The Captain's Daughter

by Meg Mitchell Moore

  “I don’t think so. I just found out myself.”

  “Okay,” said Rob. “I don’t like the sound of it. I’m going to go home and check it out, right now.”

  “Check Zoe’s texts,” said Deirdre. “And her Instagram. And her Finsta. Just in case.”

  Rob said, “Her what? What was that last thing you said?”

  “Her Finsta.”

  “I feel like you’re speaking another language.” He looked so bewildered.

  “Just ask Zoe. She’ll explain it.”

  “Okay. Okay, I will. Nice to see you. You guys enjoy your lunch.”

  “Thanks. But listen, Rob?”

  He turned back. “Yeah?”

  “Do you think we could talk about—I mean, do you have a second to—”

  Then Sheila was back and Rob gave a quick shake of his head, and he waved at both of them and was gone.

  “He looks stressed,” said Sheila, shaking out her napkin, putting it back on her lap.

  “He probably is,” said Deirdre. “He has a lot going on.”

  “I heard,” Sheila said, leaning in.

  “What do you mean? You heard what?” Deirdre’s heart thumped. Had someone seen them at The Wharf Rat?

  “Eliza’s still in Maine, huh?”

  Why was Sheila Rackley always trying to manufacture drama? It was exhausting.

  “Not so much still as again,” said Deirdre.

  “What does that mean?”

  “She’s been back and forth. She’s coming back for Evie’s play.”

  “Will she be here for the gala?”

  “Of course.” Deirdre was not actually sure that Eliza would be, but she hoped, with a fervent childlike intensity, that she would be.

  “Well, don’t you think that’s a long time to be gone?” Sheila poured herself more champagne and topped off Deirdre’s glass. “I heard,” she said, “that she might be staying up there. For good.”

  In this case Deirdre thought it was okay to bend the rules of Eliza’s privacy policy, not only to squash Sheila Rackley’s ridiculous rumor like a bug but also to defend Eliza’s completely defensible absence this summer, her completely defensible life. “Her father is dying, Sheila. He has a brain tumor. Eliza is the only person he has. He needs her.”

  Anybody else would be embarrassed about having misread the situation in such an egregious way, but Sheila kept right on going, like a train toward its station.

  “That’s terrible, but. Why isn’t Rob there too, in that case?”

  “Because he needs to be here. For work.”

  “It just seems strange. That’s all I’m saying. I mean, didn’t she almost marry a lobsterman? Wasn’t she almost a lobsterman’s wife?” Her eyes twinkled with the potential of it all.

  That settled it. The surge of loyalty and tenderness Deirdre felt for Eliza at that moment eclipsed everything else: her envy of Eliza and Rob, her frustrations with Brock, the vestiges of her own bad deed. She downed the rest of her champagne in one giant gulp.

  “Listen to me, Sheila. Rob and Eliza are the real deal. Better than Brock and I will ever be. Better than you and Mike will ever ever be.”

  Sheila raised her eyebrows and sat back. “Wow, Deirdre. That’s kind of harsh.”

  “Well.” Deirdre lifted her hands as if to indicate that the level of harshness was out of her control.

  “After I’ve spent my summer working on your gala.”

  Deirdre gasped. Did she really. Had she actually. “I’ve spent my summer working on my gala! You’ve come to three meetings, tops. You missed two.”

  Sheila put her flute down hard. “I couldn’t get a sitter for the other two.”

  Deirdre leaned toward Sheila and said, “Your kids are thirteen and eleven. You don’t need a sitter to go to a ninety-minute meeting.”

  “Look who’s talking. How many hours is Kristi Osgood working for you this summer?”

  No, she did not. Sheila Rackley did not just go there. “That’s different! I’ve been consumed with the gala this summer. I’m not just on a committee. I’m on all the committees. I am the committees. And Sofia is an only child. I can’t leave her all by herself all summer. It is so not the same.” Maybe, Deirdre admitted in the recesses of her mind, it was a little bit the same. But she would never, ever, say that to Sheila.

