Osprey Island

“Look, he’s no model parent, I’ll give you that, but the man’s grieving, you know? He just wants what he’s got left of family . . .”

“Oh for the love of god!” Eden cried. “His family? He wants his son? Lance Squire’s been denying his paternity since the day Lorna told him she was pregnant! Goddamn it, Lorna!” Eden swore as though it was Lorna, not Roddy, standing in the garden beside her. “Goddamn it!”

Roddy stood by, helpless.

“Let me tell you something, son,” Eden said, and her voice was low, as if she was afraid that Squee might hear them from the house, over the babble of the television. “Let me tell you that that man would have no claims on that child if Lorna’d done what she ought to have done and put Father Unknown on Squee’s birth certificate and made a goddamn will and put someone else as legal guardian in case something ever happened to her—Art and Penny, me, Reesa Delamico and Abel, anyone, anyone’d have done it. But no, that was too much for Lorna to manage. She didn’t want to hurt Lance. Swore up and down it was Lance’s baby—” Eden paused, her face twisted with emotion. “Do you see how hard it was to be any part of that girl’s life? Can you see what it was like to sit by and watch her ruin every chance she ever got to right herself? She was a smart girl—I don’t even know if you know how smart of a girl she was. But so stupid ! So goddamn stupid about things. Goddamn it, Lorna!” she swore again, gripping her green pea basket to her body as if it were the child she’d protect at any cost.

Roddy’s own anger at that point was growing less focused on Lance and more on Eden. “You planning on telling me what in hell you’re talking about?”

Eden ignored the question. “Go talk to him, Roddy. Go over there and talk to Lance—maybe he’ll listen to you . . .”

“Not if I don’t know why I’m talking to him or what I’m talking about! No.”

“Roddy,” she begged. “I tell you: it’s too complicated to open up that sack of worms without letting out every other question that comes along with it. Too many things you don’t need—and you don’t want to know. Could you trust your mother, please? Just take my word and talk to Lance . . . ?”

Roddy stood his ground.

“For Squee’s sake, Roddy,” she pleaded. “Please, for the sake of that child . . .”

“How about for the sake of that child you tell me what the hell is going on.”

Eden saw her defeat, her mind already calculating how much he’d need to know. She would reveal the bare minimum of what there was. “You,” she accused her son, “have turned out to be a very stubborn and unforgiving man, Roddy Jacobs.”

Roddy almost smiled. “Just like you raised me to be.”

Eden narrowed her eyes. She spoke quickly, as though she’d agreed to say it once and only once, and he could catch what he caught and forever after hold his peace.

“I’m no doctor,” Eden said, her voice so low it was nearly lost. “And I’ve surely never examined the man, but as far as I can tell you, I’m pretty damn sure that it’s a medical impossibility for Lance Squire to have children. I’m pretty sure he’s infertile, or some such, and never has been anything but. He’s well aware of that fact. And whatever Lorna said, I know Lance doesn’t believe for a second that any part of him went into making Squee. He’s certainly held that over her head in every way he could. So now he’s gung ho about being the boy’s father all of a sudden. But I know what that man’s capable of. He’s been rough with Lorna and he’s been rough with others. Lorna and I broke not too long after Squee was born, you know, so I don’t know if Lance ever lays his fist into that boy, but I don’t want to find out now. Please go talk to him, Roddy, and stop wasting time asking me questions, please . . .” She waited, breathing hard.

Roddy’s face betrayed nothing. He spoke evenly. “Who’s Squee’s father?”

“I don’t think Lorna even knew herself.”

Roddy thought on that a minute. “But she was pregnant before, wasn’t she? Isn’t that . . . ? When they got married?”

“Wasn’t his either,” Eden said. “And he knew it then too.” She stopped. She wasn’t giving away any more than he demanded.

“But why do you know?” he said. “Why do you know all that? And why’s the sheriff know you know?”

“It’s got nothing to do with the sheriff,” she lied. “Lorna and I, we were close for a time . . . When you were gone . . . When she was pregnant with Squee I helped her—staying healthy and not drinking and whatnot. She told me things, OK? She told me things. So would you go get down there and talk to Lance, please?”

Roddy paused, confused and unsatisfied, then finally turned without a word and started up the hill toward his truck.

It was nearly seven o’clock when Roddy showed up on the porch of the Squires’ cottage. Merle was watching the television, Lance seated in a chair near her, his eyes closed, head held back as if he were willing away a nosebleed. Roddy knocked and Merle waved him in.

“Stay for Pat and Vanna . . .” Merle gestured toward an empty chair.