After the initial days of questioning Miranda, Kit had begun at last, as expected, to talk about himself. Miranda dutifully prepared herself to listen, as she always listened to everyone, waiting for the confidences she knew would come.
But instead of describing sexual abuse at boarding school or stepfathers who beat him or a sordid struggle with crack cocaine, Kit talked about his happy boyhood in Maine, the walks through the woods digging up rare wildflowers with his parents and brothers and sisters; the evenings on the rocky beach splashing and digging for clams in the frigid water. The picture of this group of beautiful human beings--for surely they all looked like Kit--plunging headlong through the verdant Maine woods beneath the cheerful songs of warblers or standing windblown knee-deep in the surf made Miranda long to be in Maine herself. The smell of the pines. The breeze hurrying the bright white clouds through the infinite blue of the sky. It was true that Miranda could smell pines perfectly well right where she was, and that the breeze was hurrying just the kind of bright clouds through exactly the infinite blue sky she imagined right there on Compo Beach, which was probably what made her think of pines and clouds and infinity in the first place, but still she longed for Maine, the land of Alex Katz and E. B. White.
"I thought lobster at a bar mitzvah was totally normal . . ." Kit was saying.
Miranda smiled at him. She looked at Henry, asleep at the moment, his pink mouth pressed into his father's shoulder. She listened intently to Kit, not hearing him. What a luxury his stories were, like a vacation. No tortured memoir here, no Lite Victory. Just tender reminiscence. She had never seen eyes like Kit's, she thought. His best friend, Seth, he was saying. His words passed over her like a silky breeze. Bright, pale gray eyes as deep and translucent as air--look at them--the lashes thick and dark, above and below, like a horse's lashes. His eyes were as dramatic as the eyes of a silent-film star. Oh, she could go on and on about Kit's eyes. At Seth's bar mitzvah, Kit said. Bar mitzvah, Miranda thought, trying to pay attention. Seth's bar mitzvah. She was probably the same age as Seth's parents. But surely she was better preserved than Seth's parents, whom she envisioned as a weathered couple in matching track shoes and kelly green fleece jackets. Appetizers of oysters and chopped liver, said Kit.
Henry woke up, and Kit put him down on the sand. Miranda and Kit stood together and watched Henry dig a hole. It seemed to Miranda that this must be the most beautiful time of the year, the air cool, the light soft and clean.
But I'm too old, she thought, and Kit's too young.
Then Kit took her hand and put it to his lips.
Now, Kit's parents, of course, were older, she remembered, definitely older than she was, Kit very presciently being the youngest of four children, each three years apart. And how well they all got along, the three of them, she and Kit and Henry.
Miranda dropped suddenly down on one knee and patted some sand into a pile. "Castle," she said.
Henry nodded vigorously. "Yes," he agreed. "Castle."
Miranda wondered what life would be like with this small, busy person at her side, day in and day out, waking her in the middle of the night with a bad dream and a soggy diaper, banging a gummy spoon on the kitchen table, crying in wild, piercing simian shrieks in the grocery store while grabbing at boxes of cereal. When Henry cried, his face crumpled so immediately, so completely. He was not crying now, though she was sure he soon would be, and for some reason she could never have anticipated--an ice-cream cone dropped yesterday, suddenly recalled; a filthy cigarette butt found in the sand and confiscated; the sand itself, suddenly deemed itchy and hostile; the wind, the sound of the waves, a gull swooping low? It could be anything, it would be something. But right now Henry was sitting on his heels poking holes in the wet sand with a stick. The yellow light held him in an embrace. His face was serious and beautiful.
She felt a hand on her hair and looked up. It was Kit, smiling down at her. She had almost forgotten he was there.
Once, Miranda asked Kit why he didn't return to his apartment in the city or move into his Aunt Charlotte's big house.
"I know this place is adorable and picturesque and all," she said, looking around at the boathouse. There were three rooms, all painted a glossy nautical white--a living room containing two Adirondack chairs, a rag rug, a tiny two-burner stove, and a half-size refrigerator; a small bedroom with a maple dresser and a brass bed from the time when people were apparently shorter and thinner; and an even smaller room with an ornate and old-fashioned crib. "But it's all sort of built for hobbits."
"Or Henry."
"But even little Henry needs screens. What do you do, pull out a mosquito net at night? Do you have a fan? Do you have heat? It's not winterized, is it? I hope you have hot water. You do, don't you?"
Kit laughed and nodded.