“When are Melissa and the kids coming?” said Libby.
“Tomorrow. Kerry and Buster couldn’t tear themselves away from their busy social lives before then.” Tom rolled his eyes, a good impression of his teenage children. Libby began to mentally revise that day’s menu. Tom’s hands were pointing at the house again.
“Tom, did you see those dolphins swimming with the ferry?” said Gwen.
“They’re porpoises,” said Danny.
“Those ferry windows are so scratched you can barely see out. They should really be replaced,” said Tom. He always spent the majority of the ferry ride in the cabin working. Libby was surprised he wasn’t on his phone right now.
“I don’t know how you can sit below without getting sick,” said Libby.
“Porpoises or porpoi?” said Gwen absently.
Libby’s knuckles kept knocking against Danny’s knees. “You got to put those somewhere.”
“Maybe I should just get out and kick,” said Danny, paddling the water with one hand. “We might get there faster.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, would you like to row the five-hundred-plus pounds of Willoughby around the thoroughfare?” said Libby. “Actually, I’d love some help; why don’t you just dive right in and give us a tow? The water’s so refreshing.” Refreshing. That was their word for freezing.
“Forget it, you’re doing great. I like the scenic route,” said Danny.
On her next stroke she gave his knees a particularly powerful knock.
“It’s porpoises,” said Tom.
“Porpoi, sounds like pork pie.” Gwen.
“Pork pie.” Danny sighed. “When’s lunch?” Up here eating was a sport, and Danny was a champion, his teenage appetite yet to abate. Though Gwen was capable of giving him some stiff competition, at least when lobster was involved. The dinghy squawked against the rubber bumper of the float.
“Pork pie is a hat,” said Gwen. “You’re thinking of pork buns.” She hopped out of the boat and knelt on the float, holding the boat close so the others could get out.
Libby couldn’t remember the last time they had been up there just the four of them, no friends, no spouses. Just the kids. That’s what their parents would’ve said. But now there wasn’t even one parent left to say that, to remind them of the intimacy that they all came from that bound them together in ways that went beyond ferry schedules and Christmas cards.
Three summers ago, their father died. Only their mother had been there. She had watched him walk through that screen door, as he had every summer since 1972, and collapse on the porch. He had seemed never to age to Libby, still able to pick her up in a hug, still sailing the sloop by himself, still climbing on the roof with a hammer in hand. “I can smell a leak,” he’d say. She had watched him push her dead car down her long, narrow driveway so that he could jump it. He had waved away her help, as if she might hurt herself. When she was little she had thought someone that tall could never die. But since the summer she turned ten, Libby had watched for it. Once she knew what to look for. She tried to stay close, to be sure he didn’t slip away from her. And then he did, on a Tuesday, when she wasn’t even there. She hadn’t been able to stop it at all.
Bob Willoughby was just sixty-one when he died. They scattered his ashes in the thoroughfare. That summer their mother, Scarlet, had stayed in the house much later than usual, well into October, until Remy told her that the water had to be turned off or she ran the risk of bursting a pipe. The float was pulled up the day she left. Now she was gone too.
On the float, they picked up items from a pile of duffel bags, totes with stitched initials, two small coolers, and a case of wine. It was only ten. Loaded down, they teetered up the ramp. The skids of their shoes scratched against the asphalt paper. Through the fabric of her thin shirt Libby could feel the note stiff against her skin, trying to push its way from her pocket, trying to be seen.
“God, it smells so fucking good here,” said Gwen.
“You say that every time,” said Danny as he came up the ramp behind her carrying a case of wine.
All Libby could smell was Gwen’s suntan lotion and Danny’s sleeping bag, the warm, earthy smell of a dog bed. She was too accustomed to the dry smell of pine needles and lichen, the salt of seaweed and wet rope. She wanted to read the note again; she wanted to tear it up. But she couldn’t do that with them here, ready to take it from her, to wrestle the reins from her hands.
It was low tide, making it a steep climb up to the pier. Libby, a bag in one hand, a sleeping bag in the other, headed up the twisting path hemmed by rocks and beach roses. On the porch she held out the duffel and sleeping bag to Danny. “Your bedroll and valise, sir.” He typically responded to her Victorian bit with, “I’ll take a snifter of brandy in my chambers at the usual hour,” or something similar. The hours of watching BBC dramas with Scarlet had rubbed off on him. Today, though, he just stared at the water, biting his nails, before he realized she was talking to him.
“Dan, your crap.”
He turned to her and shook his head. “Sorry, the view, it sucks me in.” He shrugged, took his things, and headed upstairs.
Now Libby stood alone on the porch, among the coolers and the case of wine. Her siblings apparently thought the food would just magically float onto the shelves in the pantry. They never thought about logistics, about the number of beds divided by the number of invited guests, the cubic space of a side-by-side refrigerator, the amount of wine that people consume while on vacation. They bought and brought what they were told. They were good about sticking to the menu she drafted. But she was the one charging any dry goods they couldn’t carry from the mainland over at Fairholm’s. Her siblings seemed to forget that their mother was gone. There was no one who diligently carried and stowed. No one who cataloged and restocked. Well, there was, of course: Libby. Really, in the three years since their father died, Scarlet had been receding, leaving Libby to pick up the various tasks left behind. She wasn’t sure what was worse, to replace her mother or to be ignored as the replacement.