by Luanne Rice
“Michael, this is your aunt Rumer,” Zeb said. “Do you remember—”
Rumer didn't give him the chance to answer. She stepped forward, stood on her toes, and gave him a huge hug. He had been so small, and now he was enormous.
“Oh, my God,” she said, “Michael! I can't believe you're here. It's really you!”
“Yeah,” he said.
“You remember me, right? Say you do—I couldn't bear it if—-” She stopped herself, laughing, wiping tears from her eyes. “No, don't let me tell you what to say. I want to know what you really think. Do you remember being here?”
“Kind of. A little,” he said.
“You said you remembered things on your walk,” Zeb said.
Rumer could hardly tear her eyes off Michael, but now she looked at Zeb and saw him coaching his son, wanting Michael to say the right thing and not disappoint his aunt. Rumer laughed in spite of it all. Leila Mayhew and Clarissa Larkin had to be smiling down from somewhere to see their grandson standing in this house after so very long a time.
“How about a drink?” she asked. “Some iced tea— or a beer?”
“A beer sounds good,” Michael said, cracking a smile.
“You're not beer age,” her father said, coming through the kitchen. Although he had just showered, his hands were still speckled with brownish boat varnish. He stood apart, regarding Michael. “Are you?”
“What's the drinking age in Connecticut?” he asked.
“Older than you, I hope,” Sixtus said. “Or else that would make me ancient, and I'm not ready for that yet. Come shake your grandfather's hand. Hello, Zeb.”
The men exchanged handshakes, but Rumer wouldn't quite let go of Michael. She linked her arm with his, walking past the empty hutches in the mudroom into the kitchen. Zeb and Sixtus greeted each other warily; Rumer remembered the last time they'd seen each other.
It had been over a decade ago, at her mother's funeral. Her father had aged since then: As if seeing him through Zeb's eyes, she noticed his white hair, stooped posture, lined face.
Glancing at Zeb, she saw that he had aged too. Still tall and lean, his body was as hard as a young man's in jeans and a Brooks Brothers shirt. Sun lines creased his eyes and forehead, and he had gray hair at his temples. His eyes, on the other hand, looked exactly the same, as if he were still that same young boy who lived next door. Rumer stared, looked away, back again.
Zeb's sharp blue eyes were as bright as the sea and sky, the clearest blue imaginable. Rumer had always thought they looked as if he'd seen all the wonders of the universe and knew where they were hidden. Pushing the thought aside, she opened the refrigerator and pulled out an assortment of iced tea, sodas, and beer.
“You know the way, Michael,” Sixtus said gruffly His arthritis had been bothering him today; he gripped his cane with a clawlike hand, his back crooked like a staff. “Lead us onto the porch.”
“There's only one door…” he said, looking around, and Rumer had to smile at her father making the boy feel at home, watching Michael walk through the living room onto the screened porch.
While Michael grabbed the binoculars and began to scan the beach, Rumer put out cheese and crackers, shrimp and crab. They all talked about safe subjects: the Point, how Winnie never changed, Dana and Sam and how they'd met, Sixtus supplementing his pension by tutoring kids in math, the weather, Zeb's new lab.
“A lab?” Sixtus asked. “You mean on terra firma?”
“Yep,” Zeb said. “Old astronauts never die; they just wind up in laboratories, staring at pictures of stars.”
“Instead of flying to them?” Rumer asked.
“That'll be the day,” Michael snorted.
“The new observatory,” Zeb said, “is really great. The funding's generous, the telescope's better than any thing else in the world…I'll be the guy who predicts the next big meteor shower. When you go online and some know-it-all tells you to set your alarm for three A.M. because you'll see twenty shooting stars a minute, that'll be me.”
“But you won't be flying?” Rumer asked.
Zeb seemed not to hear, reaching across the table for some shrimp. His tone might have been joking, but his bright blue eyes looked serious—not laughing at all. Rumer realized he didn't want to talk about it anymore, so somewhat uneasily she turned her attention to Michael.
