“Maybe they’ve seen a sea monster,” Annie said.
“Sea monster?” Malcolm asked. “Now that sounds exciting.”
“It’s from a fairy tale in a book of Mom’s,” Ella said.
“Something else for you to show me later,” he said, though it was Nora at whom he gazed over the top of the girls’ heads.
There was barely room on the couch for everyone, and yet they piled on, Malcolm in the center, Nora balancing awkwardly on the armrest, the only spot available. “You can squish in, Mama,” Annie said.
“I’m fine, honey.” She didn’t want to squish in. She preferred to maintain her distance.
“Daddy can read tonight,” Ella said, her gaze flicking to Nora with whiplike speed, then away.
“I don’t have to,” Malcolm said. “It’s your mother’s book. See, there’s her name.”
Below Maeve’s and Maire’s. Ella’s and Annie’s would be next.
“It’s okay,” Nora said. “My voice could use a rest.”
Malcolm was a gifted orator. He could read anything and make it interesting. He used to read Nora poetry in law school as they lay in bed together. Frost. Blake. Keats. Long afternoons when the sun streamed through the windows, and hours could pass by.
He read the story of the selkie, caught in a net. The fisherman hid her coat so that she couldn’t swim away, and she bore him children and lived with him for years, all the while yearning for the sea.
“What do you think, girls?” Malcolm said. “Is your mother a selkie?”
“She doesn’t have a fur,” Annie said. “She doesn’t like it.”
“Not that kind of fur,” Ella said. “The story’s referring to the type that’s actually a part of you, like an animal pelt.”
Annie studied her arms, as if examining them for evidence, apparently disappointed that only a light down covered her skin.
“What do you say, Nora?” Malcolm asked.
She forced a smile. She refused to play his games. “ ’Fraid not.”
She wasn’t the one who’d left one night and not come back.
A single ember glowed in the fireplace, persisting in the dark. There he was on the couch, his arm thrown back in repose, as if he’d only been exiled for snoring. The nobility of his profile—the strong, straight nose, the chiseled chin—not quite matched by his character. The sigh of his breath, steady as ever. He could sleep through anything, anywhere, putting troubled thoughts aside. She’d never had the talent. She lay in her bedroom, in the dusky light—for on moonlit nights such as this, it was never truly dark, but rather half illuminated—and in that grayed world, with its blurred margins, her awareness of him, of his nearness, intensified. He had not been this close in weeks, and the proximity filled her with expectation and anxiety.
Sleep didn’t take her until one a.m. Dream after dream washed over her, before the one she would remember, hazily, upon waking. She was in the coracle, her mother sitting in front—at least, she thought it was Maeve. She couldn’t see her face, her back to Nora, a child once more. Mama, Nora said, Mama, her voice rising when her mother didn’t respond, the ashen terns flapping overhead, wings tattered and sullied as crumpled newspaper, the pages turning, turning, headlines of disasters, disappearances. Her mother’s arms moved in time with the wings above, the waves beneath them deepening, bottomless—the sky too, everything the color of steel, polished, cold, the wind blowing, lightly at first, then wildly. We have to go back, Nora cried. Maeve didn’t answer, didn’t turn. The wind lifted her mother’s hair from the nape of her neck, revealing a single green strand, a piece of sea grass, among the ringlets. Nora reached forward to remove it, the boat shifting beneath her, listing precariously. When she glanced up again, she saw that her mother’s hair was made entirely of sea grass, that one lock no different from the rest. She stared at the piece that had broken off in her hand, taking in the slickness of it, the green. Your hair— And then Maeve was gone. A wave crashed over her. She was going down, her mother a shadow, receding into the depths. I can’t breathe. No words escaping her lips, only a stream of bubbles racing to the surface, lost to spray.
She woke, gasping, Malcolm’s arms around her. The familiar scent of him, close, warm. She held fast for a moment.
