CHAPTER TEN

It took several days, but Willow had finally gotten up the courage to stay after school and talk to the photography teacher. Her classes were bigger here, twenty-five kids instead of eight or ten like at her old school. She’d thought she would hate this, but the chaos was a good thing. The teachers lectured and, as long as nobody pulled stupid shit or interrupted the class, left it up to the kids to learn or not.

Today, for instance, the two guys behind her in English said, “Dude, ow! My eyelids are, like, frozen shut!”

When Willow turned around, she saw they were using ChapStick on their eyelids. They made dumb faces, and what could she do but laugh? After class, they high-fived her and asked her to sit with them at lunch. She was wary at first, then realized these kids were part of a whole group that had known one another since grade school. One of them was the class president.

“Yeah, he ran on a platform of killing Meatless Mondays,” one girl told Willow, smirking. “Gotta love it, here in crunchy Cambridge.”

Photography was taught by Ms. Fiero, a stick of a woman with a crest of pink hair who wore striped leggings, like a Dr. Seuss character. She’d already taught Willow tons. Today, for instance, she talked about “the rule of thirds” and showed them how to divide a picture into a grid of nine squares.

“Most people think they should center every shot, but the human eye is naturally drawn to intersections of those squares,” she said, and showed them cool examples.

Ms. Fiero was pretty pumped when Willow asked about hand tinting, and she admired Willow’s photographs. Usually only juniors and seniors were allowed alone in the darkroom, but she would give Willow special permission, Ms. Fiero said. “You seem serious about photography, and being passionate about something trumps grade level in my book.”

Willow stayed after school to develop her newest rolls of film. Then she walked home, shuffling through the noisy leaves on Cambridge Common until she was spooked by a tall shadow dropping onto the path in front of her.

She froze. A guy was blocking her way. He had a weird little beard and wore a sweatshirt so small that his huge hands stuck out of the sleeves. It was like somebody had jammed them in there: Mr. Potato Head hands.

“Yo, you got any cash money dollars, girl?” the man said.

“No. Sorry.” Willow glanced around and, with a sharp little intake of breath, realized they were alone on the Common.

“C’mon, man,” the guy said. “You gotta have some spare change. Or how about an iPod? I need money, man.” He grabbed at her backpack as Willow tried to sidestep him.

Panicked, she tried to jerk out of his grip, but the man looped an arm tight around her waist and held her so close that she felt his belt buckle pressing against her hip. She flashed on Tom, the Real Deal, his fingers in her panties.

“Let go!” she said, and tried to stab him with an elbow.

“Why would I do that?” he said close to her ear. “You might have something I want.”

It was like a gate opened to let out all those memories she’d been keeping locked up in her mind. Buried deep: all the times she’d been in bed and opened her eyes to find Tom standing next to her bed, his thing out, stroking it near her face. She always closed her eyes again and pretended to be asleep. Tom sometimes did it even when Mom was home. Willow had never told anybody.

“Get off me!” Willow pleaded. Her heart was knocking against her chest like a fist.

“Not till I see what you got.” The man locked her in place with one arm while he used the other to unzip her backpack and rummage through it. He smelled gross, of sweat and something metallic. Blood?

Willow tried kicking his shin, but she was too close.

“Hold on. Hold on.” Her attacker’s voice was calm, but his breath was a hot flame licking her neck. “I’ll let you go when I’m ready.”

“You’re ready now, you bastard,” somebody growled behind them.

Willow heard a whacking sound. The man grunted and released her. Willow took off and kept running until she was halfway across the Common and had to stop because the stitch in her side felt like somebody had stuck a knife in there. She put her hand there to check: nothing.

She looked around. The guy was gone, but the blind woman who’d given her Mike was coming toward her fast, the cane swirling leaves up around her, like she was her own little tornado. “You okay, honey?”

Willow nodded, dropped the pack to the ground, zipped it back up, and pulled it onto her shoulders again. “Your voice,” she said. “It sounds different.”

