucking the key under the passenger-side mat. Same damn spot every other lobsterman put the key to the truck—not so much a hiding place as it was an announcement. Look at me. I belong here. And this is how we do things.
“Thought you got yourself a sternman,” said Josh Young, who was preparing to steam out at the same time. They climbed into their skiffs right near each other. “That guy from Ellsworth, you had him hauling with you. He quit on you?”
“Fired him.”
“Yuh,” said Josh, looking Charlie up and down. “I bet you did.”
“That guy from Ellsworth was useless,” said Charlie. He nodded and untied his skiff from the wharf, pushed off. Last time talking to Josh Young; no loss there. Over his shoulder he couldn’t resist saying, “I do better on my own, you know how it is.”
Josh grunted like he did know, but he didn’t. That guy couldn’t do a thing on his own, wouldn’t dare go out for half a day without a sternman.
Last time rowing the skiff to the boat, mooring it, starting the boat’s engine, heading out. The Joanie B, skeg-built, forty feet long, serviceable but not fancy, suitable for offshore later in the season.
Not this season, though.
Charlie Sargent knew every inch of this boat, knew it better than he knew any other forty-foot stretch in the universe. He knew the way the ignition stuck in really cold weather, and the way you had to jiggle the key real gently to get it going again. He knew the grooves marked in the floor of the wheelhouse from all those hours—days and weeks and months and years—of standing in the same spot. He knew the way you had to turn real easy when the wind was coming from the southwest because if you didn’t the bow would fight back against you.
Last time steering around the buoys in the harbor, last sunrise, the sky filling up pink and orange with whites and blues right around the edges. Charlie Sargent was no poet and he wasn’t a religious man but sometimes when he was out there on his boat with the wind lashing him and the colors of the sunrise spread out around him he felt a thump deep in his heart that made him want to be a little bit of both.
He turned the VHF on, tested it, turned it off again. A little farther out now, then a little more. But not too far. He came to a few of his own buoys, killed the engine, considering. Haul them, reset them, and send them back down? Didn’t seem like there was much point in that. But to leave the work undone, that wasn’t in his nature. That wasn’t how Charlie Sargent operated.
Just a couple strings, maybe, just the ones right here. He wouldn’t go beyond this area, though he had traps set all over. That would take all day and by then he’d lose his nerve, when there was no sense in that now: already the thing was decided. Plus, he hadn’t brought himself any lunch. Charlie’s buoys were red and black and bright blue, he’d had those colors since he was a boy of sixteen, setting out in the old rattrap boat his father had let him use.
He reached over the starboard side with his gaff and his hook, grabbed the pot warp, pulled the line from the water to run it through the hauling block and into the hydraulic hauler. The line coiled itself on the deck below the hauler. The line strained, and the trap broke the surface. He broke that trap over the rail—okay, maybe that bastard Josh was right, maybe he could have used a sternman just then, because he was breathing heavy and his hands were shaking. He wasn’t as strong as he used to be. Then the trailer traps, one after another, just three in this string, thank God, because it was a real struggle now to get them over.
But even so he did what he was supposed to do, what he’d been doing right along, since he was a boy of five, learning at his father’s knee, and he unloaded the traps. Disappointing haul on this string. Not a keeper in the bunch. The first trap was empty, the second held a couple of crabs, and the third had three lobsters. One was too small, he could tell just by eyeballing—didn’t even need his gauge. Two had undersides berried with eggs. Those had to go. He grabbed his V-notch and marked them, then tossed them over. “Off you go,” he said. “Go out there and make your babies.”
What was that little song Joanie used to sing to Eliza? One baby two babies three babies four, you’re the only one for me, it’s you that I adore.
Never made much sense to Charlie, but that didn’t matter. Joanie could be reading a grocery list or a report from the traffic court in The Ellsworth American and Charlie would be all ears, drinking it up, like it was the sound of angels singing. Charlie had loved Joanie like that, with all of himself. To the ends of the earth and back. Not that he was given to talking that way. But he could think that way, sure. He could think it.
That was done, then. The sun was up, the sky a clear blue now with just traces of white around the edges. Not too foggy today, that was good. He looked around the Joanie B to see that everything was in order. He didn’t like to think he’d leave anything sloppy behind for anyone else to deal with.
Something around his ankles, to make sure the job was done properly. He should have thought of that.
He remembered in eighty-five when that poor kid went over. Lucas Spaulding. Charlie had been a little bit younger than Lucas’s dad, and Lucas was no more than eight or nine, just starting to learn the ways of it, out with his father and his uncle one morning. August, the height of a really good season, the traps practically hauling themselves. Right up to the guidelines they were that summer. That was the summer Charlie bought Joanie a new car, Eliza was six. It was a week before the Lobster Festival, the town about as lively as it ever got. And poor Lucas. Standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, the line looped around his ankles when the trap went over, so he went over with it. By the time they pulled him up his face was dead blue and his heart had clearly stopped beating. Better that way, almost, people said; if he’d come to, his brain would have been right ruined.
