The weight of water - Anita Shreve [34]
“Mommy, can I have a Coke?”
“In a car accident,” Thomas says. “When I was a kid. The driver was drunk.” Rich looks up quickly at Thomas, but Thomas turns his head away.
“Not now, Sweetie. It’s almost time for supper.”
“We have some tunafish,” says Rich. “I’ll make her a sandwich.”
“You’ve done enough,” I say. “The least I can do is make a sandwich.” I start to get up.
“I don’t want tunafish,” Billie says. “I want a lobster.”
“Billie, I don’t think…” I start to say, but Rich stops me with a small shake of his head.
“Why don’t you give the lobster a try?” he asks Billie. “And if you don’t like it, we can make the sandwich then.”
She closes her mouth and nods. I can see that she is slightly worried now that she has won her small contest. I doubt she really wants a lobster.
“Where are you from?” Adaline asks me. As she crosses her legs, a slit in the skirt of her black dress falls open, revealing a long, suntanned calf. Thomas looks down at Adaline’s leg, and then away. I am wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. Thomas has a fresh shirt on, a blue shirt with a thin yellow stripe, and he has shaved.
“Indiana, originally,” I say. “My parents are dead. I was born late, when my mother was forty-eight.”
“Mommy, what do seagulls eat?”
“Fish, I think,” I say to Billie. “They dive in the ocean for fish. If you watch them closely, I’ll bet you can see them.” Selfconsciously, I look toward Smuttynose, at the gulls that loop in the air over the ragged shoreline.
“And you do this?” Adaline asks, gesturing with her hands to include the boat, the island, the harbor.
“When I can,” I say.
“But, Mom, where do they sleep?”
“That’s a good question,” I say, turning to Thomas for help.
“Damned if I know,” Thomas says.
“They must sleep on rocks,” Adaline offers. “They put their heads under their wings, I think.”
“Have you ever seen a seagull sleep?” Billie asks her.
Adaline purses her lips. “I must have done,” she says. “But I can’t think where.”
“On the back of a garbage barge in the middle of Boston Harbor,” Rich calls out from the galley.
“The rats of the sea,” mutters Thomas.
Billie snuggles deeper into the cavity of my arm and chest and speaks into my rib cage. “Adaline is beautiful,” she says shyly, not quite certain it is all right to say such a thing aloud.
“I know she is,” I say, looking directly at Adaline, who meets my eyes.
“I love you, Mommy,” Billie says.
“I love you, too,” I say.
Early reports of the murders were hastily written and full of inaccuracies. The first bulletin from the Boston Post read as follows: “Two Girls Murdered on Smutty Nose Island, Isles of Shoals. Particulars of the Horrible Butchery — Escape of the Assassin and Subsequent Arrest in Boston — The Murderer’s Object for Committing the Deed — Attempt to Kill a Third Person — Miraculous Escape of His Intended Victim — Terrible Sufferings from the Cold — Appalling Spectacle at the Home of the Murdered Females, Etc., Etc. — [SPECIAL DISPATCH TO THE BOSTON POST] Portsmouth, N.H., March 6. Our citizens were horror-struck soon after noon to-day, when a fisherman named Huntress, whose home is at the Isles of Shoals, by landing his boat at Newcastle, and taking them thence to this city, hastened to inform our police that murder most foul had been done at the Shoals.”
According to the same report, a “rough young man named Lewis Wagner” was seen walking down to the wharf the previous night with an ax in hand. The next morning at seven o’clock, while Wagner and “Huntress” were “having breakfast together” in Portsmouth, Wagner told the unfortunate Huntress (who had not yet returned home and did not know of the murders) that something was going to happen to him (Lewis Wagner). Anetta Lawson and Cornelia Christenson were the victims. A third woman, Mrs. Huntress, had escaped. Portsmouth City Marshall Johnson was already on his way to Boston to try to apprehend