Firefly Nights

by Katie Winters

  “Welcome back home,” Zach said. “We live well for what we are.”

  Christine laughed again. It seemed to rise up out of her without her asking for it. “I drank a lot of this in New York, maybe a little too much. Maybe I’m the reason the whole place went under,” Christine said contemplatively, chuckling a little as she stared into her cup. “But hey, you know what? It tastes even better here by the water. I wouldn’t want it anywhere else.”

  “City life ain’t for me anymore,” Zach affirmed. “All that chaos and noise. When I lived alone in Boston, it felt like I didn’t see a single person with a smile on their face for days at a time. It ate me up inside. I felt like I lived in a really lonely world, one with different rules.”

  Christine inwardly agreed with him. It had been something she had wanted to be stronger than. She had longed to overcome it. Still, she wasn’t willing to admit that to Zach Walters.

  “Anyway, I hope you stick around a little while,” Zach continued. “I’m willing to bet you don’t feel the same.”

  “If you keep letting me drink your fancy wine, I’ll never leave,” Christine said.

  “It’ll be expensive, but I think I can manage it for a while,” Zach said, flashing her a wide smile.

  Christine forced her eyes away from him again. She felt that stab of recognition again, the first feelings of lust. She had to stop them before they became too powerful.

  “By the way, Claire mentioned you’re baking the cake for the girls’ birthday party?” Zach asked.

  “Yes. I’m looking forward to it,” Christine said. “It’s been a long time since I made a cake for someone I actually cared about, rather than a really rich buyer from Manhattan. Think a sweet sixteen birthday party for the second cousin once removed of Bill Gates. Not my beloved cousin’s twin girls.”

  “Ha. It’s a completely different feeling. I get that,” Zach agreed. “But I wanted to let you know since it’s at the Inn anyway, you should use the bistro kitchen to bake it—only if you want to. I mean, it’s right there at your disposal, and it would be so much easier. You can even use some of my supplies.”

  Christine arched her brow. She hadn’t envisioned this kind of goodwill from someone she had hated so much. Again, she shoved the thought of any sort of appreciation for him, from his windswept dirty blonde hair to his blue eyes to his broad shoulders (to his incredible guitar playing), into the back crevices of her mind.

  This was Zach Walters, for crying out loud. He only did things to get ahead. He only did everything for his own selfish gain.

  If there was anything Christine knew, it was that people didn’t change. Not really.

  “I’ll have to think about it,” Christine said. “It’s a really generous offer. Thank you.”

  Suddenly, Lola ripped toward them from the water. She grabbed her shirt and covered herself quickly. Her eyes were enormous, her grin so monstrously wide. “We think we saw a whale!” she cried out.

  Immediately, Christine shot up and rushed to the edge of the water. Russel, Clark, and Claire all stood in a line, blinking out. Nobody was brave enough to speak, just in case, it scared the whale away.

  When nothing reappeared, Christine finally whispered, “Are you sure it was something?”

  “Wasn’t a trout,” Russel said.

  “It seemed huge,” Claire affirmed. “I haven’t seen one in a long time. Years. I would give anything.”

  After several more minutes of gazing out longingly, the four of them turned back to join Lola and Zach on the sand. Together, they finished the bottle of wine, then returned to the truck to drive back to Oak Bluffs. In the back, Christine listened to the soft hum of everyone’s voices, dipping in and out of the conversation, finding harmony and rhythm.

  Zach drove back to the Sheridan house first. As he went, he clucked his tongue and said, “I haven’t driven anyone to the Sheridan house in twenty plus years, I guess.”

  Christine’s heart thudded at the memory.

  “Why did you drive someone home?” Lola asked. “I don’t remember you taking me.”

  But before Zach could answer, she shrugged and struck out of the truck. Everyone hollered their goodbyes, with Christine taking extra care to catch Zach’s eye. She couldn’t believe he’d mustered the courage to say that in front of everyone else.

  Back inside, Lola scampered upstairs to change, while Christine sat with Susan and Aunt Kerry in the living area. Susan looked bleary-eyed and, admittedly, a bit stoned. Christine wondered if Aunt Kerry had seen her smoke it. She guessed not.

