Molly trudges up the road toward Vivian’s from the bus stop, her laptop in her backpack, red Braden slung over one shoulder and Hawaiian Ashley on the other. The duffels are knocking into each other like rowdy patrons at a bar, with Molly stuck between. It’s slow going.
Before the blowup with Dina, Molly had planned to go to Vivian’s tomorrow, to tell her what she found at the library. Well, plans change.
Leaving was anticlimactic. Dina stayed behind her shut bedroom door with the TV blaring while Ralph lamely offered to help Molly with her bags, loan her a twenty, drive her somewhere. Molly almost said thank you, almost gave him a hug, but in the end she just barked, “No, I’m fine, see ya,” and propelled herself forward by thinking: This is already over, I am already gone . . .
Occasionally a car lumbers past—this being the off-season, most cars on the road are sensible Subarus, ten-ton trucks, or clunkers. Molly is wearing her heavy winter coat because, though it’s May, this is, after all, Maine. (And who knows, she might end up sleeping in it.) She left behind heaps of stuff for Ralph and Dina to deal with, including a few hideous synthetic sweaters Dina had tossed her way at Christmas. Good riddance.
Molly counts her steps: left, right, left, right. Left right. Left right. Her left shoulder hurts, strap digging into bone. She jumps in place, shifting the straps. Now it’s sliding down. Shit. Jump again. She’s a turtle carrying its shell. Jane Eyre, staggering across the heath. A Penobscot under the weight of a canoe. Of course her load is heavy; these bags contain everything she possesses in the world.
What do you carry with you? What do you leave behind?
Gazing ahead at the dark blue sky striated with clouds, Molly reaches up and touches the charms around her neck. Raven. Bear. Fish.
The turtle on her hip.
She doesn’t need much.
And even if she loses the charms, she thinks, they’ll always be a part of her. The things that matter stay with you, seep into your skin. People get tattoos to have a permanent reminder of things they love or believe or fear, but though she’ll never regret the turtle, she has no need to ink her flesh again to remember the past.
She had not known the markings would be etched so deep.
APPROACHING VIVIAN’S HOUSE, MOLLY LOOKS AT HER PHONE. IT’S later than she thought it would be—8:54.
The fluorescent overhead bulb on the porch gives off a dim pink light. The rest of the house is dark. Molly heaves her bags onto the porch, rubs her shoulders for a minute, then walks around to the back, the bay side, peering up at the windows for any sign of life. And there it is: on the second floor of the far right side, two windows glow. Vivian’s bedroom.
Molly isn’t sure what to do. She doesn’t want to scare Vivian, and now that she’s here she realizes that even ringing the doorbell would startle her at this hour.
So she decides to call. Gazing up at Vivian’s window, she dials her number.
“Hello? Who is it?” Vivian answers after four rings in a strained, too-loud voice, as if communicating with someone far out at sea.
“Hi, Vivian, it’s Molly.”
“Molly? Is that you?”
“Yes,” she says, her voice cracking. She takes a deep breath. Steady, stay calm. “I’m sorry to bother you.”
Vivian comes into view in the window, pulling a burgundy robe over her nightgown. “What’s the matter? Are you all right?”
“Yes, I—”
“Goodness, do you know what hour it is?” Vivian says, fussing with the cord.
“I’m so sorry to call this late. I just—I didn’t know what else to do.”
There’s silence on the other end as Vivian absorbs this. “Where are you?” she says finally, perching on the arm of a chair.
“I’m downstairs. Outside, I mean. I was afraid it would alarm you if I rang the bell.”
“You’re where?”
“Here. I’m here. At your house.”
“Here? Now?” Vivian stands up.
“I’m sorry.” And then Molly can’t help it, she starts to cry. It’s cold on the grass and her shoulders ache and Vivian is freaked out and the Island Explorer is done for the night and the garage is dark and creepy and there’s nowhere else in the world she can think of to go.
“Don’t cry, dear. Don’t cry. I’ll be right down.”
“Okay.” Molly heaves in a breath. Pull yourself together!
“I’m hanging up now.”
“Okay.” Through her tears, Molly watches Vivian replace the receiver on the hook, wrap her robe tighter and tie it, pat the silver hair at the nape of her neck. As Vivian leaves the bedroom Molly runs back to the front porch. She shakes her head to clear it, pulls her bags into a neat heap, wipes her eyes and nose with a corner of her T-shirt.
A moment later Vivian opens the door. She looks with alarm from Molly (who realizes that, despite wiping her eyes, she must have mascara smeared all over her face) to the bulky duffel bags to the overstuffed backpack. “For goodness’ sake, come in!” she says, holding the door wide. “Come in this minute and tell me what happened.”
DESPITE MOLLY’S PROTESTS, VIVIAN INSISTS ON MAKING TEA. SHE takes down a cabbage-rose teapot and cups—a wedding gift from Mrs. Murphy that’s been in a box for decades—along with some recently recovered spoons from Mrs. Nielsen’s silver service. They wait in the kitchen for the water to boil, and then Molly pours water in the teapot and carries the tea service to the living room on a tray, with some cheese and crackers Vivian has found in the pantry.
Vivian turns on two lamps and settles Molly in a red wingback. Then she goes over to the closet and takes out a quilt.
“The wedding ring!” Molly says.
