The Silver Boat (6 page)

“Wow, Andy. I can't tell the difference.”

Andy took that in with some pride. Then, steering her through the cracked wooden gate, he said, “This is what I really wanted to show you.”

She gazed down at a four-foot-diameter doughnut-shaped piece of granite. Kneeling down, she felt the rough surface.

“The millstone?” she asked.

“That's right,” he said.

“What did they mill?”

He knelt down beside her, foraged around the wheel, held up a few petrified kernels of corn. “Big cornfield here, once stretching halfway back to Alley's. Of course, the property's been cut up half a dozen times. The untouched part right here is five acres.”

He held her hand as they both got up. They heard Scup foraging through fallen oak leaves.

“Thanks for showing me all this,” she said. “Especially now.”

“I figured you needed to know there's still some parts of the island left untouched. Or almost so,” he said, glancing at the wall and millstone.

He drove her back, dropped her in the farmhouse driveway. She kissed him for a long time, holding tight, wishing they could go back to the Hideaway. Instead she jumped out of the truck, and she and Scup ran toward the house.

D
elia stood at the kitchen sink, sipping coffee. She and Rory had stayed up late in their pajamas, talking by the fire. They'd remembered late nights long ago, parties that could last till dawn.

At Christmas and New Year's, the guests would gather round the big fireplace in the living room; hot July nights they'd spill out into the yard, drinking Tilly McCarthy's signature summer cocktail, Moët & Chandon mixed with fresh peach juice. Happy, lively times.

Delia peered out the kitchen window, glimpsed a white truck through the hedge. It pulled into the driveway, and Delia saw Dar kiss Andy and come toward the house.

“Good morning,” she said, kissing Dar as she walked in. “Didn't Andy want to come in?”

“He had to get to work.”

Dar poured herself coffee. Was it wrong of Delia to want Dar to have someone in her life? Not that everything with Jim ran smoothly, far from it, but it helped knowing someone was there, the person you loved and cared about, the one who loved you back.

“Are you okay?” Delia asked.

“Yes,” Dar said.

Delia wondered. Was she really? Was it possible? They'd all been raised to think that marriage and children were the way. Their father leaving had done a good job of slicing Dar to pieces. Rory and Delia had been stronger, or somehow better able to seal it off. Practicality helped. Delia took out her checklist and years of their mother's bank statements, ready to get down to business.

“Are we ready for this?” Delia asked.

Dar shook her head.

“It has to be done. I've looked through every account, watched the balance fall as her health care bills piled up.”

“I know, I was here,” Dar said.

Delia felt hot, but she took a deep breath. Each sister had helped in her own way, but it was true: Dar had been present the whole time.

“Sorry,” Dar said. “I didn't mean it that way. I just remember how hard it was to write the checks every month, seeing her money drain away. I was afraid it would run out before her heart stopped. We were lucky to be able to keep her at home till the end.”

“I know how much it meant to her,” Delia said. “Between you and the private duty nurses . . . She was lucky, Dar, wasn't she? To be able to stay here? To have had the means? Grandmother made so much possible, when you think about it.”

“Yes,” Dar said. “The other world.” That's what they used to call it, their grandmother's big houses and proper ways.

“You know what I was remembering?” Delia asked. “Mom's parties. They were so wild and wonderful.”

Dar leaned against the counter, arms folded. She wore skinny jeans and a long black sweater, and even though her dark hair was still damp, to Delia she looked raffishly elegant.

“Those parties were Mom's way of whistling in the dark,” Dar said. “She never had them before Dad left, but afterwards she surrounded herself with as many people as she could, pulling her friends close so she could forget . . .”

Delia knew this was Dar's sacred territory. “Don't you think she forgot him long ago? They were separated by the time he left.”

“No,” Dar said. “She hoped he'd come back. I know she did.”

You
did, Delia wanted to say. For Delia and Rory, survival had meant accepting that their father wasn't coming home. He'd crossed the Atlantic—that much of the mystery had been solved.

