CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“Why are you making me see these people?”

Zoe sounded about twelve years old, Eve thought. They were in the car, just the two of them, driving toward North Lake. It was a clear morning, and the potato fields sparkled with snow. Snow swirls rose in front of them as the wind whipped up miniature tornadoes of red dirt mixed with white. “They’re family. You know Cousin Jane.”

Zoe frowned and buried her chin deeper into the purple quilted down jacket Eve had loaned her. “You mean Dad’s cousin? That woman with the bubble butt and the big hair who never stops talking? That’s who we’re going to see? But why?”

“I wanted to bring her a pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. And I wanted her to see you.”

“But it’s not even their Thanksgiving. That’s already over.” Zoe was looking panicked. Trapped. “I don’t see what the point is.”

“The point is that Jane is Malcolm’s older sister,” Eve said.

Now Zoe looked like she wanted to open the car door and jump out. But there was no place for her to go: just snow and wind and pine trees and frozen potato fields and bright blue water everywhere she looked. “I don’t want to see her.”

“I know. But she wants to see you.”

“Jesus, Mommy. This is torture.”

Eve kept her hands steady on the wheel. “It’s a small island, honey. You can’t hide from family here.”

When they pulled up in front of Jane’s small brown house, three other cars and a pickup truck were parked in the driveway. “Who else is here?” Zoe nearly yelled.

“I have no idea. More family, I imagine.”

“Do they all know?” Zoe glanced at Eve, eyes wide.

“I don’t think so,” Eve said, but her own knees were unsteady as she climbed out of the car and got the pie from the backseat. “Ten minutes,” she promised. “That’s all. Then we’ll say we have to go home and help Darcy cook.”

They did not visit for ten minutes, of course. More like an hour. Jane had gathered all of her children—four of them, three with spouses—as well as her grandchildren, and Malcolm’s two children as well. Malcolm’s children, both sons, looked and sounded so much like him, and like Andrew, too, with their fair hair and ruddy complexions, and their talk of fishing and farming, that Eve had to sit down quickly in the kitchen with the women. Jane pressed her to eat a cheese biscuit with her tea, served on what was clearly her best flowered china.

Zoe was embraced by one relative after another, most of whom remembered her as a child and a teenager. They regaled her with questions about life in the United States, especially sports, and Eve was relieved to see Zoe open up, as if it hadn’t been more than fifteen years since her last visit. At one point, one of her half brothers said, “Jesus and Mary, if this girl isn’t the spittin’ image of himself, our uncle Andrew, eh?” at which point Jane met Eve’s eyes over the table and smiled.

“Thank you for bringing her,” Jane said, pressing Eve’s hands between her own as they were leaving. Jane’s hands felt warm and solid as two new loaves of bread. “I just wanted to see his children gathered together again, now that they’re all grown-up.”

“I wish it could have happened sooner, but after Zoe dropped out of college, she was living a bit rough,” Eve said. “I’m sorry. We couldn’t get her to do anything with the family, and then she disappeared for years.”

To her surprise, Jane nodded. “Aye, I know you’ve been through a rough time with this girl of yours. But so many of the young ones go through a rough patch, and we’re always glad to see them return. I’m very glad to see your girl here now. I know Malcolm is watching and feeling very pleased, too.”

Zoe was carrying on with her cousins outside, tossing snowballs as if she really were twelve years old again. “I bet she’ll come back,” Eve said. “Should we tell anyone else?”

“I don’t know about that,” Jane said. “Let’s just leave things as they are, eh? We’ll let Zoe do it, if she’s a mind to, when she feels ready.”

“All right.” Eve kissed Jane on the cheek. “I love you. And your family. I hope you know how much.”

“You’re one of us—don’t forget that,” Jane said. “So don’t you go selling that house. You need to keep one foot on the island. For your girls, if nothing else.”

“I’ve decided to keep the house,” Eve said.

Jane, in her customary no-nonsense way, did nothing more than nod, but her eyes were bright. “Well, there. That’s all settled, then.”

On the drive back, Eve glanced at Zoe, whose profile was serene against the deepening blue sky. “So what do you think of the island, now that you’re back?”

“That it’s nice to be in a place where most of my memories are happy.” Zoe turned in her seat to look at Eve. “Was it very awful, thinking I was dead?”

The question stunned Eve. “I mostly didn’t believe you were really dead,” she said when she could trust her voice. “I thought I’d know if you were. But, yes, the few times I let my mind go there, it was awful.”

“Still, it must have been easier in a lot of ways, not having to worry about me.”

