Osprey Island

Suzy choked. Then she began suddenly, almost violently, to cry. She sucked in breath and held her hair in her hand, the arm blocking half her face to cover at least a fraction of her shame. Her words came in sputters. “You can ask your mother,” she choked out. “She knows it all.” And then she didn’t know how to go on, for she was saying something she had never said in her life, and though it had always been true, she had never felt its truth the way she felt it right then. “I lost my virginity down in that ravine”—she threw a hand out behind her—“when I was sixteen years old.”

“To Lance?” Roddy said. “I knew you . . . I didn’t know it was—”

“Everybody and their fucking grandmother knew I slept with him. He basically raped me—Lance, there, in that ravine—when I was sixteen years old. Ask your mother,” she sobbed, “just ask your mother. She probably remembers more than I do. Ask Eden . . . That’s how I know. That’s how I know what Lance is capable of.” She paused then, drew in her breath, and looked up at Roddy for the first time since she’d begun. “I have to leave,” she said. “I feel like I’m losing my mind. I can’t stay here. I can’t. I have to leave.”

She started to say “Come with me” but he stopped her.

“I can’t . . . ,” he said.

“You could . . . ,” she said. She didn’t know if it was true, or if she wanted it, but she said it anyway.

He said, “My mother . . . Squee . . .”

And she just sobbed harder until finally he had to take her in his arms. It was easier to hold her and feel her sadness than it was to stand by and feel his own. So he held on to her, relieved that he had something to hold on to, at the same time realizing that the real relief would be in letting her go.

BRIGID WAS IN THE ROOM when Peg returned from Eden’s. She was lying on her bed, on her back, in gym shorts and a skimpy tank. It was hard for Peg to know what to say to her. It was hard for Brigid to know what to say to Peg. Peg was well enough aware that Brigid hadn’t come back to work with the rest of the girls after lunch; she’d run off after Lance Squire and never returned to her duties. The way Peg thought of it, she didn’t see Brigid as having run after Squee— didn’t even consider that Brigid might be concerned about the boy at all.

Brigid, for her part, had still been sitting on the Squires’ porch with Lance when the other girls had gotten off work, and had seen Peg climb into a car and get whisked away down Sand Beach Road. She hadn’t come to dinner. No one knew where she’d gone, not even Jeremy, who’d passed the meal in a state of demonstrable concern.

“Where’ve you been at?” Brigid said, looking off toward the window as if she was merely asking out of politeness and couldn’t have cared less where Peg had spent the last few hours.

“Pardon?” Peg said.

Brigid turned back into the room. “People wondered where you’d gone,” she said.

Peg paused. “The girls were likewise wondering where you’d knocked off to this afternoon.”

Brigid’s face went deadpan with annoyance as she tried to stop her eyes from rolling. “I was in plain sight of the lot of you on the Squires’ porch all afternoon. You couldn’t’ve wondered all that much, now could you?”

Peg couldn’t help herself. “How’s the boy?” she said, her tone a mixture of accusation and longing.

“Squee? He’s just fine,” Brigid said quickly. “They took him to the beach, with Mia.”

“Who took him to the beach?”

Brigid paused, waiting for the acid to drain back from her lips before she spoke. She forced a terrible smile: “Gavin and his new little hoor.”

“Well, if you’re getting off with Lance Squire, what precisely did you expect?”

Brigid sat up. “You’ve bloody got to be kidding.”

“What?”

“You think I’ve passed over Gavin in favor of Lance Squire?” Brigid took it for granted that no one in her right mind would ever pass over Gavin.

“So you haven’t, then?” Peg said casually.

Brigid flopped back down onto the bed and turned to the window.

“Oh, I see, now,” Peg said snidely.

Brigid lay fuming in her bed by the window, words flashing through her brain, retorts and explanations so loud in her skull it seemed Peg should have been able to hear them. She tried to speak, but whatever came to her tongue felt inadequate, and she swallowed a number of beginnings before she managed to sit up and say: “The man’s wife has just passed on. Am I the only one around in this bloody place who thinks he deserves a bit of sympathy? You lot treat him as though he’d killed her himself!”

That struck Peg unexpectedly, for it was true: that was precisely the way she thought of him. “Oh, don’t be thick,” she snapped. “I’ve simply a bit more concern for the welfare of the child who’s been left in his care and’ll likely be scarred for life, or worse, if no one steps in and does a bloody thing about it—”

“Jesus Christ!” Brigid cried. “Who do think you are, then?” She was stammering for the next line when Peg cut her off.

“I’m someone who bloody cares what’ll happen to that child!”