shoreline glimmered, drying in the early sun, the sand beneath them still cold from the night before. Scrolls of dark seaweed lay unraveled across the beach like tremendous clumps of ruined cassette tape scattered with shards of clamshell, some chalky and white as bone, some tide-polished and glistening like teeth. Smaller shells rested like eggs in seaweed nests, with tiny inhabitants curled and protected inside. On Sand Beach Road, an osprey patrolled the shore, riding the wind back and forth like a bored kid riding his bicycle up and down the street, just waiting for something to happen.
Epilogue
AN EYRIE OF OSPREY
What is a bird family? In life, a bird family is exactly like a human family. It consists of father, mother, and children. But in the books a family means quite another thing.
—OLIVE THORNE MILLER, The Second Book of Birds
IT WAS NOT A GOOD SEASON for the Lodge at Osprey Island. A fire was one thing; a fire, and a death, and a family rift, and a restraining order were quite another. Not to mention rumors of a rape too, but the girl wouldn’t press charges or even admit she’d been harmed in any way. It was her roommate who’d started the rumors, and she’d fled home to Ireland, too shaken by the whole incident to remain at the Lodge. The alleged rapist—a longtime staffer and head of maintenance at the Lodge—got taken in on a drunk and disorderly. When further charges were filed against him—trespassing, reckless endangerment, child abuse, assault—there was no one willing to put up bail, so he sat in jail on the mainland. They couldn’t be sure how long he’d stay away, but that didn’t keep people from speculating. Some said he’d never return to Osprey Island, that they’d never hear from him again. Nope, said others, they’d hear about him, all right, when he got himself killed in a bar fight or died midwinter on a subway grating in some large eastern city, all the liquor in his veins not enough to keep him from freezing to death. A few Islanders who’d been around a long while were on hand during such speculation to remind folks that the man in question had never spent a night— let alone lived—anywhere but Osprey Island in his entire life, and it didn’t take a great mind to guess that regardless of what he’d done, the minute he could he’d come straight back to Osprey Island, where his mother’d probably take pity and let him live in a trailer out back of her own house, and it would be there that he’d die, by his own hand if the alcohol didn’t take him first, or by the hand of whomever he managed to piss off badly enough. There might not have been a lot of people on Osprey Island that summer, compared to usual, but there was more than enough talk.
The Lodge lost plenty of guests—not a lot to recommend it that year. They lost staff too: a few waiters who wanted out of the whole deal, out of that place and away from everything that had happened there. Plus two other Irish housekeepers who felt frightened and uncomfortable and just wanted to go home. Service in the dining room was inconsistent and rampant with neglect. Housekeeping was shoddy at best; at worst it was nonexistent. The swimming pool was leafy, the tennis courts weedy, the lawns overgrown with dandelions. The laundry machines ran smoother than ever—when you could find someone to operate them—and the food was the same as it had always been—it was, some said, maybe even a bit better, as the chef had fewer people to cook for and could afford to take time with his preparation and presentation. There were certainly fewer complaints that summer about hotel staff out drinking on the porch late at night.
When they opened officially for Fourth of July weekend, the Lodge still hadn’t found a head housekeeper. The new head of maintenance— who started the season with three broken ribs, two black eyes, and a heart that would take a lot longer to heal than the rest of his injuries combined—had for his right-hand man an eight-year-old child with a badly broken arm and a dislocated shoulder, not to mention a dead mother, an absent father, and so persistent a habit of running away from his custodial grandparents that they gave up and allowed the boy to take up unofficial, temporarily permanent residence with an eccentric widow who raised chickens