Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [122]
Philbrick turns. “Let me think about these matters, Olympia. They are difficult.”
“I know.”
“I believe I can answer at least one question for you,” Philbrick says. “I cannot say for sure what name the child has now, but I do know he once had the name of Haskell.”
“My father gave the name Haskell to the boy?” Olympia asks.
“It was John who brought the child,” he says quietly.
Olympia turns her head away and stares through the screen at an old lilac bush, now divested of its blooms. Philbrick leans toward her, but she waves him off.
“No, I did not know,” she says. “I thought only that my father, having heard about the orphanage and reasoning that it was far from Boston, had made arrangements.”
“And doubtless he did,” Philbrick says. “But he made them with Haskell.”
She shakes her head. It is inconceivable to her that her father communicated with John Haskell during that terrible time before the birth. Inconceivable that Haskell would have given over his own child. But then, as she removes a handkerchief from her purse beside her, she remembers an argument she and Haskell once had in a carriage on the way back from the Rivard birth, and how he advocated life in an orphanage for a child over life with an unwed mother who was ill prepared for her lot.
“You never heard from John himself then?” Philbrick asks, again quietly.
“No.”
Philbrick clears his throat. “I daresay the child is thriving,” he says. “Although it has been some time since I inquired. Actually, I am ashamed to say that it has been years. This is news to me that the child was placed out.”
“How dare my father and Haskell conspire to take the child from me!” Olympia blurts out suddenly. In an instant, anger has replaced shock.
“Oh, my dear,” Philbrick says. “Of course, you know they did it for you. I am certain they thought it best for you.”
“They could not possibly know what was best for me,” Olympia says heatedly. She stands. “I must leave you now,” she says, only then remembering her manners and the lovely lunch. “Mr. Philbrick, thank you for a truly wonderful luncheon. And I do mean that sincerely. I envy you your house.”
“Do you indeed?”
She studies him for some sign of how he lives in this modest cottage, some clue to his secret life; but he remains, in his blue linen, only a kindly, if blunt, man of finance. “You will not write my father?” she asks.
“No,” he says, walking her to the door. “I can promise you that. This matter is between you and me.”
They move out onto the front lawn. In the lane, Ezra is waiting.
“I will try to discover the whereabouts of the child,” Philbrick says, “and then determine for myself if he is being well cared for before we will discuss this again. I do not like to be the arbiter of your future, but you have placed me in this position.”
“I can think of nothing else to do.”
“I shall write to you,” he says. And with that he bends and kisses Olympia at the side of her mouth, which is nearly as astonishing to her as the news she has so recently had to digest.
AS SHE HAS been doing each of the eleven afternoons since she visited Rufus Philbrick’s cottage, Olympia sits looking out to sea, an occupation that consumes nearly all of her time. Sometimes she brings a book with her onto the porch, even occasionally her mending, but these, she has come to understand, are mere accessories to the true task at hand, which is no task at all, but rather the necessity merely to be patient, to sit and look out over the water and to wait for a letter.
She watches a fisherman working from his boat not fifty feet off the rocks at the end of the lawn. A not unfamiliar sight, the boat bobs in the slight chop while the man hauls in wooden pots from the bottom of the ocean. The craft is a sloop, no, perhaps a schooner, laden with barrels of bait and catch — a charming sight, but testament only to a life more harsh than any Olympia has ever had to endure, even during those wretched weeks