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“Shoo,” she says, but it doesn’t move. She stoops, fishing a pebble out of the grass, and throws it as hard as she can. Her aim is good; the stone pings against the wall just inches from the creature’s feet. But it still doesn’t move, doesn’t even flinch. It only stares, and she stares back, and then she laughs, because this is her lesson: that sometimes the only choice is not to choose, but to wait. To wait and see. She loves her husband still, in spite of everything—and in spite of everything, he has not left her. Maybe that will be enough or maybe it won’t, but she has been making all the decisions for both of them for far too long. Let him tell her if he thinks it’s too late. Let him decide what sort of life he wants. Maybe they can set the sky aflame again.
After all, she thinks, they still have so much time.
She’s wrong, of course. There’s no time, no time at all. Theo has been dead since morning, when he stepped aboard his boat to begin preparations for the day’s fishing. TheRed Skyran aground in Brooklin just before noon, where two local boys climbed aboard and found some tangled nets, some spilled liquor, and no sign of the captain—save for a smear of blood on the starboard coaming. The police will conclude that Theodore Caravasios was likely drinking, tripped on a net, and went overboard, hitting his head on the way. An awful accident and a damn shame; you’d think a man with a wife and three children would take more care. At least the woman would be well taken care of, being who she was.
Theo’s body will never be found.
And for all but a few, this is where the story will end. Nobody will ever stop to wonder at the boat ending up in Brooklin, an odd location considering the tides and the fishermen’s usual routes. Nobody will notice that the spilled bottle of liquor is a Kentucky bourbon, when Theo was rarely known to drink anything stronger than beer. And nobody will ever remember the strange car that was parked at the pier at dawn, the tall stranger who slipped out of the shadows and onto theRed Skyin the last moments before sunrise. He had driven all night to be here before sunrise, a man with sunken cheeks and stained teeth, and a funny-looking scar on his hand that you’d recognize for what it was only if you happened to know that he’d once tried to interfere in a young woman’s life and been bitten for his trouble.
One day, many years from now, this man will lie dying in his bed in a state-owned nursing home, telling a story with his last labored breaths to the stranger who sits beside him—a young man whose dark hair and dark eyes make him look just enough like Theodore Caravasios to make a person look twice. He’ll talk about the thrill of running bootleg whiskey through the harbor under cover of darkness. He’ll talk about the great stone house above the bay and the man who lived there, the closest thing he ever had to a father, whom he served loyally until the bitter end. He’ll talk about the foolish young man he killed, a man who found out the hard way how the Day family deals with traitors. He’ll talk about the girl, Miriam, who knew what she wanted out of life and would take it with her teeth if she had to.
He’ll say that if the young man sitting beside him ever leaves this place and makes his way north, he should go and see it with his own eyes: the wild sea, the fetid mud, the boats rocking gently in the wind. The finest damn house in Bar Harbor, standing like a sentry high above the bay.
Miriam will see Smith only once more, years from now, at her father’s funeral. She will force herself to meet his eyes and see the truth that lives there: that whoever held the knife, whoever did the deed, it was her choices, her recklessness, that cost her husband his life. This is her burden to carry, and she will. She will spend a lifetime carrying it. Waking up next to it in the morning, curling around it in bed at night. Someday, as her memories begin to fade and falter, its horrible siren song will bring her back to the place where it happened—the end, the beginning, and everything in between.
But here, now, she still has hope. As she makes her way back through the garden, she hears the sound of a car coming up the drive and hurries her pace.Theo,she thinks, her heart soaring, but already she knows that it can’t be. It’s too early, the sound of the engine not quite familiar, and as she rounds the corner of the house she feels dread crawling over her skin. The car is a police car. And the man getting out to stand beside it is holding his hat in his hand.
“Mrs. Caravasios?” he says, and oh, those two words are enough. They are more than enough, she doesn’t want to hear any more. She wants to run to him, clap both her hands over his mouth, and force the rest back down his throat.
But she doesn’t. Instead, her knees buckle, and she sinks to the ground. The police officer begins to walk toward her, reaching out to help her even as he opens his mouth and says, “I’m afraid there’s been an accident.”
