nephew took me up to Nordstrom last week, and we passed the old apartment building.”
“You mean Daniel and Vera’s?”
“Yes,” she said. “It warmed me to see that the old place hadn’t been torn down. It’s a café now, right?”
“Yes, Café Lavanto.”
“Developers treat old buildings like weeds,” she said. “They can’t wait to tear them down so they can build their fancy high-rise condominiums. They don’t know that they’re destroying history, and people’s memories, with their wrecking balls. Whoever owns that building is a good person, keeping it intact.”
I smiled to myself. “I happen to know the owner,” I said. “And he’s a great guy.”
“All right, dear,” Eva said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Good-bye.”
A moment later, an e-mail popped up in my in-box. The subject line read, “Can’t wait to see you!” I looked at my desk calendar, where “visit with Emily” was written in blue ink on the slot for the afternoon. I’d promised my old friend Emily Wilson a visit. She’d moved to Bainbridge Island a few years ago, where she lived with her husband, Jack, in an old colonial owned by her ailing great aunt. I opened her e-mail.
If you want to take the 12:00 ferry, I can pick you up at the terminal at 12:45. You won’t believe how big the twins are. xoxo
I’d only seen her babies once, when they were just two weeks old. Ethan and I had visited when I was newly pregnant. We shared the news with them then, and I’ll never forget holding one of her twins, marveling at how I’d soon be cradling my own baby. She’d felt so delicate, so light. I remember feeling frightened by her little cry, wondering if I was prepared for motherhood. It came so naturally to Emily. She’d lifted the baby out of my arms with such ease, nestling the child to her breast as if she’d done it thousands of times before. I had looked down at my own belly, where a baby was growing inside, wondering if I’d be a good mother, like Emily seemed to be. I closed my eyes tightly, pushing the memory deeper into my mind, forcing it back into its dark corner. I looked at the clock on my desk. Already eleven thirty. I’d have to race to catch a cab to the terminal.
I sank into a booth on the ferry and leaned against the vinyl seat, gazing out at the V-shaped wake the vessel carved through the salty water. Seagulls flapped alongside the aging vessel, yelping and squawking, as if challenging it to a race. Eventually the outspoken birds tired of the game and flapped away.
Ethan loved the island. His parents had a beach cabin there, and we made regular trips. The four-bedroom home overlooking Eagle Harbor, however, was hardly a cabin, in the typical sense. It had a five-piece bathroom, a balcony off the master, and a chef’s kitchen, where Ethan would make buttermilk pancakes for me in the mornings. But lately he had been going alone. When my mom stayed on to care for me after the accident, Ethan spent six days at the cabin. My mom never forgave him for that. But as much as I had been hurt by his absence, in some way I’d understood. He had needed to grieve in his own way. He’d come home unshaven, with eyes that seemed vacant, distant.
I reached for my laptop, in its black leather case, and plugged the power cord into an outlet below the bench seat. The Word document I’d saved as “Daniel-Ray-Feature” contained only a title, “Blackberry Winter: The Story of a Lost Boy in the Snowstorm of 1933.” I stared at the flashing cursor and wrote a few sentences, then a few more. By the time the ferry’s horn sounded, announcing our approach to the island, I had written an introduction I was proud of. Will I be able to finish the rest? Will I ever figure out what happened to Daniel Ray?
A short walk down the ramp to the terminal and I spotted Emily, waving her arm out of the driver’s side window of her aunt’s green 1963 Volkswagen Beetle. “You made it!” she called out, her voice muted by the sound of the engine.
I opened the passenger side door and tucked my bag and laptop case inside before turning to look at the backseat, half-expecting to see the twins tucked into their car seats.
“They’re at home with Jack,” Emily said, as if reading my mind. She looked happy, with her rosy