As they walked to the eleven-fifteen ferry, Joy watched Maggie carefully for signs of confusion or stress. Maggie was going to visit her father, Dustin, and Sandy (his newish wife) and Tiki (their two-year-old daughter), as per their usual arrangement. One weekend a month Maggie would don one of her clever T-shirts—Never Trust an Atom, They Make Up Everything; I Don’t Want to Taco ’Bout It, It’s Nacho Problem—and cross Block Island Sound to spend the weekend with her father.
Joy knew from Holly, whose mother was a child psychologist in Boston, that childhood stress could manifest itself in unrecognizable ways, and even though Maggie had been making this trip for nearly two years now, ever since Dustin had resurfaced, taken up residence in Newport, and expressed a desire to reconnect with Maggie, Joy wanted to be watchful. Thirteen was a vulnerable age.
Did Maggie possibly have a stomachache that she was trying to hide from Joy? No, she was just brushing some confectioners’ sugar from her T-shirt. (Lemon ricotta pancakes, Dinner by Dad, ab-so-freaking-lutely phenomenal.)
Was she showing signs of reluctance to leave the island? No, she had merely stopped in front of Mia’s Gelateria to tie the laces on her Converse. New England, read today’s shirt. Because Old England Was Wicked Stupid.
Pickles walked between Joy and Maggie, looking eagerly from one to the other. “Sorry, Pickles,” said Joy. “No ferry ride for us.” Pickles, like many island dogs, loved the ferry.
The girl working at the ferry terminal was a soon-to-be senior at the high school (one of seven): Madison Blevins. She had a cast on her left arm from wrist to elbow. “Hey, Madison,” said Maggie, and Madison said, “Hey, Maggie.” Madison wore a dark blue polo shirt with the ferry insignia on the upper left side. Joy tried to unremember the story about Madison Blevins getting drunk at a house party the evening of the last day of school and falling down on her wrist, because this was a tiny island and even teenagers who made mistakes probably deserved more privacy than they got.
Unless that teenager was someday Maggie, in which case Joy would want to know about any bad behavior immediately.
“You don’t need to bring me on the ferry,” said Maggie, after Joy had bought her ticket. “I can find a seat on my own.”
“I know,” said Joy. “But I want to know where you’re sitting. I want to be able to picture you.”
Maggie rolled her eyes.
Joy got Maggie settled into a seat, and then she hugged her goodbye, and then Maggie hugged Pickles, and then Pickles licked the side of Maggie’s face. Maggie was a tremendous hugger, always had been: enthusiastic without being needy, confident while still being warm. Now the hugs, if they came, came intermittently, no rhyme or reason to them, like shooting stars or thunder.
Joy didn’t like leaving Maggie like this. She knew that Dustin and Sandy and Tiki would be meeting Maggie on the other end, at Perrotti Park in Newport, to take her home for the next forty-eight hours. To their home, she corrected in her head. Because Maggie’s home was with Joy, in the little cottage with the crooked kitchen. But what if Sandy caused some delay that made them late for the ferry? What if Tiki had a dirty diaper or a temper tantrum or did that thing that two-year-olds sometimes did where they went boneless when somebody tried to pick them up? It could be really difficult to get a boneless child into a car.
“It’s okay, Mom,” said Maggie. “I’ve been on this ferry a million times.”
“But not as much as the Point Judith one.”
“It’s the same thing.”
“It isn’t. It’s a whole different dock! What if you get lost?”
Eye roll from Maggie, the second of the day. (Joy thought with trepidation of Madison Blevins.) “I’m not going to get lost,” Maggie said. “There’s only one way down from the boat.”
Joy put her hand on the purple streak in Maggie’s hair. “I thought you said this washed out, by the way. It sort of seems permanent.”
“I did? I said it washed out?”
“You definitely did.”
“Hmmm. That’s really weird. I don’t remember saying that.”
By now many of the ferry seats were claimed. There were families and young day-trippers and people with large suitcases who were either leaving for or returning from longer vacations, and Joy realized that she’d better get off the boat before it departed with her on it, because wouldn’t that be a hoot, for her to come off the ferry in Newport with Maggie, Pickles prancing between them. Wouldn’t Dustin and Sandy love that.
“Make sure your dad calls me,” she said. “The minute he has you in his possession.” While she understood on an intellectual level that Dustin had grown up and matured in the years since their marriage had ended, and while she understood too that with an upgraded wife (skinnier, and definitely taller than Joy) and a toddler in his life he was probably a responsible person who wasn’t likely to lose Maggie, and while she further understood that part of the reason Dustin had moved to Rhode Island was to nourish and water the dormant relationship with his eldest daughter, she still felt the finger of worry leaving a bruise on the tender underside of her arm. “The second he has you,” she said. “I mean, before you even get in the car, you have him call me.”
