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4.

THERE HAS NEVER been any such thing as a hospital on Winthrop Island, as I later learned. Either you were sick enough to head for the hospital on the mainland, or you made do in your bed at home. This doctor—Dr. Huxley—didn’t have a regular practice here. He was a summer resident who made himself available for emergencies on the understanding that he wasn’t to be disturbed during cocktail hour or golf.

Lucky for Popeye, the good doctor was an early riser who just happened to live half a mile up Winthrop Road from Greyfriars. He set Popeye’s broken arm and stitched up the holes in his hide, and Mr. Fisher had him put up in one of the guest bedrooms with strict instructions to watch for signs of pneumonia.

“What about his family?” I said. “Shouldn’t we telephone them or something?”

Joseph looked down at me kindly. “He hasn’t got any family. Wife died two years ago. Kids moved to the mainland.”

“Oh, that’s a shame.”

“That’s the way it is on the Island, I guess. Kids move away.”

He was blushing a little, looking down at me, and I realized I still wore my old green flannel nightgown, which was wet with seawater and blood and stuck to my skin. I crossed my arms over my chest. Mr. Fisher and Dr. Huxley were upstairs with the maid, settling the patient in some spare bedroom or other. The kitchen was growing warm as the sun penetrated the window glass, and I noticed the smell of something baking, something sugary and vanilla-scented, something for the wedding, so I supposed the oven was on, too, adding to the general heat. I stared at the kitchen table, which Joseph had helped me clean up just now, dishcloths and hot water and vinegar that still stained the air. All immaculate, erased, you’d never know what happened. Just any old big kitchen on any old big summer estate. Two people standing in awkward proximity, like a pair of actors who’ve lost their place in the script.

Joseph started to turn away, toward the door.

“Want some coffee?” I said.

“Have you got any made? I mean you needn’t make fresh.”

“I think so.” I went to the electric percolator on the counter and lifted it. Heavy. Behind me, there was a faint scrape of a chair leg on the linoleum. I opened up a few cabinets, looking for coffee cups.

Joseph cleared his throat. “You must be the daughter, then. Mrs. Schuyler’s daughter.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Well, I’m sure sorry I ruined the big day for you.”

“Oh gosh, that’s nothing. I mean, he’s alive, isn’t he? That’s got to be good luck. Thanks to you. The day’s not ruined at all. Do you want cream or anything?”

“I’ll get it.”

The chair scraped again, and from the corner of my eye I saw him step to the icebox and open the door. He stood about an inch under six feet, and he still wore his yellow oilskin overalls atop his wet shirt, though his hair was beginning to dry in soft little waves around his ears. I turned toward him and offered the coffee cup.

“Thanks,” he said, dribbling a bit of cream from a small blue pitcher. “You?”

“Yes, please.”

He moved the pitcher over my cup and tilted it so the narrowest possible rope of yellow-white cream fell inside. “Say when.”

“When.”

He moved away, putting the cream back in the icebox, and I turned to the window so he wouldn’t catch me looking at the place where his hair met the back of his neck. I didn’t know much about boys, had hardly spent any time around a boy, and I couldn’t tell how old he was. Twenty? Twenty-one? Older than me, for certain. Though his skin was fresh and unlined, there was something fully grown about his shoulders, something wide and weight-bearing. And his voice had an easy, mature timbre, not like a boy’s voice at all.

Older than me. Maybe not all that much, but enough. Not a boy, after all, but a grown-up, a man who worked for his bread, whereas I was still a child, only just graduated from school. Eighteen last February. Eighteen going on eight, as unworldly as a kitten in a basket.

I stirred my coffee and sucked the spoon. Joseph came up next to me, not too close, and said, “How do you like the Island? You came up the other night, didn’t you?”

“Oh, it’s beautiful.” I set the spoon on the saucer. “How did you know? When I came up, I mean.”

“Miss Schuyler, here’s the first thing you need to know about the Island. Everyone knows each other’s business. All of it, about five minutes after it happens, if not sooner. Spreads through the air or something.” He paused to sip his coffee. “Also, I saw Isobel driving you back from the ferry.”

