The Captain's Daughter

by Meg Mitchell Moore

  Charlie nodded and didn’t look at Eliza. “Yes,” he said. “I do understand that.” Eliza watched again as the doctor wrote Comfort care measures only on the chart, and then she wrote out a prescription for antiseizure medication, and she handed it to Eliza with a look of genuine compassion in her eyes, and then she shook Charlie’s hand and said, “Best of luck, Mr. Sargent.”

  Eliza had heard one of the nurses talking about a three-car accident on the road to Bar Harbor, and in the waiting room she’d seen one weepy child who’d sprained her ankle slipping from a rock near Otter Cliff and a man who had presented with classic food poisoning symptoms. She knew Dr. Kwang was busy and that she had to move on, but even so she wished the doctor could stay there until Eliza had the chance to pull her aside once more and say, Please. Fix him. Whatever it takes.

  She led her father back to the waiting room, where Russell was sitting on a gray chair and thumbing through a People magazine, and for the first time she noticed that he was wearing very un-Russell-like clothes, a collared shirt and jeans that looked almost new.

  They stopped at the pharmacy to fill the prescription for antiseizure meds, and then, soon enough, they were on their way back to Little Harbor, Eliza driving, Russell beside her, and Charlie stretched out in the backseat of Rob’s Audi, his eyes closed.

  They rode for a long, long time in silence, and after a while Eliza said, “Thank you for coming with me, Russell,” and he said, “Of course,” and after that they were silent again and Eliza thought about how with strangers or casual acquaintances you always felt like you had to keep the conversation moving with useless chatter, but with someone you’d once known very, very well—even if that was a long time ago—you could just be quiet, and that was okay.

  Back home, Eliza woke Charlie gently and with Russell’s help she got him upstairs and into his bed. He closed his eyes again almost immediately, and Russell and Eliza tiptoed down the stairs, and somehow it was only then that Eliza remembered to ask Russell what he’d been doing at Charlie’s house in the first place. Was he there to continue their recent argument?

  “Oh,” said Russell. “That, yeah. Forgot all about it.” He looked uneasy.

  “What?” said Eliza.

  “Some of the guys were talking about maybe splitting up Charlie’s traps to haul them. But we need Marine Patrol to sign off on that, so I wanted to ask him.”

  Maybe that was what made it seem more dire than anything had, and she felt her face crumple, and she said, “I’m scared, Russell. I’m really scared.”

  “I know,” he said. “I know.”

  Eliza didn’t mean to lean against him, but she had to lean against something, and he was there. He put his arms around her and that felt like a gift, to have someone to cry against. She cried, and she sniffled, and she gulped, and she stayed there longer than maybe was strictly appropriate because it felt so nice just to lean on someone, just to be held.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, finally pulling away.

  “That’s okay.”

  “You look nice. You have a date?” She had been sort of joking, because she wasn’t sure who in Little Harbor would be available for Russell to date, but Russell nodded seriously and said, “Maybe.”

  She sniffled and realized there was a wet spot on his shirt now. She said, “You do? A date? Who with?”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He smiled. “Nobody you know.”

  She squinted at him. “Summer person?”

  He shrugged.

  “Not a local. Right?”

  He shrugged again.

  “Make sure you dry off your shirt first.”

  “I will.”

  “I hope it’s a summer person. I hope she’s stinking rich, and I hope you marry her and she pays to fix that reverse gear on your boat.”

  He laughed. “Don’t worry about my reverse gear. I’ll worry about that.”

  “Actually, if she’s stinking rich, you won’t have to haul anymore.”

  “Right,” he snorted, and put his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels and they stared at each other for a long moment and just like that the years passed between them and the electric jolts from earlier in the summer turned into something else, nostalgia, history; they crossed all of the lines, slid into the past. Then Russell cleared his throat and said, “Listen, I’ll come by tomorrow, talk to your dad then, okay? About the traps. If he’s feeling like it. You let me know.”

