by Susan Wilson
Kiley made no move to wipe the steadily rolling tears away from her cheeks. How bad, indeed? Had she wept more in front of him this week than at any other time in his life?
He finished the second sandwich and gulped down a glass of tea. “Gotta go.”
“Where?”
Kiley was surprised at the flush that reddened his already sun-reddened cheeks.
“I’m picking up a girl and going to the beach.”
“ ‘A girl’? Do you have one in mind, or are you going to cruise the streets?” she teased.
“Yeah, I have one in mind. We met at the fireworks, and then I ran into her at Starbucks the other day. Catherine Ames. Lives on Bailey’s Farm Road.” Will was standing over her chair, slightly to one side, where he could see her face but she couldn’t see his. “She’s taking me to Bailey’s Beach.”
“Oh. Right.” Bailey’s Beach.
“I can have the car, can’t I?”
“Sure.” Kiley busied herself rearranging the remaining sandwich halves on the platter. “Be home by five. I need the car.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to meet with Dr. MacKenzie in Great Harbor. About finding a job.”
Will hovered for a moment, half in and half out the door. “A job here?”
“No. Just about making some contacts for me.”
Will bounded into the house, the screen door slamming behind him. In five minutes he was back, stuffing a beach blanket and towels into his backpack. “Hey, tell me one thing.”
“What?”
“Why don’t you want to see Grainger?”
Kiley fiddled with the remaining sandwiches. “Actually, I did.”
“Good. What did you talk about?”
“None of your beeswax.”
“About me?”
“A little. He wants you to help him get Pop’s boat back in the water.”
“Sweet.”
“So, tell me about you and Lori.” For days now, Kiley had been wanting to ask Will this question. It was obvious something was up, with Will’s never calling the girl, and her unopened envelopes collecting on his bureau. Now he’d given her the opening.
Will slung the backpack over one shoulder and went down the porch steps. “We broke up.”
“Why?”
“She broke it off.”
“She’s a fool.”
“She was right. We do need to see other people, and if I don’t go now, I’ll be late for my other people.”
“Will?” Kiley called just as he reached the Mazda.
“I know, be home by five.”
“No. I just don’t want you to get any idea that…” She paused, waiting until Will fixed his attention on her. “Don’t get any ideas about Grainger and me. About some reconciliation. It’s a détente.”
Will raised his chin in that way he had when he’d been told something he didn’t want to hear. “Suit yourself. But it’s my life.”
“No, it’s not. It really doesn’t have anything to do with you. All you need to worry about is if you want to work with Grainger tomorrow.”
Twenty-three
It felt as if he’d known Catherine Ames all of his life. She was so easy to be around. They played in the water like little kids, splashing and doing handstands. After swimming, they stretched out on his beach blanket, half dozing in the fading July afternoon. Even the silences were natural. Will lay beside Catherine and studied the curve of her long neck beneath the short-chopped hair, the way it looked so delicate coming to the point between her thin shoulders where it joined her back in a V. He wanted to trace one finger down each of her vertebrae. Catherine lifted her face to look at him as if suddenly aware of his contemplation. She smiled. “So, how long are you here, college boy?”
Will lifted himself up to rest his cheek against his fist. “Not long enough. We’re gone the end of the month, unless Mom has a change of heart.”
“Then you’re off to Cornell?”
“Labor Day weekend. What about you?”
Catherine smiled, a slightly enigmatic smile. A pleased smile. “Ithaca College.”
Will let the bubble of surprised laughter out. “No way!”
Catherine laughed too. “Yep. We’ll be neighbors.” She handed him a tube of sunblock. “Did your mother ever tell you about Joe Green?”
“No. My mother never told me anything about Hawke’s Cove.” Will hoped he didn’t sound petulant. But it was true. Until two days ago he knew absolutely nothing. He stroked the sunblock across her shoulders.
