Bittersweet (17 page)

Every day, I did the crawl out to the floating dock off Flat Rocks, stopping long enough to pull myself up into the warming sun and let my bathing suit dry. I’d count the welted mosquito bites on my thighs and calves. The pink bumps itched like the devil, but my willpower had grown in direct proportion to the liters of blood that had been sucked from me, and I felt pride in my fortitude as I tucked my hands under my legs. Every day, I looked back to shore over my knees—I hadn’t spent this much time with them since I was a child—blinking across the blinding, peaking water to watch those willowy Winslow bodies in profile.

Galway and I had not spoken since our time together on the platform in the tree. Periodically, I’d visit the murky sound of the woman’s voice answering his phone in the near dawn, even as I sought out the drowning press of exercise upon my tired limbs. I hadn’t dared call his number since, and by Tuesday afternoon, with
my feet hanging off the gently rocking swimming platform into the sparkling lake, I had convinced myself that the kiss, and maybe even Galway himself, was a figment of my lonely imagination.

Then there was the lingering trace of Athol’s threatening tone, almost laughable in the light of day, especially as I sat on the edge of the floating dock, shielding my eyes and looking back toward the water’s edge, where Athol was teaching Ricky how to swim. The little boy kicked and splashed, shrieking between terror and pleasure as his father, tanner with each passing day, held him afloat. Birch watched from shore, and I remembered his sharp admonishment to Gammy Pippa, insisting I was only Ev’s roommate when the old woman inexplicably took my face into her hands. In both interactions, I’d felt an unsettled strangeness in my gut, but I couldn’t pinpoint the reason.

Beyond Athol and Birch and Gammy Pippa and Galway and the groggy “Hello,” no matter how many watery meters I covered each day, I couldn’t wash off the memory of John and Ev conjoined. I’d always found the phrase “making love” so precious, but now I understood it. Even more, I longed for it. Was that normal? To watch people you knew mounting each other, riding each other, as though they were animals, and want what they had, even as you found yourself laughing at the mechanics of what one body was doing to the other? To feel a hand inside your most primal self grasping for what they had with a longing so deep you thought you might weep, or moan, or come yourself?

So I swam. I swam up and down, out and in, until I thought I could swim no more, and then I swam again. Sometimes Lu joined me, offering pointers about my arms or my foot placement, and I improved my form, grateful my hard work was beginning to show on my body. She talked of Owen in spurts of joy—they had kissed behind the tennis courts, he’d put his hand up her shirt and his fingers had felt like a promise. Then, on Wednesday, she whispered: “I
touched his … you know,” just as Owen and the boys leapt off the floating dock, leaving it swaying below us.

“Has anyone talked to you about sex?” I asked as the boys raced back to shore, splashing Athol and Ricky with no regard.

Lu sighed. “Are you?”

“No, but you can get pregnant. You’re fourteen, Lu.”

I expected her to make a dismissive comment à la Ev, but instead she wrapped her wet arms around me and kissed me, unexpectedly, on the shoulder. “Thank you for worrying,” she said before cannon-balling into the water. I could feel the kiss twinkling long after she’d made it back to shore.

Ev had departed early that morning with her suitcase in hand; I’d opened my eyes and croaked a “Where are you going?” She’d replied, simply, “Don’t worry, it’s not like I’ll be having any fun.” But of course I had. I’d roused and fretted until I found the little note she left on the dining room table: “Mum’s kidnapped me for a ‘vacation’ in Canada.
KILL ME NOW
and pray it’s only tonight.” She’d been gone a few hours, and, while I felt liberated, missing her was another kind of trap.

Since there was no one waiting for me at home, I decided to stop by Indo’s on the way back to Bittersweet. She’d gone to Boston for a few days right after the weekend, but I’d heard the familiar chug of her old station wagon I-think-I-canning over the hill and into the great meadow the night before. I marched toward her cottage, heart beating faster, as I thought of telling her what I had discovered in the attic. But once I thought about it hard, what it even was that I had found seemed to slip through my grasp, just as Galway’s kiss had. Some papers about a long-ago bankruptcy? A subsequent positive financial statement? The revelation that Bard was second-born? These were details from a Nancy Drew mystery, probably not even news
to the Winslows. Besides, I hadn’t run across anything like Indo’s manila folder. As a cool wind tousled my wet hair, I almost bypassed her cottage. She wasn’t going to give me Clover—according to what Galway had told me, she couldn’t.

