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  Sarah paused again, probably in response to my expression of horror. I wanted to push my hand over her mouth, make the story stop. I shivered uncontrollably, my teeth chattering and tried not to grip Chester too tightly. I could tell Sarah had told the story before because she kept herself somewhat poised and factual, despite her fluctuating voice and wet eyes. I should have asked what happened next, but I couldn’t speak, couldn’t control my knocking teeth long enough to make words come out.

  Sarah sighed and skipped over some of the story by simply saying, “She was only 47 years old. Claire told me that they buried my mother a week earlier. Our estranged uncle from New York had come and left, offering to handle the paperwork, taxes, will. Claire was all alone. I got home to Smithport a few days later. When I opened the door, Claire came storming out of the house with a suitcase. I went to hug her but the look on her face … Medusa couldn’t match it. I froze on the porch when I saw her and she started shouting. Hysterically shouting. When I finally got over the shock I asked her what she was talking about. On the phone she sounded fine. I mean fine, between us. She sounded relieved to hear my voice, desperate to see me. I never understood what happened between my call home and that day.” Sarah rested her gaze on me, hunting for some clue to put the savagely crumbled puzzle back together.

  “Claire only said one logical thing to me that day. She said, ‘you get the house. I’m taking the insurance money for school.’” I watched her get into my mother’s car and I ran after her but she wouldn’t even look at me. I thought she would calm down and call me later. I thought we would make up. I have not seen her since that day. I’ve tried, mind you, but she always kept me away.” Sarah let her hands, which had been gesticulating gracefully, grow still and fall into her lap. I hung my head, watching Chester’s thick orange fur absorb my tears.

  “Where were you, when they couldn’t find you?” I asked nervously.

  Sarah deflated, her shoulders falling heavily. “You would ask that. I suppose a story half told isn’t a true story. I was in South Africa.”

  “South Africa?” I blurted. That answer was just one line above Outer Mongolia on the list of things I didn’t expect her to say. “Why were you there?”

  “I went as a research assistant. A PhD student was doing his thesis on dramatic therapy, helping to counsel people using role-play and drama. I took his class and he invited me to go as his assistant. We weren’t exactly reachable. The school tried to contact us, but we were traveling to different clinics and we never got the messages in time.”

  “You went to South Africa?” I tried to fit the label of “world traveler” into my image of her.

  “It was a long time ago.” She rubbed her neck, looking uncomfortable. Something about her eagerness to leave the topic alone made me more curious. Not quite willing to push my luck, I changed direction back to the original story.

  “How long did it take you to get home after you talked to my Mother?”

  A nervous tremor shot up her body and disappeared. “What do you mean?”

  “You were only a couple hours away at the University of Maine when you called her. But you said you got home a few days later.” I swallowed and took a steadying breath before asking, “Was it five days?” My mother’s words marched like the condemned up and down the corridors of my mind – five days, five days, five days.

  “I, I don’t know,” Sarah said, fear tightening her face. “I never counted. I got there as fast as I could. I just, I went to tell John. I needed …” Her eyes flickered coldly and then refocused. “I had a … boyfriend. Let’s just call him that. It doesn’t really fit, but close enough. After our trip to Africa he went home to Boston to finish his research. Anyway, I went to tell him and then I went home.” Sarah’s voice changed abruptly, serious and dreadful, “What is five days, Jennifer?”

  “He was the one you went with? John was the PhD student?

  “What is five days, Jennifer?” She asked, undeterred.

  How could I tell her? I tried to look away, hide the terrible knowledge that hung heavy in my chest, but her eyes wouldn’t release me. At last I answered reluctantly, “My mother didn’t tell me anything. Anything. She just said that she was alone in the world and she needed you and you didn’t come for five days. She said… she said it felt like a long time,” I finished lamely, not willing to repeat Mother’s agonized description.