The woman’s voice sounded like a normal person’s—not the grunting syllables she’d used when she’d given Willow the dog.

The woman waved the cane. “So?” she said. “Is your voice always the same? Different days, different voices, okay? Did that guy hurt you? I’ll kill him if he did. I know where he sleeps.”

Willow stepped away from her. Clearly, only crazy people hung out on Cambridge Common at night. “No. He just scared me. I shouldn’t have been walking here at night. Mom always tells me not to.”

“You should listen to her. Stay on the sidewalk after dark.” The woman pointed her cane toward Mass Ave, as if Willow couldn’t see the sidewalk between the Common and the street for herself, with its reassuring bright lights.

But wait, Willow thought. How could a blind person see the sidewalk? And how could she have attacked that guy, or followed Willow? Maybe she wasn’t completely blind.

“You don’t obey yourself, seems like,” Willow said. “Why aren’t you in a shelter after dark?”

The woman snorted, flipped a black dreadlock over one shoulder. “Shelters are crap. More thieves than anywhere. Anyway, do I look like the kind of woman worth mugging?” She rattled the coins in her guitar case.

“Still. You should be careful.”

“Oh, don’t you worry, honey. I was born careful,” the woman said. “Now, go home.”

If you’re so careful, how come you’re homeless and begging? Willow wanted to ask. But that would be rude, especially after this woman saved her life.

“Get going,” the woman barked. “Go home.”

“Okay, okay,” Willow said. “Thanks for stopping that guy. See you.”

She started walking toward Mass Ave. The wind had picked up; her sweatshirt hood blew off and Willow tugged it back up again. She was aware of the blind woman following, heard her moving through the leaves, but didn’t stop. It was creepy, yeah, but she knew the woman was probably still trying to protect her.

Once Willow reached Mass Ave, the sidewalk was crowded and bright. Traffic clogged the street and the storefronts were lit up for Halloween, orange and white lights everywhere. When Willow turned around to wave good-bye before slipping through the wooden rails of the fence bordering the Common, she saw the woman standing with her arms at her sides, the guitar at her feet. Watching over her.

“Hey, want to come home with me and visit your dog?” Willow asked.

The woman shook her head. “I gave him to you so I wouldn’t have to think about him anymore. I don’t like to get attached, you know?” She turned around, the guitar case banging against her leg, and started walking back toward the inky center of the Common.

Willow didn’t want her to go without thanking her in some way. She had granola bars. An apple, too. Snacks she always meant to eat but didn’t have time to anymore, since you weren’t allowed to eat in class at the public school the way you could at Beacon Hill.

“Hey! Wait!” Willow called. “I want to give you something!”

The blind woman stopped walking without turning around. Willow circled around in front of her and set the backpack on the ground between them. As she unzipped it, she said, “I want to repay you for helping me. I don’t have any money. But maybe you can use something to eat.”

She glanced up at the woman as she handed her the food. To Willow’s shock, from this angle the face beneath the big sunglasses looked eerily familiar: the high, flat cheekbones, the wide-set eyes, the turned-up nose.

No. It couldn’t be.

Willow’s heart began hammering again, a drumbeat in her ears. Her tongue felt cottony and thick as she watched the woman silently tuck the food into the folds of her loose clothing, then begin walking away again, tapping the ground ahead of her with the cane.

She didn’t need that cane, Willow thought, and called out, “Wait! Hold on. This is your real present!”

The woman turned around and shuffled back, grunting.

Willow removed the folder tucked next to her laptop inside the backpack, opened it, slid one of the photographs out, and handed it to the woman, careful to hide the rest from her—especially the photographs of her.

“What’s this?” The woman’s voice was muffled now by the red shawl, pulled up over her chin again.

“A picture I took of a boy skateboarding in Harvard Square,” Willow said.

“Pretty good.” The woman held it out for Willow to take back.

“No, you keep it.” Willow stood up. It was more difficult to see the woman’s features now that they were eye to eye. “Hang it in your room. I mean, if you like it. And if you have a room.”

“Of course I have a room,” the woman snapped, but the hand holding the photograph was trembling.

