“Come on,” he said. “You’re the one with the marriage certificate.”
True, true. The marriage certificate was in the back pocket of her jeans. Winnie thought of Melon smiling at her with such compassion, as if to say, You poor girl. Your mother and David Ronan.
“You’re right,” Winnie said. She finished the second biscuit, drank some more Coke, and signaled left, even though there wasn’t another car for miles. “Let’s go.”
Nantucket was bigger than Winnie realized. She’d been coming here every summer since she was born and yet her experience of Nantucket consisted of the south shore from Cisco Beach to Surfside, and the roads that led into town. Once or twice a summer they drove out Milestone Road to get ice cream from the ’Sconset Market, and two or three times they’d done the Mile-stone-Polpis bike path as a family. But driving through the moonlight with Garrett and her father’s ashes, Winnie saw whole sections of Nantucket she never even knew existed. The winding dirt roads between Monomoy and Shimmo, for example. There were whole neighborhoods-lots of people lived here. How did Garrett find these roads? He went exploring with Piper, he said. He directed Winnie back to the Polpis Road and they cruised past Quaise, Shawkemo Hills, and Wauwinet.
Winnie put her window down and the night air rushed in. They had the radio on, the oldies station, hoping they would hear a song that reminded them of their father, and as it turned out, every song that played reminded them of Arch. “Here Comes the Sun,” by the Beatles, “Red Rubber Ball,” by Cyrkle, even “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” which he used to sing to them as kids. Winnie started to feel like they were doing the right thing. It was a perfect night, the island was as beautiful as she’d ever seen it, and their father’s spirit was filling the car.
Garrett gave her plenty of warning before her left hand turn on to Quidnet Road; she put on her blinker.
“You’re doing a good job driving,” he said.
This pleased her. “Thanks.”
He told her to take another left onto a dirt road. The road was bordered on both sides by tall trees that arched above them. A tunnel of trees, and every so often through a break in the leaves and branches, Winnie spied the crescent moon.
“We’re almost there,” Garrett said.
After a while, the trees on the left hand side opened up to a meadow, and beyond the meadow was the flat, calm water of Nantucket Sound. Winnie caught her breath. “This is it?” she said.
“Yeah,” Garrett said. “It’s cool, isn’t it?”
“You came here with Daddy?”
“That one time he and I went surf casting out at Great Point?” Garrett said. “We explored on our way home and found this place. He said he wanted to bring you and Mom here for a picnic.”
“Really?” Winnie said. “Where should we stop?”
“Up here,” Garrett said.
Winnie pulled onto the shoulder. The radio was playing Linda Ronstadt singing “Long, Long Time.” Garrett opened his door and they both blinked at the dome light. “Let’s do it,” he said.
Winnie’s heart pounded in her ears. She was unable to move.
“Garrett?” she said.
He came to the driver’s side and helped her out of the car. He kept his arm around her as he steered her into the meadow. There were Queen Anne’s lace, black-eyed Susans, and a thicket of low blueberry bushes.
Garrett opened the urn. He put the top of the urn by his feet, and when he straightened, he reached into the urn, but then he withdrew his hand.
“You first,” he said. “You throw first.”
“Why?”
“Because you were his little girl,” Garrett said. “He loved you best.”
Immediately Winnie’s eyes were blurred by tears. She sniffled. “Oh, Garrett, you know he loved us exactly the same.”
“He loved us a lot,” Garrett said. He was crying, too, and this made Winnie cry harder. She knew she would never forget this moment as long as she lived. Her twin brother, this hidden meadow, and the water beyond it, the music in her head, her mother’s secret in her heart. Winnie slipped her hand into the urn. The ash was fine and silky with a few chunks. The remains of her beloved father, the man she loved first, the man she would always love beyond any other man, even Marcus. Winnie called up the memories she had left: her father across the table from her at EJ’s Luncheonette eating his red flannel hash; her father in the balcony of Danforth’s indoor pool, whooping like a rodeo cowboy as a signal to her to give the last lap of the race all she had; her father on any one of five thousand nights coming in to kiss her good night on the forehead, never shutting the door without saying, “I love you, Winnie. You’re my only little girl.” He had been a great lawyer-that was why his obituary ran in all of the New York papers, including the Times-but he’d been an even greater father. This, she realized, was the highest compliment anyone could give a man.
With a wide, circling motion of her arm, Winnie scattered him, set him free, let him go.
Chapter 6
J ust like that, Marcus’s summer was falling apart. He wished he’d never heard the secret news about Beth and David-it was family business and he’d been dragged in, first by Beth, then by Winnie. Marcus had promised Beth he would support Winnie, but her reaction to the news was so overblown, so immature, that Marcus could feel nothing but disappointment in her. Their relationship, whatever it was-boyfriend/girlfriend or just friends-was turning to rags faster than Winnie’s sweatshirt.
Marcus couldn’t figure out what the twins’ so-called revenge was, but there was a definite change in their behavior. They spoke very little to Beth, and when they did speak, it was in a cool, formal tone, the way you would talk to a stranger at a bus stop. One-word sentences, short, tired phrases, crisp and distant. Beth tolerated it for about a day and a half, then she confronted them at dinner. “All right, kids. What’s going on?” Garrett and Winnie didn’t blink, didn’t crack a smile; they simply looked at each other meaningfully and retreated into themselves, like a set of twins Marcus read about once in a magazine article who had their own spooky form of communication.
Winnie had also stopped talking to Marcus. When they occupied the same space-the kitchen, for example, while making breakfast or lunch-Winnie smiled at him benignly, like Marcus was someone she’d met once before but whose name she couldn’t recall. He wanted to shake her-this is not how you treat people when you’re angry! But Marcus didn’t want to give Winnie the satisfaction of knowing how much her behavior bugged him. After all, he had his own life. He had, he reminded himself with increasing guilt each day, a book to write.
He couldn’t stop himself from thinking of her, though, from listening to every word that came out of her mouth (mostly words directed to Garrett, or to Piper, if she was around). He couldn’t help himself from listening for her in the middle of the night; he knew her footsteps, and when they were in the house together, he kept track of her. One afternoon, as he hung out in his room, he heard her march up the stairs and stop just outside his door. He tried to steady his breathing as he waited for her to knock. Marcus was ready to forgive her-even to apologize.
Strangely, no knock came. Instead, there was a whooshing sound as an envelope skated across the wood floor. Marcus shook his head. It was just like a woman to write a note.
When he bent over to retrieve the envelope, however, he saw that it wasn’t a note and it wasn’t from Winnie. It was a Western Union telegram and that, he realized with a surge of fear, meant only one thing: Zachary Celtic. Zachary had bugged Marcus for a phone number, a fax number, an e-mail address-he wanted a way to contact Marcus to check on the progress of the book.