June’s phone buzzed on the desk. It was Jameson. She looked at the manuscript, the phone, the manuscript, and then she picked up the phone.
“Sorry for the intrusion,” he said. “I forgot to ask . . . I wanted to double-check one last time about the roofers. It’s on my calendar for tomorrow. And I’ll be taking the next few days off. I mean, I’ve made a plan to do that, so . . .”
“Oh shit,” June said. “Yes. They’ll be here tomorrow.”
“All right. Sorry to disturb you.”
June let out an audible sigh. “Not a problem.” She was suddenly irritated by the whole thing. Not his phone call, but the fact that he’d be leaving and replaced by roofers, who’d make an awful racket. So many of them, tromping across the yard and over the roof, their nail guns and hammers banging away for days.
“I just needed to know. Like I said, I made plans.”
“No, listen, I meant to call and come by. I’m swamped over here. Haven’t even touched those parcels yet. Are you headed somewhere on the coast? Sticking around? Going home?”
“A little south of here for a few days. A cabin on the river.”
Though June had lived abroad and traveled widely, the idea of getting away had not occurred to her in some time. She’d not left the property since she arrived from Ireland. Two months, and she’d hardly gone to the beach. She stood and looked outside. The day had gotten away from her. It was later than she realized, nearly dusk.
“I think I’m finished here for the day,” Jameson said. “There’s no sense in me starting the next thing until I get back.”
“Would you like to go for a walk?” she asked.
“A walk?”
“Yes. I haven’t been down to the shore in ages. I could do for a break myself.”
“Yes,” he said. “All right.”
June waited for him in the Adirondack chair, watching the bright blue dragonflies float around the yard like props on strings. And then, as if on cue, a doe and her fawn peered from behind the spruce at the edge of the yard, flicking their tails, their eyes wide and watchful. Sometimes it felt as if this small holding on the hill had been written into existence, as if it were not of the real world at all but a conjuring of the imagination.
June squeezed her knees, turned toward the bungalow.
Now this man, coming across the lawn toward her, seemed conjured, too. He wore a sage-colored T-shirt and dark jeans with the hems rolled, and carried a long-sleeved flannel shirt in his hand. He appeared scrubbed clean, changed in a way she couldn’t quite place. He wore flip-flops, as did June.
“You couldn’t have chosen a better night,” he said, and June stood and faced west, toward the water, the direction of endings.
She led the way down the long footpath to the beach. Campfires already lit the shore, and groups of shadowy figures moved in the distance. The wind lifted voices toward them—ungoverned teenagers, children singing with their parents, couples laughing, an entire world clamoring with life, and June didn’t know if what she was feeling was envy, because she didn’t know if, in truth, she wanted a family the way other people seemed to want one.
She and Jameson walked along the tide line barefoot, carrying their flip-flops. The sun had dipped below the horizon. Venus glowed brighter than the sliver being offered by the moon and clusters of stars.
Jameson said, “I used to come down here with my children.”
June stopped.
He looked toward the water when he spoke. “They loved being barefoot in the sand.”
The way he spoke the words, his throat constricted, conveyed something dire. June felt confused. “You’re talking about them as if—”
“They were shot to death when they were seven years old.”
She clutched his arm, paralyzed by shock. She searched his face for an answer, for a clue to what she should say or do next. Then slowly it dawned on her. Everything began to unfold at once. Who he was. What had happened to his children. Another wave of shock hit her and she stepped back to keep from stumbling.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to say that.”
“I think we need to sit. Do you mind? Oh God.” June turned for the dunes. She lowered herself in the sand. Jameson sat beside her.
“I know who you are,” she said.
“I figured—”
“No. I mean, I just now realized who you are, and I’m so sorry for what happened. I know . . . what happened.”
“I suspected you knew all along.”
June stared as if seeing him for the first time. “I can’t believe it.”
“What?”
“You rode a motorcycle.”
“I did.”
“And that’s what happened to your leg.”
“You can tell?”
“A bit of a limp.” June’s eyes began to fill. “My grandfather was the man who hit you.”
Jameson jerked his head up.
“Did you not know?” she asked.
“What?”
“No?”
“I didn’t have a clue.”
June shook her head at the ocean. “Is this a coincidence?”
Jameson’s jaw tightened. “I don’t know.”
“Well, it’s rather astounding, wouldn’t you say?”
Jameson shrugged slightly and narrowed his eyes. He didn’t appear as dumbstruck as she.
“My grandmother kept calling me in Ireland, leaving all these messages,” she said. “She kept saying something about children. Children that weren’t in the accident but who died that day. Of course I heard the whole story later. And even now, the town still talks about it . . .”
Jameson nodded at the waves.
“Your grandparents weren’t actually hurt, right?” he asked. “We were told they were OK.”
“They were fine. Just shaken. A little bruised.”
“The road was wet. I was speeding.”
“My grandfather shouldn’t have been driving.”
“What do you mean?”
“He felt responsible for the accident. And also . . . your children. What happened to them later that day. If he hadn’t lost control of the car. His vision and reflexes were not what they used to be. I’d told him, Niall had told him.”
