Just five years earlier, when my mother renovated our living room, she’d had a special wall of sliding glass doors placed facing northward to frame the spectacular spot where the ocean slashed through the beach and spilled into our harbor. But in a dazzling disregard of Malabar’s renovation, nature had moved the ocean’s cut northward and taken with it my mother’s perfect view.
“Our test nights weren’t quite the same without you,” Ben continued. “Now, where’s this young gentleman who seems to have stolen your heart? When do I get to meet him?”
Apparently, Malabar hadn’t told Ben that Adam’s and my relationship was on the rocks. Unsure how my mother had presented the situation, I demurred. “He’s working today.”
“Too bad,” Ben said. “He’s a lucky guy to have found you, but you tell him from me, just one misstep”—he pantomimed the wringing of a neck, the gesture he’d used that very first night to show how he killed the pigeons—“and he’s done for.” Ben smiled, took a large sip of tea, and winked at me. “Besides, I’ve had someone in mind for you for quite some time. I’ve just been waiting for you to hit eighteen.”
I blushed. Who could he mean?
“Ben,” my mother said, changing the subject. “I couldn’t help but notice that you’ve arrived empty-handed. Exactly what are we testing this weekend? The air?”
Ben laughed; he’d been waiting for this moment. “Well, with Rennie back and Brenda visiting, I thought we’d be up for a new challenge. What do you think of an eat-what-you-kill weekend?”
Brenda’s mouth popped open in surprise. Born in New Jersey and raised in Manhattan, she was a city girl if ever there was one. When she wasn’t in gardening gloves to prune my mother’s bushes, her fingers were festooned with chunky silver rings. She would not be using her lovely soft hands as tools to dig clams from the mud or rip mussels off rocks, and Ben knew this.
“Now, darling,” Ben said to my mother, hamming it up. “What is your pleasure? Lobster? Striped bass? Mussels? Cherrystones? Your wish is my command, as always.”
I studied Charles during this bold exchange—had Ben always been so overtly flirtatious?—and noticed a half smile on the left side of my stepfather’s mouth. Our eyes met, and Charles held my gaze. In that moment, I felt sure of it: He knew. Or, at the very least, he suspected. He looked down suddenly and shook his head. Did he know that I knew?
“I’ve got it,” Malabar said gamely. “I’d like some whitebait for the cocktail hour tonight. And tomorrow I’ll whip up a bouillabaisse with whatever else you catch.”
“Malabar, you are a whiz,” Lily said.
“Done and done,” Ben said.
* * *
In a corner of our basement, my mother and I pulled weathered beach chairs, threadbare windbreakers, broken fishing rods, and other detritus from a pile of forgotten paraphernalia underneath which we thought we might find our old whitebaiting net.
“I think Ben and I should go whitebaiting alone,” I said. “You need to stay home with Charles and Lily this afternoon. Charles seems off. Something’s wrong.”
“Nonsense. I want to go,” my mother said. “Brenda can entertain those two.”
“Mom, did something happen that you haven’t told me about? Does Charles know?” I asked. My panic felt physical, like something lodged in my chest.
“Of course not,” she said, tugging at a Styrofoam surfboard. “Charles doesn’t know anything.” Behind the surfboard was the net. “Voilà!”
A twelve-foot-long, three-foot-high rectangle of netting was leaning against the corner, neatly rolled around two tall end poles. We unfurled it to check for holes and rot, but despite its having sat unused in our damp basement for several years, the net seemed to be in good shape. We rolled it back up until our fingers met. I placed my pointer finger over hers and pressed down. “I hope you’re right, Mom.”
My mother handed me her pole and began to put things back in the pile.
“Charles seems depressed,” I said. “I think he’s onto you two.”
“Rennie, has it ever occurred to you that you don’t know everything? Charles is depressed because he’s worried about his health.”
“I thought he didn’t know about the aneurysm,” I said.
“He doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean he’s unaware that he’s in poor health. It’s dreadful to get old. You were probably too young to remember how different Charles was before his strokes.” Her back was to me and she busied herself with organizing the beach junk. “Facing your own mortality is terrifying.”
“Mom, stop. Can you look at me,