Nearly a month after leaving the Vineyard, he'd called from the very edge of West Kerry, Ireland, where he'd sculled into an outermost harbor, rudder damaged and sails torn to shreds in a wild gale. One phone call home, one minute each for his wife, Rory, and Delia. Five minutes for Dar. And they never heard from him again. He'd made it to Ireland with still a fair way to sail to get around the treacherous coast to Cork, and that was all they knew.

“Dar . . .”

“It's okay,” Dar said.

“All right, then,” Delia said, tapping her pad. “Let's get down to this. It's waterfront property. The reassessments were brutal.”

“Mom never anticipated how high they'd be.”

“Do you think she knew before she died that we'd have to sell?”

“She dreaded it,” Dar said. “But she was too weak to really deal; she wanted to believe we'd be able to keep this place forever.”

Glancing at the accounts, a thought crossed Delia's mind: if they sold Daggett's Way, there would be money left over. She could use her share to help ease her family's financial strain, give Pete whatever he needed to get him back on the right track. Money didn't matter to her a bit, except for how it might help fix her family.

“I'm up,” Rory announced, heading straight for the coffeepot. “Have you figured it all out without me? Good, let's go to the beach!”

“Good morning,” Delia said.

“Sleep well?” Dar asked.

“Yes. I only called Jonathan once.”

“Why'd you call him at all?” Delia asked.

Rory held the mug between her hands, blowing on the hot coffee. “Well, it's not as if the gallery is doing well in this economy, but I was thinking maybe we still had a painting of our own worth selling, to raise tax money. We don't.”

“But it was a good excuse to call him,” Dar said.

“Forget it, okay? What are we going to do about the money?”

“It's bad, you guys,” Delia said, staring at the checkbook. “No matter how we figure it, there's not enough here. I guess we could talk to the tax assessor, try to work out a payment plan.”

“With what?” Rory asked.

“I know,” Dar said. “That's the problem.”

“Look, it's not going to get solved this minute.”

“It's not going to be solved at all,” Delia said. “I'm just facing facts.”

“Delia,” Dar said.

“Stay calm, everybody,” Rory said. “We need a break. What are we going to do today?”

“I thought we'd go see Harrison,” Dar said.

“Oh, yeah,” Rory said, and they all started to smile. “The day's shaping up already.”

 

 

They left the kids home. Sylvia was fine with babysitting and taking a break from the adults. Dar took the long way, driving through Chilmark to Menemsha, out past the Coast Guard station and fish markets to the end of the road. A trawler chugged out of the harbor.

Across the white-capped bight was Lobsterville, a long, narrow sand spit where her family had picnicked on warm summer nights, waiting to watch the sun set and the moon rise. Dar and her sisters stared across the water at the broken, tilting pilings, remains of the dock from which their father had left.

“Now it's time to be happy,” Rory said. “Don't forget—
happy
. No melancholic silences until the witching hour.”

“I'm in sheer bliss,” Delia said.

Dar glanced in the rearview mirror to see if she was being sarcastic. Rory, sitting beside her up front, lit a cigarette and blew out smoke rings.

Delia made a show of opening the back windows so the car was suddenly filled with chilly salt air. Dar had quit smoking at twenty, but it had been an early bond with Rory—that plus piercing each other's ears, numbing the lobes and outer edges with ice cubes, taking slugs of whiskey to kill the pain, and using a thick sewing needle to do the deed, then hanging tiny gold hoops bought in Oak Bluffs in each hole.

Dar made a U-turn at the dead end, drove back through Menemsha and Chilmark, through wooded back roads that led toward Oak Bluffs. The air smelled of bright pine and earthy oak. This was another land, removed from the beach, and from the towns. Nearly deserted except for the occasional cabin tucked back in the woods—one of which belonged to Andy—it felt remote and spooky.

“I can't see Harrison living back here,” Rory said.

“Tell me he's bought forty acres, planning to build a replica of his parents' house in Edgartown,” Delia said.

“Not quite,” Dar said.

“He looked the same as ever at Mom's funeral,” Rory said.

