The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [145]
“It’s beautiful,” Bree said. “Thomas Merton used to live here, did you know that? He went to Tibet to meet the Dalai Lama. I love imagining that moment. I love imagining all the monks inside, doing the same things day after day.”
Paul had taken off his sunglasses. His dark eyes were clear. He reached into his pocket and spread some small stones on the hood of the car.
“Remember these?” he asked, as Norah picked one up, fingering the smooth white disk with a hole in the middle. “Crinoids. From sea lilies. Dad taught me about them, that day I broke my arm. I took a walk while you were in the church. They’re all over the place out here.”
“I’d forgotten,” Norah said slowly, but then it came back in a rush: the necklace Paul had made, and how worried she’d been that he’d get caught in it and choke. The sound of bells faded in the clear air. The size of a shirt button, the fossil was light and warm in her hand. She remembered David lifting Paul and carrying him from the party, setting his broken arm. How hard David had worked to make things good for them all, to make things right, and yet somehow it had always been so difficult, for all of them, as if they were swimming the shallow sea that once had covered all this land.
1988
July 1988
I
DAVID HENRY SAT UPSTAIRS IN HIS HOME OFFICE. THROUGH the window, filmed with years of weather and faintly warped, the view of the street wavered, undulant and slightly distorted. He watched a squirrel retrieve a nut and run up the sycamore tree whose leaves pressed against the window. Rosemary was on her knees by the porch, her long hair swinging as she leaned to plant bulbs and annuals in the flower beds she had made. She had transformed the gardens, bringing daylilies from the gardens of friends, planting flax by the garage, where it bloomed, a profusion of pale blue, like mist. Jack sat near her, playing with a dump truck. He was a sturdy boy, five years old now, cheerful and good-natured, with dark brown eyes and traces of red in his blond hair. He had a stubborn streak. On the evenings when David watched him while Rosemary went to work, Jack insisted on doing everything by himself. I’m a big boy, he announced, several times a day, proud and important.
David let him take on what he wanted, within the limits of safety and reason. The truth was, he loved to watch the boy. He loved to read Jack stories, feeling his weight and warmth, his head falling against his shoulder as he drifted nearly into sleep. He loved to hold his small trusting hand when they walked down the sidewalk to the store. It pained David that his memories of Paul at this age were so sparse, so fleeting. He had been establishing his career then, of course, busy with his clinic—and his photography too—but really it was his guilt that had kept him distant. The patterns of his life were painfully clear now. He had handed their daughter to Caroline Gill and the secret had taken root; it had grown and blossomed in the center of his family. For years he’d come home to watch Norah, mixing drinks or tying on an apron, and he’d think how lovely she was and how he hardly knew her.
He had never been able to tell her the truth, knowing he would lose her entirely—and perhaps Paul too—if he did. So he had devoted himself to his work and, in those areas of his life he could control, had been very successful. But, sadly, from those years of Paul’s childhood he remembered only a few moments in brief isolation, with the clarity of photos: Paul asleep on the sofa, one hand falling into the air, his dark hair tousled. Paul standing in the surf, shouting with fear and delight as the waves rushed around his knees. Paul sitting at the little table in the playroom, coloring seriously, so absorbed in his task that he did not notice David standing in the doorway, watching. Paul, casting a line out onto the quiet waters, holding still, hardly breathing, while they waited