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