  Sheila refilled the flutes.

  At the table in the corner somebody spilled a glass of water, and that made Deirdre think about her very first date with Brock, when he knocked over his water and left an extra-large tip to make up for the mess. She felt something in her heart turn over once, then twice. She thought about how on that first date he’d had a recent haircut. It was too short on top, and Deirdre could see a little bit of his scalp, which looked pink and vulnerable and called to mind a half-sheared sheep. Maybe it was the champagne, but she felt a wave of tenderness for the old Brock, the old them.

  “Should we talk about the centerpieces?” asked Sheila. Deirdre couldn’t tell if Sheila was mollified or plotting or just plain drunk.

  “I’m doing the centerpieces,” said Deirdre. “On my own, like I’ve done most of the work for this gala.”

  “But—”

  Deirdre waved over the server and said, “I think we’re all done here, thank you so much. You can put this on the Rackleys’ tab.”

  42

  LITTLE HARBOR, MAINE

  Eliza

  The next part isn’t a lesson at all. There’s something about dying that makes you want to clear your conscience of anything you’re ashamed of. And I’m ashamed of this.

  Oh, Eliza. It got dark so early in the afternoon in the winter. Every day was the same after the same after the same, with your dad getting up before dawn and leaving the two of us alone. I’d lie here in bed sometimes and I’d hear his truck pull out of the driveway and I’d look at the clock and it would say four thirty and I’d think about all of the hours ahead of me that stacked up to one day and then the days that would stack up to a week and then a month and then a year.

  When you were two and a half years old, I thought I didn’t have it in me to be a good mother. I didn’t think I could do right by you. I dropped you off with Val one afternoon when she was done working and I told her I was going into Ellsworth to do some shopping. But when I got to Ellsworth it looked so small and suddenly I felt it like a punch: This was it. This was all it was going to be, this was the big city to our tiny, tiny town. I thought I was doing you a favor, leaving you with someone who was more cut out for that life than I was. I didn’t think I deserved you, didn’t think I deserved your dad. He loved me so much, and I knew I didn’t have a right to be loved like that.

  So I kept driving. When in doubt, I used to tell you, choose brave. I didn’t choose brave that day. I left. I drove all the way to Boston, and I used the last of the money I had tucked away to stay in a hotel. I wasn’t happy to be there, though—I was tortured. Every day was an effort to get through. Every night I dreamed about you, and I dreamed about the wharf and the boats and the way the air smells in the evening, and the way the fog looks rolling in. Every morning I woke up and said, Today I will go back. And every day I didn’t.

  Six days went by like that and on the seventh day I went to a pay phone and I put in all of the coins I had and I called Val’s house. I didn’t think I was going to say anything, I just wanted to see if I could maybe hear you in the background, hear some of your babbling, the little sentences you were trying to string together. Then I was going to hang up.

  I knew you’d be at Val’s because it was hauling time. But when Val answered I heard you screaming in the background, not babbling. So right away I said, “It’s me. Val, it’s me.” She put Charlie on the phone. He wasn’t out hauling, he’d come in because you’d come on with a fever out of nowhere earlier that day and somebody had radioed out for him to come back. They were both in a panic, trying to quiet you, get you comfortable until the fever broke.

  I got in my car and I drove as fast as I could and b
y the time I got there the fever had broken and you were sleeping on Val’s couch and they were both sitting there, not touching, but sitting close, and watching over you.

  They looked like two parents.

  Your father has the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever known, Eliza, a heart bigger than the universe. I was never worthy of him, not really. He forgave me for leaving, and he accepted me when I came back. We never talked about it again, never once, and he continued to love me and I did my best to love him. I tried my hardest to be as worthy as I could be, worthy of him, worthy of you. I’m so sorry I left you, Eliza. But I’ve never, ever been sorry I came back.