“It’s all right. I’m here,” he said, his cheek pressed into her hair.
She recovered herself enough to pull away and clutch a pillow to her chest.
He sat on the side of the bed, the same side on which he used to sleep next to her. He wore a plain gray T-shirt and checked pajama pants. They’d never worn bedclothes at home. “The same dream?” he asked.
A version of the recurring nightmare she’d been having for years, from which she’d wake, thinking she was drowning, him soothing her, when he was there. “Yes,” she said.
“Is it worse since you’ve been here?” The edges of everything softened in the dark, their voices hushed too.
The dream had intensified the week before she received Maire’s letter, as if her psyche were attuned to what was coming. He hadn’t been home then. “I’m all right.”
He got up, awkward now. His hair stood on end, giving him a comical appearance about which she would have teased him, under different circumstances.
“You should go,” she said.
He nodded, a slow movement, as if this were part of a dream from which they might wake, shaking their heads over their estrangement.
They knew it wouldn’t be good for the girls to find him there, to think—
He turned in the doorway. “I’m here if you need me.”
The ache, the regret, didn’t hit her until after he’d closed the door, a quiet click of the latch articulating their separation, he on one side of the wall, she on the other.
One day passed into the next, flowing together. Nora swam for hours, training for the race. She felt stronger, venturing farther each time, Malcolm small in the distance, the girls swimming near shore, showing him their strokes.
He showed no sign of leaving. He stuck to them like a burr.
“Don’t you need to go?” she asked one afternoon, a couple of days later, toweling her skin and hair.
“Where?”
“Boston.”
To his work. His life. Her. Though they hadn’t spoken of her. Here, she was only an idea. She had no shape, no form.
He shook his head. “Not yet.”
“When?”
He sighed. “It’s good here, isn’t it? We’re good here, away from everything.”
Everyone. Was that what he meant?
“I didn’t know you were such a strong swimmer,” he said.
“I didn’t either. I like the open water.” She hadn’t realized how hemmed in, how limited, she felt by the pool at the health club. It was freeing to be in the ocean, with no walls and lanes, whistles and lifeguards, to hold her back.
“You look good.”
She’d done something else he hadn’t expected. It made her more interesting.
“I’m not doing this for you,” she said. “I’m doing it for me.”
He’d brought a kite. An ornate paper bird with hinged wings that caught the wind, diving and soaring. The patterns of its flight were intricate, thrilling. He and the girls ran through the grass, creating a labyrinth of passageways in the green, crisscrossing, intersecting, breaking away. The girls swooped through the bluebells, while Malcolm worked the lines, the cables humming. “Higher, Daddy, higher!” they begged, and he complied. If they’d asked for the sky, the clouds, he would have pulled them down. Or tried to—a blanket of blue, a pillow of cumulus. “Mama, come on!” Annie called. Nora cut the safety cord that had held her at a distance from Malcolm and joined them, arms outspread, opening herself up to the wind. “Are you flying, Mama?” Annie asked. Nora felt the warmth of the sun on her face, the breeze on her skin, a sense of lightness, uplifting, exhilarating. “What are we?” Nora asked. “Sparrows,” said Ella, banking right. The most aerodynamic birds of all. “Sparrows!” Annie cried, taki
ng up the call. “Sparrows!” Nora threw back her head and laughed, the meadow spinning. Malcolm, the kite in one hand, took flight as well, not to leave, but follow. “This way!” Ella led, bending low, the grass, tasseled, braided, tickling arms and legs. Annie jumped off a log, airborne, then landed, light-footed, barely touching ground. “This way!” Nora right behind, breathless, Malcolm in pursuit. A perfect summer scene. A scene that almost made Nora think they could spend many days like this, countless days.
A sudden gust blasted the meadow, testing their balance. It snatched the kite from Malcolm’s hands. The bird flailed and then plummeted into the top of the spruce tree.
“No!” Annie cried.
They stopped below, the joy of the afternoon draining away.