Jesus, he hadn’t thought about Lucas Spaulding in ages. They canceled the Lobster Festival that year, and a bunch of summer people from the Point got all up in arms about that. Not that they could say anything out loud, so they whispered behind closed doors. But word got out. It always did.
He leaned over the stern and felt the water. Cold as all anything. Jesus. Well, he’d need something tight a
round his ankles, else it wouldn’t work. He’d have something in the wheelhouse. Hell, he’d use one of his own traps if he had to. Wouldn’t that be a kicker.
He remembered Lucas Spaulding’s funeral, fishermen coming from as far away as Vinalhaven and Stonington. Charlie remembered the way Lucas’s mother was sedated so bad she could hardly sit up in the pew, had to be propped there by one of her sisters. There were plenty of Spauldings to go around, back then, generations of them, but after that the whole group of them up and moved to Augusta. Away from the water. Landlocked themselves. Charlie didn’t blame them a bit, he’d have done the same thing in their situation.
Now he hung over the stern even more, getting his arm wet all the way up to the elbow. It was practically numb already. How long would it take, to feel nothing?
And then, hell, his balance must have been off, everything was off, that goddamn dizziness. Because next thing he knew he’d flipped himself off the back of the stern, slamming his head on the transom on the way. And Jesus it was cold in that water, it was goddamn freezing.
He was expecting the cold. But the part he wasn’t expecting was what happened next. Because even though Charlie Sargent knew exactly what he wanted, even though he knew exactly what he had set out to do that day, even though he was already on his way to doing it, at some point instinct took over. Same instinct (he would think later) that makes the choking woman push against the hands around her neck, the burning man try to snuff himself out. The instinct to undo what was being done.
When that took over, that’s when Charlie brought his hands to the rail of the boat, found enough strength (from where? If he was a praying man he would have said it came from God himself) to pull himself up, up, then gracelessly back into the boat, where he lay on the deck, a heaving, shivering mass. Shaking so hard he thought his heart might stop from the force of it. One of his arms hurting like anything.
And a gash on his head—he felt for it with hands that were close to numb. Shit. Blood.
He pulled himself to his knees and the pain nearly blinded him, nearly knocked him right back down again. But he had to get to the VHF, all the way in the wheelhouse, so he forced himself to stumble there, where he took up the radio and switched it on. It defaulted to channel sixteen, same as always, dependable as the tides. He pressed the microphone button. He imagined for a second the kid getting the call in Southwest Harbor, some baby-faced twenty-year-old, barely out of training, uniform maybe a little too big on his skinny body.
More than fifty years on the water and Charlie Sargent had never needed to make a call like this. But now, the head. All that blood. No way he could drive like this. He choked out the words: “Mayday-mayday-mayday. This is Charlie Sargent, on the Joanie B.”
He’d never made the call, but he knew the protocol. State the nature of your distress was the next step.
Oh boy. Oh shit. The sun was now fully up, shining in his eyes like an insult. The nature of his distress? Too much distress to state, that was damn sure. “I have an injury to my head and I’m alone on the boat,” he said finally. “I’ll be listening on channel sixteen. This is Charlie Sargent on the Joanie B, over and out.”
And in the end his body overrode his mind—he clung, after all, to life.
33
LITTLE HARBOR, MAINE
Eliza
Well, of course Judith knew somebody from some-committee-or-other who was staying for three weeks out on the Point and had an extra bedroom for Judith. An extra bedroom! The house had something like twelve bedrooms. Or eight bedrooms and twelve bathrooms. Eliza could never remember: the house was legend. This was the woman Judith had mentioned to her earlier in the summer, Gail Byron, no relation.
Eliza didn’t even waste time being surprised about the coincidence; since she’d known Rob, she’d learned the basic tenet that money shrank the world and made it small and familiar. The opposite was also true: a lack of it made the world big and scary.
She was so excited to see the girls that she felt like somebody had blended her insides in a Vitamix. She sat on the front steps and waited until she saw Judith’s silver BMW pull around the bend in the road and into the driveway.
Did Judith’s BMW look natural pulling into Charlie Sargent’s driveway? No, not even a little bit. That car looked about as natural on this side of Little Harbor as a banded Gila monster might look spreading out a beach towel in Santa Monica.
“My goodness,” said Judith when she emerged from the driver’s seat. “Isn’t this just charming.” She smiled. “I never realized, Eliza, how picturesque your hometown is.”
Eliza squinted at Judith: Was she poking fun?
Judith smiled even more; she smiled so wide the lines around her eyes that had been dermatologically removed were almost visible.
No, Judith was trying. Judith was trying, and Eliza was a terrible daughter-in-law, trying to find fault where there was none.
