Luanne Rice (5 page)

Marisa
walked over to the refrigerator and opened the door, so Jessica couldn’t see
her face, or see her hands shaking. Mystification, it was called … not being
straight with your own child, keeping them in the fog.

“Mom, is
she?”

Marisa thought
of what Lily had said—that Rose had been born with heart defects. That meant
multiple. VSD, so that meant ventricular.
Aortal as well?
She still had her textbooks from nursing school—where were they? If she could
put her hands on them, maybe she could learn more about what was happening with
Rose. Pediatric cardiac care wasn’t her specialty, but at least she could help
Jessica understand.

“I want her
to be okay,” Jessica said, looking up as Marisa set down the milk and cookies.

“I know you
do.”

“Maybe we
could use our secret savings, to pay for an operation and save her life. We
have the money, right? Or one of our friends could do it for free?”

Marisa
picked up the remote, turned on the TV. They had a satellite—up here, so far
from
civilization,
it was the only game in town.
Hundreds of channels, with endless choices.
A person could
grow old just clicking the remote. She found an Adam Sandler movie she thought
Jessica would like and stopped there.

“Mom?”

“Jess, why are you saying that?
Rose’s mother
is taking care of her.”

“Okay.
Fine.
But you didn’t see her down by the dock. She
practically turned blue, and she couldn’t breathe, and I didn’t know what to
do, and that horrible scary man with the fake hand had to help her!”

“But you
did know what to do—you went to get her mother. You stayed calm.”

“I did,”
Jessica agreed, munching her cookie in thoughtful agreement. Then she stopped
and looked up.
“Like I did when Ted hurt my puppy.”

On the
screen, Adam Sandler was being hilarious. All over the world, people were
watching this movie and laughing.
But not this mother and
daughter.
Marisa was too busy staring at Jessica, noticing the way she
said “hurt”—when Ted had killed Tally, not just hurt her.

“I really
don’t mind that we’re hiding. As long as he never finds
us,
and you never take him back. You know that, right?” Jessica asked.

“I know
that,” Marisa said.

Jessica nodded, accepting, good daughter that she was.
She stared
at the TV screen; Marisa felt a slide of guilt for parking her daughter in
front of Adam Sandler, wanting to distract her from all the questions. She went
to the window and looked out, and as she did she remembered where her textbooks
were: boxed up and stashed in the storage unit, along with almost everything
else.

Through the
trees, down the hill, she saw the wide blue sparkling bay embraced by craggy
cliffs and granite headlands. The big white hotel with its long red roof lorded
it over the small town—Lily’s shop, the whale-watch boats. Marisa knew that
although she’d let Jessica go on the birthday cruise, she herself would have to
cancel. A woman’s club might be a little too dangerous. She blinked into the
bright early summer sun, and her eyes stung. In Boston, she knew this would be
considered a house with a “million-dollar view.” To Marisa, it just felt like
somewhere far, far from home.

Because she
didn’t like feeling that way, and because she knew a way to feel closer to
home, she went online.
E-mails, her favorite message boards,
and a secret chat room—better than cocktails in the afternoon for making
everything nice and numb.
Intimacy and friendship without the dangers of
being found out. Instead though, bypassing her favorites, she went straight to
the website for Johns Hopkins, the nursing school she had attended. She typed
in her username and password, went straight to cardiac care, and started to
read.

Chapter 4

S
harks, overfishing, and biodiversity,” Gerard
Lafarge said from the deck of the
Mar IV
as she came toward the pilings.

“Yeah, what about it?”
Liam Neill replied, walking along the dock.

“We got a
freaking genius in our midst.”

“Something
tells me you don’t mean that in a good way,” Liam said with a grin, using his
right hand—his good hand—to catch the bow line Gerard threw, looping it around
the cleat on the dock, then walking aft to do the same with the stern line.

“Seriously,”
Gerard said, jumping off his fishing boat to set the spring lines. He was grimy
and unshaven from days at sea. The boat rocked in the gentle harbor swells. The
smell of fish was strong, and flocks of seagulls swooped down, screaming. “You
think articles like that are good for us? We make our living doing the stuff
you write about. Mako brings big money at the market.
Tastes
like swordfish, only sweeter, and without the mercury.
You’re giving us
a bad name.”

“First of
all, I’m impressed you saw the paper. I didn’t know you read oceanographic
journals.” He might just as well have stopped with “I didn’t know you
read
.”

“Believe
me,
this one’s making its way around the guys. Let’s just
say, you caught our attention.”

“Second of
all, mako sharks aren’t endangered, so you’re within your legal rights. But
it’s more a matter of thinking about the future. You overfish now, the species
dwindles, and what’ll your kids do?”

