“Look at it, Meg. The land. It’s everything. Do you see? If you let the land talk to you, show you itself, you will understand.”
She went on to tell me the saltwater marsh contained the most diverse ecosystem on the planet. In other words, there was more going on in these few acres than on entire continents. She ticked off the organisms that made the marsh their home: fish, shellfish, birds, and all manner of plant life. How the ebb and flow of the tides brought in food and oxygen and flushed the debris and silt from the rivers. The whole cycle was mind boggling. I zoned out a little as she spoke, mesmerized by the way the sun was sinking into undulating grass.
“Look,” she said, pointing.
All the time she’d been talking, the intricate fretwork of water that bisected the clumps of grass, mere muddy ribbons when we’d first gotten there, was rising before my eyes, widening and joining in less than thirty minutes. We were now looking at a pond. Suddenly, there was the sound of gentle splashes and I saw a fin cruising in lazy circuits. The land become sea.
“At high tide, porpoises come in here to feed,” Doro said. “Then they head back out for the night.”
We watched the porpoise circle and loop and crest the water. He arced and dove, like he was performing just for us. And then there were three of them, a trio of fins tracing languid figure eights.
Doro’s hair lifted in the breeze. Her eyes had gone unfocused.
“This is where they found Kim Baker, my friend. When the tide went out, she was out there, in the middle of the marsh. She had drowned when the tide came in.”
She was still, her face turned away from me now. Her hand rested on the gearshift, her thumb twisted the turquoise-and-silver band on her middle finger.
“Kim’s mother, Vera Baker, had worked at Ambletern for years. Lived in one of the old slave cabins my dad fixed up. She was a housekeeper at first, then worked in the garden. My dad used her wherever he needed someone. Anyway. The sheriff came over from the mainland and investigated. He said Mrs. Baker had been depressed or something. Disturbed. Wandered out of the house one night. Kim went to find her. Her mother . . .” She shook her head, unable to speak for a moment. “Vera hit Kimmy on the head. Fractured her skull, knocked her out, of course. And when the water rose, she drowned.
“After they found the body, the staff went out to look for Vera. They found her in less than an hour. On the beach up on the north end of the island, at the middens. She was all bloody. She’d cut herself, up and down her arms. Been at it all night with an oyster shell.”
“Jesus. Because she killed her daughter?”
“Some people said she didn’t know what had happened to Kim and had gone up to the middens to kill herself. But we all were pretty sure she was the one who did it.”
Doro nodded. “They took her to the jail over at St. Marys. She died there, before she even went to trial. She had a brain tumor. Which might’ve been why she lost her mind and attacked her own daughter.”
“It’s so sad.”
“Kim was my only real friend on this island. Other than Frances.”
I thought it was a good time to seize a new subject. “So you really considered Frances a friend?”
“I was a little girl. And even though she cast me as the villain in her book, there are moments in it where you can see how she must have felt about me. It’s not just me, right?”
I must’ve looked blank because her mouth dropped.
“Wait a second,” she said. “Are you telling me you haven’t read the book?”
I lowered my eyes.
“Megan!”
“I’m on chapter five.”
Laughter bubbled out of Doro. “Your own mother wrote arguably one of the most famous books in recent history, and you haven’t gotten around to reading it? A psychologist would have a field day with that.”
I sighed.
She chuckled again. “Well. They’d have a field day with the lot of us, I expect. My dad was a good-hearted man. But naive. Terribly naive. When Kitten first came out, he could’ve sued her to stop the publication. But when it hit the bestseller list, it was like our fortunes turned around overnight. The hotel became famous. It was hard to say no to all those bookings. All that money.”
“All the weirdos.”
She hugged her torso. Watched the threatening clouds. “I feel like I haven’t earned the right to complain. Not when I think about Kim and all she lost. Most of the time, I think of it as something that happened to someone else. But if I want to remember, really remember, all I have to do is come out here. Watch the sun set and the tide come in.” She touched my shoulder. “Do me a favor, Meg? Will you write about her in your book? The real Kim? My friend?”
I nodded, biting my lip. I could make all the promises I liked, but I had to get to work. I had to put words on the page.
“Forget the book. Let’s talk about you,” Doro said. “You live in New York?”
“Sometimes. LA too.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “How many homes do you have?”
“My mother has”—I ticked off on my fingers—“a beach house in Uruguay. Castle in Scotland. Condo in Switzerland. Not that I spent all that much time in any of those places. When I was a kid, I was away at school most of the time.”
“What do you do now?”
I focused on the dark tidal pool, the waving grasses beyond it. I thought of my girls at Omnia, their bright eyes and loud chatter as they crowded into our room at the community center, tossed their book bags against the wall. Composing wildly vulgar questions in Italian or French to see who could make me laugh first.
“Not really much of anything,” I said.
“You have yet to find your calling.”
I looked at her. She was watching me closely.
“I like your spin on it,” I said.
She caught my hand, and, reflexively, I flinched. I wasn’t used to anyone touching me, not like that. “It’s hard to think about, isn’t it?” she said. “The past?”
I looked away to hide the fact that my eyes had started to water. “Yeah.”
“I think you can do it, Meg,” she said. “I believe in you.”
I felt something rise in my throat.
“Close your eyes,” Doro said.
I did. She was quiet for a moment, but she was still holding my hand, and I tried to ignore how strange it felt to be touched that way. Her hands were rough but soft at the same time. Strong.
“Remember the times you were home, wherever that happened to be, with your mom. Remember the sounds and the smells. See it all, just as it was.”
I filled my lungs with the marsh air. Imagined I was moving with the porpoises under and over the dark water.
“Just remember it, that’s all. Don’t judge.”