Heartbroken (32 page)

It didn’t feel real. She didn’t have a sense of connection to the life growing inside her. She’d always loved the look of pregnant women, so flushed and full-bodied, so aware of the passenger within. She loved the careful way they lowered themselves into chairs, how they rested possessive hands on their bellies. But she didn’t feel like one of them. It felt like a lie or a dream.

“Okay,” said Brad. Apparently, he had some reason why he still needed them. “This is how things are going to go.”

B
irdie was sitting at the table with her tea service when Kate walked in. In the dark, she looked slight and stooped like a much older woman, as though the costume of the younger, more vital self she wore during the day had been cast aside.

“What are you doing, Mom?” Kate closed the door behind her.

“Remembering,” Birdie said.

It was a short answer, but it revealed more than Kate had come to expect from her mother. It was an invitation, wasn’t it? It seemed as though Birdie had been waiting for her, as if she’d known Kate would come, in the way that only mothers know what their daughters will do and when. There was some uncanny connection that way, in spite of the distance that always had been between them.

“I thought I saw something—someone,” said Kate. “I came to check on you.”

“You’re seeing things, too?”

“I don’t think so, no.” Maybe she was. She hadn’t seen anything
on her walk down the lighted path. There had been only the rain, the wind bending the trees, and the sound of her footfalls on the rocky path. She’d beamed her flashlight between the trees, but she only frightened a rabbit who hopped away into the black. She’d felt the aloneness, the isolation. Whatever she’d seen, there was no sign of it as she made the trip from the guest cabin to the main house.

She told her mother all of this, but Birdie didn’t seem to be listening. Kate sat across from her mother, thinking not for the first time that the chairs at this table were hard—uncomfortable and unwelcoming.

“Remembering what?” Kate asked.

She left the flashlight on the table between them and placed the flare gun beside it. Birdie turned the light so it was facing away from them, as though its brightness pained her. The beam cast odd, ghoulish shadows on the far wall. The rain persisted, tapping on the roof and windows.

“What did she tell you about Richard Cameron and my mother?” Birdie asked.

The question sent a shock wave through Kate. It was both expected and unexpected. The answer was right on her tongue and, at the same time, buried deep.

“Who?” asked Kate. She was stalling; she already knew the answer.

“Caroline,” said Birdie. “You two were always thick as thieves.”

If anyone knew how to embed an insult, it was Birdie. Thieves. All they’d ever taken from Birdie were the things she’d already tossed aside. The truly sad part was that Birdie could have had them both—Kate and Caroline—had she ever put down her guard and opened her arms. They’d both been waiting all their lives to love and be loved by Birdie.

“We were close,” said Kate. “That’s true.”

Birdie let out a grunt. It sounded sad as much as disdainful. In front of Birdie was a photo album. It was the album that Caroline
had wanted for years. Birdie had always claimed it was lost, but here it was. It probably had been in the bunkhouse all this time.

Her mother opened the book to its final page, spreading her jeweled fingers wide across the photographs. Kate had always admired Birdie’s hands, white and long-fingered, with delicate ropes of veins pressing against the translucent skin, always perfectly manicured. As she aged, Birdie’s hands only seemed more regal. Kate had gotten the Burke hands, wide and too thick, she’d always thought, to be attractive on a woman.

Your father’s people come from peasant stock
, Birdie always said. So Kate thought of her hands as peasant hands, designed for hard labor. She imagined generations of thick-handed women beating laundry and diapering babies, milking cows, tending fields, cooking stew, serving meals. In another century, maybe she would have been one of them.

Birdie thinks that anyone who works for a living is a peasant
, her father said.
But our people built this country, carried it on their backs. You can be proud of that
. Kate didn’t know if that was true. Her grandfather on her father’s side was a Wall Street man. Her great-grandfather was with the railroad. It seemed to her that the Burke family had always found ways to make money, peasant stock or not.

“A long time ago, when I was a child,” said Birdie, “I saw them together—Richard Cameron and your grandmother. My mother slipped away in the night and met him on that island where John Cross built his house. Until two nights ago, I thought it was a dream. That’s what my mother told me, that I was dreaming.”

