Thursday Afternoon
“A graveyard,” Bess says, following Evan through the Mount Vernon Gate and into the oldest section of Prospect Hill Cemetery. “To get my mind off the loss of my beloved family retreat, you’ve brought me to a place that is the very symbol of death?”
“Earthly demise,” he says. “That’s all it is. Come on.” Evan takes her hand for the second time that day. “You need to tell a certain someone what’s happening. And then say farewell.”
They head west, toward the Soldier’s Turn.
“How do you know where we’re going?” Bess calls, trying to keep pace, trying not to get caught up in a bramble and find herself facedown on the final resting spot of some Eliza or Ebenezer.
“I come here quite a bit,” Evan says. “So I know my way around.”
“Wow … That’s, um, odd.”
Evan pauses, partway between a Joy and a Pigeon. If Bess isn’t mistaken, his cheeks are slightly flushed. Probably because of the wind, which is growing stronger by the gust. According to her weather app, today they can expect gales of up to forty miles per hour.
“I like the history of this place,” Evan says. “All of the island’s founders are buried at Prospect Hill. Right here we have the Honorable David Joy, who was an abolitionist. And then there’s Lucy Sturtevant Pidgin, M.D.”
Bess leans forward, squinting. A female doctor born in 1850. She hadn’t known there was such a thing.
“Across the path is Charles Robinson,” Evan continues. “He was the first developer in Sconset. You know that footbridge over Gully Road?”
Bess nods. Anyone who’s spent more than a day in Sconset has used it. Bess must’ve a hundred times. With college friends or island friends, on summer nights they’d walk the full way from Cliff House to the Summer House piano bar and back again, both ways over Gully Road.
“He built that bridge,” Evan says. “Come on, let’s keep going.”
He directs Bess onward, past the families Luce and Cartwright and Wyer and Macy. They spy a Folger, a Murphy and, yes, a Hussey or three. DULCE ET DECORUM EST PRO PATRIA MORI, Bess sees on one headstone. Thanks to Choate, she knows her Latin and her Roman poems, too. “It is sweet and glorious to die for one’s country.”
“This poor lady,” Evan says, pointing to Sarah C. Gardner. “Died soon after giving birth. She was depressed, apparently, and confined to the ‘child bed.’ She escaped from her nurse and ultimately drowned.”
“God, how sad,” Bess says, thinking of Sarah C. Gardner and the others, too.
So many women plus all those men LOST AT SEA or LOST AT WAR. And the children and babes—in the ground before they had a chance. The ache of sorrow tightens across Bess’s chest.
Soon they pass by the Starbuck Gate, two large pillars holding up a rusty scroll. Bess hesitates at one gravestone. It’s thin, white, and rectangular, with clumps of moss growing beneath it.
“‘While briefly in life’s book we are,’” Bess reads, “‘Death shuts the story of our days.’ Well, that’s cheery.”
“It’s also true.”
“Look at this one,” Bess says. “‘She was all a woman should be.’ Bummer. I was planning to use that epitaph myself. I would love to know what it means. She was a good housekeeper? Aces in the sack? What?”
“Both I’d venture. Let’s get a move on.” Evan lengthens his stride. “I think it’s about to rain again.”
Bess scrambles after him. Fantastic. More weather.
“When’d you become an amateur historian?” Bess asks as they round the corner down the Macy Path. “It’s very cute, and you should definitely use that factoid on the ladies, but it doesn’t seem like you.”
Or does it? Bess doesn’t altogether know.
“Hey,” Evan balks. “Who ya calling an amateur? I’ll have you know that I’m the president-elect of the Nantucket Historical Society.”
“What?” Bess says, gawking in surprise. “That is completely…”
“Lame?”
“No. Unexpected.” Bess smiles sadly. “Awesome.”
With each hour, Bess grows ever more glum about her fake novel that will never come to pass. Evan Mayhew is still a handsome bastard and now he’s shown a snapshot of the old man he might become. Salty, quick-witted, and pestering island folk about family trees. That Costa Rican lady must’ve been some kind of idiot to let him out of her clutches. And Ball Cap—well, she’s doing okay. Apparently.
“Ah,” Evan says. “Here we are.”
“What now?”
Bess shakes her head. Though she knows exactly where they stand, she is fifty kinds of lost.
“Right there,” Evan says, and shows her a stone: weather-beaten, grayed, and cracked.
RUBY GENEVIEVE YOUNG PACKARD
March 10, 1919–February 5, 1994
Lived Respectfully, Loved Vastly
Bess smiles.
“Clay and I used to joke her epitaph should be: ‘Stop complaining. I don’t believe in it.’ God, I miss her.” Bess turns toward Evan. “Thanks a lot, jerk. Now I’m feeling even more ‘hormonal.’”
“Hmm. Or are you just ‘feeling,’ period? What did you tell me last night?”
“Uh, my jeans don’t fit? Don’t tell Cissy I hate oysters?”
“Yes. That and you think half the problem with prescription drug abuse in this country is that people are afraid to feel stuff,” he says. “Then you promptly spent twenty minutes justifying your penchant for elastic pants.”
“I’m not afraid to have feelings,” Bess says. “I feel all over the place. Chiefly about my sweatpants.”
“Okay, you big feeler.” He taps the top of Ruby’s gravestone. “The two of you are due for a chat.”
“But I already said good-bye.”
“Not like this.”
Evan takes a step toward Bess. He pushes a strand of wind-and-salt-tangled hair from her face.
“Tell her about Cliff House, and about you,” he says. “Close the circle. It’s the only way to move on and make room for something new.”
“I don’t want anything new. I like the old and the usual,” Bess says. Then adds: “I’m talking about houses, obviously.”
“Of course,” Evan says with a smirk. “I’m going to leave you and your grandmother alone. I’ll wait for you up by the Soldier’s Turn. Take your time.”
He gives her a gentle pat on the back and then walks away.
As she listens to Evan’s footsteps fall off, Bess kneels beside Ruby’s headstone. She places a sprig of zinnia, clipped from the Cliff House gardens by Evan, in the place a heart might be.
“Good thing Cissy didn’t see Evan cut this,” Bess says. “Or the Mayhew family would have a whole new set of problems. I think he even used an old steak knife. Oh, Grandma.”
Bess sighs and shakes her head.
“Okay, this whole thing is ridiculous,” she grumbles, even as tears wet her lashes. “Gram, I wish I knew how to say this.”
Bess lowers all the way onto the ground, sitting Indian-style beside Ruby’s marker. Yes, Indian-style, none of that “crisscross applesauce” garbage because that’s what it was called when she was a kid, before it was decided an entire ethnic group might be offended by what is a pretty comfy seated position.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Bess says, picking at the pebbles on the ground. “Other than things are in complete chaos. It started, well…” She stops. “God, it’s been twenty years since we last spoke. I guess it all started just after you died, when I got kicked out of Choate. Don’t get mad because, well, it was sort of on purpose.”