Osprey Island

employees a few at a time. As some of the last people to hear, if not see, Lorna Squire alive the previous night, Peg and Jeremy were questioned together, their responses taken and recorded with great enthusiasm on the part of the deputy who didn’t often get to do much but look stern and holler at kids he caught climbing the yacht club fence for late-night swims.

No foul play was suspected—what was foul about it? A very sad, very, very drunk woman who’s just had a fight with her husband passes out on the couch, a lit cigarette in her fingers . . . What more was there to say? She left no note. No intimation of suicide. But whose mind didn’t it cross? It wasn’t hard at all for anyone to picture Lorna Squire doing herself in. They’d watched her take her own life, day by day, for years. They wondered what would happen to Squee, what would happen to Lance, but people had wondered all of those things when Lorna was alive. She’d always been dying; now she was dead. In the wake of the fire Gavin found himself overcome by a sense of protectiveness that made him envy his roommate, Jeremy. He wanted someone in his arms the way gawky, pimpled Jeremy cradled Peg in his, and though Brigid wasn’t exactly what he wanted, she was also clearly not unwilling to have him nearby.

None of this was what Gavin had expected. He’d been prepared for a summer of long walks with Heather, his Stanford girlfriend, on the beaches of her childhood, which she’d so languorously described to Gavin as they lay pinned to each other in his dorm bed back at school. It was meant to be a dream summer. She’d told him about the hotel, straight out of Dirty Dancing, she’d said. And he’d pictured the two of them, like Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey, only reversed, kind of, since he was the one from the upper-middle-class family in LA, she the island girl he loved. Gavin liked that about himself, that of all people to fall in love with, he’d tumbled not for a Palo Alto sorority girl or a politician’s daughter from D.C., but for a girl from the other side of the proverbial tracks. His parents had liked Heather, thought her, as he had, smart and sensible, someone who valued a good education but also held onto dreams of a family and a quiet life, dreams Gavin had felt himself latch on to, perhaps for lack of real, tangible dreams of his own. But his parents had certainly not understood their son’s desire to go off and serve prime rib dinners to the East Coast vacation set rather than lead wilderness trips in the Sierras or scramble for some prestigious summer internship in San Francisco. Gavin had been proud of his decision. Also, he liked the notion of following a woman, not a career, liked thinking of himself not as a doer but as a lover.

When Heather had announced her intention to return home to Osprey Island for the summer, Gavin had felt gallant in offering to accompany her. She’d protested, albeit meekly, saying no, that was crazy, what was he going to do, wait tables at the Lodge? For real? And he liked the picture he’d painted himself into: he was the boy who loved her and wanted to get to know her family. There was even a part of him that wanted to fall in love with that island, to step off the clanking old ferry Heather’d described and into a place that would feel more like home than home had ever felt. Heather was to be his entrance into another world. They’d finish their degrees and move back to Osprey, have an island wedding at the old golf house on the hill. Maybe secretly Heather’d already be pregnant, and they’d move into an A-frame overlooking the sound and start their own family. They’d make their living restoring old houses and selling them to wealthy New Yorkers looking for vacation homes. Or they’d open a restaurant, work like hell from Memorial Day to Labor Day and have the rest of the year to themselves. Gavin had allowed himself these dreams.

He felt now—given the circumstances which had arisen since his arrival—that Heather hadn’t protested his coming to Osprey quite as much as she should have. It was possible, he conceded, that she had protested vehemently and he’d merely taken it as her thoughtfulness for his other prospects, his welfare. Now all that thrummed through his mind were imagined conversations he invented between Heather and her high school boyfriend, Chandler—late-night phone calls in April and May between Heather’s dorm room and Chandler’s parents’ home on Osprey. Heather complaining about the boy from LA who wouldn’t take no for an answer, Chandler saying, You got to tell him no. And Heather whining, I tried. And Chandler saying, Not hard enough.

From the Lodge deck Gavin could see a redhead sitting down on the beach. Beyond her, just offshore, the seagulls swooped and rose from the water like lazy yo-yos. To the right was Morey’s Dinghy, tucked where the sandy beach gave way to reedy swamp. To the left Sand Beach Road extended a good mile along the shore. Gavin crossed and made his way along the narrow, splintering boardwalk that ran between the asphalt and the sand. The whitewashed railing left a chalky residue on his hand, and he wiped it on his jeans as he tromped over the sand toward Brigid. She had on gym shorts and a striped bikini top. She was reading a fashion magazine.

“Looking to catch a little skin cancer?” he called, approaching.

She turned, shielded her eyes from the sun, and leveled her gaze at him soberly. “I think they’ve determined it’s not contagious.”

He hovered. “Still, you’re pretty pale to be lounging out, aren’t you?”

“Ah!” She clasped her hands at her heart. “Look at him! He cares!”

Gavin sat down in the sand beside her towel, legs bent out in front of him, hands on his knees. He looked over the bay. “How you doing?”

“Such attention! Hardly know what to do with myself.”

“You want me to go?” Gavin offered.

Brigid fixed him in her stare. “Now, what do you think?”

Gavin gave her a conciliatory smile but said nothing. They looked out at the water. After a minute Brigid said, “Not so bad, considering.” Then she said, “How are you, then?”

“OK,” he said. A pause. “You going out tonight?”

Brigid shrugged noncommittally: Make me an offer.

“You think it’s wrong to go out?” Gavin asked.

“Fuck if I know.”

“Yeah . . .”

“I never so much as laid eyes on the woman,” Brigid said.

“Yeah,” Gavin said, “but everyone who’s from here knew her.” He thought for a moment. “I wonder if they’ll even open the bar. I mean, it’s a pretty damn small town.”

“Pub or not,” Brigid said, “I’ll be fucking gumming for a pint by evening.”

“That worry you ever?” Gavin said, half-teasing. “That nationalistic need for beer?”

“About as much as your nationalistic need for cheeseburgers worries you, I’d say.”