“You’re not really blind, are you?” Willow said. Was she crazy? Or pretending to be blind to make people feel sorry for her and give her money?

There was one other possibility, too, but it was so out there that even imagining it for a second made Willow feel like she must be the crazy one. “Take off your glasses,” she said.

The woman pulled her shawl up over the bridge of her nose and shook her head.

“Please,” Willow said. “I need to see you.”

“Not going to happen.” The woman spun around, dropping the cane and guitar, gripping only the picture as she sprinted across the Common. After a moment of openmouthed shock, Willow ran after her, drawing breaths of cold air in gulps. She might not have caught her if the woman hadn’t tripped and fallen. She went down with a soft thump on the carpet of leaves and tried to roll to a standing position. But her boot heel got stuck in her long skirt and she wasn’t fast enough.

Willow practically fell on top of her, pinning the woman in place, saying, “Take off your glasses! Please!”

At last, when the woman stopped struggling beneath her, Willow sat up. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t force you.”

The woman sat up, too, head bowed. “That’s right. Just leave me alone.”

With a sudden lurch, Willow leaned forward and grabbed the glasses off her face.

Even in that moment, even seeing the pale blue eyes, huge with fright now, and the familiar face with its tiny scar across the chin, Willow wasn’t completely sure. Not until the woman slowly slid the rainbow tam and black wig off her head, revealing cropped, curly pale blond hair beneath it.

“Mom?” Willow said, staggering to her feet.

Her mother pressed her hands to her face while Willow stood above her, the ground tilting crazily beneath her feet.

•   •   •

Catherine’s Saturday hours were all accounted for now: Zumba class with Bethany at the Y, God help her. Then dinner with Seth.

Three weeks into her separation with Russell, but plans were still crucial to her survival. Well. Only nineteen days, to be exact, yet she was exhausted. Catherine hadn’t imagined how difficult it would be to keep a house—a whole life—going on your own. Planning meals and getting groceries, taking the trash out on the right day, laundry and vacuuming and walking the damn dog. What was that expression? The devil is in the details.

Other than the few days she’d spent clearing out the Chance Harbor house and the rare times she went out—usually when Willow went with Russell, like this weekend—Catherine had stuck to her routine. She saw Willow off to school and went to work, came home and made dinner, dropped into bed, failed to fall asleep. Did frantic sums in her head to see if she could pay the bills. Took an antihistamine to help herself drop off.

Every morning she woke feeling drugged. But she’d tried not sleeping and that was even worse. Bad enough getting through daylight hours without having to be awake at night, too, and reflecting on her miserable single state and on her mother’s lies about her own marriage.

Catherine had mostly managed to forget that awful conversation with Russell about her parents. But then her mother had called this morning to say she was going to Cape Breton with a friend next weekend, and would be driving back to Newburyport the Monday after that.

“You and Willow should come up to Newburyport after I get home and spend a weekend,” she’d said. “We’ll go hiking or take out the canoe if it’s still warm enough.”

Who was this woman, who would just take off for Cape Breton with a friend? Who wanted to hike and canoe? That was not her mother, Catherine thought as she pulled on sweatpants and a T-shirt and laced up her sneakers. Her mother had been the quintessential career woman—tailored suits and late nights at the office, weekends spent catching up on household chores. Always with an agenda filled with work and chores, not fun. Like Catherine now.

Hearing her mother’s voice brought back everything Russell had said. How could her mother have cheated on Dad? Catherine could understand Dad, with all of his traveling and business stress, having a brief affair. A blip, as her mother had said. But her mother, too? She didn’t know what to make of that, other than to think she didn’t know her mother at all.

Catherine blinked, shocked to find herself in the middle of the dance floor. Then she had to pay attention while following the teacher, a brunette in her fifties with the body of a teenage cheerleader. That was Bethany’s point, exactly, when she’d forced Catherine to sign up for Zumba.

“You need things that keep you in the moment,” Bethany had said.

