Page 4 of Dead of Summer
“Do you think someone lives there? Would it even be possible?”
If only she knew.She listens to them deliberate on the details. If Orla were in a different sort of mood, or maybe if she’d had a few drinks, she would have interjected to say that someone does live there. She may even have told the women what she knows about the strange, sad home of Marjorie and Henry Wright and the watery grave Henry made for her best friend Alice.
She turns her face away and pulls her hands farther into the sleeves of her sweatshirt as they chug through the harbor and approach a row ofbuildings painted in cheerful, if a bit weatherworn, colors hugging the water. The entire village of Port Mary. The ferry turns clumsily with a loud groan and the engine cuts. The awkward cries of seagulls pierce the sudden quiet; they swoop overhead, landing on the pilings as the ferry scrapes along the dock.
A teenage boy leaps from the deck, deftly twisting the lines and pulling the boat in. Back in high school Orla and Alice always knew the kids working the ferry. They were their peers; now she wonders how many of them have stayed on the island. Not many, she’s sure. Very few people born on Hadley stay here for good. If you have the means, Hadley is the kind of place you return to in summers, not a place to live year-round. Not if you can afford not to. Winter on the island is desolate. Orla remembers it well.
Around her people gather their things. They have moved on from the novelty of the boat ride and are already chattering excitedly about trips to the beach and dinner reservations and where to buy the freshest lobsters. Orla feels conspicuously alone among them. She grabs her bag and adjusts her sunglasses and propels herself to the narrow staircase. The window of Mint Ship ice cream shop slides open to welcome the tourists clomping down the dock behind her, their faces pink from the wind. Orla dodges past them, yanking her suitcase behind her.
At the end of the dock, Orla turns to the left and walks quickly through the village. Harbor Street hugs the water in an arc of quaint shops and restaurants. She notes that not one has changed since she was last here. She rolls her suitcase past the Salty Crab, the seafood restaurant and dive bar where she spent many nights drinking with Alice before they were even legal. The sidewalk out front gives off a tang of spilled beer drying in the sun. But from the doorway, propped open slightly, wafts the smell of some deep-fried sea creature. Orla’s stomach gurgles. An empty booth by the window catches the sunlight invitingly. She stops and presses her face to the glass.
A woman sits at the end of the bar below a collection of decorative ropes and anchors. She’s wearing a half apron and has a pencil tuckedover her ear. Jean O’Malley has been a fixture at the Salty Crab as long as Orla has been alive. Her curly hair is grayer now, her sturdy body just a bit wider than Orla remembers her. She had always seemed so capable, so resilient, that Orla never considered her life outside of the Crab. She’d never left the island and never married. She had only her sister, Marjorie, and her brother-in-law, Henry Wright. Back when Orla was little, she had seen the three of them occasionally wandering around town or sharing dinner in the Crab. But after what happened with Alice, Marjorie and Henry stopped coming to the island altogether. Apart from her shifts at the Crab, Jean was always on her own. Orla watches her wearily begin to roll silverware into napkins, her wrists flicking with over thirty years of muscle memory. Orla’s sunglasses accidentally tap against the glass. Jean looks up, startled.
Damn it.
Orla jerks back from the window and rushes the rest of the way up Harbor Street. She passes the other restaurants, their awnings advertising lobster claws and scallop risottos, then walks past the liquor store and the post office. She practically runs past the Clarke property, its white marble facade looming down a drive accessible behind a sealed metal gate. Orla doesn’t so much as pause to catch her breath until the road finally curves, and she can see the cedarwood shingles on the very top of her childhood home poking up between the trees.
She approaches the house with an unexpected fluttering in her chest. It’s been kept up with the help of a caretaker and looks unchanged from when she left. The lush green lawn is freshly mowed. Stands of indigo hydrangeas in full bloom flank the lawn. The swing on the front porch wavers invitingly in the breeze. She almost expects her dad to step outside holding a tray inviting her to try something he’d just finished cooking. She stops midway up the walk, turning her head to the right. She had been trying not to look but she has to.
For nearly Orla’s entire childhood Alice had lived right next door. They were the same age, as luck would have it. A built-in best friend. Alice, bold and smart with an adventurous streak that would have gottenthem into trouble more often were it not for Orla’s more balanced and careful nature. The two of them were as close as any sisters could have been, spending every waking moment they could together, rushing back and forth between their houses from the time the sun came up until after dark when their parents called them back to their respective homes for bed.
Even their houses matched. Alice’s house, once the slightly nicer of the two, is now so overgrown it is hardly visible even up close. Through the dense vegetation, Orla can find only a vague hint of the outline of what was once a beautiful and immaculately kept seaside home.
The wraparound porch where Orla and Alice once acted out a thousand made-up fairy tales with their dolls and stuffed animals is now almost completely obscured behind a dark mass of vines and hanging branches. The roof of the porch has caved in, the jagged edges of rotted boards peeking through the opening. The cedar siding, where it is visible through the overgrown brush, is curled back, with gaps in the shingles like a partly scaled fish. The glass in the picture windows is obscured by a thick layer of dirt. A shutter on one has come loose and hangs at an angle.