“Okay,” said Maggie. Then, “What are you going to do while I’m gone?”
“I have a meeting with Bridezilla,” said Joy. Bridezilla, whose real name was Kimberly, was a cranky bride-to-be from Boston who was due to be married at the Narragansett Inn at the end of August. Joy had met her a few times and she’d never seen the young woman smile. Her mother, Linda, a nonconfrontational woman with a prodigious J.Jill collection who’d been a regular at the shop for years, was as lovely as Kimberly was unlovely. Linda had put in an order for a thousand whoopie pies to be served at the two-hundred-guest wedding and also to be boxed up as wedding favors, three per guest. It was a significant order, especially since the pies for the wedding would have specific, island-themed decorations—sailboats and seashells—which raised the price by almost a dollar per pie. For these reasons, Joy was trying to overlook Kimberly’s unpleasantness. “After that,” Joy told Maggie, “I’m not sure. Pickles and I might go out and paint the town.”
“Oh, please, Mom.”
“What? We might. Pickles likes to get out as much as the next dog.”
Maggie rolled her eyes a third time. “Just don’t do anything embarrassing. Seriously, okay?”
The hours before Joy had to meet with Bridezilla stretched out endlessly. The shop was in the capable hands of Olivia Rossi, Joy Bombs’ summer assistant manager. Early in the season Joy could manage well enough alone, but as tourist traffic picked up she always needed someone to help at the counter while Joy baked or to oversee the ovens or fill the pies. This was Olivia’s first day on her own, and as tempted as she was, Joy knew it would be too Type A of her to stop by and see how Olivia was doing. Olivia was capable and mature, with a level head that belied her sixteen years.
The day was enchanting, and Joy knew the beaches would be wall-to-wall. She could wander down to Fred Benson on foot or hop on her bike and cross the island to Stevens Cove.
“I don’t feel like doing any of those fun things,” she told Pickles when she was back home from the ferry, sitting on her couch, resting her feet on the coffee table. “I just feel like sulking.” What she wanted to do was indulge the insidious worry she felt every time Maggie was with Dustin. What if, now that she’d been visiting regularly for almost two years, Maggie decided she liked it better at Dustin’s house? What if Sandy was more patient than Joy, and kinder? Dustin had somehow secured a job that allowed Sandy to stay home with Tiki; what if Maggie realized that what she was missing in her life was a mother figure who didn’t have to go to work at dawn every day?
What if the most important person in Joy’s life fell in love with Dustin’s second family?
After she’d had a very brief conversation with Dustin confirming that he had Maggie in hand, Joy wandered around the cottage. She dialed Joy Bombs and hung up before Olivia Rossi could answer. She spent more time than she should have in Maggie’s room. First she lay down on Maggie’s bed, on top of the black (black!) comforter Maggie had asked for on her twelfth birthday. She sniffed the pillow to see if she could locate the scent of Maggie’s shampoo. She couldn’t. Had she forgotten to remind Maggie to wash her hair? She dialed Maggie’s number, then hung up before she could answer. She was becoming a stalker.
She opened Maggie’s closet and studied the neatly hung jeans, the collection of Converse sneakers in multiple colors, the tidy piles of T-shirts: I’m Not a Monday Person and I’m Not Short I’m Just Concentrated Awesome and the one that Joy would only let Maggie wear inside the house: Cute but Psycho. Joy’s personal favorite featured a hedgehog and the existential question Why Don’t They Just Share the Hedge? It made her laugh every time.
On Maggie’s nightstand was her iPad, which she used in the olden days, before she got a phone. The messages on the iPad were synced with those on Maggie’s phone, and Joy picked it up, punching in the passcode, which she knew to be the month and day they’d adopted Pickles, and studied the messages. Pickles eyed her reproachfully.
“Don’t judge me, Pickles,” Joy said. “You know the rules as well as I do.” The rules were that as long as Joy paid the cell phone bill she was allowed to look at anything on the devices.
Do u rly think i should go 4 it
Riley’s reply: Yes
Maggie: Hes so much older
Riley: Not rly
Then the next text from Riley: T:)T
(What did that mean?)
Joy checked the time on the messages. Maggie and Riley had been texting when Maggie was on the ferry. Joy’s stomach turned over. What did it mean to “go 4 it” when you were thirteen years old? What did “so much older” mean when you were thirteen? Did it mean fourteen, or forty-five?