Miriam lets him talk. There’s no stopping the words now, and no changing what’s done. The vow she made a moment ago was nothing but a fantasy. She gazes back toward the place she came from, but thegarden wall is empty, the fox gone. Theodora will wake from her nap soon, and Miriam will have to see to that. Indeed, there’s no one else to see to it. Only the two of them in this great house, with all its many rooms, its memories, all those dark windows like watchful eyes. She looks up at it and remembers: the games of hide-and-seek she played in its secret spaces. Those lovely young ladies in their silk and pearls, strolling the veranda on her brothers’ arms. Papa in his library; Mother in her parlor. A house that held her family. A house that tore it apart.But no more,she thinks.
She will leave this place. She will never come back.
She wishes she could burn it to the ground.
26.
2015
February
He told me then: about the old man with tar-stained teeth who lay gasping for breath in his final days, telling the story of who he’d been and what he’d done. A story that connected him forever to my family; a secret he and Mimi had kept separately for years, holding it close. But at the end, neither one could leave it completely unspoken. My grandmother had unburdened herself to the Reverend Frank, who had kept her confidence even as he tried to warn me away from the same reckless love that cost her everything.
Charles Smith, on the other hand, had made a different sort of confession. On his deathbed, in between fits of coughing that racked his brittle body, to a young man who listened raptly and remembered every word.
“I’ve heard so many stories, but god, that one,” Adam said. “It was like he’d planted a seed in my brain. So after my contract there ended, I just went north. I could have gone anywhere, but . . . I don’tknow. It was like something was pulling me to this place. And when I ended up at Willowcrest, and I realized that the old woman in the room down the hall was the girl from that story? I knew it was meant to be. I believe that, Delphine. Fate sent that man to me, so he could send me to you. That’s how I know we’re supposed to be together.”
We stood at the window for what felt like hours, watching as the sky deepened from violet to slate, as shadows crept across the fresh-fallen snow. Adam was breathing in sharp little bursts beside me, and I wondered if he was angry, and then realized I wouldn’t know what it looked like if he was. I had never seen him angry. I had never seen him at all, not really. I had decided to spend my life with him not because of who he was, but because of how he made me feel: wanted.
I didn’t feel wanted anymore. I didn’t feel anything at all. Not the fluttering of my heart in my chest, not the cool air on my skin. I felt like the snow-covered landscape outside, twilit and silent and still. I felt like the ice that wouldn’t shatter under my mother’s fists. I felt that I could have stood there forever, like a spectator, waiting to see what would happen—and I thought that whatever happened, I would always remember this moment. The way the last of the fading light kissed the curves of Adam’s face. The wavy glass of the window, feathered at the corners with curls of frost. The absolute quiet that lay heavy over everything, because in that moment the whispering wind that gave the house its name had finally fallen silent.
The certainty, in the coldest and darkest part of my heart, that whatever came next would be something I’d carry for the rest of my life.
“I’m glad,” Adam said finally. He kept his gaze straight ahead. His hands, one of them still holding my phone, hung limply at his sides. “I’m glad you know. I hated lying to you.”
I almost laughed. “For something you hate, you do a lot of it.” I paused. “So you planned this. How much? All of it? You and me... was any of it real?”
Now he did look at me, and on his face was genuine hurt. “I can’t believe you’d ask me that. Do you think I would have done this if itwasn’t real? Everything I did, I did for you. So we could be together. I wanted to give you everything.” His voice turned fierce. “And I did. You have the money now to do anything you want, and that’s because of me.”
My breath caught in my throat. “I don’t understand.”
“Yes you do. You were the only one who came to see her. The only one who ever spent any time with her. The rest of your family, they’re fucking vultures. All they wanted was for her to die so they could get her money. Even your mom—you saw it, I know you did. She couldn’t wait for it to be over so she could go back to her life.”
“But how, how did you—”
He shrugged. “I told Miriam she should leave it all to you. She was already meeting with her lawyer, to set up the thing for Shelly. That whole week, I told her she should think about who really deserved to inherit the rest. Who was there for her every day? I don’t have to tell you that she put a lot of stock in loyalty, do I? Look what happened to your grandfather. It wasn’t hard to convince her. Sometimes I think she might have done it anyway, even without me working on her.”
