Chapter Twenty-Two

When Andre walked through the door and saw Elliot’s face, he knew that he needed to get him out of the house as soon as possible. He grabbed the leash and snapped it onto MacTavish’s collar. “Come on,” he said. “The rain’s not that bad. You can talk while we walk.”

“He’ll get filthy,” Elliot said despairingly of the white dog.

“He likes baths.” Andre tossed Elliot his tennis windbreaker. Elliot zipped it without further protest.

They headed away from the beach, out Indian Avenue to Sherburne Turnpike, their chins tucked into their collars and their eyes on the ground. From there they could ramble with the dog, almost entirely undisturbed, among the backroads off Sherburne Way. Tav sauntered along happily, his hindquarters swinging, his nose thrust into every clump and tussock he encountered.

“Have you eaten anything today?” Andre asked.

Elliot shook his head.

“I brought some Scotch Irish cake back from the Downyflake.”

“I can’t believe you sought out the police,” Elliot muttered. “What were you thinking? Why did you do it? You know how biased they are against black men—”

“I thought I should tell them that I’d met Nora,” Andre said, “and got to know her in New York. Kate put me in touch with her.”

Elliot’s feet slowed. Andre kept walking, in pace with Tav.

“You met Nora?” Elliot repeated.

“Yes.”

“And never told me.”

“Yes,” Andre said. “I was hoping eventually to repair the relationship between you two. But she died before it could happen.”

He looked over his shoulder. Elliot was standing dead still on the road’s wet verge, the latest shock of the weekend all over his face. Andre walked deliberately back to him.

“I’m ready to talk about it now,” he said, “if you’re ready to listen.”

Clarence Strangerfield was used to being damp. He had grown up in Siasconset sixty years ago, when the island in general and particularly that village had been virtually deserted after August. His father had put him on a boat before he could walk, and had taught him to scallop in the Coatue bends during the November commercial season—Coatue still had shellfish in those days before Brown Tide—with a chain mesh dragging net off the boat’s stern. Sometimes young Clarence had hunted for bay scallops on his own, after school, wearing his father’s waders that came up to his armpits and carrying a long, stocking-hat-shaped scallop net. The boys—it was always boys, except for Nellie Wilson, who had four brothers and never had a choice in the matter—picked them up one by one in rubber-gloved hands. On those days they waded in Madaket, riding out to the western end of the island on their bicycles, even in the rain. Sometimes they took out their pocket knives and shucked the scallops while still standing in the water, eating them raw.

So a brief summer shower or three didn’t bother Clarence. Particularly in July, when the heat and mugginess were sometimes oppressive. What bothered Clarence was standing on his aching feet while Nat Coffin dumpster-dove through the roll-off construction waste bins that they were forced to search for Spencer Murphy’s instrument of death. They had been at it for most of the morning, the construction dumpsters being full of such things as scraps of wood flooring, scraps of insulation, scraps of drywall and demo’d tile, ancient toilets and rolls of carpeting, various local residents’ plastic and lavender-scented dog-poop bags they had hurled into the dumpsters while walking at night, other people’s picture frames and old cartons and pizza boxes and paint cans—myriad, mostly empty, paint cans, which were technically toxic waste required to be recycled—tossed opportunistically into the dumpsters. The construction bins were the standard size generally in use on Nantucket—fifteen cubic yards. But they were microcosms of disposable American culture, Clarence thought, and of the quiet rebellion of island residents—who were so restricted in their garbage disposal that tossing a contraband item in any available receptacle was a secret pleasure.

Nantucket had faced a choice in the late ’90s: organize around the stink of the town dump, which was noxious and alienating residents within a five-mile radius of its location along Madaket Road; or pay through the nose to ship all of the island’s garbage—all of its garbage!—across the Sound to Cape Cod. The Selectmen had opted, in typical New England fashion, to support the environment and the future. Now 91 percent of the island’s waste was recycled, processed as compost in the anaerobic digester, or buried in a strictly monitored landfill. But that meant everyone—resident and summer tourist alike—had to tediously separate their garbage into three distinct bins: Compost, Recyclables, and Landfill. It drove many Nantucketers nuts. Particularly the ones who flew in to rent someone else’s house for two weeks each year, and saw no reason to get with the program.

“Hey, Clare,” Nat Coffin said.

