Returning to Shore (8 page)

It seemed even more private, perhaps, to see what someone had been reading in bed at night than to be snooping through their dresser drawers. Clare wondered if Richard would be embarrassed to have her know he read poetry—poetry certainly seemed to make him seem more vulnerable than, for instance, a book on seaweed. But she guessed not. Richard seemed like the kind of man who just did what he wanted to do and felt no apologies for it.

Clare laid the book back on the table and placed the glasses exactly as she had found them. She went to the doorway again and listened for the sound of Richard coming home, but the house was as still as if she were the only person who had ever lived there.

Clare went over to Richard's desk and sat down.
The desk was a wooden door set on filing cabinets. There was a hole where the doorknob had once been. The desk chair had worn-out armrests and squealed when Clare swiveled. Peter had had a fancy desk chair that Vera had complained cost too much money.

“It's ergonomic,” Peter had explained. “It's important to have something proper to sit on when you're writing. The mind works better.”

“My creative genius!” Vera had said, laughing, and she kissed Peter full on the lips. That was back when Vera had loved Peter and believed in his talent. Later, she'd gotten impatient with him. While she was in the library studying for the bar exam, she resented that he'd take his laptop to a café. She said he spent more time chatting with his friends—“cronies” she called them—than doing serious work.

Clare looked over the piles of papers on Richard's desk. There were stacks of printouts of data on terrapins and scraps of hand-scrawled notes anchored by smooth beach rocks. At the back of the desk were two photographs in acrylic frames. She hadn't noticed them before. The large one was of a group of high school students who were winners of a California state
science fair competition (the kids were holding up a sign announcing it), posing with their teacher. Clare looked over the faces of the kids, who were around her age. She wondered which was the one that her father knew.

The other photo was taken on the beach. A man was walking with a toddler in front of him, her arms were held up over her head and he held her two hands in his. It took Clare a moment to realize that the little girl in the photograph was herself. Although his face was angled down to look at the child, she could tell the man was Richard. He looked like the man in other photographs she had of him when he was younger, though this was a photograph she had never seen. It was a moment from her life that she did not remember, but a moment that had happened, for here was the evidence of it. In the photograph she was plunging forwards, a little white beach hat perched on the back of her head, the chin strap dangling around her neck. She had a gleeful expression, as if she was excited about taking those big steps. Clare wondered who was the photographer, the person she had been smiling at. Vera? Or her grandmother? Or someone else, entirely. Someone else, lost to the past.

Clare put the photograph back on the desk. There was a fine line of dust along the top curved edge of the acrylic. This wasn't a photograph that Richard had put out because he knew she was coming, but a photograph that lived on his desk.

She looked again at the photograph of the kids at the science fair. There were nine of them—five boys and four girls—all smiling. She studied their faces—especially those of the girls—trying to guess which was the one Richard was connected to. Was it the girl with the wire-frame glasses or the girl who was caught with her hand adjusting her collar? Richard had disappeared from Clare's life, but he had been part of the life of one of these kids, and none of them were his own daughter. She felt jealous of whoever it was—in fact she felt jealous of all of them. She set the photo back on the desk, but pushed it a little to the right, so it was partially blocked by the printer.

There were no photographs of Richard anywhere visible in Vera's house; there never had been. All the photographs were buried in albums or shoeboxes. And now there were no photographs of Peter visible, either. Soon, Clare guessed, there would be a photograph of
Vera and Tertio, on their wedding day—a tasteful, artistic photograph, of course.

***

When Richard came back, his face was radiant. He didn't look at all like the man who had been leaning over by the side of the car the night before, clutching his chest.

“I found a new nest this morning,” he said. “I put a stick there to mark it but we'll go together now and set up the cage.”

Clare ran upstairs to grab her sunglasses and then she and Richard hiked out to the beach. Richard was carrying the cage, and he'd given her a stake with a blue flag on the top. She felt like a kid in a parade.

