Embers (81 page)

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.

Jane
'
s eyes, on the other hand, were puffy from weeping, her nose bright pink from blowing. She
'
d forgotten to open her umbrella at one point, and now her long auburn hair was plastered to her face in dark wet ringlets. Yesterday it hadn
'
t sunk in, but sometime during the night she realized it: Aunt Sylvia
—
funny, eccentric, shrewd Aunt Sylvia
—
was gone.

The minister finished with a short prayer and offered his condolences. The service was over; the small gathering began breaking up. Gwendolyn Drew took her daughter aside with a look of loving horror.

"
Darling, you look positively awful,
"
she said, peeling a wet strand of hair from Jane
'
s forehead.
"
Would you rather skip lunch and go to bed, and I
'
ll be on my way?
"

"
No,
"
Jane said quickly. She flapped open her big wet hanky and blew one more time.
"
I
'
ll be all right. I don
'
t know what
's come over me ..
. I knew Aunt Sylvia was ready to
...
but I never knew she cared enough about me
....
Oh,
mother ...
she left
me
Lilac Cottage
!
"

Gwendolyn
'
s eyes opened wide.
"
She
did
?
That
is
a surprise. I assumed the house would go to an animal shelter or some such. Well!
"
she said, lowering her voice in deference to the one other mourner who remained.
"
That really is a surprise.
"

The mourner, whose back was to them both, was a solidly built man with shaggy hair. In one hand he held a big black umbrella; the other was jammed into the pocket of his canvas jacket. As they watched, he took something from his pocket and tossed it into the open, still-empty grave. His profile was grim as he turned and left without acknowledging them.

There was a finality in the man
'
s gesture that made Jane say,
"
I guess we should go.
"

She touched her fingers to her lips and blew a kiss gently in the direction of her aunt, then fell in alongside her mother. But at the grave
'
s opening she stopped, attracted by a small red spot of color in the dirt at the bottom. It was a rose, tiny and exquisite and impossibly out of place in February, in a grave.

The two women moved on.

****

They had lunch in town at the Crowninshield Saloon, a casual bar and restaurant with a scrubbed wood floor that was popular with the locals and one of the few that remained open all year long. At her mother
'
s insistence that she eat something, Jane forced down a bowl of hot kale soup, a Portuguese specialty that took away some of the chill that had plagued her since the night before.

Her mother had a chicken salad and a glass of Perrier. Her mother
always
had a chicken salad and a glass of Perrier whenever she was in what she called
"
a place like this.
"

"
Nantucket
. What a desolate place to live,
"
Gwendolyn said, staring out at the rain pounding the bare windows.
"
Fog
...  rain ...
penetrating cold
...."

"
Mother, you live in
San Francisco
,
"
Jane said, recovering her sense of irony.
"
You
have fog and rain and penetrating cold.
"