“Michael, your dad said you remembered things on your walk,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said, smiling. “You took me in a boat. There were swans on an island.”
“Making their nest,” she said. “You remember. How about Blue… do you remember Blue?”
“Blue…” Michael said, turning the name over.
“How's Zee?” Sixtus asked, and the first awkward silence of the evening befell them.
“Mom's fine,” Michael answered. “She's doing a movie in Toronto.”
“I know. But she'd better come home one of these days if she knows what's good for her,” Sixtus said, and Michael laughed.
“Watch it, Dad—she's Michael's mother,” Rumer said.
“She was my daughter before she was his mother!” Sixtus said. “You know how she got her nickname, Zee?”
“No one calls her that in California,” Michael said.
“Yes, well, this is Connecticut. She was baptized Elisabeth, with an S, after your grandmother's great-great-great-grandmother—am I leaving out a ‘great’?” he asked, glancing at Rumer.
“No, I think you got them all,” Rumer said, sipping her iced tea.
Nodding gravely, Sixtus continued. “Anyway, the woman who lived at that lighthouse right there”—he extended a strong arm out toward the Wickland Rock Light—”ran off with her lover, some English sailor. Right, Rumer?”
“Right,” Rumer said, but she could barely concentrate with Zeb sitting right there.
“Keep in mind, names were important to Clarissa Larkin. Her own name comes from the little girl left behind at the lighthouse. And your aunt here is named after Rumer Godden, author of many books her mother loved.”
“Okay,” Michael said, intrigued by the family history. Sixtus went on. “Anyway… your grandmother names her firstborn baby—your mother—Elisabeth, after her drowned ancestor. And your mother—upon reaching the ripe old age of about thirteen—announces she's changing her name to Elizabeth with a Z. Because, she says, she intends to be as famous or more so than Winnie Hubbard, and she wants the critics to know exactly how to spell her name. Took on the nickname Zee to drive the point home.”
“The missing Z in Elizabeth,” Michael said.
Rumer saw the boy look from his grandfather to his father, but Zeb's face seemed to have frozen into a permanent frown. They were discussing the intractability of Elizabeth Randall Larkin Mayhew, and from personal experience, Rumer knew it was an uncomfortable place to be.
“So why'd she do it?” Michael asked.
“Maybe because it's theatrical,” Sixtus said. “Added to her stage mystique. Or maybe to mollify me.”
“Or maybe just because she wanted to,” Zeb said quietly, still staring at the house next door as the gazes of both his son and his former father-in-law slid inquisitively in his direction.
“Huh?” Michael asked.
“The way she does everything else,” Zeb said.
Rumer heard the bitterness. She felt it herself, but for Michael's sake, she wasn't going to give Zeb the satisfaction of pursuing the subject. Just then the phone rang. Her father started for it, but Rumer beat him to it.
“Hello?” she asked.
“It's me,” said Edward. “I missed you today.”
“I missed you too,” she said. “I'd have come, but I got busy at the office. Now we have company for dinner.”
“Really? Anyone I know?”
“My nephew, Michael,” she said. “And his father.”
“Oh, the famous Zeb,” Edward said, his voice a little uneasy. “They're there right now?”
“Yep.”
“Ah. Well, just wanted
to say hi. And to say I'm looking forward to the wedding tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” Rumer agreed. “Say hi to Blue for me.”
“I will.”
When she hung up, she started for the kitchen. Zeb was watching her, his eyes sharp as a hawk's. As she left the room, she heard Michael ask, “Who was that?”
“Your aunt's boyfriend,” Sixtus answered. “One of these days he's going to ask her to marry him, and then I'll have to fend for myself He's got a big, beautiful farm up the river, with horses and cows. She's scoffed at marriage this long, and she might be able to resist Edward, but the vet in her'U never be able to resist that farm and all those animals.”
Michael laughed. Rumer tried to hear Zeb's response, but from him all she got was silence.
Michael liked them, and that surprised him. Not that his mother ever said anything really bad about her family, but she had given him the idea they were—watching his grandfather set up the grill, he tried to come up with the word. “Dull” just about covered it.
