Healing Tides

by Katie Winters

  Nancy shifted her weight. “Really. I just wanted to let you know in case you get a complaint on social media or through email. This is not a big deal. The woman has been handled. I think she had her panties in a knot, too.”

  Elsa’s heart sped up. It was like a butterfly, fluttering around her ribcage. Nancy’s brow furrowed even more.

  “Elsa. Are you okay?” She sounded suddenly terrified.

  The room began to spin. Elsa gripped either side of her chair and returned to it. She blinked as her equilibrium returned.

  “I’m fine,” she heard herself say, although her voice sounded very far away. “Really, I’m good.”

  Nancy remained over her desk for a moment. “You’re going to eat the rest of that soup, right?”

  Elsa nodded.

  “Okay.” Nancy crossed and uncrossed her arms. “I hope this isn’t too much for you right now. I know it’s a lot, getting back in the saddle, especially without Neal around. If you want, we can hire someone else to help out with some of the things you handle.”

  “No. It’s not necessary,” Elsa told her. “Really.” She forced herself to smile. “You know how I am.”

  “Your dad always did say you could handle anything,” Nancy returned. “But remember. Even superheroes have to eat lunch.” She lifted her wrist to check her watch after that, then nodded and said, “Okay. Well, I have another appointment. See you later tonight? Janine suggested take-out from the Mexican place.”

  When Nancy disappeared again, Elsa lifted her chin toward the sky. Her heart continued to hammer in her chest strangely.

  “Dad. I don’t know how I can do any of this without you,” she breathed. “Will you give me some kind of strength to keep going?” Her tears left streaks down her cheeks. She had never felt so alone before in her entire life.

  Chapter Four

  FOR MANY MONTHS AFTER Aiden’s death, Elsa struggled to remember not to return home. Her autopilot kicked in as she rushed down Katama Rd, headed for the four-bedroom safe haven she and Aiden had selected together all those years ago. Their cozy kitchen with its yellow paint and its fluttering lace curtains and the massive couch upon which she’d found Aiden fast asleep probably over a thousand times. Sometimes, she made the drive all the way and then hovered in the driveway as tears rushed down her cheeks. Her stomach quaked with a single answer: if she entered that house, she would fall on the floor and be unable to leave it.

  Now that it was July of the following year, her return to her childhood home was more automatic. Her heart no longer screamed with the expectation to see her father’s face, either. It was as though her brain had closed off several of its emotional sectors so that she was able to get through the healthy mechanisms of her everyday life. She supposed this was how the body waged war on sadness. It was how anyone could really cope with anything, even in the worst of times.

  Elsa stepped into the cool shadows of the house, placed her purse near the foyer table, and stepped into the hallway between the foyer and the yonder kitchen. The large door between the kitchen and the back porch was open to allow the fresh sea breeze to waft through, and she closed her eyes for a moment to inhale, exhale. The sound of the waves was nourishing. It seemed to lift her from the ground the slightest bit.

  “I remember that!” Nancy’s voice rang out as she burst into laughter. Immediately after, Janine’s laughter rollicked, as well.

  Throughout the first several weeks of Janine’s stay at the house, Elsa hadn’t heard Janine laugh even once. She had been a shell of a person who had hardly managed to look Nancy in the eye. Now, it seemed, their routine was to take a bottle of wine to the porch as their conversation danced around old memories. This made Elsa long for peace that much more.

  But unfortunately, Nancy had heard her come in.

  “Elsa? Is that you?” Nancy’s shadow appeared on the other side of the screen door. The door flashed open to reveal her, sun-tanned and healthy, her hair windswept. “Goodness, I thought you’d never get home! Janine and I just opened some Pinot. Let me get you a glass.”

  Elsa grimaced. She felt like a stranger in her childhood home. There was the quick creak, then slam of one of the cabinet doors and then, Nancy reappeared in the doorway gesturing for Elsa to come along. “The light is perfect right now. Come and relax with us.”

  Elsa walked like a zombie toward the back porch. Nancy’s smile was welcoming, even as her eyes told a story of confusion and worry.