Eve was so angry that she jerked the car over to the side of the road, flinging Zoe against the window, and slammed it into park. She unclasped her seat belt and turned to look at her daughter. “Do not ever dare say that again,” she said. “Do not ever think that I would wish you dead. You are my child!” she yelled, and burst into tears.

“Oh, Mommy,” Zoe said, and slid across the seat to hold her.

•   •   •

They’d been kicked out of the house. “Go, go, go!” Eve cried, actually shooing them out of the kitchen door with a dish towel.

Catherine suspected her mother had contrived this as a way to push her into talking alone with Zoe. So far, she and her sister had been circling like territorial cats, polite but for the occasional hiss, with Willow nervously bouncing between them and giggling like a hyper eight-year-old or clinging to Catherine.

“Let us at least help peel potatoes or something,” Catherine said. There was no part of her that felt ready to be alone with Zoe.

“This kitchen isn’t big enough for both of you,” Eve snapped. “You can help with cleanup later. Go down to the beach and get some air while it’s still light out. You’ve been moping around underfoot, and I can’t stand it anymore.”

“We’re not moping,” Zoe said. “I was doing a puzzle.”

“I don’t care what you were doing. You girls need some fresh air to work up an appetite,” Eve said. Then, when Willow began putting her jacket on to follow them, she hauled her back. “Not you, Willow. You stay here and set the table.”

Catherine stepped outside and hesitated as Zoe bounded toward the cliff, declaring her intention to walk the beach as far as Basin Head. “You can come or not,” she tossed over her shoulder, and disappeared down the steep wooden staircase leading to the water.

In this late-afternoon light, the sun slanted orange over the snowy fields. Catherine could make out bird and mouse tracks on top of the slight crust of snow, proving that even in the dead of winter, even on this remote corner of a remote island, life went on, no matter what silly business the humans were conducting.

She took the staircase gingerly because some of the boards were icy, hating herself for being so cautious. Zoe, whom she could see striding along the beach, had probably descended the steps at a run, or maybe even jumped from the halfway point.

The beach was mostly free of snow. If they’d been at home, it would be getting dark by now. But on Prince Edward Island, the light lingered in the sky and turned all shades of color, as if someone up there were constantly tie-dyeing the horizon, refusing to create the same crazy color combinations twice. Just now the clouds were shadowed in purple and laced in green and yellow.

Catherine picked her way through the enormous red rocks, staying close to the cliff to keep out of the wind. Zoe had stopped to examine something in the sand—deliberately?—and Catherine caught up with her by the first trio of tall dunes.

“Sea glass,” Zoe said, holding out her palm. A triangular piece of glass lay there, a delicate turquoise color.

“Pretty.”

“Probably one of the same pieces we picked up as kids. I always thought Mom tossed them back on the beach at night after we found them.”

“Me, too.”

They walked into the wind toward Basin Head. Catherine’s forehead was numb with cold. She couldn’t think of how to begin to tell Zoe what she’d found out from Grey, and that one confession seemed to have lodged in her throat, preventing any other conversation.

“What do you think of Darcy?” Zoe asked. “Pretty hunky for sixty.”

Catherine laughed, glad to have a distraction. “He’s probably pushing seventy.”

“Whatever. It’s still weird, right, how he and Mom can hardly keep their eyes off each other? I even saw them holding hands. It’s like chaperoning a pair of lovesick teenagers.”

“They do seem pretty smitten.”

“Guess that’s better than her being alone. And he’s kind of sweet. Nicer than Dad in a lot of ways. I still can’t believe the guy’s cooking us a turkey.”

“Mom could do worse,” Catherine agreed. She’d forgotten this: how much time she and Zoe used to spend watching their parents, dissecting their moods. She supposed all children must do that, and then shuddered to think of what Willow must have observed between her and Russell. “Observing the animals in their natural habitat,” Zoe had called it in middle school when she’d spy on their parents and report something back to Catherine like, “The male of the species is now circling the watering hole, in search of whiskey, while the female flicks her tail feathers and issues indignant squawks. This is their weekly mating ritual.”

Nobody could make her laugh as hard as her sister. Now, as they continued walking in silence, Zoe’s silhouette beside her seemed so familiar that Catherine felt almost as if they were walking back through time, to the childhood and adolescence they’d spent on this beach with innumerable MacLeish cousins.

Just then Zoe glanced at her, eyebrows raised beneath the old blue watch cap of their father’s she’d shoved onto her head, her yellow bangs pressed flat beneath it. “How weird is this?” she said, echoing Catherine’s thoughts. “I feel like I’m ten again.”

“I know. I was just thinking the same thing.”

“I’m glad you came for Thanksgiving,” Zoe said. “It’s good you’re here. You made Mom’s holiday happier. Willow’s, too. They were missing you.”

