It was Labor Day, and all the island grasses were golden. They moved in the wind, tickling Susan’s legs as she walked along the narrow path. She had set out from the house nearly an hour before, passing places that she had first seen the previous November, when the island was covered with snow.
The church stood straight ahead. Approaching it, she felt her heart beating faster. She felt nervous about what she was doing, although she had been planning it all along. Her knapsack felt heavy, bumping her back with every step. But the discomfort didn’t bother her: Susan had been wearing threadbare socks for years, and she understood the sacrifices people sometimes made for love.
Pausing when she got close, Susan caught her breath. The chapel was so beautiful, like something in an English painting: the dark stone, the steeple rising into the blue sky, summer clouds scudding across the sea. A bouquet of wildflowers was tied to the church door, and Susan wondered who had put it there. Walking around the side, she came to a small walled churchyard. Susan undid the latch, then quietly went through the gate. Her heart wouldn’t settle down. She felt nervous and shy, as if she were meeting someone important for the first time. Palms damp, she wiped her hands on the sides of her jeans.
Her eyes roved the small cluster of graves. She had thought she would have to search for a while, but one stone drew her immediately. Very slowly, never taking her eyes away, Susan walked toward it. As she got closer, her body began to tremble. Brushing the smooth granite with her fingers, Susan lowered herself to her knees. She couldn’t stop the tears from flowing down her face, and she didn’t even try.
‘Hello, Sarah,’ she said.
Seeing the name etched in stone made everything so real: ‘Sarah Talbot Burke, beloved of the island.’
‘Not just the island,’ Susan said, frowning as the tears touched her lips. Why did that make her so mad? Did Elk Island think it was the only place Sarah had been loved, made a difference in people’s lives? She felt the resentment, a big knot in her stomach. But suddenly she could almost hear Sarah’s gentle laugh, telling that she knew what Susan meant, and that it would be okay to let it go.
‘Fort Cromwell too,’ Susan said almost absently, as if to the air. ‘Beloved there too.’
She glanced around to see if anyone was around to hear. People thought you were eccentric or crazy if you talked to the dead, but Susan had been doing it for years. Some of her most meaningful conversations had been with Fred.
‘I’ve missed you,’ she said, gazing fixedly at Sarah’s name.
The September sky was deep blue. An eagle circled overhead, as if keeping watch. Susan believed in messages from nature, like Fred’s whale at Thanksgiving; it had made her feel better knowing he was looking out for Sarah.
‘The eagle, Sarah,’ Susan said softly, tracing the stone’s letters. ‘He’s here. And so am I.’
Settling down, she took off her knapsack and laid it on the grass beside her. She sat cross-legged on the ground. Someone had laid a bouquet, identical to the one hanging on the church door, at the base of the stone. Sticking out from beneath the tangle of asters, golden-rod, and Queen Anne’s lace was a note in her father’s handwriting. Susan glanced down, but she only wanted to stare at Sarah’s name.
‘Dad’s here too,’ she said. ‘I know he was out here early this morning – I heard him leave the house. He misses you too, Sarah.’
At the thought of her father, of what he had gone through in the aftermath of Sarah’s death, Susan’s heart shrunk a little, and she curled inward and wept.
‘A lot,’ she said when she could talk again. ‘That’s putting it mildly. He kind of shut down for a while. Even I couldn’t get to him. But, Sarah …’ Swallowing hard, Susan touched the stone again. ‘He had to go through it. He explained everything to me on our way out here … it’s like what I went through with Fred. Love is the greatest blessing there is, and when you love someone as much as he loved you, you can’t let go lightly. You just can’t.’
Shaking with sobs, Susan seemed unable to take her hand away from the carved letters of Sarah’s name. She traced them with her fingers very carefully, as if she were reading something very urgent. But after a few minutes, letting out a shuddering sigh, she reached for her knapsack. She seemed about to open it, but instead she let it rest on her lap.
They had come to pick up Mike. Did Sarah already know? Was she sitting somewhere, radiant and smiling, because Mike had decided to finish his senior year at Fort Cromwell, that he was going to fly back with them, live with Will until next summer?
‘Your father had a fit at first,’ Susan said, smiling. ‘He and my dad had these long-distance battles over the phone, yelling at each other, hanging up, calling back … it was a mess. Poor Aunt Bess. She’d call back when George wasn’t around to apologize for him and tell us it wasn’t us he was mad at, it was the situation … you know, having Mike leave the island.’
Laughing, Susan bowed her head.
The funny thing was, in the end, he accepted it. Good old George! One day Mike went into his room, and there were all the old National Geographics tied up in a bundle with a note: “Bring these back when you get your diploma.” I mean, what was Mike going to say to that? Especially –’
Here the laughter stopped, and Susan gazed at the stone again.
