What I Thought Was True

“The view is lovely from there,” Henry says in a slightly too-loud, overcompensating voice, similar to the one I probably used a second ago. “But Mother is sleeping. Perhaps you can wait until she wakes up.”

I’m stuffing the groceries into the refrigerator like the efficient, upright, honest servant I should be, rather than the shifty, eavesdropping one I’ve apparently become. My hands are shaking.

Then someone else’s hand falls on my shoulder.

“Er. Guinevere.”

I turn to meet Henry Ellington’s eyes.

“Mother’s told me what a hard worker you are. I appreciate your—” He clears his throat. “Tireless efforts on her behalf.”

He reaches into his pocket, pulls something out, then flips it open on the kitchen table, bending over it to write.

A check.

“Rose Ellington is not easy,” he says. “Used to certain standards. You meet them. I think you deserve this . . . a little extra.”

He folds the check, extends it to me.

I’m frozen for a second, staring at it as if he’s handing me something far more deadly than a piece of paper.

After a moment, as though that’s what he had intended all along, Henry sets the check down on the kitchen table, on the dry, clear spot between where I spilled the water and where I put the groceries. As though it belongs there, as much as they do, as natural, as accidental, as those.

Chapter Twenty-seven

“He’s robbing her blind,” Vivie says. She hangs a hard left in the Almeida’s van, throwing both Nic and me against the passenger doors. “He’s divorced, right? He cheated with the underage babysitter and now her family’s asking for hush money, his ex took him to the cleaners even though she was having it on with the doorman, he’s broke because he’s embezzling from his boss, and he’s counting on Mommy to bail him out. Without her knowing.”

“Wow. You got all that from what I just told you?”

“Drama Queen,” Nic says.

“I’m not.” Viv jerks the wheel, tires squealing, to turn onto Main Road. I land hard against the door.

“Why wouldn’t he just ask her for the money?” I say, righting myself, kicking upright the bag of quahogs at my feet—we’re doing a clam boil for St. John de Brito Church tonight.

“Those guys never talk to each other,” Nic says. “I swear, we were painting the dining room at the Beinekes’ today. Place was draped in sheets and stuff, and Hoop and I are doing the edging, but Mr. and Mrs. Beineke and their poor granddaughter are still eating in there. It’s all ‘Sophie, can you ask your grandmother to pass the butter’ and ‘Sophie, please tell your grandmother we are ru

“The question is, do I say anything?” I ask. “Or should I—”

“Left up here!” Nic interrupts, pointing right.

Viv turns left.

“No—that way!” Nic points right again.

Viv swears under her breath, making a U-turn that tosses Nic and me against the doors again.

“Do you think this is a handicap, Vee?” Nic asks. “Do you think the academy won’t take me because I always have to make that little L thing with my hand?”

“Maybe you’ll get a special scholarship,” Vivien says, patting his shoulder, squinting at me in the rearview. “Gwe

Don’t get involved. Don’t think about it. Nas histórias de outras pessoas.

Thinking those thoughts is starting to seem like the snooze button on an old alarm clock, one I’ve hit so often, it just doesn’t work anymore.

“Gracious, Gwen, where are you today?” Mrs. E. waves her hand in front of my face, calling me back to the here and now. On her porch, nearly at the end of the day. A day I’ve spent daydreaming about Cass and preoccupied about Henry, going through the motions with Mrs. E., who deserves better.

“Clarissa Cole tells me the yard boy, dear Cassidy, is teaching your brother to swim.”

The island grapevine is evidently faster than a speeding bullet. Mrs. E. rests a hand, light as a leaf, on my arm. “Oh, uh, yeah—yes. He’s got a lesson tomorrow.”

“Would it be too much to ask if an old Beach Bat could come along?”

“To swim?”

“Merely to observe. I spend too much time in the company of the elderly, or”—she lowers her voice, although Joy-less the nurse has not yet arrived, having called to say she’ll be late, and somehow making that sound like my fault—“the cranky. I’ve missed several days with the ladies on the beach—just feeling lazy, I’m afraid. It would be a pleasure to see how your dear boy handles this.”

“He’s not my dear boy, Mrs. E. We just go to school together.”

She looks down, turning the thin gold bracelet on her wrist, but not before I catch the flash of girlish amusement. “So you say. Well, I was a young woman a very long time ago. I ca

Have to admit, I’ve noticed that too. And when he called to figure out a time for Em’s next swim lesson, there was a certain amount of lingering on the phone.

Cass: “So I should go . . .” (Not hanging up) “Uh . . .”

Me: “Okay. I’ll let you go.” (Not hanging up) “Another family thing?”

Cass: (Sighing) “Yeah. Photo shoot.”

Me: (Incredulous) “Your family thing is a photo shoot?”

Cass: “Stop laughing. Yes. We do the a

Then all at once, I remembered that. Mr. Somers and the three boys. I couldn’t see her, but Cass’s mom must have been there too. Standing on the deck of their big sailboat tied off the Abenaki pier, white shirts, khaki pants, tan faces. Cass bending his knees to try to rock the boat, his brothers laughing, me starting to climb down the ladder to clamber aboard. Dad catching me and saying, “No, pal, you aren’t family.”

“You still do that?”

“Every year,” he said. “I may be the black sheep, but apparently I photograph well.”

His tone was light, but I heard something darker in it.

Silence.

I could hear him breathing. He could probably hear me swallow.

Me: “Cass . . .”

Cass: “I’m here.”

Me: “Are you going to do it? What your family wants? Say it was all Spence, go back to Hodges?”

Cass: (Long sigh. I pictured him clenching his fist, unclenching.) “This should be easier than it is.” (Pause) “Black and white. He’s my best friend. But I’m . . . My brothers are . . . I mean . . .”

It’s not like him to stammer. I pressed the phone closer to my cheek. “Yeah?”

Cass: “I’m not Bill, the financial whiz kid. I’m not Jake, the scholar/athlete.”

Me: “Why should you be?”

Cass: “They want the best for me. My parents. My family.”

At that point, Mom came into the room, sighing loudly as she took off her sneakers, flipping on the noisy fan. I told Cass to wait, took the phone outside, to the backyard, lay down in the grass on my back, staring at the deep blue sky. We had never talked like that to each other. His voice was so close, it was as though he was whispering in my ear.

Me: “I’m back. And the best thing for you is?”

Cass: “The whole deal. An Ivy. A good job. All that. I may not be as smart as my brothers, but I know that it . . . looks better . . . to graduate from Hodges.”

Here’s where I should have said that it didn’t matter how it looked. But I couldn’t lie to him. I knew what he meant. Instead, I asked, “Is that what matters? Looks? To you.”