Catherine had tried to stake out a place in the back row—too many intimidating twentysomethings up front—but Bethany had propelled her to the middle of the dance floor. Catherine was soon panting to catch her breath and clearing the floor around her as she tried to get the hang of basic salsa and cumbia steps. She stepped on at least three people.

“You made it!” Bethany teased as they grabbed their water bottles.

Catherine wiped her face with a towel. “I feel like I’ve been run over by a steamroller.”

Bethany laughed. “It gets easier. I promise.”

“That’s what everyone keeps saying to me about everything. But nobody tells me when.”

“Soon,” Bethany promised. “I can tell you’re better already.”

Catherine made a face at her. “Only because I’m half-dead. How can class be an hour long? Ten minutes would have been enough,” she moaned.

Back at the house, she did a few more chores, then showered and changed into a black dress she’d bought on impulse at the consignment store near her clinic. It was a simple, straight dress with long sleeves, but it had delicate beading around the collar. Catherine added her silver hoops and silver bracelets, examining the effect in the mirror, then removed the bracelets because they reminded her of the anniversary trip she and Russell had taken to Mexico, where she’d bought them from a woman on the beach.

She wondered what Russell was doing with Willow this weekend. (She never let herself think about Nola being with them, because the very idea of Russell making Willow spend time with Nola made her see red.) Willow had seemed alternately too quiet and too maniacally happy lately, especially the last couple of days; she was definitely feeling the stress of the separation and probably hating the idea of spending another weekend with Russell and Nola. She’d done nothing but complain about the last one.

“Nola acts like she’s the only person in the world who’s ever been pregnant,” Willow had said. “She’s all about aches and pains and peeing, even though she doesn’t even look pregnant yet. I mean, she could be faking it—right? Just to get Dad to marry her?”

“Why in the world would she do that?” Catherine had said, though of course she’d considered that possibility. “Nola strikes me as the kind of girl who’s had no trouble getting boyfriends in the past.”

“Yeah, I know,” Willow had said, sounding glum. “But she says Dad’s the only guy who’s ever treated her like a real person and been really nice to her.” She’d given Catherine a sudden, stricken look. “Does this suck, when I talk about Nola?”

Catherine shook her head and issued her standard party line, the one she and Russell had agreed to use with Willow while they were hammering out the separation agreement. “No. What happened between your father and me is between us, honey. He wants me to be happy, I want him to be happy, and we both want you to be happy most of all. You tell me whatever you feel comfortable saying. I promise not to judge,” she added, even though that last sentence was a lie.

Jesus, she thought now, as the doorbell rang. Willow had to see through that crap. She must know that Catherine was far from wanting Russell and Nola to be happy. Right now she wished a sinkhole would swallow up Nola’s Back Bay brownstone with both of them in it.

Seth had brought her sunflowers, bright and bold. She smiled at the sight of them and invited him inside for a glass of wine while she put them in a vase. “How’s Brady?”

“Still loving his preschool and breathing easy,” Seth said, raising his glass of chardonnay to touch hers. “How about Willow? When do I get to meet her, anyway?”

Catherine sipped her wine, considering this. “She’s fine, but I think Willow’s got enough on her plate right now,” she answered finally. “I don’t want her to think we’re dating.”

“No, of course not,” Seth said.

He’d answered so quickly that Catherine gave him a sharp look. “We’re not, right? That’s what we agreed.”

Seth nodded, but his mouth—which Catherine had kissed exactly once, and liked well enough—turned down at the corners. He ran a hand through his thick auburn hair, pushing it off his forehead. “It’s just that I don’t meet many women I like as much as I like you,” he said.

Catherine smiled. “I appreciate that. Right now I feel like I’m not great company, truthfully, so it means a lot to hear you say that.”

Seth’s eyes lingered on her face, but he finished his wine without saying whatever he clearly wanted to say and stood up. “Better go. The play starts at eight.”

The play was a comedy, thankfully, a clever Oscar Wilde revival. Afterward they went for sushi in Harvard Square and browsed in a used bookstore. “You do realize we’re the oldest ones in here,” Catherine said, looking around at the college students.