Was Zoe, too? Catherine wished she knew. She searched the patterned sand at their feet, looking for the right words written there in the scrolls of the sea. “Listen. I know what happened to you at school. How you got pregnant. And I’m sorry.”

Zoe stopped walking and shoved her hands deep into her pockets. “Who told you? Mom?”

So their mother knew, too. This surprised Catherine, but she wasn’t about to tell Zoe it was Grey. He was Zoe’s best friend; it might be worse if it had come from him.

“When did you tell her the truth?” Catherine asked to avoid answering her question.

“Not long ago.”

“I’m so sorry,” Catherine said again. “I wish I’d known.”

“I didn’t want you to know.” Zoe started walking again, faster. “I still wish nobody did.”

Catherine had to step up her pace and felt suddenly breathless, remembering this, too, from their childhood at Chance Harbor: Zoe, after about age eight, was always faster, stronger, and more impulsive than she was. So mercurial that Catherine had often felt like she was a faint light trailing after her sister’s own bright flare.

“Does Willow know?”

Zoe shook her head, hard. “I would never tell her, and don’t you do it, either,” she said fiercely, stopping again to grab Catherine’s arm. “Please.”

“But she has to know. Otherwise she’ll keep asking questions.”

“No. I don’t think so. Yesterday I told her a partial truth, okay? Enough. I just said I’d met this guy at a party and hooked up with him. That he was a nice guy, but it was a onetime thing and I never looked for him. That’s all she knows.”

“Why don’t you want to tell her?”

“I don’t want Willow to ever think the rape had anything to do with her. I don’t want her tainted by it,” Zoe said. “I know that’s a medieval word, and I know I’m supposed to be a feminist and all that, but Willow doesn’t have to know everything, okay? Promise me that.”

“I promise,” Catherine said, touched by her sister’s determined generosity. “For what it’s worth, I think you’re probably right not to tell her.”

Zoe turned away, but not before Catherine could see that she was crying, one cheek shinier than the other. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. But I still don’t understand why you didn’t tell me. I was right there, Zoe!”

“You were busy getting ready to graduate.”

“You’re my sister. I would have dropped everything for you!”

Zoe shrugged, the purple jacket hunching up around her ears as if it had been pulled upward by strings. “You did that enough. You’d already made it clear you were done with me, after I came crying to you about Mike so many times.”

This was true. Catherine thought back to how Zoe had wept, her eyes red-rimmed for weeks after Mike broke up with her. How she’d refused to eat and couldn’t sleep without dope or antihistamines. By then Catherine had met Russell, was busy planning not only her graduation party, but their wedding. Then would come nursing school. Her future was set. Zoe, she had thought, was wallowing. Again.

“My sister’s a histrionic attention-seeker,” was how she’d described Zoe to Russell one night when they’d come home to find Zoe sitting on the doorstep of her apartment in the rain, begging to spend the night.

Now, thinking of what Zoe had gone through during the rape and its aftermath, of how alone she must have felt, Catherine’s stomach turned. “I was an awful sister to you,” she said, hurrying to catch up because Zoe was ahead of her again. She linked arms with Zoe this time, using such a strong grip that Zoe made a little noise of surprise.

“It doesn’t matter. That was a long time ago. Anyway, you were never awful,” Zoe said. “I was always the awful one.”

“Oh, I see how it is. It’s still the Sister Olympics around here. You have to be a faster walker and more awful, too?”

To her relief, Zoe laughed. “Look, I know I never made things easy for us. For Mom and Dad, either. But I understand myself better now.”

“Good. Me, too.”

Zoe shook her head. “No. I mean, I understand who I am and where I came from. There’s something I need to tell you.”

Catherine felt a sharp stone of dread in her throat and couldn’t swallow. “What?”

“Dad? He’s not my real father.”

“What?” Catherine stopped and pulled Zoe around by the arm to face her. Zoe’s cheeks were bright red from the wind, her freckles almost invisible. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am. Mom told me. She had an affair with Malcolm. You know, Dad’s cousin?”

Catherine frowned. She’d heard that name. “Cousin Jane’s brother? The one who drowned?”

“Yes. I guess Dad fooled around, and Mom felt lonely, so . . .” She shrugged. “And I was the result.”

“My God,” Catherine said. “Does anybody else know?”

“Only Cousin Jane, apparently.”

“Of course. Nothing gets past her. Funny she kept it a secret.”

Zoe nodded. “I know. Maybe she didn’t want Dad to be embarrassed. Or maybe it was out of respect for Malcolm after he died, you know, because he had kids.” She smiled, her teeth very white in the late-afternoon light, which was burnishing the gold grass at the tops of the dunes a fiery orange, making the dunes look like they’d caught fire. “I saw Malcolm’s kids yesterday. So freaky.”