  “Are you feeling okay? Did you manage to eat the rest of that soup?”

  “Yes.” This, of course, was a lie. She hovered toward the side of the porch and watched as Nancy filled her glass.

  Janine wore a pair of cream linen pants and a tank top that highlighted her perfectly sculpted shoulders. Her smile was electric. Elsa had a flashing memory of seeing that very smile on the cover of a tabloid magazine, one of the first days Nancy had fully realized the extent of what had happened to Janine over in Manhattan. SOCIALITE FINDS HUSBAND WITH BEST FRIEND had been the headline.

  Elsa had marveled at how any man could treat such a beautiful woman like garbage.

  “I hardly saw you today,” Janine said. “Everything go okay with Jennifer?”

  Elsa blinked twice before memory of her meeting with Jennifer came back. “Yes. She really knows what she’s talking about.” She paused, recognized that Janine wanted more from her, then added, “I can’t really keep up with all this social media stuff. It’s like the rules of the game change every five minutes.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” Janine agreed. “My daughters try to keep me in the loop. I recently asked Maggie, ‘What is this new video one? With all these dance videos?’ and I could practically feel her eyes roll back in her head as she tried to answer.”

  Elsa’s laugh sounded false. Janine shook one of the chairs out from beneath the table and gestured. “Come on! Sit with us. I have fresh watermelon in the fridge, and Mom was just talking about making breadsticks, although I told her that’s a dangerous game.”

  Elsa sat with her glass of wine and tried her best to deliver a sterling smile. Nancy and Janine’s eyes returned to one another; they’d dealt with the “Elsa situation,” and now, they could return to their newly bubbling relationship.

  “Oh, but you must remember that older man who worked at that bodega in Williamsburg,” Nancy said as she snapped her fingers. “The one who walked with a cane and had that tabby cat on his shoulder all the time?”

  “I do! Rex! He always gave me a piece of candy when we went in there. And he always asked you if you wanted him to adopt you,” Janine returned.

  Nancy’s eyes closed as her smile flourished. “He was one of the kindest old men. You must have been six or seven, so I was only....”

  “Twenty-two or so?” Janine chimed in.

  “That’s right. It’s hard to believe it.”

  “We were both such babies,” Janine said. “Oh, and remember some of the schemes you got us into? That guy asked you to sell all those knock-off purses on the sidewalk outside of that department store.”

  Nancy smacked her palm across her thigh. “I can’t believe you remember that! You were really little then. I think maybe five?”

  “Yes, but I remember those purses, especially the way they smelled. Like burning plastic.” Janine scrunched her nose.

  “You sold knock-off purses? On the street?” Elsa tried her best to fall into conversation; maybe, any sign of life from her would make her feel more human, if only to herself.

  Nancy and Janine nodded half-heartedly, as Nancy said, “I was such an idiot back then. I did anything to try to keep food on the table.”

  Elsa’s heart dropped. She’d known this element of Nancy’s life, absolutely, but it was still difficult for her to fully imagine it, especially since she’d met Nancy within the context of her father’s life and her father had always been one hundred percent perfect, a stand-up citizen.

  “Oh, I’m so glad your father never learned about those knock-off pur
ses,” Nancy said then with a rumbling laugh. “He was such an upstanding citizen.”

  “Come on. He was a man of industry,” Janine returned. “The people demanded knock-off purses, and you were there to sell them.”

  Elsa arched an eyebrow. “Once, when I was a little girl, I accidentally stole a pack of gum from the gas station. Dad found out about it and made me return it with a letter of apology.”

  Janine’s smile faltered. She turned her eyes toward her glass of wine. Elsa felt her cheeks grow warm. Perhaps she shouldn’t have said that. Probably, Janine thought she was comparing her own life with Janine and Nancy’s previous one. It was as though she had said, Oh, well, in this house, we didn’t break the law. But wasn’t that the truth?

  “Well, I’m pretty sure I stole gum all the time,” Janine said mischievously.

  “You were a Brooklyn baby. It was just how you got by,” Nancy returned.