“Well, except for that guy. He’s our age,” Seth whispered, lifting his chin in the direction of a man who’d fallen asleep in one of the aisles, his hat on his chest, his snores a noisy rattle. Because this was Cambridge, people just stepped around him and let him be.

As they walked home, Catherine shivered—she’d forgotten her hat, and the air was damp as well as chilly—and Seth put an arm around her. He didn’t relinquish his hold even when they reached Mass Ave and the sidewalk was crowded. Catherine wasn’t sure how she felt about this, other than warmer.

When Seth tried to kiss her good night in the doorway, Catherine let him, trying to surrender to the strange feeling of his broad chest and too-tall body against her own, but everything about it was wrong. She finally put a hand to his chest and gently pushed him away.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and she was. How nice it would have been if, after Russell, she could so easily find a man whose company she not only enjoyed, but desired on every level.

“I’m sorrier,” Seth said, and kissed the top of her head before he left.

•   •   •

She shouldn’t have said yes. That was Eve’s main thought as she hastily threw things into an overnight bag on Monday morning. But it was too late now.

Eve zipped the bag shut just as she heard Darcy’s truck pull into the yard. Darcy had called her three times since their picnic on the beach, trying to convince her to come with him to Cape Breton Island. But the call that had actually changed her mind was Marta’s. This was only the second time she’d spoken to Marta since Andrew’s death. The first was when Marta had called to say she was in an ambulance with Andrew—Eve could hear the shrieking, bone-chilling sound of the siren over the phone—and that Eve should meet her at the hospital.

This time Marta caught her as she was painting woodwork in the kitchen. Eve hadn’t bothered to glance at the caller ID, just plucked the phone out of the pocket of her work shirt with her free hand. She’d nearly dropped it when she heard Marta’s voice.

“We have to talk,” Marta said. “There are things you must know.”

Eve had nearly toppled off the ladder. The audacity of this woman! She felt the tension, which had lifted from her shoulders after days of island air and hard work, return like an iron bar pressed across her throat.

“We have nothing to say to each other,” Eve said.

“Oh, but I do.”

Marta’s voice was sultry and low, that German accent thickening every vowel. Eve pictured her as she’d seen her so many years ago, with her thick, shining dark hair, her red lips. That cleavage. If a jaguar could talk, it would sound like Marta.

“Just tell me over the phone, whatever it is, and let’s be done with it,” Eve said.

“I cannot do that. It is too complicated,” Marta said. “Where are you? I could meet you today.”

“In Canada,” Eve said, and then, for good measure, added, “In Andrew’s family’s home. Where we were married.”

There was a brief silence, during which Eve imagined Marta doing any number of things that would suit that cabaret voice of hers: smoking a cigarette, loading a pearl-handled revolver, pulling a knife out of her garter. Finally, Marta said, “It is something of grave importance.”

“I’m hanging up now,” Eve said.

“I will wait for your call when you return from Canada,” Marta had answered, and hung up first.

That was yesterday. And last night Eve had called Darcy, feeling like she might go mad if she had to spend any more time alone, wondering what her husband’s mistress was so determined to tell her.

Bear was in the back of the truck’s cab, squeezed behind the seat. His tail thumped against the rear window as Eve climbed into the cab. “Somebody’s happy to see you,” Darcy said.

She laughed, but was quiet as they drove toward Souris, watching the sky lighten gradually, the spires of the pines emerging first from the hills, the white farmhouses glowing pink in the dawn light. Souris was starting to wake up, the trucks already in line for coffee at Tim Hortons. She and Darcy talked about the town as they waited in line with them, about some of the new restaurants and shops. “Do you know how Souris got its name?”

“No,” said Darcy. “But I know it means ‘mouse’ in French.”

“It was back in the seventeen hundreds. There was a mouse plague of some sort, and French sailors coming into port had to push their boats through waves of drowned mice that had swarmed into the water,” she said.

