4. #3
It seemed like no father should keep tabs on a twenty-eight-year-old son.
It seemed like he should be more concerned with keeping up a relationship.
But this was a subject on which Claire knew very little, and maybe it was only an odd turn of phrase.
She had no idea how a real family was supposed to function, since all she had was Aunt Margo, and they barely acknowledged each other.
Occasionally, she’d receive a birthday card, but it was always a couple days off.
She guessed that this time, the card would come after she returned from Harrow Point.
Dr. Lark tried to talk to her about it sometimes, asking her how she was coping with the idea of starting a family with her marriage when her experience of them was so limited.
Claire hadn’t given an answer. She rarely did.
Every session was a crash course in omission, and part of her knew that made it pointless, but she couldn’t bring herself to stop going, as if hoping the intention somehow outweighed the impact.
She got her meds out of it, and that worked fine.
Her only feeling about starting a family—joining one—had been relief.
“I know we never knew each other.” Audrey took a deep breath.
Claire heard the sound of the sea again, a tide washing in and out.
“I know that Elias probably planned to keep it that way, at least for a while, until things… changed. But we would truly love to have you join us, Claire. We would love for you to be part of the family. Will you come and be part of this? Step into the role you would’ve had? ”
Something almost giddy looped through Claire’s stomach, nauseating after the heaviness of grief.
“Of course,” she said, wondering why Audrey had called to ask when she’d said as much in her email.
Maybe she was the kind of person who only trusted something spoken.
She did still have Hotmail. “Of course I’ll come. ”
“Wonderful.” Audrey had regained the perfect veneer of her composure; she said it like someone making a golf date.
“Oh, and don’t worry about a funeral home—we’ve already made arrangements to have Elias brought to us at Harrow Point.
I’ll email you the details. We’ll send a plane that can take you to Portland, then we’ll drive to the island. ”
She hung up before Claire could ask questions.
Mouth agape, Claire stared at the screen of her phone until it went dark. “A plane,” she said, then shook her head. “Rich people.”
○ ○ 4. ○ ○
A few hours later, Claire gripped her phone in her hand, psyching herself up to make another call.
She’d searched Elias’s desk until she found a business card that read simply “Fish Guy,” with clip art of Flounder from The Little Mermaid.
She assumed this was whom she should call about the removal of the dead octopus-thing.
She’d had very little emotional wherewithal to do anything, hadn’t even let herself look at the tank, but the idea of a sea creature rotting in her house was too much to bear.
Fish Guy was actually named Pete, and he was prompt. He arrived two hours after she made the call, and he appeared fairly normal for someone who used a Disney character on his business card. He smiled at her as he entered. “The thing finally kicked the bucket?”
“Seemingly.” The knot of tentacles floated at the surface of the tank, right above a plastic rendering of SpongeBob’s pineapple under the sea. Claire had never seen the octopus-thing use it.
Gently, Pete scooped the octopus-thing out of the tank with a net and deposited it in a plastic bag. It rolled over as it fell, revealing a gaping mouth full of teeth and an open, milky blue eye.
Claire looked away.
“Gotta tell ya,” Pete said, holding the bag up to the light, “I’ve taken care of some weird fish for weird folks in my day, but this one is definitely the weirdest. Elias never could tell me what exactly it was. Some exotic species, he said, from where he grew up.”
That was more information than he’d ever given Claire. He’d had the thing since they got together, in the same huge tank in his city apartment before they bought the house. It’d cost a fortune to move.
She supposed it wasn’t that strange, to want to have a piece of home with you. Even if the home wasn’t somewhere you were fond of.
“Do I need to do…?” She trailed off, waved at the tank.
“Nah.” Pete studied the plastic bag for a moment longer before putting it in a cooler stacked with gas station ice. “It cleaned up after itself. You should tell Elias to market these things, I’ve never seen a fish more low-maintenance.”
He spoke as if Elias were still alive. He had no reason to believe he wasn’t. Claire didn’t inform him that Elias was dead. That she could never tell him anything ever again.
“Listen, do you care if I show this to the guys before I dispose of it? Elias is kinda cagey about it, never wanted me to take pictures, but…” He shrugged, smiled. “Just between us. They all think I’m pulling their legs.”
“Go for it.” The idea of a coterie of exotic-fish keepers sharing trade secrets was almost enough to make her smile. Almost.
Pete left, whistling. Claire stared at the now-empty tank.
There was some kind of mechanism in it that simulated a tide, washing the water gently up the side of the glass.
The tank was taller than she was, the surface above her head.
If she stared, it almost made it seem like she was beneath the waves.
Claire went upstairs to pack for Harrow Point.