the sheriff’s visit, as though she’d all but forgotten he’d come by.
“Yeah,” Roddy said, determined, “that.”
A wash of panic swept Eden’s face suddenly. “Where’s Squee?” She looked toward the house. “You had him . . . ?”
“He’s watching TV. He’s fine. Don’t change the subject.”
“Oh ho,” Eden laughed bitterly, shaking her head, a finger pointed at Roddy in reprimand. “Oh, that is the subject, son. That is the subject.”
“Don’t,” Roddy said. He was growing impatient and frustrated. “Don’t get cryptical—”
“Well isn’t that the pot calling the kettle—”
“Ma—”
“Look, son. I know you’re not going to argue against there being some things best left untold, and I am not going to tell you what I talked about to Sheriff Harty this morning any more than you’re about to sit down and tell me where you’ve been since nineteen sixty-eight. So don’t tell me you don’t know that some things are best kept. There’s no reason to say them, and there’s too many other folks who’d get hurt if you did. OK? So, I am done talking about this, son. Done.”
Ten
HOW THE OSPREY TENDS ITS NESTLINGS
From my canoe on the Connecticut River I have often watched the male enter the eyrie with his catch. After he eats the head, his mate takes the remainder from him and feeds the young the choice center part, bit by bit, saving the tail for herself. But in Florida, Fred Truslow, who photographed ospreys so beautifully for this article, saw a male depart from etiquette. “He brought back a pound-and-a-half weakfish and sat there nibbling,” Fred said. “When he ate beyond the head, the female clucked impatiently. When he reached the halfway mark on the body, she grew strident. And when he ate the tail section, she flew off with an angry scream. A few moments later she was back with a fish of her own. This she divided—center part for the youngsters, head and tail for herself.”
—ROGER TORY PETERSON, “The Endangered Osprey”
SUZY’S FIRST OFFICIAL ACT as head housekeeper was to clean the Squires’ cottage. Lance would be coming back from Merle’s, and word from Merle was he wanted his son with him, which worried everyone, since Lance had never particularly wanted Squee around when Lorna was alive. Still, they tried to understand. Squee was all Lance had left of his wife. It made sense he’d want to cling to him. Wouldn’t you? they murmured, pausing to chat in the aisles of the IGA, at the bar, as they shuffled out of the Episcopal Church.
Suzy gathered the housekeeping girls that morning. “Let’s just get in there and do it. A whole crew of us, it shouldn’t take that long.”
She was wrong. It took six of them all day. “Remember,” Suzy kept saying as they uncovered another den of mouse corpses—trapped on sticky-tape, bloody and desiccated—inside a kitchen drawer, “the rest of your work this summer is going to feel like a piece of cake after this.” By afternoon the girls were rolling their eyes, and Suzy shut up about it. When she and Brigid started going through the bedroom, collecting Lorna’s things, folding her clothes into discarded produce-packing boxes from the IGA, they were on their last legs.
“How well did you know her, then?” Brigid asked, standing at the closet door, surveying the contents, unsure where and how to delve in.
“In high school, I guess I knew her pretty well . . . better than I wound up knowing her, I guess.” Suzy sighed heavily. “It was hard, with Lance . . . she just kind of cut off other people.”
Brigid reached for an empty box. “He couldn’t be so altogether dreadful as everyone imagines, could he?” She sat down in the open mouth of the closet and dug in. They had designated a “Lance” mound on the bed, to be dealt with later, and Brigid began riffling through the closet, sorting “Lance” and “Lorna,” bed or box.
“Yeah, he probably is . . .” Suzy chuckled bitterly a moment, then sobered up. “No,” she revised herself, “he’s probably not . . .”
“Do you know him well, then?”
Suzy let out another spurt of hard laughter. She didn’t think very far ahead when she said, “Well, I knew him.”
Brigid turned around to see Suzy’s face, and grinned. “Oh, did you . . . ?”
“It’s a really small island,” Suzy said. “You grow up here and it can get a little incestuous.”
“So, you and Mr. Squire . . . you were a couple, then?”
“Me and Lance? Oh, god no.” Suzy