The Second Mother

by Jenny Milchman

  Julie girded herself in case David suggested a drink.

  “—little quiet? I have something I’d like to discuss.”

  He looked serious, and although the effects of a rough boat ride could mimic those of a hangover, Julie was pretty sure that David was sober.

  “I’ll take you to see the island’s best view.”

  * * *

  They stopped in town to buy coffee, then carried it to the cliff trail, whose location Ellie had described the night Julie slept over. The trail crept up from the schoolhouse cove, and after a few yards, Julie and David came to a flat ledge overlooking the sea. Both it and the sky were the color of blue jeans, no apparent weather coming in. Perhaps the crossing hadn’t been that hard, and David was just a clumsy seaman. The idea gave Julie an uncharitable nip of pleasure. She sat down, patting the rock beside her.

  “How’s Depot?” David asked, taking a seat.

  Julie blew on her coffee. “Good overall. Some adventures. I can take you to see him; he’s right down there in the—”

  David cut her off. “Probably not the best idea. I took Depot on so many drunk walks, I think he might be a trigger for me.”

  “A trigger?” Julie repeated, trying to wrap her head around the fact that David didn’t want to see their dog.

  He looked out to sea. “This is quite a spot. You were right.”

  Julie accepted the diversion, studying sparkles on the water. “Calendar worthy.”

  “I meant the whole island,” David said. “I thought you might be doing a geographical, as we say in group, but it looks like you were right to come.”

  The statement felt presumptuous. “Why are you here, David?”

  He set his coffee down on the ledge. It wobbled a bit, and Julie reached out to steady the cardboard cup, nestling it in a pocket of stone.

  “I’m in recovery,” he told her.

  “That’s great,” she replied. “So am I.”

  David laced his fingers together and looked at her. “AA?”

  “No,” Julie replied. “The population is pretty small on-island—I don’t even know if there’s a group. And I wouldn’t necessarily want to announce my problem to all the parents who would find out. But twelve-step isn’t the only way to get sober.”

  “It’s not,” David acknowledged. “But it’s been instrumental for me. And I’m trying to work the ninth step, which is really the one that hangs over my head. Owning up to things you did that hurt the people you love. Trying to make amends.”

  “What do you have to own up to with me?” Julie asked.

  David shook his head. “You always did have a way of cutting to the chase.” He picked up his cup and took a sizzling gulp, then rubbed his brow, the way he used to do to ease a hangover headache. “You know how Hedley was sick the night before?”

  No need to ascertain which night before. There could only be one such night for the two of them, now and forever. Julie tasted coffee, bitter and undigested, in the back of her throat. She had a feeling that what David was about to say would call for a drink stronger than this, maybe stronger than any that existed in a bottle.

  He drank down the rest of his coffee. When he set the cup back on the ledge, his hand was shaking so badly that the cup overturned and rolled off the edge.

  They watched it vanish beneath a foaming wave.

  “David,” Julie said quietly. “Talk to me.”

  Neither of them was used to communicating without the lubricating effects of booze. But David responded at last. “I gave Hedley her Benadryl that night. Remember?”

  Something in his tone shot an icicle spear through Julie. “Yes.”

  “Well, I gave her too much.” David whispered it, but the statement was as loud as shattered glass. “I was pretty drunk, and some spilled out of the cap, and when I added more, I lost track of how much. I might’ve given her a dose and a half. Maybe even two.”

  The sun burned Julie’s eyes, causing spots to bob in her vision.

  David turned to her, and his face looked like it had been ravaged, as if an animal had attacked him, were attacking him still. “Do you understand, Julie? You’ve carried all this guilt around. You thought you were responsible because you happened to be out with Hedley that day. But it was me all this time. I killed our little girl.”

  * * *

  David’s mouth wrenched with fear, venal and ugly. “They could charge me with something. Endangerment of a child. Accidental homicide. Maybe even manslaughter. If you tell Tim about this—for all I know, they will.”