“Oh, of course.”

The window overlooked the lawn and the tents. Sometime during the fuss of the past hour, an old rust-red Ford truck had driven onto the grass, and a couple of men were now unloading crates from the back. Crystal and china, I guessed. I could just see the edge of the dock, and the tip of Popeye’s boat tethered up on the other side against the pale blue sky.

“It’s got the whole island buzzing,” Joseph said.

“What has?”

“Why, the wedding. Mr. Fisher’s a big man around here.”

I shifted my feet and looked down at the still, muddy surface of my coffee. “I don’t really know him that well. He’s been awfully nice to Mama.”

“I hear they met at your school? Your mother and Mr. Fisher?”

“Yes. Last year.” I paused, and the silence seemed so heavy and almost rude, given the tender, friendly way he’d asked the question, I rushed on. “At Isobel’s graduation? One of the events. I don’t really know which one, there’s so many of them, ceremonies and parties and things. My mother was a secretary in the president’s office, you see, ever since my father—well, since my father …” I stuttered to a stop, brought up short in the middle of all that flustered babbling by the thought of my father.

“Killed in the war, wasn’t he?” Joseph said, without embarrassment.

“Why, how did you know?”

“Like I said, the Island’s been talking about this for weeks, Miss Schuyler. Not that I listen to gossip much. But you can’t help hearing a few things, even without trying. My grandmother, she runs the general store in town. There’s nothing she doesn’t know.”

I glanced at him, and though he stared straight ahead, holding the cup to his lips like he was fascinated by the unloading of crystal and china, I thought he was smiling a little.

“Is that so?” I said. “What else have you heard?”

“Oh, just this and that.”

You know, it’s a funny thing. I didn’t know this boy, this man. Just his name and face and approximate age, and the fact that he trapped lobsters for a living, that he could swim, that he was the kind of fellow who would jump in the sea to save another fellow from drowning. He was a stranger, but he wasn’t. We’d held a bleeding, broken man between the two of us; we’d watched the eternity of life pass before us. Now we shared a pot of coffee. Stared out the same window, breathed the same air. So he wasn’t a stranger, but he was.

I set down my cup and turned around to hop up and sit on the counter. The clock on the opposite wall pointed its sharp black hands to a quarter past seven. A quarter past seven! I thought I’d lived a lifetime. I crossed my arms over my disgraceful nightgown and said—not to Joseph but to the room at large—“He taught at Foxcroft for eleven years. My father. He took a leave of absence to join up, so when he was killed, Miss Charlotte gave Mama a job to make ends meet. She’s like that, Miss Charlotte. Sort of tough and horsey, if you know what I mean, but heart of gold.”

“What did he teach?”

“Art. That’s why he volunteered, because he heard about what the Nazis were doing, looting and destroying all those treasures, and he couldn’t just—couldn’t stand by, he said …”

“A good man, then.”

“He was. Oh, he was. Of course, I was only eleven years old when he died. So maybe I never saw him as a real person, as somebody ordinary and fallen.”

“No,” Joseph said. “He fought for something he believed in. That’s a hero in anyone’s book.”

“Everybody fought. Mr. Fisher fought.”

“Yes, he did. Lucky for your mother, he got out alive, though.”

“Yes, lucky for her.”

“They say she’s a real beauty, your mother.”

“Mama? Oh yes. Haven’t you seen her?”

“Not up close, no. Just the photograph in the local rag.”

“Sometimes I just stare at her, you know, thinking it’s not possible anyone could be that beautiful. She was so young when she married Daddy. Only just eighteen. Can you imagine being a widow at twenty-nine? But she loved him so much, she just couldn’t look at anyone else for ever so long.”

He moved a little, turning his head to look at me. “What about you? Happy about all this?”

“Me? Of course I am. Why shouldn’t I be?”

“No reason.”

“Mama’s happy, the happiest I’ve ever seen her, at least since Daddy died. You can’t mourn forever, can you?”

“That’s true.”