“They're nice, Michael,” his mother would say when he used to ask if they could go east and visit. “Very nice, and I love them. But ‘nice’ isn't enough. I'd die if I ever had to live there.”
“You'd die?” he'd asked, confused by the idea.
“Not literally. I mean it hurts to spend time with people whose idea of fun is watching the tide change. You know?”
Michael had guessed he knew, but now, hearing his grandfather swear as he struck match after match to get the grill going, he wasn't sure. The whole place intrigued him. A cool wind blew off the Atlantic, so Michael held his hands out to shelter the flame, helping his grandfather light the match. The old man nodded his thanks.
“So, how'd you get your name?” Michael asked. “Sixtus?”
“I'm a twin,” he said, arranging tuna steaks on the grill. “And when I was born, the doctor suggested to my mother that she name us after the last two English kings. Instead, she named us after two popes—Sixtus and Clement.” He slid a narrow gaze Michael's way. “You have to be Irish to really appreciate that story.”
“Oh.”
“Which you are—Irish. Your mother take you to church?”
“Urn, no.”
His grandfather frowned, sliding a spatula under the steaks and turning them. “She should,” he said. “Or you should go on your own. Things matter in this world beyond good movie parts and palm trees, or whatever the draw is out there.”
“You mean in California?”
“Yes. She knows better than to not send her son to church. She knows better than to do a lot of things.” The old man looked up again, and this time his expression wasn't so much angry as sad. “She's kept her distance for a good long time now. Time was, your father was like a son to me. Knew him from the day he was born. I'm sorry they got divorced.”
Michael felt a thud in his body down near his stomach. He never thought about the divorce anymore, and he didn't think anyone else did either. His parents tried to do the right thing. He lived with his mother, but his father stayed in touch from wherever he was. With her being on location, he spent a lot of his time alone. In some strange, mysterious way, it felt good to be talked to like this.
“Well, the important thing is, you're here now,” his grandfather said.
“Yeah. Till September, when Dad has to get to the lab.”
“When you should be starting school… except that you dropped out.”
“Well,” Michael said, not wanting to get into it.
“You don't have to tell me anything. I've known a lot of high school dropouts in my day, and I know the right thing always happens—if they're supposed to stay dropped out, they do. But your aunt Rumer…”
At her name, Michael looked through the kitchen door. He had expected to see his aunt and dad talking, just like him and his grandfather. But to his surprise, his aunt was alone in the kitchen, mixing up the salad dressing.
“Your aunt won't let it rest,” Sixtus said. “I'm telling you. She'll be all over you like sand on wet feet. She wants you to finish high school.”
At the sound of an outboard engine, Michael looked off the edge of the terrace, down the hill to the beach and the boat basin. There, in her old boat, was the salty girl. She must have left her pots at sea, because they were no longer in the boat. His grandfather saw him looking, and laughed as he shook his head.
“Oh, boy. That's all we need, is to have you and Quinn hook up.”
“Qumn?”
“That delightful curmudgeonly young lady I see you observing there.”
“I met her—well, kind of—before. When I took my walk. She was in some kind of bad mood.”
“She's always in some kind of bad mood,” his grandfather chuckled. “We love her for it—or through it. Allowances must be made for the people we love, Michael. You know?”
Michael was silent, thinking that over. He had learned that the opposite was true: in his house, when someone screwed up, they were either out the door or shut off.
“Why's she always in a bad mood?” Michael asked, to change the subject.
“Well, it's complicated. But she lost her parents in a boating accident, right out there—” he pointed across the beach to the Sound. “A few years ago now. She's getting better a little at a time. You never get over something like that, but she has a lot of people loving her, pulling her through.”
Michael nodded. He felt empty without knowing why.
“Good thing the summer's young,” his grandfather said. “Young for you, young for me.”
“Do you have plans?” Michael asked, but his grandfather just smiled and shrugged.
