Chance Harbor (11 page)

“How long have you known?”

“Since Friday. Even then Russell didn’t tell me everything. It’s been coming out in bits and pieces. Apparently Russell has been screwing this girl—this
student
—since last spring. He couldn’t help himself, he says. Now he’s lost his job as well as his mind. End of story.”

“Not quite the end.” Eve turned onto her side and looked at her daughter, whose cheeks were shiny with tears.

She remembered, suddenly, a night when she’d come into Catherine’s room long ago, when Catherine was eighteen, a high school senior herself. Zoe would have been a freshman. Catherine had stormed upstairs after a party—that in itself was strange, since Catherine wasn’t the sort of child who threw tantrums—and announced that Zoe had been at the same party with one of the senior boys, “putting on a big show and letting everyone know how slutty she is.”

Eve had tried to lie on Catherine’s bed that night, to talk about it, but Catherine had shut down completely and told her to leave. To Eve’s shame, she’d done it. She’d left Catherine, upset and alone, and gone out to hunt for Zoe, whom she’d never found. Zoe had come home at five o’clock in the morning, showered, and gone to school as if nothing had happened. They’d grounded her for a month. She just kept sneaking out.

How often, Eve wondered, had she chosen to focus on the troubled daughter over the one who seemed to have it all together?

“What do you mean, it’s not the end of the story?” Catherine was asking. “I hope you’re not going to tell me I have to make things work with my husband for Willow’s sake.”

“No, no. I don’t believe that,” Eve said. “What I meant was, there’s more to come. You need to think about what you really want. You have a role to play in how this all unfolds.”

“That’s simple. I want Russell to burn in hell.”

“That’s how you feel at this moment, sure. But given a choice, would you work on this marriage, Catherine? I know Russell wants to be involved in this child’s life, but it doesn’t sound like he’s in love with the mother. Do you still love him?”

“I did until, let’s see . . . about eight o’clock on Friday night. Now I don’t know.” Catherine covered her eyes with one hand. “I thought we had a good marriage, Mom. Russell and I were still having sex, for God’s sake! And now he’s fathering a child with a child!”

“You could still try to dissuade him,” Eve said, “if that’s what you really want. You could fight for your marriage and win, maybe. I don’t think Russell’s thinking very clearly.”

“He’s thinking with his dick,” Catherine said. “But it doesn’t matter. I’d divorce him even if he climbed those stairs and came into this bedroom on his knees. How can you even suggest that I think about working on my marriage after something like this?”

“Because I think it’s important for you to consider what
you
want, apart from Russell.”

Catherine’s laughter had a hysterical edge. “But that’s the point. I’ve never been apart from Russell! We raised each other, Mom. I’ve never even had sex with another man. Is that pathetic or what? I don’t know what I want because I don’t know who I
am
. I always thought I was going to be a wife and a mother. For a while I was, but now it turns out that everything was a sham.”

“No, it wasn’t. Everything between you and Russell was a long and complicated marriage, like it is for most of us.”

Catherine turned away from her, shoulder and hip protruding from the sheet, her waist dipped and narrow. She was very still. Eve didn’t know whether to go or stay. She felt hollowed out by sorrow. Would telling Catherine about her own affair help her get through this?

Probably not. Unlike Eve, Catherine had done absolutely nothing wrong.

Eve stifled a sigh, thinking about meeting Malcolm. It was Landing Day on Prince Edward Island, the day the lobster boats brought in their last catch of the season. Eve had taken Catherine down to the docks at North Lake. Andrew was spending the summer sorting out a company in California, leaving her alone at the house in Chance Harbor with Catherine, who’d just celebrated her second birthday. It was the summer after she’d discovered, during a weekend getaway in Vermont, that Andrew was still seeing Marta, after he’d promised over and over that it was finished.

Malcolm was one of Andrew’s many cousins. He had stepped out of his lobster boat after the last of his traps were in and walked along the dock in his waders and yellow rubber overalls, the bib dangling by one strap, revealing the holes in his black T-shirt and the pale skin beneath it. He kept his eyes locked on Eve’s as he traveled the length of the splintery dock to where she’d been standing with Catherine to watch the boats.

