The Summer I Dared: A Novel

by Barbara Delinsky

  Chapter 7

  Julia didn’t want to be on the water. She hadn’t been in a boat since the accident, and would have been perfectly happy never to step foot on one again. Of course, she knew she would have to, since Big Sawyer was an island. There was no other way to leave, and she couldn’t stay forever.

  Plus there was Monte, who was harping on her getting the car.

  And now there was Molly, too. Molly wanted to shop with Julia for clothes to replace those lost on the Amelia Celeste. She wanted a frivolously fun mother-daughter day on the mainland—had the whole thing planned by the time Tuesday evening was done—so what could Julia say?

  What she wanted to say was that this was her vacation and she would do what she wanted, when she wanted.

  But part of her liked the idea of frivolous fun. She had woken up during the night with more of those restless moments. They were starting to feel like a stomachache that wouldn’t go away. Being busy was the best medicine.

  So, Julia reasoned, shopping with Molly would serve on two fronts: it would keep her mind busy, and it would force her to face her fear of the ferry. What message would she be teaching Molly if she refused to get back on the bicycle after a fall?

  Not that the accident was a fall, exactly. It was more like a hundred falls rolled into one, the kind of thing that, in the split second of its occurrence, was indelibly etched on the psyche. She didn’t fall asleep without thinking of it, didn’t wake up without remembering, and then there were the jolts in the middle of the night, and the restlessness that set in when the jitters eased. The stitches on her arm were gone, and the scar would fade, but she suspected that the emotional blow would be slower to heal. Her world had been shaken, her sense of mortality tweaked. She didn’t think she would be taking things for granted again, not the least of them being the safety of a boat ride.

  Molly didn’t see it that way, of course. Nor did Zoe, apparently, because neither of them batted an eyelash when mention of ferrying to the mainland came up—and part of Julia understood. The ferry was a way of life here. It ran multiple times each day and had done so safely for years, the lone exception being the accident the week before. She tried to tell herself it would be statistically next to impossible for something to happen to a second ferry she was on. Today’s ferry was bigger, meaning it should be safer. She told herself that. Still, her stomach was in knots when she woke up Wednesday morning and saw the fog.

  She washed her face. The fog outside remained. She put on her wedding band, but it brought no comfort. She followed the sound of voices into the kitchen, where she found Molly and Zoe, and, trying to sound nonchalant, asked, “Should we put it off?”

  “Oh, no, Mom, this is a perfect day to go. You need clothes.”

  “The thing is, though, I don’t. Do you mind my wearing your things?” she asked Zoe, who was stirring pancake batter at the stove.

  “Be my guest.”

  But Molly was determined. “You’ll need your own if you’re staying longer. Think we can make the nine o’clock ferry?”

  “Nine o’clock’s way too soon,” Julia said. “It’ll have to be later. I have work to do first.” This was true. She had to help with the rabbits.

  “The ten-thirty ferry, then?”

  Ten-thirty it was, though only after Julia had therapy in the barn. The shutters were raised and the skylights open, allowing cool morning air to circulate among the cages and stalls, and diffuse light to penetrate even the darkest corners. She wore the sweat suit and sneakers that Zoe had loaned her for barn work; they were welcomingly warm in the moist air.

  Fog blanketed the barn. Other than the whoosh of the mister every few minutes, the rustle of the rabbits, and the occasional songbird in the meadow beyond, there was no noise. Julia didn’t speak, nor did Zoe. The stillness of the morning held a precious peace.

  Julia didn’t feel restless here. There was something about the rabbits—something elemental and pure—that didn’t allow it.

  Savoring the moment, she changed the water bottles hooked on each of the cages and measured the proper amount of pellets to add to each bowl. She held Gretchen first—didn’t want her pal to feel slighted—then held other rabbits whom she hadn’t yet come to know. She was learning the differences between them. Some were easygoing and could be held most any which way, while others would sit on her lap only if their rumps were against her stomach and they looked out. Yet others needed to bury their faces in the crook of her elbow.

