How did they know? she wondered for the thousandth time. How do they know what we need?
The service had poignant moments and even laughter, and the room fairly teemed with love for Charlie. Maren had asked that the standard final hymn be replaced with Charlie’s favorite from the weekly sing-along. So, when the time came, the voices of Haven Point rose up full and hearty to sing “The Skye Boat Song,” an old Scottish folk number about Bonnie Prince Charlie. She could practically see the notes sail out the open windows, through the trees, carried by the salt air to the sea Charlie had so loved.
Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing
Onward! The sailors cry
Carry the lad that’s born to be king
Over the sea to Skye.
Loud the winds howl, loud the waves roar
Thunderclaps rend the air
Baffled, our foes stand by the shore
Follow they will not dare.
Though the waves leap, soft shall ye sleep
Ocean’s a royal bed
Rocked in the deep, Flora will keep
Watch by your weary head.
Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing
Onward! The sailors cry
Carry the lad that’s born to be king
Over the sea to Skye.
“Come on over. A change of scenery will do you good.” Georgie had been after her for days.
“Oh, all right,” Maren said. To resist Georgie took as much energy, if not more, than to relent, so she slipped on a cotton dress and sneakers and headed out the door.
Maren had not been sleeping. She wavered between disoriented stupor and terrible, desperate darkness. She felt drained of all competence. Oliver was nearly as paralyzed, though he had managed to go sailing that morning. While it was an activity he could perform almost entirely by instinct, she envied his ability to do anything at all.
Georgie’s porch was its usual late-August riot of plants potted in every kind of container. Flowers and greens and herbs spilled over each other, as if, given another month of summer, they might grow together and completely take over.
A morning fog had lifted, leaving behind a damp smell of salt and fish. Maude sat darning an old sock. At her feet were two dogs, lying as close as they could without being rolled under the old cane chair’s rockers.
Maren slumped in a chair and felt vaguely sick, though she did sense the tiniest glimmer of novelty in being outdoors.
“How’s Annie?” Georgie asked.
“I don’t know. She has hardly left her room.” Maren sighed. Oliver had taken Billy to the train that morning. She’d been perversely relieved by his tears when he said good-bye. He was so broken, but she knew somehow that buried deep in the suffering were seeds of vitality—that someday those cracks and fissures would make room for grace and mercy, for transcendence and healing. Annie was broken, too, but along the wrong fault lines.
“Last night she came into the kitchen with red eyes, and I thought something was finally breaking through. But all she said was, ‘Has he called?’”
“Has who called?” Georgie asked.
“Patrick. She had that stubborn look, as if it taxed her dignity to ask, but she wanted to know. Her tears were for him. I didn’t have a good answer, of course. We haven’t heard from him since the night Charlie died.”
“He was at the service, though,” Georgie said.
“He came to the church with Finn and Mary Pat, but not the reception. It was so obvious Annie was looking for him that Finn finally gave her some flimsy excuse.”
“I didn’t realize she was still so fixated on him.”
“I’m not sure we realized how much of a hold he had on her until Oliver told her to stop seeing him.”
“What a disgrace, his avoiding her like that,” Georgie said.
“Patrick’s chief concern is Patrick. This is too messy. He can’t be bothered.”
“So strange. Annie’s always had the world by the tail,” Georgie said. “Sounds like she’s more upset about him than Charlie.”
Maude looked up from her needlework, her expression a cross between admonition and sorrow.
“It’s easier to be upset about Patrick Donnelly,” she said.
* * *
When Maren got home that afternoon, she knocked on Annie’s door.
“What?” Annie’s voice was dull. Maren opened the door to find Annie on her unmade bed, looking out the window. A Three Dog Night song played on the 8-track. She turned and looked at Maren blankly.
“I wanted to check on you. I’ve been at Georgie’s.”
“Oh.”