Richard set down the cage at the base of the low dunes near the boathouse, then led Clare down towards the water. “Here are the tracks,” he said. “This is how I found the nest.” He pointed out the J-shaped prints set about eight inches apart, made by the turtle's feet, and the straight line in the center made by her dragging tail. “She came up from the water right here, made her way up the beach,” said Richard. Clare
followed the tracks just behind Richard. She would never have noticed them if she hadn't known what she was looking for.

In the grassy area on top of the low dunes the tracks seemed to end. “Here's a false nest,” said Richard. “She dug her hole, didn't like it, and moved on.” They followed the tracks farther along. Eventually Richard stopped. “Here's the spot,” he said.

The slight disturbance in the sand could have been anything. It certainly wasn't easy to read the few clues, to imagine that this was a place where a turtle had dug a hole, laid her eggs, and buried them all neatly, covering the spot so there were few traces visible.

“Is there really something down there?” Clare asked.

Richard knelt in the sand and started scooping away the sand. “Take a look,” he said.

In a depression, about half a foot underground, there was a clutch of small pale eggs. Richard lifted one carefully. “Hold out your hand,” he said. He laid the egg gently in Clare's palm. She touched it cautiously with her finger. It wasn't like a bird's egg, but something that seemed more alive, with a shell that
was soft and translucent.

“It's amazing a baby turtle's inside here.”

“It will be.”

Clare laid the egg down with the others, and she and Richard covered them up with the sand, just as the mother turtle had done. Richard set the cage over the spot and buried its rim, and Clare poked the stake into the sand. The blue flag fluttered.

“At the end of summer the hatchlings will peck their way out of those eggs,” said Richard, “and make their way down to the marsh.”

“How will they get out of the cage?”

“We check the nest sites every day and lift the cages off when the hatchlings emerge.”

Clare ran her finger along the wire of the cage. She was glad it was there, keeping the eggs safe until they were ready.

Richard was looking out at the water. He turned to her now.

“About last night,” he said. “I want to explain it to you. Do you know anything about panic attacks?”

“Sort of.”

“They can be triggered by associations. When I
saw the mailbox and the kid on the bike, it brought back something that happened—it's not something I tell most people, but it's something I think you should know.” He hesitated, and Clare could see that he was taking a moment to work out his wording in his head. When he continued, he spoke quickly, as if he were reciting, for the first time, something he'd learned by heart.

“A friend of mine commuted to work by bicycle. He had just gotten home and was standing over his bicycle getting his mail out of the mailbox. A car was speeding along the road and hit him. Killed him. End of story.”

“I'm sorry,” said Clare.

“Yup,” said Richard. He stood up and brushed the sand from his hands.

In the afternoon Richard had work he wanted to do at his desk. Clare said she was fine going to the beach alone. She decided to wear her newest bathing suit, but she covered it with a T-shirt and draped a beach towel over her shoulders. She walked to the other end of the island to the cove where people swam. The small cluster of beach umbrellas—hot pink and turquoise and yellow stripes—looked festive, though a little jarring against the background of pale sand and beach grass. There were two boys digging in the sand, but no one was in the water, so Clare spent some time beachcombing, instead. She walked around the
tip of the island, past the people, and then started back again. She noticed a girl her age ambling in her direction along the edge of the water, but didn't acknowledge that she'd seen her. But the girl was more gregarious. Once she spotted Clare she changed her course so she was headed right towards her. Clare stood where she was. As the girl approached, she gave a little wave. She was a few inches shorter than Clare and had an abundance of thick, bushy hair held up with an elastic, and a plump face that made her look, Clare guessed, probably a lot happier than she really was.

She introduced herself just the way Vera would do, holding out her hand and giving Clare's hand a squeeze.

“Hi, I'm Jaylin, J-A-Y-L-I-N,” she said. “I always spell it because people never seem to get it right. Someone even once thought I said, ‘Caitlin'.”

“I'm Clare,” said Clare. “No ‘i'.”

