by Lisa Duffy
Which worries him more than ever right now.
He’s had to keep track of her only after school hours. They’d agreed she would come home no later than four thirty in the afternoon. She’s never been late.
Now the summer days stretch out. And he’s supposed to be on the ferry off the island tomorrow for a meeting in the office.
Sky waves goodbye and turns. They watch her walk away in silence.
Leo should be rushing home to deal with the water in the basement. And the phone call from Ann’s mother, the one she hadn’t spoken to in years. But he stands in the parking lot with Maggie and Agnes, too tired suddenly to move.
“I’m screwed if she doesn’t change her mind. I have to work all week,” Leo admits. “Can you force a child to go to camp?”
“Of course,” Agnes scoffs. “Mothers have been forcing children to do things they don’t want to do since the beginning of time. Welcome to the club.”
Maggie frowns at Agnes, but Leo ignores her. Her comment is just one in a handful of things she’s said to him since he returned to the island two months ago.
He’s used to Agnes’s gruff nature—she was the school nurse way back when he was a student. And he grew up two doors down from her on the same street.
Honestly, until recently, Agnes Coffin was just an adult in his life. The school nurse who kept a jar of animal crackers on her desk.
Now, as an adult, he finds her rude. Small-minded, even.
She calls him city boy and hot shot. One Friday afternoon, he passed her on the street on his way to meet Xavier at the ferry, and she pointed to the clouds, the rain starting to come down.
“Just saw your boyfriend getting off the ferry. Looks like he brought the bad weather with him from the mainland,” she said.
“Husband,” he corrected, and she waved him away and kept walking, as though he were a bigger inconvenience than the tiny drops falling on her head.
She had a habit of fingering the cross around her neck when she made these comments, as though she knew she should be seeking forgiveness even as the words crossed her lips.
Now Maggie puts her hand on Leo’s arm.
“I’m no expert, but I think forcing Sky to do anything she doesn’t want to do right now seems unnecessary. She’s dealing with enough change, don’t you think?” Maggie asks, and Leo nods.
“Well what do you suggest, Mother Teresa?” Agnes asks. “Perhaps a flock of sheep can tend to the child each day.” She smiles innocently at Maggie, who ignores her.
“What if we watch her a couple of days a week? I think she’d agree to it,” Maggie says.
“We who?” Agnes asks.
“I can’t ask you to do that,” Leo says. “It’s your summer.”
“Damn right,” Agnes mutters.
“Oh, stop it, Agnes. You know you’ll be calling me next week, bored out of your mind and asking me to do something. Besides, I want to do it. These kids keep me young. And she’ll be good company.”
“That’s exactly my point,” Agnes tells Maggie. “I want to call you and do something. Not watch a child—which is what we do all year!”
“There’s plenty of time for both. I’m happy to do it.”
“Are you sure?” Leo asks. “I mean, she loves you. She ends up at your house all the time anyway.”
He doesn’t mean for this to come out like it does. Sad and pathetic and whiny. But there it is. Out in the air just like that. Maggie’s quick to respond, patting his arm.
“Don’t let that bother you. I used to watch Sky when she was little and Ann was working part-time. She’d drop her off if Brian was at the station. Never mind that I’m her teacher. It’s just familiarity she wants right now. She’ll stay put when she’s ready. Just give her time.”
“Xavier wants me to put a lock on her bedroom door. He takes a harder line than I do, I guess,” Leo admits.
“Well, you’re a parent now. Nobody said it was easy. If you don’t know where she is at night, a lock isn’t the worst idea. Remember, it’s your job to keep her safe,” Agnes lectures, as though this has somehow slipped his mind.
Maggie frowns. “It’s not a mystery where she’s going, Agnes. She’s in the tree house, which is technically on their property—”
“In the middle of the woods!” Agnes says.
“In her wooded backyard,” Maggie corrects.
