Chapter 11 #3
“Oh, friends of the family, business acquaintances…?” Becca shrugged.
“Whoever they invited up. Their visitors would stay in the cottages while the family was at Grayhaven. I don’t remember it too well.
I was only sixteen when it all stopped, after the accident.
” She paused, pressing her lips together, as if there was more she was recalling but didn’t want to say.
“The accident…” Grace repeated cautiously. “Your mom mentioned a girl dying…”
“You really want all the goss, don’t you?
” Becca remarked ruefully. Grace thought she saw a flash of something like grief or pain in her eyes and wondered if it had to do with the unknown girl or something else.
“My mother doesn’t like to talk about it, but then she’s pretty tight-lipped generally, and it was awful, although it was a long time ago now, and we…
we had other stuff going on. My dad had died just a few months before, and…
well.” She drew a quick breath, gathering her composure before continuing, “It was a sailing accident with one of the visitors—a girl, maybe seventeen or so. Eleanor, her name was. I remember that. She and her family were staying at one of the cottages, and she took a boat out by herself. There was some kind of accident, even though the weather was calm. They went out and searched for her, and eventually they found her, later in the night, when the mist was coming up.” She shook her head slowly.
“I remember the sound of the foghorn, and somehow everyone knew. They thought she must have hit her head somehow and drowned. I never really understood exactly what happened, but it was terrible.”
“I’m so sorry…” Grace murmured.
“It was. Everything was such a blur… they went out searching, and they came back with her body… and then suddenly everyone was leaving. Everyone.” She shivered suddenly as the memory seemed to hold her in its misty grip.
“It was terrible, at the time,” she said quietly.
“Her poor mother, the way she screamed…” She shook her head.
“And afterward, after the Lawrences and—the Lawrences left, it felt kind of… empty here. My brothers had already gone, and my dad…” Becca’s gaze turned distant.
“I guess I was more focused on that, so I don’t remember a lot about the accident, but it made it so the Lawrences never came back. ”
“I’m so sorry,” Grace said, conscious she was apologizing yet again, which made her think of Noah. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
“I understand why you’d be curious,” Becca told her frankly.
“With this island the way it is, that gloomy house up there on the rock, and Noah as good as a hermit.” She shook her head again as she sighed.
“I think he took his brother’s death pretty badly.
They were twins, you know, practically joined at the hip. ”
“I didn’t know they were twins,” Grace said after a moment. “Did he die recently?”
“About a year and a half ago. Noah’s been living here since, but he hardly shows his face.
And he was some kind of bigwig in New York, him and his brother.
Venture capitalists. There was some article on them in the newspaper, I remember seeing it online.
The Kings of New York, they were called, something of a play on words because they’d both been big chess players growing up, had tutors, competed in tournaments all over the world, all that jazz.
Noah’s some kind of master at it, I think.
Anyway.” Becca straightened as she put down her coffee mug.
“I think I’ve probably gossiped enough. My mother would be giving me an earful if she could hear me, but I don’t get the chance to chat very much.
” She gave Grace an abashed smile, seeming a little embarrassed by the admission. “Thanks for the coffee.”
“Anytime.” She’d appreciated talking to someone, Grace reflected, as well as getting to know a little bit of the Lawrence family history. Maybe she and Becca could be friends. “Thanks for coming over. I hope you come again.”
“And I hope you stick it out here.” Becca rose from the table. “And I have some nosy questions to ask you,” she added, wagging a finger playfully. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten!”
“And I’ll do my best to answer them,” Grace replied with a small smile. Or at least to prevaricate. She’d become adept at sidestepping anything remotely personal, but maybe it was time to change.
Maybe it was time to change a lot of things, Grace thought as she saw Becca out.
For far too long she’d kept herself isolated, immolated even, the unique and interesting parts of herself as good as consumed by her ex-husband’s unrelenting expectations and demands, so softly and slyly given she hadn’t even realized that was what they were.
Brad had been so convincing that she’d believe it was what she’d wanted, and not just him.
It was going to take a while to figure out who she was and what she wanted, Grace acknowledged, a discovery of self that was long overdue, but at least here she might be able to start.