“That's a relief,” said Jaylin, and she smiled. “Are you staying here on the island?”

“Yes,” said Clare.

“Do you have a house here?”

“Well, my Dad does.”

“My parents built a house,” said Jaylin, “and dragged me here last summer. And there's no one around who isn't ancient or a little kid except for Mark—my brother—and his friends, and they don't count. How come I didn't see you last summer?”

“I wasn't here. I haven't been since I was little.”

“Lucky you,” said Jaylin. “I hope you're here for a while this time, because I'm stuck here for two more weeks.”

“I'll be here,” said Clare.

“Sweet,” said Jaylin. “We can hang out together.”

“Sure,” said Clare.

“What are you collecting?” asked Jaylin, looking at Clare's hands.

Clare held out her open palm. “Whatever looks interesting,” she said.

“Last summer I was obsessed with collecting scallop shells. I'm not anymore, but there's nothing much to do on this beach, so sometimes I still pick them up.” Clare noticed Jaylin's gold bracelet. It seemed crazy that someone would wear something expensive like that on the beach.

“I don't know which shells are which,” said Clare, “but I thought I could look them up. There's a shell book at the house.”

“Where's your house?”

“Back there,” said Clare, pointing vaguely towards the marsh.

“We're right up there,” said Jaylin. The house she pointed to was a big one, perched on the top of the dune with decks hanging off in all directions. “Hey, why don't you come up with me and we can get something to drink, or some ice cream, OK?”

“OK,” said Clare. She wondered if she should ask Richard or at least let him know, but there was no way to do that. If she was staying long at Jaylin's she could call him from the phone in Jaylin's house.

There was a long wooden staircase leading up to the house.

“The stairs are brand new this week,” said Jaylin. “They almost didn't get it done in time. My mom was going to have a fit.”

They paused at the landing halfway up and Clare looked out at the view of the bay. “The stairs we had last year got washed away in a storm,” continued Jaylin.
“Everything gets washed away here. The house is going to get washed away if we don't get a sea wall built. There's this crazy old guy on the island who's got this thing about sea walls. It's costing my dad a fortune in lawyers.”

Crazy old guy
. It took Clare a second to realize that it must be Richard whom Jaylin was talking about. Clare sat on the built-in bench on the landing.

“Hey, you're not that tired, are you?” asked Jaylin.

Clare shook her head. She thought about saying something about the turtles, but then Jaylin would want to know how she knew, and what would Jaylin think if she knew who Clare's father was? Still, he wasn't really crazy, and he wasn't that old, either.

“We're halfway up. Think ice cream!” said Jaylin. Clare wavered, her allegiances divided, but then Jaylin seized her hand and gave her a friendly tug and it tipped the balance. She followed Jaylin up the second half of the staircase. From the top she could see all the way from one side of the island to the other.

Everything in Jaylin's house was oversized: the rooms, the sofas, the windows, the view. It was the sort of house Vera liked, Clare thought, the new Vera,
that is, the one who had chosen to live with Tertio instead of Peter. Peter had had what he called his “little extravagances”—like his ergonomic desk chair and his collection of fountain pens—but they'd lived in a modest house. Though Clare wondered now—and the thought seemed almost traitorous to Peter—if it was because Peter really had contempt for big, fancy houses, or if it was because he and Vera hadn't been able to afford anything better at the time.

Jaylin's house seemed dazzling inside. Everything was white, and the high ceilings were punctured with skylights so the rooms were filled with sunshine. Richard's small house in the shade seemed, in contrast, like a hobbit's hole.

Jaylin's room was all white, too, but there were spots of color: a pair of jeans thrown over the back of a chair, magazines half-stuck under the bed, an orange bathing suit top dangling from the closet doorknob. Jaylin seemed unconcerned about dripping ice cream on her white futon when she flopped down on it, but Clare stood by the window and finished her ice cream, careful not to get any on the carpeting, also white.