“During the war this guy crashed his fighter plane into the Cove, and then swam to shore right here on Bailey’s Beach. Technically, he was a deserter. AWOL. The woman who owned Bailey’s Farm took him in, and they fell in love. But at the end of the war, she went back to the city when her husband came home. Joe Green stayed here. Not once has he ever left Hawke’s Cove. He kept both his past and their love affair secret until, can you believe it, the nineties, when their separate children found out about both secrets. Then his daughter and her son fell in love and married each other, and still spend summers in the farmhouse. Charlie and Maggie Worth, I used to baby-sit for them. I’ve even met them, Joe and Vangie. They’re wicked old, but they still hold hands. They never forgot each other over all that time.”
Will capped the tube and handed it back to Catherine. “Charlie Worth was in the game on the Fourth. Pretty good for an old guy.”
Catherine rolled her eyes, then slapped Will. “That’s not the point. Don’t you think that it’s romantic, carrying a torch for each other for fifty years?”
Will wrapped his long arms around his knees and stared out at the rumpled water. “Do you think that’s really possible? Don’t you think that if too much time goes by, you just move on?”
Catherine handed him a box of cheese crackers. “I believe if you’re meant for someone, it doesn’t matter how long it takes.”
“How do you know if you’re meant for someone?”
Catherine fished a Snapple out of the cooler and passed it to Will. “I don’t think it’s like in the movies, all instant recognition and all. But I do think that there are signs.”
Will popped the cover off the Snapple bottle and took a long drink. “I’m just beginning to find out some stuff about my mother.”
“Like what?”
“I grew up without a father, and now I may have two.”
“Like having two mommies?”
“No. Not exactly. Most of my life, I’ve just ignored the fact that I didn’t have a father. In our town, it’s not unusual to have a single parent. Shit, half the kids in my fifth-grade class were children of single mothers. Or patched-together families of steps and step-steps.”
“So what’s the matter?”
“It’s hard to explain.”
“You don’t have to tell me, but I’m supposedly a good listener.” They were a few inches apart, as befitted casual aquaintances, a safe distance, one that might be crossed or respected without challenge.
“I might have been conceived here. On this very beach.”
“How do you know that?”
“You wouldn’t want to know.”
“Try me.” Catherine, whom he had met less than three days ago, reached across the tiny divide and linked her fingers with his. “I promise you’ll feel better.”
It was that little touch that did him in, which pricked his reserve and let the words begin to flow out. Slowly at first, then, more rapidly, as thoughts he had yet to formulate were suddenly articulated. He told this girl, gently linking her fingers with his, everything. About how he’d grown up always wondering who his father was. Why they were in Hawke’s Cove, his run-in with the law, and his breakup with Lori. Lori seemed so distant now. So insignificant. He tested the recent hurt to his pride that her pronouncement had caused, and found it gone. Too much else had reduced it to a mere memory. Memory. That’s what his mother wanted all of this to remain. She didn’t want him to pursue finding out the hard truth abou
t his paternity.
“So now my mother is all weird about seeing Grainger. I mean, think about it. She slept with him and she slept with Mack, and here I am and Mack is dead and only…” Will stopped talking. His mouth felt dry and the Snapple was gone. Surely he’d put Catherine to sleep with his tale. Then he felt her fingers increase their pressure on his. With his other hand, Will outlined circles in the sand.
“I think you need to talk to Grainger. I think that he’d go along with having the DNA test.”
“It’s not just that. I don’t understand why he and my mother seem so angry with each other. It’s not like they were divorced and there’s all this animosity. It’s like…I don’t know. Nothing I’ve ever experienced.”
“Like two proud, stubborn Yankees.”
“Yeah. Stubborn.”
“So, trick ’em.”
“My mother already told me this isn’t, and I quote, ‘the fucking Parent Trap.’ She’s never used that word in my hearing before, so I’m not too keen on playing childish tricks to get them in the same room.”
“Wow. Okay, you should use not-so-childish tricks.”
“Like what?”
“Hmmm. It would be handy if you were struck with some nearly fatal disease. You could get them to reconcile over your sickbed.”