  “Nooo,” Sarah drew the word out, her voice dripping with pain. “Jasper! I was coming. I was half delirious and then…” she looked to me like I could absolve her, but I met her appalled eyes with my sickened face. “I didn’t mean to not come home. Truly, it was the worst timing. . .” Sarah gave up and sat still, looking as ill as I felt. I pushed my hand over Chester’s fur, concentrating on the way his silky hair parted beneath my fingers. The world felt very big in that instant and I feared any movement, even a glance, would eject me from my place on the furiously spinning globe and throw me into the black abyss of space with only my aunt’s pain as my last memory.

  “I think I knew that was part of it, but I never realized that was it. All of it. Five days! And I did it. I did it,” she repeated, revulsion distorting her voice. She decided “jasper” wouldn’t suffice and swore under her breath. “I’m sorry,” she said immediately, shaking her hand at me to erase the ugly word. “I’m so sorry!” She wasn’t just talking about the swearing anymore. “Why won’t she talk to me? Why?” She demanded, thumping her fist against the arm of her chair and looking at me, trying to find her sister’s reasons somewhere in my face. But the answers didn’t lie with me. Only more questions. And pity as deep as the sea.

  CHAPTER 15

  Sarah tried to recompose herself, but ended up asking me to excuse her to go to bed, instead. I watched her wander to her bedroom, sorry for the hurt I caused by asking her about the five days, but certain, nonetheless, that she needed to know. I didn’t want to stay outside alone in the hushed, humid air so I slipped upstairs and sat on my bed replaying snatches of the conversation. I finally picked up the phone to call Cleo. She answered on the second ring and said, “I thought you were calling tomorrow.”

  “It couldn’t wait. I know what happened now.” She gave me her complete attention while I repeated everything. As I told the story in my own words I saw the picture so vividly – my mother lugging her heavy bag over to the brown Buick. Her refusal to look at her stunned sister. Barely older than me and utterly, voluntarily, alone.

  After exhausting the topic of what happened between my Mother and Sarah, I gave Cleo a brief description of the lines and Nathan, which didn’t interest her.

  “So you all just read a line of something to each other,” she asked, unimpressed.

  I sighed. “You don’t have a romantic bone in your body, Cleo.”

  “Romantic?” She said too loud. “Do you like the boy? Are you reading love sonnets or something? You’ve only been there two days!” Her voice dripped with derision.

  “Not what I meant,” I said as tolerantly as I could manage. Truly, she is like talking to a calculator sometimes. Especially after getting used to Sarah. “I mean romantic as in the beauty of something. Appreciating the beauty of the words. The beauty of the night.” I sat up straighter, stunned by my own revelation. “Cleo, you don’t even recognize the beauty in yourself. I never thought … I never put it together before, but you never give anything credit for being beautiful.”

  Her irritated groan filled the phone. “Don’t be stupid, Jennifer. I don’t emote all over the place, but of course I think things are beautiful.”

  Undeterred, I asked, “what?”

  “What what?”

  “What do you think is beautiful?”

  “I think you’re tired or overwhelmed with poetry or something. Maybe we should talk tomorrow.”

  I laughed, glad to feel some of the heaviness of the night lift. “Don’t be a coward. Just answer the question.”

  Her exasperated breath exploded in my ear and she answered in a monotone, “the
wheat field. I think it’s beautiful.”

  “Was that so hard?”

  “Good night, Jennifer,” she said, her aggravation only intensifying my enjoyment.

  She hung up before she heard me say “good night”, and it’s good, too, because I broke into laughter. One point for me for cracking her.

  The next day dawned bright and breezy with less fog and an aqua blue tint on the horizon. The morning sunlight seemed to infuse Sarah with fresh courage. She met me peacefully at breakfast, but the puffy pink skin around her eyes testified of a long, sleepless night. Before I could ask how she was doing she said, “I thought I’d invite Nathan’s family over for dinner tonight. They are dying to be introduced.” Sarah unceremoniously pushed Chester off the kitchen table and he glared up at her with wounded dignity before stalking from the room with his tail raised high.

  I took great interest in buttering my toast while Sarah talked about firing up her smoker that afternoon. “Would you do salmon, Jennifer? If I swear to make the meatiest, smokiest, least-salmony salmon you ever tasted, would you try it?”

  I smiled and nodded doubtfully. “You can try. Maybe I’ll be converted, yet.”

