“I didn’t know your grandmother well,” Evan says. “But she didn’t seem like the stalking type. She intimidated me, to be honest. I saw her as so regal and refined.”
“She was both. A nice balance to the total spaz that is my mother—God love her. We bonded over the various manifestations of Cissy cuckooness.”
“Your mother is a pain in the ass,” Evan says. “But she’s one of the greats.”
“Exactly. Pain in the ass. Awesome. At the same time. That’s why she’ll drive you nuts.”
Bess opens a box and begins sifting through it.
“You know, there’s a lot to do,” Evan says, scanning the room and the kitchen beyond. “I’m thinking … sort out the memorabilia later?”
“I know, I know,” Bess says. “But first…”
She passes Evan a piece of paper, yellowed and thin.
“My grandfather’s discharge papers from World War Two. I thought he was injured but this says he was discharged for ‘psychoneurosis.’” Bess frowns. “Could be code for alcoholic.”
“You’re the doctor.”
“We’re more specific these days. We can’t get away with general hysteria or run-of-the-mill batshit loony tunes.”
Bess pitches the paper back into its box.
“Grandma would hate this,” she says. “The packing up, the moving of Cliff House. Her mom conceived it but the house was Ruby’s through and through.”
“Yes, she’d hate it,” Evan says. “And so do you, which is why you’ve done such a crap job packing.”
“Hey!”
“It’s true. Hell, I hate it and my own father is the demon single-handedly trying to thwart Cissy’s efforts to preserve it.”
“Yeah.” Bess snorts. “Your father is a demon all right. We shouldn’t even be in the same room.”
“You miss her.”
Bess looks up.
“Ruby?” she says, though the question, and therefore the answer, is clear. “Yeah. I do. I miss her a ton.”
“Come on,” Evan says, and grabs Bess’s hand. “I have an idea.”
She looks down at his fingers meshed with hers. Her insides surge.
“Shouldn’t we … finish packing?” Bess says.
“Finish packing? I hate to break it to you, but you haven’t even started. Let’s go.”
Evan slants his head in the direction of Baxter Road.
“What’re a few more hours?” he asks.
“Uhhhh…” Bess says, her skin at once clammy. “A few more hours might be the difference between a full living room and half of one.”
“So either Cliff House will be here when we get back, or it won’t.”
“Okay, that’s not funny.”
“At least you won’t be in it when it falls.”
“Fair enough,” Bess says in a grumble. “Can I change?”
“Why are you always so worried about your clothes?”
Bess barks out a laugh.
“That is the first time anyone’s ever accused me of being worried about my clothes. I wear scrubs for a job. Pajamas, basically.”
Evan doesn’t respond, and with a soft and careful tug leads Bess back into the kitchen and down the hall.
“I should at least put on a bra,” she insists, trying not to think of her hand, or how firmly it is being held.
What would Ball Cap think?
“I couldn’t rob Cissy of her hard-earned reputation for eccentricity,” Bess adds.
“All right, princess.”
Evan drops Bess’s arm, which falls to her side and then hangs there awkwardly.
“Go find your coveted brassiere and meet me outside by the truck. This field trip shouldn’t take long but it’ll be worth the time.”
35
Thursday Afternoon
“A graveyard,” Bess says, following Evan through the Mount Vernon Gate and into the oldest section of Prospect Hill Cemetery. “To get my mind off the loss of my beloved family retreat, you’ve brought me to a place that is the very symbol of death?”
“Earthly demise,” he says. “That’s all it is. Come on.” Evan takes her hand for the second time that day. “You need to tell a certain someone what’s happening. And then say farewell.”
They head west, toward the Soldier’s Turn.
“How do you know where we’re going?” Bess calls, trying to keep pace, trying not to get caught up in a bramble and find herself facedown on the final resting spot of some Eliza or Ebenezer.
“I come here quite a bit,” Evan says. “So I know my way around.”
“Wow … That’s, um, odd.”
Evan pauses, partway between a Joy and a Pigeon. If Bess isn’t mistaken, his cheeks are slightly flushed. Probably because of the wind, which is growing stronger by the gust. According to her weather app, today they can expect gales of up to forty miles per hour.
“I like the history of this place,” Evan says. “All of the island’s founders are buried at Prospect Hill. Right here we have the Honorable David Joy, who was an abolitionist. And then there’s Lucy Sturtevant Pidgin, M.D.”
Bess leans forward, squinting. A female doctor born in 1850. She hadn’t known there was such a thing.
“Across the path is Charles Robinson,” Evan continues. “He was the first developer in Sconset. You know that footbridge over Gully Road?”
Bess nods. Anyone who’s spent more than a day in Sconset has used it. Bess must’ve a hundred times. With college friends or island friends, on summer nights they’d walk the full way from Cliff House to the Summer House piano bar and back again, both ways over Gully Road.
“He built that bridge,” Evan says. “Come on, let’s keep going.”
He directs Bess onward, past the families Luce and Cartwright and Wyer and Macy. They spy a Folger, a Murphy and, yes, a Hussey or three. DULCE ET DECORUM EST PRO PATRIA MORI, Bess sees on one headstone. Thanks to Choate, she knows her Latin and her Roman poems, too. “It is sweet and glorious to die for one’s country.”
“This poor lady,” Evan says, pointing to Sarah C. Gardner. “Died soon after giving birth. She was depressed, apparently, and confined to the ‘child bed.’ She escaped from her nurse and ultimately drowned.”
“God, how sad,” Bess says, thinking of Sarah C. Gardner and the others, too.
So many women plus all those men LOST AT SEA or LOST AT WAR. And the children and babes—in the ground before they had a chance. The ache of sorrow tightens across Bess’s chest.
Soon they pass by the Starbuck Gate, two large pillars holding up a rusty scroll. Bess hesitates at one gravestone. It’s thin, white, and rectangular, with clumps of moss growing beneath it.
“‘While briefly in life’s book we are,’” Bess reads, “‘Death shuts the story of our days.’ Well, that’s cheery.”
“It’s also true.”
“Look at this one,” Bess says. “‘She was all a woman should be.’ Bummer. I was planning to use that epitaph myself. I would love to know what it means. She was a good housekeeper? Aces in the sack? What?”
“Both I’d venture. Let’s get a move on.” Evan lengthens his stride. “I think it’s about to rain again.”
Bess scrambles after him. Fantastic. More weather.
“When’d you become an amateur historian?” Bess asks as they round the corner down the Macy Path. “It’s very cute, and you should definitely use that factoid on the ladies, but it doesn’t seem like you.”
Or does it? Bess doesn’t altogether know.