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Briar

September 2, 1945

T hree years after that terrible night with Tyson, the war finally came to an end. Cadence heard on the radio that the Japanese surrender seemed likely at any time and said small groups were gathering across the island, waiting to share the joyous news with neighbors and friends. She suggested I go join one, but I told her I’d rather watch the celebrations from my sentry tree, and there I sat, on top of the world.

My eye went to the cottage below and to Gram’s flowers along the front fence. The whole back of the house had been rebuilt, thanks to Bess. Gram would have loved being there to see that bumper crop of lilies, but she had died the year before, asleep in her bed at home, two years after her successful treatment at Mass General. We’d never told her the truth about Tyson and how the fire started. Cadence took the blame and said she’d left the linguica frying on the stove too long. Gram never did recover from the terrible news about Tom. And she was right. We really did miss her when she was gone.

At nineteen, I lived like a dormant cicada, burrowed deep in the ground, working the farm, waiting on war news, ready for it to end. Someone had a car radio turned up loud out by the Methodist church in Chilmark Center, probably in order to hear the announcement once it came. Even miles away I could feel the anticipation.

It had been a long five years of war and the island had matured, grown a thicker skin through it all. Sandra’s house had been turned into a coffee shop, and McManus was kicked upstairs to New York City, with bigger fish to fry than us. The summer people would still come and go, and the carousel of seasons would still turn. Just not like before.

I tried to picture Tom’s face and tensed, having trouble conjuring it. If he’d been here, what would he be doing to celebrate? Certainly be at the church tolling the bells himself.

A great cheer went up in the distance, and I turned in the direction of the church. First the Chilmark bell began to toll, and then West Tisbury joined in. And people started blaring their automobile horns, something no one had done since the start of the war.

It was over.

I tried to soak in the joy of the moment, but I felt blank. Maybe I just missed Tom too much. He’d given his life, and it was hard to celebrate while carrying that weight. They’d never even found Tom’s body.

I looked to the upper field. I missed Peter and Margaret, too. I hoped they were in Minnesota with his grandmother and daughter. I missed Bess, as well, but much as Cadence held out hope, I had a feeling she’d never return. Once she left, she cut off all contact with us. Tom had a two-and-a-half-year-old child out there somewhere.

My gaze wandered to the boulder near the grove of beetlebungs where Tyson lay. Only the postmaster had inquired about him, and Cadence said he’d had to ship out unexpectedly. Cadence heard from her friend at the draft board that they assumed Tyson had left the country to evade service. Shelby had asked about him only once, then married a Cornell student from Nantucket one year later and moved to Ithaca. It still gave me the willies to walk near that boulder. Even Scout gave it a wide berth.

I never did find the Totenkopf ring in the belongings Tyson left behind. It was better he’d probably been buried with it, one less piece of evil out there in the world.

I looked down the coast toward Lambert’s Cove Beach, a haze over it, and thought of all our island-trained boys who’d been lost on the beaches at Normandy. The rumors had been right: The Army was practicing here for the Allied invasion of western Europe. I liked to think that their training had at least given them an advantage as they landed and so bravely faced the German machine guns at Pointe du Hoc. Almost half of them never came home. But perhaps the casualties would have been even greater if Tyson had succeeded in divulging American strategies to Hitler.

I felt a vibration below and up came Cadence, working her way through the leafy branches. That was a first, my sister climbing a tree. Cadence clumsily reached the branch below mine and sat.

“Thought I’d come report on the end-of-the-war happenings,” she said. “But you already have a good view of it all.” Cadence took in the vista. “No wonder you like it up here.”

“Welcome.”

“Nice outfit,” she said, nodding at my tweed waistcoat and cap. “I just got back from driving around a bit. It’s quite a scene in town. Everyone out of their minds, crying with happiness. Rose Miller, more than anyone, was a wreck, with her two boys still serving.”

“Glad they’ll be coming home.”

“Everyone was ripping up their gas-ration cards and making confetti out of them and driving up and down South and North Roads leaning on their horn buttons. Two privates from Peaked Hill were dragged off the road and forced to tolerate kisses from Gram’s church ladies.”

“Poor guys,” I said. “You should go back and celebrate more.”

“It’ll be going on for a long time. I’m enjoying being here with you.” Cadence paused, then said, “I was thinking. With Tom gone, you might need a new sailing partner.”

“That’d be great,” I said, but couldn’t quite warm to the idea. With a little work, Cadence would make a fine partner, but I had a hard time even thinking about sailing the boat without Tom.

“And we still have a book club, you know. Agnes and Ethel want to join, Gram’s pals. I know you hate fiction, but we’re reading Brideshead Revisited before I go . Winnie sent us copies.”

I’d flipped through one of those books when the box arrived from New York City, and it didn’t look half bad for fiction. “Not sure I want to read a book about men calling each other ‘old sponge,’?” I said.