Maybe this had been a bad idea, this visit. She was too shaken up and confused to be a good hostess or a good mother. She wouldn’t be able to hide her father’s deteriorating condition from her eagle-eyed girls. He’d exhaust himself, trying to pretend that everything was the same as it had always been.
Then Evie got out of the car and hugged Eliza so hard Eliza almost fell over, and Zoe got out of the car and gave Eliza an embrace that was about as enthusiastic and outwardly loving as Zoe’s embraces got. Zoe wasn’t looking at her phone—she wasn’t even holding her phone—and her girls looked both so much the same and so totally different than they had the last time Eliza had seen them that her eyes got damp.
This was not a bad idea, this visit. This was a wonderful idea.
“Thank you, Judith,” she said genuinely. “Thank you for doing this.”
Judith waved a hand, and Eliza supposed that was her way of saying You’re welcome.
“Where’s Grandpa?” asked Evie immediately.
“He’s upstairs, he’s lying down,” said Eliza.
Evie looked doubtful. “Grandpa doesn’t lie down during the day,” she said suspiciously.
Eliza’s heart lurched and galloped. The girls knew brain cancer, but they didn’t know the very worst, mostly highly aggressive form of brain cancer. “Sometimes he does,” she said. “He was up late last night, he just got a little tired.” They all knew Charlie Sargent was never up late. Nine o’clock was late, to Charlie!
“Well!” said Judith heartily. “Why don’t I get the girls’ stuff out of the car, and I’ll let you all visit while I head to my accommodation. If you can just point me in the right direction, Eliza.”
———
Zoe and Evie were in Little Harbor for three glorious days. One night they had dinner at The Lobster Trap, Charlie included. Zoe ate a lobster roll and Evie ordered steamed clams. Eliza ordered just a salad because she predicted correctly that Evie would never finish the clams. Judith had a lobster cake and the house specialty, a lobster Bloody Mary. Then a second. A third after that. Charlie ate next to nothing, but he ordered a burger he meant to eat, and that was something. One night, Eliza made chicken cutlets for everybody except for Evie, who ate yogurt. They played eleven games of Uno, fourteen games of War. They played five rounds of the Game of Life on Zoe’s iPhone. Zoe checked her Instagram feed a total of thirty-one times, liked one hundred and seven photos, commented on seventeen. She posted three times herself, garnering seventy-five likes (her new record) on her photo of the lobster boats in the harbor with a spectacular blood-orange sunset behind them. Evie took one shower, reluctantly, and Zoe took four; Eliza had to rap on the door three of the four times to remind her that the hot water tank in this house was much smaller than it was at home. Evie mentioned one time that she was missing Charlotte’s Web practice, but that it didn’t matter, and Zoe made passing reference to a slumber party at Hannah Coogan’s but then admitted that she really didn’t care if she went or not. Charlie slept a lot and when he was awake he sat in his recliner and the girls sat next to each other on the sofa and watched hi
m. When he wanted to talk they talked, and when he wanted to remain silent they remained silent, and overall they made Eliza proud.
There was one thing, though. It gave Eliza chills when she thought about it later, and forever after.
On the second evening Zoe was upstairs (“reading,” she said, but Eliza knew that meant “texting”) and Evie was in the living room with Charlie. Eliza was fiddling around in the kitchen, wiping down the refrigerator shelves, making a grocery list, when Evie came in.
“Grandpa just said the funniest thing,” said Evie. Eliza realized later that she must have missed a clue in Evie’s voice, a quaver. Maybe a hint of terror on her face.
“Oh yeah?” Eliza glanced up quickly, then back down at her shopping list. Eggs, definitely. Milk, maybe. “What’d he say?”
“He asked me if I could see the purple birds that were knitting little sweaters.”
Eliza felt herself go all hot and then cold and then hot again. A hallucination, because of the tumor. Not uncommon. “Well, that’s interesting,” said Eliza carefully. “Birds can’t knit.”
“No,” said Evie. “I don’t think they can usually knit.”
“What’d you say?” asked Eliza. She moved toward the living room, but not too fast, to keep from panicking Evie.
“I said I couldn’t see them,” said Evie. “And then he closed his eyes, and then I came in here.” Her lip wobbled a little bit, the way it used to when she was a toddler.
Charlie was asleep, his head tipped back, his breathing slightly ragged.
“Okay,” said Eliza brightly, falsely, returning to the kitchen. “I think Grandpa was just being silly, playing a little game with you.”
“That’s not Grandpa’s kind of silly,” said Evie accurately.
Eliza tried to steady her own voice, and she reached over and pulled Evie close to her, smoothing her hair. “No,” she said. “No, it’s not.”
On the final evening, Judith and Gail Byron wanted to take the girls to dinner at the yacht club on the Point. Eliza, who had never, in her whole life, eaten at the yacht club on the Point, felt something within her shift uncomfortably at the suggestion.
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