Susannah’s grandmother, her mother’s mother, had also worked in the netting factory, side by side with her father’s mother. The two women had been firm friends, and it was through this connection Susannah’s parents had met.
Susannah pulled the box out all the way and opened up the lid. She took out the stack of old photographs. She knew them all by heart, but even so she laid them out on the wooden floor. There was the old wedding picture in Sweden, and one of her grandparents’ wedding in Vinalhaven, on the steps of the old church. One of her favourites was the picture of all the women who worked in the netting factory. Three rows of serious faces all dressed in black. She loved to think about the stories of all those women. Had they all grown up in Vinalhaven? Did they have dreams and desires beyond the island? Had any of those women managed to escape to the world outside of Maine?
She sifted through the photos and found what she was really looking for. The picture of her dad in his American army uniform. He looked so pleased with himself. A big smile plastered on his face, with his officer’s cap on top of his slicked-back hair. Had he really been so happy to go off to war? Or was it to escape the island? She imagined all the places he’d got to see before he met his end in Italy. She had been five, Kate four, when their father had died. Her memories of him from before the war were hazy, but she remembered those hallowed times when he had read to them at night. He had given her a love of books. Susannah stared at her father’s face. She sought in this photograph an understanding of who she was.
It had been snowing, the day their mother had received the telegram. The day before Thanksgiving, and their mother had been cooking in preparation for her husband’s family’s annual visit. Every time Susannah smelt or tasted pecan pie, its sweetness brought back the sound of their mother’s cry. A long, low wail, like a wounded animal. Terrifying in its depth. A sound neither she nor Kate had ever heard their mother make before.
Their mother had run out of the house, snow falling as she plunged through white drifts towards the sea. Kate had been terrified.
‘What’s wrong with Mom?’ she’d asked Susannah, her small face white with shock, tears welling in her eyes.
‘It’s something to do with Daddy,’ Susannah said to her sister, picking up the telegram. She had not been reading for long and grasped at the words. ‘I think he’s dead,’ she whispered, her heart feeling big and huge in her chest. It had never occurred to her that her father might never come back from the war. ‘He was killed.’
But Kate wasn’t listening. She had followed their mother out into the garden, slipping along the trail her mother had made through the snow in her house shoes. Susannah watched Kate go to their mother, and pull on her arm. Bring her back from the brink of her despair. Their mother turned to Kate, bent down and scooped her up. Held her tight to her chest. Susannah watched her mother and sister together in loss, their mother clinging onto her child to stop herself from walking into the icy sea. The two of them shaking with cold and grief, yet still not turning back into the house and their new reality. Susannah didn’t know why she hadn’t joined them. But she held back, with her forehead pressed to the chill windowpane, feeling outside of her family, tears trailing down her cheeks. Why had God taken her father from her?
It had been almost nine years since that terrible day. The very worst day in her life by far. She had woken this Saturday morning to a white world, the first snows of the winter. Always, it reminded her of her father’s death. The whole morning, she’d been aching to dig out the box of photographs and find his picture. She was afraid that one day she would forget what he looked like. Already, he had become a shadowy memory.
Susannah heard her mother calling up to her from down below. She’d gone upstairs to sweep the floors and get her mother’s new glasses. Her mother hated wearing them, but she needed them when she laced.
Susannah put the photograph back in the box and shoved it under her mother’s bed. She picked the glasses up from her mother’s dressing table.
Downstairs, her mother and Kate were both sitting either side of the lacing stand, working on net bags for pool tables. The table was in the window for the best light. Outside it had stopped snowing and the sun had come out, sparkling on the snow and illuminating the room. Her mother had a big order to fulfil and she and Kate had been working away since the early morning, while Susannah had cleaned the whole house.
‘How come
