The original six-month trial period had morphed into a six-year partnership. Alistair had given her the contacts and prestige to open all the right doors, and Maggie had given the wholehearted dedication and raw talent to make an increasingly successful name for herself. She had never once been sorry she said yes.
She didn’t bother to listen to the voice mail but instead dialed Alistair’s cell directly.
“My little renegade star,” he said without preamble when he picked up on the fourth ring. “Where are you and when are you coming home?”
“Hi to you too. Is that a jazz band I hear? Where are you?”
“A benefit, some sort of cancer research. Bladder cancer, I think. I can’t remember. I’m representing us all, you know. And having to eat a ghastly imitation of barbecued pork. It’s a picnic.” He said the word picnic as though it were a profanity.
Maggie laughed. Alistair was a diva, but he was also loyal and shrewd. He worked hard to promote CPI anywhere he thought might be advantageous, even benefit picnics.
“I’m on the island, and I don’t know when I’m coming back.” She paused, listening to the muted saxophone solo in the background. It seemed worlds away from where she stood now, alone with only the rolling expanse of the sea for company. She took a deep breath. “Alistair, there’s been an accident.”
When she told him the details, Alistair was silent for a moment. “Oh, my dear,” he said finally, “how positively tragic. And three little children. Of course you need to be there. For as long as it takes. But, darling, you also need to be thinking about coming home as soon as possible.” His voice dropped a few notches in volume, and he moved away from the music. She could hear the saxophone receding in the background. Then it was just Alistair’s voice, crisp and urgent, as clear as though he were standing right next to her.
“Listen, I was going to wait until you got back from Nicaragua to tell you, but you need to be thinking about this now. I know, terrible timing, but I’ve put your name in for the Regent Fellowship this year, my dear. I sent in the series you did last year for that Women’s Awareness Campaign, the one on mothers and daughters in prostitution in the red-light district of Kolkata. And, Magdalena, they’ve accepted you. You are in the running! I just received word today. Congratulations, darling. It’s a marvelous accomplishment. And if you want to have a prayer of winning, we need to start strategizing about your entry straightaway.”
Maggie sat down hard on the rocky outcropping. She was speechless. Alistair was still talking, but she couldn’t concentrate on his words. The Regent Fellowship was the most prestigious award in the photography world. Given just once every three years to a photographer of outstanding merit, it came with a one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar cash prize and a private traveling exhibit that circled fifteen major cities across the globe. Winning the Regent vaulted the recipient into a tiny circle reserved for the best, most innovative photographers in the world. It was the golden apple, every serious photographer’s dream. And now Alistair was handing her an opportunity to compete.
Maggie gripped the phone, stunned, aware that she should respond but unable to formulate a sentence. Her pulse was hammering in her ears. Alistair had submitted her name without consulting her, and her Kolkata series had won her a chance to enter, no small thing in and of itself. But now would come the real challenge. To have a prayer of winning, she would have to create a series more compelling than anything she’d ever done before.
“The entry is due by September 1,” Alistair told her helpfully.
Maggie shook her head, trying to absorb the implications of his words. If she were smart, she’d be on the first plane back to Chicago to strategize with Alistair. This was the opportunity of a lifetime. But she couldn’t possibly leave right now. Lena was in full-blown denial. The kids were in shock. And as for herself, she didn’t even know how she felt. The spaces of her heart felt hollow and unknown. She should have been elated by this news, but it seemed so removed from her present circumstances. Alistair might as well have been promising her the moon.
“But I can’t leave,” she told him.
“Of course not,” Alistair soothed. “You need to finish your grieving, help the family, that sort of thing. I understand. But I’d like to see you back in the office next week. Sort out what you need to, then come home.”
Maggie hesitated. Would a week be enough time? If she said no, she’d be spitting in the face of the best opportunity she’d ever been given. It had been her biggest dream for as long as she could remember. It would be the culmination, the triumph of her career, the thing she had been striving for with single-minded devotion for so many years.
“I’ll try,” she said in the end. It was the best she could do.