Orla hadn’t known how bad it had gotten. She’d never dared to ask. But the extent of the neglect makes her realize how much time has passed. She turns away feeling sick and pulls her things up the steps to her house. As she crouches to dig for the house key in the pocket of her suitcase, a gust of wind blows over her bare legs. In the shadow of the front porch there is a chill in the air. It’s the kind of cold that seemed impossible to imagine when she packed yesterday in her sweaty New York apartment. Her hands tremble a little.
Thefeelingis coming back. The pain of it twists in her chest, building and building like the pressure at the start of a scream.
She rushes to unlock the door.
HENRY
Now that people are returning to the island for the season, Henry’s days have become busy. There is so much to keep track of. Families are arriving on the ferry and people are congregating at the beach. The restaurants along the pier are open for the first time this year. They are all filling up, their back patios lively with people drinking martinis and eating oysters over the water. After a long and dreary spring, all the activity always fills him with a newfound sense of vitality and optimism. Soon all the summer residents will have arrived, along with a fresh boatload of tourists every day, and the island will be so active that Henry will have trouble keeping up with his logbooks. This is his favorite time of year. When his mind is occupied, and he can let himself get lost in the comings and goings, when he can, for a brief time, forget about the past.
“It’s not nice to spy on people, Henry,” Margie’s voice comes from behind him, scolding.
His wife has never liked him watching through the telescope. Though she’s never turned down a piece of gossip that was offered to her. Despite her disapproval, his passion for watching the people of Hadley has only grown over time, turning into more of an obsession. A need. So much so that he feels as though he personally knows each of the families whose homes he can see on the shoreline. He is invested inall the lives he can see. It is what happens when you don’t have much of a family of your own, he supposes. It’s natural he should want to connect.No harm in it.That’s what he tells himself anyway. Even though a part of him knows that it’s wrong. Henry knows, for example, that Marty Fredrick’s wife has recently started going to sleep in a different bedroom. And that Penny Gallagher spends most of her nights in her bathrobe staring sadly into the glow of her computer screen. And he knows that little Mary Elizabeth—well, not so little anymore, she must be nearly sixteen—has a boyfriend. He’s seen her duck out though her bedroom window onto the porch roof and climb down the trellis to meet him. He’s watched the two of them kissing down by the water, their bodies mashing together, arms groping in the dark, where they think no one can see. He hears the newspaper rustling on Margie’s lap. She tuts disapprovingly.
They built the Rock on high stilts, which are anchored precariously atop a craggy piece of shale that cleaves up through the sound. It had been nearly a decade in the making for Henry, a retirement present for the both of them, he’d said when at age fifty-five the house was finally completed, and his pension had started. Once a local contractor, Henry wanted to make something special for Margie. He’d planned it all meticulously, even teaching himself to make rudimentary architectural sketches.
The construction of it over nearly ten years had presented so many challenges—electricity and plumbing and permits—that he nearly gave up, but Margie always encouraged him to keep going. “It’s a masterpiece, Henry,” she’d said when it was finally done, and he’d brought her to see it for the first time.
He beamed with pride as she took his arm and he walked her around the house. He had carefully considered every detail, a galley kitchen with tile the colors of sea glass that faced a wide, open living room with enough space on one side for their large dining table. A bedroom off the back had a skylight above the bed. The wood floor was reclaimed from the old pier, taken down by a storm, sanded into imperfect strips thathe’d carefully arranged to match up. The ceiling also was crossed by two large beams that had once belonged to an old fishing vessel. An iron woodstove in one corner, a beast to bring up the narrow steps, would pump out enough heat to keep them snug in the winter. It was a space at once airy and cozy and when the windows were open it felt like being at sea. He’d designed the layout to be open so that no matter where the other was in the house they’d be together, able to banter back and forth, the way they liked.
Henry had watched with pride as Margie walked around the open floor plan, marveling at the view from the wall of wide-paned windows in the sitting area. She threw open the French doors and went out on the deck, leaning over the railing and closing her eyes as she felt the fine spray from the water on her face. “A sanctuary, truly. I never want to leave.” Margie had turned to him and smiled. She didn’t know that soon she wouldn’t really have a choice.
Now the windows provide the perfect vantage point for watching the comings and goings of the houses on the western shore of Hadley Island. If anyone knew Henry was watching them, they’d probably put in window shades, which would be a shame. But no one has ever known about Henry’s little hobby. Except Margie.
“You’re going to have to go down there again soon and take care of things,” Margie says.
“Yes, dear,” he replies noncommittally, hoping she’ll let it go. He is watching the ferry come in. The upper deck is nearly full today. He leans in, squinting to see if he can recognize any of them.
“The sediment’s probably washing away after that last full moon tide. It’ll become a liability soon.” She presses. “Any boat that’s passing could see if they looked hard enough.”
“I heard you,” he says impatiently and holds up a hand, trying to shush her.A mistake.Henry should know by now never to shush his wife.
“You know it’s true. I’m just trying to take care of us.” Margie’s voice is clipped. He can tell he’s hurt her feelings. And moreover, he knows she’s right.