But no, I thought, I want to see her, and ask her about the folder—there must be some detail I’m missing. Ever the optimist, Mabel Dagmar.

I was glad to find the station wagon parked before Clover. My hand fisted to knock when the door yawned open.

It was Birch. “Hello hello,” he said with a cheerful grin. “You here to see Indo?”

“Is she inside?”

“I’m afraid she just settled in for a nap.”

I heard the familiar scrape of nails across the floor as Fritz ran toward us, yapping like a lunatic, his compatriots at his heels. I knelt down, ready to scratch behind his ears. But when he was almost at the door, Birch’s boat shoe moved as though of its own accord, tucking under the dog’s low belly and sending him flying across the kitchen and into the cabinet below Indo’s sink. The dog yelped, landing like a rag doll, as Birch stepped out and slammed the door behind himself, smiling all the while. “Come to tea!” he said, adding, “You can stop by after she’s awoken,” clapping my bare shoulder and pressing me toward Trillium.

“You take milk? Sugar?” Birch asked as a woman carried a tea tray onto the sunny porch. One of the pair of water spaniels lying at the foot of Birch’s wicker chair lifted its head and growled at the rattle of the dishes, but the maid paid him no mind, setting the silver service down and leaving us as soon as she’d come. The tray was laden with homemade chocolate chip cookies, and though I was trying not to eat anything made of butter, sugar, or wheat, they sent up a glorious smell and I felt, for the woman’s sake, that I should taste at least one.

As I thought of Fritz sailing across Indo’s kitchen, I squirmed in apprehension. Had Birch been lying in wait for me at Indo’s? And if so, why? Had he discovered that Indo had offered me her house, that I was rooting around in his family’s history? Under the scrutiny of his gaze, I felt naked in my bathing suit. I crossed my arms over my chest and hoped if he was going to banish me he would do it soon.

“Have you heard from Ev and Tilde?” I asked, grateful she wasn’t here to scrutinize me too. I succumbed to a bite of cookie.

He shook his head. “You know how girl time is. Too much shopping to call home.” I knew that Ev would rather do just about anything than spend time alone with her mother; what had her note said? “
Kill me now
.” I wondered if Tilde had discovered Ev and John’s dalliance. Maybe that was why I was in trouble. If I was in trouble.

As if an internal timer had gone off, Birch deliberately poured our tea from the pot. He set a silver strainer atop paper-thin porcelain cups. The liquid was black and steaming. His hands worked methodically, ritually, always at a task. He rested only after he had taken his first sip.

“You know, my dear,” he said, settling back into his wicker chair, “I don’t think we’ve properly expressed how much we appreciate you looking out for our Genevra.”

“We look out for each other,” I said, nervously downing another cookie. “She’s a great friend.”

“You are the great friend.”

I sipped my tea. It was bitter. But I had already turned down the sugar.

“In fact …” He put down his cup. “I hesitate to mention this, because I can’t imagine creating tension between you two. You seem to have such fun together.”

I set my cup down too.

“At our first dinner of the summer, you mentioned something to me called, what was it, the ‘inspection’?”

“Yes,” I clarified, “the Winslow tradition of making sure that when someone has inherited their house, they’re doing the proper upkeep and—”

He held his hand up. “I’m going to stop you right there. You see, my dear, there is no such thing as an ‘inspection’ in the Winslow tradition. Once a home is passed to someone, we don’t check over her shoulder. It’s her private home, to decorate and care for however she pleases. Certainly you’ve seen Indo’s hovel. I doubt it would pass any inspection, familial or safety or what have you, were such a bylaw in place.”

“But Ev told me …” My mind was trying to gather up the bits of what Ev had told me about the inspection. She’d first mentioned it on our arrival at the Plattsburgh train station.

Birch frowned. “My dear, I’m afraid …” He sighed. “You are an honest girl, I can tell that. Not used to people manipulating you to get what they want. We adore Genevra, but she’s had her … troubles over the years. With honesty, among other things.”

My face felt hot. “You’re saying she made up the inspection? She tricked me? But why would she do that?”