When he reached them, he kept his eyes on Eve’s face, but bent down to touch one of Catherine’s blond curls, wrapping it around his finger like a ribbon.

“You’re like a little mermaid, you are,” Malcolm said. He was speaking to Catherine, but it was as if he’d laid his hand on Eve’s head, his fingers warm on her scalp, claiming her as his.

His blue eyes were kind, and he had the same ruddy coloring as Andrew and most of the others in the MacLeish clan. He was widowed with two young children; it had been an unhappy marriage, Eve suspected, though he’d never really said.

Malcolm started dropping by to help her with things around the house at Chance Harbor and often stayed for a beer or even dinner. He would find Eve with Catherine on the beach, too, and help them build elaborate sand castles decorated with driftwood and shells. Other cousins, aunts, and uncles joined them; it was all innocent, except for Cousin Jane’s occasional sharp, knowing glances.

Lobster season was over, so Malcolm had plenty of time on his hands; besides, he was family and she enjoyed the way he traced his words in the air with long fingers when he spoke, painting pictures for her of the sea and its storms; of whales bigger than his boat and rocky shores where some said they’d seen mermaids; of the ghost ship ablaze on certain nights, a burning ship that disappeared whenever sailors tried to reach it in time to save the men jumping overboard.

A few weeks after they’d first met on the docks, Malcolm leaned across her kitchen table at Chance Harbor and said, “I know this is the wrong thing to say, but I’m in love with you, Evie.”

Evie.
Nobody had ever called her that before. It made her feel like a different person, a woman who was still hopeful about life. A woman who felt cherished and desirable. A woman who wore long skirts and thin blouses with silver jewelry that suggested waves breaking on a beach, instead of her everyday fleeces and jeans.

Another few days went by. They began kissing good night. Sometimes they sat in the car and kissed for hours. They held hands whenever they watched TV at her house or found themselves alone on the beach, or they swung Catherine between them if they couldn’t do that.

Finally, she invited Malcolm into her bed. “I want you to stay with me,” she whispered. “Just one night, all night long. I want to be close to you. To sleep with you, that’s all. Nothing more has to happen.”

Andrew had flown from California to a sales conference in Europe by then, and Eve suspected he might be seeing Marta still, but she didn’t ask him.

She had thought it would be difficult to undress with a stranger, but Malcolm made it easier by declaring that she was beautiful, lovely, desirable. He’d repeated those words with every article of clothing she dropped to the floor in front of him.

“I’m a lucky, lucky man,” he’d said when she was naked, his eyes lingering on Eve’s breasts and hips and thighs and face. When she finally lay down beside him, Malcolm’s body felt like home, so similar to Andrew’s build, yet with a fisherman’s muscles and scars. She’d traced them with her fingers, her tongue.

They had kissed and tangled their limbs like teenagers, growing slick with sweat, and of course they didn’t just sleep together. They made love several times that night, until both of them were drunk on fatigue and rubbed raw. Malcolm sneaked out of the house carrying his boots, but he came back again and again that summer.

Eve listened to the grandfather clock in the front hall chime the hour. Ten thirty. “Do you want me to leave?” she asked as Catherine turned onto her back again.

“I don’t care.” Catherine glanced at her mother. In the dim light, her narrow face glowed a milky white. “Just don’t try to tell me I can work things out with Russell. I can’t do it. I won’t do it. I’m going to divorce
him
even if he doesn’t divorce me. After that I don’t care what he does.”

“Don’t lie. It doesn’t suit you.”

“No?” Catherine’s face was ugly with rage. “Who does lying suit, then? Everybody else? Zoe was a liar. Russell’s certainly doing okay in that department. Who doesn’t lie, Mom? You and Dad?”

Eve said nothing, feeling guilty that she’d been more honest with Russell than with her own daughter. She sat up. “You should get some sleep, honey. I’ll go to the guest room.”