  “Yes. Me and Maxine had an entire system,” Janine returned. “Oh, but I probably shouldn’t say anything like that around you, Elsa. I’m starting to feel like a bad kid.”

  Nancy and Janine burst into another round of laughter as Nancy traced their path toward yet another story. Elsa sipped her wine and gazed out across the waves. For nearly a mile, the beach was all theirs, white and somber and terribly deserted. Toward the far end, a seagull jumped on land, toward the water, with his beak lifted. Why was it that birds spent any time at all on land? Did they not understand what a privilege it was to fly?

  That moment, the front door creaked open. There was the sound of a baby’s wail — a baby Elsa knew well. She leaped up as Nancy called, “Is that baby Zachery I hear?”

  Elsa drew open the screen door and discovered her daughter, Mallory, with the baby carrier in tow. Her daughter’s shoulders were slumped forward; her cheeks were hollowed out; her eyes reflected chaotic inner storms and loneliness. Elsa remembered her first years of motherhood. How exhausting and demanding it was. Also, regardless of the immensity of your love, you never felt like enough.

  “Honey, I didn’t know you were coming by.” Elsa forced her voice to brighten as she rushed toward her.

  Mallory placed Zachery’s carrier on the floor and then lifted her hands to her elbows to cup them. Her chin quivered, just as it had when she’d been a child.

  “Are you okay?” Elsa whispered. She wrapped her arms around Mallory and placed her hand delicately over the back of her head. Mallory shook against her as Zachery kicked his legs and sucked on his pacifier below them.

  “Can we go for a drive?” Mallory exhaled.

  In minutes, they strapped the baby carrier into the back of Elsa’s car. Mallory’s knees clacked together as she buckled her seatbelt and whipped her long curls over her shoulder. As Elsa backed down the driveway, her eyes caught the slight slant of Mallory’s nose, which always reminded her of Aiden.

  Elsa drove west, toward the Aquinnah Cliffs Overlook, with its immense white cliffs and its glorious view of the sea below. Mallory hiccupped twice as tears rolled down her cheeks. Elsa knew better than to ask what was wrong. Mallory would tell her when she felt strong enough.

  Finally, Elsa cut the engine in the lot nearest the overlooks. Mallory turned back to gaze at Zachery, who’d fallen asleep. The silence felt heavy and thick.

  “We couldn’t get him to stop crying all night,” Mallory breathed. “It was awful. Lucas needs to sleep for work; it’s been so busy at the docks, and you know, he has to get there before the sun comes up, so it’s pretty intense. But it’s not like I don’t have work, too. And sometimes, we argue about it. About who should get more sleep. About who deserves it more. And the arguments have gotten really crazy lately.”

  Elsa had noticed the slightest of tension between Mallory and Lucas the last time they’d eaten lunch together. Mallory had swatted his hand away when he’d tried to hold hers. Elsa had worried but prayed that it was just an ordinary spat between two new parents.

  “It’s gotten so hard lately. To feel anything for him,” Mallory continued. She didn’t turn her eyes toward her mother as though shame forced her to look elsewhere. “And we don’t have any time for one another. It’s like we see each other as potential babysitters, and that’s it. And of course, because I’m the mom, most of that work goes to me. It’s like we’re supposed to live in this modern society, right? But still, when Zach starts to cry, Lucas just rolls over in bed and places his pillow over his head.”

  Elsa’s nostrils flared. She reached across the car and gripped her daughter’s hand as Mallory’s tear-filled eyes found hers.

  “I’m so sorry to complain about this,” Mallory whispered. “It sounds so stupid, especially when I compare it to everything else.”

  “It’s not stupid. You should be able to find love in everything Lucas does for you. He should support you in every single possible way.”

  Mallory’s chin quivered again. “Maybe I ask for too much. I just feel so alone sometimes. And Lucas even goes out to see his friends all the time and there I am, in that little apartment, wondering if we’ll ever be able to get something bigger. Wondering if our lives will ever get past this bickering and resolve into something so special, the way yours and Dad’s did.”

