“But the building inspector—he didn’t…” Rob wanted to finish the sentence but he felt like there was a small animal trapped in his throat, something wild and furry, and he couldn’t talk around it.
“I’m gonna anticipate your next question,” said Ruggman then. “Forty-five to ninety days, to get the state approval. Usually closer to ninety.”
“Ninety days! Shit, Ruggman, that takes us to—”
“Mid-October. Maybe later.”
“Mid-October.”
So that meant they couldn’t sod in September, like they had planned. They couldn’t do the front walkway either. The trucks carrying the bluestone for the patio would ride roughshod right over everything. They’d have to wait. They’d have to wait on the walkout for the lower level, too, because they couldn’t do the stone retaining wall before they’d filled in the slope. Shit. Shit. Shit.
“How’d we not know this, Ruggman? How’d we miss it?”
“We didn’t miss anything,” said Ruggman. “It’s not my job to do the due diligence on this stuff. It’s yours.”
38
LITTLE HARBOR, MAINE
Mary
Thirteen weeks. A peach. Vocal cords. This baby could put its thumb in its mouth.
———
“Here,” said Daphne, handing Mary a package from the bakery in Ellsworth. “I way over-ordered the lobster cookies today, take them home to your mom.” She squinted at Mary and tilted her head sideways. Two vertical lines appeared between her eyebrows when she did that. “You okay, honey?”
“Fine,” said Mary. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” said Daphne. “You look…”
Mary waited, not offering anything. Over the course of the summer she’d learned that sometimes the less you offered the better off you were.
“You look tired, I guess,” Daphne continued. “But more than tired, or, I don’t know, a different kind of tired.” She squinted some more. “You look like you’re tired from the inside out.”
Mary dipped her head. Tired from the inside out was exactly how she felt: Daphne was hitting close to home.
While she was chewing gently on these thoughts Daphne was saying, “Missing Josh, are you?”
Daphne wasn’t so close to home anymore.
Mary shook her head. “Not really.”
“When’s he coming back?”
“Not sure.” Never. “I’m fine,” she told Daphne. “I just had trouble sleeping last night.” In fact, she had slept great the night before; she’d slept like a rock. She’d slept like a…well, like a baby. She took the package of cookies from Daphne. “Thank you,” she said. “My mom will love them.”
When she got into her car outside The Cup, Mary sat for a minute and considered the cookies. Vivienne would eat them, sure, but she’d complain the whole time about how she shouldn’t be eating them, and she’d be dramatic about it, and she’d make Mary wish she’d never brought them home. Vivienne sometimes had a way of turning a nice gesture on its head.
Mary started the car and turned away from the road that led her home. She knew someone who loved these cookies, someone who wouldn’t feel bad about eating them and who wouldn’t make Mary feel bad about bringing them. Also, she was hoping Eliza would be home. She planned to ask her for one more ride, a ride to Bangor on August 3rd, at ten o’clock in the morning. She was supposed to arrive at nine thirty to check in. They’d have to leave by eight. It was a lot to ask. But there was nobody else.
———
Mary almost turned around at the last minute—it was weird, maybe, dropping in on Charlie Sargent like this—but what the heck. The man had brain cancer. He was dying. He had six months, maybe a year to live, that’s what he’d told her at The Cup. And it had almost been much less than that, if he hadn’t called the Coast Guard. He’d told her that too. The least Mary could do was bring him some cookies.
Mary had a clear view of the living room through the front window and she could see Charlie there, in his recliner. There was one lamp on, right beside him, and the front porch light was on too, like maybe he was expecting a visitor. His truck was in the driveway but there was no sign of the Audi that Eliza drove. There was a flicker of blue light that meant the TV was on.
Mary rapped softly on the door. She didn’t want to make a sick man get out of his chair, but she didn’t want to barge in without an invitation either. After a good long time, Charlie opened the door. When he saw Mary there with the cookies he smiled and said, “Mary!” like he was really glad to see her, and that made her feel good.
“Here,” she said, holding the cookies up. “These were extra. I thought you might want them. I know how much you like them.”
“I do,” he said. “I sure do.”
He stepped back and motioned for her to enter.
Charlie Sargent didn’t look so much like a knight in shining armor now, he looked pale and weak and thin. Charlie was more stooped than he had been just ten days ago, and his eyes looked almost colorless, like some of the light had leaked out of them. He looked exhausted both from the inside out and from the outside in.
Mary suddenly felt shy and out of place. “Where’s, um,” she said, looking around.
“My pain-in-the-ass daughter?” He smiled again. “I sent her to Ellsworth. Told her to catch a movie. Don’t know if she’ll do it, but I told her to. Sent Val with her.”
Mary laughed uncertainly, and Charlie said, “I’m kidding, about the pain in the ass.”
“Okay,” said Mary. “I know.”
“Sort of. I love her, you know, but sometimes there’s only so much concern one person can take.”
Mary nodded. Even Mary understood that. Ever since that night after her visit to A Cut Above, the night Vivienne had cried onto Mary’s cheek, when she was home with her mother, just doing something dumb like putting an ice-cream bowl in the dishwasher or searching through the On Demand movies on the cable, she sometimes caught Vivienne staring at her in such an uncomfortable way. A few times Mary even saw Vivienne’s eyes fill up with tears. It made Mary want to chew glass and spit it out at the world. “I know what you mean,” she said. Then she noticed that she was still holding the cookies and that she was still standing on the doormat. “Here,” she said. “Why don’t I put these in the kitchen. I have to be home soon anyway.” (She didn’t.)
“You can do that, sure, that’d be great. But after, if you have a few minutes, how about you just sit here with me.” Charlie moved slowly back toward his recliner. “Maybe we talk or maybe we don’t talk, either way is okay with me. But the company would be nice. Would that be okay?”
There was something pleading and kind in Charlie Sargent’s eyes when he said that, and a little of the color reentered them. He moved aside so she could pass into the kitchen.
“That would be okay,” she said. She had sort of been dreading going home to an empty house anyway—Vivienne was going out with the girls after work. “I wouldn’t mind that at all. I’d like that.”