“I don’t need help getting anywhere,” sneered Roland. He would not move from the doorway, Emma saw, and no one could move him—even on one leg, he was like a mountain.
Mr. Stanton said, “Mr. Murphy, if I may . . .”
“You may not,” Roland mocked back.
“Thank you,” Emma said to Mr. Stanton. “Thank you for bringing them home. We’ll manage from here.”
Mr. Stanton took off his hat. His eyes were wet, Emma saw. “It’s not such a crime,” he said, “a girl wanting . . .” Then he trailed off, got into his car without looking again at Roland, and drove back down the hill.
“Was there leather on the seats in there?” asked Joshua.
Liam and Jeffrey nodded, but their eyes were on their father, who stared at Lucy as if repulsed.
“Is like a galloping sofa!” Joshua cried.
“Here,” Emma said, taking pennies from her pocket and giving one to each child. “Go down to the store, buy a piece of candy.” She led Lucy into the perry shack, where she sat her down on the potato bin, sat herself down on the “turnip bin,” and took Lucy’s hands into her own. It was a way of comforting the girl and steadying herself. Emma was frightened by Roland, in the doorway. And she didn’t know what to make of Lucy in her brothers’ clothes, an old cap in her grip (and now in Emma’s), her curls in a plantlike tangle around her head. Emma felt closer to understanding something about Lucy’s behavior all summer—her itchy glances, her pleas for Emma to go back to work—but also farther, because why? Why would the girl want to do such a thing?
Before Emma could speak, Lucy started to cry. She shook silently, then let out a soft wail, her mouth opening to a raw, shocking size, her fingers pulling away from Emma’s. The cap dropped to the floor as she hid her face in her hands. Emma leaned forward, taking the girl into her arms. “It’s all right,” she said. “Shhh. You don’t have to explain.”
This was true, she realized—she didn’t need to know, if it meant having Lucy back, the way she’d been. But Lucy was already explaining, through her tears: “I wanted the money . . . I thought the pears . . . but then I . . . This year . . . I just wanted . . .”
Emma put the snotty, broken parts together. The pears. Lucy was falling apart over the pears, the change of plans since the Mendosa, the neglected Schedule of Ripeness pinned to the shack wall. The children played jacks in the perry shack now, or marbles—they passed time here to avoid Roland. The fruit they had harvested was nearly pressed and there would be no more—despite Roland’s urging, they had been too rattled by the Feds to go out again. But not Lucy, Lucy was saying. Lucy was not afraid of those men! Lucy wanted to finish what they had started. They had made a plan and they should stick to it!
Her vehemence startled Emma. How had she come to care so much about the pears? She took Lucy gently by the shoulders and began, “Sweet girl, we’re going to be fine, it’ll all be fine, you don’t have to go dressing . . .” She wanted to tell her the money from Sven’s was enough, tell her part of growing up was accepting what you couldn’t change, but Lucy pushed her hands away. “It is not fine!” she shouted, and started to sob.
Emma waited then, until Lucy began to tell her, between choking gulps of air, not about the pears or the quarry but about a trip she had taken a few weeks ago, late at night, while the rest of the family slept. She described a ride in a truck full of whiskey, her near capture, a man’s foot on her back, heavier than her carry bag at the quarry, his foot bruising her ribs. There was some kind of search, lights beaming through the coat that covered her, the man’s foot pressing harder, a deal struck, her nose smashed against the truck floor. Emma hardly breathed as Lucy spoke. Apparently it wasn’t just the job: Lucy had a whole life, a species of courage, Emma knew nothing about. You found a newborn and she seemed blanker, somehow, than the newborns you had birthed, free of any history, exempted from her own ties, more yours. But of course she wasn’t any more yours than they were, which was to say less and less all the time.
Still, Emma did not understand where the story was heading, not until Lucy described climbing out of the truck at the Eastern Point Yacht Club. Even then, Emma could not believe it. How could she? She was late, as usual, with laundry. She had not yet found the torn newsprint with Beatrice Cohn’s likeness in the pocket of Liam’s pants. But then Lucy told her about slipping through the gap in the honeysuckle, walking up through the pear trees, swinging a leg onto the terrace of the house where she had been born.
She looked at Emma and said, with sudden coherence: “I saw my mother.”
“Lucy . . .” Emma started to say, but Lucy went on, not noticing or caring about Emma’s astonished tears.
“She looks just like me! Anyone could see it! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I—”
“What were you doing working for her?”
“I—”
“How could you not have told me she was right there all this time?”