The Night Strangers - Chris Bohjalian [8]
Their children were fifth-graders named Hallie and Garnet: Garnet because her newborn hair had been the deep red it was even now and Hallie because it was the name of the infant’s grandmother—Emily’s mother. Hallie and Garnet were not identical twins, though they certainly were close and took pride in their sisterly camaraderie. They were each other’s best friend. The family had lived outside of Philadelphia, in the mannered suburb of West Chester, but at different points in their lives both Emily and Chip had spent sizable chunks of time in New England. Emily’s grandparents had had a summerhouse in Meredith, New Hampshire, and she had fond childhood memories of Julys and Augusts in the brisk waters of Lake Winnipesaukee. Chip had spent four years in Amherst at the University of Massachusetts, though by his senior year he was spending far more time at the Northampton Airport than he was in classes: He would devote whatever money he made working overnight at the university switchboard to flying lessons there in Pipers and Cessnas and, eventually, in a twin-engine Beechcraft Duchess. The first mountains he flew over—foothills in all but name—were the thousand-foot peak of Hitchcock and the eleven-hundred-foot summit of Norwottuck, which were no more than five miles from the edge of the runway.
Consequently, the idea of retreating to New England after the disastrous water landing grew slowly but inexorably—rather like a seed germinating in water in a bathroom glass—in the minds of both the captain and his wife. Any state but Vermont, the site of the crash, would do. Neither of them particularly liked the idea of uprooting their children, but they also didn’t believe that remaining in Pennsylvania was an option after the captain’s sudden retirement from flying. They needed to start fresh someplace new. Emily thought she could take the bar wherever they resettled, and Chip presumed it didn’t matter at forty whether he started a new career in New England or the Mid-Atlantic. The girls would make friends wherever they found themselves. Children were resilient. Didn’t families move all the time?
Still, they had barely begun to search the Web for possible homes in New England when they heard from a real estate agent. A fellow named Sheldon Carter called, describing some town they had never heard of in northern New Hampshire. Bethel. Sheldon, of course, along with every other sentient adult in the country, was aware of Flight 1611 and the captain who wasn’t Sully Sullenberger. He knew precisely who Emily was. He said that he had seen her name among the possible buyers who requested more information on the agency’s Web site in Littleton, New Hampshire, and that he had the perfect house for them. His voice was serene and warm, and it sounded as if he really did have an intuitive sense of what the Linton family needed: a world where they would be far from both the stares—some judgmental, some pitying—and the averted eyes. A world where people were not defined by their successes and failures. A world that was, in some ways, oblivious to the inexorable media—the twenty-four-hour news cycles, the relentless blogs, the wonder walls of gossip and innuendo and supposition on the Web—that constantly had stories likely to trigger self-hatred and despair in the captain, even though it wasn’t his fault.
The house he had in mind, the Realtor said, had character, space, and absolutely spectacular views. It sat alone on a hill up the road from the village. And the town had a first-rate public school system. Sheldon actually