He was braced on a pile of refuse inside the final construction roll-off they’d targeted. It was the largest they’d dealt with, about forty cubic yards, Clarence guessed. It was positioned in front of a massive foundation cut into the sand above Steps Beach, the whole lot already terraced for multiple levels of dwelling, the native vegetation stripped and the soil nothing more than a wet and sandy slash on the face of the cliff. The dumpster sat right near the conjunction of Lincoln Ave and Lincoln Circle, closer to town than Step Above.

“Ayeh?” Clarence said.

Nat lifted a garden shovel in his latex-gloved hands. Clarence reached for it gingerly with his. The shovel was spade-shaped, not square-edged, and the apex of the tip was stained rusty brown. Clarence squinted and examined it narrowly. There were still a few silver hairs stuck to the steel.

“Well, I’ll be,” he said.

“Wait,” Nat cautioned. “There’s more.”

And, grunting, lifted an ancient garden wheelbarrow over the dumpster’s rim.

“I was trying to spare you pain,” Andre concluded, as the two of them walked back up Indian Avenue toward Lincoln Circle. “You earned a lot of scars in this family. However much you loved Barbara, your relationship was always complicated. Spence was your hero. I couldn’t let Nora destroy that. If I could persuade her not to publish . . . to channel her anger into good somehow . . . the foundation seemed ideal.”

“But the house,” Elliot attempted.

“I thought maybe we could put in an offer. Buy it from the trust.” He hadn’t told Elliot that he’d expected to be running it. That was a private wound Elliot didn’t need to hear right now. “We still could. Maybe Kate’ll cut us a better deal than David ever would.”

Elliot lifted his shoulders despairingly. “Nothing seems worth it anymore, with Spence dead. Everything’s over.”

“Even us?”

They reached Lincoln Circle. Tav started to pull toward Step Above’s drive. But Andre came to a halt on the circle’s grass oval. There was a question he needed to ask before they entered the claustrophobic world of Step Above.

“Can you forgive me, El? For not telling you about Nora?”

Elliot looked at him, aghast. “After all you’ve done for me? Of course. You were just trying to protect me, Dre. You always do. You love me better than anyone in the world. I wish Dad had understood that.”

He reached for Andre. The two men embraced, the dog sitting at their feet.

It was as he held Elliot that Andre saw the two men in the distance, lifting the wheelbarrow out of the roll-off dumpster.

Kate Murphy had prolonged her time in town after her first cup of coffee at Fog Island. She had mastered the contents of the trust documents and had begun to make notes on a pad she kept in her substantial purse. There were so many tasks to consider, to list, to organize. She would first need a timetable for securing the foundation’s assets; that would depend entirely on the speed of probate court and how well David, as executor, cooperated with the process. She would have to file the necessary forms to secure federal tax-exempt status. Consider the location of her offices—the number of staff she would need—how large her board should be and whom she should request to sit on it. She ran through various names in her mind, aware that she had no expertise in refugee-related issues and that she would need advice. Should the foundation concentrate on women and children—reflecting Nora’s experience and legacy? Or should it be gender-neutral? Should it consider assistance for any regions of the world, or concentrate on the worst affected by war? Or were those areas already flooded with aid groups? Maybe she should concentrate on areas the world seemed to overlook. Maybe . . .

Overwhelmed, Kate stopped writing.

Or maybe Andre could help her get her arms around this job.

He had so much knowledge, so many contacts. He should be her first appointment to the board. She would ask him to help her.

That would have to wait, however, until they were all back in New York and could work around Elliot. She had always liked him—but she knew how deep his sense of disappointment and resentment must be. He must feel betrayed. He would demand explanations—so would David. Had she known Nora was in the States? Had she conspired to defraud them? All questions neither man had asked in Alice Abernathy’s office. Kate was dreading them.

She should leave Nantucket as soon as possible. She couldn’t imagine living in the house for the rest of the week while the others prepared for Spence’s funeral. She would go back to Step Above now, and pack her bag.

Her cell phone trilled; she glanced at the text. It was from Laney.

Mom. Where R U?

Kate considered this. She almost didn’t answer her daughter. Then she thought: Forget the bag. There’s nothing at the house you can’t replace. And texted Laney, On my way to the airport, sweetie. Be in touch soon.