“No.” Catherine reached over, circled her fingers around Eve’s wrist the way she’d done as a child whenever Eve came into her bedroom to tend her: fevers, bad dreams, a broken heart. “Stay with me, Mom.”

Eve lay back down against the pillows, her daughter’s delicate fingers anchoring her firmly in place. Eventually Catherine’s breathing slowed.

When Eve looked over at her again, Catherine was asleep, her lips parted, her soft blond hair falling over her eyes as it always had when she was a child. Eve brushed the hair off Catherine’s forehead and watched her sleep, wishing she could smooth away the hurt, too.

A
s she entered the examining room for her next appointment, Catherine glanced through the slim file. Her patient—a two-week-old baby boy—had been born vaginally without complications, with normal weight and Apgar scores. Why, then, was his head lolling on his neck? And why was he wheezing?

Catherine found the mother’s name on the chart and said, “Hello, Kayla. My name is Catherine Standish. I’m one of the nurse practitioners here. What’s going on with Jamie?”

“He’s sick.” The girl was texting; she didn’t lift her eyes from the phone.

God help me, Catherine thought, barely restraining herself from grabbing the phone out of the girl’s hands and tossing it into the waste bin for needles.

She lay the baby down on the exam table and began undressing him. With infants, one common cause of breathing difficulties was RSV, a respiratory virus. But there was more going on here. Most babies made eye contact during exams or screamed bloody murder, depending on temperament. This one did neither. He was dull-eyed and listless. Floppy.

“Tell me more,” she urged the mother. “How long has Jamie been sick?”

“Two days? Maybe three.”

Catherine glanced at the girl as she took the baby’s temperature. The mother couldn’t be much older than Willow. Or Nola. Why did so many ill-equipped teenagers pop babies out like PEZ dispensers, while women like her, with careers, cars, retirement plans, and—until last week—a husband, couldn’t bear children, even with armies of fertility specialists?

No. She wasn’t going to dwell on that, or on Russell and his baby.
Get through the day,
Catherine told herself.
Then you can fall apart.

Kayla had blue-black hair and a butterfly tattoo on her wrist. Her cargo pants were too tight, the loose skin of her post-pregnancy belly gathered above the waistband, mushroom white beneath the hem of her black T-shirt.

“What are his symptoms?” Catherine asked. “Has Jamie been vomiting? Running a fever? Crying more than usual?”

“All that stuff, yeah.”

“I see.” Catherine glanced at the thermometer. No fever now. She measured the baby’s head and length, then moved Jamie’s frail limbs between her hands to test his reflexes. They were off, but maybe he was dehydrated. “How much did he vomit?”

“A shitload,” the girl said. “He makes himself puke when he cries. I had to shake him to shut him up.” Kayla continued to glare at her phone, texting with rapid, furious jabs of her thumbs.

“You
shook
him?” Catherine took a deep breath to control her temper. Shaking a baby, especially as young as this one, would pitch the brain back and forth inside the skull, potentially causing brain damage.

The girl rolled her eyes without looking up from her phone. “It’s not like I shook him
hard
,” she said. “I just needed him to pay attention. I swear to God he’s ADHD. Jamie’s always crying to get me to pick him up. But I don’t want to spoil him, you know?”

“There’s no such thing as spoiling a baby.” Catherine knew her anger was starting to seep through. “Babies only cry when they need something. It’s your job as a parent to figure out what it is. Tell you what. I’m going to sign you up with a nurse who teaches free parenting classes at the hospital, okay? She can help you. I know the first few months of motherhood can be rough. And it’s hard to raise a baby on your own.”

“I’m
not
alone!” Kayla said. “And my boyfriend’s old enough to know what to do with a baby. He’s already got two.”

Catherine focused on keeping her expression neutral as she palpated the infant’s abdomen. She didn’t like what she saw. The baby’s rib cage was bruised and there was an inch-long, plum-colored bruise on his hip. She held the stethoscope to the infant’s chest, then gently diapered and dressed him.

