Silver Girl (40 page)

The epilogue to that story, which Connie didn’t like to think about now, was that the following January, Meredith sent Connie a letter from Princeton. The letter said,
Guess what? You were right. I am going to be fine! I’ve met an amazing guy. His name is Fred.

Meredith returned from her walk with a handful of shells that she set in a row along the edge of her towel like a prepubescent girl.

She gave Dan a teensy smile. “It’s lovely here. Thank you for bringing us.”

Dan said, “Meredith, you’re welcome.”

Connie thought,
Things are improving.

Toby returned a little while later with an armload of driftwood, which he dropped in a noisy pile a few inches from where Meredith lay.

“For a fire,” he said. “Later.”

“Great!” Connie said.

Toby nudged Meredith’s shoulder with his big toe. “You missed a great walk,” he said.

“No, I didn’t,” Meredith said. “I took a great walk. I went that way.”

Toby eyeballed her a second, then shook his head.

Connie closed her eyes and thought,
Things are not improving.
She thought,
Okay, the two of you don’t have to fall back in love, no one expects that, but can’t you be friends? And if you can’t manage to be friends, could you at least be civil?

Meredith stood up. “I’m going for a swim.”

“Me, too,” Toby said.

Meredith whipped around. “Stop it, Toby,” she said.

Toby laughed. “The ocean is big enough for both of us.”

“No,” Meredith said. “I don’t think it is.” She waded in, and when the water was at her hips, she dove under. She was as natural to the water as a porpoise. Toby dove in after her, and Connie thought,
God, Toby, leave the woman alone.
But he swam right up to her and snapped the strap of her black tank suit, and Meredith splashed him in the face and said, “Get some new tricks.”

And he said, “What’s wrong with my old tricks?”

Meredith said, “What’s
wrong
with your old tricks? Do I really need to answer that?” But if Connie wasn’t mistaken, her voice was a little more elastic, and that was all Toby would need to wiggle into her good graces. Meredith swam down the shoreline, and Toby took off after her, undeterred.

“That looks like fun,” Dan said. He stood up to join them, and Connie followed, although she hated being pressured into the water. But the water here was warm and shallow. Connie floated on her back and felt the sun on her face. Dan encouraged her out a little deeper where he cradled her in his arms and sang a James Taylor song in her ear. “Something in the Way She Moves.” He had a wonderful voice—he was good enough to be a real singer—and Connie loved the buzz in her ear. When he finished, she said, “You are the man with the key.”

“The key to what?” he said.

The lighthouse, silly!
she nearly said. But instead, she said, “The key to my heart.”

He seemed pleased by this. “Am I now?” he said.

She nodded. Then she felt guilty. Wolf! Wolf was the man with the key to her heart. It was foolish to believe she could love anybody else like that.

She swam back to shore.

After lunch, Meredith curled up on her blanket and fell asleep. Toby leaned forward in his chair and watched the sailboats in the distance. Connie wondered if he was thinking about
Bird’s Nest
. Of course he was. She had been more than a boat; she had been, for Toby, a home. As Connie was studying him—she wanted to say something, though she wasn’t sure what—she saw him cast his eyes at Meredith. He gazed at her for a long couple of seconds, and Connie thought,
Oh, boy
.

Dan pushed himself up out of his chair. “I’m going to fish for a little while. Connie?”

“I’ll pass.”

Toby hopped to his feet. “I’d love to join you.”

Connie watched her lover and her brother amble down the beach with their fishing poles. Meredith’s breathing was audible; she was fast asleep. Connie wondered what she was dreaming about. Did she dream about her sons or Freddy or Connie or her attorney or the angry woman at the salon? Did she dream about Toby, and if so, was it Toby at eighteen, or Toby now, at fifty-one? Connie’s eyes drifted closed. She heard Dan singing a song without words, she felt the breeze lift the brim of her straw hat, she wondered if seals went to heaven and decided they probably did.

When she woke, it was because Toby was shouting about a fish. Dan yelled up the beach, “It’s a keeper!” Connie squinted at them. Meredith was still asleep. Connie decided to walk over and be impressed. She recognized the dark markings on the scales—a striped bass. Big one.

Dan said, “Now
that’s
a beauty.”

Toby said, “The sea has always provided for me.”

Connie looked at Dan. “Are we going to eat it?”