When Pauline died, Annie had been an open book, her grief acute and intense, so different from what Maren saw now. Annie seemed underwater, weighed down by something bigger than grief.
“Would you like to get outside for a little bit? I’m going to walk to the beach.”
“I don’t know,” Annie replied, her voice still listless, eyes unfocused.
“You could bring your camera,” Maren added. “We can just wander.”
The tiny spark of life Maren detected in Annie’s eyes confirmed her suspicion. Annie’s abundant energy could not simply dissipate. At some point she had to let it out.
Sure enough, Annie got up slowly, took her camera off her dresser, and put the strap around her neck. Annie looked at Maren again, her expression still vacant. She would come, but Maren had to lead. Maren suppressed the urge to show how happy it made her.
They made their way down the hill to the beach club, Maren venturing an occasional innocuous remark, Annie silent.
“Are you hungry?” Maren asked when they arrived. Annie had barely eaten for days.
Annie shrugged, moved to one of the tables that overlooked the beach, and slumped in a chair. Reading this as acquiescence, Maren ordered sandwiches and brought them to the table. The beach club was crowded, but other than some pats on the arm and gentle smiles, people left them alone.
Annie took the seat that faced north, which gave her a direct view of the rocks where Charlie had fallen. After a few minutes, something up the beach seemed to catch her eye. Maren turned to see two men working at the part of the sea wall where it met the rocks.
“What is going on up there?” Annie asked.
“I’m not sure.”
Lillian Belmont sat at the next table. Maren saw her shift in her seat, a speaking look in her eyes. Annie picked up her camera and trained her telephoto lens in that direction.
“Mom, they are doing something above the rocks.”
“Lillian, do you know what they’re working on?” Maren asked. Lillian hesitated.
“They are cutting a path,” she said finally.
For years, Annie and her friends had pressed for a path to allow easier access to the Donnelly property, a way through the snarl of trees and vegetation above the rocks that separated the beach and the compound beyond.
Annie, eyes wide, turned to face Lillian. “A path?”
“It is too late for Charlie.” Lillian spoke plainly, as everyone had that week. “But they are doing it now.”
Annie pushed her chair back from the table with a great scrape, her eyes wild.
“Annie, please sit down,” Maren said quietly.
“NO! I’m not staying here. I won’t stay here,” she shouted. When everyone at the beach club fell silent, Annie seemed grateful for the opening. She flung an arm in the direction of the Donnelly property.
“Now you let them cut a path? We asked for that path, but you all were so stuck-up. You just hated them too much, you wouldn’t do it. But now you see what could happen to your precious kids, so it’s finally more dangerous than letting them hang out with the Donnellys. This place makes me sick.”
She burst into tears and ran out of the beach club.
Maren sat paralyzed. Lillian rose from her table, sat in what had been Annie’s seat, and took her hand. “I am so sorry. I didn’t know what to say other than the truth.”
“It’s
all right, Lillian. It’s not your fault.”
She stayed for a few more minutes. Someone wrapped her sandwiches for her. There had been a day when Maren would have resented these people witnessing Annie’s scene, or mistrusted their response, but at that moment she was more comfortable sitting among them than going home to face Annie.
But face her she must. She declined Lillian’s offer to walk her home and trudged up the hill alone. When she reached Annie’s room, it was to find her packing.
“I have to get out of here. I can’t stay.” Annie seemed less angry, but her breath was short, as if she were having an allergic reaction and had to escape something unhealthy in the air. “I want to go home. I can stay with Laura or Gwen.”
“Annie, I need to say something. Please sit down.”
Annie stopped for a moment, resistant.
“Mom, please?” Her expression was pleading. Maren looked at her gently and patted the bed. Annie finally sat.
“Annie, I beg you to listen. I had to say something similar to your father earlier this week. It is so very important you understand. Charlie’s death was an accident.”
