to Lorna like barbecue coals with too much lighter fluid and the flick of a match: love for Squee knocked her like a flare of heat so powerful she had to wait for the blow to pass before she was good for anything again.
From around the back of the staff barracks, Roddy appeared, toting a few long pieces of lumber. He slid them into the bed of the pickup. Lorna lifted a hand in greeting, and Roddy nodded, but his brow was furrowed. He went to the driver’s side and fumbled behind the seat.
“You getting hungry?” Lorna asked Squee. Her voice was tired.
Squee was nodding as Roddy reemerged with some orange plastic ribbon, which he tied to the boards that stuck off the end of the truck bed.
Lorna sighed. “Guess I better think about some dinner for you then, huh?”
Roddy looked up at her again, the way she was leaning on the truck. Her skin looked too pale, and the hollows of her face too dark. “I’m heading to Morey’s,” he told Lorna, though he’d had no such plans until that moment.
Lorna looked relieved. “You want to go with Roddy?”
Squee shrugged his acquiescence.
“You come too, Lorna,” Roddy suggested.
“Oh, I’ve got work left . . .” she lied, gesturing vaguely toward the laundry shack. “You men go. Let me give you some money, Roddy.” She began to reach into her jeans pocket but Roddy held up a hand to stop her. “I got him,” he said. Lorna paused. She let her hands drop back to her sides. “Thank you.” She nudged Squee: “Thank you, Roddy.”
“Thank you, Roddy,” Squee repeated.
“Welcome.” And when he’d secured the lumber in the truck with some twine and a bungee cord, Roddy climbed in beside Squee, who blew his mother a last kiss.
Morey’s Dinghy was an old fisherman’s shanty fifty yards up the beach from the Lodge and across a small footbridge. It perched on a curved lip of land where the beach cut back on one side into a swampy inlet of reeds where lurking heron were often spotted in the twilight hours. Old fishing nets threaded with colored Christmas lights and cast-off buoys hung from the rafters. The kitchen consisted of a freezer and a deep fryer; Morey served only food that cooked in a vat of boiling oil. Everything came on a grease-soaked slip of wax paper nestled at the bottom of a red plastic basket, all without so much as a sheaf of iceberg lettuce to soften the blow.
Morey presided over the bar daily from noon, when he opened, until about seven, when Merle Squire, Lance’s mother, showed up for her shift. The Lodge staff were traditionally renowned for copious drinking, often starting out the night at Morey’s, then returning to the porch of the Lodge when the bar closed, by legal decree, at one a.m. The bar had four taps—Bud, Bud Light, Miller, Miller Lite—but when the Irish girls arrived in June Morey switched one tap over to Guinness. His local crowd was steady and loyal, more family than clientele, since his was one of only three island bars, not including restaurants that served bottled beer and wine, and his was the only one that stayed open through the off-season, which was everything but the summer. For three months a year, renters from New York City and its moneyed environs invaded Osprey with their private-schooled children and their au pairs and their Volvo wagons, and pumped enough cash into the island economy to keep it nominally running for the nine intervening months until they came crashing back for another season.
When Roddy and Squee walked in that evening, Suzy and Mia were seated at the bar. Squee swung himself up beside Mia, who was rationing sips of a tall Shirley Temple, climbing up onto her knees to drink from the straw and then ducking down to check the level of pink in the glass. Roddy hovered awkwardly, then finally took the stool next to Suzy.
“What do you want?” Roddy called to Squee. Morey stood behind the bar twitching his mustache.
“Chicken fingers.” Squee didn’t take his eyes from Mia and her glass. “And a Coke.”
Suzy looked to Squee. “How ’bout Seven-Up?”
Squee shrugged, nodded disinterestedly. Suzy nodded to Morey. Roddy looked confused.
“You don’t want that kid hopped up on caffeine all night,” she said. “Trust me.”
Roddy conceded. “You have those clam strips?” Morey nodded. “And a Bud.” Roddy glanced to Suzy, gestured vaguely toward her drink.
“Sure,” she said, after a moment’s pause. “Maker’s and soda.”