Page 12 of Dead of Summer

HENRY

Henry hits the switch on an electric kettle, filthy with hardwater stains.

Back when Margie was in her prime, she would never have allowed it to get so bad, he thinks with a flash of guilt, as he pulls a mug printed with a faded image of Hadley’s Osprey Point Lighthouse out of the dish drainer.

He glances at the closed bedroom door and tries to make his footsteps lighter so as not to disturb her as he goes to the cupboard for the coffee canister.

Before things took a turn for the worse Margie was always keeping busy, bustling around the house sweeping nooks and crannies and wiping down the edges of things, her sturdy body fussing at the stove or shaking a rug off on the wraparound deck.

Henry can still hear her faintly humming along to the radio, a little out of tune.

He thought at the time that he could preserve them the way they were forever and keep them safe.

That if they were on this rock nothing bad could ever touch them. He was oh so wrong.

Henry carries his mug across the living room past the full wall of windows that face the windward side of Hadley Island.

They give him an unobstructed view from the pier in Port Mary all the way to the lighthouse perched on the end of a rocky cliff.

Everything in between is within his purview.

The telescope stands on its swivel in front of a broad dining table rendered unusable by its cover of newspapers and logbooks, old bills and an assortment of open charts.

Henry takes a long drink of coffee and bends down to look through the lens, noting that the ferry has arrived, disgorging a whole new crowd of tourists onto shore.

They wander along the road into town, dispersing at the village, where they check into one of the B&Bs in the old Victorians off the main drag or move farther inland to various rental homes.

With a sharp jab in his chest, he moves the telescope once more to the Gallos’ house.

Henry had studied the property this morning, looking for broken branches or soil upturned by footprints, but found nothing in the thick-knit foliage covering the house.

He doesn’t know what he expects to see, but through the vines the house remains dark and quiet, the windows gray with dirt.

It must have been a trick of the mind that he saw there, a reflection in the glass cast from a fishing boat offshore.

The O’Connors’ house is quiet today too.

Maybe the whole thing was just a dream. He is tempted to go back to the entry in his logbook and scribble it out entirely.

It would certainly ease some of the anxiety that has gripped him since he woke up.

Henry pans left, following the rocky shoreline until it gives way to the perfectly manicured sand in front of the Clarkes’ mansion.

The staff have been preparing the house all week.

He’s watched them anxiously zigzagging across the lawn, putting out deck chairs and skimming the leaves off the swimming pool’s surface.

But now there is a row of black SUVs in the drive that weren’t there before.

The family must have come in last night while he was asleep.

The Clarkes are not people to take a ferry anywhere.

A private plane is much more their style.

He pauses to make a note in his logbook.

3:14pm. The Clarkes have returned. Will be keeping a close eye on them.

When he goes back to the eyepiece of the telescope, David Clarke is stepping out onto the veranda, his phone pressed to his ear.

He is lean and tanned, his hair parted and combed into the same timeless, conservative style as his father’s.

Henry finds this amusing. The young man has been quite literally groomed for the role.

Since the day he was born David has had only one direction in life, which was straight in line behind his father.

In business and in life. Margie would appreciate the observation.

He’ll have to tell her when she wakes up.

The door behind David slides open and a woman comes out to stand next to him.

The hem of her blue dress flutters in the wind as she leans toward him.

David turns to her, putting his hand to her hip.

Their heads bend together. Henry’s eyes strain as he watches her stand on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek.

She turns to the water and the sun catches her face. Henry’s heart lurches. Impossible.

A scraping sound nearby startles Henry away from the telescope.

He looks out the window down at the small blue boat pulling up to his little weatherworn dock.

Jean is throwing a rope over the side. She heaves the boat in, looping the rope around the mooring to secure it.

She had been having trouble getting someone to cover for her at the Crab, but clearly, she took care of that.

Henry doesn’t know what he’d do without her biweekly visits.

She’s been their lifeline, the one connection they’ve had with the outside.

Through the window he puts a hand up in greeting.

She returns the gesture, squinting up at him.

As Marjorie’s younger sister, Jean has been providing for them for more than a decade, ever since the incident.

She never let the town rumor mill sway her.

Still, Henry is eternally grateful and more than a little bit mortified by her assistance.

She unloads several paper bags of groceries from Danny’s Market onto the dock, then pulls herself out of the boat.

He should go down and help. Henry starts toward the door and then at the last moment he rushes back across the room.

He covers the logbook with a map and swivels the telescope up, pointing it toward the sky.

I’m a stargazer , is what he’d say if anyone ever asked. Though no one ever has.

“Hi, Henry. How’s it been?” Jean bustles in, followed by a breath of ocean air. He takes the bags from her and walks them over to the counter.

“Fine, fine.” He pauses, eager to tell her about the O’Connor girl and the light he saw in the Gallos’ upstairs window.

He’d like someone to reassure him. Of course, that might mean he has finally lost his mind out here and is seeing things, an equally worrying development.

He stops himself. Jean has no idea about his hobby. Margie has always made sure of it.