“But it didn’t have to happen,” she insisted, her eyes flashing. “If we had a path, if everyone hadn’t hated the Donnellys so much, it wouldn’t have happened. Don’t you see? They wouldn’t let them past the rocks. I can’t stand it here. I can’t stand it.”
She clenched her hands into tight balls and covered her eyes as she began to cry. Maren had a memory of Annie’s tantrums as a little girl, the tears that would come so fast, as if pressed out by the wellspring of her great energy. Maren put an arm around her back. This would not pass so easily. Annie was as tangled as the mess above the rocks. Maren wondered if there was any way clear.
“Annie, I know how you feel about people here, but it’s a dangerous thing to assign blame. If we could go back in time, we could take a thousand things from the equation and Charlie would be here. You can blame the rain. You can blame me, or Dad.”
Annie looked up quickly. “No. It’s not your fault, or Dad’s.” She pulled herself together to get the words out through her tears. “Dad had reasons for me not to see Patrick. I didn’t agree, but it wasn’t the same as everyone else. They just wanted to keep them out. They always did.”
Maren could tell Annie had gone to great pains to reconcile herself to what she was saying. She felt a surge of tenderness at Annie’s desire to absolve her father from blame, and of deep relief that Annie did not seem to blame herself.
At the same time, she was troubled by Annie’s persistence in defending the Donnellys, even after Patrick had so clearly abandoned her.
“Annie, do you think that is why Patrick hasn’t come around?”
“Obviously!” she practically screamed. “They finally drove him away. He got the message. A person can only take so much!”
It was the most peculiar logic, the idea that Patrick had thrown up his hands after some final affront from Haven Point. But Annie had seized on it as the explanation for his disappearance. In her perversion of history, she was the baby Patrick had to throw out with the bathwater. Maren suspected Annie had spent many hours fixating until she fashioned an explanation for his betrayal that implicated Haven Point without insulting her.
Maren looked at Annie, deciding whether to dispute her twisted analysis. She knew Patrick had not rejected Annie because he felt slighted by the people of Haven Point. He had abandoned her because Annie’s grief was troublesome and inconvenient. Even if it stung, would the truth free her?
Only if she could believe it, Maren thought. Annie did not seem remotely open to the truth.
Maybe, like the ancient Hebrews who cast out one goat to assume their collective sins, Annie needed something to cast out. Maybe it would be best to allow her to respond to that old primal desire for some creature to take on all iniquity. It was wrong in many ways. It wasn’t truth. But perhaps a scapegoat would help her get beyond this. While it was sad that Annie would make Haven Point the guilty party, at least she didn’t blame herself, or Oliver. If Maren agreed, it might bring Annie back.
“We’re leaving in a few days anyway, Annie. Please stay.”
As always, it calmed Annie to feel understood. She sniffled again but seemed to relax.
“Fine,” she said. “But I’m not leaving this house. And I’m never coming back here.”
Annie did not leave the house for the rest of their stay, and she never went back to Haven Point. It was many years before Maren realized the error. Annie Demarest could not cast Haven Point out like an old Hebrew goat.
She had exiled herself instead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
August 2008
Haven Point
SKYE
“I know this was rather a lot for you to take in,” Gran said. She looked at Skye with gentle sympathy, as if it wasn’t Gran’s terrible loss she had described, but Skye’s.
Georgie had remained next to Gran all afternoon—listening, knitting, occasionally interjecting a piece of information. Mostly she was just there, as she had always been.
“I don’t understand why no one told me this before,” Skye said. She took a tissue from the box Gran handed her and dabbed her eyes. “I thought Charlie died in a car accident.”
Skye wasn’t sure if she had assumed this or her mother had misled her. It was something she had believed as long as she could remember.
“I knew you thought that at one point,” Gran said. “You were at my house once, maybe seven or eight years old. You saw a picture of Charlie and asked who he was. When I told you, you said, ‘He died in a car crash.’ Pop and I felt it was your mother’s story to tell, or not. I suspected she called it an accident, and you assumed the rest. I was never sure if your mother ever told you the truth.”