“It’s not just the running away,” Leo cuts in. “I’ve known Sky since she was, I don’t know, a week old. I mean, coming into the world like that—being abandoned and then fate somehow giving you two of the best people as parents. That’s just… luck. Amazing luck. And Sky knew it. The three of them were inseparable. And now she’s just sad. I mean, it’s all over her face—I can feel it. I guess I just worry about her… you know. Doing something.”
“Don’t say such things,” Agnes chides. “God won’t allow that to happen.”
“Maybe you could talk to her?” he asks Maggie. “It can’t hurt—”
“I gave her a wellness evaluation just two weeks ago,” Agnes interrupts. “And as a professional in the medical field, I can assure you she is not going to hurt herself. That’s something I’m trained to be aware of.”
“Are you aware that she’s been writing letters to her parents? Each one is signed: See you soon. I’m not a trained professional, but that seems pretty serious, doesn’t it?” Leo snaps.
“Oh, good Lord,” Maggie says.
Agnes rolls her eyes. “Children are fickle. Who knows what nonsense they get in their heads? Let’s just keep an eye on her and say our prayers, and this will all pass. Calling attention to it is just going to reinforce the behavior.”
“Right. Ignore it and pray. Problem solved,” Leo says, his temper running away from him.
“I didn’t say ignore it. I said don’t call attention to it. And damn right I pray. Perhaps you should, too!”
“What’s that supposed to mean—”
“Let’s just calm down,” Maggie says quietly. “We’re all on the same side here. Right, Agnes?”
“I’m not the one who was sarcastic, was I?” Agnes crosses her arms, and Leo sighs.
“Agnes, I apologize. Look—I know you both love Sky. I’m just trying to do my best here. Maggie, it would be a huge help if you could watch her. I’m sure she’ll be excited.”
He says goodbye to them, notices how Agnes won’t even look at him.
He’s walking away when he hears Agnes say to Maggie, “Are you planning on saving all the children on the island? One at a time?”
He doesn’t hear Maggie’s response. But he doesn’t care. He’s not interested in all the children on the island.
Just one.
8
There’s a story everyone on Ichabod likes to tell about Sky’s father. Sometimes she tries to remember when she first heard it, but she can’t. Her memory doesn’t go back that far.
It goes like this:
Brian Pope was born dead. All seven pounds of him appearing suddenly in the sixth inning of a Red Sox game at Fenway Park.
Three weeks early, he came into the world as though he were sliding headfirst into home plate. A heaping pile of baby nearly landing on the peanut-shell-covered floor in the bleacher seats.
His parents were surprisingly calm.
Brian’s father was halfway through his fifth beer, and the Yankees were at bat, and he hated the Yankees, every one of them. As did everyone around him. Between the booing and hissing and name-calling, he didn’t hear his wife call out.
He didn’t notice her get up from her seat and double over on the wide cement steps in the aisle. His eyes were on the batter and, sure, he felt someone tap him on the back, maybe even a tug on his sleeve, but that was because he was screaming, telling the batter what a lousy bum he was, and everyone was cheering, agreeing with him.
Then he heard the crack of the ball against the bat. His eyes went skyward, searching. But there was no ball. From his seat way out in center field, he watched the lousy bu
m of a batter at the plate walk to the dugout.
Three strikes on the board.
Only then did he notice the commotion beside him. His wife on her back, her sundress tented over her spread legs, and a policeman kneeling between them, holding a blue-faced, lifeless, newborn baby.
The crack of the ball against the bat was the policeman’s open palm bouncing off the baby’s round bottom, desperate to get him to breathe. The rookie policeman wasn’t trained for this—he’d only just graduated from the academy last year. He’d cleared the baby’s mouth with his finger already. He couldn’t feel a pulse.
And the mother was up on her elbows, staring at him, so stunned that her expression looked almost serene. She hadn’t even pushed. The baby just slid out.
The rookie policeman did the only thing that seemed reasonable. He slapped the baby on the behind. Not too hard—just enough to say: Wake up!
He thought he saw the infant’s eyelids flicker. He did it again.
