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“You don’t understand. We’re getting married.” Anna screamed with fear.
“Can you focus on your breathing, ma’am?” the man asked her. “I know it’s hard. Maybe we can breathe together.”
But Anna couldn’t breathe. She could do nothing but stare far off toward the horizon, where the same lighthouse Dean had commented on moments ago began to roll its lights across the rainy gray day. Her heart was in her throat. Somewhere deep in her body, she knew that nothing in her life would ever be the same again— that everything had been forever changed.
These were the first moments of the rest of her life. What a fool she’d been to think she could be happy.
ChapterFive
Two days after the fire, Eloise moved into a temporary apartment five streets away from Brenda’s house. The apartment was fully furnished, with a microwave that made food limp and lukewarm, a double bed that was stiff as a board, and a flatscreen television that brought live news and sitcoms to the very small and impersonal living room every single night.
Eloise was not sure how to feel in the wake of the fire. She’d checked into a hotel on the night it had happened and slept in her overalls on top of the sheets, dreaming of Liam, of his mother who had baked bread in that kitchen that was now no more, and about Liam’s grandmother, who’d given birth in the living room on a hot summer’s day so many years ago.What had happened to all those stories?Eloise was the only person in the world who carried them— and she was hardly a Clemmens herself.
Brenda and her friends brought Eloise baked goods and lasagnas, their eyes moist and worried as they asked her how Eloise was. Eloise thought they maybe suspected her as the arsonist, as though there was money to be had for insurance purposes, which there wasn’t. Eloise didn’t go out of her way to tell them it had been an electrical fire, with no fault. She sort-of liked how suspicious they were of her. They looked at her as though she could combust any minute.
Brenda, of course, didn’t suspect her in the slightest— but she was worried that Eloise hadn’t cried yet. The afternoon after Eloise moved in five streets away, Brenda urged her to go to therapy about the fire. To this, Eloise said, “I wasn’t there. I didn’t lose anyone. This is hardly a tragedy.” Brenda hadn’t known what to say, so she went into the kitchen and prepared Eloise another pot of soup. Eloise wasn’t sure how she was going to get through all the food these dear women had prepared for her. It was as though they had nowhere to put the tremendous amount of love they were able to give the world.
Two days after Eloise moved into the apartment, she sat with a very cold piece of lasagna and watched the nightly news. Recently, Quentin Copperfield had been replaced with a man named Jackson Crawford, who’d then been replaced with a woman Eloise rather liked. It was a rare thing for a woman to read the nightly news, and Eloise relished it— seeing it as proof that women were striving further in their careers every year. She had been born during a time when women’s rights were hardly a whisper on people’s lips.
Eloise thought the switch from Quentin to Jackson was a funny one, given what she knew about the Copperfield family. Jackson and Quentin had once been brothers-in-law, their connection only legal, with no family ties or love. Now, they were nothing to one another. She knew that— the legal aspects. She didn’t know the why or how.
She could glean only so much about the Copperfields from a distance. To her, they were more like fictional characters in a book she’d read as a child. One she’d read obsessively until they’d come to life in her mind.
But on this evening, two days after she’d moved into the nondescript apartment in downtown Muncie, Indiana, the woman who read the news sat at her news desk and reported something terrible.
“Good evening. Tonight, we must honor the life of a young man who was taken too soon— a young man with a connection to us here at the station. This young man’s name was Dean Carpenter, and he’d recently asked Anna Crawford, the daughter of one of our anchors here at the station, to marry him. Our hearts go out to Anna, to Dean’s family, and to Jackson during this difficult time.”
Eloise reached for the remote control and turned off the television. There she sat, in the shadows of this living room that was really not hers, and felt tears finally spring to her eyes.Was this really the first time she was going to cry in the wake of the fire?It seemed so. Tears rained down her cheeks and dotted her overalls.
How had this happened? How had a young man like Dean Carpenter died so young before his real life had begun?It seemed so horrific, more proof that the world operated with its own rules and remained unbothered regarding the wants and needs of its people.
Poor Anna Crawford. Eloise knew very little of Anna— only that she was Julia’s daughter, that she lived in Seattle, and that she had jet-black hair and very sharp, intelligent eyes. The fact that she’d met the love of her life, only to have him taken away so soon like that, chilled Eloise to the bone. It reminded her of the horrors of her own past.
Brenda had lent Eloise her husband’s old computer, and Eloise walked to it now, turned it on, and googled the young man’s name. DEAN CARPENTER. The first results told Eloise what had happened that fateful day, the same day Eloise’s farm had been aflame. Dean and Anna had gone for a hike on Orcas Island, and Dean had fallen from the cliff’s edge. A medical team had come to collect both Dean and Anna, but Dean’s injuries had been severe, and he’d died a little over a day after the accident. Anna had been holding his hand at the time.
None of the articles had any quotes from Anna, which Eloise was glad about. She hoped most journalists had the goodwill to keep away from Anna, to allow her to grieve her love in peace.
Just before Eloise planned to stop reading about Dean and Anna, to perhaps turn on the television to watch one of the sitcoms, she read:
Dean Carpenter’s funeral will be held in Dayton, Ohio, on April 12, 2023, with a viewing at two p.m. and a service immediately following at four.
Dayton, Ohio. Eloise’s eyes widened. Dayton was not far from where she lived, not in the slightest. Suddenly, a seed of an idea planted itself in her brain, one that she tried to drive out as soon as it appeared.
All these years, Eloise had been more-or-less trapped in the Midwest. All these years, she’d been at the mercy of her memories of those long-lost days in Nantucket. Now, Anna Crawford would be only a few hours away.
Eloise turned off the computer and shook her head.No, she thought. She was out of her mind. Anna Crawford didn’t know anything about who she was or what she wanted. To Anna, Eloise was just an old lady in a pair of farming overalls, nothing more.
But then again, when else would Eloise get the opportunity to see one of the Copperfields in person? For years, she’d studied them from a distance— her heart shattering at Bernard’s prison sentence, championing Alana’s modeling career, or weeping at the beauty of the books Julia’s publishing house published. She’d never been brave enough to reach out, not even when their world had fallen apart.
Okay. If she did drive to Ohio, what then? Would she just walk up to Anna Crawford and explain everything? No. She wouldn’t. The girl was going through the most heinous days of her life. It was an era of constant re-calibration, during which the plans she’d set for herself no longer had anything to do with what would happen in her future. She’d planned to be married, to have a family with Dean Carpenter. Eloise understood that all too well.
When Eloise went to bed that night, she’d more-or-less convinced herself not to drive to Ohio. It was foolish, reckless. No good could possibly come from it.
But then, two days later, she found herself behind the wheel of Liam’s truck, headed east toward Dayton. How did this happen? How did she let herself go to Walmart, purchase a black dress and a pair of black flats, smear makeup on her cheeks (something she hadn’t done in years!), and disembark? She hadn’t told anyone where she was off to. It wasn’t a reasonable thing to explain. She could half-imagine Brenda’s expression.“Say what, now? What are you going to do?”
That wasn’t Brenda’s fault. Perhaps Eloise should have been more open about her past. In truth, she hadn’t even told Liam about what had happened in Nantucket, nor why she’d had to leave. Liam, being Liam, hadn’t asked.
The drive to Dayton took about two and a half hours. Eloise turned into the funeral home parking lot, then parked, peered toward the front door of the establishment, and froze with fear. Other mourners had begun to arrive, all dressed in black, their hair gleaming beneath an April sun. Eloise placed her hands over her face as her heart thudded. This wasn’t her loss to mourn. She shouldn’t have driven here.What had she been thinking?
