Wilma rushed about, happily taking orders and filling coffee cups. Meredith noticed some unfamiliar faces among the breakfast crowd. The tourist trickle had begun, but Louisa had warned her it would become a veritable flood after Memorial Day.
“Nothing like Big Sister gets, though,” she’d added with a shake of her head.
Now that she’d lived here a few months and knew most of the island faces, Meredith realized how early the islanders must have been at their shopping and errands last summer when she and her parents were part of the flood.
“Here you go, dear.” Wilma appeared with her coffee and a plate of waffles.
“Thanks, Wilma.” Meredith grinned apologetically as she closed her laptop. “I won’t be taking up space here much longer. My dad contacted a tech to come on next week’s ferry and get our own internet set up.”
“Land sakes, it’s been no bother a’tall.”
“Hey,” Meredith said as Wilma turned to leave, “I’ve been trying to find Rebecca the last few days. Have you seen her?”
Wilma’s sunny expression darkened. She glanced over her shoulder, but no one demanded her immediate attention. She sat down at Meredith’s table and leaned close.
“Not seen her for days, myself. Not since the last ferry.”
“When Nadiya left.”
Wilma nodded, seeming relieved she didn’t have to explain that part. “Thought Rebecca might come down to see her off. Nadiya did, too. Kept looking about, hopeful like. Think she was pretty close to tears as she boarded.”
“The times I saw them together, Rebecca looked really happy.” Meredith buttered her waffle.
“Happiest I ever remember seeing her,” Wilma agreed. “Two different worlds, though, aren’t they? I’ve no idea how that was ever going to work out.”
She got up to take care of more diners, leaving Meredith to eat and ponder. How in the world could a woman be so hard to find on this island? She quickly ate and paid her bill. With a wave to Wilma, she carried her laptop out to her car and drove to the library, where the addition now had walls and roof sheathing.
“Wow.” She craned her head to where Joe and Molly were nailing down roof shingles. “Can’t believe how much you’ve got done.”
“Want to get it weather-tight as soon as we can,” Molly said after taking the roofing nails from her lips. “Then we’ll get to work on the interior.”
“Can I go in?” Meredith asked.
“Sure you can,” Joe called down. “But be careful.”
Inside, plywood subflooring was laid, but the walls were still studs, waiting for electric and insulation. A rack of windows leaned in the corner. She went to where she imagined her desk would be, turned and surveyed her imaginary students. Twirling in place, she laughed.
Outside again, she said, “Looks great! Can’t wait to get in there.”
“Couple more weeks, and you should be able to start setting up,” Molly said.
“You haven’t seen Rebecca, have you?”
“No,” Molly and Joe said in unison.
“Okay. See you later.”
She walked quickly over to Rebecca’s cottage and knocked. When she didn’t get an answer, she hesitantly opened the door. “Hello? Rebecca, are you here?”
Still no answer. Worried, she entered and looked into each room, muttering, “Please don’t be lying unconscious or something.”
The cottage was empty.
Bewildered, she hurried back to the Subaru and drove home. “Okay,” she said when she found Louisa reading in the living room, Jasper at her feet. “This island is only so big. Rebecca isn’t at home, and no one has seen her for days. Where could she be?”
Louisa glanced over her reading glasses. “I’d go to the chapel or the stone circle or the bluff. When Rebecca wanted to be alone, that’s usually where she’d go.”
“Thanks.” She patted her leg, and Jasper raised his head hopefully. “Want to come?”
He got up and followed her outside. They hiked along the ring road to the cemetery and made their way to the chapel. It was empty, but Rebecca had clearly been here. All of the pillows and cushions had been stacked in a corner, and the benches that served as pews were likewise pushed aside and balanced atop one another. A broom, mop, and bucket leaned against the wall, along with rags and glass cleaner.
“Working out her frustrations, I guess.”
Behind the chapel, through the trees, loomed the shadow of the stone circle. It, too, was empty.
“All right. To the bluff.”
They wandered into the trees, following a faint trail through the woods where clumps of wildflowers were blooming among the rocks. The trail dumped them out near a rocky outcropping Meredith had discovered early on, a place she’d felt how deep her connection to the island went. Rebecca sat almost exactly where Meredith had, gazing out at the ocean, a sheer cliff dropping below her.
Jasper beat her to the rocks. He scrambled up and nosed Rebecca’s arm. Without turning, she draped an arm over his back.
“You’re a hard woman to find.” Meredith sat beside them.
“Even here, if you want to be alone, you can do it.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to the waves breaking against the granite core of the island below them.
“I suppose you want to talk about your bonding,” Rebecca said at last.
