Osprey Island

any more. Lance’s arms were laid across the armrests of the peeling whitewashed Adirondack-style chair in which he sat, and Brigid instinctively, and compassionately, reached out a hand and laid it across his forearm. He stiffened, shut his eyes. It made Brigid feel strange, and a bit frightened. She thought, This is a man whom no one touches.

THE REST OF THE IRISH GIRLS were still down in the dining room playing cards amid their PB&J detritus when Suzy returned from lunch. They’d managed (actually, Tito’s butterscotch pudding had managed) to get Mia to stop crying, but the second she laid eyes on her mother coming through the sliding glass door Mia burst into tears, bounded from her chair, sending her rummy hand scattering, and rushed at Suzy, who squatted and caught her just as Mia let out a terrible sob.

“Baby . . . baby,” Suzy cooed. “Shhhhhh, shhhhhh . . . What’s the matter, Mia? Sweetie? What?” She stroked Mia’s hair, looking over the girl’s head to the Irish girls, asking with her eyes, What’s up with her? What’d I miss?

But Mia wasn’t talking, wasn’t doing anything except burrowing into Suzy as if looking for someplace to hide. Suzy stood, scooping the girl up with her, and Mia wrapped her legs around her mother’s waist instinctually, arms around her neck. For Suzy, a child’s miniature crisis was more than welcome right then—a scrape, a lost game, a perceived injustice—something to supplant, or at least distract her from, all the larger crises at hand. It made Suzy feel strong: here was something she could make better again.

Suzy said, for the Irish girls as much as for Mia, “Why don’t you and I take this upstairs, ma’am?” She sent a knowing look to the girls over there at their card game table, a look to apologize for Mia— I know, I’m sorry, I know she can be a pain. To say, Thanks, be back soon—but her look wasn’t met with anything akin. The girls were worried, their brows furrowed. It was then Suzy realized that Squee wasn’t at the table and that this was no kissable, soothable, manageable problem. She hugged Mia to her, spoke softly into her hair. “Where’s Squee, baby? Did he have lunch with you?” At which Mia only began to sob more ferociously. “OK,” Suzy breathed, “OK.” Her pulse began to race. “OK, baby, OK, let’s just go up to our room and calm down a little. It’s going to be all right.” Like a mantra: “Everything’s going to be all right.”

In the room, Suzy set Mia down on the end of one of the beds and knelt before her on the floor. She tried for patience—she’d dealt enough with crying children to know that her own anxiety wasn’t going to get her anywhere. She tried to slow herself down.

“What’s going on, babe?” She rubbed Mia’s arms at her sides as if to warm her, though the sun shone in brightly through the window shades and Suzy was sweating with fear. “Can you try to tell me what’s going on, Mia-belle? Maybe I can help if you tell me what’s wrong.”

Mia wiped her upper lip with the back of her hand and tried to sniffle through her clogged nose, but couldn’t and choked, coughing instead. Suzy reached for a tissue on the bed stand. “Here, baby.” She held the tissue around Mia’s nostrils. “Blow. Give a good blow— good!” Mia honked into the tissue. Suzy refolded it and let her blow again, then wiped Mia off and tossed the tissue toward a wastebasket, which she missed by a hair.

Mia straightened and breathed in and opened her mouth to speak, but in the time it took for the words to get from her brain to her lips, the realization of their meaning came slamming back at her, so that as she said, “I hate Squee’s dad,” her face was already contorting, the tears beginning anew, flooding out as if they had never paused at all.

Another tissue. More blowing. “Did something happen, Mi? Why do you hate Lance? Did he yell at you? Did he do something that was mean? Did he do something mean to you?” And suddenly she was struck with what felt like a clear and full revelation of the extent to which Lance Squire was capable of doing something mean. Lorna had kept him in check to some degree—but Lorna was gone.

When she spoke it was far too angrily, and though she was clearly castigating herself, not her daughter, it might have appeared otherwise. She grabbed Mia’s shoulders with enough force to scare the girl out of her crying. “Did Lance Squire do anything bad to you, Mia? You have to tell me right now, Mia: you have to tell me if Lance Squire ever did anything bad to you!” She couldn’t believe the words coming out of her mouth. This was not what her life was supposed to be! She’d gotten away! Suzy Chizek had left Osprey Island! What the hell was she doing in an upstairs room at the Osprey Lodge, yelling into the face of her sweetest, only, baby daughter? “Mia, you have to answer me right now—did Lance Squire make you do something you didn’t want to do?” She was pleading, her hands pulling at Mia’s small arms, kneading, as if she could wring out the truth and the evil all at once.

And then, in the midst of—or maybe in reaction to—Suzy’s sudden outburst of desperate and incredulous fear, Mia miraculously regained self-control. In a voice so adult and with such calm presence of mind it was eerie and horrible, she said: “No, Mom, it was nothing like that at all. It’s just he’s so mean to Squee. That’s what’s upsetting me. He’s so mean to Squee, and Squee is my best friend. I’m scared . . . I want to go home.”

Suzy sat there a moment, still, holding Mia’s arms and staring at her daughter as though she’d just been the vehicle of an otherworldly transmission, a voice speaking through this girl from someplace beyond. Suzy’s eyes were grave, and she was nodding her head. “OK,” she said to Mia slowly. “OK.”

Suzy carried Mia back downstairs and left her in the care of the Irish girls again. Then she went to find Reesa in the salon, which looked, as she entered, as though it had been ransacked. Reesa sat in the middle of the linoleum floor, surrounded by ten thousand bottles, tubes, and aerosol cans.

“Jesus,” Suzy said.

Reesa tilted her face toward the door. “And I’ve got a shipment coming in today!” She looked around, trying to figure out where she might possibly store anything else. “I have to keep reminding myself how much spray those ladies like, and what a pain in the ass it is to deal with orders coming in midsummer. I’m planning ahead. Tell me it’s a good thing.” She looked to Suzy, then registered the concern on her face. “What?” Reesa glanced around her again. “It’s not so bad . . . Really, you’d be amazed how fast it goes. Suzy! What? What’s going on?” Reesa was getting it now: something was wrong. She started to her feet.

“No.” Suzy shook her head, waved Reesa back down. “No, no, you’re busy. I just . . . I need to get Mia . . . and Squee . . . You’re waiting for a shipment?”

“Yeah, why? Suze, what’s going on?” Reesa had gotten up anyway and was coming toward Suzy, wiping her hands on her jeans as she walked.

Suzy ran a hand through her hair, felt the scrap of cloth that was holding it back. “No, I just . . . you don’t know what time, do you? When they’re coming? I need to get the kids out of here, Reese. I need to go deal with things. Lance is . . . I don’t know what he is. He’s been at Squee, yelling, whatever, I don’t even know . . . Mia’s a wreck. I just want to get them away from him, just out of here for the afternoon. Just anywhere. I’m probably being totally melodramatic. Mia freaked me out though.” Suzy gestured vaguely with a hand in the direction of their room upstairs. “I don’t know what to do, but while I figure it out I don’t want my kid in his line of fire.”

Reesa put a hand on Suzy’s arm to still her: Hang on a minute, don’t move. She went toward the back of the shop. “Janna? Jan . . . you there?”