“And I guess Mr. Fisher loves her back, because he’s not marrying her for money, that’s for certain.”

“A real Cinderella story, then.” He finished his coffee and moved to the sink. Rinsed out his cup. “Best be off. Got to take Silva’s tub back to the harbor. And Pops’ll be wondering where I am.”

“Can’t you signal him in or something? There’s plenty of coffee left.”

He smiled. “Pops’d never come in here. Not Greyfriars.”

“Really? Why not? Mr. Fisher’s not some kind of snob, is he?”

“A snob? No, nothing like that. I’ll say this about the Island. The Families and the locals, they respect each other, which is more than you can say of a lot of places like this.”

“The Families?”

“Summer residents. Like you.” He wiped his fingers on a dishtowel and held his hand out to me. “Real nice to meet you, Miss Schuyler. Wish it could have been under friendlier circumstances, of course, but it’s been a pleasure all the same.”

I slid down from the counter and shook his hand. “It’s Miranda.”

“Miranda.” He smiled again. “Admired Miranda! Indeed the top of admiration! Worth what’s dearest to the world.”

I snatched at the edge of the counter behind me. I think my mouth made an amazed circle. Outside the window, which was cracked open an inch or two, the birds sang like mad, thrilled to pieces at the beauty of the morning, and Joseph just stared at me like we were sharing a secret, and he was waiting for me to find out what it was.

Finally I said, “Why, how do you know—”

“Joseph! My goodness, what’s going on?”

We turned to the doorway, where Isobel Fisher stood, long limbed and done up in curlers, her yellow dressing gown belted at the waist.

5.

I MET ISOBEL Fisher at the same instant I stepped onto Winthrop Island for the first time, two nights before the wedding. The morning storms had cleared away, and the breeze was cool and smelled of ozone, of the ocean. She had come to meet the ferry, and when I saw her, leaning against a massive, venerable Oldsmobile 98, wearing a checked shirt, rolled at the sleeves, and billowy white trousers, I waved from the railing. We might not have known each other, but I recognized her face and the pale, cornsilk shade of her hair. She wore no cosmetics that I could see, except for a swath of cherry-red lipstick, perfectly drawn. I remember she wasn’t wearing a hat.

The ferry’s engines ground and ground, shoving us alongside the dock in lazy, expert thrusts. Isobel’s gaze slid along the line of passengers at the rail, and when she found me at last, still waving, she straightened from the car and waved back. I don’t know if she actually recognized me. As the ferry knocked into place and the ferryman tossed the rope to the fellow on the dock, she swung her car keys from the index finger of her left hand, with no apparent regard for the monstrous diamond that perched a few digits down.

That was Thursday evening, and there weren’t many other passengers. I came last down the ramp, staggering a little under the burden of the two old leather portmanteaus that contained nearly all I owned. My pocketbook banged between my wrist and the handle of the right-hand suitcase. As I reached the bottom and stepped onto the dock, Isobel went around to open up the back. “Just a minute!” she called, thrusting her head and shoulders inside, rummaging around. “I picked up the flowers from Mrs. Beardsley along the way. Was your journey perfectly horrible? I can’t believe you made it all by yourself, you brave thing.”

Her torso emerged from the back of the Oldsmobile. She pushed back her pale hair and reached for one of the suitcases, and without any effort at all she lifted it up and heaved it inside. Even at school, her lean, straight-hipped athleticism had awed me. Nearly all the girls brought their own horses to Foxcroft, but Isobel had brought two—great, rangy, bloodthirsty beasts—and hunted them both all autumn. Once she’d broken her arm in a bad fall, and the sling had somehow suited her.

Not to be outdone, I hauled the second suitcase myself, only more awkwardly. Isobel made a few adjustments, satisfied herself to the security of Mrs. Beardsley’s flowers, and turned around at last. “Can you believe we’re sisters?” she said, in that drawly voice of hers, always faintly amused at something or other. She stood back and held me at the shoulders. “Miranda. Little sister. I simply can’t wait to show you Greyfriars. I can’t wait to show you Winthrop and everything in it.”