Birdie flipped the photo over, and Kate saw what her grandmother had written there:
It wasn’t a dream, darling. I’m so sorry
.

“All these years, I remembered that morning with such shame,” said Birdie. “They all laughed at me, mocked me. But I
did
see her run away to him.”

Kate was startled by Birdie’s hand on hers. “What do you know?” her mother asked.

Kate took her hand away. There was a time when she craved contact from her mother. But now she could hardly stand it. “Does it really matter, Mother?”

“It matters,” said Birdie. “I need to know.”

In Kate’s mind, the story was a romantic one, tragic and violent but somehow beautiful. She knew it wouldn’t be that for her mother. It would be the story of betrayal and infidelity. Birdie could only find it ugly and wrong and would judge the players harshly. She would indict Lana and Richard and maybe even Jack.

But Kate didn’t have any choice now; she couldn’t control how others would view her grandmother’s affair with Richard Cameron.

“They were lovers,” said Kate. The words sounded weak and ordinary, not right for how she understood the relationship. “They met here, on these islands, when they were children. And they loved each other.”

It sounded so simple. In her journals, Lana had painted such a picture of the two of them swimming and climbing rocks, knowing even then that they were meant to be together. Kate, in this moment, did not feel up to the task of telling it. The journals she’d brought for her mother were tucked away in the upstairs bedroom. Kate had figured that if she didn’t have the nerve to talk to her mother before she left, she’d tell her about the journals once she was back home. Sometimes, when it came to Birdie, Kate felt like a coward.

Kate went on. “But ultimately, she married Grandpa—who came from a better family and who was a better man. She tried to give Richard Cameron up. But she couldn’t. He waited for her here every summer until he died.”

Birdie released a long slow breath and, for a long moment, didn’t say a word. The rain had started again. “Did my father know?” she asked finally.

“I’m not sure what he knew. Something,” said Kate. “I only know what Caroline wrote in her journals and what Lana wrote in hers.”

“I always thought they loved each other,” said Birdie. She sounded grief-stricken. “Their relationship was always so tender.”

“She loved Grandpa Jack,” said Kate. Caroline hadn’t thought so, but Kate believed differently. “She did. They were great friends. She admired him, considered him her partner in this life, the father of her children. But did she have with him what she had with Richard? I don’t think so. They were different men. She loved them differently.”

Birdie didn’t say anything, her eyes cast down to the table.

Kate went on, “On the other hand, her relationship with Richard was tempestuous, unpredictable. There was violence between them. When it was time to choose, when she had to decide between them, she married Jack.”

Kate thought of what Caroline had written:
She chose sanity, security, the kind of gentle and easy love my father offered. It was enough for her in so many ways. But at the same time, her appetite for Richard never died, not until he did. She wilted all year without him, coming alive again only in the summer. It was their stolen time. I wonder if my father knew all along. If it was a bargain he made to have her with him the rest of the year
.

“She told you all of this?” asked Birdie. “Caroline confided all of this to you?”

“No,” said Kate. “Not while she lived. It was all in the journals she left to me.”

Birdie leaned away from the table. In the dim light, her face was a blank mask, no emotion registering at all. Kate knew her well enough to understand that her anger was gathering like a storm. The rage would come later, someplace unpredictable, chosen for maximum impact.

“And you didn’t think I’d want to know about this?” Birdie said.

“I’ve been searching for a way to tell you,” said Kate. “I knew it would only hurt you. I felt that you wouldn’t understand—or forgive.”

“And this book you’ve written,” Birdie said. “I suppose now I know what it’s about.”

Kate smiled, though it almost hurt to do so. How could Birdie know that? Was Kate so obvious, so transparent? This was not the conversation she’d wanted to have with her mother about her book. She’d imagined it so differently. But that was just a fantasy, one of many she’d had about her mother. It was a fantasy to imagine her mother as proud, excited, and giving. It had been silly to hope that Birdie could share Kate’s passion for the story that had reignited her will to write. She wanted to tell her mother about the emotional journey she’d taken via Caroline’s journal. And how Lana’s words had been an intimate window into a time before Kate was ever born. But she couldn’t do that. She said instead what she had intended to say to anyone who asked about the inspiration for her novel.