Chapter Five
MAGGIE WALKED BACK TO THE HOUSE IN A DAZE, still trying to digest the conversation with Alistair. She had a shot at the Regent, and yet she had to stay on the island, at least for the time being. Leaving was out of the question, but now staying seemed equally impossible. The tension was making her head spin.
As she rounded the front of the house toward the mudroom, she noticed a motorcycle parked beside Lena’s Volvo. Curious, Maggie eyed it as she passed. Black with silver trim, it looked vintage, tough, like something Steve McQueen might have ridden. Definitely a man’s bike. Whose was it?
“Lena?” she called, shucking off her shoes in the mudroom.
“Maggie, we’re in here,” Lena responded from the direction of the front parlor. Surprised, Maggie veered to the left, into the front room. She’d never seen Lena entertain guests there before. The room always smelled unused, like faded rose potpourri and a thin layer of dust.
Lena was sitting on a chaise lounge, ankles crossed, her posture perfect, sipping from a china teacup. She was surrounded by stiff, perfectly appointed furnishings in lemon yellows and floral-print pinks. Sitting across from her on the buttercup cotton-twill sofa was undoubtedly the owner of the motorcycle. He was handsome in a rugged, open-road kind of way, with wavy auburn hair that fell across his brow carelessly, a strong, square jaw, a cleft chin. He was about their age, maybe a few years older, early thirties. The teacup he held looked ridiculous, fragile and out of place in his large hands. Maggie got the distinct impression of broad shoulders and long legs in faded blue jeans as he leaned over, placed the cup on the coffee table, and rose to greet her. He was dressed in a dark leather café racer jacket, and as he turned toward her, she noted with shock that he was wearing a clerical collar. A priest? A motorcycle-riding priest?
“You must be Maggie,” he said, sticking out his hand. She moved forward automatically, shaking it. He had quite a grip. She tightened hers instinctively. His accent surprised her, broad and open. He was Australian. What in the world was a motorcycle-riding Aussie priest doing here on the island in the middle of nowhere?
“Griffin Carter. It’s a pleasure.” He met her eyes with a direct, assessing look.
“Magdalena Henry.” She dropped her hand and broke the gaze after a second, feeling somehow looked into, as though he could see more of her than she was prepared to offer. She took a seat in a prim chintz armchair that had been stuffed within an inch of its life. The chair made her sit up perfectly straight, as though on high alert.
“Lena’s been telling me about your work,” Griffin continued, resuming his seat on the sofa. “I haven’t heard of you, but I feel like I should have.” He grinned, displaying square, slightly crooked teeth, a deep dimple in one cheek. He was unnerving, warm and dynamic in a way that ruffled her composure. No priest had any business being that magnetic. The priests of her childhood had been dry, old men who smelled of chalky, pink wintergreen candies and had no sense of humor. She’d loathed them. Maggie stared at him wordlessly for a moment. She narrowed her eyes. Why was he here?
“Maggie, would you like some tea?” Lena offered, already filling a cup from the rose-patterned teapot on the coffee table. “It’s Lemon Zinger.” She added a spoonful of sugar without asking and prof
fered the cup.
“Where do you work?” Maggie asked Griffin, taking the tea.
“Just down the road in Friday Harbor. Church of the Blessed Redeemer.”
Maggie took a sip. Tepid and too sweet. “How do you know Lena?”
“Our neighbor invited us last summer to a music program at the church,” Lena answered. “When we came to the island this summer, the children wanted to go back.” She shrugged delicately. “We enjoy it.” She smiled at Griffin.
“It’s been great having Lena and the kids with us,” Griffin added. “When we heard about Marco . . . Well, of course we’re all concerned about the family. I just wanted to stop in and see if there was anything I could do.” He took a sip of tea and sat back, relaxed, appearing oddly comfortable in the prim surroundings.
“That’s so kind.” Lena looked down at her teacup. “We’re fine, though. Right, Maggie? Everything’s just fine.”