“When?”

“When you took Willow to the store.” Zoe made a face. “Mom made me go with her when she brought them a pie. She must have arranged it ahead of time with Cousin Jane somehow, because there were, like, a hundred people there. Including my two half brothers, who I hadn’t seen since the summer after my senior year of high school. They’re much older than I am, but it was weird, seeing how much I actually look like them now that we’re all adults.”

“Jesus. I always thought you and I looked alike.” Catherine was having trouble keeping up with all this; she imagined the same red sunset glow over her head as her brain overheated.

“We do. But Malcolm was Dad’s cousin, so I guess that makes sense,” Zoe said. She laughed. “It’s like we’re all one big MacLeish herd. Doesn’t really matter who our dads were in some ways because that bloodline is so strong.”

“Seriously, Zoe. How did you feel, seeing them, now that you know?”

Zoe shrugged. “Surprisingly okay. I’ve always felt so alone, you know? It’s good to be in a place where people just accept me as family. And now I understand why Dad felt responsible for me but couldn’t completely claim me as his. He must have looked at me and seen Malcolm, but I always reminded him of Mom cheating on him, too.”

“He cheated on her first,” Catherine said, thinking of the trip to Cape Breton, of her mother being pregnant with Zoe as their father wept down on the dock, waving good-bye. Now that final puzzle piece fell into place, too, and she told Zoe.

“Wow,” Zoe said.

“Right. Wow.”

“So we’re only half sisters.” Zoe said this matter-of-factly, but Catherine heard the pain in her voice.

“Are you kidding?” Catherine said. “I held you in my arms the day you were born. You’ve been the kind of pain in the ass only a real sister could be.”

Zoe laughed. Her nose was running, Catherine saw, and her eyes, too. Maybe it was the wind, but she didn’t think so.

“We’d better get back,” Zoe said. “My face is freezing off.”

“Mine, too.”

They had made it halfway to the stairs leading up to the house when Zoe said, “We need to talk about Willow.”

The tide was coming in, so they had to walk on higher ground, where there were rocks and dried clumps of seaweed. Catherine stumbled a little in the sand, the dread she’d been carrying suddenly boulder-sized. “What about her?” she asked, then made herself say it. “You want custody, I guess.”

Zoe shook her head. “No. I think Willow should keep living with you.”

Catherine was stunned. “Are you sure? You’re her mother, Zoe.”

Zoe put a hand to her face and didn’t speak for a moment. When she brought her hand down, her voice was shaky and difficult to hear over the surf. “The thing is, every time you look at Willow, you see the baby you always wanted, the girl you love. A beautiful child,” she said slowly. “But when I look at her, I only see that sometimes. Other times Willow reminds me, you know, of everything that happened. Of every mistake I ever made.”

“But that’s crazy. What happened wasn’t your fault.”

“I know the rape wasn’t my fault. But how many times did I make the wrong choices, Cat? How many times did I choose the easy way out, instead of doing all the hard things, like going to school and working and taking care of my damn kid?” Zoe’s voice had risen, as if she were shouting at herself. “You were right. I’ve screwed her up, and I need to stop doing that.”

Catherine’s entire being had gone very still. She focused only on her sister now. She said, “Willow is her own person, Zoe, with her own life ahead of her. That’s what you and I have to keep remembering: we are only two people in her life. Two important people, but only two. Willow has Mom and Russell, teachers and friends. Someday she might even have a family of her own. You have tried your hardest to do the right things for her. I see that now. If you want custody, I won’t fight you. I’ll try to help you any way I can. You and Willow.”

“Wow. Quite the speech.” Zoe was smiling. “Thanks. But I’m not able to be a parent the way you are, Cat. I want her to live with you. It’ll be better for her. I think Willow knows that, too. She loves you. And, more importantly, she trusts you.”

“And you? What will you do?” Catherine was standing very close to her sister now, close enough that they were sheltering each other from the wind. “You’re not leaving, are you?” She felt unexpectedly panicked by the idea.

Zoe shook her head. “I’ll stick around. I don’t want to bail on Willow again. Grey says I can live in the trailer as long as I need a place, and Mom’s willing to help me with tuition if I go back to school. Or maybe I’ll move up here in the spring, help Mom out with the house. Tuition’s even cheaper at the university here. I’ll see Willow wherever I go. That’s the only sure thing. Otherwise, one day at a time, right? And today is Thanksgiving. We’d better go up and eat some of that turkey.”

