Lila woke to the rifle shot. She was in the New House, and the pink sky outside the window told her it was already past time for her to be gone. She did not trust herself to replicate the staff’s hospital corners, so she had not turned down the sheets or even unfolded the heavy wool blanket at the foot of the bed, and, luckily, it had not been cold overnight. Her sister, Hannah, had sometimes spent nights in one of these attic rooms—originally they were for the maids—rather than in her and Billy’s much-grander usual room, with its four-poster bed and immense Shaker wardrobe, the one piece of New House furniture that Lila envied. Hannah was an early riser, while for some reason Billy, a man of regular habits in Manhattan, turned nocturnal on the island. He would get up and down and open all the creaky doors and sleep until noon, so Hannah had commandeered this little-used, unglamorous room as a solitary refuge.
Now Lila wanted to see her husband. She had slept here at the New House not so much to punish Jim as to insist upon the old contract. His work implied a certain violence, ran her understanding of their basic agreement, but that violence, such as it was, would be tightly compartmentalized. He would understand; he would say that Baffin was a fever dream of the Old Man’s, a fantasy—an impossibility. He would promise. Lila walked downstairs and out without seeing or hearing any sign of the New House people. She had not seen Billy, nor felt anything at all here in his house, other than heavy sleep and the residue of her evaporating anger. Now she was outside, standing over the harbor, which every morning looked like it had been created just the night before. Everything was still.
And then her wish was answered: there was Jim, out on the lawn, walking toward her from the barn. He must have heard the rifle, too.
Lila kissed him lightly.
“It was the old talk,” Jim said without preamble.
“Please say it.”
“None of our children will set foot on Baffin Island.”
He smiled, but Lila still felt somehow in the wrong, as if she had coerced him about Baffin. Which she had. Which had been essential.
“Why were you up?” she said.
“That rifle shot.”
“It was loud.”
“I had to talk Cyrus out of firing Edward Peck for shooting his gun in the clearing.”
“Why you?” Lila said, laughing.
“Because Billy won’t be up for hours.”
“That was good of you—I like Edward Peck.”
“And this,” Jim said. “Cyrus said three lambs were born last night.”
“Three! All at once?”
“In the barn. He said you should tell Isa.”
Isa was her youngest, a gorgeous surprise. She was now six, and wholly preoccupied with the secret lives of animals.
“She’ll die from happiness.”
Then he was quiet.
“Please say you didn’t sleep in the woods,” Jim said.
“No,” she said.
“Tell me.”
“The New House attic.”
He paused. “Ah.”
“No one saw me,” Lila said.
“That’s good.”
“It was the room Hannah slept in when Billy stayed up late,” she said.
Lila was encouraged by his relatively easy responses. She might have overreacted last night, although she was not sorry.
Months ago, at home in Georgetown, a bedraggled man was handing out pamphlets near Dumbarton Oaks, which was odd because not many people walked by there. The man had shouted to her from across the street. Lila was startled, but she had stopped and looked at him. Encouraged, the man said it again: millions now living will never die. He seemed compelled to repeat it, as if the immortality of the chosen were only real while the words still lingered in the air. Millions now living will never die, he had said again before Lila moved on. Something in his phrase matched something in her mood that day, and it made her happy.
While sharing nothing else, Lila thought, this man and her husband both spoke from a very hot core of certainty. They were men of faith. From time to time, Jim would speak about something, the role of Portugal in NATO, say, or coal or medieval agriculture, and she would be transported, against her will—it had happened the night before, when Jim had silenced the Old Man. At those times, Lila thought, his voice became uncanny. She would feel entirely at peace. It had happened the night she met him, by the fountain at that party in Philadelphia, when all he’d said was that it wouldn’t rain.
“I might go out on the boat today,” Jim said, “to look at that eagles’ nest Peck was talking about.”
“I’m sure Catta would want to go with you,” Lila said, for no other reason than her wish to hear Jim say Catta’s name out loud.
“Good,” Jim said. “I’ll take him with me.”
15
Catta woke up early, although later than he’d hoped: the sun was above Indian Head now, and the sky was already blue. His goal had been to leave the Cottage in the dark, just after Martha put the biscuits out under a towel, the first thing she did before going up the hill to cook breakfast for the adults. Martha came back later in the morning, when everyone was up and the tyranny of James was in full effect, to fix the children long trays full of eggs and bacon. She banged on a pot to wake up the stragglers. When it was just Martha and Catta, sometimes she gave him the special blueberry jam, which was only for the adults. Then, fortified, he would head out to the far reaches of the island, to walk the trails and the canyons. He wanted to know the woods better than anyone else, better even than his grandfather, who could not walk too far anymore but who knew how deep the springs were and why there were no owls on Seven. It was his grandfather’s idea, too, to invite eagles to come and live here by offering them the carcasses of dead lambs, which they left stretched out at the rim of Bonner field.