“Right,” Maggie said without much conviction, letting her gaze linger on Lena’s downturned face. When she looked away, she found Griffin watching the interaction with a slight frown. He raised one eyebrow at her, nodding ever so slightly toward Lena. Maggie dropped her gaze, pretending she hadn’t seen his unspoken question. No, they were not fine, but she didn’t know if she wanted to admit it to the priest.
A few moments later, Griffin rose to leave. He set his cup on the coffee table and turned to Maggie. She stood, and he met her eyes squarely. His were a light brown, almost golden. She had the distinct impression that he was taking her measure just as much as she was taking his.
“It was great to meet you, Maggie.” He took her hand again in that firm grip.
“You too,” Maggie replied, a little wary, unsure what to think of him.
“If there’s anything I can do, please call.”
Maggie nodded, and he released her hand. Griffin turned to Lena, leaning down and laying his hand on her shoulder. “Lena, if you need anything at all, don’t hesitate to call. We’re all here for you.” He squeezed her shoulder and straightened.
Lena smiled, though her lips trembled at the corners. “Thank you for everything. It means so much.” She dropped her gaze.
Griffin let himself out, taking the impression of warmth and energy with him. They listened to the vroom, vroom of his motorcycle fading down the lane. The room seemed to exhale, falling into silence.
Lena broke the spell. “Well,” she said, leaning forward to place her teacup with Griffin’s empty one on the coffee table. “Well, that was lovely of him to stop by.”
Maggie noted Lena’s hands were trembling. Her fingernails, usually immaculate ovals lacquered with a clear polish, were bitten to the pink. Seeing Lena up close in the pale sunlight filtering through lace curtains, Maggie was struck again by how tired she looked, with dark smudges under her eyes. It didn’t look as though she’d slept in quite some time.
“Lena, are you okay?” Maggie asked gently. Lena looked up, laughing quickly, touching her collarbone with one hand, tucking a stray hair back into her French twist.
“Of course.” She didn’t meet Maggie’s eyes.
“Really?” Maggie responded, her voice quiet but insistent. “Lena, you haven’t said Marco’s name since I got here. You’re acting like nothing’s happened, like he might walk back in the door any second. And you and I both know that’s not going to happen. So when I ask you if you’re okay, I’m asking because I love you and I’m worried about you, and I really want to know what’s going on in your head.”
Lena had gone pale at the mention of Marco. She fumbled with the tea things, gathering them into a stack, her hands shaking so that the cups and saucers clinked together alarmingly. “I’m fine,” she stated, her voice reedy with strain. “I’m just fine.”
She glanced up as she spoke, fixing her eyes on a point just to the left of Maggie’s face, the spot she’d focused on when she told Maggie their freshman year that she’d never been drunk before. The spot Maggie had seen Lena focus on only a handful of times in their many years of friendship. The spot she focused on when she was bald-facedly lying.
Chapter Six
LATER THAT NIGHT MAGGIE SHUT THE DOOR TO the guest room softly, mindful of Gabby asleep in the next room. It was only a little past ten, but it felt like the middle of the night. Fatigue pulled at her like a lead weight, dragging down her every movement. It had been a long day. Her mind was still churning over the call with Alistair and her concern over Lena’s evasive behavior, but she felt too tired to make any headway.
In the darkness she crossed the room and felt for the switch on the table lamp beside the bed, instantly suffusing the space with a soft warm glow. She hoisted her backpack onto the bed and fished around the inside for a moment. On the lower right, next to her water bottle, she found what she was looking for. She pulled out the small square leather case.
It was billed as a man’s wallet in the tiny shop in Mexico, but Maggie used it to carry her most precious possessions. She fingered the case, as worn and smooth as butter from years of handling. Inside were three photos. One of her mother when she was young, smiling as she half-covered her face with her hands, embarrassed by the camera in the hands of their elderly neighbor and Maggie’s occasional babysitter, Mrs. Sanchez. She was bent over the ugly avocado-colored bathtub in their first apartment in Chicago, giving three-year-old Maggie a bath. All that was visible of Maggie were a pair of dimpled knees and fat little feet. It was her mother’s expression that Maggie loved—tired but happy, a soft smile lighting up the round contours of her face.