“I’m so ashamed I wasn’t more curious,” Skye said.
“Don’t be. Your mother led you to believe his death was not significant to her,” Gran replied.
Skye had a hazy recollection of her mother brushing aside questions, her sense that this was a subject to avoid. No one profited from pursuing something Anne Demarest didn’t care to discuss. And while extraordinary in light of what she had heard, Skye could see how as a child she might readily have accepted that her mother had simply gotten over Charlie’s death. In her own way, she’d powered through difficulties like a bull through a red cape. Why not power through grief in the same manner?
“And if everyone acted like it wasn’t a big deal, why would you think otherwise?” Georgie interjected.
“Because it was her brother … And your son!” Skye’s tears came again in earnest.
“It’s been many years, Skye,” Gran said with a sad, resigned smile. “I didn’t get over it. You just don’t. There is no true reconciliation for losing a child. But a time comes when it’s not what you wake up to every day.”
“I’m still not sure I understand why she wanted her ashes spread here, though,” Skye said.
“Well, for a long time…,” Gran began, then paused. She closed her eyes, took a breath, then started again. “For a long time, I sensed she still had some love for Haven Point, buried deep.”
“Maybe,” Skye replied. “But if she did, it was buried awfully deep.”
Georgie stopped knitting, glanced at Gran, then looked at Skye over her reading glasses. “Well, think about your name.”
“What about it?”
“The song we sang at Charlie’s memorial service?” Georgie said. “It was called ‘The Skye Boat Song.’”
“You think she named me after that?” Skye was skeptical.
“We wondered,” Georgie said.
Skye had asked about her name. Her mom had just said she liked it. Had it been a tribute to Charlie, perhaps even to Haven Point? The idea gave her a little rush of warmth.
“But Gran, had she said something about Haven Point recently? You said she put the instructions in her will a year before she died.” The timing implied a sentiment right at the sur
face, not “buried deep.”
Gran opened her mouth as if to speak, but before she could get a word out, her face crumpled in anguish.
“Oh Gran, I’m so sorry.”
She nodded and waved a little, as if to say, I just need a moment.
“So, what happened to Patrick?” Skye asked Georgie. She hoped she had chosen a safe change of subject.
“He married a wealthy heiress,” she replied. “Ran for a seat in the New York legislature, but he caused a huge scandal when he got some young staffer pregnant. His wife divorced him, and he’s had two more wives since. He never changed.”
“Does he still come to Haven Point?”
“He used to occasionally, but he doesn’t get on with his family very well,” Georgie said. “Even the Donnellys know he’s bad news. He went to law school at some point. He’s an ambulance chaser in California now. You know the guys in the ads? ‘Have you been harmed by asbestos?’ That sort of thing. He’s made a lot of money,” Georgie grudgingly acknowledged.
“His son comes up here, though,” Gran said. She’d wiped her eyes and nose, and though Skye heard fatigue in her voice, she seemed to have mastered herself.
“Oh, that reminds me.” Georgie, her eyes suddenly alive with news, turned to Gran. “I heard they finally arrested him. I doubt we’ll be seeing him again this summer.”
“Wait … which son of Patrick’s?” Skye said, feeling a sudden dread.
“His younger son, Ryan,” Gran said. “Oh, that’s right. You probably know him from D.C.”
“Yes, I know him! What on earth are you talking about?”
“Oh, steer clear of that guy,” Georgie said, shaking her head, clearly not aware that Skye was about to jump out of her skin. “He’s even worse than his dad.”
“What did he do?”
“He’s the one responsible for Steven Barrows ending up in rehab. The Barrows Family has had a bad summer, I tell you. Not just Steven…” Georgie turned toward Gran again, about to go off on another tangent.
“Please, Georgie. I really need to know what happened.” Skye gripped the tops of her thighs with her hands.
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