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  “A board meeting,” he blithely announced to Annuncia as he was leaving the plant with the contract in one hand and a one-gallon olive oil container in the other, but she would have none of that. She took one solid step sideways and blocked the metal door with her formidable self, waiting for an answer. With her bullet-shaped body draped in a red smock and topped with a snood, she looked like the red nun, one of the navigational buoys in the harbor. It was how he often thought of her, anyway. After his father’s death, when Duncan’s family expected that he’d return to Port Ellery to run Seacrest’s, it was Annuncia who drove to New York to convince him that he could do it. It was Annuncia who’d then talked him into staying in Port Ellery when he realized, yes, he probably could do it, but he didn’t want to. Once he was resigned to his fate, it was Annuncia who sat him down in the office and showed him how to navigate the turbulent currents of the business. More recently, she’d helped guide them through the renovation of the building and encouraged him to expand into retail.

  But all those decisions had brought him and Seacrest’s nearer to ruin. It was time to start seeking counsel elsewhere, even if it was only his mother.

  “What’s that in your hand there, Dun’n?” she said.

  “Soup,” he said. Duncan had asked Marney for the jellyfish soup because anything that could lift varnish off a table and stop a man dead in his tracks might have a few commercial applications. Jellyfish had become more abundant than ever due to warmer waters and the overfishing of their predators and competitors, crowding everything else out. If he could find a lucrative use for one of the species, he would have a constant supply, and the fishermen would be happy to have them gone from the waters. So little was known about them, nothing was impossible. For his current needs, he knew that jellyfish were inefficient as fertilizer because of the huge quantity needed to dehydrate into a single spoonful of dust, being 99 percent water as they were, but after seeing how they had exploded in Slocum’s face and then produced a soup as strong as turpentine, he thought they might have potential for a solvent. After the ambulance had left with Osbert, Marney had funneled the pot of Slocum’s jellyfish soup into an empty olive oil can for Duncan and poured the rest down the sink. “Better than Drano,” she said as she pushed him out the back door, one step ahead of the health inspector. She’d been through this drill before.

  Annuncia stared at the can as if she could see through steel. “The soup that about killed Osbert?”

  “Shh,” he said and put a finger to his lips.

  “You don’t intend to do yourself in, do you, Dun’n?”

  “Not this way,” he said. “I’m sort of a coward when it comes to gut-wrenching pain.”

  There followed a pointed silence during which Annuncia seemed to be contemplating his cowardice in all its manifestations, but she let it pass. “What’s that in your other hand?”

  He inspected the manila envelope as if he were surprised to find it in his possession. “Some paperwork.”

  “It’s the contract from Osbert,” she said. “Are you going to sign it and save us, or not?”

  Wade, who had been heading toward the loading dock, stopped to pick up a broom and started mechanically sweeping around the few square feet in which they stood.

  “It’s not an either-or situation,” said Duncan. “If I don’t sign the agreement, there are still ways to save the business.” He looked around the empty factory. The stainless steel tanks had stopped churning for the day, and the cement floor was wet from a rinsing. He looked at his watch. “Where is everyone? The shift isn’t over yet.”

  “We got through early, and rather than let them sit on their hands for a half hour, I sent them down to the beach to pick up plastic crap. Don’t change the subject. Tell me about this other ‘or.’ You have payroll for Friday?”

  “To pay to have the beach cleaned? No wonder we’re in trouble.”

  “Let me worry about whether the work gets done and when.”

  “What ’Nun is getting at,” said Wade, who had stopped all pretense of sweeping and was now leaning on his push broom, “is that for things to stay the same, we gotta change. Think long. Like ’Nun here sending workers out to collect the plastic ’fore it taints the fishes.” With that, he slapped his heart. “No fish, no fish guts, no Seacrest’s.”

  “Survival means more than just the survival of the business,” she said. “Who else but you can take the world’s mess and transform it into something useful?”

  “Annuncia, don’t I have enough pressure right now without adding the weight of a world on me? I can’t do everything.”

  “Do something,” she said. “Look past the tip of your nose. As your dear mum would say, keep your hand steady on the tiller and your eye on the horizon.”

  “I’m trying to see dear mum right now,” Duncan said. “If you’ll just move aside.”

  “Why?” asked Wade. “She wouldn’t take notice of the factory ’less you strapped a spinnaker on the roof and pushed the building into the sea to see how fast it’ll go.”

  “And Nod,” added Duncan. “He’s on the board, too. I have my responsibilities.”

  “Your responsibilities are misplaced,” Annuncia said. A worker, one of the few apparently not out gathering garbage off the beach, puttered toward them in a forklift, heading for the loading dock. Annuncia stepped aside to let the machine pass, and Duncan slid out the door.

  “Go ahead, go talk to your ‘board,’” she called. “But come back tomorrow with a signed contract, or none of us will be working by the end of the week.”

