Osprey Island

The water was choppy, waves reflecting sunlight like undulating glass, and the ferry rocked and sloshed in the slip, bucking up against the pylons, which creaked and groaned in response. These were, for Roddy Jacobs, the most familiar sights and sounds in the world. Just the smells of this place—the fishy seaweed rot, the salt-drenched, sun-baked wood, gasoline, engine exhaust—all whipped by the wind and sprayed from the water in a fine mist as the ferry pulled away from the dock. Roddy leaned against the railing and turned his face to the sky, eyes closed against the sun. He heard the honking call of the ferry whistle, the churn of the rudders beneath him, the push of water through the gunwales, the clanking of chains on the gate, and the constant arrhythmic clang of rope against metal as halyard smacked flagpole atop the captain’s tower.

If there were other places like this in the world, Roddy Jacobs hadn’t found them. And he’d traveled plenty. Two decades, and travel was mostly what he’d done. He’d been up and down the West Coast, the East Coast, through Canada, and down to Mexico and below. He’d even ridden ferries—every ferry he could find—all over Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands, across Lake Michigan and Lake Champlain and through the locks of Sault Sainte Marie. He’d been to Cape Cod, and Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket and St. Simon’s. Block Island, Shelter Island, Staten Island, Fire Island. And all of them were nice—he was sure that the people who’d grown up in Vineyard Haven and Vinalhaven cherished their ferries the way he cherished Osprey’s and thought their island the most beautiful, most breathtaking, most comforting place in the world. He was glad for those people who had their places. Because he had his. Roddy Jacobs had longed for his home every day he’d spent elsewhere. It was only on returning that he fully realized—a gulp of ocean air pounding into his lungs as though he hadn’t really breathed for twenty years—how much will it had taken to keep himself away.

He knew very well who’d left the truck illegally parked in Menhadenport, though he was finding it hard to get his mind to focus on what that really meant. Bud hadn’t even known which truck it was, told Roddy to take all the spare keys, but Roddy’d gone to the vehicle shed and grabbed only the set for the tan Ford, though he suspected he’d find the truck unlocked, keys on the floor just beneath the seat. He didn’t expect there’d be a note—she couldn’t know who’d be the first to see it—and, after all, she’d already come to say good-bye. And then, after good-bye, he imagined she’d gone back to the Lodge. She’d have thrown everything into their luggage. Probably even stripped the beds to make less work for the Irish girls. She’d have coaxed Mia out of the bathroom with promises she probably never planned to make good on. Or Mia would have come out on her own, teary-eyed and sleepy and just wanting her mother, all that anger replaced by the simple need to be held in her mother’s arms. And to that end, Suzy would have obliged, hauling down all the bags by herself, then going back upstairs to lift Mia to her chest and carry her, floppy-limbed and docile, to the waiting truck.

It would have been late, Roddy imagined. But how late? Before midnight, all those waiters and housekeepers still lounging on the deck? Would they have seen her? Wondered what was going on? Or had it been very late, the Lodge silent but for Suzy’s patter up and down the central stairs? Had they missed the last ferry, twelve a.m., and slept in the truck on the Osprey side, right by where his own truck was parked now, Mia breathing softly on the seat, Suzy dozing off, then waking every few minutes to a rumble in the running engine or a car on Ferry Road? Had anyone come by—police, security, the usual nosy Islander—to see why on earth someone—My goodness! Not just someone! Suzy Chizek!—was sleeping in a beat-up truck in the Osprey Island Ferry lot? Or had they slept there peacefully until the horn awakened them? Or maybe Suzy set an alarm, making sure they were on the first ferry across, in time to catch the six o’clock train for New York? No, he realized, they had to have gone over the night before; the guys on the morning boat didn’t know who’d left the truck; they hadn’t seen her go over. That she’d left it in a No Parking zone was nothing but a final fuck you to her father. Even through his confusion, Roddy was able to see that Suzy Chizek was the kind of person who really did need to have the final fuck you. He had at least that much objectivity left.