“Vincent Drake,” he said. “From Bardavista, Florida.”
Mr. Chase gave a murmur of recognition. “I hear it’s beautiful down there.”
And as Mr. Chase filled out the paperwork in his slow, careful script, Vincent Drake looked out the window behind the front desk at the pretty girl who was shooing away seagulls from the Dumpster as she heaved in another overstuffed trash bag.
After shutting the lid, Diane came back into the office, eyes and mind elsewhere as she started to say, “Daddy, the . . .” Then she noticed Vincent Drake and her words slowed a bit. “Dumpster is full.” And the boy found something for which to long.
Diane didn’t have the opportunity to tell Vincent Drake that she was pregnant. Her father spent months calling town clerks’ offices, but they never did find a young man with that name near Bardavista. And though mother and daughter walked those beaches together for weeks, Diane never told Mary why she had chosen there, of all places, to wait out the arrival of another child. Diane wasn’t even sure if she herself knew.
Sometimes during that winter, Diane would look at her daughter as if remembering the man who said his name was Vincent. Mary resembled him physically, but where his presence was most apparent was in Mary’s boldness. In her opportunistic charm. In the way she could tell wild, outrageous lies with a steady-eyed calm.
Mary had a similar expression on her face now as she stared out of the window of the hospital room. Diane shifted, feeling the fatigue in her body reach down to her bones.
“Mary, honey,” Diane said. “Can you hold the baby for a minute?”
Mary didn’t move. Diane shifted slightly in her seat, suddenly feeling the enormity of raising another child on her own. She was going to need Mary, she knew. She was going to need her girl.
“Mary,” she said, her tone sapped of patience, her words lingering and long. “I need you to hold your sister.”
Mary’s eyes found her mother’s in the window’s black glass, all that was unspoken passing in a look.
“Why?” asked Mary.
Diane held her daughter’s gaze. “Because I have to go to the bathroom, Mary.”
Mary turned slowly and looked at the baby, her arms at her sides. Diane struggled up, cradling the infant in one arm while pushing herself up with the other. “Mare . . . ,” she said, keeping her awkward hold. “Can you?” She felt herself slip slightly, fall back against the chair, and the baby let out a mewling cry.
And to Diane it looked like reflex, like some primal need to protect the being with whom she shared blood—a tribal sense of duty. But Mary darted forward, sliding her arms beneath the baby and pulling her into her chest. Diane watched them for a moment, watched as Mary started to sway, calming the child.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, but Mary was still looking at the baby, some internal battle silently being waged.
In the bathroom, Diane turned on the water and sat on the toilet, letting it run and run, letting it drown out everything else. She wasn’t sure how long she stayed in there. It could have been five minutes. It could have been twenty. And when she opened the door, Mary was sitting in the blue vinyl chair, the baby still in her arms. Diane watched them for a moment.
“So,” Diane said. And Mary started slightly, as if she hadn’t heard her leave the bathroom. “What are we going to name her?”
“Name her whatever you want,” Mary replied, though she couldn’t quite look away from the baby’s small face.
“She’s going to need you, Mary,” said Diane. It was something Diane knew without understanding how. “Do you know that?”
Diane walked over and sat on the edge of the hospital bed facing her daughter. Diane waited, knowing that Mary was a girl whose loyalty was fierce and rare and absolute. Knowing that Mary was deciding, right at this moment, whether or not to love this child, whether or not to give herself to her entirely. The baby squirmed in Mary’s arms and the expression on Mary’s face slackened and at that moment Diane knew it was done. Raising her chin, Mary looked at her mother, and said simply, “Let’s call her Hannah.” And with those words, it was as if Mary had slashed the palm of her hand and offered her blood as oath.
Soon the three of them would return to Sandy Bank, and the whispers and gossip would rise like a tide and then eventually recede. The father of Diane’s second baby, it was said, had swept in and out of her life in much the same way as the father of her first. Another Vincent Drake had come to the Water’s Edge, laid Diane down on a sand dune, and given her a child but nothing more.
Three
1981
In the dark, Mary felt the presence of the small light-limbed body next to her. She and her little sister lay with their heads on the same pillow, Mary’s dark hair mingling with Hannah’s light. Hannah had inched in as close as she could and wrapped both of her arms around one of Mary’s as the story Mary was telling grew almost unbearably climactic for a four-year-old.
“Princess Hannah and Princess Mary raced as fast as they could through the forest, the briars ripping the skirts of their gowns and scratching their hands and faces,” said Mary, skillfully riding the wave of her tale. “Because behind them . . . they heard the wolves.”
Hannah gasped. “The evil queen’s wolves?” she asked, as she hugged Mary’s arm tighter.
“The evil queen’s wolves,” confirmed Mary.
Mary could spin masterful stories and often transformed the room she and Hannah shared at the Water’s Edge into a land of beauty and magic and danger. A land where they were princesses, always running, always pursued. A land where no one was to be trusted except each other.
“And just as they reached the edge of the Black Woods”—Mary’s voice built as if she were giving a speech from a grandstand—“a wolf came leaping out of the dark, its mouth open, its fangs bared. But Princess Mary drew her sword and plunged it into the beast.”
“Does that mean she killed it?” asked Hannah, the words coming out as an urgent breath.
Mary smiled at her sister and nodded, relishing Hannah’s utter absorption, her lack of disbelief. “Then Princess Mary pulled Princess Hannah onto her back, and together they ran out of the Black Woods, falling out of the forest just as the rest of the pack reached its edge.”
“So they were safe?” asked Hannah, desperate for confirmation. “The wolves didn’t get them?”
“They were safe.” Mary leaned over to kiss her sister on the line where her hair met the skin of her forehead. “Don’t worry, Bunny. The wolves can’t leave the Black Woods.”