“Sorry,” Malcolm said. “I should have held on.”
Nora’s eyes met his. The words didn’t have to be spoken to pass between them.
“It’s roosting,” Ella said hopefully.
“So it is,” he agreed. “Still, I might see if I can persuade it to come down.”
“The tree is like a mountain,” Annie said. A mountain of needles, of green.
“I can buy another,” he said, as if the time in the meadow, already receding into the past, could be re-created. He tugged on the line, tentatively at first, then harder. The bird hopped down a branch, then held fast, taunting him.
“Let’s go inside and make lemonade,” Nora suggested, sensing his mounting frustration. “You must be thirsty.”
“Do you want some, Daddy?” Ella asked.
“I’d love a glass. It’s hard work, being a bird, and negotiating with one. You know where to find me,” he said.
For once, Nora did.
The girls darted ahead, still birdlike in their movements, into the cottage. Nora skirted Malcolm’s sedan, a sporty, sleek model. The buzz of his cell phone cut the quiet of the afternoon through a half-open window. She’d heard him at the car earlier that morning, the click of the latch, the ding of the warning light, as he retrieved the kite and, in all likelihood, checked for messages in privacy.
She glanced up. He was out of her line of sight—and she from his. The phone buzzed violently as a trapped insect against the hard plastic receptacle. The call might be important—to his career, or, more to the point, to her, to ascertain his intentions, to find out if she’d been, careful as she was, fooled yet again.
The screen flashed. It might as well have been a billboard, given how large the letters seemed. It was a text message from her. Nora hesitated before pressing the button. Did she want to know? To violate his trust? Too many choices, the thirst for knowledge, as benign or terrible as it might be, winning in the end.
Have you given her the papers yet?
He rounded the corner, saw her standing there with the door ajar, the warning bell still doing its ding-ding-ding.
“You have a missed call,” she said.
“You didn’t have to answer it.”
“A message.” She thrust the device at him. She was aware of the girls inside the house, making the drinks, juicing the lemons, adding water, pouring in sugar, making everything sweet. The day, and all that lay between them, fragile as glass.
“I can explain.”
She stared at him. She felt tightly coiled as a spring.
“Nora—”
“Remember, I’m your wife, not one of your constituents.”
“That’s not fair. This isn’t what I want.”
“What isn’t?” Her words rat-tatted in the quiet afternoon.
“A divorce.”
“But she thinks you do.”
“I didn’t say—”
“Didn’t you?”
“She has her own situation to work out.”
So that’s what marriages were. Situations—the Situation Room taking on a whole new meaning. “Sounds like a fine start to a relationship, one built on mutual destruction and deceit. I’m glad you two have so much in common.” She paused, the words leaving a bitter aftertaste.
“I’m hurting too.”
“My heart bleeds for you.”
“Don’t raise your voice.”
“I’m not raising my voice.” How dare he tell her what to do? How to feel? She wanted to scream at him.
“You are. They might hear you.”
The girls, their mutual trump card. The one they tried not to use.
Maybe she was talking too loudly. Though it was more her tone than anything else that probably got to him. He wasn’t used to her speaking to him that way—sharp, biting, judging, no hint of affection, not even a glimmer. She’d been indulgent of him, loved him, for so many years.
“Why did you come here?” She dropped her voice lower. “Why did you, really?”
“I just wanted to see—” He faltered. He never faltered, but he did now.
“What you’re missing?”
He looked at the ground, unable to meet her gaze.
“And is it enough, Malcolm?” Enough to make him stay? And if it was, did she care enough, trust enough, to let him?
He stroked the keys of his phone, absently, his fingers perhaps itching to dial the number he knew by heart. He caught her staring at his hand and froze, too late. He’d given himself away. She knew it wasn’t calculated. For all his faults—and hers, she wasn’t perfect either, she knew that—he wasn’t manipulative. Defensive, exasperating, deflective, deceptive, yes; manipulative, no. He was, simply and finally, himself, perhaps ultimately unable to change for her, or she for him. “And what about what I want? Have you thought about that?”