But that was two nights ago, and she hadn’t had much time to show me anything yet, because of the wedding and because her fiancé arrived the next afternoon. Clayton Monk. (Yes, those Monks, the department store fortune.) His parents’ house lay at the northeastern end of the Island, four miles away, and we’d all met for dinner at the Winthrop Island Club last night. Sort of a celebration. Mama’s wedding and Isobel’s betrothal, because they’d only just gotten engaged in May, when Clayton graduated from Harvard Law—Hahvahd, the Monks called it, short a, they’re a Boston family—and this was the Club’s first chance to properly congratulate the happy couple.

Well, it was a grand night, all right. Clay Monk was a clean, handsome, well-tailored fellow, you know the type, and Isobel wore a dress of such shimmery pale yellow satin, it looked gold and matched her hair. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have said she was trying to outshine my mother—the actual bride, you’ll recall—but then you haven’t seen my mother, have you? I mean, not up close. Even at thirty-six she was more beautiful than Isobel. I say that without prejudice. Raven hair clean of even a single gray strand, eyes the color of twilight. Picture Elizabeth Taylor, I guess, and you’re not far off. Isobel didn’t stand a chance, even in her golden dress, and maybe she knew it. She laid low, stealing off with Clayton after dinner, and he must have driven her home afterward because when she walked into the Greyfriars kitchen at twenty minutes past seven o’clock on the morning of Mama’s wedding, wearing her curlers and her yellow dressing gown, that was the first I’d seen of her since Clayton wiped a smear of crème anglaise from her chin the night before and led her out on the terrace, where the orchestra played “Sentimental Me.”

Joseph greeted her with a smile you might call familiar. “Morning, Isobel. Nothing much. Just old Silva fell in the drink, and I had to haul him back out.”

“Well, they’re putting him to bed upstairs, awful fuss. I’ve got a terrible hung head. Is that coffee?” She yawned.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She moved to the Welsh dresser that held all the everyday porcelain, planting a kiss on my cheek along the way. “Morning, sister dear. Did he wake you up too?”

I lifted my hand to return the caress, but she’d already slipped away. “I was already awake.”

“Too excited to sleep, were you? What about your mother? I hope she got her beauty sleep, all right. Her wedding day!” Another yawn, and a wince. “I’m sure I’ll be able to appreciate all that sunshine in an hour or two. Hit me, will you?”

She held out her cup to me and smiled. She wasn’t wearing her lipstick yet, but her mouth was still pink. I took the cup and filled it with coffee from the percolator, added cream and sugar from the tin on the counter.

“Thanks, darling,” Isobel said, taking the cup. “Shouldn’t you be heading back to your boat now, Joseph? I’m sure you have plenty of lobsters left to catch this morning. Or maybe college boys are above that kind of thing?”

“College?” I said.

“Joseph’s at Brown.” Isobel looked over the rim of her cup, not at me but at Joseph, who stood before the icebox with his arms crossed. In her drawling, intimate voice, she said, “He’s a rising junior. Isn’t that right, Joseph?”

“Two years to go.” He returned to her some kind of look, I didn’t know what it was. Something warm and knowledgeable, something that connected the two of them, something that made me feel like an absolute stranger in that room, an intruder, an innocent. Which I was, of course. Still, whatever the frisson between them, it lasted only a second or two. Joseph uncrossed his arms and said cheerfully, “Like you said, best be heading back out on the water now. Nice to meet you, Miss Schuyler. Isobel.”

He made a little salute with the first two fingers of his right hand and walked out the kitchen door, whistling a snatch of something, taking all the conversation with him inside a swirl of fresh June air. I watched the window until he came into view. Quick, jaunty stride. Sun striking his head. Isobel turned away.

“Oh, not you too.”

“Me too what?”

She angled her head to the window. “That. Joseph. All the girls on the Island are crazy about him. He lives on the Rock, you know. Flood Rock.”

I turned to her. “The lighthouse? Really? I can see it from my window!”