Vivian holds the quilt by two corners and shakes it out, then carries it over and drapes it across Molly’s lap. It is stained and ripped in places, thinned from use. Many of the small rectangles of fabric sewn by hand into interlocking circles have dissolved altogether, the ghostly remains of stitches holding snippets of colored cloth. “If I can’t bear to give this stuff away, I might as well use it.”
As Vivian tucks the quilt around her legs, Molly says, “Sorry for barging in like this.”
Vivian flaps her hand. “Don’t be silly. I could use the excitement. Gets my heart rate up.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”
The news about Maisie sits in Molly’s stomach like a stone. She doesn’t want to spring it on Vivian just yet—too many surprises at once.
After Vivian has poured tea in two cups, handed one to Molly, taken one for herself, added and stirred in two lumps of sugar, and arranged the cheese and crackers on the plate, she settles into the other chair and folds her hands on her lap. “All right,” she says. “Now tell me.”
So Molly talks. She tells Vivian about living in the trailer on Indian Island, the car crash that killed her father, her mother’s struggle with drugs. She shows her Shelly the turtle. She tells her about the dozen foster homes and the nose ring and the argument with Dina and finding out on the Internet that her mother’s in jail.
The tea grows tepid, then cold, in their cups.
And then, because she is determined to be completely honest, Molly takes a deep breath and says, “There’s something I should’ve told you a long time ago. The community service requirement wasn’t for school—it was because I stole a book from the Spruce Harbor library.”
Vivian pulls her burgundy fleece robe tighter around her. “I see.”
“It was a stupid thing to do.”
“What book was it?”
“Jane Eyre.”
“Why did you steal it?”
Molly thinks back to that moment: pulling each copy of the novel off the shelf, turning them over in her hands, returning the hardcover and the newer paperback, tucking the other one under her shirt. “Well, it’s my favorite book. And there were three copies. I thought nobody would miss the crappiest one.” She shrugs. “I just—wanted to own it.”
Vivian taps her bottom lip with her thumb. “Terry knew?”
Molly shrugs. She doesn’t want to get Terry in trouble. “Jack vouched for me, and you know how she feels about Jack.”
“That I do.”
The night is still, quiet except for their voices. The drapes are shut against the dark. “I’m sorry I came into your house this way. Under false pretenses,” Molly says.
“Ah, well,” Vivian says. “I suppose we all come under false pretenses one way or another, don’t we? It was best not to tell me. I probably wouldn’t have let you in.” Clasping her hands together, she says, “If you’re going to steal a book, though, you should at least take the nicest one. Otherwise what’s the point?”
Molly is so nervous she barely smiles.
But Vivian does. “Stealing Jane Eyre!” She laughs. “They should’ve given you a gold star. Bumped you up a grade.”
“You’re not disappointed in me?”
Vivian lifts her shoulders. “Eh.”
“Really?” Relief washes over her.
“You’ve certainly paid your dues, in any case, putting in all these hours with me.”
“It hasn’t felt like punishment.” Once upon a time—fairly recently, in fact—Molly would’ve gagged over these words, both because they’re blatantly sycophantic and cringingly sentimental. But not today. For one thing, she means them. For another, she’s so focused on the next part of the story that she can barely think of anything else. She plunges ahead. “Listen, Vivian,” she says. “There’s something else I need to tell you.”
“Oh Lord.” Vivian takes a sip of cold tea and sets her cup down. “What have you done now?”
Molly takes a deep breath. “It’s not about me. It’s about Maisie.”
Vivian gazes at her steadily, her hazel eyes clear and unblinking.
“I went online. I just wanted to see if I could find anything, and it was surprisingly easy; I found records from Ellis Island—”
“The Agnes Pauline?”
“Yeah, exactly. I found your parents’ names on the roster—and from there I got the death notices of your father and brothers. But not hers, not Maisie’s. And then I had the idea to try to find the Schatzmans. Well, there happened to be a family reunion blog . . . and . . . anyway, it said that they adopted a baby, Margaret, in 1929.”
Vivian is perfectly still. “Margaret.”
Molly nods.
“Maisie.”
“It has to be, right?”
“But—he told me she didn’t make it.”
“I know.”
Vivian seems to gather herself up, to grow taller in her chair. “He lied to me.” For a moment she looks off in the middle distance, somewhere above the bookcase. Then she says, “And they adopted her?”
“Apparently so. I don’t know anything else about them, though I’m sure there are ways to find out. But she lived a long time. In upstate New York. She only died six months ago. There’s a photo . . . She seemed really happy—children and grandchildren and all that.” God, I’m an idiot, Molly thinks. Why did I say that?
“How do you know she died?”
“There’s an obituary. I’ll show you. And—do you want to see the photo?” Without waiting for an answer, Molly gets up and retrieves her laptop from her backpack. She turns it on and brings it over to where Vivian is sitting. She opens the family reunion photos and the obituary, saved on her desktop, and places the laptop in Vivian’s lap.
Vivian peers at the picture on the screen. “That’s her.” Looking up at Molly, she says, “I can tell by the eyes. They’re exactly the same.”
“She looks like you,” Molly says, and they both stare silently for a moment at the beaming elderly woman with sharp blue eyes, surrounded by her family.
Vivian reaches out and touches the screen. “Look at how white her hair is. It used to be blond. Ringlets.” She twirls her index finger next to her own silver head. “All these years . . . she was alive,” she murmurs. “Maisie was alive. All these years, there were two of them.”