‘Especially because he knew that’s what you wanted.’
Her hands shaking slightly, Susan began to untie the cord on her knapsack. She had tied it extra tightly, knowing that what she had inside was very precious. Susan had the sentimental need to link things with the people she had loved and lost. She still wore Fred’s socks. For years she had used names that had reminded her of him, and it still felt slightly weird each time she answered to someone calling her Susan. Although her mother was relieved – for her it made all the difference to have Susan going by her real name – and they even had Sarah to thank for that.
Carefully, she pulled the plaque from within the backpack. Cradling it on her lap, she sighed. It was at moments like this that she wondered: Had she done this for a real reason? Was there any way Sarah could actually know?
‘Everyone loves you,’ Susan began. ‘Everyone. Your father and Aunt Bess, Mike, my dad … God, Sarah. My dad loves you so much. You were such a gift to him. You have no idea how much you taught him … to love, Sarah, but even more, to hope. My dad has so much hope now. He gets up every day, and he lives it for you.’
Susan caught her breath. ‘He has to, he says, because life is so wonderful. It’s a precious gift, and we never know when it might be shortened unfairly. You just never know,’ she whispered. Now she picked up her father’s note, a thin piece of paper stained green from the wildflowers. ‘I love you, Sarah. Forever,’ it said. Knowing the message was private, between her father and Sarah, Susan gently placed it back.
‘You meant so much to everyone, Sarah. They talk about you all the time. Sometimes I feel that you belong so much to other people, the ones who knew you longer and better, I forget about us.’
Us, Susan thought, smiling through her tears.
‘Remember, Sarah? When we first met? I mean, I’d seen you at the airport for your birthday flight, but we didn’t actually meet until that day in your shop. When I came in freezing cold, pretending I wanted to buy something, and you gave me that cup of hot cider … remember?’
A shadow passed across the grave, and Susan looked up. She wanted it to be the eagle, but it was only a low cloud gliding across the brilliant sun.
‘I wanted you to be all mine,’ Susan said. ‘When those college girls came in, I felt jealous. But you know …’
Holding the plaque tighter, she bowed her head for an instant, gathering herself together. ‘You are mine. You’re my stepmother. My dad married you, and it makes me so happy. You knew me, Sarah. Really knew me, and I think that’s rare. To understand and accept all there is about another person … At home, when things are hard with Mom and Julian, I think, oh, how much I wish I could ride my bike down to see you. I know you’d understand.’
Making a place beside her father’s flowers, Susan stood the plaque she had made against the gravestone. It was a small blue wooden oval, a magical cloud with a golden ‘9,’ feathers falling like snow – a tiny replica of the sign at Sarah’s shop. Susan remembered the first time she’d ever seen it, that freezing evening when she’d walked in.
‘My father helped me make this,’ Susan said. ‘We did it in his workshop at the airport, all last winter, after you died.’
For a minute, remembering the cold hangar, the silence as they worked the wood on the long tool bench, both feeling the loss of Sarah, Susan bowed her head and cried. But by the time the sign was ready to paint, spring had filled the orchards surrounding the airfield with apple and pear blossoms. Susan and her father spent those long hours together, many of them laughing and recalling their love for Sarah.
‘When I was making the sign,’ Susan said, the tears making her throat ache, ‘I was thinking that that was our place – your shop, Cloud Nine. But, Sarah …’
She looked around, feeling the island breeze lifting her hair. Waves broke on the rocks below, and sea gulls cried from the roof of the church. They sounded happy, exultant, a choir of birds.
‘You’re with me all the time. That’s the amazing thing.’
Tapping the little sign with her hand, she smiled even bigger than before. ‘Cloud Nine is just where we started. But I have you with me always. At school, at home, here on the island. You were even with me and Dad in his workshop.’
She read Sarah’s stone again, making her eyes take in every word slowly. ‘Sarah Talbot Burke, beloved of the island,’ she said out loud.
The wind picked up. Susan’s neck tingled. Looking up, she saw him again: the eagle. He circled once, a tight bend overhead. Then he ranged out over the moors, around toward the bay, dipping low behind a row of pines before he was lost to sight. It didn’t matter. Susan knew he would be back. She and her father would take Mike home to Fort Cromwell, and next summer they would all return to the island. The eagle would be there, and so would Sarah.
Standing, Susan brushed bits of grass from her palms. She checked to make sure her plaque was solidly wedged against Sarah’s grave to keep her company while Susan, Mike, and her father were away. It wasn’t going anywhere.
‘Beloved,’ Susan whispered, touching the letters one more time. ‘Of the island.’
This time, the words didn’t seem so hard to say.