Of course she and Rob weren’t going to die at the same time. She should just sign the papers, compromise, the way married people did, the way reasonable people did.
But she couldn’t do it. She didn’t feel reasonable. She felt that signing the documents was akin to signing over her children completely to Judith’s world, to Rob’s world. Nothing would be left of Eliza’s world, nothing at all! She wanted to cry and stamp her feet like a child. If the unthinkable happened, and the girls went to Judith, all vestiges of Eliza, of Little Harbor, of the boats and the wharf and the traps, of the little house Eliza had grown up in, of Charlie’s strong hands and weathered face, would be gone, swallowed up in a wave of endless ease and privilege.
Eliza and Rob weren’t going to die, not at the same time, of course not.
But they might. Phineas was right: they had to prepare for all eventualities.
First Rob took the casual approach: “Hey, could you sign those papers when you get a chance?” Then he tried the harried approach, via text: GOT VM FROM PHINEAS WE NEED TO GET THE DOCS OVER TO HIM. He tried the stern approach, the goofy approach, the cajoling approach, the friendly, no-nonsense approach. Once he left the papers on her pillow, like they were chocolates at a fine hotel and he was in charge of the turndown service. She moved them from one place to another and then finally shifted them to Rob’s third-floor office, out of sight, out of mind, unsigned.
Except they weren’t out of mind. They were on Eliza’s mind constantly—more, she’d wager, than they would have been if she’d just signed them. And the worst part about it was that Rob was right. He was right! Judith was the obvious choice, really the only choice. She loved the girls in her own weird, gin-soaked way. Charlie hadn’t been a realistic candidate before—it would be ridiculous to expect the girls to grow up in a lobstering village, and even if Charlie was financially compensated by their estate he wasn’t going to move to Massachusetts and stop hauling traps. Now that he was terminally ill, he obviously wasn’t a candidate at all.
And yet! Even now, even so many months after their initial meeting, even in the shadow of her father’s diagnosis, her mind kept going back to Phineas Tarbox’s office and the easy way Rob had answered for both of them, the way he’d just assumed. What he hadn’t said (because he hadn’t needed to) was, Your family isn’t good enough for our kids. But mine is.
Her resentment over all of this was buried deep, like the pea under the princess’s mattress. And, like the princess, Eliza could feel it each time she shifted in the night.
Or maybe it wasn’t a pea, maybe it was something small like a pea but sharper, like a razor. You could rip a seam with something like that. And then what? Once the seam was ripped, everything spilled out.
———
Eliza had been gone from Barton a week, but by the time she got home it felt like much longer. It was like living in a time warp, being back in Little Harbor. During her absence the peonies in the yard of the Cavanaughs’ house across the street had come into full bloom. Mrs. Cavanaugh was out in her clogs, holding a pair of clippers and studying the garden. It didn’t seem right—in fact, it seemed downright inconsiderate of the peonies—that her dad had a brain tumor, the very worst kind of brain tumor you could have, and the peonies were blooming so exuberantly. How dare they. She remembered a similar feeling from when her mother died; just two days later, Eliza was expected to go to school and do math and science, and it was all so unbelievable, that the numbers still added up the way they were supposed to, and her lungs and heart still did their jobs of breathing and pumping, and she still had to go to the bathroom and drink water when she was thirsty: all of these normal, pedestrian activities, with such a glaring void in the world.
Charlie had been angry with Eliza for snooping in the drawer; he was angry with Val for telling Eliza about his tumor. No, he didn’t want to talk about it. No, he didn’t want to go see a doctor in Boston; he wouldn’t go home with Eliza to Barton. He wasn’t leaving his traps untended. No, he didn’t want to go out to dinner in Ellsworth or to The Lobster Trap in town. He wanted to watch television and go to bed, and he’d say goodbye now, Eliza, because he was getting up too early in the morning and he knew she’d be gone before he got back.
“You can’t haul,” Eliza had said. “With your arm!”
“Got some help,” he’d said. “I got it figured out, Eliza, you don’t need to worry about it.”
Eliza had wanted to ask Russell to help, but Russell had his own traps to haul. He shouldn’t take on Charlie’s too. Although he would if Eliza asked him.
When Eliza was sixteen, Val used to tell her, A flame like that is going to burn itself out.
And it did, of course. Eventually.
Eliza waved at Mrs. Cavanaugh and pulled into her own driveway, then let herself in the front door.
“Hello?” she said. “Hello? I’m home. Where is everybody?”
Evie would be at theater camp, but Zoe should be home, and certainly Rob should be home, tucked up in his home office, working on Cabot Lodge. Unless he’d gone up to Naples again. Would he go to Naples without telling her? She didn’t think he would. She put her overnight bag in the foyer and climbed the stairs to the third floor. Rob’s office was a disaster. It looked like an army of industrious rodents had visited during the night, scattering plans and books and papers all around. She saw that on Rob’s drafting table were not one, not two, but three coffee cups, each partially filled, with the contents beginning to congeal.
Eliza closed her eyes and thought about how long Rob had listened to her when she told him about Charlie. She thought about how he had offered to drop everything and drive up. She opened her eyes. The coffee cups were still there. She closed the door.
Zoe’s bed was neatly made, with her ancient stuffed elephant, Marvin, sitting on top of the pile of pillows. Evie’s bed had the top sheet bunched up and hanging out the bottom, but at least she’d tried. Eliza and Rob’s bed was not made at all. Eliza closed that door too. She’d get to it later; she’d get to all of it later. She was suddenly exhausted and had to fight the urge to crawl into the unmade bed and go to sleep. When she heard the front door open she flew down the stairs, just as Deirdre, Sofia, and Zoe were coming in.