Chance Harbor (50 page)

“My sister’s a histrionic attention-seeker,” was how she’d described Zoe to Russell one night when they’d come home to find Zoe sitting on the doorstep of her apartment in the rain, begging to spend the night.

Now, thinking of what Zoe had gone through during the rape and its aftermath, of how alone she must have felt, Catherine’s stomach turned. “I was an awful sister to you,” she said, hurrying to catch up because Zoe was ahead of her again. She linked arms with Zoe this time, using such a strong grip that Zoe made a little noise of surprise.

“It doesn’t matter. That was a long time ago. Anyway, you were never awful,” Zoe said. “I was always the awful one.”

“Oh, I see how it is. It’s still the Sister Olympics around here. You have to be a faster walker
and
more awful, too?”

To her relief, Zoe laughed. “Look, I know I never made things easy for us. For Mom and Dad, either. But I understand myself better now.”

“Good. Me, too.”

Zoe shook her head. “No. I mean, I understand who I am and where I came from. There’s something I need to tell you.”

Catherine felt a sharp stone of dread in her throat and couldn’t swallow. “What?”

“Dad? He’s not my real father.”

“What?”
Catherine stopped and pulled Zoe around by the arm to face her. Zoe’s cheeks were bright red from the wind, her freckles almost invisible. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am. Mom told me. She had an affair with Malcolm. You know, Dad’s cousin?”

Catherine frowned. She’d heard that name. “Cousin Jane’s brother? The one who drowned?”

“Yes. I guess Dad fooled around, and Mom felt lonely, so . . .” She shrugged. “And I was the result.”

“My God,” Catherine said. “Does anybody else know?”

“Only Cousin Jane, apparently.”

“Of course. Nothing gets past her. Funny she kept it a secret.”

Zoe nodded. “I know. Maybe she didn’t want Dad to be embarrassed. Or maybe it was out of respect for Malcolm after he died, you know, because he had kids.” She smiled, her teeth very white in the late-afternoon light, which was burnishing the gold grass at the tops of the dunes a fiery orange, making the dunes look like they’d caught fire. “I saw Malcolm’s kids yesterday. So freaky.”

“When?”

“When you took Willow to the store.” Zoe made a face. “Mom made me go with her when she brought them a pie. She must have arranged it ahead of time with Cousin Jane somehow, because there were, like, a hundred people there. Including my two half brothers, who I hadn’t seen since the summer after my senior year of high school. They’re much older than I am, but it was weird, seeing how much I actually look like them now that we’re all adults.”

“Jesus. I always thought you and I looked alike.” Catherine was having trouble keeping up with all this; she imagined the same red sunset glow over her head as her brain overheated.

“We do. But Malcolm was Dad’s cousin, so I guess that makes sense,” Zoe said. She laughed. “It’s like we’re all one big MacLeish herd. Doesn’t really matter who our dads were in some ways because that bloodline is so strong.”

“Seriously, Zoe. How did you feel, seeing them, now that you know?”

Zoe shrugged. “Surprisingly okay. I’ve always felt so alone, you know? It’s good to be in a place where people just accept me as family. And now I understand why Dad felt responsible for me but couldn’t completely claim me as his. He must have looked at me and seen Malcolm, but I always reminded him of Mom cheating on him, too.”

“He cheated on her first,” Catherine said, thinking of the trip to Cape Breton, of her mother being pregnant with Zoe as their father wept down on the dock, waving good-bye. Now that final puzzle piece fell into place, too, and she told Zoe.

“Wow,” Zoe said.

“Right. Wow.”

“So we’re only half sisters.” Zoe said this matter-of-factly, but Catherine heard the pain in her voice.

“Are you kidding?” Catherine said. “I held you in my arms the day you were born. You’ve been the kind of pain in the ass only a real sister could be.”

Zoe laughed. Her nose was running, Catherine saw, and her eyes, too. Maybe it was the wind, but she didn’t think so.

“We’d better get back,” Zoe said. “My face is freezing off.”

“Mine, too.”

They had made it halfway to the stairs leading up to the house when Zoe said, “We need to talk about Willow.”

The tide was coming in, so they had to walk on higher ground, where there were rocks and dried clumps of seaweed. Catherine stumbled a little in the sand, the dread she’d been carrying suddenly boulder-sized. “What about her?” she asked, then made herself say it. “You want custody, I guess.”

Zoe shook her head. “No. I think Willow should keep living with you.”

Catherine was stunned. “Are you sure? You’re her mother, Zoe.”

Zoe put a hand to her face and didn’t speak for a moment. When she brought her hand down, her voice was shaky and difficult to hear over the surf. “The thing is, every time you look at Willow, you see the baby you always wanted, the girl you love. A beautiful child,” she said slowly. “But when I look at her, I only see that sometimes. Other times Willow reminds me, you know, of everything that happened. Of every mistake I ever made.”