  “How was the fair, beauty?” Susan asked, patting the cushion beside her on the couch.

  “It was actually really fun,” Christine said. She huddled next to her sister, who drew a thick blanket over them.

  “Susan introduced me to something called a podcast,” Aunt Kerry said. “True crime. It’s fascinating. You know, they can solve any crime with DNA these days. But it all relates back to that Ancestry dot com stuff. If you gave your blood, and your cousin is a serial killer, he had better watch out.”

  “All our cousins are your kids, Aunt Kerry. Are you trying to tell us something?” Susan asked as she smiled at her aunt.

  Aunt Kerry furrowed her brow. “It’s just impossible to ever tell, isn’t it?”

  “I think you made a huge mistake,” Christine whispered to Susan.

  Aunt Kerry prepared her things, folding up her crochet and sipping the last of her glass of wine. “I suppose I had better get on home. I’ll take your father to that doctor’s appointment tomorrow. 10:30.”

  “Perfect. Yes. I just want to meet with a few vendors tomorrow,” Susan said.

  Aunt Kerry gripped Susan’s shoulder and said, “You look tired, my dear. I think you should get some rest.”

  When Aunt Kerry disappeared, Christine turned her head and said, “You must be stoned, right? That’s all it is.”

  Susan scrubbed her hands over her eyes. “Yep. Just a little stoned. That’s all.”

  “I knew it. It’s the funniest thing in the world,” Christine said. “My older, goody-two-shoes sister, smoking pot.”

  “Whatever. If only Amanda knew. She would laugh along with you,” Susan said as she chuckled.

  When Lola reappeared in the living room, she did a little kick-spin and landed on her knees, beaming. “Guess who drank wine on the beach alone with Zach Walters this evening?”

  “Oh, Lola, you didn’t!” Susan cried.

  “Nope. I didn’t. But his nemesis did,” Lola said, wagging her eyebrows and pointing the finger at her older sister.

  “What an interesting development,” Susan said contemplatively, giving Christine a curious glance.

  “I just didn’t want to swim in the freezing cold water, is all,” Christine said. “You guys are insane. I’m a civilized city girl now.”

  “A civilized city girl who drinks expensive French wine in styrofoam cups. Got it,” Lola said with a wide smirk.

  “I would never involve myself with Zach Walters,” Christine said. “I’ve hated him all these years. I would never.”

  As Christine lay in bed upstairs, she heard the soft hum of her sisters speaking into the night without her. Exhaustion swept over her as she curled beneath the sheets. Suddenly, there was the soft pad of Felix, bouncing up from the floor and winding himself down at the end of the bed.

  Over the past twenty-five years of her life, Christine found that these dark and quiet moments were the ones when she thought of her mother most. In New York, she would peer out the window and watch the traffic and consider what her mother might have thought of her life in the city. “So chaotic and loud, Christy, but that’s just like you!” Anna Sheridan hadn’t fully understood Christine, not like she had understood Susan. At the time of her death, Christine had been fourteen and volatile, on that rocky edge of puberty and eager to spew hateful words and stomp up the steps to her bedroom to play loud music until bedtime. On more than one occasion, she had told her mother that she hated her, something
that curdled in her stomach now. She hoped her mother had known this was nothing more than teenage angst.

  Still, Christine remembered her mother enough to know how little she would have liked some of her ex-boyfriends. Of Frank, she would have said, “Handsome, sure. I can see why you wanted to date him, Christy. But build a business with him? Live in that big, expensive apartment? He doesn’t have it, Christy. He was always going to ruin you. He looks at other people’s money like it’s his to burn.”

  “Zach Walters is so handsome, isn’t he?” Anna Sheridan had said exactly once, after picking Christine up from soccer practice at age thirteen and taking her privately to get ice cream, which was a rare treat without her sisters. Zach had walked past them post-practice and waved.

  “Um, no. He’s a jerk,” Christine had blurted out.

  “He was watching you during your practice,” her mother had said.

