“Her physical health might be okay. But up here…?” Mark tapped his temple.
“What are you talking about? She has all her mental faculties.”
“Then why didn’t she turn the gas burner off a couple weeks ago?”
She was surprised Ivy had told him about her recent oversight, considering how vexed she’d been by it. Zoey hadn’t been there when it happened; she’d gone back to Rhode Island for a few days to collect documents to file her taxes. But according to her aunt, if the carpenter who was tightening the staircase banister hadn’t happened to smell gas, Ivy, Sylvia, and Moby —their gray, seventeen-pound, thirteen-year-old tabby cat—all would have perished. Since the gas had only been on for a few minutes and Ivy would have smelled it eventually, Zoey was reasonably sure that was an exaggeration, but her aunt had bemoaned her error for days.
“How did you hear about that?”
“I do check in from time to time to see how they’re doing, you know. You’re not the only one who cares about them.” Mark scowled and averted his eyes.
That was as close as Zoey had ever heard him come to expressing… well, notlove, but at leastconcernabout Ivy and Sylvia. She realized she ought to go a little easier on him. If she’d heard her aunts say it once, she’d heard them say it a hundred times,Mark isn’t good at demonstrating affection, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care.
“I appreciate that you’re concerned about her,” she acknowledged. “But Aunt Ivy didn’t leave the gas on because she’s experiencing symptoms of dementia. She just didn’t click the knob into place all the way—probably because of her arthritis.”
Actually, it was probably because the knob was difficult to twist. The major appliances in her home—and a couple of the downstairs rooms—could have done with some updating but Zoey wasn’t going to admit that to Mark. From what she’d just overheard, he already wanted to overhaul the entire house and she knew how traumatic that would be for their aunt.“Besides, I always check the burners when she’s done using the stove.”
“Exactly. So what’s going to happen once you leave?”
“I-I’m planning to stay a while longer.”
“How can you do that? What about your job?”
Zoey was relieved but not surprised her aunts hadn’t told Mark that she’d been laid off; Sylvia and Ivy had always been tight-lipped about anything that Zoey or Mark mentioned to them in confidence. So he must have thought she’d been taking family medical leave to care for Sylvia, and Zoey was fine with letting him believe that. Losing her job wasn’t her fault, but that wouldn’t stop Mark from gloating. The fact that he’d only been in his current role as a pharmaceutical sales rep for a year and would probably quit or get fired within another six months, the way he usually did, was irrelevant. He’d make wisecracks if he found out she’d been unemployed for five months and she wasn’t in the mood to hear them.
“It’s not a problem,” she hedged. “I can stay as long as Aunt Ivy needs me.”
“You’re just postponing the inevitable, you know. She’s going to have to move eventually.”
You want to bet on it?Zoey thought, but she let his remark slide. She’d challenge him again later if it came to that, but right now she didn’t have it in her to keep sparring with him. When Mark tipped his head back to down the last of his beer, she took advantage of the silence to tell him she was going back inside. But as she turned toward the door, she noticed Mr. Witherell out of the corner of her eye. Apparently he’d finished smoking his pipe and he shuffled toward them, bent at the waist so that his torso and head were angled nearly parallel with the ground as he tapped his cane on the brick driveway.
The old man had been the village’s lighthouse keeper until all the lighthouses on Dune Island became automated in the seventies and he was forced into an early retirement. He now lived in a rundown shack of a dwelling on a little patch of land in the lowest-lying area in Benjamin’s Manor. His house was considered such an eyesore by the village’s summer elite that several of them united and offered to pay to relocate him so they could raze the building. When he refused, they counter-offered to rehabilitate his home, inside and out. Again, no deal. He did, however, allow them to build and maintain a white, eight-foot wooden privacy fence with a lattice topper and lockable gate. Anyone driving by the property wouldn’t have guessed his house on the other side was any different from the rest of the houses in the neighborhood; exactly the desired effect.
“Hello, Mr. Witherell. Thank you for coming,” Zoey said, although she knew better than to expect a response.
As a rule, Mr. Witherell didn’t talk any more. He grunted on occasion, or shook his head, but that was it. According to island lore that the school kids had been passing down for years, his jaw rusted shut during the hurricane of 1967. Although some of the adults believed he’d gone deaf, most of them generally assumed that he’d spent so much time alone keeping the lighthouse, he’d lost his social skills, and they tried to accommodate his communication style as best as they could. There were a few less tolerant people who theorized he was so cantankerous it was actually a good thing he didn’t express himself verbally.
Yet Zoey’s aunt said he always showed up for funerals whenever one of the old-time islanders passed away. Regardless of the season, he wore the same wool single-breasted suit, a relic from the fifties that was so faded it appeared charcoal instead of black. But beneath the cuffs of his short-cut, pleated trousers, his toe-cap shoes were polished to a shine. To Zoey, that small detail demonstrated a world of respect for the deceased. She tried to reciprocate her regard for Mr. Witherell by speaking to him as she would have spoken to any other guest, whether or not he heard or answered her.
Mark, on the other hand, fanned his nose and scoffed as the old man passed by, “If you want to keep your title as Dune Island’s oldest year-round resident, you might consider giving up that pipe.”
“Mark!” Zoey hissed, “That’s rude.”
Mark sneered, “The old salt is deaf.”
As if on cue, Mr. Witherell stopped short and spat on the grass. Staring at the ground, he asked Mark, “Who do you think you are?”
Zoey was absolutely dumbfounded to hear his voice, which sounded as if he was gurgling pebbles in the back of his throat. But his tone wasn’t one of indignation, the way people usually sounded when they asked that question. It was more like a straightforward inquiry. And he appeared to be waiting for a response, which meant he certainly wasn’t deaf. She glanced over at Mark to see what he’d do next.
At first, he shook his head and rolled his eyes. But when Mr. Witherell didn’t leave, he snickered before announcing slowly and loudly, “I’m. Marcus. Winslow. The. Third.”
Mr. Witherell pulled out a handkerchief and swiped it across his mouth. “I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” he said. Then he shoved the kerchief back into his pocket and continued down the driveway.
Red-faced, Mark immediately cursed him out, while Zoey stood there wondering,What wasthatall about?Mr. Witherell had undoubtedly been the object of far ruder remarks over the years, but as far as she knew, no one ever reported hearing him say anything in response. Why today? Was he finally fed up? Or was there something about Mark in particular that made him lash out? It wouldn’t have been the first time someone had been offended by her cousin’s boorishness, but casting doubt on his identity was more of a slam against his mother than against Mark. Or it would been, if it weren’t utterly ridiculous.
Oh—I get it,Zoey suddenly realized.Mark is such a snob about being a Winslow that Mr. Witherell was deliberately attacking his point of pride to get a reaction.
It worked: his taunt had made Mark fuming mad and he ended his tirade by saying, “Somebody should have had that guy committed half a century ago.”