The other two were of Marco. Maggie pulled the first one out, studying it. She’d snapped it her senior year of college outside the pub where Marco worked. She had caught him leaning casually against an iron railing, smoking a clove cigarette. His hair was too long, a style he hadn’t worn in the years since then, and he was wearing his old leather bomber jacket. He looked a little like James Dean. He was glancing sideways at the camera, head cocked slightly, one brow arched. It captured the essence of him, his almost feral grace and his fierce edge, the sense Maggie always had that he couldn’t be contained or subdued. He was his own man.
Carefully, she slid the picture back into the wallet and took out the last photo, rubbing the edge worn soft as a scrap of flannel by her touch. It was the three of them—Marco, Lena, and Maggie, not just Marco—in the cramped kitchen of the apartment Marco rented near the Rhys campus after his graduation. He was a year ahead of them in college, and while they completed their senior year, he finished an architecture internship at a prestigious firm near Rhys.
In the photo Maggie and Lena stood on either side of him, leaning in as though pulled by the magnet of his person. Marco was bent forward over a pan of bolognaise sauce, slurping a long strand of spaghetti, testing it for doneness, looking full-on at the camera and laughing through his clipped black beard. His arm was extended, holding the camera so they could all bunch together into the frame. Both their faces turned toward him, Lena and Maggie had their mouths open like baby birds, begging for a taste. He could whip up the best pasta sauce from scratch. It seemed like magic.
They had spent many long, happy weekend evenings together, the three of them lingering for hours on Marco’s tiny, weedy patio with a dish of olives, a bottle of red wine, and a citronella candle to drive away bugs. In those moments life had seemed endlessly open, laid out before them golden with promise. They were young, brilliant, on the cusp of something greater. They had used those evenings almost carelessly, secure in the abundance, sure they had all the time in the world.
Maggie slipped the photo back into the wallet and then slid the wallet under her pillow. She slept every night close to those she loved the most. They had gone with her to every country she had set foot in, lain next to her in every bed or cot or camp mat. When she slept, they were not lost to her. In her dreams her mother was alive, and Marco was not unattainable, not the husband of a woman who loved her like a sister. She didn’t feel the thin filament of guilt that had run
through her waking hours for so many years, the uncomfortable knowledge that she loved a man who was not hers, who could not be hers. For years Marco and Ana had traveled with her to the ends of the earth, together serving as a little beacon of love and safety. But here, in the guest room of Marco and Lena’s farmhouse, sitting in a circle of warm yellow light, she was faced with the yawning blackness of their absence, the reality that those she loved most were in fact far beyond her reach.
“Why did you go?” she asked, not expecting an answer. There was never an answer. She sighed, scrubbing her hands over her face, suddenly so exhausted she felt it like an ache in her bones. She slid under the covers, acutely aware of the empty spaces on either side of her, cold pockets of loneliness, proof of her loss. She tucked the quilt around her, trying to create a little cocoon, trying to forget once again that she slept alone. She lay still, waiting for sleep as the night deepened, the taste of loss and regret familiar in her mouth—Kalamata olives and a peppery shiraz.
The first time she lost Marco, Maggie didn’t see the danger until it was too late.
“Why didn’t you tell me about you and Marco?” Maggie demanded of Lena, facing her roommate across the narrow dorm room they shared. It was February of their junior year at Rhys, and Maggie had just returned from a monthlong photography trip to Greece during January term. Tanned and glowing from photographing the ruins of a great civilization, she’d come back to find that Marco and Lena had formed an exclusive club of two in her absence. Suddenly she was the odd man out, the one who didn’t understand the inside jokes and shared glances. It took her completely by surprise, as did the surge of jealousy that shot through her when she caught them kissing in the dorm hall. She stood rooted to the spot, mesmerized by Marco’s hands on Lena’s skin, the way their lips met, familiar, not awkward with the newness of love. This was not the first time they had done this, she understood. And suddenly she felt terribly alone.
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