Will felt a giggle rise in his chest, an unfamiliar sensation lately. Ever since Lori, there had been little to laugh over. Then Catherine laughed out loud, and he joined her until the laughter became guffaws and he had to grip his belly against the welcome pain. “That might get all three of them together: Mom, Grainger, and the doctor who might or might not be my uncle. Wow. Brilliant. I feel a fever coming on.”
Suddenly Catherine kissed him. A sweet, gentle, friendly kiss. Will took her face in his hands; he breathed in her Snapple-scented breath and lowered his lips to meet hers. “Thank God you’re here. I’d be banging my head against a brick wall if you weren’t.”
“I told you I was a good listener.”
“More than that, Catherine. Much more.” For some reason, the name of the boat came to Will as he moved to kiss Catherine again. Blithe Spirit. Exactly how he would describe Catherine to anyone. Exactly how Mack and Grainger had viewed Kiley. No wonder it had been impossible for them to not fall in love with her. Will gently pulled away from Catherine. He didn’t want history to repeat itself on this beach. “I have to be home in”—he looked at his watch—“one minute.”
“Oops.”
“Want to come over tonight?”
“Sure.”
“Mom’s going out.” Will got to his feet and pulled Catherine to hers. “She’s going out with Mack’s brother.”
“Oh, the handsome Dr. Conor MacKenzie?”
“Yeah. Supposedly she’s meeting him to talk about a job.”
“My aunt has a wicked crush on him. She keeps finding reasons to go see him. Every twinge and bellyache, and off she goes to consult Doc Conor. Hoping he’ll do more than prescribe.” Catherine stuffed her towel in her beach bag.
“So, he’s single?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Great.” Will jammed his towel into his backpack. “Great.”
“Will?”
Will looked at Catherine.
“Are you playing favorites?”
“Favorites how?”
“You wish your mother would be with Grainger Egan.”
“I don’t give a flying fuck who she dates. It’s immaterial to me.” Will slung his backpack over one shoulder and started up the path to the car.
Twenty-four
Grainger couldn’t bear to listen to the chatter on talk radio, so he slipped a Muddy Waters tape into the truck’s player and turned up the volume. Blues was what he felt, blues was what he needed. Having Kiley so close was like being faced with a living specter. She sounded like Kiley, she mostly looked like Kiley, but she wore neither the fangs nor claws of the Kiley he had created in his imagination all these years. The girl to whom he had attributed a callous disregard of anyone’s feelings—a cavalier notion that she wouldn’t break hearts—the friendship splitter, the betrayer, had never existed and he knew it. Kiley was simply a good mother, a caring person who, like him, lived too much in the past. It was past time to come to terms with it. Because of his own stubborn notion of keeping ancient history in his heart, Grainger had denied himself the one thing that might have given his empty life ballast: Will. At least she wasn’t denying him Will any longer.
They had come so close this morning. He still felt the light weight of her in his arms, how his heart raced at the possibility they might be able to mend this great tear in the fabric of their friendship. Grainger turned up the volume, trying to crowd out the voice in his head with the voice on the tape. Fool. In one sentence Kiley had reminded him, once again, that he was in second place. She probably thought that if he forgave her not telling him about Will, he’d forget he hadn’t ever been her first choice.
He drove past the hardware store, although he needed more sandpaper, taking the road that led up the hill and out of town. One of the benefits, or drawbacks, of his profession was too much time for thinking; much of what he did required only muscle memory, and his thoughts ranged freely. He was in no frame of mind to touch power tools, so he kept driving, the blues accompanying his incomplete thoughts.
