A Month at the Shore (66 page)

Chapter 1

"Do
you think she
'
s really dead?
"

"
Man, we don
'
t even know if she
'
s
in
there.
"
The boy reached out a grimy hand and laid it gingerly on the closed lid of the gleaming casket.

His pal
—
younger, cleaner, better behaved
—
sucked in his breath.
"
You
'
re not supposed to touch it!
"

"
What
'
s she gonna do? Open it and come after us?
"
The older boy
'
s voice was defiant; but he glanced around furtively, then rubbed away his smudge marks with the sleeve of his jacket.
"
Come on, let
'
s go. It looks like we have to take their word for it.
"

Watching the two from her seat in the front row of folding chairs, Jane Drew tried not to smile.
You never should
'
ve kept their baseballs, Aunt Sylvia. Fifty years from now they
'
ll still be saying you were a witch.

The kids made a run for the door around a plain-dressed woman, who promptly collared the younger one.

"
Walk.
This is a place of respect.
"

The boy squirmed out of her grip, then walked briskly the rest of the way out. The woman, sixty and bulky, shifted her handbag from her right forearm to her left and glanced tentatively around the room, taking in the closed coffin, Jane, and the two visitors chatting quietly in the back.

Jane went up to the new arrival.
"
I
'
m Jane Drew, Sylvia Merchant
'
s great-niece,
"
she said with a smile.

The visitor stuck out a well-worn hand.
"
How do you do. I
'
m Mrs. Adamont. Adele Adamont. I work at the A&P where Mrs. Merchant shopped,
"
she explained.
"
I wanted
to pay my respects because, well
..."
She nodded to the empty chairs.
"
You see for yourself. When a widow has nobody, this is how it ends up.
"

Surprised by the islander
'
s bluntness, Jane said something dutiful about her great-aunt having outlived most of her friends.

"
Oh, no; she never had none, not that I recall,
"
Mrs. Adamont said evenly.
"
Everyone on
Nantucket
knew that. They say her husband died in the First World War; I suppose she never got over it. She was always one to say good morning, but never one to stop and pass the time of day. She was funny that way. How old was she?
"
the woman added.

"
My aunt had just turned ninety-four. The last two years were hard for her,
"
Jane volunteered.
"
She didn
'
t like living in a nursing home, away from
Nantucket
.
"

"
I did wonder why she
decided to go into a home off-
island. Was she all right
—
you know
—
up there?
"

"
Sharp as a tack,
"
Jane said, taken aback again.

Leave it to an islander to think anyone living on the mainland must be insane.
Jane racked her memory, trying to remember whether her aunt had ever mentioned a Mrs. Adamont. But the visitor was right; Sylvia Merchant had had little interest in other people. In the nursing home she
'
d reminisced about her house, and her garden, and the two cats who
'
d shared it with her. Books were important to her. So were movies: she
'
d had a VCR in her room, and her own copy of
Casablanca
.
But as for friends and neighbors .
...

"
She did give me zucchini from her garden once,
"
Mrs. Adamont said, as if that were reason enough to pay her last respects.
"
So then, you
'
re all there is for family?
"

"
Almost,
"
Jane answered, drawing herself up to her full five-feet-seven, trying to make up for lost relatives.
"
There
'
s an elderly cousin no longer able to travel. I have a sister living on the West Coast, and of course my parents;
but unfortunately they
'
re in
Europe
right now.
"
Not that they
'
d come in any event, Jane knew. Other than an occasional exchange of Christmas cards, there
'
d been no contact between her parents and Sylvia Merchant for decades.

Mrs. Adamont looked Jane up and looked Jane down and Jane
'
s first thought was that the pale gray suit she was wearing just wasn
'
t funereal enough.

"
I see. You
'
re the one who
'
ll be getting the house, then.
"
Jane blinked. She was thirty-three; a career woman (even if an unemployed one); and reasonably sophisticated. Hosting a wake shouldn
'
t have been a daunting social challenge—but this portly, plain-spoken visitor wasn
'
t making it easy.

"
As a matter of fact
...."

As a matter of fact the cottage
was
Jane
'
s now. She
'
d found that out just two hours earlier from her aunt
'
s attorney when he picked her up at the ferry.

