Chapter 70
WILLIAM
William boarded the first ferry. After he’d packed, he stood on the hotel porch and spoke to what felt like every member of his family.
Some seemed to think he’d been there after the lights came back on, saying that they’d caught a glimpse of him on the parquet dance floor, or trailed the golf cart he’d boarded back to the hotel.
“And Shay slept through so much of it!” they exclaimed, and William could only think to shake his head along with them.
Only Vivian seemed suspicious, asking if he’d found Joel, but she seemed to relax when Aunt Pam interrupted to say she’d seen Shay that morning, and how well rested she looked, which she ought to, given how much she’d slept.
No one mentioned seeing a man with a shaved head.
He was not waiting for Shay in the dim corner of the lobby or skulking in the shadows of the porch.
He was not anywhere, and William decided in that moment that he would have to trust Shay.
The man had swum to shore, but he would not come looking for her. She’d proven she was someone to fear.
Shay hugged him goodbye outside of her hotel room.
He could hear nothing behind the door, so he was unsure whether Andrew was inside.
The newlyweds were supposed to stay on the island for another day and then leave on Monday for their honeymoon in Spain.
William was not sure if she would be at Eleanor’s funeral; all he needed was the faith that she would call that evening, after he’d dropped his bag on the familiar floorboards of his apartment.
He boarded a golf cart to the ferry. Oscar and Scott sat behind him, talking about whether they’d be able to sleep on the plane.
Oscar badgered Scott about a girl he’d gone home with after the reception, but Scott demurred and refused to divulge any details, always a gentleman.
Their patter was familiar and calming, and William burned with love for each of them.
The ferry was almost full. Children clambered up to the top deck, and suitcases were piled in the corner next to a cage of chickens, each pecking at their nest of hay. Some of the guests sighed at the sight of them, too tired to ask.
He did not want to see the island any longer, it was not his home and never would be, so he found a seat on the lower deck beside his mother.
When he sat down, she shifted her body away from him, still cold with fury for everything he had said and done, but he refused to move.
He would not let her pull away, to let the years ahead of them pass in silence.
It was clear she’d stayed awake for some word of her children, because within ten minutes of the ferry departing, his mother’s head was resting against his shoulder.
Though it was an intimacy she never would have permitted had she been fully awake, he hoped it meant she was capable of forgiving him.
He tried to think if he had ever actually seen either of his parents sleep before.
The walls of their apartment were thin, but the door to their bedroom was tightly latched.
He found that he liked to think of them that way: resting beside each other, softened and tender.
He had a shift at the restaurant the following evening, and on Wednesday, he’d planned to attend a Presbyterian service in Edgewater, but now he knew he would not go.
The next church he’d enter would be the one for Eleanor’s funeral, the stately stone structure on Damen he’d never visited on his own, believing for some reason that he had to look elsewhere, that he had to travel the road alone.
He did not know if he believed what the Episcopal church taught—the sacraments, the creeds—but each of the congregants would be his family.
Each of their faces would be known and loved.
When they planned the service, he would ask if he could give a eulogy.
He would think of Eleanor’s stories, the house on Foster that burned down from a single, forgotten candle, the impossible sound of a voice on the other end of a telephone, children at her school hiding field mice in their desks, children cartwheeling down the halls, children growing older.
Everything she’d ever told him. Strength responds to strength.
Chicago’s first warm day in spring is its own heaven.
We are all far too young when we leave home.