Birch leaned forward. He put his fingers together against his lips and closed his eyes for a moment. “Genevra is about to come into a good bit of money. Her personal trust. She turned eighteen, after all. But before she gets it, the transfer has to be approved by, well, the board, and then, as head of this family, by me. It’s my belief that she meant you no harm. She simply wanted to put her best foot forward, to impress Tilde and myself with a beautiful home. And she believed that if she made up some elaborate tale about an inspection, it would … motivate you. Get you to work as hard as possible. So that when I saw the house I would see, once and for all, that she is ready to inherit what she believes she is due.”

I sat back in my chair.

“If it makes you feel any better, she’s done something similar
to just about everyone she loves. It’s her nature. Although it doesn’t make the experience any less painful.”

“I don’t know what to say.” My mind was replaying every aspect of my friendship with Ev. Rekindling the suspicion my mother had encouraged me to undertake at the beginning of it. Reprimanding myself for brushing off my mother’s warnings as paranoia. I couldn’t believe that Ev could have just lied to me so effortlessly and threatened me with being sent home. But then, that was exactly what had motivated me to spend a week on my hands and knees scrubbing, wasn’t it?

Birch went on. “I fear this will sound overly permissive, but lying to you is really quite irrelevant in terms of the finances. I can’t exactly stop my daughter’s trust from coming in just because she made up a story. But that doesn’t mean what she did doesn’t have personal ramifications. Mabel, I want to extend an apology on behalf of my daughter. She is … a challenge, and I would understand completely if you wanted to pack your bags.”

“No,” I said quickly, panicked he was sending me away. “No, I’m hurt, I’ll need to work it out with her, but—”

“And this is the other bit of it,” he interrupted. “I’m going to ask something, well; perhaps you’ll think me too forgiving, but … you see, Mabel, I’m going to ask if we could keep this revelation of her dissembling between ourselves. Not because I believe Genevra’s behavior is excusable. But because it worries me.”

“You don’t want me to tell her I know she lied to me?”

He nodded.

Looking into the house, I could make out the maid doing something methodical—dusting, folding, polishing. Her arm waggled back and forth, diligently doing work my ancestors would have done. I wondered if she could hear us. I wondered if the Van Gogh was back on the wall.

I stuffed another cookie into my mouth. “Why does her lying worry you?”

“She’s always been somewhat troubled. Had a hard time separating fact from fiction. But the real risk is that she can be quite self-destructive. I’m sure, hearing what she did to you, you can hardly imagine how she could treat herself more poorly than she’s treated you, but I can assure you, Genevra has tried to … well, to hurt herself on more than one occasion.”

“She’s tried to …?” I wondered if he was suggesting she’d attempted suicide. I shivered at the thought, but having seen how wrecked she was the day after our ride on Eric’s yacht, I wasn’t entirely surprised.

“She’s our daughter. We hate the thought of her being … unkind … but we hate the thought of her hurting herself even more. I asked you here to enlist you. As my ally in this matter.”

I was relieved that he wasn’t sending me away, that he believed I might be able to help them all move forward. “I’ll help any way I can,” I replied.

“This is awkward, I’m sure you must be aware of that”—I nodded—“but I want to know if you’ll inform me if you notice any strange behavior on Genevra’s part. Oh, the usual shenanigans, forget about them, I just mean if you see her doing something … dangerous. Making decisions you worry aren’t in her best interest. I hope you’ll feel you can come to me. That you won’t think of it as tattling.”

“Absolutely,” I said quickly, “absolutely,” my body welling with relief, even as I thought back over what I’d seen in the past week alone. But then, this was another world, and the Winslows seemed positively nonchalant about behaviors that would have sent my mother to an early grave. I wondered if I should ask Ev’s father if he could define the concerning behaviors for me—outdoor sex? cigarette smoking?—so that I might at least know if I should be worried myself, but he spoke instead.

“Anything you need, Mabel, just let me know.” He cleared his
throat. “It can be uncomfortable to discuss financial matters, but rest assured, you are part of this family now, and we care for our own.”

Involuntary tears sprang forth—no father had ever spoken to me this way, least of all my own. But before I could muster up an appropriate response, Birch had stood. He took a long draft from his teacup, then set it down hard to rattle on its saucer. “Now if you’ll excuse me …” With that, he turned on his heel and disappeared into the house. The dogs woofed and shuffled off behind him. “Bring some cookies to grumpy old Indo,” he called over his shoulder. And then he was gone.