But I liked the story. Figured I’d give it a try.

I looked down at the beach, where Cadence and Bess’s little book-club flag still waved. I liked the way that, no matter the weather, Cadence still raised it every morning and lowered it each night. Maybe I’d keep that going when she left.

Perhaps I was just maturing, my frontal cortex developing, but something about the idea of being with Gram’s friends and eating Grandma’s Rocks with a beetlebung-honey wine chaser appealed tome.

I moved over to make room for Cadence next to me on the branch. “Do you miss Gil?” I asked.

Cadence had kept in touch with Major Gil, and he was still hot to trot. He’d survived the war and was even decorated for combat in Italy, but he seemed pretty ensconced in London, and she was working for Winnie long distance and planning to make the move to New York City later that fall. Turned out Cadence wasn’t so quick to rush off as I figured she’d be.

We heard that our Private Jeffers from Preston, Idaho, had been awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism after dying on the battlefield. He had stayed at his post, on a beach in New Guinea, wounded, and fought off the Japanese until the end. We’d found out about it not long before Gram passed, and she had sent Mrs. Jeffers a note, telling her how much we’d enjoyed her son.

“I’ll see Gil soon enough,” Cadence said. “He’s coming over from London. Just a look-see, whatever that means. I hope you’ll be okay when I’m gone. You can always come to New York with me.”

I looked down on the barn. I would be better than okay. Once we had acquired the exclusive sale of Burbanks on the island, I pushed Gram to invest in ten cows and resume production as a dairy farm. We flourished after Gil arranged a contract for us to sell our Copper Pond Creamery products to the military. I suggested they print a drawing Bess had made of a sweet cow on every milk bottle. What would Tom have thought to see me here running the whole operation? At least it helped me get up every day.

“Gil said they used the Naushon as a hospital ship at Normandy,” Cadence said, referencing the beloved steamship that had been requisitioned for war duty in Europe. “One of his commandos recognized it when they picked him up off the beach at Pointe du Hoc. Gave him a good bit of comfort.”

“Tom would have liked that.” I pulled at a twig. “Maybe you should go visit Gil in London. Try to see Bess.”

I had watched Cadence slowly give up on expecting letters from Bess. At first she’d sent daily letters to Boston, only to find them back at the post office, Return to Sender stamped on the front. Cadence had even taken the train there and knocked on the Stanhopes’ townhouse door in Beacon Hill, but the house was closed up tight. Cadence heard through the grapevine that the Stanhopes had moved to Paris, but we knew little else. I figured Tom’s child would be talking by now, in French no less.

“Maybe,” Cadence said. “I think she has moved on. We were only a phase for her.”

“Don’t say that. Maybe we remind her too much of Tom.”

A movement caught my eye down at the cottage, as Scout walked along the front fence and lay in her spot. Still waiting for Tom? Maybe just watching for squirrels.

“I’ll try to look Bess up,” Cadence said. “But in the meantime, don’t you want to at least come and have some fun? Celebrate?”

Something pulled at me, a gentle tug of positivity. Tom had wanted me to grow up and become a citizen of the world. Why had I resisted for so long? It was something I could do for my brother.

I worked my way to the branch below. “Let’s go down.”

“Are you sure?” Cadence asked, perhaps surprised that her coaching had worked.

“Come on.” I reached up to take her hand. “Let’s go join the living.”

—

A month after the end of the war, the confetti was still sprinkled on the ground, but the island was busy getting back to normal. I still heard the sounds of a few soldiers at Peaked Hill now and then, but most had moved on, the manic hum of activity up there now quiet. Fewer airplanes came and went from the new airport, a relief from the near-constant drone overhead. And even though the Sones had not returned to their gift shop, I hoped they’d come back next summer, after an outpouring of letters on the part of their devoted island fans. At least Bert the Barber was at his chair again. Cadence and I had driven by his Main Street shop and the line was out the door.

The island welcomed October, always my favorite month, when the summer people were long gone and fall arrived in full force. I’d craved the smell of wood fires and baked apples, the crisp nights with the stars on show. Walking the beach, the sand cold on my feet.

Scout took up the rear as I brought the cows to the barn for milking, our lead cow Louise forging ahead, the bell at her throat clanking a little song. Scout, now almost nine, still followed us everywhere, just a little more slowly. At the cottage Cadence took the wash from the line, gathering a sheet in her arms as it ballooned in the cool breeze, and I felt a surge of love for her, always so willing to go on, no matter the headwinds.

In the distance along Copper Pond Road, something caught my eye, starch white in the sunlight, like a great swan floating toward us. I looked harder. It was a nun of some order, wearing an enormous white cornette. I shaded my eyes with one hand and squinted. The nun held the arm of an elderly man as they made their way down the road.