  I thought when I fell in love with your dad I was like a character in a fairy tale, waiting on the wharf for the boats to come in, for the men to appear out of the fog. Then I found out that there’s no such thing, no fairy tale. I guess that’s Lesson Number Five. I love you, Eliza, I have always loved you. I know a lot more people will love you in your life but nobody will love you the way I have.

  When Eliza looked up from the letter she was alone in Val’s living room, except for Sternman, who was flat on his side, his front paw twitching, his big lips rising and falling with each breath.

  “Val?” she called. “Val?” She hadn’t heard the front door close; hadn’t heard if Val had said anything to her before she’d gone. She searched the small kitchen, the dining room with the round maple table, the copper curtains that had hung there as long as Eliza could remember.

  Of course she knew where Val would be. It was getting on toward the late afternoon, and the boats would be coming in. She’d be at the wharf.

  “Come on, Sternman,” she said. “Let’s go, boy. Get up, we’re going for a walk.”

  ———

  She was right. There was Val, back straight, facing the water. All of the boats were out except for the Joanie B. You could read a lot of different things into the sight of that boat, if you didn’t know the backstory. You could read loneliness or comfortable solitude. You could think the captain of that boat had taken a vacation or that he’d fallen on hard times and couldn’t afford fuel or that he’d come back early because he had to go to the dentist or that he’d had the haul of a lifetime over the last three weeks and had just, plain and simple, decided to sleep in and take a day off. So much of life was about knowing the backstory.

  Eliza stood for a moment, watching Val watch the water. Sternman wagged his tail and whimpered low and long and pulled a little bit on the leash. When they got closer to Val, Eliza said, “How come you didn’t give me the whole letter at once, Val?”

  Val looked up at her, and Eliza saw that her eyes were wet.

  “Sit down, sit down here.” Val indicated the space next to her on the dock, but she was looking back at the harbor, toward the stand of pines. She wasn’t looking in the direction of the Joanie B.

  “No.” Eliza’s voice could have sliced wood, it was so sharp.

  “Yes. Eliza Sargent Barnes, you sit down next to me right now, and that’s an order.”

  Eliza sighed and did as she was told. Sternman settled beside her, his chin on his paws, looking out at the water along with Val and Eliza. Eliza said, “That’s the last lesson? That there’s no fairy tale? I can’t believe that’s the last lesson.”

  Val said, “I know it’s easy to think that people who aren’t here anymore were perfect—”

  “Don’t,” said Eliza. She had never talked to Val with an ounce of anger, not even when she was a teenager, not even during those moments every teenager has of being angry with everyone, angry with the world.

  “No. Let me say it. Of course Joanie wasn’t perfect, she was a human being like all the rest of us. She made her own mistakes, did selfish things sometimes, did thoughtless things sometimes, same as you and me do.”

  Eliza set her lips together. “I don’t want to hear this.”

  “Want to hear it or not, it’s true. Your mom wanted me to give you that whole letter when you were sixteen. You know what you were doing when you were sixteen?”

  “No.” Yes.

  “You were so crazy in love with Russell your head was up in the clouds, Eliza, way up there.”

  “But still.”

  “You were breaking your daddy’s heart.”

  Eliza’s breath caught. “I was?”

  “Of course you were.”

  Eliza laid her hand on Sternman’s giant square head and held it there. Sternman closed his eyes and she rubbed behind his left ear, just the way he liked it. Part of her was trying to keep the memory down, but there it was. She remembered now.

  She was sixteen, and Russell was waiting for her in his truck. Russell leaned on his horn the tiniest bit and Eliza, having brushed her hair fourteen times, brushed it once more.

  “I’m going out,” she would have called to her father. Where was he? In his recliner, the hauling done for the day.

  He said, “Where?” He was just asking. As he had every right to. But she didn’t want to talk to anybody but Russell, so she said, “Just out!” in a new voice, an awful voice. And when she passed by the living room she saw his face crumple in hurt and bewilderment—just for an instant, before he regained his usual inscrutable expression and waved her on like it didn’t matter. He might even have said goodbye, not that she deserved it. He might have said, “Have a good time,” or “Be careful,” or some other mundane and fatherly thing, and she just left.