  Eliza’s throat clotted with the words she could have said. She didn’t say, I’m sorry for all the things that happened. She didn’t say, I’m sorry for all the things that didn’t happen. She didn’t say, I’m sorry for the stupid things I said at the café. She didn’t even say, I’m sorry I cried on your shirt. This was because she was a native: she knew to show her emotions through actions instead of words, so she grasped Russell’s hand and she squeezed it and he squeezed back. And even though she knew she’d see him again it felt solid and right, like the perfect goodbye.

  “I hope you have a nice date, Russell,” she said. “I mean it. And thank you, for today.”

  “Anytime, Liza. You know that.” She held the door open for him and he gave a little wave after he went through it and then he sauntered off, taking a little bit of her heart with him. But not the most important part. And anyway, the heart is a renewable resource. Even people who didn’t go to medical school know that.

  37

  NAPLES, MAINE

  Rob

  Zoe and Evie did not want to drive up to Long Lake with Rob, but Christine Cabot had requested an in-person, on-site meeting, and Rob put his parental foot down, insisting that the girls go with him.

  “We just got back from Maine!” they said. “We’ve been in the car so much!” They could stay alone, they said; they’d be nice to each other, they’d stay off their screens. They’d play board games! That usually got Eliza, the promise of playing board games. Eliza ate that stuff up. But Rob wanted the girls with him. The last time he’d left them alone for the whole day, the time he’d gone to look at the new floor tiles, he’d come home to find a dollop of peanut butter on the living room rug, popcorn kernels in the bathtub, and Zoe napping with the door to her room closed while Evie sat in a chair by the pool, getting lavishly sunburned and reading a young adult novel that very likely contained teenage sex. They were not to be trusted.

  “We can stay with Deirdre!” Zoe said. “She won’t mind, I know she won’t.”

  “Deirdre never minds,” inserted Evie unhelpfully.

  “Nope,” said Rob, shifting uncomfortably. “I’ve already decided. Let’s go, ladies.” He opened the car door. “If it helps, I can guarantee that there will be ice cream involved at some point during the day.”

  ———

  In the category of pleasant surprises, the girls got along famously both on the car ride and once they arrived at Cabot Lodge, and, admittedly, Rob felt some stirrings of pride when he pulled up in front of the lot and was able to show them what he’d been working on all spring and summer. If he burst an ulcer before all was said and done, at least they’d have a visual of the cause.

  When Rob introduced them to Mrs. Cabot they shook her hand solemnly and firmly and inserted pleases and thank yous in all the right places. His heart swelled: his daughters were doing their best for him. They were trying. And because they were trying, he didn’t complain when they began to walk around in the mud pit that a recent rainfall had been kind enough to create from the bare soil.

  Ruggman was late—Ruggman was never late!—so while they were waiting Rob took a stab at polite conversation. He mentioned to Mrs. Cabot that her friend Nadine Edwards had contacted him and that he was going to send her some preliminary sketches in the next couple of weeks. They walked through the house and noted the progress made in the installation of the floor tiles. Mrs. Cabot told a funny story about her son, Jonathan Junior, and even though Rob knew Jonathan Junior was a complete cokehead and a liar and a thief he laughed agreeably.

  �
��I don’t mind waiting,” said Christine Cabot. “Jonathan’s out on the boat all day. I have nowhere to be. Apparently it’s a gorgeous day for a sail, although honestly I’ve never learned to read the wind.”

  Rob set his teeth together. It was a perfect day for a sail: southwest breeze of fifteen knots, seas of a foot and a half, temperature resting comfortably right around seventy-eight. He thought of A Family Affair and his heart ached.

  When the girls got cranky he told Mrs. Cabot he’d be back and he took them for lunch at a restaurant on the other side of the lake. He invited Mrs. Cabot to accompany them, but she pulled an exquisitely wrapped sandwich from her elegant handbag and declared that she was going to take it down to the dock to get a taste of al fresco dining in her new home.

  At the restaurant they sat on the deck, at a table inadequately shielded from the sun by a striped umbrella, and Rob thought about the bottle of sunscreen he’d forgotten to pack, which led him to think about all the sunscreen he’d forgotten to apply to the girls since Eliza had been gone. He stared out at the glass-smooth lake and thought about the vast number of sunburns for which he was personally responsible.