“His father’s the lightkeeper. Of course, his wife does the actual work, so he can keep on lobstering. Nice little arrangement.” She nodded again to the window, even though you couldn’t see the lighthouse from this angle, tucked away at the side of the house, and I followed the gesture. Joseph was no bigger than a lobster himself by now, although considerably more graceful and less red, striding down the curve of the lawn toward the dock.

“It’s nice they can afford the college tuition,” I said.

“Well, why not? He hasn’t got any siblings. And I guess old Vargas doesn’t think so much of the lobster trade that he wants his son to follow in his footsteps. What about breakfast, do you think? Where’s Esther?”

“Helping them put Mr. Silva to bed, I think.”

She joined me at the window, cradling her coffee in her palms. She smelled of some kind of flower, maybe gardenias, and I thought it must be her soap or shampoo, because who wore perfume at this hour? Joseph had reached the dock. The tide had gone out a little, so the boat kicked against the pilings. He reached down and unwound the rope. Leapt nimbly from the dock to the boat and bent over the wheel, on the other side of the deckhouse, so we couldn’t see him.

I had a thousand questions I wanted to ask Isobel. I wanted to ask about the Island, about her father, about Joseph. About college, about her own mother. Things I’d wanted to ask in the car from the ferry but couldn’t, because Isobel gleamed like sunshine, because Isobel had graduated the year before me at Foxcroft and was therefore so untouchable as to be divine.

Yet there was something a little softer about Isobel this morning, as if her sleek, athletic edges had blurred with sleep in the night, as if the curlers in her hair had made her mortal. She leaned her elbows on the counter and sipped her coffee, staring, like me, at the lobster boat curving its way westward toward the harbor.

“Go ahead and look,” she said. “Just don’t touch.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Isobel lifted herself back up and turned to me. She wore a wry little smile on her pink lips. “You and all the other girls. You can look all you like, I don’t care. Just remember one thing, though.” She leaned forward and spoke softly. “He’s mine.”

“Who’s yours, darling?”

I spun toward the door, where Hugh Fisher stood in a dressing gown of his own—paisley, satin, blue, immaculate—and a helmet of gold hair the same shade as his daughter’s, just slightly the worse for tarnish. For an instant, just that first flash of impression, I thought he looked a little like Clayton Monk.

Isobel went to him and set a kiss into the hollow beneath his cheekbone. “You are, Daddy, and you always will be. But thank God you’ve found a dear, lovely woman to marry this morning, and not some gimlet society goddess from the Club.”

He chuckled and patted her back. “You know I’ve got better sense than that. Has young Vargas left already?”

“Yes, Daddy.” Isobel moved to the Welsh dresser and rummaged for another cup and saucer. “Some poor fellows do have to work for a living, you know. Coffee?”

“Yes, please.” He pulled a cigarette case from the pocket of his dressing gown. “Well, that’s a shame. I wanted to shake his hand, after what he did this morning. He’s a damned fine young man, that Vargas. A credit to the Island.” He lit the cigarette, drew in a long, luxurious breath, and looked at me, smiling vaguely, as if he’d just perceived my existence in the corner by the window. “Ah, there you are, princess. Good morning. I believe you’re wanted upstairs.”

I started forward. “Mr. Silva?”

“Silva? What, what? You don’t mean to say you’ve forgotten the main event of the day, have you?” He laughed, took his cup from Isobel, and beckoned me over. He’d already shaved, and his pink skin smelled of that masculine, expensive soap men use for the purpose, a scent that jolted me because it was exactly the same as my father’s.

I stopped and stared at his left hand, holding the saucer, holding also the cigarette between the first and second fingers. His right hand curled in the air, motioning me closer.

I leaned my head toward him, trying not to breathe. I told myself it was the nearby smoke from his cigarette that repelled me, because I had always liked Mr. Fisher. He was so kind, always so perfectly courteous. He adored my mother, and he had charmed our lives over the course of the past year.

I don’t know if he noticed my hesitation. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, in a confidential voice, “A certain blushing bride has need of her bridesmaid.”