“You think
I want my kids fishing? Shit, I don’t want them working this hard, maybe buying
it in a winter storm—I’m making all I can now, getting rich off the sea, to
send the brats to McGill or Harvard, so they can stay on dry land and support
me and Marguerite in our old age.”

“Is that
why you’re going after dolphins now?”

The banter
stopped, the look on Gerard’s grizzled face turning ice cold. His glance slid
to the deck, where his crew was icing the catch. Liam stared at the hacked-off
dorsal fin lying in a pile of debris.

“What do
you know, Neill?” Gerard barked. “The rest of your family does an honest day’s
work on the water—while you sit in judgment of us all. I heard what you said to
your uncle. You want to stop him from whale-watching, just like you want to
stop me from fishing.”

“I don’t
want to stop anyone,” Liam said. He continued out the dock, where he met his
cousin Jude Neill. Jude had been hosing down the flat-bottom Zodiac, one of the
smaller boats in the family’s whale-watching fleet. He’d stopped, obviously to
listen to Liam and Gerard.

“But you
do,” Jude said, smiling.

“I
do—what?” Liam asked.

“Want to
stop us from whale-watching.”

“
You going
to start in on me too?” Liam asked.

“Someone’s
got to keep you in line,” Jude said.

The cousins
glared at each other, then broke into grins. Jude stood aside so Liam could
climb aboard. Water from the hose splashed his boots. The day was sunny, but in
the distance a dark wall of fog was approaching fast.

“See
anything today?”

“Five fin
whales, a few minkes,
a
whole lot of dolphins. The
crowd was happy.”

“That idiot
Lafarge had a dolphin dorsal fin right there in the bottom of his boat. He
didn’t even try to hide it when I walked by.”

“Look, I’m
sure he didn’t catch it on purpose. He long-lines, and there’s no helping what
you catch that way. What should he do, let the meat go to waste?”

“He
shouldn’t long-line.”

“Truce, okay, cuz?
I’m on your side with this one. All the
tourists love dolphins—they’re good for family business. So you’re preaching to
the converted. Just don’t lecture me on the Marine Mammal Act, and on getting
too close to the sweet, cuddly air-breathers. I got you and the patrol boats
giving me grief on one side, and on the other I got my customers wanting to get
the whales up close and personal on camera, pointing at my less conscientious
competitors who practically let them pet the freaking things.”

“Yeah, well
…”

“Remember
when you, me, and Connor used to go out, see how close we could get? Connor
used to like to put his hand right over the blowhole
… .”

“He’d say
he could feel the warm air.”

“No one
could get close like Connor,” Jude said.

“Nope.
No one could,” Liam said. The blue bay
sparkled; as he squinted into the sun he thought he saw the back of a white
whale, a beluga, surface about fifty yards out. Suddenly he remembered being
twelve, when Jude was eleven and Connor was nine. Three boys with the whole
summer ahead of them …

“The kid
spoke their language. He spoke whale, that’s just a fact. And when I—”

Liam
interrupted him. “No human speaks whale. Look, the reason I came down here was
to ask you about a charter.”

“You want
to charter a whale watch?
That’s
a
first,” Jude said, trying to hide his hurt feelings with sarcasm. Liam just let
it pass; he wanted to get off the dock, back to his dark office, away from any
sightings of the white whale.

“Not me.
A birthday charter—for Rose Malone’s birthday party.”

“Ah, yeah.
This Saturday.
Lily
booked the big boat for the morning.
Nine to eleven.
Why? What about it?”

“Who’s going
to be captain?”

“Captain?
I don’t know. Let’s see—sixteen giggling,
screaming girls and their mothers? Whoever picks the short straw, I guess.
Why?”

“I want you
to do me a favor. I want you to captain.”

Jude stared
at him. One eyebrow dramatically
raised
, then lowered.
He seemed to be waiting for the punch line. When none came, he said, “I never
work Saturdays. It’s the only single perk I get, owning the fleet, top of the
food chain. You know?”

“I’m asking
you a favor, Jude,” Liam said. “It’s important.”

“Why?”

“Because
you’re the best, and because you never flinch, and because you know what to do
in a crisis. Rose is going in for surgery soon. I don’t think there’s going to
be a problem—”

“Her mother
already told me there’s nothing to worry about.”

“Good. But
still.”

Jude
squinted. “What are you trying to tell me? Is Rose Malone your secret love
child? You did it with Lily? You and Miss Unapproachable 2005 got it on ten
years ago and you’re suddenly feeling protective?”

Liam shook
his head, smiling. If it made Jude feel more like captaining the cruise, he’d
let him think what he wanted. People had always speculated about Lily
Malone,
and because of his history with her, people always
wondered.