“No. I mean, I do want to talk to you about it at some point, but we really want Jenny and Joey to be there, so we figure May is the earliest it can happen.”
“That’s wise.”
Silence settled between them again.
“I don’t mean to intrude,” Meredith began hesitantly, “and I’ll leave if you want me to. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
“Okay.” Rebecca kept her eyes trained on the horizon. “What does that mean?”
Meredith sensed she wasn’t really waiting for an answer.
“Breathing. Waking up. Moving about. Functioning. I guess that could mean okay.”
“Or,” Meredith ventured, “it could mean you’re simply existing. Getting by as best you can.”
Rebecca nodded, and Meredith saw her throat work as she swallowed hard.
“Did you and Nadiya fight before she left?”
“Not really.” Rebecca turned to face her at last. “We merely rehashed the same reasons we couldn’t stay together more than forty years ago. She wants—needs—a city. People. I need Little Sister. Why did I think it could be any different now?”
Meredith studied her face, the dark circles under her eyes, the gaunt lines around her mouth. “But you wanted it to be different.”
Rebecca’s expression softened a tiny bit. “I did. I love her. I can say it, admit it now. She’s the only one I ever have loved. But love isn’t always enough. Not for this.”
She turned back to the sea.
Meredith reached a tentative hand out to squeeze Rebecca’s shoulder, certain she would jerk away from the contact. But she didn’t.
“I’m sorry, Rebecca. I don’t know what I would have done, if I’d fallen for Aidan but needed to stay where I was, asking him to give this up to come and be with me. Even if he’d agreed, I think I would have watched him die, a little at a time, and that would have killed me. I couldn’t have done that. I don’t know how you and Nadiya find a way to be together.”
Rebecca’s jaw muscles clenched as she fought for control. “We don’t.” She gazed at Meredith, her blue-green eyes hard as stone. “And I have to learn to live with that.”
A quiet had settled over the cottage, Kathleen realized. Not the peaceful quiet of looking up from her computer to realize she wasn’t inundated with traffic noise and sirens, like she had when she first came back to Little Sister. And not the comforting quiet of sitting with Molly in the evening when they’d finished work and dinner, reading together, with Blossom’s snores the only sound. Nor was it the wondrous quiet of standing outside under a velvety black sky that showed her more stars than she’d ever imagined were in the heavens.
This quiet was the quiet of hushed voices and muffled footsteps. This was the quiet of impending death.
Someone was always with Christine, though it was only to keep watch. She was no longer eating and rarely seemed to be aware of who was there in the room. Mostly, it was Kathleen who sat at her bedside, watching for the rise and fall of her mother’s ribs, wondering when the last breath would come. Will we notice? she wondered. Or will her last breath just slip away like a wisp of wind that brushes by, and we don’t even feel it?
No matter how Christine was positioned to try and keep her comfortable, the one thing she groped for wasn’t a hand to hold. It was that oar. She kept it in the bed with her, lying alongside her, her bony fingers gripping it tightly.
Molly had stopped going to work. “The rest can wait,” she’d said when Kathleen had fretted that the construction on the addition had been paused.
Others came by—Siobhan, Louisa with Roy and Irene and Meredith, Wilma, Jenny now that she and Joey were back onisland. They brought food and offered to stay, so that Molly could get Kathleen out for short walks.
A shadow moved across the door, and her dad stepped up behind her. As useless as he’d been over the past weeks, he now insisted on sleeping in the other bed in this room, so that Christine wasn’t alone through the nights. Kathleen often heard the squeak of the old bedsprings and knew that he was getting up to check on her.
“Go get something to eat,” he said. “I’ll stay.”
She got stiffly to her feet. Blossom was waiting for her in the hall. Even after all these weeks, he kept a wary distance from Christine and Michael.
“I’ll call if anything happens,” Michael said when she opened her mouth. “Go on.”
Down in the kitchen, Molly sat with her mom and Wilma, talking in low voices. Molly jumped up when she saw Kathleen.
“No change,” Kathleen said before anyone could ask.
“What would you like to eat?” Wilma went to the stove, where a pot simmered. “We’ve got Nels’s chicken and dumplings, nice and hot.”
“Sounds good. Thanks.” Kathleen sank into a chair. “How’s Joey doing?”
Jenny shrugged. “He doesn’t say much, but he’s still in a good bit of pain. We go back to the surgeon next week. Hope he can start therapy then and get moving.”
“Here you go, Katie.” Wilma set a bowl down while Molly got her a glass of water. “I’ve got to get back. I’ll check in later.”
“Thanks.” Kathleen ate while Molly steered the conversation in other directions, sparing Kathleen the need to talk.
