in Yarmouth and picked up all the eggs you wanted.”
“I’m not to leave until it’s over. You, either. Don’t ask me anything else. I have to keep my promise.”
“For Astrid.”
“Well . . . he’s paying me a great deal of money for a little bit of nursing, enough to retire on, but mostly for Astrid, yes.”
“Who’s watching out for her while you’re here? Somebody better be. I don’t know what Charlie’s told you, but there really are aftereffects from some of his treatments, and they can be—”
“She’s well cared for, you don’t need to worry about that. We have . . . good friends in the community.”
This time her smile was stronger, more natural, and at least one thing came clear to me.
“You’re lovers, aren’t you? You and Astrid?”
“Partners. Not long after Maine legalized gay marriage, we set a date to make it official. Then she got sick. That’s all I can tell you. I’m going now. I can’t be away for long. I left you plenty of eggs, don’t worry.”
“Why can’t you be away for long?”
She shook her head, not meeting my eyes. “I have to go.”
“Were you already here when we talked on the phone?”
“No . . . but I knew I would be.”
I watched her trundle back down the hill, the golf cart’s wheels making tracks in the diamond dew. Those gems wouldn’t last long; the day had barely begun, and it was already hot enough to pop sweat on my arms and forehead. She disappeared into the trees. I knew that if I walked down there, I’d find a path. And if I followed the path, I’d come to a cabin. The one where I’d lain breast to breast and hip to hip with Astrid Soderberg in another life.
• • •
Shortly after ten that morning, while I was reading The Mysterious Affair at Styles (one of my late sister’s favorites), the first floor was filled with the chiming of Jacobs’s call-button. I went up to the Cooper Suite, hoping not to find him lying on the floor with a broken hip. I needn’t have worried. He was dressed, leaning on his cane, and looking out the window. When he turned to me, his eyes were bright.
“I think today might be our day,” he said. “Be prepared.”
But it wasn’t. When I brought him his supper—barley soup and a cheese sandwich—the television was silent and he wouldn’t open the door. He shouted through it for me to go away, sounding like a petulant child.
“You need to eat, Charlie.”
“What I need is peace and quiet! Leave me alone!”
I went back up around ten o’clock, meaning only to listen at the door long enough to hear the cackle of his TV. If I did, I’d ask if he didn’t at least want some toast before he turned in. The TV was off but Jacobs was awake and talking in the too-loud voice people who are going deaf always seem to use on the phone.
“She won’t go until I’m ready! You’ll make sure of it! That’s what I’m paying you for, so see to it!”
Problems—and with Jenny, it seemed at first. She was close to deciding she’d had enough, and wanted to go somewhere. Back to the Downeast home she shared with Astrid seemed most likely, at least until it occurred to me that it might actually have been Jenny he was talking to. Which would mean what? The only thing that came to mind was what the verb to go often meant to people of Charlie Jacobs’s age.
I left his suite without knocking.
What he’d been waiting for—what we’d all been waiting for—came the next day.
• • •
His call-chime went off at one o’clock, not long after I’d taken him his lunch. The door to the suite was open, and as I approached, I heard the current weather boffin talking about how warm the Gulf of Mexico was, and what that augured for the coming hurricane season. Then the guy’s voice was cut off by a series of harsh buzzing sounds. When I walked in, I saw a red band running along the bottom of the screen. It was gone before I could read it, but I know a weather warning when I see one.
Severe weather during a long hot spell meant thunderstorms, thunderstorms meant lightning, and to me, lightning meant Skytop. To Jacobs, too, I was betting.
He was once more fully dressed. “No false alarms today, Jamie. The storm cells are in upstate New York now, but they’re moving east