Olivia did not know what to say. She stared at the newspaper in Mary Poor’s lap, folded to the crossword puzzle, which had nearly been completed.
“That husband of yours,” Mary said.
“Paul?”
“Paul. He’s a very high-strung sort, isn’t he? You need to feed him kale with sea salt and lemon.”
Olivia laughed.
“Kale with sea salt for those nerves of his. And you tell him it’s about time he came back. I have plenty more I can tell him and Lord knows how much longer I can keep it straight in this old noggin.” She touched her fingertips to her temple.
“You seem very lucid to me, Mrs. Poor.” Olivia stood up. She bent down to pick up the bags, nearly straining her back with the weight of them.
“You make this the last time you bring magazines by here, all right?” Mary said.
Olivia frowned. “I don’t understand,” she said. “I thought…”
“You can come visiting anytime, child, but not doing Annie’s chores for her.”
Mary leaned back in the rocking chair after the girl had gone and closed her eyes. She had done enough of the crossword puzzle for now, and she knew that Jane would be asleep until suppertime. She should take a little rest herself, but her mind kept returning to the girl’s face. Had she really looked like Elizabeth? Probably not. To be honest, she could barely remember Elizabeth’s face at all. It was frozen in her memory at the ages she’d been in the few pictures she had of her. Three, eight, fifteen. That last picture had been taken the day before she ran away. She remembered well how she’d looked the very last time she’d seen her, though, two years ago, when she’d been lying in a casket. Mary never would have recognized her. Elizabeth had been fifty-eight years old, gray-haired and waxy-pale.
A friend of Elizabeth’s in Ohio had sent Mary the letter, telling her that Elizabeth had collapsed at work and never regained consciousness. Mary wanted to go to the funeral, she told Annie. She needed to pay her last respects.
Annie drove her, and it took them a very long time to get there. Days, perhaps. Mary wasn’t sure. She slept most of the way, while Annie sang along with the radio. Mary would catch bits and pieces of her songs, amused by the energy she put into them, as though she were on stage. It made Mary chuckle to herself. Then she’d feel a little guilty at the comfort she took in being with Annie, while her own daughter had died a stranger to her.
Annie took care of her on that trip, and for once Mary needed Annie’s care more than Annie needed hers. Away from Kiss River for the first time in many years, Mary suddenly felt every bit her age—eighty-seven and one half years old. Almost as devastating as seeing the unfamiliar, lifeless body of her daughter was the sudden awareness of her frailty. She was confused, uncertain of the hour or the day. Sometimes uncertain of the year. In the restaurants, she stared at the silverware, trying to remember how to hold a fork, how to cut her meat. During the night in the hotel, she woke Annie half a dozen times to ask her why there were no bursts of light coming through the window.
The strangers she met at the funeral treated her like a very old woman, sometimes talking past her as if she were not there. Annie became her eyes and her ears and her memory. Mary would catch her dear young friend looking at her with a worry in her face she had never noticed before. Annie wept at Elizabeth’s funeral, and Mary knew it was not Elizabeth she cried for, but her. She wanted to assure Annie that she was all right, that Annie did not have to fret about her. But the truth was, away from Kiss River she was a very old woman.
She was relieved to be back at Kiss River after that long and taxing journey. She stepped stiffly out of Annie’s car and felt immediately rejuvenated by the cool, salt-filled air. She wanted to climb to the top of the lighthouse, but Annie dissuaded her. Annie made dinner for her before going home to her own family, fussing over her as if she were a helpless child.
Mary had only been back at Kiss River a day and a half when she fell. Looking back later, she wished she could say there’d been an obstacle in her path that night, but the truth was she was simply walking across the kitchen floor when she lost her balance and went down. Pain shot through her hip and arm, and her cheek smacked hard against the tile. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t lift herself a fraction of an inch from the floor.
For two days and two nights she did without food or drink. She messed herself. The floor grew as cold as the ground outside, while the fire in the living room turned to ashes and a cold front swept across Kiss River. Mary slipped in and out of consciousness, struggling to keep her mind working by remembering the names of the dozens of men who had worked at the lifesaving station over the years.
On the third night, Annie arrived. Mary heard her key in the front door. She heard her step into the living room, and she tried to call out to her, but her throat was too dry. Annie called her name as she moved from room to room, and Mary heard her gasp when she finally entered the kitchen.
“Oh, my God,” Annie said, dropping next to her, the soft fabric of her skirt brushing over Mary’s face. Did she have someone with her that night? Yes, of course. Mary remembered Annie speaking to the stranger who hung back in the shadows of the cold living room, telling him to call an ambulance. Then she lifted Mary’s head into her lap and rocked her, as she must have rocked her children when they were younger.
“Oh, Mary,” she whispered, her hair like a red veil in front of Mary’s eyes. “You’ve gone and done it this time, precious. They’ll move you out now for sure.”
Mary hoped she would die right then. She squeezed her eyes closed and tried to force her soul from her body, but her effort only resulted in a deep and painless sleep. And when she woke up to the smell of antiseptic and sterile air, she knew she had left Kiss River forever.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Paul knew he should have backed out of tonight’s meeting. He’d been sitting in his car on the tree-lined street in front of Alec’s house for several minutes now, his windows rolled up and the air conditioner blowing in his face as he summoned up the courage to go inside. The first few meetings at the Sea Tern had been uncomfortable enough. He didn’t know why Alec had suddenly suggested the committee meet here.
On the outside, the house was utterly Annie—yellow, with white trim, and surrounded by trees hung heavy with Spanish moss. It was a decade old—he knew that she and Alec had it built when Alec’s practice was finally solvent. A couple of brightly colored sailboards were propped against the side wall, and he could see a fish-shaped windsock flying from the pier around back. The house was on the sound, on a little cul-de-sac of water, just as Annie had described it to him.