“But that’s crazy. What happened wasn’t your fault.”

“I know the rape wasn’t my fault. But how many times did I make the wrong choices, Cat? How many times did I choose the easy way out, instead of doing all the hard things, like going to school and working and taking care of my damn kid?” Zoe’s voice had risen, as if she were shouting at herself. “You were right. I’ve screwed her up, and I need to stop doing that.”

Catherine’s entire being had gone very still. She focused only on her sister now. She said, “Willow is her own person, Zoe, with her own life ahead of her. That’s what you and I have to keep remembering: we are only two people in her life. Two important people, but only two. Willow has Mom and Russell, teachers and friends. Someday she might even have a family of her own. You have tried your hardest to do the right things for her. I see that now. If you want custody, I won’t fight you. I’ll try to help you any way I can. You and Willow.”

“Wow. Quite the speech.” Zoe was smiling. “Thanks. But I’m not able to be a parent the way you are, Cat. I want her to live with you. It’ll be better for her. I think Willow knows that, too. She loves you. And, more importantly, she trusts you.”

“And you? What will you do?” Catherine was standing very close to her sister now, close enough that they were sheltering each other from the wind. “You’re not leaving, are you?” She felt unexpectedly panicked by the idea.

Zoe shook her head. “I’ll stick around. I don’t want to bail on Willow again. Grey says I can live in the trailer as long as I need a place, and Mom’s willing to help me with tuition if I go back to school. Or maybe I’ll move up here in the spring, help Mom out with the house. Tuition’s even cheaper at the university here. I’ll see Willow wherever I go. That’s the only sure thing. Otherwise, one day at a time, right? And today is Thanksgiving. We’d better go up and eat some of that turkey.”

The darkness had fallen completely as they began their ascent up the cliff. Now the moon was out, just a sliver of white.

As she reached the top of the ladder, Catherine saw that the lights in the Chance Harbor house were on, the windows gleaming yellow squares. Through one of them, she could see Willow in the kitchen, waiting for them to return, her face turned toward the window.

•   •   •

Right after they’d eaten and washed the china, wiped the counters and fallen into living room chairs with books and another endless puzzle, Darcy announced he had a surprise for them. “Time for us to go outside,” he said. “Bundle up!”

“You’re out of your mind,” Eve said, but she forced herself off the sofa, groaning a little from the turkey and potatoes. She got her coat and scarf from the pegs outside the kitchen and told Willow to help Catherine and Zoe carry the wool blankets they’d stacked on the porch.

“Wait. Turn off all the lights,” Darcy said as they were shoving their feet into boots and hands into mittens.

“This is crazy,” Zoe said, but she went upstairs and did as he asked, while Willow and Catherine turned off the lights downstairs.

They felt their way through the dark onto the back lawn, where Darcy had somehow managed to pull the Adirondack chairs out of the barn and line them up on the cliff without Eve noticing. It must have been while she and Willow were cutting out decorations, as she was fretting about her daughters alone on the beach. Whatever had happened between them must have settled something, she decided, after watching them laugh and tell stories at the table.

Darcy instructed them to sit in the chairs. The surf rushed in and out below, the Northumberland Strait breathing like a dragon at their feet.

“Not you, though,” Darcy said to Willow. “I need you as my assistant.”

Willow went over to him. Once Eve’s eyes adjusted to the darkness—nearly complete, with the lights turned off in the house and no ambient light other than that thumbnail of moon—she saw that Darcy had set up a tripod with a camera on it. He turned around for a moment to smile at her, a glimmer of white in the inky blue. His Cheshire-cat grin, she thought fondly. The grin that announced life was good. And perhaps it was, the way Darcy always chose to see it. She hoped to learn that trick from him.

“What we’re witnessing tonight,” Darcy announced, gesturing grandly at the sky above them, “are the Leonids, the annual meteor shower associated with Earth crossing paths with a comet called Tempel-Tuttle.”

“Why isn’t it called the Tempel-Tuttle meteor shower, then?” Zoe called from her chair.

“Ah, so glad you asked,” Darcy said. “It’s because the radiant of this particular meteor shower—the place where it’s brightest—is the constellation Leo. Now, no more questions. I’ll answer those later. Right now I want you all to keep your eyes on the sky. Except you,” he added, touching Willow’s shoulder. “I need you to help me record the event. Okay, if I told you the wider the lens, the more sky we’d see, what lens would you choose? Here’s what I have.”