“That might put me off swimming forever,” he said, making her laugh. And suddenly, as Darcy joined her, his laugh low and rumbling, Eve felt her mood lift.

“So what do you want to do for your birthday?” she asked.

“I had a hike in mind, if the weather holds. Or maybe a boat ride out to Bird Island.”

“Bird Island? Is that even a real place? Sounds like a cartoon.”

“Sure it is. Might be too late in the season to see the puffins, but we’d see eagles for sure, and seals.”

“Well. It’s your birthday. You pick,” Eve said.

“Hiking, then.”

“All right.”

He glanced down at her sneakers. “You’re okay in those?”

“I brought boots, too. How old are you, anyway?”

“Old enough to know my own mind.” He was grinning. “Old enough to know I got lucky, convincing you to come with me on this trip.”

Eve rolled her eyes. “Come on. Just tell me.”

“Sixty-six tomorrow.”

“You’re a babe. I’m way ahead of you. I turned sixty-six in February.”

“Thank God. I was afraid I was robbing the cradle here.”

The tide was out in Souris Harbor as they drove across the bridge. The sand glowed apricot, glittering with quartz crystals as the sun came up all of a sudden, the way it did here, as if hoping to surprise people. Then they were out of the city, the land gradually flattening out as they drove toward the southern shore and the Wood Islands ferry terminal.

There were hardly any cars in line when they pulled up and bought their ferry ticket. They waited about fifteen minutes, leaving the truck to walk Bear up the dirt road toward the lighthouse, then returned and drove down the clanging metal ramp into the belly of the ferry.

Dogs weren’t allowed in the lounge area, so they had to stay on the deck with Bear. (Darcy, too, had dropped the ridiculous name “Sparrow.”) Eve leaned over the port side as the ferry moved smoothly out to sea. She spotted a pair of seals on a sandbar, one of them a black U shape as it arched its back.

Darcy had brought a wool blanket for their laps and a picnic breakfast of egg-and-cheese sandwiches on wheat toast. Eve was suddenly starved. She ate all but her crusts, feeding those to Bear.

“So, are you going to tell me about it?” Darcy asked, leaning back against the bench when they’d finished their food, after first tucking the blanket in around Eve’s shoulders and hips. He didn’t look at her; he tipped his head back against the bench, his red wool watch cap pulled low over his forehead, his hands tucked into his armpits.

Eve glanced at him, startled. “About what?”

He opened one eye. “Your disastrous first Cape Breton voyage.”

Unexpectedly, Eve found herself laughing again. Out here in the middle of the sparkling sea, with the red cliffs of PEI receding fast behind them and the sun a bright yellow disc against a gray sky mottled with clouds, her past problems felt small and insignificant. A storm could come up or they could hit a sandbar. The boat could go down at any moment and they would have to fight for their lives in the cold, choppy water of the Northumberland Strait. Today was what mattered.

What would be the harm in telling someone? Especially a man she’d probably never see again after this trip?

Eve tipped her head back, too, closing her eyes against the brightening sky, and gave in to the feeling of being on a boat, her hip and thigh warmed by Darcy’s long body. Almost like being in bed, she thought, then shook her head a little. Really. At her age?

“I’m not telling you anything about my sex life,” she warned.

“I’ll just have to use my virile imagination.”

She smacked his knee under the blanket. “Behave yourself, young man.”

Darcy laughed, but kept his eyes closed, waiting.

It was surprisingly easy, once she’d begun. She told him about Marta first, about discovering Andrew’s affair. About how he had continued to see her, as he’d confessed in Vermont. “I think he only told me because she’d threatened to tell me about them if he didn’t,” Eve said.

“Probably,” Darcy said.

“Thanks a lot.”

“I’m just being honest. That’s what most people do, isn’t it? Hide whatever they’re ashamed of until some catalyst makes it impossible to hide anymore.”

Bear stirred against Eve’s feet; she glanced down and realized that the dog had thrown his big black body over not only her feet, but Darcy’s, too, effectively anchoring them in place together. If the boat did go down, she had no doubt that this dog would tow them to shore.