When Kathleen was finished, Jenny insisted she and Molly go for a walk. Blossom leapt joyfully off the porch steps, dancing ahead of them, waiting to see which direction they’d go.
“Let’s walk the road,” Kathleen said.
Molly took her hand. “You look exhausted. I felt you tossing and turning again last night. You’re not getting much sleep.”
“Obviously, you’re not, either. Sorry to disturb you.”
“Don’t be silly. I know. It’s like we’re always listening.”
“I’m so afraid I’ll sleep through it, when it happens.”
They walked, and Kathleen looked around, puzzled. It seemed everything was getting ready to burst into bloom all at once.
“Wow, I hadn’t realized. Spring’s really here.” She gazed at the overcast sky. “Storm’s coming, though.”
“Yep. It’ll be here before morning. I’ve got the oil lamps out and ready. We’ll put one upstairs.”
Kathleen tugged on Molly’s hand to turn them around. “I better get back.” They changed direction, and Blossom came racing from where he’d been exploring in the woods.
“Thank you for everything you’ve been doing,” Kathleen said, raising Molly’s hand to her lips.
“I wish there was more I could do.”
“Just be with me.”
Molly pulled her into a tight hug. “Always.”
At the cottage, Jenny was getting ready to leave. “Who knows what Joey’s trying to do on his own, with one arm. Better get back. Call if…”
Molly nodded. “Thanks, Mom.”
Upstairs, Kathleen took up her position at Christine’s bedside. “Go check your emails,” she told Michael. “One of us might as well get some stuff done.”
The afternoon darkened as heavier clouds moved in, and Kathleen found herself dozing off in the chair. She jumped at the raspy sound of her name.
“Kathleen.”
The whisper was so soft, Kathleen had to lean over her mother to hear her. “I’m here.”
She gazed into her mother’s eyes, her heart pounding for some odd reason as she waited, listening hard. Christine gripped her hand.
“Tell Michael to cremate me. With this.” The knuckles of her other hand on the oar were white. “Promise me.”
Kathleen’s head gave a spasmodic nod. “Promise.”
Christine closed her eyes again. She released Kathleen’s hand, but the hand grasping the oar hadn’t loosened.
A low peal of thunder rumbled, on and on, while rain pattered against the window. In the distance, flashes of lightning illuminated the blue-black clouds that had covered the island for the last couple of days. Louisa sat and knitted, peering at Christine’s still form every few stitches.
Sitting at a deathbed wasn’t a thing to be relished, exactly… oh, but what I’d have given to be able to do this for Ollie.
For herself, when it came time for her own passing, she supposed there was something to be said about quick, like Ollie’s heart attack. But having time to say your final good-byes, to make amends if amends were needed before it was too late. Yes, she could see how this slow fading away of existence could heal many hurts.
Christine gave a rattling cough that racked her frail body. Louisa leaned forward.
“Do you need a drink, dear?”
Christine didn’t reply. Her half-open eyes stared, unfocused, and Louisa wondered what was going on in her head, what she saw. The oar was still cradled in her hand, hugged close. She wouldn’t let anyone take it away. Louisa wasn’t so sure Aidan should have given it to her, but the poor woman clung to it as if it were her boy come back to her.
How many times had Maisie bemoaned her carelessness in letting Bryan out of her sight that day? No matter how often Olivia and Louisa tried to remind her that she couldn’t have known what the boys were up to, that kids on the island had always run a bit wild as they couldn’t get into much real trouble—none of their reassurances could assuage Maisie’s guilt. Of course, the way Michael and Christine had blamed her for Bryan’s death had only piled on the guilt. Their taking Katie away, never letting Maisie see her granddaughter again, that had been beyond cruel. It had been easy to blame Michael and Christine for Maisie’s lonely last years, when she wore her remorse like a cloak.
“We should call them,” Louisa used to argue. “Tell them how much what they’re doing is hurting her.”
But Ollie had always talked her down, reminding her that Maisie had the two of them and the rest of the islanders, and that was enough. Of course, that was when Louisa was hiding the secret of her own baby she’d given up, and she knew how guilt could eat away at a soul.
Louisa set her knitting down, gazing out at the storm, lost in memories. A hoarse, rattling breath jerked her back to the present.
She bent over the bed, where Christine’s chest heaved with another ragged inhalation. Rushing out of the room, Louisa descended halfway down the stairs to lean over the banister.
“Katie! Michael! Come up.”
By the time they gathered around the bed, Christine’s body was still. No more ragged breaths. Her eyes already dull and lifeless.
Katie dropped to her knees beside the bed. “Mom? Mom!”
Michael stood, seeming to be in shock that this moment had come.
Louisa went to the window and opened it a couple of inches, despite the rain. “So her spirit can fly.”