A second slap, just as the small crowd that had gathered went quiet with horror at the silent infant cradled facedown in his hand.
The baby jolted, arms jerking, his mouth opening. Seconds later, a shaky wail filled the air.
The crowd cheered while the baby took his first breaths, the Green Monster peering down on him as though it were his very own guardian angel.
The story made the newspapers. Miracle Baby, they called him.
The story followed the new parents back to their home on Ichabod, and the infant, Brian Pope, earned a reputation before he even shed the remnants of his umbilical cord.
Tough, they called him. A survivor.
Not a weak bone in his body—a fighter, that kid.
Sky heard that story over and over. The priest even slipped it into her father’s funeral: No one knew what happened in that car. What tragedy led to the accident that took both Brian and Ann.
But the priest knew God knew that Brian Pope did everything in his power to save himself and his beloved wife.
Because that’s the kind of person Brian was. A fighter.
Her mother hated the story about Sky’s father’s birth. She’d wince when anybody told it.
“Isn’t that a burden to carry through life?” she’d muttered once to Sky. “So small and you’re already tough. Already a fighter. Quite a thing to live up to.”
Sky hadn’t understood what her mother was talking about. But this last year, she didn’t understand a lot of things that were happening in her house.
Things she didn’t tell anyone.
Not even Frankie.
She didn’t have the words to explain the growing pile of empty bottles under the stairs in the basement. Her father disappeared down there most nights.
She also couldn’t figure out her mother’s moods. How she was happy one minute. Crying the next.
In the months before her parents died, Sky didn’t know which mother she’d wake up to in the morning. The mom she’d always known, or the other woman—the one who dressed in heels and wore red lipstick and said things that made Sky look at her sideways.
The one who decided they needed all new plates and glasses one random day. Her mother had gone to the store and returned with boxes filling her trunk. She stayed up all night unpacking them, putting the expensive-looking china in the cabinets. Sky could hear her from her bedroom, muttering something under her breath.
But when Sky came home from school the next day, the old plates and glasses were back in the cabinet. Her mother had taken the new china back to the store. And she was herself again. Calm and smiling, apologizing to Sky for being so caught up in that silly project.
“You know how I get sometimes,” her mother had said. “Silly and impulsive. Crazy ideas in my head.”
No, Sky had thought to herself. I don’t.
Sky had never known her mother to be impulsive. And silly was about the last word she would’ve used to describe her. Dependable Reliable. Maybe even boring. These were the words she would have used to describe the only mother she’d known since birth.
But something inside of her mother’s mind had changed.
Her father knew it too.
Sky saw it in the way he watched her mother. Sometimes, if her mother was acting that way, he’d come into Sky’s room at bedtime, sit next to her, his back against the headboard, ask her about her day. He’d stay in her bed and pretend he’d fallen asleep.
But she’d catch his eyes open when there was a noise in the house. He’d look at the door, and she’d hold her breath even though she had no idea what they were waiting for. She got the impression he was protecting her. Standing watch.
She’d never even heard her parents argue until this past year. But once they started, they never stopped.
Her mother yelled at her father about the bottles in the basement. How he needed help.
Most times, her father walked into the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet, and returned with a bottle of pills in his hand.
He’d shake it, a thick rattle going through the house. “Did you even take one? A single one?”
“They make me feel sick,” her mother would explain.
Her father’s answer was always the same. “You are sick,” he’d say. “You have a disease.”
“So do you!” her mother would shout, ready to fight.
And Sky would close her bedroom door. Or slip outside, run to the tree house. Or sometimes she’d go next door to Joe’s.
Joe never came over anymore. He used to be at her house all the time when he was putting the dormers on the front of their house. Then, one day after school, Sky came home to an ambulance in the driveway and Joe, unconscious on a stretcher, and that was the last time he was over at her house.
He’d fallen off the scaffolding, her mother had said.
Sky still remembers her mother standing in the driveway. Shiny red lipstick on her mouth, so heavy and bright she looked like a clown.