“Will you
do it?”

“Am I
looking at liability here? The girl has a problem on board …”

“She won’t,
I’m sure. The surgery has been planned—it’s routine, for her condition.
Besides, if you’re using the big boat, there’s no faster way to get her to the
heliport if it’s necessary.”

“Great.
You’re making me nervous. Maybe I should cancel.”

“You won’t.
You’re not going to ruin Rose’s birthday.”

“You’re an
arm-twister, you know that? Some cousin …”

Liam knew
then that Jude would captain Rose’s birthday party. He waved, walking back down
the long dock, toward the town square and its statue of the fisherman—right
where he had stood with Rose earlier. He felt a long shiver go down his spine.

The air was
getting
warmer,
making you almost believe you could go
swimming. These northern waters were still cold from the winter snows melting
up north, filling the rivers, entering the Gulf. But on an early summer day
like this, he traveled back in time. He was twelve, and Jude was eleven, and
Connor was nine. He could almost believe they were all together. Liam could feel
the way they all used to be, back when he still had both arms, back before
Connor.

But he had
trained himself not to think such thoughts—summer day or not—and he walked past
the stone fisherman without even a sideways glance, up the stairs of his office,
where he slammed the door shut behind him.

At home,
Lily Malone sat on the porch, needlepointing while Rose knelt in the garden.
She wore the half-glasses she’d recently started needing—bright pink rims to
make the whole idea seem somehow festive instead of quite depressing. Peering
over them, she kept one eye on her daughter while trying to be surreptitious
about her project. Every year for her daughter’s birthday, she had done
a needlework
square. Of course Rose knew she’d be getting
one again this year, but it was part of the fun for Lily to hide it and for
Rose to pretend to be surprised.

“Mom,
look,” Rose said. “The morning glories are coming up.
And
here—some zinnias.
At least, I think that’s what they are. The leaves
are so tiny.”

“Check your
map,” Lily suggested.

Rose pushed
herself up and walked over to the garden shed. Lily watched how slowly she
moved. She watched Rose’s chest rise and fall, counting her breaths. She
checked her color, which was pale, but not too pale—her lips weren’t at all
blue. Her balance seemed steady—she wasn’t dizzy. Over the years, Lily had
developed the ability to assess Rose’s minute-to-minute health. She wasn’t
foolproof, but by tuning in to the small things, she felt she had a good sense
of what was happening.

“Mom, they
are
the zinnias and morning glories we
planted!” Rose said, emerging from the shed with the map they had drawn last
month, after tilling the garden’s hard earth, mixing it with potting soil,
pressing in the tiny seeds.

“That’s
great, Rose!”

“I’m going
to be a horti—how do you say it again?”

“‘Horticulturist,’ ”
Lily said, smiling.

“Horticulturist,”
Rose repeated.
“A plant scientist.
A
morning glory doctor!”

Lily
glanced up. So much with Rose harkened back to medicine—because that was what she
knew. Doctors, hospitals, tests, procedures, operations … Lily swallowed down
the wish that her daughter could have an unfettered experience in the
garden—without thinking about doctors.

“The
morning glories are going to grow tall,” Rose said, kneeling down again,
brushing dirt away from their delicate stems, fragile green leaves. “They’re
going to climb up the trellis, all the way to the sky.”

“With
bright blue flowers,” Lily said.

“I’m just
so glad they’re up already,” Rose said.

“Already?”

Rose nodded.
“So I don’t have to worry about them, while we’re gone. If I hadn’t seen them,
I might think the seeds hadn’t worked. I’ll be glad to picture them growing and
blooming while I’m in the hospital.”

“They grow
like crazy,” Lily said, smiling, hiding how fierce she felt at that moment.
“They go wild all summer, right into September. They’ll bloom, all right.”

“Will I be
home before September?”

“You will,
sweetheart. You’ll be in the hospital for one, maybe two weeks. You’ll have
plenty of summer left after we get back.”

“Will it be
my last surgery?”

“Yes,” Lily
said. She tried never to lie to Rose about her medical care; not because she
wouldn’t have done anything to protect her, shield her from the realities of
being a cardiac patient, but because Rose always knew … she always knew when
her mother was telling a lie, and that just made her worry more. But Lily was
almost certain about this—the doctors had assured her that replacing the old
patch should be
it
.

Rose
crouched down, hands in the earth, pulling out weeds. She had an instinct,
knowing what should stay, what should go. She had the innate ability to nurture
a flower bed, just like her ancestors. Lily remembered childhood days in the
garden, when her mother had told her that gardening was the same as prayer:
being quiet, present, and appreciative of nature. The gardening gene was alive
and well in Rose.