  Zoe worked close by, whispering sweet nothings to the rabbits. When she spoke to Julia, it was in a soft, instructional voice. “Now here’s Madeleine,” she said, standing at a cage that held a puffy lilac Angora. “She’ll be dropping her kits within the week. See how she’s staying far back in the cage? She doesn’t want to be touched. I’ll put a nest box in later. She’ll need to get it ready.”

  Julia continued to stroke the rabbit she held. It was a chocolate named Hershey. “How does she do that?”

  “I give her fresh hay with the box, then she moves it around and shapes it to her liking. Inevitably, that’s a shallow bowl of sorts. Then she starts adding fur.”

  “Her own?”

  “Uh-huh. She plucks her middle to get fiber for the nest. Kits are born hairless and blind. Hay would never keep them warm enough. It’s the fur that insulates them and keeps them from dying of the cold.”

  Julia returned Hershey to his cage and opened the cage beside it. Inside was Maria and a nest box containing her seven babies. The babies were nearly two weeks old. With the kits burrowed deep in their bed of fur, and that bed moving gently with squirming and breath, the initial impression was of a single pulsing organism.

  “They’re always so warm when I reach in for them,” she said. “I can’t imagine their getting cold enough to die.”

  Joining her, Zoe opened the cage and lifted out the nest box. “I’ve never lost an entire litter. The few I’ve lost have been accidents following feeding. The mother nurses them twice a day. She climbs right onto the nest box with her belly to the kits, and they latch on and drink. It doesn’t take more than five minutes, which is all the patience she has. Then she climbs off the box and goes about her business.” She set the nest box on the grooming stand, worked a hand into the fur, and lifted out a small gray kit. “Every so often, Mom leaves the box with one of the kits still clinging to a teat, and she doesn’t realize it’s there. Eventually it lets go. If it’s small enough, it slips between the bars of the cage and falls to the tray underneath. It isn’t the fall that kills it. It’s the cold. There have been times when I’ve spotted a kit in the tray in time to save it. Other times, I’ll come in in the morning and it’s gone.” She held the gray baby in the cup of her palms, moving her thumbs gently around its tiny closed eyes. “Watch this.”

  Julia watched. In less than a minute, the kit’s eyes opened, first one, then the other. Her own eyes widened. “You did that?”

  “The other kits in this litter have done it themselves, but this little one needed some help. They should be seeing by the tenth day. We’re at the thirteenth now. If I’d left it much longer, this little one would be blind.” She replaced the kit in the nest box and glanced at another group of cages. “I’ll do some plucking today. Chipmunk over there is ready. Same with Gardener and Mae.”

  “I want to watch,” Julia said. She loved the peacefulness here. “Maybe I can put Molly off a day.”

  “Oh, no. You go with Molly. I’ll be plucking next week.”

  “Can I learn to do it?” Even aside from the serenity of the barn, Julia was starting to feel a personal investment in the rabbits. Like human babies, they were totally dependent on someone to provide them with food, water, and shelter.

  Zoe nodded.

  “And to spin?”

  “Sure.”

  “What about staying beyond my allotted two weeks?”

  “Hey,” Zoe chided with a smile, “you were the one who set the time limit. If I had my way, you’d be here all summer.”

>   “What if Molly stays too?” Julia asked. Her gut told her that Molly would be here as long as she was. “That’ll make for a fuller house than you’re used to.”

  “I’d love it,” Zoe said and lowered her voice. “But what about you? I had the feeling when you decided to come here that you wanted time away.” She stopped short of saying that Molly’s arrival put a chink in that.

  But Julia heard. She had thought it herself more than once during those middle-of-the-night moments when she had been jolted from sleep by the sight of a long purple bow bursting from the fog, and had lain awake, restless and unsure. Who am I? With Molly’s coming, she was an active mother again, doing things for her daughter that she might never have chosen to do on her own—like take the ferry to the mainland so soon.

  “I love being with Molly,” she reasoned. “In the last few years, she’s become a friend. Not every mother is as lucky as I am. Besides, Monte didn’t rush up here after the accident. Nor did my parents.”

