Osprey Island

“No—it’s right here! Do you . . . can you get the number, for the man, the one who fixes things . . . Roddy?”

Cybelle was nodding, haughty and self-important. “That’s Roddy Jacobs. He doesn’t have a phone himself, but you can sometimes get him here.” She dialed the number at Eden’s and passed the receiver to Peg.

Someone answered, and Peg asked for Roddy. He wasn’t in—an obstacle Peg hadn’t anticipated. She paused for such a long time that Eden asked, “Hello? Can I help you with something?”

“Oh,” wailed Peg. She looked to Cybelle nervously, unsure of how she might proceed. “I don’t know . . . I . . . I’m working here at the Lodge and I’ve . . . I’ve got to talk with Mr. . . . with Roddy.” She said his name as if it were a foreign word. “I’m terribly, I’m afraid . . . with Squee . . . I’m just entirely . . .”

“Squee?” Eden said sharply. “What happened to Squee?”

“What?” said Peg. “No, I don’t . . . I’ve just . . .” And then she burst into tears.

Cybelle, embarrassed, disappeared into the back room.

“Please, sweetheart,” Eden said on the line, “please calm down. Did something happen to Squee? I’m Roddy’s mother,” she explained to the sobbing girl. “Can you tell me what happened, please?”

Peg’s tears abated slightly. “Do you . . . ? You know the Squire . . . Squee? You know Squee?”

“What happened?” Eden’s voice was rip-cord tense. “I’m his god-mother,” she said, and though it wasn’t true, she couldn’t find words that were, some way to explain her relationship to the child. “Please,” Eden said shrilly. “Please, is he all right?”

Peg took a gulp of air, and when she let it out inside another sob, all she could think to say was “It’s really that I don’t know . . .”

Eden broke in. “You’re at the Lodge? Why don’t I come there? I’m coming down there.”

Peg’s next sob conveyed acquiescence.

“Go down to the Sand Beach Road entrance,” Eden instructed. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

Roddy, who’d also finished up work at the Lodge at five, pulled into the driveway at home just as Eden was pulling out. She saw him and bristled: What in god’s name was Roddy doing home when something was wrong with Squee down at the Lodge? Then she felt relief: if Roddy was home, it could be nothing too bad down there. And then the relief turned to fear: Roddy was home to tell her about whatever terrible thing had happened down at the Lodge. They stopped their vehicles in the driveway and spoke through the windows. In the confusion it took some moments before they were able to make themselves clear.

“I was just there,” Roddy said. “Nothing’s wrong down at the Lodge. Not more than usual. Now . . .”

“She wanted to talk to you,” Eden said.

“Well, what?” Roddy was tired, and unprepared for this welcome home. “What? You want me to come down with you?” It was not what he wanted at all.

“She’s waiting by the road. Just come with me.”

Roddy did as his mother instructed.

Eden wasn’t sure exactly what would happen when they reached the girl at the Lodge, but when they pulled up beside her on Sand Beach Road, Peg tugged open the back door of the Caddy and climbed in gratefully. She was no longer crying, but her pale skin was splotchy red, her eyelashes slick and wet. “I’m so thankful to you,” she said as she pulled the door shut behind her and slid across the seat, “just for getting out of there for a bit, you know? Just to be away from it all?” So Eden pulled a wide, unruly U-turn and drove straight back the way she’d come, as if it were what she’d planned all along.

Peg sat in the very center of Eden’s couch, perching so precisely in the exact middle of the middle cushion, you might have suspected her of some obsessive tendencies. Eden gave the girl a cup of water and sat opposite her. Roddy hovered, filling the doorway, ready to make a hasty escape should the need arise.

“I’ve wanted to know,” Peg said, “if there’d be someone we might talk with about the legal issues involved here, you know? I don’t know about, like, American law . . . but I’d thought if we might talk with a professional . . .” There was something proprietary and hoarding about her concern for Squee’s welfare, as though she were fighting for his custody. When she described what she’d witnessed that day, and in the course of her brief tenure at the Lodge, she seemed to cast blame for Squee’s circumstance not only on Osprey Island as a whole, but on America at large. Nothing so ugly and unfortunate, she seemed to imply, would have come to pass on Irish soil. Peg appeared at once to trust Roddy and Eden while reserving an incredulity that anyone— even if only through inaction—had allowed a man like Lance Squire to have his way about the island. Peg wanted to see something happen, and was loathe to understand why she—an outsider and virtual stranger—was the one making this call to arms.