  Julie was seized by a spasm of rage so strong it left her trembling. She felt as if she could’ve shifted the rock ledge they sat on, hurled it into the sea. She hated David for keeping this from her, for letting her bear the blame, although he believed it to have been shared, or even his alone, all along.

  David took both her hands, his flesh lizard-like, dry against hers, and she had to work not to pull free. “Can you forgive me? You know the state I was in. The state we both were in. Our marriage was over—should’ve ended years before—but drinking glazed that over, kept us from admitting it.” He looked at her with the zeal of the convert.

  Julie didn’t speak. She couldn’t.

  David dropped her hands. “Well,” he said with a rasp in his throat. He got to his feet on the ledge, wiping his mouth with the back of one hand. “I leave it in your hands, what to do next. Whatever you decide, I will make my peace with.”

  Julie stared out to sea.

  “Can you just tell me one thing?”

  Julie shifted to look at him.

  “When does the return ferry depart?”

  She almost laughed. No repeat request for forgiveness, nor a question about whether she thought his self-flagellation was warranted. Well, she sure wasn’t inviting David to stay over. She wouldn’t mind if she never saw him again in her life. “Not till the morning. But there are always men hanging around by the dock. You can charter a boat.”

  She sat for a long time after David disappeared down the trail, and what prompted her to move was a change that had nothing to do with the guilt she had carried, or her view of her husband, their marriage, and their daughter’s last hours alive.

  It was the weather.

  Grayed-out vista, opaque clouds blotting the ocean from view. Julie shivered, her clothes gone damp and speckled with moisture. She stood up on the ledge, surprised at how slippery the rock felt underfoot. She hadn’t brought David very far along this trail, but she could no longer see the cove.

  She needed to get back to Depot. He would be wanting company.

  A sudden stiff breeze was sufficient to sway her, and she dropped onto her hands and knees to keep from going over the edge. Tears stung her eyes. Why hadn’t anybody warned Julie that the wind by the sea could mimic the high, shrill sound of a baby crying? Hedley crying anyway. With her stuffed noses, she’d often had an especially pained cry. Julie used to cringe at its sound, use a pillow to block her ears when there was nothing she could provide in the way of comfort. She missed that cry now, would do anything to hear it. She wondered if David would too. Julie rose shakily to her feet, touching strands on mossy rock, and feeling soft, sweet hair.

  She tried to mentally re-create her steps back to the schoolhouse. Less than a quarter mile, but she was beginning to understand why Ellie had deemed this trail usable only in good weather. Though it was simple to maintain her bearings—the direction from which the mist blew in off the ocean, the fact that she was descending—a single misstep and Julie would slip off the edge just like David’s coffee cup had. There was not one thing to hold onto. And while the cliffs weren’t terribly high at this point, there were rocks beneath the surface of the water, and an undertow that would be hard to fight.

  Julie felt for the path, patting around with her palms. A hairpin line of sand and gritty dirt. Amazing how simple taking th
is trail was when you could see it, and how daunting it was to do blind. Rising to her feet, Julie began to shuffle forward, testing each step to make sure there was solid ground beneath. She couldn’t see her shoes. The incline steepened—indicative of a plummet over the side, or just the path dropping to the cove?

  By the time Julie tripped over the first seaweed-slicked rock and staggered onto the beach, she was filled with an electric hum of paranoia. Even the weather seemed to be conspiring against her, as if the grandmother had the power to control that too. The fog distorted the shape of things two inches in front of her. Julie didn’t feel sure of what was real in her life, and what had been orchestrated by invisible hands. David’s revelation prompted other thoughts to crowd into her mind. Why had Julie’s salary been upped after Chloe was fired? Had she met Callum by chance or design? Was Peter hiding something, or was something being hidden from him?

  Cold seawater swirled around her ankles; she was back on level ground. Sucking in a breath of relief, Julie began to feel for boulders, taking their dimensions so that she could climb over humped backs or weave between stone walls toward the schoolhouse.

