seemed all that ludicrous a notion that Lorna might return to it one day, that she might need a place to run to. But she’d never run.
The day after Lorna’s death, while Art sobbed to himself in the other room, Penny took a box of Hefty bags and a stack of cardboard boxes from the IGA into her daughter’s bedroom and did what she should have done twenty years before. She went through, removing photographs from the vanity mirror, stuffed animals from the bed and shelves. She folded and packed up the clothes of a seventeen-year-old girl to bring to the secondhand shop off-island, moth holes notwithstanding. Books she boxed for the library. The curtains Squee would have to live with, but she stripped the bed and remade it with plain white sheets and Art’s old army blankets for a more masculine feel. It was as though, for that day, Penny Vaughn had decided to adopt a different life as her own. She was preparing for a visit from her beloved grandson—not eradicating Lorna, just welcoming Squee.
If Penny thought it strange that Squee uttered not a single word as she ushered him through the house and the rituals of bedtime, both of which were somewhat alien to him, she said nothing of it. She tucked him to bed without much flutter, as she’d tucked Lorna in for the better part of seventeen years, closed the door, and went across the hall to join poor Art in his heartbroken slumber.
Ten minutes later, Squee had his shorts and sneakers back on and was out the window and on his way back up the hill toward Eden’s.
GIVEN AN OPTION, it’s not likely that either Suzy or Roddy would have chosen sex on a camp cot. But sometimes such constraints render certain couplings more urgent. Roddy and Suzy were restricted by space, by time, and by circumstance, and driven by a desire that felt like necessity. It made such sense, and felt, for both of them, so good that they found themselves surprised, laughing afterward at how their bodies were like dogs, that they were the owners watching their puppies gallop and play. They sure seem to like each other, don’t they? Yeah, they sure do.
And then the world came back to them, and they remembered in earnest the things that had led them to the place they were in.
“What’s going to happen tomorrow?” Roddy asked.
“What do you mean?” Suzy balked.
“I guess I start clearing . . . debris . . .” He said it as if it were an unfamiliar word, difficult to speak. “Make way for that new-and-improved laundry!”
Suzy said, “Please don’t hate me because my father’s such a . . .”
Roddy propped himself on an elbow, touched her hair. “That hasn’t ever been much of a problem,” he said, laughing a little.
She craned up and kissed him, ran her hand across his chest, down his side. “Really, how’d you get this scar?” She traced her fingertips over its surface again. “It’s a nasty one, huh?”
“Yup,” Roddy said. He pulled the sheet up to cover himself, bent in to kiss her.
She pulled away. “Not your favorite thing in the world to discuss, huh?”
“No.” He paused, then relented. “I was working out West at a sawmill for a while . . . You don’t really want the details.”
“OK,” she said, though it was clearly not.
The air outside was awhirl with early-summer crickets. “What’s your tomorrow like?” he asked.
“I could check my appointment book.”
“That was a joke, right?”
“Yeah.” She lay back down, ran both hands through her hair and held it by the ends away from her head as if to yank it from the scalp. “Jesus, I guess depending on Mia, how she is, I guess I take on my new and illustrious position as head housekeeper! I guess I might get called on to help plan a funeral.”
Roddy closed his eyes, shook his head back and forth.
“I should get back,” she admitted.
“Yeah.”
“I’d rather stay . . .”
Roddy nodded. “Your bed back at the Lodge’ll give you a hell of a better night’s sleep than here.”
“A little lonely, though . . .”
Roddy went back to shaking his head. “Oh boy,” he said. “Oh boy, am I in for it now . . .”
Suzy grinned mischievously. “And why’s that?”
Roddy’s head just wagged back and forth.
“I’ll see you tomorrow?” Suzy asked.
“I’m sure you will,” he answered.
Suzy quietly shut the door to Roddy’s cabin and started up the path toward her truck. She was just passing