Del had her baby six weeks early, in July. She held him, briefly, then she took off with a man she’d met while pregnant, a yachtie who’d invited her sailing. At times I imagined she was fleeing Detective Thomson and his questions and, later, that she was running from the baby and the predictability of the life she would have lived with him. The baby—she’d named him Owen—was born blind. His eyes were like Del’s, the same color and shape, heavy with lashes. For five years I saw only photographs of him, and from those I couldn’t tell for sure if he was William’s son. I thought that on meeting him I would sense it, that I would somehow resent him. But by then he was school-age, sturdy and thoughtful. I hadn’t been around children much and had no idea the things they taught you about yourself.
My mother and I would get postcards and e-mails from various ports of call—Grenada, Tobago, St. Vincent—the boats Del was on and the men she was with constantly changing. When she was in town she went by our mother’s to visit, but only for an hour or two. My mother, when I asked how Del was, would say that she’d warned her to use sunscreen, but that Del had a dark suntan.
“And what else?” I’d say.
She’d shift the phone to her other ear, her hands busy in the kitchen sink. “Her usual impulsive self.”
Del would bring Owen spice drops, watch him play, read him The Velveteen Rabbit, then go. Later, I would get an e-mail from Del about how the visit went—a humorous description of our mother’s attempts to satisfy Owen’s every whim, and play hostess. Tea on a tray, Del would write. For God’s sake. About Owen she said little. He is a clever little man, she wrote. He asks more questions than any human being I’ve ever met. Even You-Know-Who.
We’d stopped hearing from Del in May—no cards or e-mails. Last we knew she’d been on a yacht called The Pearl, anchored off a small island in the Grenadines. My mother had put out inquiries, but Del couldn’t be located. We assumed she’d taken off with someone new. But it wasn’t like her to stay out of touch. Together, my mother and I had invented a story for ourselves: Del had decided to stay put on some island, and was eating papaya and roti, entertaining yachties at the island bar with her stories.
The first week of June, my mother called and asked me to come home. Ordinarily, I would have made some excuse. This time I did not.
“Why do you want me there?” I asked.
“It’s your birthday. And it’s time you met your nephew.” The pendulum of the old regulator clock echoed through the kitchen. “Stay for a few days. Stay for a month or the whole summer. It’s up to you.”
“You’ve heard something about Del,” I said.
“No, I have not.” My mother’s voice was crisp, annoyed.
I took the train into the Old Saybrook station and called a cab to take me to my mother’s house.
The morning was cool, the weather always changeable near the shore. Driving down our road I smelled the Sound, the remains of morning fires lit to ward off the damp. Overhead the trees shook their bright leaves. The house was the same, the windows flashing the sun. The barn was gone. My mother had called me two years before to tell me we’d lost it, but I’d forgotten. “Fire,” she’d said, and nothing more. As the cab pulled into the pebbled drive the missing barn was all I could see. My mother came out onto the wide front porch.
She was thinner. She’d let her hair go gray, though it was still long to her shoulders and styled. She wore no makeup. “You made it,” she called.
The driver went to the trunk for my bag, and then the cab drove away. I stood below my mother on the pebbled drive. “What really happened to it?”
She put her hand up to shade her eyes. “Lightning,” she said. Then she did something astonishing. She tipped her head back and laughed.
“Are you my mother?” I asked.
“Oh, Martha,” she said. “Still the same.”
I followed her inside the house, where the sea breeze came through the windows into the kitchen. The Spiritualists by the Sea camp had opened—I could smell the scent of oil paint. And then Owen came into the room with a little white cane, tapping it in the doorway. He held his two hands out and my mother told me to kneel down onto the kitchen’s worn wood floor. I smelled his breath, cloying and sweet. He placed his small hands on my face.
“This is how he knows you,” my mother said.
His little fingers were nimble, searching me out.
“Girl,” he said, quietly, his hands on my hair.
“Auntie Martha,” my mother told him. “Run along and play while we visit.”