  Lifting one leg over a large, bulbous rock, Julie slid down its other side, then began to pat the air before her, trying to determine where the next obstacle stood.

  Instead of kelp or stone, she touched the solid chest of a man.

  Chapter Sixty

  Depot gave a bark of reunion, and launched himself at her out of the fog.

  “Christ,” Callum swore when they’d each confirmed the other’s identity. “What were you doing up there in fog as dense as this?”

  Seawater lapped Depot’s paws, and he bounded away to get clear of it.

  “I won’t again, I promise,” Julie said, the ebb of adrenaline leaving her weak and wobbly on the rocks. “How did Depot get here?”

  “He was barking up a storm in the schoolhouse when I came to do the lights. I let him out,” Callum said. “You must be part mountain goat to have gotten down that trail.”

  “There are five-thousand-foot peaks where I come from,” she reminded him. “And snow and ice and whiteouts and—”

  Callum grabbed her hands, cradling them between his salt-roughened ones.

  Depot had been racing above the high-tide line amongst gummy masses of kelp, nipping at them, then growling in displeasure at their taste. He paused, a tubular length dangling from his teeth as he observed them.

  “Just thank God you’re okay,” Callum said, still holding onto her hands.

  And Julie thought, this is real. No matter who or what the grandmother might be controlling behind the scenes on Mercy Island, it wasn’t, couldn’t, be any part of this.

  * * *

  Back home that night, Julie put in an emergency call to Dr. Trask’s service, knowing the physician would call her back. He listened to her description of the situation, then gave her the assessment she had been pretty sure would come.

  Next, Julie opened her computer and composed a brief email.

  Dear David: As we both know, they did an autopsy on Hedley and no traces of medication were found in her system. She died more than sixteen hours after receiving her last dose, whether it was the right amount or not. The ME, the pedi, the cops all agreed.

  Julie knew David would take her words as deliverance. He didn’t yet know that absolution came with its own breed of burden.

  She typed a few final lines.

  I don’t think it was anything you or I did. In a way, I wish that it were, that one or both of us could’ve prevented what happened to our daughter. Because one day it might hit you—the fact that nothing and nobody could is even worse than what you’ve been living with. Julie

  * * *

  Monday morning dawned gray beneath a cotton-batting sky. Inside the schoolhouse, Julie started a fire, spreading her raincoat over the ornate metal door of the stove to dry. She fed Depot a second breakfast, then let him play a solo game, scrabbling between the legs of the student desks while she organized the day’s lessons.

  Somebody pulled at one of the barn doors, drawing it open effortfully, and Julie frowned, checking the time on the clock on the wall. School didn’t begin for another forty minutes. She walked to the front of the schoolhouse and heaved the door the rest of the way ajar.

  Outside stood a man encased in oilcloth waders and a raincoat. As he edged into the classroom and tugged off his hood, his identity became clear. It was the man from the video reel Laura Hutchins had shown her, and Julie now remembered the reason she’d recognized him in that still shot, had thought that she knew him.

  She’d also seen him in her own hometown Target.

  * * *

  This was the man who had steadied her, looking at her in a strange, probing way when she’d bumped into him coming out of the store.

  Depot came and stood beside her, though he didn’t bark or growl.

  The man glanced down at the dog nervously, taking a few steps to one side. “Name’s Mike Cowry. I’m Eddie’s dad.”

  “Mr. Cowry,” Julie said. “It’s nice to see you again.”

  “Don’t believe we’ve met,” he replied. “It’s hard for me to get time off the boat. The owner’s been working me hard. Why I took so long to respond to your note.”

  Julie faced him headlong, and the man withdrew a few more steps.

  “No, we haven’t met,” she agreed. “I meant that it’s nice to see you on-island.”

  “Shit,” Mike Cowry said, drawing the word out. “You recognize me?”

  Julie hooked her fingers around Depot’s collar and walked him into the teacher’s room. Then she went over to the fire, rearranging the crocodile hides of burning logs with a metal poker. “Why don’t you tell me how you came to be so near my little town?”