“My book is a work of fiction. It is inspired by actual events from journals left to me by Caroline. But the characters in my novel and its events are fictionalized to the point of being unrecognizable. It’s not about anyone or anything real, not truly.”

“That’s convenient.”

“It’s true,” said Kate.

“Don’t pretend you don’t want to hurt me,” said Birdie. “It’s all you’ve ever wanted. To get even because you think I was a horrible mother.”

The accusation stung, and Kate felt tears spring to her eyes. How was it that her own mother knew her not at all? “You’re wrong, Mom,” she said. “I’ve wanted so many things over the course of my life, but revenge was never one of them. I know you did your best, as we all do with our children.”

Birdie let out an ugly laugh. “Oh, that’s rich,” she said. But she didn’t go on.

Kate wasn’t sure what Birdie found so funny and disdainful. She’d learned long ago not to answer those goading statements that implied she’d done or said something awful, laughable, or insulting.
Instead, Kate asked a question she’d been wanting to ask for as long as she could remember. “Why are you so angry, Mom? Why have you always been so angry at everyone? Why do you push everyone away and then act surprised when they finally go?”

The questions seemed to drain the energy from the room, and Birdie’s head sank into her hands. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “I really don’t know.”

Kate didn’t have time to be surprised by Birdie’s answer. There was a loud knock on the door. Birdie looked up at Kate, startled. It took a second for Kate to register that there was somebody standing on the porch. Two people. She could see them through the glass.

“Who is that?” asked Birdie. Her voice was thin and shaky. Kate got up, but Birdie reached across the table and put a hand on her arm. “Don’t,” she said.

“We need help.” It was the voice of a young woman, her tone desperate and afraid. “We’ve crashed our boat. We’re stranded.”

Kate reached for the flare gun, but Birdie stopped her. “There’s a gun in the cabinet.”

“Who’s with you?” Kate called as she reached for the weapon. She was surprised by its weight as she brought it down. A quick glance at the chamber told her it was fully loaded.

“My fiancé,” the voice from outside replied. “Please. We’re in trouble. Our boat—it’s sinking.”

Kate looked at her mother, who was standing, staring hard at the door. Birdie reached out for the gun, and Kate handed it to her.

“Should I go to the door?” she asked. Birdie looked her straight in the eye; Kate could see the uncertainty, the hesitation.

“What choice do we have?” said Birdie finally. “They’re on the island.”

Kate knew what she meant. If it was trouble, it was already here; the perimeter had been breached, and they had no choice but to face it head-on. Kate walked over to the door and opened it.

Two young people in their mid-twenties stood wet and shivering on the porch. The girl looked sad and frightened. The young man was nervous, fidgety, with the eyes of a con man. Kate would look back and think she knew in that moment that nothing good could follow.

chapter twenty-four

S
ean had a feeling he should leave after the open house. It was something in his gut that told him he should go straight over to his mom’s, pick up Brendan, and get right on the road. But Kate had made him promise, if he was tired, to wait until Monday morning. And for a number of reasons, he
was
tired, bone-tired.

He hadn’t slept at all the night before, going over details in his mind for the open house—what to serve, what needed staging, what needed tidying or rearranging. He’d run around like a crazy person all day, getting everything ready, putting up signs, sending e-mails to his favorite clients, making calls to people who’d reached out to him in the past.
It’s one of my favorite houses ever
, he’d said about a million times. And it was true.

By the time four o’clock rolled around, everything was perfect. He was hopped up on Red Bull. His partner, Jane, was there, ready and raring to go. It was the first house of the year that wasn’t being sold out of sheer desperation. In his heart, he felt it heralded a recovery for the market. He couldn’t have said why; there were still plenty of foreclosures. It just felt like a new beginning.