The darkness had fallen completely as they began their ascent up the cliff. Now the moon was out, just a sliver of white.

As she reached the top of the ladder, Catherine saw that the lights in the Chance Harbor house were on, the windows gleaming yellow squares. Through one of them, she could see Willow in the kitchen, waiting for them to return, her face turned toward the window.

•   •   •

Right after they’d eaten and washed the china, wiped the counters and fallen into living room chairs with books and another endless puzzle, Darcy announced he had a surprise for them. “Time for us to go outside,” he said. “Bundle up!”

“You’re out of your mind,” Eve said, but she forced herself off the sofa, groaning a little from the turkey and potatoes. She got her coat and scarf from the pegs outside the kitchen and told Willow to help Catherine and Zoe carry the wool blankets they’d stacked on the porch.

“Wait. Turn off all the lights,” Darcy said as they were shoving their feet into boots and hands into mittens.

“This is crazy,” Zoe said, but she went upstairs and did as he asked, while Willow and Catherine turned off the lights downstairs.

They felt their way through the dark onto the back lawn, where Darcy had somehow managed to pull the Adirondack chairs out of the barn and line them up on the cliff without Eve noticing. It must have been while she and Willow were cutting out decorations, as she was fretting about her daughters alone on the beach. Whatever had happened between them must have settled something, she decided, after watching them laugh and tell stories at the table.

Darcy instructed them to sit in the chairs. The surf rushed in and out below, the Northumberland Strait breathing like a dragon at their feet.

“Not you, though,” Darcy said to Willow. “I need you as my assistant.”

Willow went over to him. Once Eve’s eyes adjusted to the darkness—nearly complete, with the lights turned off in the house and no ambient light other than that thumbnail of moon—she saw that Darcy had set up a tripod with a camera on it. He turned around for a moment to smile at her, a glimmer of white in the inky blue. His Cheshire-cat grin, she thought fondly. The grin that announced life was good. And perhaps it was, the way Darcy always chose to see it. She hoped to learn that trick from him.

“What we’re witnessing tonight,” Darcy announced, gesturing grandly at the sky above them, “are the Leonids, the annual meteor shower associated with Earth crossing paths with a comet called Tempel-Tuttle.”

“Why isn’t it called the Tempel-Tuttle meteor shower, then?” Zoe called from her chair.

“Ah, so glad you asked,” Darcy said. “It’s because the radiant of this particular meteor shower—the place where it’s brightest—is the constellation Leo. Now, no more questions. I’ll answer those later. Right now I want you all to keep your eyes on the sky. Except you,” he added, touching Willow’s shoulder. “I need you to help me record the event. Okay, if I told you the wider the lens, the more sky we’d see, what lens would you choose? Here’s what I have.”

Darcy and Willow squatted over a case holding his camera lenses, conferring quietly. Eve tipped her head up, pulling the woolen blanket to her chin. On this clear, cold night, the stars were so abundant that she wondered if she’d see any meteors at all. Then, quite suddenly, there was a streak of light across the sky, making her gasp, and then more of them, as if the sky were raining light.

Zoe and Catherine were huddled on the Adirondack love seat beneath a blanket. One of them pointed to the sky and said something Eve couldn’t hear. She couldn’t tell one voice from the other, and with their heads bent so close together, her daughters appeared to be a single creature. Later, she would take Catherine aside and try to say all of the things she should have said long ago: about Andrew and Marta and their son, to start with, and then a longer conversation about how sorry Eve was about seeming to always favor Zoe over Catherine, when Catherine had needed her just as much as a child. And about how proud she was of Catherine’s accomplishments and of how generous and loving a mother she had become.

Eve hoped it wasn’t too late for those conversations with her older daughter. What else could a mother do, but keep trying? Meanwhile, for now she was happy to know that her daughters were together. Looking out for each other.

Willow and Darcy had put the lens on the camera and were watching the sky now, too, standing side by side, tipping their heads so comically far back that they looked related, especially with strands of Willow’s hair escaping from the hood of her black jacket and floating, almost silver in the moonlight, just like Darcy’s.

Watching them, and feeling her daughters beside her, something in Eve let go, that small sad creature inside of her that had been clinging with its monkey paws to the idea that loneliness was her permanent state, because she had been married to a man for whom she was not enough and had lost a daughter, because she had been widowed and worried that she might lose her daughter a second time once every secret was out.

That creature inside her morphed now into something else for Eve, into the sparkling feathered realization that she had family gathered around her, noisy and flawed and generous. She wasn’t lonely after all, but a woman who loved and was loved. A woman who would ask for forgiveness and receive it, for all of the mistakes she’d made, and would continue to make, as long as she lived beneath a sky that rained light.