  There was this feeling of being trapped by time. Elsa remembered it — remembered feeling that she would never be old enough for so many things. She had always felt that if she could just age up five more years, or ten more years, or maybe fifteen, she would have the kind of peace and confidence that other people seemed to exhibit. The truth of it was much more complicated and she knew that now.

  “All you can do is demand what you need in this world and draw your own boundaries,” she told Mallory then. “Tell Lucas how you feel. Tell him everything, honey. You shouldn’t be afraid to share your emotions.”

  “What if he can’t be what I need him to be?”

  Elsa gave the slightest of shrugs. “If he’s not there for you, you know I will be— every single step of the way.”

  Chapter Five

  ELSA’S MIND ROLLICKED with storms. There was tightness in her shoulders and an ache in her belly. Mallory, at only twenty-four-years-old, had begun to discover the secrets of real womanhood: that you had to be much, much stronger than everyone around you; that you had to be both the ship and the anchor; that you had to forgive, and then forgive again until you felt your bones crack with the weight of it all.

  Her email inbox at the office blinked at her with an urgent number of emails. Nancy had already suggested that she hire a personal assistant — someone to type out email responses and keep track of her business meetings. Elsa had a stack of applications for this very position on her desk. Still, there was something about having someone so close to her business, knowing the ins and outs of her everyday life, that she resisted.

  Elsa crossed her hands over her lap. Outside her office, Janine’s voice greeted someone warmly and Elsa’s stomach dropped lower with something that unfortunately resembled resentment. How had Elsa, ‘one of the sweetest people anyone had ever met’ turn into such a sour creature?

  Janine herself appeared in her office seconds later with a stack of mail. Her skin glowed as she rushed toward Elsa’s desk and placed the letters to the right of her keyboard. “Ooph! I have to run. I don’t know why I did it to myself, but I arranged three back-to-back appointments this afternoon.”

  Just as Janine snaked out of the office and closed the door, Janine found her voice enough to say, “Thanks for the mail.”

  She exhaled somberly and lifted the first letter, then the second. Most seemed to be bills for the Katama Lodge itself; others were information from doctors who practiced off the island, who wanted to request to transfer their patients to the Lodge for wellness retreats. These were the doctors who remained in the dark ages, the ones who still liked a paper trail. Neal had been fond of these sorts of doctors. “I just don’t like the new ways. It’s so impersonal,” he’d said frequently.

  At the bottom of the stack, Elsa foun
d a strange letter, listed from Canterbury Attorney At Law. Her thumb snuck beneath the fold and tore the paper straight across. In a flash, she had the thick letter out before her.

  And in a moment, her entire body filled with dread.

  To Whom It May Concern,

  We are the attorneys who represent Carlson Montague, a previous client of the now-deceased Aiden Steel. Carlson Montague has reason to believe that Aiden Steel mishandled an enormous amount of funds. He plans to press charges against the entire Steel estate.

  Elsa’s eyes grew. Her fingers let the letter fly loose, and it fluttered to the ground.

  Press charges against the entire STEEL ESTATE.

  That meant press charges against her own livelihood. It meant press charges against her, and her memory, and Aiden’s memory. Everything he stood for.

  It was an assault on everything she held dear to her heart. How could this be happening?

  And above everything else, she didn’t believe it was true. Aiden had been a remarkably kind-hearted man. He had assisted his clients, made enormous funds for them, assisted them on their journey to wealth and prosperity, and never complained a single day in his life. In return, his clients had often sent along beautiful Christmas gifts and very cheerful letters of thanks. This letter, in fact, was the first Elsa had ever heard with any kind of malice.

  She kind of wanted to punch something.

  Elsa retrieved the letter from the floor and reread it as though it might give her some kind of fresh perspective. When it remained the same, she bolted for the door. Her eyes filled with bright spots as she wandered, helpless. She felt on the verge of a panic attack as her heart pounded in her chest, threatening to burst through her rib cage. She headed straight for Nancy’s yoga studio but found that the door was closed tight as Nancy was in the midst of instructing a child’s pose meditation. Elsa blinked out across the twelve women, all with their bodies tucked tight against their mats. “Inhale and slowly exhale,” Nancy’s words floated above and then shivered under the door frame.