  Mike Cowry averted his gaze. He didn’t seem like a man who, once confronted, would be inclined to put up much of a fight, and his next words confirmed that.

  “Mrs. Hempstead paid me to go. Never earned that much all at once in my life.”

  “And why did Mrs. Hempstead pay you?” Julie asked.

  He still didn’t make eye contact. “I was supposed to keep tabs on you for a few days. She likes to do that if they bring in somebody from away. The doc, our pastor.”

  Those mute calls and hang-ups, Julie’s feeling of being watched. Back when she was still drinking, and spending the night in her car, and driving around while grieving with such force, it’d nearly broken her.

  Mike Cowry seemed to follow her thoughts. “Don’t worry, nothing you did surprised no one. I had to report back, and the old lady liked what she heard.”

  Julie felt as if she’d been seen in the bathroom naked—which, for all she knew, she had. “What are you talking about?” Her gaze shot to the front of the schoolroom to make sure no early comers had arrived and could overhear the hysterical tenor of her tone.

  Depot trotted in from the hallway, hailed by her cry, but halted when Julie held out a hand.

  Mike Cowry shrugged beneath the heavy folds of his raincoat. “You were someone who’d had the shit kicked out of her by life, right? I seen that and Old Lady Hempstead said we could help. You know, let the island sort of nurse you back to health.”

  Yeah, right, Julie thought. That’s what the grandmother wanted for her.

  Mike Cowry’s gaze flicked to take in the distant recesses of the room. “The old lady also asked me to give you a message today.”

  “She knew you were coming.” Not a question, a statement.

  She knows everything, Ellie had said.

  Mike Cowry dug a balled-up piece of notepaper out of his raincoat and uncrumpled it. “‘I believe we have enough,’” he read aloud, the imperious words sounding strange on his tongue, “‘not just to remove you from this post, but to cast doubt as to your fitness for the teaching profession in general.’” A note of apology
snuck into his tone. “That’s probably ’cause of me. I took pictures when I was in New York. Of you outside. And your recycling.”

  Julie flinched with a near-physical humiliation. She and David had always gone to the dump themselves. Ostensibly a money saver, it was really because they wouldn’t have wanted anyone—not even the privatized collection service used by the town—to see the number of bottles that piled up in their bins.

  Mike Cowry jammed the piece of paper back into his pocket.

  Back bowed with defeat, Julie went to add another log to the fire. She stared into the shower of sparks that shot up, heat searing her face, soldering the tears that stung her eyes. At last she brushed wood dust off her hands with a couple of claps, and turned.

  “I think it would be best if we spoke about your son,” she told Mike Cowry. “I’m his teacher, and if Mrs. Hempstead tries to say otherwise, then I will fight her, go to the school board even if she does sit on it, because I want to be Eddie’s teacher, and the other children’s too.”

  Mike Cowry finally met her eyes.

  “So let’s get a couple of things cleared up,” Julie went on. “Eddie needs to be in school regularly. That’s the law, and he’ll fall behind if he isn’t. We have a very full year in store for us. Is that going to be a problem?”

  Mike Cowry hesitated a moment, then said, “I’ll make sure he’s here.”

  “Thank you,” Julie replied. “Finally, one point that’s a bit awkward to bring up, but I have to. Do you discipline your son physically?”

  Mike Cowry’s face turned the color of the embers Julie had just been prodding. “Hit him, you mean? Do I hit Eddie?”

  Julie gave a nod.

  “Never!” Mike Cowry said. “My son’s all I got. I would never hurt that boy.”

  It wasn’t unfettered proof, but Julie would’ve bet a decent sum on the truth of the man’s declaration. “Nonetheless, it was implied that you did.” A pause. “The slander-blackmail game goes two ways on this island, Mr. Cowry.” Dozens of ways actually. Hundreds over the years.

  Mike Cowry’s brow knit. “Someone told you that?”