My heart thumped and I walked, as if levitated, toward them. The man wasn’t elderly, I saw, though he picked his steps carefully.

Was I hallucinating?

“My God,” I said, and took off at a run, Scout close behind. I could barely breathe by the time I made it to them, and I took in Tom, his face more lined and pale, but it was him. I threw my arms around his neck, and he was so thin I could feel his vertebrae. I held him out to get a good look, letting it all sink in. “You’re home.”

He looked at me and smiled a bit, perhaps taken aback by my enthusiastic welcome. I would be gentler. He was recovering, after all.

Tom was back.

Cadence threw down her sheet and ran to us, crying and kissing Tom’s cheeks, and we hugged our brother.

“It might be good for him to find a chair,” the little nun almost whispered in a breathy French accent.

We apologized for not greeting her sooner. The young woman introduced herself as Sister Claire, a Sister of Charity, and Scout led us into the cottage, Cadence still smothering Tom with kisses along the way.

We took seats at the kitchen table as Cadence boiled water for tea and I held Tom’s hand, his skin smooth and opaque, the skin of a shut-in. Where had he been?

I watched him closely while he surveyed the kitchen, as if just having landed on Neptune. He looked much older than his twenty-three years, stooped and gaunt but well-dressed, in his hand-knit sweater and linen trousers.

I tried not to cry when Scout came to sit at Tom’s side, as if her master had never left. “Good girl,” Tom said, caressing the dog’s ear with his free hand. His voice was a bit lower and a touch gravelly, but a trill of joy ran through me at the sound of it.

“That’s the first thing you’ve spoken, Tom,” I said. Tom turned and regarded me, as if looking at some new acquaintance on the street. He doesn’t remember me. The thought heaved through me.

Cadence smiled at Sister Claire. “We’ve never let poor Tom get a word in edgewise.”

As Cadence plied us all with scones and clotted cream, I slowly realized, with a sinking heart, that Tom was alive and healthy but he wasn’t “all there,” as Gram would have said.

Tom removed his stocking cap to reveal a scar at his temple, almost proud of it, and Sister Claire explained the story she herself had pieced together over the years. She’d spent most of the war corresponding with the nun in France who’d found him.

“Sister Agnès, have you heard of her?” she asked. “They call her the Angel of Dieppe. After the battle there, she walked the coast of France, searching for fallen men who were still alive. She didn’t give up on finding survivors, though the Allies had moved on.”

As if in a dream, I listened to her explain that Tom had been left for dead and taken to Sister Agnès’s convent, where they assumed he was Canadian, seeing no dog tags and hearing only the French phrases Tom muttered.

“He repeated, Je t’aime plus, ” Sister Claire said.

One of the phrases Bess had taught him. I love you more.

“The Germans had stripped him of everything,” Sister Claire said.

She told us that Sister Agnès sent Tom by ship to Canada, to the Sisters of Charity, a cloistered order in Quebec, hoping they could find his family. Once Tom recovered enough to sketch in some of his history, Sister Claire eventually traced him to Copper Pond Farm, and the Holy Mother of the convent funded their trip there by train. Being cloistered, the nuns were not allowed to use the phone, but they had sent letters—to a wrong address that Tom had misremembered. He’d told them he was in the Coast Guard, which he might have thought was true. There were sixty-three Thomas Smiths in the military, and that letter of inquiry was probably still on someone’s desk.

I sat back, exhausted after taking it all in. It was the most incredible story I had ever heard, and I longed to get Tom alone so I could learn more details. And I itched to thoroughly test his faculties.

He’d been lucky to survive a gunshot wound to the head; I assumed that’s what caused Tom’s amnesia. And he was exhibiting the same symptoms our grandfather had after his stroke: aphasia and minor facial paralysis. I made a mental list of treatments. I’d start with flash cards of words. Everyday objects and place names.

Tom looked toward the kitchen door. “Is she…”

“Who?” Cadence asked. She paused a moment. “Bess?”

He nodded.

Of course he remembered that name. The love of his life.

Cadence frowned, in that trembly way she always did when she tried not to cry. “Bess left a few years ago. We think she’s in Europe.”

He nodded, seemed satisfied with that answer, and looked to Sister Claire for direction. Had he ever gotten Bess’s letter about the baby?

I told him about Gram, and he looked down at his hands. Was he even able to take it all in? Did he remember her? In time the memory might come back. Grandfather’s had. Tom and I would paint together—that was a start. Maybe I’d help him write a letter to Bess. Take the boat out.

I nudged his arm with my elbow. “What do you say we go out for a sail sometime? Cadence has agreed to come along.”

He turned to me and met my gaze. “Hi, Port.”

I saw it there, the light of recognition, and gave in to the sweet surge of joy.

“Hi, Starboard,” I said with a smile. “I’ve missed you.”