Page 59 of Our Last Vineyard Summer

The little girl ran into the front yard, alighting at the sight of the other kids, and the three children ran off to squeeze into the porch swing. The rusted chain link creaked as they rocked.

It had to be the child Virgie nearly hit with the car at South Beach earlier this summer. She wouldn’t forget that little girl’s face. Fear had burned it into memory. And she’d thought her familiar then, too; she’d looked like her old friend Melody Fleming.

Virgie peeled her gaze away from the girl. Melody still had that pasted-on smile.

“Gosh, I’m being rude,” Melody said. “Come inside.” The woman looked to the car to see if someone else was inside, swallowing before turning to go in.

Virgie felt for the back of her French twist, like she wasn’t sure her hair was still in place. “I don’t mean to impose like this. I have a personal policy to call before I show up at someone’s house, but I didn’t know. I didn’t know it was going to be you.”

Her friend seemed to relax then. “Of course, no, please. Come in.”

Virgie became hyperaware of her every step in the narrow hall as she followed Melody to the kitchen. Her eyes swept around the adjoining sunny living room, and then the dining room with its mahogany turn-foot table and dated chandelier.

“I’m so sorry; we are meeting some friends at the beach. Jetties in town, you might have seen it as you arrived on the ferry. It’s calmer. The water out here will sweep you away. A few little girls from Vera’s camp, since camp was canceled, and I just had no idea you were going to come. I wish I did because I would have had tea on or a platter of sandwiches ready.” Melody pivoted at the sink; she’d been talking so fast she needed to catch her breath. She reached for two glasses. “It would have been nice to have lunch and a proper visit. Well, we have some time now.”

“I won’t be here long,” Virgie reassured her. “I’m just trying to understand… do you live here?”

Melody squeezed her lips with her fist, then released them. “I’m so sorry. I’m so very sorry. I really am. I tried to.” She turned her face away from Virgie, and Virgie thought it sweet that she still had her freckles, even as a grown woman. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”

“Tell me what?” Virgie said, or maybe she’d only thought she said it. Now she followed her friend, carrying two glasses and a bottle of soda, into her living room, where she shut off the blaring television. There was an upright piano, a scatter of picture frames on top, wide-open views of the reedy inlet. Virgie wondered if she was dreaming—she had the strange sensation of floating—and she guessed she might wake up in her bed in the Vineyard, remarking to the girls at breakfast that she had the strangest vision. She ran her hand along the nubby fabric of the couch as she sat, pinching her outer thigh; both felt real.

This house with the weathered cedar shingles. The refrigerator covered in a child’s artwork. This living room with the big windows overlooking a gnarled oak tree with a tire swing. It was all somehow connected to Charlie.

“I’m really sorry I didn’t tell you,” Melody said, her voice shaky and speeding. “I just thought it would be best to leave DC, and the mystery was less hurtful than the truth.”

There were others, there were always others, Virgie thought in her head. A painful sensation socked her in the chest, and she worried she might be having a heart attack or a stroke, and she worked hard to slow her breath.You are fine. You will survive. You need to understand.

Illegal dealings, maybe a criminal enterprise. That is what Wiley led her to believe she might find. But Melody?

The woman crossed her long, freckled legs, her toenails painted a coral color Virgie never would select for herself. “I’ve barely seen Charlie. Honest to God, but he has dropped by once or twice. I guess I’ve wanted him to see Vera, even if Vera has no idea who he is.”

Melody trembled as she poured Virgie a glass of ginger ale. It had always been Melody’s favorite drink. Outside, Virgie watched James, Betsy, and another child taking turns climbing the rubber tire. The girl sprinted inside, her face balled up with anguish. “They’re hogging the swing,” she said, and Melody leaned into her ear, whispering something.

It was then that Virgie gripped the edge of the sofa. She’d been uncomfortably seated on the sunken couch in this sunny living room with its wide-planked solid wood floors. She leaned closer to the girl so she might see her with more clarity. And there they were: Charlie’s eyes.

There was screaming in Virgie’s ear, her own voice.

She did not sip her ginger ale as Melody talked at a clip, and it was then that she imagined the year she was pregnant with Betsy. How often she’d dragged the children on the campaign trail as her stomach rounded to a ball. How Charlie had won his Senate seat, how he’d waved and smiled and told her he couldn’t have done it without her. How she’d pushed Betsy into the world that year, and Charlie had cradled his baby girl in his arms under the fluorescent lights of the hospital and said he was the happiest man on earth.

“How old is your daughter?” Virgie interrupted the woman, her pulse skittering, her body feeling like it might propel itself through the window.

Melody folded her hands in her lap, then tapped one finger on the table. “She’s ten.”

Betsy’s age.

“It’s why you left. It’s why I never heard from you again. Did Charlie buy you this house?”

The answer was no; he invited her to live there. Charlie never gave her money. “I promise you. He only loves you. I’ve been doing him a favor, depositing the checks he mails here. I’m doing it because he showed me generosity.”

“Vera is Charlie’s? You and Charlie were…?”

Melody let her face fall into her hands, and Virgie felt a wave of nausea. “You and Charlie? When? I don’t understand.”

Melody’s cheeks were wet and red, maybe they had been all along, and she seemed to be pleading with Virgie. “It was only once, and while I want to say that I had no part in it, I did. I loved him, differentlythan you, but we were always together in those days. We were always up late writing speeches, talking on opposite sides of his desk, and one night, it just happened. We both felt terrible, and as soon as it started, it ended, and I left town because I couldn’t do that to you. And then… This house came up and he offered it to me.”

This house.

To think Melody had been so close by, living in Nantucket! All she could think about for a moment was how Charlie would console her in those months after Melody left, counseling her to let go of the friendship, since her friend didn’t return her letters. He’d called the friendship “one-sided.”

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