She picked him up and held him close to her shoulder, cupping his hot head with her palm. His bones felt hollow. As always with cases of neglected and abused kids in her care, there was a tug in her lower belly. She longed to walk right out the door with this baby and take him home.

“How old are you, honey?” she asked.

“Sixteen. Everybody says I look older, though.” Kayla slid her phone into the back pocket of her pants. A second later, the phone buzzed and she whipped it out again. “Crap,” she said, staring at the screen. “Is this going to take much longer? I really gotta be someplace.”

“Just a few more minutes. Wait here. I’ll be right back.” Catherine carried the baby out to the main office, where she asked Alicia to call an ambulance. Then she called the Department of Children and Families to file a report.

A hectic hour later, everything was sorted. She’d filed the 51A form, and the emergency team from DCF had arrived at the office to accompany Kayla and her child to the hospital in the ambulance. Afterward, Catherine locked herself in her office, allowing herself to cry as she wrote up her notes and waited for the call from the social worker.

Finally it came. “The pediatric neurologist agrees with you,” the social worker reported. “Definitely shaken baby syndrome. Kayla will be charged with abuse.”

Catherine closed her eyes. “Is that really necessary? Kayla’s just a kid herself. She needs help, not a criminal record. And what if the father did it?”

“We know that’s a possibility, of course,” the social worker said. “This wasn’t my choice, either. I promise we’ll do a solid investigation.”

Alicia knocked on her door a few minutes later, telling Catherine her next appointment had canceled. When she saw Catherine’s expression, she said, “Go home. We can handle your appointments.”

“No, you can’t,” Catherine said. “We’re already overbooked. And I’m better off working here instead of going home and stewing about that poor baby. I’ll go out to eat my sandwich and get some air, but I’ll be back in an hour.”

Catherine took a brisk walk down to the Charles River, where she escaped most days to eat lunch in solitude. The river was nearly empty of boats now that it was September. She choked down half of her food without tasting it, then called Bethany.

She and Bethany had been friends since nursing school; they’d been bridesmaids for each other the same year and had planned their pregnancies for the next, imagining their children growing up as close as cousins. They’d succeeded in getting pregnant the same month and had happily swapped tales of morning sickness and thickening waists. Catherine, however, lost her baby at four months, and lost every baby after that, though one pregnancy had lasted six months. Four miscarriages in all.

Bethany had her baby, and, two years later, twin boys. Her oldest, a daughter, was in high school now. Catherine hadn’t thought she could be around Bethany and her family. Had been afraid she’d resent Bethany for her easy fecundity and jolly disorganization as a mother. Instead, the opposite had happened: Bethany’s children had become part of Catherine’s family as well.

She adored Bethany’s kids, who were all as noisy and plump as her friend. They often spent weekends and vacations together. Willow had benefited from this as well: Bethany always knew what to do in a crisis, whether that involved finding a gluten-free, nut-free recipe for a school bake sale or where to go for the perfect trendy sneakers at the start of school.

They always shared schedules on a Google calendar, so Catherine knew Bethany would be home now. “Hey,” Bethany said. “Thank God you called. I was just waging a war on dirt, and dirt was kicking my butt. What’s up?”

Catherine spilled it all: Russell and Nola, the shaken baby, and how she’d nearly fallen apart today at work. Bethany made all of the right sympathetic noises, including, several times, “that rat bastard” when Russell’s name was mentioned, then said, “We definitely need a pub date! Friday okay?”

“Friday’s perfect,” Catherine said, and smiled for the first time all day.

Still, she went through her afternoon appointments like an automaton, depressing tongues and listening to heartbeats, issuing prescriptions and counseling worried parents about fevers and teething, eyesight and speech, vaccinations and autism. She probably shouldn’t be here at all. Willow was at home alone. Catherine hadn’t had the heart to enroll her at the public school right away. She’d hated to go to work and leave her; she’d done so only after extracting a promise from Willow that she’d stay in the house and text her every two hours, which Willow had done. This was just the beginning of her life as a single parent, and Catherine was already worn-out.