“I brought my filet knife,” he said. “And a bottle of olive oil and my Lawry’s seasoned salt. I knew we’d catch something. We’ll cook it over the fire.”

Connie smiled and kissed her brother on the cheek. “Hunter-gatherer,” she said. “Meredith will be so impressed.”

They played horseshoes, and Dan won handily. They played Wiffle ball, and Connie hit the ball over everyone’s heads into the eelgrass and they couldn’t find it again. Although this ended their game prematurely, Dan was impressed by the hit, and Connie beamed.

Toby said, “You should have seen her play field hockey. She was a killer.”

Connie and Dan went for a walk and stopped to kiss, which got so heated at one point, Connie thought they might… there was no one around, so… but Dan pulled away. He said, “If Bud comes driving around and sees us, he won’t like it.”

“Does Bud come driving around?” Connie asked.

“Oh, sure,” Dan said, and he nibbled on Connie’s ear.

The sun was setting. When Connie and Dan got back to the camp, Toby had dug a pit with a shovel he’d found in the back of Dan’s Jeep. He piled in the wood and used the paper from their sandwich wrappings to start a fire. He was a man with survival skills. Two failed marriages, a lifelong battle with alcohol, a little boy he didn’t see enough of. Connie had buried a husband and lost a daughter; Dan had buried a wife and lost a son. Meredith—well, Meredith had experienced difficulty the likes of which Connie couldn’t begin to imagine. And yet, despite all of this collective suffering, the four of them gathered around the growing heat and light of the bonfire, and let it warm them.

God, human beings are resilient,
Connie thought.

We are resilient!

Dan filleted the bass, and Connie set out cheese and crackers on a plate. Toby and Meredith were sitting side by side on the blanket, not touching, not talking, but they were definitely coexisting more peacefully now. Or was she imagining this?

It was high school over and over and over again.

There was a noise. Connie looked up to see a forest-green pickup truck coming their way. Although it had been a nearly perfect day, they had seen very few people—a couple of lone fishermen on foot, a handful of families in rental Jeeps who approached their spot then backed up, for fear of infringing. But this truck drove toward the camp, then stopped suddenly, spraying sand on Toby and Meredith’s blanket. There was white writing on the side of the truck.
Trustees of the Reservation.
A man poked his head out the window. He was wearing a green cap. It was Bud Attatash.

He stepped out of the truck. “You folks doing all right?”

Dan was monitoring the progress of the striped bass on the grill. He said, “We’re doing great, Bud. Couldn’t have asked for a better day.”

“I’ll agree with you there,” Bud said. He stood with his hands in his pockets, an uncomfortable air about him. He hadn’t come to talk about the weather. Was he upset about the grill? Or about the fire? Dan had gotten a fire permit; it was in the glove compartment of the Jeep. Was he going to scold them for having an open container? One open beer?

“You headed home?” Dan asked. He had explained that, as ranger, Bud Attatash spent the summer living in a cottage out here on the point.

“Yep,” Bud said. “I just wanted to stop by and see how you folks were doing.”

“We’re cooking up this striped bass,” Dan said. “It was legal, half inch over.”

“They’ve been big this summer,” Bud said. He cleared his throat. “Listen, after you folks headed out, I got to thinking about what you said about that dead seal on the south shore being a more complicated issue than it appeared. So I called up Chief Kapenash, and he told me about it. He said that you, Dan, were a part of that whole thing.” Here, he looked, not at Dan, but at Meredith, whose face had gone scary blank. “And I realized that I said some inappropriate things.” He nodded at Meredith. “Are you Mrs. Delinn?”

Meredith stared. Toby said, “Please, sir, if you don’t mind…”

“Well, Mrs. Delinn, I just want to apologize for my callous words earlier. And for perhaps sounding like I cared more about a dead seal than I did for your welfare. What those people did was inexcusable. No doubt, you’ve been through enough in your private life without these hooligans trying to scare you.”

Meredith pressed her lips together. Toby said, “That’s right, you’re right, she’s been through enough.”

“So if anyone ever bothers you again, you let me know.” He gazed out over the dark water at the twinkling lights of town. “Nantucket is supposed to be a safe haven.”

Dan came over to shake Bud’s hand. “Thanks, Bud. Thank you for coming all the way out here to say that. You didn’t have to.”

“Oh, I know, I know,” Bud said. “But I didn’t want any of you to get the wrong idea about me. I’m not coldhearted or vindictive.”