  “Probably because I’m better than he is at soccer. He wants to figure out how to beat me. He never will.”

  “Oh, Christine. That hard edge to you. It’ll take you far in this life,” her mother had said. “But I don’t know if it will make you happy.”

  Chapter Eight

  A few days later, Christine gathered together Anna Sheridan’s old diaries, poured herself a dense glass of Cabernet Sauvignon, and sat out on the picnic table. Wes was inside, catching the start of a baseball game on the little TV he’d had for some fifteen years, and the sound of the crowd and the click of the baseball against the bat soothed her. They were sounds of a long-ago life.

  The question Christine wanted to ask her mother the most was why. Why had she taken up the affair? Why hadn’t she decided to work on her marriage and turn inward, rather than leap out for someone like Stan Ellis, a man who had ultimately been the reason for her and two other tourists’ deaths?

  The reason Anna had stepped out of the marriage seemed inextricably linked to Christine’s own mode of operation. All her life, she had assumed her mother was far more reasonable and responsible, less brash and egoistic. Now, with her affair coming to the surface, Christine felt she saw something more of herself in her mother.

  And she was hungry for more.

  November 15, 1992

  It seems unfair to write these words whilst my daughters sit in the kitchen together and prepare dinner. Wes remains at the Inn, forever at the Inn, never one to “accidentally” swing home early, or make extra time for his family. That said, I am the one who’s stepped outside of all of this, seeking a happiness that Wes has never given or allowed me.

  Last evening, Christine was the only one at the house with me. Lola had a sleepover, Susan was yet again with Scott and I sat outside on the porch, all bundled up sipping wine and watching the minutes of my life tick by. Christine moseyed in and out before heading upstairs to read a comic book. (Again, she seems on the edge of some sort of teenage depression, something I must keep up with as she grows older.)

  Stan drove his boat to our dock. He’s never been so brash before. If I’m honest, the act of it turned me on. I rushed down the little hill and wrapped my arms around him. He twirled me into the boat and kissed me there beneath the lush pink sunset. “My daughter Christine is home!” I told him, genuinely shocked. But he just shrugged and said, “She’ll know about us soon enough.” He said it with such certainty, as though he’s already written the story of our life.

  Stan insisted on following me up and drinking a glass of wine on the porch. It was cold, nearly freezing, but he wrapped me in his arms and told me secrets of himself. His ex-wife nearly broke him in two, and he always assumed that he would be alone, that he would never have anyone. I am that someone. I want to give him that hope.

  How horrible is it that we become these hopes for people. How horrible is it that once, Wes and I were that hope for one another and we’ve stepped away from it, exhausted and strung-out from hours at the Inn and with babies and toddlers and now, the reckless angst of teenagers?

  There was a footstep on that very same porch. Christine lifted her head to find Susan and Lola swing out through the screen door. Their eyes closed in on the diaries. Christine felt as though she came up from a dream and blinked at them. Lola was the spitting image of Anna at the time of her death and Christine felt overwhelmed with sadness, looking at her now.

  “Have you discovered anything new?” Lola asked.

  “Not really,” Christine said. She brushed aside a tear and tried on a smile. “Although she was having some real problems with me and my... ‘depression.’” She put air quotes up, trying to turn it into a joke.

  Susan and Lola exchanged glances for enough time to prove that they, too, thought Christine suffered from it. Heck, she did. It wasn’t a secret.

  “What’s the date?” Susan asked.

  “November 1992,” Christine said. “In this one, you were off with Scott.”

  “Does she say anything about him?” Susan asked, sitting across from Christine and pouring herself a glass of wine.

  “Not really. She always liked him, I think,” Christine said. She flipped ahead a bit and found Scott’s name again, in December of that year.

  Scott is just like Wes in a lot of ways—committed and kind. He wants to build a world with my daughter. I hope she knows what she’s getting into, and I hope he doesn’t do what Wes did: step as far as he could out of his life while still pretending to perform all his duties as a husband and father. Regardless, I don’t think Susan is the type of girl to cheat. It’s a funny thing, imagining my three girls as women, my age or older. How will they perceive the world? Will they have gotten off of this silly island? Will they have made anything more of themselves than me, a sloppy, cheating wife?