“I thought you wanted to try.”
“I did. But you haven’t. You haven’t done a damn thing.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Don’t insult my intelligence,” she said. “Right now, I want you gone. Do you hear me? G-O-N-E.” She shoved him. “You shouldn’t have come here in the first place.”
He stood his ground, striking the same pose he did in court, the one that won him case after case. “I don’t like being jerked around like this.”
“That’s right, Malcolm. You’re the victim.”
“What’s going to be enough for you?”
They weren’t hearing each other, their words ricocheting. “You already know the answer to that.”
He took a different tack. “And what about the girls? You’re supposed to protect them.”
“Seriously? Screw you.”
“There’s no call for that kind of language.”
“Oh, yes, there certainly is. Protect them? That’s exactly what I’ve been doing. I doubt you can say the same.” She turned her back on him and walked away. She would not let him get the best of her.
The rest of the day passed. They spoke to the girls too brightly, their words so vehemently upbeat they shone. To each other, they said as little as possible, their movements as carefully choreographed as steps in a dance, their lines so well spoken they might have had weeks of rehearsal.
The next morning, she woke to find he’d gone. And while she had expected it, it surprised her too. She felt his absence more keenly than she might have thought. He was still a part of her, whether she liked it or not. She put the spare blankets in the closet, the sheets in the bag, to be transported to Maire’s for washing.
Ella’s eyes brimmed with tears. “Where is he?”
As if Nora had misplaced him. “He went back to Boston.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry, honey. He was visiting. He couldn’t stay.”
“Why?”
“His work—” And the other things she couldn’t speak of.
Ella sputtered. “You drove him away, didn’t you? What did you say to him? What did you say?”
“El, I’m doing the best I can, for all of us.”
“Your best isn’t good enough.”
Annie put her hands over her ears. “Stop shouting! Stop!”
They turned and looked at her.
“He didn’t even say good-bye.” Annie cri
ed softly. “He always says good-bye.”
Nora pulled her close. Annie’s tears dampened the front of her shirt. Ella ran out the door with a slam.
“El—” Nora called after her.
Malcolm hadn’t told the girls he was leaving, to spare them—and more likely, himself—a scene. Nora supposed it was better that way, in the end.
Ella sat below the spruce, gaze fixed on the kite, still high in the tree. She stayed there for some time, as if by the force of her will she could bring the kite down, bring her father back. When she returned to the house at last, exhausted, Nora ran her a warm bath, to wash away the tears.
Over the passing days, the kite faded and tore, a ribboned piece of its tail catching on the roof, where it fluttered, a hapless banner of the days they’d spent as a family, before the wind ripped it free at last, carrying it past the cove, twisting in midair, out to sea.
Chapter Fourteen
The girls sat in the beached coracle, the surrounding sand, rocks, and driftwood their sea. The pebbles shone. The tide retreated, leaving behind petticoats of white-laced foam. The shore smelled strongly of seaweed, and their lips had an invisible crust of salt. Their hair broke free of its braided restraints, falling into their faces in tangled strands they kept pushing behind their ears, so that they might contemplate the forbidden ocean, its currents summoning them, its waves promising adventure.
“It’s not the same.” Ella threw down the plastic tube she’d been using as a telescope in disgust.
“We can’t take the boat out. We promised.” Annie hopped out of the vessel and waded in the shallows—oh, that breath-catching, skin-prickling, delicious cold, like no other—as if that would suffice.
If their father had been there, he would have gone with them. But he was gone.
Ella tromped along the tidal margins, leaving footprints in the wet, slate-colored sand, the heels filling with water, legs splattered with the ocean’s damp breath, its gritty muck. “No, we didn’t. We didn’t promise anything.” She set her lips in a sullen line.
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