"
Oh, you don
'
t have to say if you don
'
t want to, dear,
"
Adele Adamont said, seeing that Jane was reluctant to talk about it.
"
Everyone will know soon enough. You
're not actually staying
at Lilac Cottage, are you? The place does need work. Well, never mind. All in good time. Let me just say my good-byes to poor Sylvia. She had a long life, and
— despite all the silly gossip
—
who
'
s to say it wasn
'
t a good one?
"

Mrs. Adamont wrapped her coat around herself a little more snugly and approached the coffin. She bowed her gray head and murmured a short prayer, ending it with the sign of the cross, a kind smile for Jane, and a purposeful exit. She had done her duty to the deceased.

The two women visitors in the back
—
elderly sisters who had no idea who Sylvia Merchant was but who never missed a wake in town
—
left shortly afterward. For the next hour and a half Jane sat alone in the second row, her heart steadily filling up with sorrow, unwilling or unable to believe that no one else would be coming.

Finally, ten minutes before the end of the wake, someone did show.

He was a few years older than Jane and had the look of a man who
'
s had to juggle his schedule ruthlessly to find the time to break away. He nodded to Jane and walked directly up to the casket, where he stood for a moment of quiet reflection.

As for Jane, she could hardly keep from staring. He was almost the first person under sixty that she
'
d seen all day, tall and good-looking and handsomely dressed, with an air of quiet confidence. He was, she knew at once, a man of some success.

He turned to Jane again, his face sympathetic. It was a handsome face, chiseled to near-perfection and framed by dark hair.

"
I
'
m sorry to barge in so late,
"
he said.

Jane had become so used to the thick sound of silence that she jumped a little.
"
Not at all; I
'
m glad you
'
ve come,
"
she said, as if his showing up made a quorum.
"
I
'
m Jane Drew.
"

"
Sylvia
'
s great-niece. Of course. I
'
m glad to meet you at last. Phillip Harrow,
"
he said, taking her hand in his.
"
I
'
m sorry about your great-aunt, Miss Drew,
"
he said softly.
"
Ninety-four is a wonderful old age, but a hundred and ninety-four would have been better still.
"

Somehow Jane didn
'
t want to argue with him, didn
'
t want to admit that just a month earlier her aunt had slammed her tiny fist on the bedstand and shouted,
"
I
'
m ready to go, goddammit!
"
So Jane nodded and said simply,
"
Yes.
"
She added,
"
How did you know my aunt?
"

"
She was a neighbor. She
—
"

Just then the funeral director, his lips pursed in sympathy, appeared in the entryway; it was time to close up shop. Phillip Harrow acknowledged him with a somber
"
Evening, Fred,
"
and turned back to Jane.
"
I
'
m leaving the island tonight. I
'
m sorry
—
I won
'
t be attending the funeral,
"
he said, his voice low with regret.

Jane was sorry, too, though for a split second she wasn
'
t quite sure why.
Because I want
someone
else to be there,
she decided as she shook Phillip Harrow
'
s hand good-bye.
I want
someone
else to care.

Harrow
began walking out, then stopped suddenly and turned.
"
Will you be staying on
Nantucket
past tomorrow?
"

Jane smiled and lifted her shoulders.
"
I don
'
t know
...
maybe a day or two
."

His blue eyes
—
piercingly, hauntingly blue
—
settled on her for a long, long moment. And then he, too, smiled and shrugged.
"
Well, good-bye, then.
"

There were seven people huddling under seven umbrellas at the funeral. Jane knew only one of them: her mother. Gwendolyn Drew had flown from London to Boston, caught an air shuttle, and much to Jane
'
s astonishment, arrived at Prospect Hill Cemetery right in the nick of time.

"
I had to come back to the States early and it wasn
'
t that out of the way,
"
her mother whispered over the eulogy.
"
And after all,
"
she added with a sigh,
"
Sylvia
was
family.
"

The morning was wet and cold; Jane felt pierced through to her bones. But her mother faced down the weather with a kind of noble indifference, as if she were waiting in her BMW at a red light in her beloved
San Francisco
.

How does she do
it? Jane wondered, not for the first time. Her mother couldn
'
t possibly have got more than a couple of hours
'
sleep, even in first-class. And yet here she was, fresh and poised and uncomplaining. Every highlighted hair was in place; the belt of her trench coat was tied exactly so. The makeup she wore was perfectly applied and unstained by tears.