  “Oops,” Lola said. “That sounds harsh.”

  “It goes on to talk about Stan,” Christine continued. “Gosh, she loved him. She calls him one of the most fascinating men she’s ever met in her life.”

  Susan balled her hand into a fist and whispered, “How can he be anything but a murderer? I’m sorry, but what he did keeps me up at night. The fact that he’s just out there on the Sound all the time, getting away with what he did... I can hardly stand it.”

  “We should talk to him,” Christine said suddenly, surprising herself.

  Lola and Susan studied her with stoic faces.

  “Don’t you think too much time has gone by?” Susan asked.

  “I don’t know. It’s all still so real to us,” Christine said. “There’s no reason that it isn’t still real to him. And maybe we could get the answers we need from him.” She paused for a moment, contemplating. “Besides. It’s clear that he was the only person really close to Mom during these years when we were teenagers and doing our own thing and Dad gave all his time to the Inn.”

  “I talked to Claire about him recently, and she said that Stan always drinks at the Edgartown Bar,” Susan said. “That tiny one right off Main Street. We’ve walked past it a million times.”

  “I would imagine he’s a big drinker,” Christine said. She drank to duck away from her own all-encompassing emotions and she assumed other people had to do the same to get through.

  “He was probably wasted the night Mom died,” Lola spat out in annoyance. “I’d like to know that, too, I think. I want to know everything. It’s not fair that we have to live in the grey-area of knowing about this, only hearing what Dad is willing to tell us.”

  “Do you think it would bother Mom, knowing we were going through her things like this?” Susan asked suddenly. “I try to imagine Amanda going through my stuff after I’m dead. It’s not like I keep a very good journal or anything, but little lists I make to myself. Little quotes I write down. What would she make of all of it?”

  “Don’t talk like that,” Lola insisted.

  “I just think we all keep a lot of secrets from one another, is all,” Susan said, quickly picking up her glass and taking a sip.

  Christine arched her brow. That seemed way too cryptic for her liking. But before she could say a
nything, Lola’s phone on the table buzzed, making the tops of their wine glasses shimmer.

  “Speaking of family, that’s my flesh and blood,” Lola said. Her face shifted quickly and her eyes sparkled. She lifted the phone to her ear and said, “Audrey! Hello!”

  Lola stood from the table, grabbed her wine, and walked slowly down the steps of the porch, her laughter bubbling up through her. Seconds later, though, that laughter halted.

  “What do you mean?” Lola said, down below the porch. Her voice was strained, stark.

  Susan and Christine made heavy eye contact. It was obvious already; something was wrong.

  Susan grabbed a diary and flipped through. Christine saw the date: 1990, probably about a year before their mother had started the affair with Stan. She pretended to read, while Christine watched Lola pace down below the porch. She hadn’t said anything in a while.

  “Don’t cry, honey. It’s going to be okay,” Lola said, trying to soothe her daughter on the other end of the line.

  By her tone, Christine had to guess that everything wasn’t going to be okay. Again, Susan gave her a big-eyed, panicked look. Slowly, Lola ambled away from the porch, toward the dock below. For a long time, she sat at the edge, her feet dipping in and out of the water as she spoke with her daughter on the phone.

  “What do you think happened?” Christine asked.

  “I have no idea,” Susan replied. “It doesn’t sound very good, though.”

  “Nineteen-years-old at her first internship in Chicago,” Christine said, remembering what Audrey had been up to when she’d seen her niece in the Vineyard a few weeks before. “She has the world at her fingertips.”

  “But it’s easy to think you don’t at that age,” Susan said. “You’re just kind of fumbling around for something to cling onto.”

  “It was worse for us,” Christine said. “We didn’t have each other or Mom or Dad. We were just floundering.”

  “Maybe,” Susan said. “I made Richard my rock pretty quickly. Then, there was the first baby and then the second.” She clucked her tongue.