  Duncan wanted to point out that no one was working now, but he kept his mouth shut in order to make a smooth escape. He felt their eyes on his back as he climbed into the pickup and drove off. What was the point of pretending he was still deliberating? He knew he would sign the contract, and not just because Annuncia told him to but because there was no other way to save Seacrest’s. Deep down, in spite of his ambivalence, he wanted to save it. Embarrassment was stronger than fear. He could not relinquish the company without a fight and still hold his head up in town. And maybe, just maybe, if he took care of one responsibility (Seacrest’s), the other (his marriage) would fall into line. He felt lighter just thinking about it. In fact, the farther he drove away from Seacrest’s, the better he felt about its future, so much so that he decided he would no longer wait for Cora to call. He would risk rejection and call her to discuss their own future. He fumbled for his cell and tried her office number.

  “Duncan! Oh, what a relief. You’ve called.”

  “I think we’re saved,” he said, positively giddy.

  “We are?”

  “I’ve found a temporary partner for Seacrest’s. He wants to process some garbage in exchange for enough money to carry us over until we launch the new fertilizer line.”

  He waited for her to be happy for him, but when she finally spoke, it was in a voice touched with repressed rage that took the wind out of his sails. “Seacrest’s?” she said. “What about us? You haven’t seen or talked to me in three weeks. Three long, important weeks, and you don’t even ask about the biggest thing in our lives.”

  Duncan started bailing with both buckets. “I thought you were supposed to call me when you were ready to have me back.” The light turned red, and when he stopped short a car screeched to a stop behind him. “Can I? Come home?”

  “Home?” He heard her take some breaths. Was she crying? “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I need to relax, and you’ll just want to throw a panic party. You’re getting me very upset right now as it is.”

  “I know, I’ve been such a wreck. I thought I was going to lose Seacrest’s. But that’s all going to change.”

  “I’m sorry you’re having such a rough time of it,” she said. “But do you really have nothing to say? Nothing to ask me?”

  What? What? He’d already asked to come home. What else was there?

  He heard her sigh. He imagined her sitting in her office at the back of their house, a cozy r
oom with teal curtains that let the sun shine through like water. She would be at her desk. Their orange cat, Dabs, would be curled up on the chair opposite her, like a reclusive client. Before he’d called and interrupted her life, Cora would have been making notes about the last client or reviewing them for the next. Behind her on the wall was a framed print of a quotation by the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, which more or less acted as her family counseling mission statement:

  The type of human being we prefer reveals the contours of our heart. Love is an impulse which springs from the most profound depths of our beings, and upon reaching the visible surface of life carries with it an alluvium of shells and seaweed from the inner abyss. A skilled naturalist, by filing these materials, can reconstruct the oceanic depths from which they have been uprooted.

  He was the alluvium she kept turning over in her hands. “What do you think it says about me that I’m with you?” she had asked early in the summer while they were waiting in the clinic’s office. “It says you like a project,” he’d said, with a laugh. She didn’t laugh back. “When we have a baby, Duncan, that will be my project. Our project. Think you can stand that?”

  He’d squeezed her hand and pulled her close. “I can’t wait.” Soon afterward, though, the business had started going down and so had he. He needed Cora, but she was immersed in the minute changes of her hormones and could not be reached. He’d always depended on her to tell him about himself. Now she wanted him to figure it out on his own. It was like a pop quiz at school, only he didn’t even know what the subject was.

  The light turned green, and he lurched forward.

  “Okay, never mind,” she said in defeat. “Tell me about this garbage. Did you do a feasibility study or risk assessment?”

  “There’s no time,” he said, a little sick to find himself sounding like his mother. “I have to make payroll this week or go under. I can’t draw on our own money to pay for it again.”

  “No! Don’t even think about it. We need every penny now more than ever.”

  “Then let me get the business stable so we can concentrate on us. Isn’t that what you wanted me to do when you sent me away? Clear the decks?”

  “I thought you were going to Slocum’s for a few days so I could relax. Now I hear you’re living at your mom’s.” He heard her shuffle papers. “Although that might not be a bad thing. Revisiting the past might help you step into the future.”

  He pulled over to the side of the road because he could not keep driving and have this conversation at the same time. He forgot to signal, and the driver behind him leaned on his horn as he passed. A gray Mini Cooper. He recognized Beaky Harrow and felt a damp chill run through his body. What did everyone want from him?

  “Can we talk about this in person?”

  There was a hollow sound on the other end of the line, and he thought she’d walked away from the call. “Duncan,” she began again, a little tearily, “right now I just can’t take care of you. You have to take care of yourself. As for me, not that you’ve asked …” And then she paused. In a swift, terrifying moment he wondered if someone had told her about Syrie kissing him at lunch that day. Or seen her foot on his at the Boat Club. Then, in an even more terrifying moment, he wondered if she had a Syrie—a male, virile Syrie, willing and able to do what Duncan could not—and that was what she wanted to tell him. It was a confession he did not want to hear. He pressed on his horn.

  “Someone’s telling me to move,” he said over the sound. “I’ll call you later.” And then he clicked the phone shut.