“Well, thanks again,” Dan said. “You have a good night.”

Bud Attatash tipped his cap at Meredith and then again at Connie, and then he climbed into his truck and drove off into the darkness.

“Well,” Meredith said after a minute. “That was a first.”

They ate the grilled fish with some sliced fresh tomatoes that Dan had gotten at Bartlett’s Farm. Then they each put a marshmallow on a stick and roasted it over the fire. Meredith went back in the water, and Toby stood to join her, but Meredith put a hand up and said, “Don’t even think about it.” Toby plopped back down on his towel. “Yeah,” he said. “She wants me.” Connie climbed into Dan’s lap and listened to the splashing sound of Meredith swimming. Dan kissed her and said, “Let’s get out of here.”

Yes!
she thought.

She and Dan started breaking down the camp and packing everything up. Meredith emerged from the water with her teeth chattering, and Connie handed her the last dry towel. She collected the trash and stowed everything in the coolers. She folded up the blankets and the chairs while Dan dealt with the cooling grill and doused the fire. Toby put away the fishing poles, and Meredith collected the horseshoes. A seagull landed for the remains of the striped bass. Connie found the plastic bat in the sand and tucked it into the back of the Jeep. The Wiffle ball was still out there somewhere, Connie thought, tucked into the eelgrass like a seagull’s egg, a memento of one of the small triumphs of the day.

The days zipped by. Connie spent nearly every night at Dan’s house. She left a toothbrush there, and she bought half-and-half for her coffee (Dan, health nut, had only skim milk) and kept it in the fridge. She had met both of Dan’s younger sons—Donovan and Charlie—though they had little more to say to her than “Hey.” Dan relayed the funny things they said to him after Connie left.

Donovan, who was sixteen, had said, “Glad you’re getting laid on a regular basis again, Dad. Can I borrow the Jeep?”

Charlie, the youngest, said, “She’s pretty hot for an older lady.”

“Older lady!” Connie exclaimed.

“Older than him, he means,” Dan said. “And he’s fourteen.”

On the days that Dan had to work, Connie and Meredith and Toby walked the beach and then sat on the deck and read their books and discussed what they wanted to do for dinner. These were the moments when Toby acted like an adult. But more and more often, there were moments when Toby acted like an adolescent. He would mess up Meredith’s hair or throw stones at the door of the outdoor shower while she was in there, or he would steal her glasses, forcing her to come stumbling blindly after him.

“Look at you,” he’d say to her. “You’re
chasing
me.”

Connie said to Dan, “I can’t tell if that’s going to happen or not.”

Toby asked if he could stay another week.

“Another week?” Connie said. “Or longer?”

“I don’t start at the Naval Academy until after Labor Day,” he said.

“So what does that mean?” Connie asked. “You’ll stay until Labor Day?”

“Another week,” Toby said. “But maybe longer. If that’s okay with you?”

“Of course, it’s okay with me,” Connie said. “I’m just wondering what I did to deserve the honor of your extended presence?” What she wanted him to say was that he was staying because of Meredith.

“This is Nantucket,” Toby said, “Why would I want to be anywhere else?”

On the morning of the twenty-third of August, Meredith was awakened by the phone. Was it the phone? She thought it was, but the phone was in Connie’s room, far, far away, and Meredith was in the grip of a heavy, smothering sleep. Connie would answer it. The phone kept ringing. Really? Meredith tried to lift her head. The balcony doors were shut tight—even with Toby across the hall, she didn’t feel safe enough to sleep with them open—and her room was sweltering. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t answer the phone.

A little while later, the phone rang again. Meredith woke with a start. Connie would get it. Then she remembered that Connie wasn’t home. Connie was at Dan’s.

Meredith got out of bed and padded down the hall. Toby probably hadn’t even heard the phone; he slept like a corpse. Meredith liked to believe this was a sign that he had a clean conscience. Freddy had jolted awake at the slightest sound.

Connie didn’t have an answering machine, and so the phone rang and rang.
It’s probably Connie,
Meredith thought,
calling from Dan’s house with some kind of plan for the day—a lunch picnic at Smith’s Point or a trip to Tuckernuck in Dan’s boat.
Meredith’s heart quickened. She had fallen in love with Nantucket—and yet in a few weeks, she would have to leave. She was trying not to think about where she would go or what she would do.