“The Fleet Rock lighthouse? Why, that would be old Mrs. Vargas,” said the fisherman, without changing expression, without turning his attention from the water before us.
“What about Mr. Vargas?”
“I’m afraid he’s passed on, ma’am. Just a few months ago. One winter too many, I guess.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“He was a good man. A good lobsterman.”
I laughed politely. “Isn’t that the same thing?”
He laughed too. “I guess it is, ma’am. I guess it is.”
We said nothing more, all the way into the harbor, and I gave him another five dollars to keep quiet about the woman with the black eye and the sunglasses who was asking questions about Fleet Rock lighthouse. He put the Lincoln in his pocket and asked if he could help me with my suitcase. I said no, I was just heading into the general store across the street from the marina. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, though, so I let him carry the suitcase anyway. Men sometimes like to make themselves useful that way, I’ve found, and you might as well humor them.
Inside the store, I absorbed the familiar, particular odor of dust and spices, and the scent gave me another jolt of exquisite pain to the solar plexus. There’s something about the smells of your childhood, isn’t there? Even when that childhood was short and flavored by bitterness and ended in catastrophe, in a disaster of devastating proportions, you still remember those small, sublime joys with an ache of longing. Because there’s no getting it back, is there? You can’t return to a state of innocence. So I waited patiently for the old woman behind the soda fountain to hustle and bustle her way around her shelves, her cabinets, her rows of merchandise, until at last she noticed my presence and apologized.
“It’s no trouble at all,” I said.
At the sound of my voice, her face changed, in much the same way as the fisherman’s had. Her mouth made a perfect hole of surprise. “Deus meu! Miranda Schuyler?” she said in wonder.
“The prodigal returns.” I removed my sunglasses.
“Oh dear! What is this thing that has happened to your face?”
“There was an accident. A car accident. I thought I might find someplace quiet to lick my wounds. I hope you don’t mind.”
Her voice was soft with pity. “No, of course. Of course not.” She paused delicately. “Do they know you are coming? At Greyfriars? Your mother, she was here yesterday, and she said nothing to me.”
“I thought I might surprise them. I don’t suppose your husband still drives his delivery van, does he?”
“Ah, poor Manuelo, he is gone now.”
“Oh! I’m so sorry. I didn’t think.”
“But I can drive you this far. My daughter Laura will keep the store for me. Laura! You remember Laura, don’t you?”
“Naturally I remember Laura. I remember everybody and everything. How could I forget?”
We exchanged a look of deep, futile understanding that lasted as long as it took for Mrs. Medeiro’s daughter, Miss Laura, scatter-haired and dumpy in a floral housedress, to emerge from some back room, clasp her hands, and express her absolute astonishment that the great Miranda Schuyler had returned to the Island at last, that she stood right here in the middle of their humble store.
“Or must we call you Miranda Thomas?” she asked, pretending not to eye the shiner that disfigured the left side of my face.
“Just Miranda will do. I’m here unofficially, you understand.”
“Ah, I see.” She smoothed her hair with one hand and looked at her mother, and some communication passed between them, to which Mrs. Medeiro replied with a small shrug. Miss Laura picked up a dishcloth and put it down again. I was opening my mouth to speak when she burst out, “What was it like to kiss Roger Moore?”
“Laura!” snapped her mother.
I slipped the sunglasses back over my eyes. “Just exactly as you might think,” I said.
We were halfway to Greyfriars before I asked Mrs. Medeiro about her grandson, and she took her time to answer me.
“He’s well,” she said, “the last I heard.”
“He never did answer any of my letters. I wrote and wrote.”
“He thought this was best. There was no hope, you see.”
I set my elbow on the edge of the window, which was rolled down all the way to allow the May breeze inside the fish-smelling cab. I might have looked out toward the sea, which was darkening into a purple twilight, but I didn’t. I knew what was out there, the cliffs dropping away into the water, and Fleet Rock like a dream against the horizon.
Mrs. Medeiro changed gears to thrust the old van up the slope. “You have heard the news, yes?”
“That he escaped from prison? Yes, I heard.”
“Is that—” She bit herself off and rattled her thumbs against the steering wheel.
“Is that why I’ve come back, you mean? Because of Joseph escaping from prison?”
“I’m sorry. It’s your business, why you’re here.”
“It’s a logical question. I don’t blame you for asking. I mean, he’s bolted from his prison, and now I’ve—well, here I am, fresh from London.”
“So you are here for him?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Oh.” Mrs. Medeiro glanced at me. “I just—well, the police already came, the detectives, the marshals. I mean, they searched everywhere. They could not find him.”
“I don’t suppose you happen to know where he went?”
She shrugged. “Who really knows about Joseph? He always keeps his own mind.”
“That’s not an answer, Mrs. Medeiro,” I said.
“No, I guess not.”
I took off the sunglasses and folded them into my pocketbook. We had nearly reached the Greyfriars drive, and my fingers were shaking, shaking, my heart was thundering. I had thought, after so many years, I should approach the house like an old friend with whom you had quarreled long ago and since forgiven so far as to forget what the quarrel was about. But now I glimpsed the stone wall, crumbling to bits, and the gap through which I had walked so often, and the mighty, unkempt rhododendrons, and I was eighteen again—exactly half as old as my current age, now there’s symmetry for you—and knew nothing about keeping your emotions in check, your spirit under exquisite control. I gripped the handles of my pocketbook and counted the pulse of my breathing, as my husband had once trained me to do, yet still the flutter remained and worsened into dizziness.
“Is everything okay, Miranda?” asked Mrs. Medeiro quietly. “Should I stop the car?”
“No, thank you. Drive right on up to the door, if you don’t mind.”
We turned down the drive and the tires crunched on the gravel, bounced over the ruts, dove into the potholes. In earlier days, the Greyfriars drive was an impeccable thing, almost as smooth as asphalt, and Mrs. Medeiro, after one particularly bone-crunching jolt, was moved to apologize for the fall in standards, almost as if she had some responsibility for them.
“Things aren’t the same at Greyfriars, you know,” she said.
“I don’t imagine they are.”
“I think there is not much money now. You know they