  I accompanied Sarah into town after breakfast to grab fresh salmon from the men on the dock. Sarah picked out a “little one” roughly the size of a Maine Coon cat. I averted my eyes and tried not to stare at the fixed, glassy eye of the slimy looking fish while a man nimbly wrapped it in brown paper and tied it with a length of twine. I stepped back, making it plain that I would not carry the cold, limp corpse. I don’t mind eating meat, but in Nebraska I don’t have to go to the slaughterhouse and pick my carcass. It unsettled me, the piles of floppy fish packed into long, ice-filled freezers.

  “Thanks, Harv,” Sarah said to the man and he grunted pleasantly. He looked about Sarah’s age, but his chapped, red face was carved with deep wrinkles around his eyes; The face of man who lived on purpose.

  His glance, which darted to me periodically as Sarah picked her fish, finally settled on my face. “That the girl? Claire’s girl?” He spoke as if I couldn’t understand him. I shied away, looking at his shirt pocket instead of his eyes.

  “This is Jennifer. Claire’s daughter.” Sarah said it cheerful enough, but I sensed a deeper meaning to her words.

  “Hmm,” was all he said as he gave me a thoughtful evaluation. I squirmed, shifted my weight and tried to guess what he saw when he looked at me so intently. It was a bit like being assessed by the Marlboro man. “Well, you look like a Maine girl,” he said gruffly and ended the conversation by turning back to his stack of fish.

  Does one say thank you to that? I made a noncommittal sound and followed Sarah off the dock, who didn’t speak again until we walked well out of the man’s hearing range. “That is a high compliment, trust me,” she said in a low voice. “In his own stubborn way Harvey called you beautiful.” And when she smiled at me I could see it: the fresh complexion rubbed clean by salt and wind, the muscular build from a life of battling the elements, and the strong independence in her footsteps.

  Back at Shelter Cove I helped prepare the food, refusing contact with the fish, but happily snapping green beans and mashing potatoes while Sarah told me more about Nathan’s family. “I call them the Beckers, because that is Judith’s last name and they’ll all answer to it if someone says it, but they all have different last names. Nathan’s name is Moore, his sixteen year old sister is Claudia Morgan, Hester is eight and her last name is St. Jean and Darcy’s name is Cass. Not that you have to remember all that. I just thought I’d warn you because it can be confusing when it comes up.”

  I concentrated on her words and tried to ignore whatever she was doing with a tiny silver knife and the heavy, limp fish. “All different,” I mused. “That makes for a complicated family.”

  “I guess all families can get complicated,” Sarah said wryly.

  “So Claudia is sixteen. How old is Nathan?”

  “Seventeen. Almost eighteen. They’re barely a year apart.” She lowered her voice apologetically and said, “She is why Nathan’s dad left.”

  “He didn’t want another kid?”

  “Not one that wasn’t his,” Sarah said slowly, pausing between her words.

  It took me a moment before I said, “oh” very quietly.

  “Is the eight year old anything like Darcy?” I asked, reaching for a less controversial topic.

  “Hardly. She is so much like Nathan. Just as bright, possibly more so. And painfully shy. But when you get to know her she is the most precious soul.”

  I smiled, “Then not much like Darcy at all.” I realized my mistake and quickly corrected. “I don’t mean Darcy isn’t precious. I just meant the shy part.”

  Sarah flicked her hand dismissively and laughed. “They are all gifted. All four of them. I’ve never seen anything like it. Nathan is the most obvious, but Claudia has a mathematical mind that will blow you away, Hester’s comprehension is light years ahead of her age and Darcy, oh sweet, sweet, Darcy. She’s too smart for her own good. She knows enough to be dangerous.”

  “You teach them all?”

  “Not Nathan. He finished High School when he was fifteen. He’s been taking long distance classes from the University of Maine.” Sarah grabbed an apron out of a drawer and looped it around her small waist. She caught me watching and said critically, “I don’t know why I do this. I’m not really worried about flour on my jeans. Force of habit. My mother always did it.” She made a face at herself and turned back to the counter.

  “Why doesn’t Nathan just go away to school, if he’s been done with high school so long?”