Michael nodded. He thought of Blue, and he thought of Quinn. He thought of his mother and wondered why she never came back here. And he thought of his aunt, alone in the kitchen as she fixed their dinner, and his father… why wasn't his father in the kitchen, talking to her?
Because when Michael had gone to the terrace's edge and looked down at the beach, he'd seen his father standing alone in the living room, staring out the window—not up at the sky, as usual, but straight across at the dark green house next door.
The breeze was getting chillier by the minute, and clouds of mist were billowing out of the east, obscuring the hillside. Rabbits scurried for cover, hiding in the massive gray rocks. A shadow moved, disappearing into the trees. Michael shivered, looking down at the boats: Quinn had climbed onto the seawall, heading toward home.
With the weather turning so fast and everything mysteriously unsettled, Michael found himself feeling glad, unexpectedly relieved—in spite of her nasty attitude—that she was back from wherever she had gone at sea, safe and sound.
THE MORNING of the wedding, it poured rain. Quinn swore, feeling awful. The lobsters didn't respond to surface weather; they had to eat, and they came to the bait in her pots whether it was raining, snowing, or sunny. But for Aunt Dana's and Sam's sake, Quinn was upset. She had wanted this to be a perfect day for them.
She had gone out at five-thirty, before sunrise, to check her pots one last time. Pounding over pewter waves, she had gone from buoy to buoy, hauling lines and opening the pots with rain driving into her eyes. She had marked her school ruler at three and a quarter inches to measure the lobsters’ carapaces and make sure they were all keepers. She threw back small ones and egg-bearing females. Even so, in this one run alone, she got twelve lobsters.
On her way back in, she swung left and headed toward the Wickland Shoal. Quinn's heart was wide open this wedding morning, and she had people she had to visit. Her first pass was by the lighthouse, where Elisabeth and Clarissa Randall had lived so long ago. She identified with the girl who had lost her mother so young, and she related to the woman who'd given up everything in search of adventure.
“That doesn't mean she didn't love you,” Quinn said out loud to the ghost of the first Clarissa. “You know that, right?” And when she got to the spot where Joe Connor—Sam's famous treasure-hunting brother—had raised the Cambria
a few years before, Quinn bowed her head to the love of Elisabeth Randall and Nathaniel Thorn and prayed that her aunt and Sam's would be just as intense but much more happy and lasting.
As a gray, rainy dawn spread westward from Block Island, the lighthouses seemed less bright. Quinn glanced up, wishing there were a dawn star to wish on. Instead, knowing she had one more stop, she gunned her engine and sped out to the middle of the Sound.
This was her favorite place in the world. Although there were no markers, no graves, she knew it was the place of her parents’ souls. Their boat, the Sundance, had sunk here six years ago. Quinn could see the spot from her bedroom window, on the hill at Hubbard's Point, but actually being here felt so different.
For two years after their death, Quinn had heard and glimpsed a mermaid. She knew it was odd, unusual, but she didn't care: It had been her mother staying close to make sure she, Allie, and Aunt Dana were okay.
Much longer ago, Rumer's mother had seen a unicorn, and Quinn remembered her telling her that at Hubbard's Point when it came to true love, the deepest kind, there was no such thing as magic: It was very, very real. Quinn had always believed the unicorn had been the spirit of Mrs. Larkin's own dead.
Scanning the Hunting Ground, Quinn looked for a sign. She wanted her mother to know that this was her sister's wedding day. Thinking of Allie, she tried to imagine how she'd feel if she had to miss seeing her get married.
“Hey, Mom!” Quinn said out loud. She looked for a splash, a rogue wave, the flash of a silver-blue tail, and the sea-silk of a mermaid's hair. Nothing. Perhaps she was now too old to see them. She had outgrown the need—something like that. But Quinn had come here for a reason, and no amount of rain could stop her.
Opening her sailing bag, she pulled out the bouquet of white flowers she'd picked that morning. She and Allie had been raiding Point gardens all week, gathering blooms for the wedding, but she didn't think Aunt Dana would mind that Quinn had saved a few for her mother.
