Osprey Island

“I don’t think I want to feel better,” she cut him off. “I think I want to feel worse, like I want to make it so bad that it breaks . . . that it breaks me or something and then I don’t have to be responsible for what I do or say or don’t. Or taking care of Mia or anyone else. Doc Zobeck could just shoot me full of something that’d make all the decisions for me. Jesus. I just want someone to knock me out.” Suzy stood suddenly. She looked as if she wanted to pace, but there was no room for it in the little cabin and her momentum stalled once she was upright. It seemed briefly that she might topple. She glanced around, looked to Roddy, flapped her arms awkwardly, then wrapped them around herself as if to contain something, to hold herself back from some downward tumble. Roddy watched her, afraid for what she might do. She hugged herself tightly, her tears finally breaking. “What are we supposed to do ?”

It wasn’t a choice Roddy made then, not something he could say he decided to do and then did. He just moved. Here was Suzy, breaking, and there he was, feet away, moving to her. She held herself tight and small, and he enveloped her, the way his father used to envelop his mother, by his sheer size. He held her, his chin nearly level with the top of her head, and when she looked up at him he kissed her tears, and her eyes, and her cheeks, and everywhere the tears touched, because it was the only thing he could possibly do.

Seven

IN THE SHADOW OF THY WINGS WILL I MAKE MY REFUGE

Lorna Marie Vaughn Squire died early Tuesday morning in a tragic fire at the Osprey Lodge laundry. She was thirty-six years old. The daughter of Arthur and Penelope Vaughn of Island Drive, Lorna was a 1970 graduate of Island High. She had been the head housekeeper atthe Osprey Lodge since 1969 and was beloved by all. Lorna is survived by her husband, Lance Squire, 38, and a son, Lance Jr., 8. Mayshe rest in peace.

—Island Times

ART VAUGHN WAS INCONSOLABLE. He’d been holding off mourning the loss of his daughter for more than twenty years, keeping alive the hope that she’d return to him someday. Now there was nothing more to put between himself and the pain, between the fact of the world with Lorna and the fact of the world without her. There were no maybes, no more possibilities, no more roads that led his daughter back to him. She was just gone, and Art Vaughn sat on his living room sofa and cried as he should have cried on Lorna’s wedding day.

Art and Penny Vaughn had been unable to conceive. But they had adopted Lorna in infancy, and Osprey Island was the only home she ever knew. The Vaughns were cut and dried: they acted according to the dictates of the Church, ate ground beef, Kraft Singles, and Rice-a-Roni, and lived in an aluminum-sided ranch house, blue ducks and pink cows stenciled on the walls, wicker baskets of syrupy potpourri and stitched quilt samplers festooning every cranny. Lorna’s parents loved her as a streak down the center of their otherwise eventless lives. They distrusted Lance even before they knew him, had always looked down on Merle Squire and the disgraces that defined her. When Lorna met Lance she was not yet thirteen years old—a child!— and Lance’s mere existence seemed to grant Lorna all the permission she needed to break into the lawless limbo of adolescence.

On an autumn evening in 1965, Lance had arrived at the Vaughns’ nest of faux-country charm to pick up Lorna for their first official date. It was his first and last encounter with Lorna’s father.

Lance was formal and officious, standing militarily at ease beside a framed cross-stitch of the Lord’s Prayer and answering to the third degree that passed for small talk when it came to some chump from the high school wanting to get into the panties of Art Vaughn’s only daughter. Art knew you could never trust a boy. His only hope, as he saw it, was to instill enough fear in the young man’s heart so that even if Lorna was ready to put out (as he feared she would), the boy might develop a case of temporary impotence. Art didn’t know if he had that kind of power to frighten, but for the sake of his little girl’s virginity, he gave it all he had.

“You’re Merle’s boy,” Art said. It was not a question.

“Yes sir.” Lance nodded once.

“Your mother’s doing well.” The pause that followed Art’s statements were his only indication of inquisition.

“Hasn’t done herself in yet,” Lance said.

“Say what?”

Lance shook his head in self-effacement.