Sky should’ve been watching the men load Joe into the back of the ambulance, checking to see if he was okay. But she hadn’t taken her eyes off her mother. But it wasn’t really her mother. It was the other woman.
The one with the blank eyes and the red lipstick. And the crazy ideas.
Now that her parents are gone, everyone talks about what a perfect couple they were. But she knows they weren’t. They were just people, with problems and secrets, just like everyone else.
She writes them letters sometimes. Tells them about her day. Or what the weather is like. Nothing important, because the thing she misses the most is talking with them about nothing important.
It’s silly. A waste of time. But it always makes her feel better. It reminds her of when she went to overnight camp and she’d send home letters almost every day.
She throws each one in the trash though. There is nowhere to send them. No return letters coming her way or care packages in the mail.
Still.
A letter each night makes her feel as if they’re still here. As though they’re somewhere out there. Still listening. Maybe reading the words over her shoulder.
See you soon.
9
The sun is already blazing in the morning sky when Leo walks out of the house. He’s wearing a collared shirt tucked into khakis. A belt even.
Dressed up from his typical shorts and T-shirt, he’s already uncomfortable in the heat, but he wants to make a good impression today.
He hears a whistle and looks over to see Joe sitting in a lawn chair in the shade, a hose pointed at his garden.
He’s smiling at Leo, as though he’s a construction worker catcalling a pretty girl instead of an out-of-work sixty-year-old man teasing his gay neighbor.
Leo laughs and walks over.
“You approve?” he says, and holds his arms out, spins in a slow circle. “Work on your whistle, man. My mother had better pipes.”
Joe grins. “Your mother probably could’ve kicked my ass right now too. Watering these plants has me out of breath.”
Leo waves him off. “It’s only been a couple months since you got hurt. You’ll be good in no time.”
“Couple, my ass. Six months as of yesterday. Doc says I’m healed, but my back seems to think otherwise. Starting to wonder if it’s all in my head. I should probably take my sister’s advice. Hang up my hammer. She keeps telling me to get a job on the mainland. A regular gig at Home Depot or Lowe’s. Some place so big even the damn birds in the rafters can’t get out.”
“Come on now—the one and only Joe Armstrong! Best builder on the island. Guys like you don’t go silently into the night. Where’s the fight in the old dog, huh?” Leo puts his hands up, punches the air.
Joe watches him for a minute, raises his eyebrows. “Sky could take you in a brawl. You ever get in a fight, let Xavier handle it.”
Leo drops his arms. “He’s not any better. We have a couple of lesbian friends we bring in for the real muscle. Nobody messes with them.”
Joe smiles. “Speaking of messing with people—don’t answer your door if somebody knocks. The warden’s trying to set up a neighborhood meeting.”
Leo rolls his eyes. “Thanks for the warning. You two any friendlier?”
There was no love lost between Joe and Agnes. The whole neighborhood knew they didn’t like each other. Maybe the whole island.
“I laid off her when she was sick. But she’s back to acting like she owns the street.”
“Well, she might. She’s been here long enough. Isn’t just the street either. Agnes thinks she owns the island.”
“Speaking of—I didn’t know she owned that house too.” Joe nods to the vacant house down the street. “I thought it belonged to the town or something. They always have meetings or whatever there. Church fund-raisers.”
Leo nods. “She grew up in that house.” He pointed to the one Joe was referring to. “Then she got married and moved across the street. When her parents died, she inherited the one she grew up in. She didn’t change one thing in there. Place is like a shrine. She won’t sell it. Won’t rent it. Says she doesn’t want strangers moving in.”
“Well, apparently it’s the site of our weekly neighborhood meeting. Twice this week, she’s knocked on my door. First to tell me it’s my duty to show up at the neighborhood meeting—’course, I didn’t even know about any of that. Two days later, she’s back. Says there’s an unknown car parked on the street and do I know who it belongs to? Middle of the day and she’s worried about a goddamn sedan parked outside my house.”