Osprey Island

“Baby . . . baby,” Suzy cooed. “Shhhhhh, shhhhhh . . . What’s the matter, Mia? Sweetie? What?” She stroked Mia’s hair, looking over the girl’s head to the Irish girls, asking with her eyes, What’s up with her? What’d I miss?

But Mia wasn’t talking, wasn’t doing anything except burrowing into Suzy as if looking for someplace to hide. Suzy stood, scooping the girl up with her, and Mia wrapped her legs around her mother’s waist instinctually, arms around her neck. For Suzy, a child’s miniature crisis was more than welcome right then—a scrape, a lost game, a perceived injustice—something to supplant, or at least distract her from, all the larger crises at hand. It made Suzy feel strong: here was something she could make better again.

Suzy said, for the Irish girls as much as for Mia, “Why don’t you and I take this upstairs, ma’am?” She sent a knowing look to the girls over there at their card game table, a look to apologize for Mia— I know, I’m sorry, I know she can be a pain. To say, Thanks, be back soon—but her look wasn’t met with anything akin. The girls were worried, their brows furrowed. It was then Suzy realized that Squee wasn’t at the table and that this was no kissable, soothable, manageable problem. She hugged Mia to her, spoke softly into her hair. “Where’s Squee, baby? Did he have lunch with you?” At which Mia only began to sob more ferociously. “OK,” Suzy breathed, “OK.” Her pulse began to race. “OK, baby, OK, let’s just go up to our room and calm down a little. It’s going to be all right.” Like a mantra: “Everything’s going to be all right.”

In the room, Suzy set Mia down on the end of one of the beds and knelt before her on the floor. She tried for patience—she’d dealt enough with crying children to know that her own anxiety wasn’t going to get her anywhere. She tried to slow herself down.

“What’s going on, babe?” She rubbed Mia’s arms at her sides as if to warm her, though the sun shone in brightly through the window shades and Suzy was sweating with fear. “Can you try to tell me what’s going on, Mia-belle? Maybe I can help if you tell me what’s wrong.”

Mia wiped her upper lip with the back of her hand and tried to sniffle through her clogged nose, but couldn’t and choked, coughing instead. Suzy reached for a tissue on the bed stand. “Here, baby.” She held the tissue around Mia’s nostrils. “Blow. Give a good blow— good!” Mia honked into the tissue. Suzy refolded it and let her blow again, then wiped Mia off and tossed the tissue toward a wastebasket, which she missed by a hair.

Mia straightened and breathed in and opened her mouth to speak, but in the time it took for the words to get from her brain to her lips, the realization of their meaning came slamming back at her, so that as she said, “I hate Squee’s dad,” her face was already contorting, the tears beginning anew, flooding out as if they had never paused at all.

Another tissue. More blowing. “Did something happen, Mi? Why do you hate Lance? Did he yell at you? Did he do something that was mean? Did he do something mean to you?” And suddenly she was struck with what felt like a clear and full revelation of the extent to which Lance Squire was capable of doing something mean. Lorna had kept him in check to some degree—but Lorna was gone.

When she spoke it was far too angrily, and though she was clearly castigating herself, not her daughter, it might have appeared otherwise. She grabbed Mia’s shoulders with enough force to scare the girl out of her crying. “Did Lance Squire do anything bad to you, Mia? You have to tell me right now, Mia: you have to tell me if Lance Squire ever did anything bad to you!” She couldn’t believe the words coming out of her mouth. This was not what her life was supposed to be! She’d gotten away! Suzy Chizek had left Osprey Island! What the hell was she doing in an upstairs room at the Osprey Lodge, yelling into the face of her sweetest, only, baby daughter? “Mia, you have to answer me right now—did Lance Squire make you do something you didn’t want to do?” She was pleading, her hands pulling at Mia’s small arms, kneading, as if she could wring out the truth and the evil all at once.

And then, in the midst of—or maybe in reaction to—Suzy’s sudden outburst of desperate and incredulous fear, Mia miraculously regained self-control. In a voice so adult and with such calm presence of mind it was eerie and horrible, she said: “No, Mom, it was nothing like that at all. It’s just he’s so mean to Squee. That’s what’s upsetting me. He’s so mean to Squee, and Squee is my best friend. I’m scared . . . I want to go home.”

Suzy sat there a moment, still, holding Mia’s arms and staring at her daughter as though she’d just been the vehicle of an otherworldly transmission, a voice speaking through this girl from someplace beyond. Suzy’s eyes were grave, and she was nodding her head. “OK,” she said to Mia slowly. “OK.”