Darcy and Willow squatted over a case holding his camera lenses, conferring quietly. Eve tipped her head up, pulling the woolen blanket to her chin. On this clear, cold night, the stars were so abundant that she wondered if she’d see any meteors at all. Then, quite suddenly, there was a streak of light across the sky, making her gasp, and then more of them, as if the sky were raining light.

Zoe and Catherine were huddled on the Adirondack love seat beneath a blanket. One of them pointed to the sky and said something Eve couldn’t hear. She couldn’t tell one voice from the other, and with their heads bent so close together, her daughters appeared to be a single creature. Later, she would take Catherine aside and try to say all of the things she should have said long ago: about Andrew and Marta and their son, to start with, and then a longer conversation about how sorry Eve was about seeming to always favor Zoe over Catherine, when Catherine had needed her just as much as a child. And about how proud she was of Catherine’s accomplishments and of how generous and loving a mother she had become.

Eve hoped it wasn’t too late for those conversations with her older daughter. What else could a mother do, but keep trying? Meanwhile, for now she was happy to know that her daughters were together. Looking out for each other.

Willow and Darcy had put the lens on the camera and were watching the sky now, too, standing side by side, tipping their heads so comically far back that they looked related, especially with strands of Willow’s hair escaping from the hood of her black jacket and floating, almost silver in the moonlight, just like Darcy’s.

Watching them, and feeling her daughters beside her, something in Eve let go, that small sad creature inside of her that had been clinging with its monkey paws to the idea that loneliness was her permanent state, because she had been married to a man for whom she was not enough and had lost a daughter, because she had been widowed and worried that she might lose her daughter a second time once every secret was out.

That creature inside her morphed now into something else for Eve, into the sparkling feathered realization that she had family gathered around her, noisy and flawed and generous. She wasn’t lonely after all, but a woman who loved and was loved. A woman who would ask for forgiveness and receive it, for all of the mistakes she’d made, and would continue to make, as long as she lived beneath a sky that rained light.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Where, oh where, would I be without my family? I wouldn’t be a writer—that’s for sure. Whether I need somebody to do the grocery shopping or leave me alone for a weekend while I hammer out pages, my husband, my mom, and my children are infinitely supportive, even bringing me food and tea at the dining room table when I’m tearing my hair out over a manuscript. Thank you, my peeps. I love you all.

My brother Donald and his family—Jean, Emily, and Jill—continue to urge me on from afar, and one of these days I will definitely set a book in England so I can hang out in their glorious riverside brick farmhouse. I might have to set a few scenes in Ithaca, too, where my brother Phil plays any instrument with strings.

My wonderful extended family—all of you Cooksons, Boyles, Schneiders and Robinsons—gives me the confidence to believe in myself by believing in me. I’m proud to be one of you!

My agent, Richard Parks, has become family as well, after two decades of helping me usher books into the world. Thank you, dear man. I hope you know how much I adore you.

At New American Library, I’m blessed to have a fantastic team supporting the production of my books. Special thanks to my savvy whirlwind editor, Tracy Bernstein, whose knowledge of all things literary, academic, and Broadway knows no bounds and whose love of story is equal to mine. I am also blessed to have NAL publisher, Kara Welsh, in my corner, along with the best design, marketing, and publicity people in this crazy business. Thank you, all.

In addition to my in-house publishing team, I want to thank Rachel Tarlow Gul of Over the River Public Relations for her energetic efforts to find the best readers for my books. And there are many people I treasure in my writing community:

First among my writer-mom friends, I want to thank Susan Straight, Emily Ferrara, and Toby Neal, who all know and love Prince Edward Island as much as I do. I couldn’t have written this book without you keeping me company on my various writing retreats there. I also had the support of my caring neighbors on Prince Edward Island, who are always ready to share their stories: Bruce and Pat Craig, Wendell and Barbara Baker, David and Mary Mahar, the Jarvis family, and of course, Rusty and Linda at Elliot’s store—thank you for making my family feel so welcome on the island.

Other writers and editors have also been instrumental in helping me talk and think about my writing. A special shout-out especially to Kristin Bair O’Keeffe, Maddie Dawson, Elisabeth Elo, Ann Garvin, Rachael Herron, Terri Giuliano Long, Amy Sue Nathan, Jay Neugeboren, Carla Panciera, Sandi Kahn Shelton, Virginia Smith, Lorrie Thomson, and Sonja Yoerg for being in my corner. I see you waving those pom-poms! I also must thank Melanie Wold, who always seems to have an extra house on hand at the very moment when I need a writing sanctuary most and is so generous about sharing her spaces. And, last but not least, thank you to Brian Simpson, who is not only a fine hairstylist but also a great storyteller—one of his anecdotes made it into this book.

Finally, I wish to extend my sincerest gratitude to all of the bookstore owners and readers who continue to make this novelist’s dreams come true. Your support means everything to me.