She furiously wrote out an antibiotic prescription for a mother whose toddler had an ear infection. “Your daughter may need tubes, since this is her third infection in the past six months,” she said, trying to smile at the child—a little girl all in pink, right down to sparkling ballet shoes—and feeling the edges of her face crack.

“Tubes?” the mother said in alarm. “What do you mean?”

“It’s no big deal. A minor surgical procedure to prevent recurring ear infections and possible subsequent deafness.”

“My God.” The mother had paled.

“We’ll talk about that next time,” Catherine said, thinking,
You think that’s bad? Ha! Let me tell you about my husband. Please.
To the little girl, she said, “Okay, my nurse, Julia, is going to give you a shot.”

“But I don’t want a shot!” the little girl screamed.

“Too bad,” Catherine said. “Everybody gets shots here.”

She ignored Julia’s horrified glance and racewalked out of the room. Anger, she was discovering, was a useful emotion. It let you do and say all of the things you would normally filter out.

In the next exam room were a father and son. The boy was four years old, according to his chart, but he looked younger. He was sitting on the table and working so hard to breathe that he was sucking his abdomen in beneath his rib cage. His hair was a startling orange and his hazel eyes were enormous and frightened.

Catherine introduced herself and asked their names to double-check them with the chart, as she always did. “This is my son, Brady,” the father said, after introducing himself as Seth Cunningham.

She talked to Brady about the animal posters hanging on the wall as she examined him. His heartbeat was abnormally fast. A clatter of racehorse hooves in her ear. He was really struggling to take in oxygen.

“Does Brady have a history of asthma?” she asked.

The father, Seth, shook his head. “I don’t know.”

She gave him a look before moving the stethoscope to Brady’s skinny back. Seth’s hair was a rich chestnut color that had probably started out as red as his son’s; despite his height, Seth had the biceps and barrel chest of a man who worked in construction or some other trade that required lifting heavy objects. She wondered what he did for a living. Maybe he was a highway worker or a mechanic?

No, the hands and nails were too neat. Probably Seth was unemployed—that would explain why he was here with his son in the middle of the day—and spent his free time working out.

“Has Brady been sick long?” she asked.

“I’m not sure.”

“He isn’t running a fever. Was he before?”

“I don’t know. I just picked him up this morning.”

“Does he have a history of allergies? Or has he suddenly come into contact with some new substance or a pet? This looks like an asthma attack provoked by an allergic reaction.”

Seth raised his hands. “No idea. You tell me.”

Anger blurred her vision for a moment. Some fathers shouldn’t answer to any name but “Loser.” How could this man not even know if his own kid had allergies? Brady was four years old!

Divorced dad and absentee father, probably. The sort who got his kid once a week and thought he was doing his fair share.

She warmed the stethoscope and listened to Brady’s chest. Kids suffering from pneumonia typically had rales, which sounded like a crackling noise and indicated sputum in the airways. Those experiencing asthma attacks had dry coughs and wheezed when they exhaled, like Brady.

She’d better act fast. Brady was starting to panic, the anxiety amplifying his symptoms. His lips were starting to take on a blue tint.

Catherine asked Julia to bring an inhaler. “This is what I call my special rescue medicine,” she told Brady. She demonstrated how he should put it in his mouth and watched while he took a puff. To the father, she explained that she was using a pressurized, metered-dose inhaler.

“What’s in it?” Seth asked.

“Albuterol, a corticosteroid that acts as a bronchodilator,” she said. “You wouldn’t want to rely on it for long-term or regular treatments, but it’s a good emergency measure when he suffers a flare-up like this. We’ll have to run tests, of course, but I’d say Brady has chronic asthma and this is a flare-up.” She smiled at Brady, pleased to see color seep back into his cheeks. “You sit there for a few minutes with Nurse Julia and rest, okay? Your dad and I are going to my office to set up your next appointment.”

Catherine led Seth across the hall and seated herself behind the desk. “Why don’t you know anything about your son’s medical history?” she demanded. “He could have died! You should have brought him to the ER, not waited for an appointment here. What’s
wrong
with you?”