  She could have stopped, could have done something to make it better. But she was sixteen, and she was in love, and Russell was waiting outside, and there was all of that newly discovered desire between them. She was the Mary to his Springsteen. She let the screen door slam and she didn’t look back. And she knew that that was one of many times, not the only one.

  This was what it meant to have children, this was coming for her one day, this was her future. You loved them and loved them and cared for them and they loved you back, unconditionally, absolutely, so much love you thought you might drown in it, until one day they slammed the screen door and they got into someone else’s truck and they drove away. How could that not be the saddest thing in the world?

  “Oh, Val,” she said.

  “Or eighteen. You know what you were doing when you were eighteen?”

  Eliza took a deep, shuddery breath. She knew. “Leaving.”

  “Exactly right. You were leaving. We took that trip to Bangor together”—Eliza winced, remembering the then-brand-new Civic, the smell of the clinic, the pitted unloveliness of the parking lot, the kind look on the doctor’s face—“and then you packed your bags for college, and you never looked back.”

  Eliza said, “Right.”

  “To add to that for you, or for Charlie, to remind either one of you that there was a time when Joanie wanted more—forget it. I never wanted to make someone else’s burden heavier just so I could make mine a little lighter. So I kept the last part of the letter. And I’d make the same choice a hundred times in a row if you asked me to.”

  Eliza glanced to the side to see Val more clearly. A complicated expression was crossing her face, and she said, “Charlie worshipped your mom, Eliza. I never saw anything like it before or since. Never.” Her voice broke off and she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth.

  Eliza thought of how Val was leaning over Charlie that first day Eliza arrived early in the summer. She thought of the way Val had hidden the evidence of Charlie’s illness because that’s what he wanted, how she’d handed him the water, fed him, cared for him, taken him to the doctor, let him sleep. She imagined Val and Charlie, caring together for sick little Eliza.

  Of course.

  Of course! How could she not have realized this before? She took a deep breath, and she felt like she was unearthing a secret as old and reliable as the lobsters themselves when she said, “You love my dad. You love Charlie.”

  “Course I love him. I love you too.”

  “No, I mean you love him. You’re in love with him.”

  “Eliza—” />
  “I know you are. I know you always have been.”

  Val was silent for a long time. A trio of seagulls circled overheard. Out on a channel marker, Eliza saw a cormorant perched, spreading out its wings to dry. At any other time she would have pointed out the cormorant, but now she was holding her breath, waiting.

  Eliza had heard the story dozens of times, but now she could replay it, cast it in a different light. “When you met my mom that day, you weren’t just waiting for the boats to come in, not all the boats. You were waiting for him. But he picked Joanie, he picked my mom.”

  A long time passed, and then eventually Val spoke. “Part of me didn’t want her to come back. She was my best friend, Eliza, but when she left I thought, Good. Now I can have what was supposed to be mine. I would have loved you just as much as she did, I would have cared for you and for Charlie. I was here. I was ready. I’m sorry if that’s an awful thing for me to say, Eliza, but it’s true. It’s the way it was.”

  Eliza moved closer to her and rested her head on Val’s shoulder. Sternman, offended, sighed and rolled partially on his side. “That’s not awful,” said Eliza.

  “Yes it is.”

  “It’s not, because that’s exactly what you did, you did care for me, when she was gone.”

  There was a low bank of fog out along the horizon. Eliza stared at it and waited a beat and then she said, “I have to go home for Evie’s play, I promised her up and down. I have to leave tomorrow. I’ll come right back after. Will you take care of him when I’m gone?”

  “Of course I will.”

  They looked out at the water and Eliza said, “That’s a long time.”

  “A long time for what?”

  “To love someone who doesn’t love you back the same way.”

  Val sighed, and her sigh was so deep that it seemed to contain decades of a life inside of it. “There are lots of different kinds of love, Eliza. You must know that by now.”

  43

  BARTON, MASSACHUSETTS