At last, the ceremony came to an end, and the family departed, politely murmuring their appreciation. “I hope you feel better soon,” Gloria said when he took her hand. Alone, he sat for a moment in the front pew, welcoming the quiet of the empty chapel. His stomach rumbled, and he realized he hadn’t eaten since morning and then it was something light. A soft-boiled egg. He’d feel better when he got some food. By now, with any luck, Lena MacDougall would have gone home and Father Burns would be off somewhere. Hiking, he thought, remembering those shorts with pockets on the hips and rear and legs, more than anyone could possibly have need of. As he rose to leave, he spied a rumpled Kleenex in the front pew where the family had gathered, and on the floor by the altar a few rose petals had dropped from the bouquet. He made a mental note to see if Mr. Jervis would arrange to come and tidy the place before his usual scheduled time on the weekend. As he locked the door behind him, a wisp of a thought sat on the edge of memory, too elusive to break through.
Mrs. Jessup had left a platter of deli meat and a second plate of tomatoes, sliced and lightly dressed with olive oil and salt. He was relieved to find that indeed Father Burns was nowhere to be seen, and so he fixed himself a dish and sat there at the kitchen table. The meal reminded him of those his mother and grandmother would prepare from the daily bounty of their summer gardens. Cucumber and corn and tomatoes and green snap beans. When the first crop of corn was ripe, the family would sometimes have a meal consisting entirely of sweet corn, ear after ear of it dripping with the butter his grandmother had churned herself, all of them delighting in the pleasure of that first taste of the season. Or blueberries. He could almost taste them. One time he and Cecelia had eaten almost a whole watermelon between them and been sick well into the night. At the memory of his sister, his eyes filled, and he wiped the tears away. He was turning into a sentimental old man.
When he was finished with his meal, he cleaned up the kitchen, poured himself a second glass of iced tea—Lena MacDougall’s advice still echoing—and carried it to the living room in time to catch the first inning of the game, the second of a double header. As he stooped to pick up the remote, the thought that had eluded him earlier in the chapel stayed his hand. As clearly as if the scene were unfolding on the flat-screen in front of him, he recalled the day earlier in the summer. He saw himself sitting in the chapel where he had gone to work on a homily. He recalled the chill in the building, the coldness of the stone floor as it seeped through the leather soles of his shoes, and he remembered catching sight of an object half hidden beneath a pew. He had been working on a sermon. A sermon on the teachings of the apostle Paul. The power of hope and faith in the face of despair. Yes. That was right. So it had been in June. He remembered picking the object up and discovering it was a child’s toy. The little figure that Will Light believed to have belonged to his daughter. Where did you get this? He saw Will’s face across the table at the café. He knew the passing pleasure of solving a little mystery, and with this small victory, a win over elusive memory, the tribulations of the day—fainting during Mass, Lena MacDougall bending over him on the sofa, his failure to say exactly the right thing at the little ceremony in the chapel—all this receded. He clicked on the television and settled in with his tea to watch the ball game, making note before he turned his full attention on the game that he must remember to tell Will Light how he had come to have the little toy.
It was only later, after the game had ended—the Sox riding a five-game winning streak—and he was about to fall asleep that another question occurred to him. If the Yoda had indeed been Lucy’s as her father believed, how had he come to find it in the chapel so many months after the girl’s death?
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Sophie crossed the lawn to me, her body fit and tan, her step light, and I was ambushed by this thought: This is the woman Lucy would have grown to be.
Then she was in my arms, embracing me without hesitation, holding me for a long moment. “Hey,” she said, her voice almost a whisper.
Another tsunami of longing swept me. There on the sloping lawn that led down to the cove, my wife in my arms, I had a deep sense of coming home. Please, I thought, can we begin again? “Sorry I’m late,” I said. “I got caught in traffic.” Much too soon, she slipped from my embrace.
“I was worried about that. Was it bad?”
“Yes. I completely forgot about weekend gridlock. I should have left earlier.” Is there still a chance for us?
“It doesn’t matter. That’s one of the things I love about being here.”
“What’s that?”
“Oh, the way everything slows down. The way time is measured not by clocks but by the tides, moon, and sun.”
“Sounds good.” And it did. A timeless universe.
“Honestly, Will, it’s amazing how when we stop paying attention to minutes and hours, they become nearly irrelevant. Sometimes this feeling is so strong I think we all must walk around wearing a mantle of stress or tension that we aren’t even aware of.” She looked at me. Her head slightly tilted in question. “Do you know what I mean, Will?”
“I do.
“And somehow, here, in the timelessness of this place, that tension dissipates.”
I felt it too, the relaxation of being freed from ordinary demands. Or maybe it was being with Sophie. For a moment, and if that was all it was, one moment, I would take it and be grateful, for that moment, the world was nearly right. That day in Maine the inevitability of what lay ahead was as far away as Jupiter.
“Honestly,” she said, “it makes me want to do away with every timepiece in creation. Without them, everything expands.”
“Not everything.” I grasped her waist playfully and encircled it with my hands. “Are you even eating, Soph?”
She threw back her head and laughed. “Oh God, yes. Joan and I eat like trenchermen.”
Joan. I waved the name away, determined not to let anyone intrude on this time. “Not starving then?”
“No, but you must be. When it got late, I thought you might stop on the way up, but I waited on lunch anyway.”
“I didn’t stop.” I couldn’t wait to get here.
“Good. Why don’t you bring your things into the house while I set out the food. And unless you prefer to be inside, I thought we’d eat outdoors.” She laughed lightly. “By some miracle, the black flies are absent today. They must have known you were coming.” I knew we were both remembering a long-ago vacation when I had declared war on the insects.