She reached down to stroke the dog’s silky back and said, “Anyway, after I found out he’d gone back on his word and was still seeing her, I was all of the usual things: hurt, angry, jealous. I had never felt so unsure of myself. I had a new baby and I’d given up my job with Andrew’s company. I wasn’t coping with anything well, really. So it was a relief to get to Prince Edward Island that summer, to just be in Chance Harbor with Andrew and pretend like we really had left all of our problems behind.”

“I imagine so. The island has a way of making you feel like nothing can touch you,” Darcy murmured.

“Yes. But then Andrew suddenly announced that he had to go away, to take care of some business in California and then in Berlin. I didn’t believe him, of course.”

“Because Marta’s German.”

“Right. We argued. I said some things I shouldn’t have said, but Andrew kept telling me he loved me, he wanted to be with me, we were a family now.” Eve caught the tremor in her voice and cleared her throat. “He was gone for two months.”

“And you were alone with Catherine in Chance Harbor?” Darcy turned his head to look at her then, his face uncomfortably close. His gray eyes, she noticed, were flecked with gold, like the sea at sunrise. “That must have been excruciating, imagining what he was up to while you were stranded with the baby.”

“Well, to be fair, I had plenty of company,” Eve said. “Too much at times. All of Andrew’s cousins were around, and it seemed like they were dropping in constantly. Catherine had plenty of little playmates, which was good, but I was exhausted, constantly making food and washing dishes and fretting about Andrew. This was before cell phones, of course, so we hardly communicated during that time.”

She paused to take a breath and pulled the blanket higher. “One of his cousins, Malcolm, was a lobster fisherman,” she went on in a rush, determined to finish the story before they docked. “Andrew left in July, and soon after that, it was Landing Day. I met Malcolm at North Lake while Catherine and I were watching the boats. He brought me some of his catch that night, cooked the lobsters for me. After that, he started taking Catherine and me out on his boat and coming around to the house at night.”

She fell silent again, feeling the motion of the ferry and remembering Malcolm’s boat. Catherine asleep in the cabin while she and Malcolm made love out on the deck, on top of the thick nets woven out of ropes, the sun beating down on their bare skin and the boat rocking them, amplifying their motions.

She shook her head and dropped her eyes, not wanting Darcy to read the memories there. “The thing is, I knew from the minute I saw Malcolm that I would sleep with him.”

“Because you wanted a way to get back at Andrew?” Darcy suggested, rousing himself to turn and look at her.

“That was partly it, I’m sure,” she said. “But I think it had more to do with me feeling so inadequate as a woman. Inferior. Because Andrew had desired Marta, I felt I wasn’t enough for him.”

“Sometimes desire is the last reason people have affairs.”

“I understand that better now. But that’s how I felt back then: undesirable, untouchable. Having Malcolm want me so openly, so unconditionally, well. That was a powerful aphrodisiac, just like you described feeling with that inflatable woman of yours.”

When Darcy looked puzzled, Eve prodded him with her elbow. “You know. The Barbie with the implants.”

“Ah,” he said. “Go on.”

“Right. Well, Malcolm and I started seeing each other. Only on his boat, or at night, of course, because the island is a small place, and he and Andrew have family all over East Point.” She took a deep breath as the captain announced it was time for passengers to return to their cars.

“None of this sounds so sinful to me, you know,” Darcy said, folding up the blanket and tucking it under one arm before picking up the dog’s leash. “It sounds like a very common story, really, of a husband and wife who loved each other but hurt each other sometimes, too. We weren’t meant to be married for decades.”

“What?” Eve turned her head to look at him, nearly falling down the last three metal steps. “Why not?”

“Because humans originally lived to be only forty years old,” Darcy said. “Now we’re expected to stay married for that long, through thirty years of parenting and five careers? Come on. It’s just not practical. I always thought there should be a renewable marriage contract.”

Eve waited until they were in his truck again before asking, “What do you mean by that?”

“You know. I take thee to be my wife again, for another ten years.”