  He watched Zoe and Evie work their way through their lunches. Zoe was eating a Caesar salad with blackened haddock, which he knew would make Eliza happy, and Evie had ordered a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which he knew wouldn’t. Rob had the lobster stew. He studied the cocktail menu. There was something called the Sebago Perfecto: Patrón Silver tequila, Grand Marnier orange liqueur, sweet-and-sour mix, and lime. It looked like something Deirdre Palmer and the other ladies at the club would drink, which made him think about Eliza, which made him think about Charlie, which made his heart seize with sorrow. When the waitress came to check on them, he ordered a beer.

  “That lady is nice,” said Zoe.

  “The waitress?”

  “No, the lady at the house.”

  “Mrs. Cabot.”

  “Right. She gave us candy.”

  “She did? When?”

  “When you were talking to the guy.”

  “Oh,” said Rob.

  “Peppermint Patties,” confirmed Evie. “My favorite.”

  Then he said, “Did she seem happy?”

  Evie squinted at him and pulled off a small section of her sandwich, squeezing it until the jelly squirted out. Rob thought about stopping her but didn’t, and he and Zoe both watched, a little entranced, as Evie repeated the performance until the entire sandwich had been torn into pieces. Then Evie said, “She seemed regular. Is regular happy?”

  “It is for a grown-up,” said Zoe philosophically.

  They were all silent for a moment, soaking in the sun or the atmosphere or their own grim thoughts. After a time, Zoe said, “When is Mommy coming home?”

  “Soon.” He noted that she said Mommy, not Mom, when normally she said Mom all the time now. Eliza had told him once that she’d be devastated when Zoe stopped saying Mommy; Eliza herself had lost her mom before she’d gotten to that point.

  “Soon?” said Evie.

  He remembered that when his children were small they had no real concept of time—you could say that something was happening tomorrow and they’d forget all about it by the time tomorrow came, or they could dredge up a three-week-old promise and want it fulfilled as though it had just been made.

  “How soon?” asked Zoe.

  “Very soon,” said Rob. “She’ll be home for your play, Evie.”

  “For good?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe.”

  Evie sighed and said, “Brain cancer is bad, right?”

  Rob cleared his throat and opted for honesty. He said, “It’s not good.”

  “Is he going to die?”

  Rob considered his younger daughter, her little snub nose, her wide brown eyes, her smooth skin. He’d always believed the truth was better than the not-truth. He said, “Yes.” And then he amended it: “We’re all going to die someday.”

  “But is he going to die soon?”

  Rob looked out over the lake: the Songo River Queen II was making her slow and mighty voyage. Off to the right he could see a giant water trampoline with bodies bouncing off it. Traffic moved by on the Causeway, and a red pontoon passed out of sight. “He might. We really don’t know.”

  Evie took a drink of her Shirley Temple and said, “Is Mommy really sad?”

  “She is.” Rob nodded. “Yes, she is.”

  “Of course she is, dummy,” said Zoe. “Aren’t you going to be sad when Daddy dies?”

  Evie squinted at him and put a French fry in her mouth. She chewed it thoughtfully and said, “Definitely. I’m going to be heartbroken when Daddy dies.”

  “Okay,” said Rob uneasily. “Maybe we change the subject to something happier?”

  “I don’t see why,” said Evie. She shielded her eyes and regarded the lake. “If what’s happening is sad.”

  She was wise beyond her years, that one. Wise beyond her years.

  “Are you sad?” Evie asked. “About Grandpa?”

  “Of course I am,” Rob said. He thought about the first time he’d gone up to Little Harbor with Eliza, and how Charlie had taken them both out on the Joanie B. He’d felt like a pansy, the way he’d first reacted to the smell of the bait, but if Charlie thought the same thing he didn’t let on.

  “I remember when he came to my class for show-and-tell,” said Zoe.

  “He did that for me too,” said Evie. “Lots of times. With the two lobster traps, wooden and metal.”

  Then the waitress brought Rob’s beer, and Rob’s phone began to ring.

  “Mrs. Cabot,” he said to the girls, glancing at the screen. “Hurry and finish up your lunch.” He drank half his beer in one gulp.

