(As a wedding gift, Judith had paid off the eighty thousand dollars remaining on Eliza’s student loans.)
The first time Rob had brought Eliza home to the Back Bay townhouse where he’d grown up, Judith had mentioned Rob’s ex-girlfriend Kitty Sutherland twice, and even though Rob had blown an imaginary referee whistle and said, “Mom! Unnecessary roughness!” she’d told one more story, something about Rob and Kitty and a trip to Nantucket, just hilarious. Kitty’s heel broke on one of the cobblestones, ha ha ha ha ha, they almost missed their dinner reservation…
If Jackie O. and Gidget had a baby, that baby would grow up to look like Kitty Sutherland.
On that same visit, Eliza, who had been dispatched to the guest room, had lain under a heavy quilt, in sheets so soft they felt like butter. This was before she knew the phrase thread count. She’d stared at a black-and-white photograph of a sailboat leaning into the wind. This was before she knew the phrase coming about. The next morning, Judith had called Eliza into the living room, where she and Rob were already standing in front of the picture window.
“The first snowfall!” Judith had said, turning triumphantly to Eliza, as though she had Mother Nature herself on her payroll. Like she was giving them a gift.
So, thought Eliza, pushing her hair away from her face, trying to tame its unruliness. So. This is wealth.
It’s complicated.
Lobster boats didn’t come about, by the way. They just turned.
“Why don’t we ask her?” Rob prodded now. “She’s always saying she wants to be more involved in the girls’ lives.” Eliza thought about Phineas Tarbox and sat down on one of the stools. Rob got up and stood behind her, rubbing the knots in her neck. He always knew just where they were without her having to tell him.
“It’s complicated,” said Eliza.
“Doesn’t have to be.”
“Owwwww,” said Eliza.
“Am I hurting you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry!” He whipped his hands away.
“No, don’t you dare stop.”
It was so disorienting, going from that world to this in a few short hours. It felt like the voyage should have taken light-years. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s ask Judith.”
PART TWO
July
13
LITTLE HARBOR, MAINE
Mary
This is going to be a good night, thought Mary. Vivienne was working late at the salon (it was a Thursday) and Josh was coming to pick her up and take her to a movie in Ellsworth. She had stopped avoiding him, and look what had happened! A real date. She was excited. Maybe, before the movie or after it, she’d tell him about the baby. She had the words lined up and ready to go: Baby. Pregnant. Us.
She was waiting by the front door—the movie was at seven, and they were supposed to eat beforehand. Josh was supposed to come at five. It was okay that he was a little late. She’d built some extra time into the plan. Maybe it had taken a while getting back after hauling, turning in the catch at the co-op, settling up.
It was five minutes after five, and then it was five fifteen, and then five twenty.
Doesn’t matter, she told herself. We can eat quickly.
Five twenty-five.
She went outside to sit on the front steps of the house. She picked at a mosquito bite on her knee and looked at the sky: still bright, with a band of clouds that looked like it had been pushed by hand over to the farthest edges. The smells of the harbor reached her, bumping along on the early-evening breeze. She picked at her fingernails and checked her phone.
Five thirty. We don’t have to eat. We can go right to the movie.
Finally: Josh. She got up, ready to get immediately into the car. But Josh got out before she had a chance to get in.
“Let’s go right away,” Mary said.
“Your mom’s not home, is she?”
“No.” Mary looked at her wrist where a watch would have been if she’d had one. “We were going to eat, remember? The movie starts at seven.” She tried to keep her voice easy and friendly. She had prepared the words once again. Baby. Pregnant. She just wasn’t sure when to let them out. Not now, obviously: Josh looked agitated, and they were rushed. Her stomach churned with a brewing disappointment.
“I have to put something inside,” said Josh. “Real quick. Just for a little while.” He was holding a crumpled-up brown bag, the kind you brought your lunch in to elementary school if you didn’t have a lunch box. “Somewhere in your room, okay?”
“What is it?”
“Nothing. Just something I can’t keep at home right now, it’s not a big deal.”
“Let me see it.”
“Come on, baby, it’s not a big deal.” There was a flash of something across his face. “Let me just go put it in your room.”
He was already past her, and into the house.
“Is it a gun?”
“No.”
“Drugs?”
“Sort of.”
“What do you mean, sort of?” She followed him into the house. He was already in her bedroom, looking around. She took the bag to open it, and Josh snatched it out of her hands, rolling the top down more tightly.
“Totally legal. Prescription.”
She blinked and squinted at him. “Whose prescription?”
“Don’t worry about it, it’s under control.”
“Josh.”
“It’s nothing,” he said. “Just a painkiller, no big deal, not heroin or anything. I just can’t keep it at home.”
“Why not?”
“There’s a few hundred dollars’ worth in here, a little more, even. Just keep it safe, until I ask for it. That’s it, that’s all you have to do.”
She considered this. How hard would that be, really? To put a lunch bag in her closet and forget it was there. But still.
“Why don’t you keep it at your house?”
“Too risky.”
“But…”
She took a deep, uncertain breath. She wanted to say, I don’t want that bag near me. I don’t want anything bad near me. Because of the baby. But instead she just thought it.
“It’ll just be a bag, sitting there, doing nothing. Just a little salt and sugar. What could happen?”
Salt and sugar? thought Mary. What the…?
“Come on, babe. Don’t make everything a big deal.” He smiled at her, and she saw a flash of the old Josh, the charming one, and something inside of her relented. She didn’t want to make everything a big deal, she really didn’t. There were enough things that were a big deal. She opened the closet door. She watched as he found a place for the bag in the back right corner of the closet, behind an old pair of Nikes. He had to get down on his hands and knees to do it, he had to really stuff himself into the closet. She watched as he covered the sneakers with a T-shirt from the previous year’s Lobster Festival.
Then the flash of charm changed to something more sinister as Josh pulled himself back out of the closet, and Mary felt like ice cubes were moving up and down her spine. Then Josh said, “You know I would never do anything to hurt you, right, baby?” and smiled again.