  Sarah stopped moving and raised her head. “‘Why’ is a hard question. He never gives me the real answer. He says he needs to save more money but colleges come begging for him. Lots of free rides. He scored perfect on the SATs. Perfect. Then he says he doesn’t want to leave the girls alone. His reasons are his. I don’t know, exactly.”

  “Perfect? Can people do that? I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Just a special few. It’s not common, that’s for sure. And Nathan did it twice – just for good measure.” She smacked her bottom to clean off her dusty hands and looked over my shoulder at the mashed potatoes. “Those look good. You make them at home?”

  “My specialty.”

  “Well, there you go. Potatoes are something that Maine and Nebraska have in common.” She ruffled my hair affectionately. While Sarah finished the more complicated parts of dinner I chose a line and waited nervously for the Becker family. When I heard animated voices through the window I hitched on a forced smile as Darcy’s familiar clumps resounded on the steps.

  “Sarah!” She called loudly. “Jennifer!” A small scuffle ensued followed by a “shut up and knock on the door like a normal person.” I replaced my fake smile with a genuine chuckle and opened the door to find too many heads trying to squeeze into the empty space surrounded by the door frame. Nathan hung back, but the girls jostled to position, trying to cross the threshold in a jumble of arms and legs and bodies, which thoroughly delighted Charlie as he raced into the room, black ear cocked and tongue waving.

  I stepped back until they could sort themselves out and a petite blonde girl detached herself by shaking Darcy’s hand roughly from her arm. “Get off!” She mumbled. She looked at me for a long moment and then turned and smacked Nathan roughly in the arm. I jumped more than he did. Then the girl smiled at me. I might like one of them, after all.

  As she opened her mouth to say something Darcy announced loudly, “This is Claudia Gale, my biggest sister.”

  Claudia bared her teeth at Darcy, rolled her eyes and then turned back to me, her hand raised in a wave, “Claude. Just Claude.” I waved back, thinking that she looked more like a ten year old than a girl my age. She could only be five feet, tops. Her curly blonde hair framed a delicately featured face with a sharp nose, tiny pink lips and not a trace of make-up. Her slight body was stick straight, flat-chested and wiry. But she turned a w
arm smile on me that rivaled a mid-western welcome. One of the few I’d gotten up here.

  “Did she say Claudia Gale?”

  “Yes, but like I said …”

  “No, I won’t call you that. But how do you spell Gale?” She told me and my mouth opened in surprise just as Sarah came into the room. I turned to my aunt and exclaimed, “My middle name is Gale, too! Spelled the same way!” It seemed too incredible a coincidence.

  Sarah’s surprise mirrored mine, but for different reasons. “You’re Jennifer Gale? You never told me that!” She studied me with grave eyes. “That’s my middle name, too.”

  “Are you serious?” My mother named me after Sarah?

  “But half the girls in this town have Gale for a middle name. Tradition. It’s our way of naming them after her,” Sarah tilted her head to the windows where the sea glinted.

  I tried to digest it quickly so I could return to introductions, but my dumbfounded face just kept staring at Sarah. Perhaps my mother didn’t make as complete a break as I’d been led to believe. Some Smithport lingered in her yet.

  “My middle name is Jean!” Darcy said loudly, not wanting to be left out any longer.

  “Good for you, Dear,” Sarah said absently and stretched out her hand to pat her on the head and ended up tapping her in the face instead. Sarah gave me a significant look and we each filed away the subject for later scrutiny. We had guests to attend to.

  “Hey, Jennifer. Good to meet you. I’m Judith,” I turned my attention to Judith for the first time. I didn’t like her. I know that sounds rash, but as Sarah says, a story half told isn’t a true story. Her gruff voice, open posture and straddled legs made her too rough to be appealing. And Sarah was right, the accent sounded wrong on a woman. She smiled but the severe cut of her short blonde hair looked threatening. Why do so many men love her? I wondered as I gave a polite smile and a two finger wave. She walked up and threw her arm around my shoulder, squeezing too hard. “So ya like it he’e?” I nodded quickly and slipped out of her uncomfortable grasp.