Eve didn’t know what she thought of this, so she was silent as Darcy navigated the truck up the ramp and off the ferry. Then they were on the road in Nova Scotia, and suddenly she didn’t want to talk anymore, remembering her first trip to Cape Breton, how she’d wept while driving Catherine to Baddeck.

Which, ironically, was where they were headed now. Darcy’s meeting was going to be in an office building in Baddeck, right on Bras d’Or, and he’d booked rooms in an inn overlooking the lake.

“You still haven’t told me why you were afraid to come back here,” he said, as they followed the traffic on the roundabout and headed out to the highway that would take them to the causeway bridge separating them from Cape Breton Island. “Why was the idea of returning so painful? Because you were afraid of thinking about all of this and wondering if you should have chosen Malcolm over Andrew?”

“Malcolm drowned,” she said.

She kept her face to the window, but felt him turn to look at her. “My God, Eve. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right now. It was a long time ago.”

“How did it happen? Was he fishing?”

She nodded. “He and a friend were going out for bluefin. A storm came up, and Malcolm drowned.”

“That must have been horrible. Did anybody else know about the two of you? That must have been tough, if you had to keep your grief a secret.”

“It was. Later, though, I found out that Malcolm’s older sister had guessed about us.”

Eve pictured Jane as she’d been after Malcolm’s death, stumping up the steps to the deck of their Chance Harbor house the following year, when Eve had returned—against her wishes—with Andrew and the two girls. Andrew was out in his workshop.

Jane had thrust a pie in Eve’s direction and said, “All sorted out with your husband, is it?” gesturing with her chin in the direction of the barn.

“Mostly.” Eve waited for the rebuke, guessing from her expression that Jane knew about Malcolm.

None came. Instead, Jane had wiped her eyes and said, “At least Malcolm knew happiness before he went. His wife wasn’t much for love. You gave my brother that. I’m grateful.” Then she’d turned and hurried back to her car, shoulders hunched, without even saying hello to Andrew.

“Did Andrew ever find out?” Darcy asked.

Eve nodded and pressed her face to the window, taking a small stab of pleasure in the chilly slick feel of the glass against her forehead. “Yes. I might not have told him anything. Why would I, when it would only hurt him? I suppose I was a coward, just like you said before about all of us. But soon after Malcolm drowned, I realized I was pregnant. And Andrew would have to know the baby wasn’t his, because he and I hadn’t had sex in months.”

She turned to glance at Darcy but couldn’t read his expression. He was staring straight ahead at the road.

Eve focused on the road as well, on the trees covering the hills in a rich carpet of orange and red. She remembered this landscape now, how she had thought at first that this part of Nova Scotia didn’t look that different from Vermont, with its lakes and rivers and hills. She’d been vaguely disappointed not to see something more novel despite her state of confusion and grief. But then, once she crossed the causeway to Cape Breton Island, the hills had begun to rise so steeply that they soon towered over the sea and tiny villages, the road reduced to a thin gray ribbon winding around them.

“I came here alone after I told him everything, because I needed to think about what to do, and I wanted to be in a place I’d never been before,” Eve said. “A place I’d never been with Andrew. I was still trying to decide whether to stay with him. That’s what Andrew wanted. He said none of it mattered, that he loved me and would raise the baby as his own. It was his cousin’s baby after all, and Andrew was a good man. A man with a big heart. And he did try to love the baby. My younger daughter. But Zoe looked and acted so much like Malcolm, whom he’d known since they were children, that Andrew once told me it was the hardest thing he’d ever done, being her father.”

Finally, Eve dared to look at Darcy. “Please say something.”

“I’m sorry,” he said softly.

“For what?”

Darcy reached over and took her hand. “That you had to go through all that. That you ever had to feel unloved or undesirable. That you had to feel alone and ashamed and scared. That you lost Malcolm. And that now you’ve lost Andrew and Zoe, too. I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”

Eve couldn’t speak. She looked down at Darcy’s hand clasping her own. For this moment, she was not alone, and she was grateful.