  “I see her!” said Zoe delightedly. “Mrs. Cabot! We can see Cabot Lodge from here, right, Daddy? At least the dock.”

  Rob hadn’t noticed this. Because of the way his chair was angled he’d been fixing his gaze on the western side of the lake, but Zoe’s seat faced the eastern side. He pivoted in his chair and, yes, there it was. The dock extending into the lake like a finger. A figure at the end. He squinted. Was the figure holding a phone?

  “That’s funny,” said Zoe, “that she’s calling you. When we can see her. She must really want to talk.”

  ———

  “Rob. We got a problem.”

  Rob had barely stopped the car when Ruggman approached.

  Rob reached first for levity. “Don’t hold back, Ruggman,” he said. “Don’t waste time with all the niceties, all the small talk.” He laughed; Ruggman didn’t.

  “No, Rob, I’m serious. We got a real problem.” Ruggman cleared his throat. Ruggman was always clearing his throat, and his throat never sounded clear.

  “Just since I left for lunch?”

  “Just since you left for lunch.”

  Rob took a deep breath and felt a chunk of lobster threaten to rise up in revolt. “Tell me.”

  “Landscaper was here, getting the final sizes for the patio and the walkways. He says that where you want to put the patio we gotta get state approval.”

  “We what?”

  “He said that because of the slope of the land, they’re gonna have to fill in, adjust the grade, and anytime you do that around here you need state approval.”

  “But the building inspector—he didn’t…” Rob wanted to finish the sentence but he felt like there was a small animal trapped in his throat, something wild and furry, and he couldn’t talk around it.

  “I’m gonna anticipate your next question,” said Ruggman then. “Forty-five to ninety days, to get the state approval. Usually closer to ninety.”

  “Ninety days! Shit, Ruggman, that takes us to—”

  “Mid-October. Maybe later.”

  “Mid-October.”

  So that meant they couldn’t sod in September, like they had planned. They couldn’t do the front walkway either. The trucks carrying the bluestone for the patio would ride roughshod right over everything. The
y’d have to wait. They’d have to wait on the walkout for the lower level, too, because they couldn’t do the stone retaining wall before they’d filled in the slope. Shit. Shit. Shit.

  “How’d we not know this, Ruggman? How’d we miss it?”

  “We didn’t miss anything,” said Ruggman. “It’s not my job to do the due diligence on this stuff. It’s yours.”

  38

  LITTLE HARBOR, MAINE

  Mary

  Thirteen weeks. A peach. Vocal cords. This baby could put its thumb in its mouth.

  ———

  “Here,” said Daphne, handing Mary a package from the bakery in Ellsworth. “I way over-ordered the lobster cookies today, take them home to your mom.” She squinted at Mary and tilted her head sideways. Two vertical lines appeared between her eyebrows when she did that. “You okay, honey?”

  “Fine,” said Mary. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” said Daphne. “You look…”

  Mary waited, not offering anything. Over the course of the summer she’d learned that sometimes the less you offered the better off you were.

  “You look tired, I guess,” Daphne continued. “But more than tired, or, I don’t know, a different kind of tired.” She squinted some more. “You look like you’re tired from the inside out.”

  Mary dipped her head. Tired from the inside out was exactly how she felt: Daphne was hitting close to home.

  While she was chewing gently on these thoughts Daphne was saying, “Missing Josh, are you?”

  Daphne wasn’t so close to home anymore.

  Mary shook her head. “Not really.”

  “When’s he coming back?”

  “Not sure.” Never. “I’m fine,” she told Daphne. “I just had trouble sleeping last night.” In fact, she had slept great the night before; she’d slept like a rock. She’d slept like a…well, like a baby. She took the package of cookies from Daphne. “Thank you,” she said. “My mom will love them.”

  When she got into her car outside The Cup, Mary sat for a minute and considered the cookies. Vivienne would eat them, sure, but she’d complain the whole time about how she shouldn’t be eating them, and she’d be dramatic about it, and she’d make Mary wish she’d never brought them home. Vivienne sometimes had a way of turning a nice gesture on its head.