  “What’s going on with you and Monte?”

  Julia pressed her lips together, shook her head. She didn’t want to talk about that.

  Zoe didn’t push it. “And your parents? What is wrong with them? Okay, if they didn’t want to come here, they could have sent some-thing—clothes, flowers, even just a card.”

  Julia smiled sadly. “To me? But why would they do that? I’m strong. I’m able. I’m the one who takes care of everyone else. They don’t have to worry about me.”

  “They nearly lost you,” Zoe argued.

  “Apparently my mother is okay with loss. Look what she’s done to you.”

  “We’re estranged.”

  “Estrangement implies a mutual distancing, but you still send her cards and gifts. The door’s open on your end.”

  “Okay. She disowned me.”

  “Why?” Julia asked, but it was a rhetorical question, asked so often in the past and never answered that she was startled when an answer came now.

  “Way back,” Zoe said, “we loved the same man.”

  Julia gasped. “Loved the same man? But Janet is so much older than you.”

  “Men can be with someone far younger, and no one looks twice.”

  “Who was it?” Julia asked, scrambling to do the figuring. The math didn’t work. “You were twelve when I was born. My parents were married then. You would have been too young before that. Even twelve is pushing it.”

  “It wasn’t before. It was after.”

  “After. My mother fell in love with someone else?” The thought was barely out when her eyes widened. Her voice fell to an astonished whisper. “You and Dad?”

  Leaving Julia with the nest box, Zoe went to another cage and lifted out a rabbit. She settled it in the crook of her arm and began to stroke its fur.

  “Zoe?” Julia prodded, needing an answer.

  “You all used to come up here to see me. Janet was good that way. Back then, she did want to keep the connection going, despite what I was.”

  “What were you?”

  “The family oddball—raising sheep then, weaving, speaking my mind about things people often don’t care to discuss.”

  “What things?”

  “Politics and religion. Always the two no-nos.” Alive with feeling, Zoe’s eyes met hers. “God forbid you offend someone by saying you disagree with them.” A passion entered her voice. “I grew up believing that the beauty of a democracy was precisely that it’s all right for people to think different things. Well, it’s not all right. Some people get offended when you don’t agree with them. That’s my family.” She paused, took a breath, and stroked the rabbit, visibly calming. When she went on, her voice was quieter. “I was twenty-seven when it happened. Janet had a problem at work and had to leave early, but George stayed on, and you and the boys kept busy. If the three of you weren’t at the beach, you were hanging out at the island store or holed up in the movie theater.” She smiled and looked up at Julia. “Remember the theater?”

  Julia did. It was musty and small, packed with kids sitting on rows of bolted wood chairs, eating hot buttered popcorn and Milk Duds— surely a memory to explore, but not now. Her mind was shooting off in that other, shocking direction. She could no more imagine Zoe being drawn to her father than she could imagine his being drawn to Zoe. They were city versus country, math versus art, Brooks Brothers versus L.L. Bean—as alike as night and day.

  “Back then, we had first-run movies,” Zoe was saying, lingering briefly with the memory, stroking the rabbit again. “Even the little theaters could get them in those days. Then, suddenly, we couldn’t get them, and videos arrived, and the theater closed.” Her smile waned. “George stayed on after Janet left. I’d always thought him the nicest man in the world, and then, there he was, in his prime, trying to adjust to the fact of having a wife with a burgeoning career at a time when women were only starting to consider having careers outside the home. He was vulnerable. Maybe I played on that.”

  Of all the things Julia had imagined over the years that might have come between her mother and Zoe, this wasn’t one she had ever considered. She was struggling to absorb it. “Did anything happen?” she whispered, not daring to ask it any louder, it was such a bizarre thought.

  Zoe let out a breath. Looking out the window into the fog, she nodded.

  Julia was stunned. Zoe and her father. She was stunned. “And Mom found out.”