Spontaneously, Grainger slowed down and turned into the gate of the old burying ground at the top of the hill beside the brownstone Episcopal church. It was a pretty place. The oldest graves appeared to be randomly placed around trees and up and down the gentle hillocks. Surrounded by flowering quince, apple, and pear trees in the spring, from a distance, the graveyard looked like an orchard. Grainger got out of the truck, leaving a complaining Pilot in the cab. He didn’t know where he was going, only that the quiet peacefulness called to him, as if he was being pulled toward a solace as yet unexplained. The peaceful realm of the dead. The sea breeze fluttered the little flags the VFW had placed on veterans’ graves for the Fourth. Someday they would put one on his grave, although he only spent two miserable years in the service and never saw action anywhere.
Grainger drifted, thinking vaguely of going into the church, of seeing if the small nave might take up the large and uncomfortable feelings filling the space around his heart.
When his mother first left, the MacKenzies brought him with them to this church, the old priest there attempting consolation by getting him into Sunday school. As if he could find any consolation in stories like Joseph and his coat of many colors; a story that only verified the treacherous behavior of families.
Grainger walked past graves of people he knew: a teacher dead of cancer; Howie Randall, who ran the drugstore, a coronary; and several others who had given their lives to the sea. To a man who had made his living on or around the water, who grew up surrounded on three sides by it, drowning and death on the water were commonplace. By the time Grainger was twenty, he could count on both hands the names of people lost whom he knew. Accidents, all. A wave over the top of waders, an underestimated undertow, a capsized boat. Or like his father, a drunken entanglement in fishing net. Or like Mack, gone overboard.
He’d left Hawke’s Cove that night. In the morning, Blithe Spirit was found caught between the rocks near Bailey’s Beach. It isn’t unusual for the sea to keep what it takes. Eventually the search for Mack was called off, and a headstone placed above an empty grave in the family plot—as close to a burial as the MacKenzies would have.
In all the time he’d been back in Hawke’s Cove, Grainger had never visited the gravesite. Every time the anniversary of Mack’s death came, he’d plan to go and put flowers on it, but somehow he never did.
He hadn’t known that Mack was in danger. He’d been hitchhiking to Great Harbor, aware of the wind and rain only as they mirrored his black mood. Anger and hurt had been the only feelings occupying him.
A woodpecker hammered now at a dying tree. On his own unhappy road to Damascus, Grainger paused in mid-step. For an instan
t he felt exactly as he had years before, standing atop the mainmast of the schooner before plunging into the dark water. For he knew suddenly what it was he was looking for: it wasn’t forgiveness between only Kiley and himself.
He had betrayed Mack by trying to take Kiley away from him.
Then he had run away, aware only of his own wounded pride. If he had stayed, maybe Mack wouldn’t have gone out. But even if he had, Grainger and Kiley might have been able to grieve together. Like diving again from the mainmast, a cleansing impact was what Grainger was looking for. It was Mack’s forgiveness he wanted. Impossible, and forever too late.
There it was, tidy and tended—Mack’s gravesite. William “Mack” MacKenzie 1966–1984. Beloved son.
Beloved son. William.
Seeing Mack’s whole name carved in the soft white marble, Grainger knew that Mack had to be Will’s biological father. And Kiley had to have somehow known. Grainger sat on the ground, in front of the polished headstone marking the forever empty grave.
Will couldn’t know he was named after Mack. Otherwise he wouldn’t have asked which of them was his father. Kiley must have some reason she wouldn’t tell him the truth. A reason that was tangled up in her desire to keep the mythological threesome alive. She was letting them both believe there was no answer to that question. Given his behavior that night, Kiley had every right to keep him out of Will’s life. If Will hadn’t discovered him, would Kiley have continued to try to keep them unaware of each other?
Atonement. Grainger rolled the word around in his imagination. If Mack had lived, there was no doubt that Grainger would have come to him seeking to repair the damage to their friendship. And no doubt that Mack would have done the same. But there had been no chance, and he could never know under what circumstances their reconciliation might have taken place.
Until now. He’d do what Mack would have wanted done. He’d make a good sailor out of Will—and give him the boat, Blithe Spirit. She was Will’s heritage. Even if Mack had died aboard her, she was still his beloved boat. She hadn’t killed him, he had with his betrayal.