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I almost laughed. As if he could keep what was going to happen from happening if he refused to look. It was a desperate, childish impulse, like clapping your hands over your eyes when the killer in the horror movie raises his knife overhead. As if it would just hang there in the air forever; as if the killing stroke would never come.
As if we both didn’t know what the next picture would show.
“You’re not done,” I said.
“Delphine—”
“Come on, Adam.”
The tension went out of his body then. His shoulders slumped forward in defeat. Silently, he scrolled to the next and last photo. I thought he might refuse to look at it, but he didn’t. He looked and didn’t say anything. And he didn’t ask what was in it, of course he didn’t, because he knew. He knew because he was there, and because this wasn’t the kind of moment a person could ever forget. Not ever. Not even if he wanted to.
I was in the picture, too, just barely, a slice of my hat and coat visible at the edge of the frame as I walked into the bakery while Mimi and Adam waited in the car. But it was the car that was the focus. There was the Subaru, with its center console, the one Mimi thought was there to keep young people from canoodling. And here were its two passengers, their heads filling the space between the two front seats. The back window was dirty, but you could see Adam’s graybeanie and Mimi’s white hair. You could see the curve of his arm where his elbow rested on the console, and one of his hands, nearest the camera, resting against her cheek.
But most of all, you could see that he was kissing her. Not briefly, not a peck, but deeply and on the lips, holding his hand against her face in the same way that he had so often held it against mine.
Outside, the light was almost gone.
Adam turned to me, the glow from the phone lighting the stubbled curve of his jaw. There were deep hollows beneath his eyes. “He told me what she was like, you know,” he said. “He said she was the kind of jealous that destroys everything it touches. He said any man who crossed her path should run the other way. But I didn’t believe it could still be true. Not after all this time. And by the time I realized, it was too late.” His voice turned pleading. “I had no choice.”
“Who?” I said. My voice sounded strangled. “Who told you that?”
He smiled a little bit then. Wearily, like he’d been telling a long, unfunny joke, and here at last was the punch line.
“The man who killed your grandfather.”
25.
1964
Autumn
Miriam wakes the next morning on the sofa in the library, still in her clothes, her mouth dry and sour. Something is tugging at her arm, and she opens her eyes to see Theodora. The child’s eyes are huge and serious. Miriam bolts to a sitting position, running her hands through her hair and groaning. Her head has begun to pound. The details of last night are hazy, like a bad dream—but the pain, the dreadful pit deep in her stomach, the look on Theo’s face, those are vivid enough. She can tell from the brightness of the room that it’s long past dawn, which means that Theo left for the marina without waking her or saying goodbye.
Theodora is staring at her. “Where Shelly?”
“She’s on vacation,” Miriam says, and stands with a groan. Breakfast was one of Shelly’s responsibilities; the child must be starving. But Theodora isn’t crying, not today. Only gazing at her with a disappointed expression that’s far too grown-up for her little face.
She fixes breakfast for both of them but barely touches hers, staring out the window while her eggs get cold. She thinks about the night she sat at this table, the taste of Smith’s blood still on her lips, and prepared herself to fight for what she wanted. For the man she’d chosen. She had been so sure—of him, of them, of her own heart. Would she have made the same choice if she’d known how it would end?
Morning turns to midday, and midday to afternoon. Theodora seems to sense that something is wrong and sets up at a table in the library with a sketch pad and a box of crayons, humming to herself while Miriam sits nearby and stares into space, lost in thought. When the child goes down for her nap, she puts on her coat and sets out down the pine path.
At first she can only trip over more memories. Walking this path alone in the dark, to meet him at the mouth of the cove. Strolling hand in hand with her husband, the two of them laughing and leaning into each other, while Richard and Diana scampered ahead. Alone again, arms crossed against the bitter wind, on the day she realized there would be a third baby.
But then she reaches the end of the path, where the sea lavender grows, and exhales. The trees across the cove are a symphony of red and gold, blazing against the sky, defiant in the face of the coming winter. The air is clean and sweet and salt, tickling her nose. And her mind, after so many clouded and chaotic hours, is finally quiet. Finally clear.
It won’t last. She knows that—just as the brilliant display across the water will soon be scattered, dead and brown, by the winter wind. To every thing, a season. A time for every purpose.
And in this moment, it is time to choose.
She thinks of leaving. She could take Theodora and go to her parents. She could weather that: the disapproval, the disappointment, the way her mother’s lips purse together when she’s about to say, “I told you so.” She could abandon this life and this pain and this man; she could start over in a place where the people smiled more freely, where the winters were gentler. She could find happiness somewhereelse, maybe even with someone else someday. It would take time, of course. It would be hard.
Staying, though... that would be harder.
She drifts back along the path. The leaves crunch beneath her feet, the wind rustles her hair. At the edge of the forest, the trees fall away and she looks up, past the garden, where the house looms like a giant. Her breath catches in her throat.
Just ahead, from atop the garden wall, a pair of amber eyes are tracking her every move.
She stops to watch the fox. Fascinated at first—she’s never seen one so close—and then increasingly uneasy, because the fox seems to be watching her, too. Waiting to see what she’ll do. But she doesn’t know herself what she intends to do, even now, and a desperate little laugh escapes her throat. There are no good choices, but not just that: there’s no excitement, no possibility, no great leap into the unknown. Miriam’s days of jumping into things are over. Whichever path she chooses, she can see quite clearly where it will lead, the miserable work that awaits. And still the fox watches her.