  Eyes distant, Zoe chewed on her lower lip. When she spoke, her tone was dry. “Not from me, that’s for sure. I knew it would be the final nail in the coffin.”

  “Dad told her?”

  Zoe looked at her now. “Apparently he couldn’t live with the guilt. He’s a very sweet man.”

  “Then you don’t hate him?”

  “Because he chose Janet over me? How could I hate him? Janet is a remarkable woman. She was remarkable even back then. And look at the life he had with her. He had the three of you, had the house, had a social life that he might have attributed to Janet, but that was part of him, too. What would he have had with me? I live on an island, for God’s sake.”

  “Oh, Zoe. I’m so sorry.”

  “No, Julia. I’m the one who’s sorry. I should have known better than to let anything happen.”

  “Don’t absolve him of all responsibility,” Julia warned. She had her own current gripes with her father, and was therefore feeling a tad less than sympathetic toward the man—that, on top of her feelings for Monte, which were so closely, disturbingly related.

  “Oh, I don’t. But it takes two to tango. If I’d said no, nothing would have happened, and if nothing had happened, you all would have continued coming up here to visit, I’d have family, and Janet would be talking with you now.”

  Julia felt a burst of anger. “Well, how stupid is it of her to be holding a grudge all this time? She got the man. She won. You lost. Doesn’t she see that?”

  “I’m sure she does,” Zoe said reasonably. “That’s probably why she let you kids keep on coming to visit. But only you kids. Do you remember that?”

  Julia nodded. “We took a train to Portland, and you met us there. I was in charge of making sure my brothers behaved. My parents didn’t come, but it seemed a perfectly natural thing, with us old enough to travel alone. I assumed they used the time to be together.”

  “They probably did.”

  “With an ulterior motive,” Julia charged.

  “Can you blame your mother?” Zoe asked. “Think about it. She’s behaving just like women with straying husbands behave all the time. The affair can end, and be well and truly done. The husband can be attentive and adoring for years, but let him be unexpectedly late coming home from work, and the wife’s thoughts shoot off in one direction, and one direction only. Trust can be rebuilt. But it’s like a heart. Once there’s been an attack, there’s always a vulnerability.”

  Julia knew that truth all too well. She had been feeling vulnerable with Monte for a very long time.

  “Mom?” Molly asked from the door of t
he barn.

  And right there was the major reason Julia stayed with him. Feeling not the slightest inkling of regret, she looked at her daughter. Molly had grown up in a household with two parents who loved her, just as Julia had.

  Now, the girl tapped the Rolex on her wrist, her high school graduation gift from those two parents who loved her. “The ferry?”

  Fog was hovering still when the ten-thirty ferry motored out of the harbor and picked up speed. It was only then that Julia realized how sheltered the harbor was from the waves in comparison with the open sea. The ferry was heavy and wide. It had an enclosed area with seats, plus benches out front on the bow and, above the wheelhouse, a small upper deck. Carrying two cars in its stern from earlier stops, it plowed through the water with remarkable steadiness.

  That steadiness notwithstanding, Julia would have rather been anywhere else. Where to sit? Outside would mean feeling the fog and the full brunt of memory. Inside would mean feeling confined, trapped in a space from which she might not be able to escape in the event of a crash. She had survived the other night precisely because she had been at the front of the boat and been thrown out of harm’s way.

  Choosing the lesser of the evils, she opted for outside and in the bow. There were plenty of free seats on the benches for Molly and her, and enough other people around to make this ride different from the last one she’d taken. She wore another Zoe outfit, this time denim capris, a tank top, and sandals. More notably, she carried a handsome leather shoulder bag made on the island by one of Zoe’s friends. Zoe had given it to her as a gift.

  So she was feeling well dressed and put-together.

  But she couldn’t relax. If there had been no fog, she would have been able to see for herself that the channel was clear of other boats. Granted, she didn’t hear one, the way she had heard The Beast. But then, this ferry was larger and louder, so she might not hear another boat at all. She trusted that whoever was at the helm had radar. Of course, the Amelia Celeste had had it too, and it hadn’t helped.