Dar pictured how he'd looked that day. Blue blazer, white shirt, yacht club tie, khakis, Top-Siders, heavier than ever, wiping away tears, mourning his “other mother.”

Dar flipped on her signal, even though there was no traffic in either direction. She turned right just past a sign for Island Storage and then wound along a sandy road that led to rows of storage units.

“What's this?” Delia asked. “I thought we agreed not to store any of Mom's stuff.”

“Exactly,” Rory said. “Forget the side trip, and let's go see Harrison.”

Dar drove in a looping zigzag, up a small hill. Narrow metal compartments lined the road, but as it climbed higher, the units became larger, built of concrete. Dar always got lost in here, but she spotted the satellite dish on top of one flat roof, aimed toward it, and found Harrison in a satin robe flopped like a beached whale on a hardware store folding webbed chaise longue.

“Welcome!” he said, clambering up.

“Holy fucking shit,” Rory said, getting out of the car. “You've got to be kidding me.”

Harrison welcomed her, and then Delia, pulling them into a huge Harrison-style hug.

The unit's overhead garage door was open, and Delia peered inside. Dar watched her take it in: the four-poster bed; three vintage guitars and two fiddles, gifts from someone he'd done some work for, hanging on the wall; an antique partners desk intricately carved with dolphins and scallop shells; the gilded chairs that had once adorned the living room of his parents' Beacon Hill apartment.

“Is this where you hide your family's treasures?” Delia asked.

“Hell no,” Harrison said. “Didn't Dar tell you? It's where I live, baby.”

“You live in a storage unit,” Rory said in a flat voice.

“Yes!” Harrison said. “It costs a hundred dollars a month—fully tax deductible. Come on in.”

“I can't believe it,” Rory said. “This can't be real.”

“I'm rich in many, many ways,” he said in his deep baritone.

Dar trailed behind as Harrison showed her sisters his flat-screen TV, his computer, his small bathroom.

“How is this possible in a storage unit?” Delia asked.

“It's industrial, baby,” he said. “Think loft space, Manhattan in the eighties. Light industry welcome. Electricity, running water. Satellite TV. I rent under the name of Thaxter Enterprises.”

“Which does what?”

“Sails, drinks, and romances the ladies,” he said.

Dar knew the first two were true, but it had been a while since Harrison had romanced anyone. He never complained, but she knew he had fallen far. He wasn't Icarus, but his father had been—gambling the old money away, melting his wings at the Monaco and Las Vegas roulette tables, crashing to earth.

After his father's sudden death, Harrison had been left with debts and the reality of his father's bank taking possession of the Boston apartment and the summer place on Water Street in Edgartown. He didn't advertise his financial situation; Dar was one of his few confidantes.

“But there's no shower,” Delia said, looking into the bathroom.

“For that I go to the yacht club! Which is where I'm taking the McCarthy sisters for lunch right now. Just let me change.”

Rory rode with Harrison in his navy blue panel truck, and Dar and Delia followed. Delia was full of questions, including how he managed to afford the yacht club if he was living in a place worse than a trailer park, and Dar kept telling her to ask Harrison. They drove down Main Street in Edgartown, past sea captains' white clapboard houses and the brick courthouse, boutiques and cafés.

Dar parked behind Harrison, who looked more jaunty than she'd seen him all winter, in chinos, a red polo shirt, and a dark green fleece she'd given him for Christmas. He clinked as he walked, pockets full of keys. When they got to the yacht club, Delia shook the gate, puzzled.

“It's closed,” she said, disappointed. “I forgot—it closes for the winter, doesn't it?”

“Reopens in May,” Harrison said, his tone jolly. “The commodore left the water on so I can shower.”

He used a key to unlock the gate, held it open for the sisters, and guided them onto the sun-drenched dock. They sat in a row, legs dangling over the harbor, just as they'd done as kids waiting for sailing lessons, and then regattas. Dar noticed Harrison snuggling close to Rory; it was an open secret, the fact he had always loved her.