He notices Jean looking at the bedroom door. It’s shut now. It’s been staying shut later and later, making his days more and more solitary. He swallows and turns back to the counter.

“How are things going with you, Jean?” he asks instead. His voice sounds loud and unnatural from lack of use. “How’s the Crab?”

“Getting crowded already. I have a feeling it’s going to be busy this summer.” Jean bustles around the kitchen opening cupboards and putting things away. The arthritis in her leg has gotten worse lately, he notes. It drags very slightly on the wood floor.

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” he says absently, inspecting a can of peeled tomatoes.

Even though Henry hasn’t been to the Salty Crab in nearly fifteen years, through Jean he knows the ins and outs of the place as though he were a regular.

Every special menu item and employee scuffle.

Henry enjoys the chatter. Hearing about these people with their day-to-day problems and mundane situations almost makes him feel like one of them, like he is normal.

And he knows that it is good for Jean to be able to talk freely to him in a way she can’t with anyone on the island. After all, who does he have to tell?

“I know I should be grateful for business being good.”

He can hear the guilt in her voice. “But what?” Henry asks quickly, putting the can into a cupboard with a whole stack of others. He doesn’t really cook tomatoes but doesn’t have the heart to tell her.

“I don’t know what has gotten into people lately. They’re always wanting gluten-free lobster rolls and asking if we have reposado, whatever that is. Not asking, demanding . And the look on their faces when I say no. This place is changing. And not for the better.”

How much the island has transformed over the years is a common theme in their conversations.

Hadley has always been exclusive and monied in the summer, but there was always something more laid-back about it than other East Coast getaways like the Hamptons or Martha’s Vineyard.

Perhaps because of its size and how isolated it is there was something more quaint and charming about the island than some of its brasher, more commercial neighbors.

But over the past few years something has shifted.

Henry can feel it even from here on his little outpost. It’s been, as Jean put it bitterly once, discovered .

The crowds are bigger, younger. Boats moor in front of the marina and blare music, the girls sunning themselves on the bows in barely-there bikinis.

Port Mary is nothing like the sleepy fishing village where he’d grown up.

Back then the wealthy people were mostly quiet and kept to themselves.

But then again, Henry thinks, maybe it’s the world that is changing.

Not just Hadley Island. How would he know?

Jean unloads the bags, lining up various pantry items on the counter. She grunts with the effort. Henry tries to intercede. “You don’t have to do that. I am perfectly capable of putting my own groceries away.”

But Jean stubbornly picks up a coffee canister. “I don’t do it for you. I do it for Margie.”

Henry stands down, retreating to the other side of the kitchen island. He never could go against Margie’s wishes.

“The Clarkes are back,” Jean says, hobbling toward the fridge with a carton of milk.

“Oh, are they?” Henry tries to sound like this is news to him but miscalculates and it comes out too quickly. Jean glances up sharply. He looks away from her, distracting himself with the grocery haul.

He pulls a box out of one of the bags and looks down at the bright packaging. “What are these?” he says, grateful to change the subject. Chocolate-covered nuggets with crisp rice coating.

“Ice cream bars, just like the label says. They were on special.” She shrugs. It’s unlike her to buy him something so frivolous. Perplexed, he puts them into the freezer next to a frost-coated hunk of haddock.

Jean sighs heavily as she leans to place a bag of potatoes into the cupboard.

She seems extra exhausted lately. He stops to watch.

Is she moving slower than normal? Does she look slightly older?

He relies on her for so much, the idea of it scares him.

“Why don’t you sit down a minute, Jean?” Henry tries again. “Have a cup of tea. I can do the rest.”

She waves him off with a stiff flap of her hand. “No, no. There’s no time to relax. I have to get back. Have a training session with the new hire. An island girl. She’s good so far. Young but surprisingly bright. And a hard worker.”

“Does her family live on the west side?” he asks, trying to sound neutral, though they both know the western part of the island is the side he can see.

Jean shakes her head. “No, she’s from back in the village. Her mom is Eunice Collier.”

“The drunk?”

“The very one.”

Henry shakes his head. He’s finding lately that some of the people in town are beginning to blur in his memory after so long away. Some may even be starting to disappear altogether. The thought is frightening and keeps him diligent about his logbooks.

“But Gemma is a good kid. You wouldn’t know she’s had it so rough from spending time with her.

I’m grateful for her. Not easy to find a young person with a decent head on their shoulders these days.

” Jean folds the paper bags and puts them under the counter as Henry scans his memory for the young girl or her mother, but he comes up empty.

The longer he spends away from the island, the more he doesn’t know about it.

No matter how hard he tries to keep up, things slip through the cracks.

He can only know what he can see, after all.

“What does Gemma look like?” he asks. At this Jean turns sharply and stares at him.

It passes quickly, but he can see in her arched brows something he’d rather not, something that makes him take a small step back and retreat into himself, going quiet until she leaves.

He watches Jean limp down to the dock and get into her little boat, motoring back to the island, the question hanging unanswered in the air behind her.