Val looked up at her, and Eliza saw that her eyes were wet.
“Sit down, sit down here.” Val indicated the space next to her on the dock, but she was looking back at the harbor, toward the stand of pines. She wasn’t looking in the direction of the Joanie B.
“No.” Eliza’s voice could have sliced wood, it was so sharp.
“Yes. Eliza Sargent Barnes, you sit down next to me right now, and that’s an order.”
Eliza sighed and did as she was told. Sternman settled beside her, his chin on his paws, looking out at the water along with Val and Eliza. Eliza said, “That’s the last lesson? That there’s no fairy tale? I can’t believe that’s the last lesson.”
Val said, “I know it’s easy to think that people who aren’t here anymore were perfect—”
“Don’t,” said Eliza. She had never talked to Val with an ounce of anger, not even when she was a teenager, not even during those moments every teenager has of being angry with everyone, angry with the world.
“No. Let me say it. Of course Joanie wasn’t perfect, she was a human being like all the rest of us. She made her own mistakes, did selfish things sometimes, did thoughtless things sometimes, same as you and me do.”
Eliza set her lips together. “I don’t want to hear this.”
“Want to hear it or not, it’s true. Your mom wanted me to give you that whole letter when you were sixteen. You know what you were doing when you were sixteen?”
“No.” Yes.
“You were so crazy in love with Russell your head was up in the clouds, Eliza, way up there.”
“But still.”
“You were breaking your daddy’s heart.”
Eliza’s breath caught. “I was?”
“Of course you were.”
Eliza laid her hand on Sternman’s giant square head and held it there. Sternman closed his eyes and she rubbed behind his left ear, just the way he liked it. Part of her was trying to keep the memory down, but there it was. She remembered now.
She was sixteen, and Russell was waiting for her in his truck. Russell leaned on his horn the tiniest bit and Eliza, having brushed her hair fourteen times, brushed it once more.
“I’m going out,” she would have called to her father. Where was he? In his recliner, the hauling done for the day.
He said, “Where?” He was just asking. As he had every right to. But she didn’t want to talk to anybody but Russell, so she said, “Just out!” in a new voice, an awful voice. And when she passed by the living room she saw his face crumple in hurt and bewilderment—just for an instant, before he regained his usual inscrutable expression and waved her on like it didn’t matter. He might even have said goodbye, not that she deserved it. He might have said, “Have a good time,” or “Be careful,” or some other mundane and fatherly thing, and she just left.
She could have stopped, could have done something to make it better. But she was sixteen, and she was in love, and Russell was waiting outside, and there was all of that newly discovered desire between them. She was the Mary to his Springsteen. She let the screen door slam and she didn’t look back. And she knew that that was one of many times, not the only one.
This was what it meant to have children, this was coming for her one day, this was her future. You loved them and loved them and cared for them and they loved you back, unconditionally, absolutely, so much love you thought you might drown in it, until one day they slammed the screen door and they got into someone else’s truck and they drove away. How could that not be the saddest thing in the world?
“Oh, Val,” she said.
“Or eighteen. You know what you were doing when you were eighteen?”
Eliza took a deep, shuddery breath. She knew. “Leaving.”
“Exactly right. You were leaving. We took that trip to Bangor together”—Eliza winced, remembering the then-brand-new Civic, the smell of the clinic, the pitted unloveliness of the parking lot, the kind look on the doctor’s face—“and then you packed your bags for college, and you never looked back.”
Eliza said, “Right.”
“To add to that for you, or for Charlie, to remind either one of you that there was a time when Joanie wanted more—forget it. I never wanted to make someone else’s burden heavier just so I could make mine a little lighter. So I kept the last part of the letter. And I’d make the same choice a hundred times in a row if you asked me to.”
Eliza glanced to the side to see Val more clearly. A complicated expression was crossing her face, and she said, “Charlie worshipped your mom, Eliza. I never saw anything like it before or since. Never.” Her voice broke off and she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth.
Eliza thought of how Val was leaning over Charlie that first day Eliza arrived early in the summer. She thought of the way Val had hidden the evidence of Charlie’s illness because that’s what he wanted, how she’d handed him the water, fed him, cared for him, taken him to the doctor, let him sleep. She imagined Val and Charlie, caring together for sick little Eliza.
Of course.
Of course! How could she not have realized this before? She took a deep breath, and she felt like she was unearthing a secret as old and reliable as the lobsters themselves when she said, “You love my dad. You love Charlie.”
“Course I love him. I love you too.”
“No, I mean you love him. You’re in love with him.”
“Eliza—”
“I know you are. I know you always have been.”
Val was silent for a long time. A trio of seagulls circled overheard. Out on a channel marker, Eliza saw a cormorant perched, spreading out its wings to dry. At any other time she would have pointed out the cormorant, but now she was holding her breath, waiting.
Eliza had heard the story dozens of times, but now she could replay it, cast it in a different light. “When you met my mom that day, you weren’t just waiting for the boats to come in, not all the boats. You were waiting for him. But he picked Joanie, he picked my mom.”
A long time passed, and then eventually Val spoke. “Part of me didn’t want her to come back. She was my best friend, Eliza, but when she left I thought, Good. Now I can have what was supposed to be mine. I would have loved you just as much as she did, I would have cared for you and for Charlie. I was here. I was ready. I’m sorry if that’s an awful thing for me to say, Eliza, but it’s true. It’s the way it was.”
Eliza moved closer to her and rested her head on Val’s shoulder. Sternman, offended, sighed and rolled partially on his side. “That’s not awful,” said Eliza.
“Yes it is.”
“It’s not, because that’s exactly what you did, you did care for me, when she was gone.”
There was a low bank of fog out along the horizon. Eliza stared at it and waited a beat and then she said, “I have to go home for Evie’s play, I promised her up and down. I have to leave tomorrow. I’ll come right back after. Will you take care of him when I’m gone?”
“Of course I will.”
They looked out at the water and Eliza said, “That’s a long time.”
“A long time for what?”