  He rested his head on the steering wheel and felt his sweat against the cold plastic. A truck rumbled by full of empty clam shells from the processor, and when it hit a pothole a shell bounced out and landed on his windshield with a sharp crack. He sat upright and touched the damage, a sparkling circle of shattered glass the size of a dime. “One more thing to repair.”

  Two of his employees walked past the pickup and stared at him. He smiled and waved cheerfully at them as if nothing was the matter, then started his engine and pulled out into the traffic. He could not stay where he was.

  eight

  Duncan was so turned around by his conversation with Cora that he was suddenly unsure of his ability to navigate. “Water on my right, water on my right,” he said to himself as he drove, a silly mantra when all he had to do was stay on Shore Road. While he lamented the shipwreck that was his marriage, he mourned the equally disastrous changes in his old route. It was no longer the road of his blissfully rudderless youth, when this long stretch was the somewhat wild and untamed curve of the bay, dotted with signs of warning—Swim at your own risk and Caution: strong tides—which had only encouraged recklessness. This area had once been so sparsely settled that as kids he and Nod could walk the few miles from their house to their dad’s office without ever taking their feet off the rocks. Often that meant racing to get to town before an advancing tide forced them up onto the civilization of the sidewalk. How they had loved the damp band of earth that was neither wholly sea nor entirely land, a constantly changing landscape that offered their prepubescent souls new, exciting dangers to overcome. They had felt themselves gifted at avoiding the perils of the seaweed slicks; they had leaped across the cracks and crevices with ease, even grace, and had waded unafraid through tide pools full of barnacles and crabs. They had stepped over lobster traps and avoided the many minefields of trash. They were masters of their world, demigods of the water’s edge.

  But their infinite kingdom was gone. They’d be arrested for trespassing if they tried that today, if it was even possible to climb over, under, and around all the new docks and fences. The shoreline had been rapidly built up over the recent years, and now, as fast as it had all gone up, it was coming down. He passed the unfinished “Lightkeeper’s House,” as the developer called it, a plywood mansion with a fake lighthouse attached. The protective plastic that had once covered the raw wood had blown away in shreds, waving like battle standards. Another ruin in the making, like so many others along the stretch, abandoned during construction due to the homeowner’s or builder’s financial apocalypse. The wrecks were signs of a lost civilization, like pagodas in the jungles, soon to be smothered with vines and inhabited by gangs of monkeys.

  He stopped by the side of the road, between two houses where there was still a window to his old world, and got out of the truck. He put one foot on the guardrail and looked out at the water, which rose and fell as methodically as a breathing chest. Rheya was out there, rowing her dory listlessly around and around, as if she could not rest until all the parts of her husband were together again.

  A gray Mini Cooper drove by, and Beaky waved from inside his little shell of metal.

  “Leave me alone!” Duncan shouted as it disappeared down the road. Would this be his life if he signed the contract, constantly being watched and supervised? What would be his life if he didn’t sign?

  He got back in the truck and sped off, turning wide onto Cean Avenue, his mother’s street. Years ago, long before he was born, it was Ocean Avenue, but the “O” had cracked off the end of its hand-painted sign, so it became Cean Avenue first by custom, then by law. It was pronounced keen, as to wail loudly. He turned into his mother’s driveway, killed the ignition, and sat. He closed his eyes. Over the sound of the surf slapping the rocks, he heard his mother’s voice, as sharp and piercing as a gull’s, carping at poor Nod down by the water. Duncan pulled himself out of the truck, taking with him the manila envelope and the tin gallon of soup.

  He paused in front of the house. Usually he would get to the backyard by the wraparound porch, but he and Nod had just stored all the lawn furniture on it before the fall winds arrived to blow them away. Instead, he used the ratway, a narrow path squeezed in between the house and the neighbor’s high stone wall. Zoning would not allow a house to be built that close to the property line today, but there was so much about the structure that was grandfathered in, it might as well be a boat in dry dock for all that it confo
rmed to modern building code. Even the porch railings, which canted inward like a ship’s rails, were more nautical than domestic.

  The ratway was overhung by hairy evergreens, casting him in a green underwater light. The trees had been planted on the other side of the wall decades ago by the abutters and left by subsequent owners as a barrier against the irregular life of the Lelands. On his left, open latticework concealed the crawl space under the porch, and he kept his eyes averted for fear of spotting furry things creeping among the terra cotta towers of flowerpots and stacks of storm windows, beyond which lay the foundation of the house, the crude heavy stones upon which all the rest depended, and upon which the old house had teetered during gales, always—amazingly—managing to set itself right in the end. And behind that wall of stone, in the cellar, lay Great-Uncle Fern’s casks of mulberry wine, on which his mother depended. Beneath Duncan’s feet, the path crunched with layers of sea glass, the dumping place of a century’s worth of family beachcombing. As a hobby, Cora made whimsical mobiles from sea glass and sometimes scoured for pieces from the path because the supply on the beach was so rapidly dwindling. It had once seemed an unending source of material, but now, between the change to plastic and the ban on dumping, sea glass, that perfect collaboration between man and nature, was becoming a relic of the past.