Sarah arrives at seven in the morning in her uniform. The woman has dark blond hair, blue eyes, and an air of confidence. Grace has made a large breakfast for her and the children. When the kids aren’t listening, she asks Sarah to give Gene the envelope with Grace’s letter inside sometime after lunch. Grace tells Claire that they are all going on a little vacation, and that Sarah, a nurse, will take good care of Daddy. Claire warms to the idea of a vacation and asks, “Will there be new toys?”
“Yes,” says Grace.
While her children chat with Sarah in the kitchen, Grace moves to the library and stares at the paneled walnut door. In this room, she and Aidan once made love. She has never adjusted to the fact that it has become her husband’s room, its resonance no longer that of passion, but rather that of sadness and emotional turmoil. Reaching for the brass doorknob, she hesitates before turning it. Only her fingertips touch the metal. Inside, Gene is lying painless and asleep, or he is waiting for his own day to begin. Does he feel remorse of any kind? Grace thought, in a moment of empathy and generosity, that she would go into his room, sit in a chair, and try to talk to him about the terror he was creating in the night for the children. She wasn’t going to mention herself, because that was the point, wasn’t it? To punish her, to have power over her.
She removes her fingers from the knob in case she inadvertently turns it.
As if by mere touch she had instructed the door to swing open, Gene stands at the threshold, startling Grace so much that she grabs on to the back of a chair. His jaw is set, he has on clean navy silk pajamas, and he’s wearing his eye patch. “Where are you going?” he asks.
Grace shakes her head, stunned by her terrible luck.
“You were about to come into my room, weren’t you?”
She puts a hand to her chest and remembers that she has on a good dress. Not a special one, but a good one. She has fake pearls at her ears.
She’s struck dumb.
“You’re going somewhere?” An entirely different question from his first one.
Her vision narrows to a black dot, but then returns.
“What’s going on?” he asks, beginning to suspect something.
“I was coming to wake you,” she says, her voice thin. “There’s someone I want you to meet. Wait here.”
Fighting for air, she enters the kitchen, where Sarah is sitting with the children. “Sarah, I’d like to speak with you for a moment. Claire, you stay here and watch your brother. You’re a big girl now.”
When Sarah stands, Grace notes that her back is straight and her legs are strong. The nurse looks like a woman who, while polite, can handle a challenge. There’s no time to explain anything further to her, just a moment for an introduction that has only a small chance of being successful.
“Gene, I’d like you to meet Sarah Brody. She’s an extremely qualified nurse and is going to help with your care. Sarah, this is my husband, Gene.”
There’s a long moment of silence. Sarah smiles. Gene cocks his head, considering.
Does Gene understand? Does he know that he’s about to exchange one life for another, and that the other is potentially a better one?
His scrutiny of Sarah continues. Then he looks at Grace as if he knew her plans. Before he can say another word, however, Sarah moves in front of Grace, and with a deft turning motion of her hands, she coaxes Gene back into his room.
Sarah is more welcome than a vase of flowers. Than a wife.
Grace lifts Tom and tells Claire to come with her. Collecting one of the suitcases, she hustles her children down the driveway and along the block to the Ford. “Wait here, don’t move,” she says to Claire.
Grace, crouching, runs and limps as best she can to the top of the drive and collects the second suitcase.
With legs shaking and stomach hollow, Grace drives slowly along the coast road as if tempting the hand of God to hook on to the car and haul it back to Merle Holland’s house. She remembers the old baby carriage lost in the fire, the one with the navy enameled chassis and the white leather trim, and for a moment she pictures pushing Claire and Tom out of town with steely determination. When she comes to a stop sign, she rolls down her window, sticks out her arm, and bends it at the elbow. She’s headed north.
Epilogue
1950
Grace
“What are you doing on the ground?” Rosie asks.
“I’m trying to take a picture of the stars.” Grace peers through the lens of the camera Rosie and Tim gave her for Christmas. “They’re so clear tonight.”
Rosie lays a towel on the seat of a teak deck chair and sits.
“I can see them with my eyes, but not at all with the lens,” Grace adds.
“The camera isn’t perfect.”
“It is perfect. You’ve seen the photographs of the kids.”
“I have,” says Rosie, “but aren’t the stars awfully far away?”
“I don’t get it. The camera is a lens. My eye is a lens. The sun is the same distance from each, and I can take a picture of the sun. Well, sort of. The stars are the same distance from each, but I can’t find a single twinkling dot in the camera.”
“Not enough light,” Rosie says, putting a cigarette to her lips. “Now get up. You’ll catch your death.”
Grace props her body on her arm and then stands. “My mother used to say that when I was a kid.”
Rosie lays another towel on another deck chair meant for Grace.
“Thanks,” Grace says, fitting the camera back into its case. “Have you seen how curious Claire is about this? Yesterday, I let her hold the camera and look through the lens and push the shutter. I can’t wait to get the roll of film developed so that she can see her pictures. I’m excited about the idea of teaching her the rudiments of photography.”
“Don’t leave the camera lying around Ian. First thing he’d do is take it apart.”
“And then he’d put it back together again. He’s going to be an engineer one day.”
“They’re both asleep?”
“Yes, yours?” Grace asks.
“I left the whole bedtime thing to Tim,” Rosie says and laughs. “It’ll be good for him. He hasn’t done it in ages. And if I have to read The Poky Little Puppy one more time, I’ll scream.”
When Grace arrived in Tim and Rosie’s driveway in Nova Scotia during the summer of 1948, she bent her head to the steering wheel while Rosie and Tim, stunned and elated by her presence, took Tom and Claire out of the Ford. Grace had driven straight through, and she was more exhausted than she’d ever been. She hadn’t dared to stop for fear that she’d lose her nerve.
She was malnourished and dehydrated, and for two weeks she lay in a guest room bed, sickened by remorse and guilt and also a kind of moral anxiety. One day, after much careful attention from Rosie, Tim and she appeared at Grace’s bedroom door. Tim sat in a chair and called a halt to the remorse. He told Grace she had a new life before her as well as happy children. Then Rosie took Grace outside, where they sat together on the rocks by the sea and talked. In that hour, Grace could feel her body repairing itself. Rosie swore it was the sea air that cleared her head.
Grace’s first act of independence was to design a house for herself and the children. It was constructed on the land beside Tim and Rosie’s. Grace’s is a simple cape with three bedrooms upstairs, painted white and unadorned: white trim, no shutters. Inside, she has a washing machine, a dryer, a bathtub, a shower, and a record player, luxuries she decided she couldn’t live without. Both Grace’s and Rosie’s houses lie on land owned by Rosie’s mother.