Back then, Beatrix liked to sit next to Mr. G when he rowed them all to the mainland. She would watch the town come into focus, the buildings growing larger, the white steeple in relief against the bluest sky. This was in Maine, where the family went each summer, and it was during the war, although that was hard to remember when they were there. Mrs. G often wore a pink or yellow sundress, her pearls tight round her neck, and she squawked about getting wet as William and Gerald splashed each other with water. Mr. G would roll his eyes and half-heartedly tell the boys to stop, his glasses spotted with sea salt, his tanned arms moving the oars forward and back in a smooth rhythm. When they got close, he would hand Beatrix an oar, and they would row, together, to shore.
Once a year, they ate at the small restaurant in town that was located at the end of the dock. They sat at the same table every year, a corner table with five seats facing the water. This way, Mrs. G said, they could all watch the sunset sky change over the island, their island, the sharp spikes of the evergreens set off by the pink and orange streaks, before the trees lost their edges as the sky grew dark. Not once, in the years that Beatrix was there, did the weather on this night disappoint. She was struck, whenever she saw the island from the mainland, by how different it was when seen from afar. It was beautiful, a blurry patch of green, caught up between the ocean and the sky. It was also so small that she could hold it in the palm of her hand. When they were on the island, though, she was the one who was small; it was her whole world. It was as though nowhere else existed.
They ordered clam chowder and corn on the cob and lobster. Baked potatoes still in their tinfoil wrappers, the heat escaping from a vertical slice across the top. The first summer Beatrix was there, the boys started to crack open the hard, red shells as soon as the plates were in front of them. Gerald was so excited that he was standing rather than sitting, and William was the first to find some meat, tipping his head back to catch the drips of butter. Beatrix slowly tied her bib, watching, and then took a swallow of water. Mr. G nodded at Mrs. G, who was seated next to her, and she patted her on the leg before she set to work on her lobster, pausing to let her see exactly what she was doing, so that she could do the same.
But that was all in the past. Tonight, alone in this seaside restaurant, Beatrix orders the lobster as the waitress lights the votive candle on the table. When the lobster arrives, she ties the bib around her neck, watching her reflection in the dark window. In August, she turned thirty-four. Twenty years have gone by. She often finds it hard to reconcile the girl she was then with the adult she is now. They seem like two separate people. For so many years she has tried to forget. She smells the cuff of her jacket; the ocean has nestled into her clothes. She can hear the waves crashing onto the shore. This place—a town on the Firth of Forth, just outside Edinburgh—is flat, the wind rough. Islands and rocky outcroppings are scattered offshore. There’s a wildness to it that reminds her of Maine. If she closes her eyes, it’s almost as though she’s there.
She’d come back from her trip to America in early September and thrown herself into work. The new school year started in a blur, someone always needing something from her, days when she might as well have slept in her office she spent so little time in her flat. In October, when she could finally slow down, she realized she felt adrift. Unmoored. Seeing the Gregorys in America, standing with them in the graveyard, had brought everything back—the five years that she spent there, the family she called her own for that briefest of moments. The grief at losing them. The grief she had worked so hard to bury. There she was, back in that familiar house, in that kitchen that smelled of lemon and cinnamon and butter, feeling Mrs. G’s arms wrapped around her neck, her whispers in her ear. Once again she hadn’t wanted to leave, and once again she had. She had lost them all over again.
Mum was the one who suggested that she might take a little holiday, to break up her routine, to try something new. Maybe that would help. She recommended this town because she had come here often as a small girl, and she’d loved it. She said something about the beaches and the birds, the relaxing train ride from London. It was fine, Beatrix supposed, although probably not the quaint Victorian town that her mother had known. She wondered whether her mother would have even seen the connection to Maine. She’d never been, after all. Beatrix wouldn’t have thought of it herself.
She eats some lobster but it turns out that most of the fun was in doing it together. She feels a fool, wrestling with it alone, in this tired and empty dining room. It makes her feel worse. She pushes the plate away and orders a coffee. The beam from the lighthouse is now visible, sweeping regularly across the black sea. There were nights when she and Gerald and William would sleep in tents in the woods, never far from the house, but they felt completely on their own, as though they were stranded on an island, the only ones to survive. The darkness was almost solid. They’d use their flashlights to walk down to the water and sit on one of the big rocks, shining the beams this way and that, then turn off the lights to absorb the black night, the whole world of stars shining down on the sea. She was happiest when she sat in the middle, when she could feel them on either side.
Dinner in town was always capped off by a chocolate layer cake, made by Mrs. G and brought over earlier in the day, with cold scoops of peppermint ice cream. Three fat candles to be blown out: one for William, one for Gerald, and one for Beatrix. Their names in fanciful blue script on the vanilla icing. My August birthday children, Mrs. G said. Another year gone by. The whole restaurant would sing “Happy Birthday” when the lit cake was carried out of the kitchen. The three of them stood and bent toward the cake in the center of the table, Mrs. G holding Beatrix’s hair back from the flames. The restaurant was dark by then, the sun having set, and their faces were lit by the candlelight. Gerald, with his red hair and freckles, his infectious smile. William, his curly hair bleached blond by the sun, his smile hidden from his face. What did they see when they looked at her? She doesn’t know, except that she imagines her face must have reflected the joy she felt. When she thinks of the three of them, together, she remembers this, the moment before the candles were blown out, as they all drew in their breaths, deciding what to wish for, and caught one another’s eyes.
That final summer, her wish was to stay. To be with them all, forever. She leans forward now, blows out the flame in the votive, and closes her eyes.