“Niall?”
“My husband.”
“You’re married?”
“Was. Not anymore.”
“I have a wife.”
“Of course you do.” June recalled her voice on the phone. What is it you want?
“She’s coming here tomorrow.”
June glanced at the sand, gave a nod. “Has she been back here since . . . ?”
“We moved away within a year. No, she hasn’t been back. This is the first I’ve been here myself.”
“I see. A cabin. Well. That will be nice.”
“I can’t work with the roofers here.”
“No, no, I probably can’t either. They’re going to be ten times louder than you’ve been, which is to say you haven’t been an intrusion in the least, just so you know, but I’m sure the nail guns will be echoing off my house and through the trees. They’ll be yelling for each other from all sides of the house.” What she was saying wasn’t at all what she meant.
“So I’ll just take these few days,” Jameson said.
June raised her head. “My grandmother left so many messages. She kept saying it was all their fault, because the story was, well, I learned later what the story was.”
“I lost control before your grandfather did. How ridiculous for them to believe it was their fault.”
“It was no one’s fault.”
Jameson looked at her sharply.
“I’m not overstepping my bounds here,” she said.
“That’s not what I was thinking.”
“What were you thinking?”
“Never mind.”
“I see.” After a moment June added, “My grandmother brought you a pie.”
Jameson looked at her, his eyes dark and serious, especially as the sun dipped deeply out of sight. “When?” he asked.
“I don’t know. It was a message she’d left. I don’t remember much from that time, but I remember that. She took you a pie and you told her something awful about the sand from your children’s feet still on the floor.”
He stiffened, lips pursed, and he turned away, clearly not wanting her to see him, though he nodded as if to say yes, I remember, yes, that was me. And then he pulled his knees up and held them to his chest. He lowered his forehead onto his arms atop his knees, and June could no longer see his face. The waves and the voices down the beach were not enough to muffle his sobs.
June placed her hand in the middle of his back and caressed him in a small circle, feeling the ripple of muscle and bone.
After a moment he raised his head and laid his cheek on his arms and looked at her, smiling sadly, and she offered the same smile in return. And then she lifted her hand from his back.
“I haven’t cried like that in years,” he said, clearing his throat.
“I can’t begin to imagine your pain.”
“Well.” Jameson leaned back and dropped his knees and swiped at his eyes. “I’m not sure I believe you,” he said.
June could feel the glare in her eyes. She did nothing to soften it away.
“I think you’ve lost somebody too,” he said.
“I have. But it isn’t quite the same.”
“How so?” he asked. “How do you measure such a thing?”
The ocean rolled in and out, stars littered the black sky, the fires along the beach burned brighter in the dark, and June watched as a child’s marshmallow caught flame on the end of his stick. His mother jumped up and blew it out.
“So you’ve got these days free, then,” June said. “For you, and your wife.”
“We have a foster child now.”
June studied his face. He seemed to be waiting for her to say something more. Something he didn’t want to talk about. She stood and brushed the sand from her jeans. “It’s getting late,” she said.
Jameson came to his feet. “What else did Van Hicks say about me?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think it was a coincidence that he had you call me.”
“I’m not following you.”
“That guy, who shot my children?”
“Yes?”
“He was Van’s son.”
June stepped back. Held her hand to her chest. “Why would he . . . I don’t understand. Why would Van tell me to call you, of all people?”
“I’d like to think it’s because I do good work. But I’m not sure. I don’t trust him. I took this job because I needed it. I had to take it. That’s just the fact.”
June felt a little sick. All this time she’d been putting Jameson through something of which she had no idea. All this time she’d been a part of something that may have been underhanded.
“He said you were perfect for the house. That you would know exactly what to do, and the quality of your work was—”
“I believe you when you tell me that he said all that.” He narrowed his eyes up into the sky.
“Well.”
“I’ve spent the last three years beating myself up over that day,” Jameson said. “That fucking motorcycle, excuse my language. I was riding too fast. Your grandfather had nothing to do with it, OK? If I hadn’t taken off like that, my children would still be alive.”
“And if it hadn’t rained and Granddad had given up his license and that young man with the gun had not been lost inside a world of insanity . . . Where is a person supposed to draw the line?”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
June stiffened, fury in her bones. She turned for home. “You know nothing about me.”
Jameson walked after her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
June spun around. “Easy for me to say? I’ve lived my whole life retracing my steps, checking off all the false moves that did me in. All the moves that did in the lives of other people around me.”
Jameson started to speak, but June cut him off. “My own mother is dead because I was born,” she said. “You think I give a shit about my birthday? That’s the least of my problems.”
Jameson took her hand. He held it tightly at her side.
June began to cry. “Oh good Christ.”
“I had no business saying such a thing,” Jameson said.
The breeze lifted the campfire smoke and now the singing and laughing was louder, mocking them, standing as they were, facing each other’s grief.
Jameson squeezed her hand. “I am cracked and broken in more ways than I know how to fix,” he said.
“I understand,” she said, and then Jameson wrapped his flannel shirt over her shoulders to help stop her shivering, and he told her it was time to go home.