It was big news: the Randolphs were moving to Australia for at least a year, maybe longer. Jordan Randolph was taking a leave of absence from the newspaper, and Marnie Fellowes would run it in his stead. People questioned the logic of pulling Jake Randolph out of school in his senior year. Was it kind or cruel? Was it wise from a college-admissions perspective? Some people said Jake didn’t want to go. Others said he couldn’t wait to get away from Nantucket. Even people who knew next to nothing about the Randolphs’ marriage knew that Ava Randolph was dying to move back to her homeland. If it hadn’t been for the accident, people would have seen this move as a valiant attempt to fix the marriage. But everyone knew the Randolphs were leaving because of the accident.
The accident was still lurking around the edges of our minds, but it was no longer front and center. It had been, after all, an accident: there was no one to blame. Penelope Alistair had been driving too fast, plain and simple. Dr. Ted Field released the tox report, but it turned up nothing. Penny hadn’t been drinking or on drugs. She had been upset. People hazarded guesses about the reason for that, but most of those guesses were so absurd that we disregarded them immediately. That the other kids had been drinking was whispered about, of course. If it had been during the school year, some of the parents might have rallied for an alcohol and drug awareness forum, but it was high summer. The mild June weeks turned into scorching July weeks. The summer people arrived in their Suburbans and Hummers, taking all the available parking spots, clogging up the aisles at the Stop & Shop, bringing vacation frivolity and a river of money to the island. Whole days passed during which we didn’t think about Penelope Alistair at all. Don’t think us callous; life was just moving on. It was summer. We had our own lives to live.
There were reminders, of course. The seven-foot white cross at Cisco Beach was the most visible of these. A few of the girls from the madrigal group started gathering at the cross every evening at sunset to sing. They sang the classical tunes they had practiced so hard, but as their audience grew (one night there were fifteen people, the next night twenty-three), they branched out to cover the Beatles and Elton John. As with anything else, there were detractors. It was in poor taste, someone said, singing each night at the spot where their friend had died. Others felt it was a fitting tribute. The cross itself put some people off. Cisco had been a popular surfing beach, but now a stretch of sand on either side of the cross remained unoccupied during the day.
One summer resident, the mother of two girls, said, “The cross scares my children. I wish they would take it down.”