The Captain's Daughter

Deirdre stopped kissing Rob and looked him straight in the eye. She seemed alarmingly unapologetic. And also very drunk. The biker let out a low whistle.


Oh boy. Things had taken a turn. Things had definitely taken a turn.

Robert Barnes II was out of his element. No question. He was a man sitting in a testosterone-filled bar on Ladies’ Night, with a woman who was not his wife, waiting and waiting—almost without breathing, he was waiting so carefully—to see what would happen next.





24


LITTLE HARBOR, MAINE





Mary


Andi had given Mary a bunch of smoothie greens that were technically past their sell-by date and now Mary was in her kitchen making them into a salad. “They’re perfectly fine,” said Andi. “I’d eat them myself, I would, we just have to abide by the date. Per the health board.” The greens still had firm stems and bright, healthy leaves.

Mary had planned on a salad with the greens, avocado, and tomato slices, but first she had to clean up the kitchen, which was small and cluttered in the best of circumstances and downright impossible to work in the rest of the time. Vivienne was a famous non-cook; she said it proudly, like some people would say, I don’t smoke or I don’t shoot heroin.

To make room for the cutting board on the small square of counter, Mary moved three different piles of mail, a hairbrush, a flatiron, a tube of mascara with the top loose—all Vivienne’s—and her own copy of The Fault in Our Stars, which she was reading for the sixth time; she could quote certain passages out loud, if anyone asked her. (Nobody ever did.) Mary loved The Fault in Our Stars. When the movie had come out two summers ago she’d gone with Tyler to see it, and she’d weeped through the entire second half while Tyler had tooth-murdered the leftover popcorn kernels and snorted at all of the best parts. She should have known then.

Mary also loaded Vivienne’s breakfast dishes into the dishwasher—Vivienne’s breakfast was always the same, two heavily buttered English muffins with instant coffee—and then she started in on a sticky substance on the Formica. It was a Thursday, and Mary had the day off. Vivienne went to work at one on Thursdays because the salon was open until nine.

Someday, Mary thought, she would have her own tiny house, and it would be clean and orderly, with gleaming counters and nice food stored neatly in the cupboard.

Her fetus-tracking website told her that the baby was an inch and a half long, the size of a prune, with little indentations on the legs that were planning to turn into knees and ankles.

She was thinking about that when Vivienne came into the kitchen, dressed for work, her hair wet from a shower. Vivienne plucked the hairbrush from the pile Mary had made on the table and began to work it carefully through her hair, pulling gently when she snagged on a tangle. While she brushed she watched Mary.

“I saw that jerk Tyler Wasson in Ellsworth,” Vivienne said, after a while.

“Oh yeah?” said Mary. She was trying to make her voice sound uninterested.

“Yeah. He was with his mom, coming out of Cadillac Mountain Sports.”

Mary had liked Tyler Wasson’s mom. She felt an unwelcome ping of nostalgia. But she didn’t like to think about the girl she’d been then: that girl had been innocent and trusting and zero percent pregnant. She worked off the skin of the avocado the way Daphne had shown her and shuffled the nostalgia to the back of her mind.

Vivienne stopped brushing and said, “I just don’t know how you got yourself into this situation, Mare.” Mary looked up from the avocado and blinked at her and Vivienne said, “I mean, of course I know how, but I’m just not sure why.”

“It wasn’t on purpose,” said Mary. She went back to making her salad. She finished the avocado and got to work on the tomato, slicing it the way Daphne had taught her, tucking her fingers under so that she wouldn’t cut them off. “Obviously.”

“Obviously,” repeated Vivienne. “But: here you are.”

“Here I am,” said Mary.

It was hard to say now, in the bald daylight seeping into the kitchen, what had made her tell Eliza Barnes at the bar.

Eliza had said, “Oh, sweetie,” and had looked like she was about to start crying herself. Eliza had sounded the same way she had the time Mary overheard her talking to one of her children on the phone, and for just a moment there Mary had felt safe and cared about. Then she’d smiled in a sad way and half stood, like she was going to hug Mary or something. That was when Josh had come over to the table, and that had been it.

Josh wouldn’t tell her what he’d gotten into with some of the guys at The Wheelhouse, and his mood had turned so black so fast. She’d told him she felt sick to her stomach (true) and had gone home right from the bar, and straight to bed.

Everybody had black moods sometimes, right? Didn’t they? Did they?

Vivienne picked up the book and said, “What’s this?”

“Just a book,” said Mary. She’d only had it hanging around the house for three years, did Vivienne notice anything about her?

“Any good?”

Mary sighed and said, “It’s perfect.”

“What’s it about?”

“It’s a love story. And a tragedy.”

Vivienne snorted and said, “Love,” like she’d taken a bite of a nail sandwich.

“Someday I’ll fall in love,” said Mary. “Someday somebody will fall in love with me.”

A complicated expression crossed Vivienne’s face and for a brief hopeful second Mary thought Vivienne was going to agree but then she just snorted again and brushed her hair even harder. She picked up the mascara and inspected it and said, “Oh, Mary, what are you going to do?”

Mary shrugged. She thought about the parents in The Fault in Our Stars, who were kind and loving, even in the face of tragic circumstances. Those parents would never say, What are you going to do because they would be busy saying, What are we going to do.

“What did Josh say?”

“I haven’t told him.”

“You haven’t told him? What do you mean?”

Mary arranged it all in a bowl: the greens, the avocado, the tomato, and said, “I mean, I haven’t had a chance.”

“Mary. You need to.”

“I know.”

“If you don’t tell him, I will. Somebody needs to make sure that he—”

“Don’t, Mom. Don’t.”

“Mary, something like this doesn’t go away on its own, he’s going to have to help you, you’re going to have to go to a clinic…”

“I know that.”

Vivienne opened the mascara and applied it without the benefit of a mirror. It looked perfect anyway. Of course Vivienne wasn’t a mother from a novel. Nobody was: mothers from novels were made up.

After Vivienne left for work Mary brought her salad over to the table and picked up the book.

What if Mary’s heart turned into a dried fig, and nobody ever loved her? What if she never loved anyone? What then?





25


BARTON, MASSACHUSETTS





Rob

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