Chapter 06
amy
Amy knew she owed Mac an apology. His truck was parked in the drive when she got home from school that afternoon; he rarely came home from the marina before seven or eight at night in the summer, and it was barely four o’clock – a clear marker of how upset he was over this morning’s drama.
If the shoe had been on the other foot and he’d been the one who’d risked his life – to save one of his passengers, say – she’d have been furious. But Mac wasn’t angry; he was disappointed and hurt, and that was a thousand times worse.
She made herself an old-fashioned pot of coffee – she refused to add to the oceans of plastic coffee pods already in landfill – and sifted through the post as she waited for it to percolate.
She’d signed up for paperless mail with every bank, credit card and utility company they used, but the mailbox was still always filled with leaflets and unwanted magazines.
She couldn’t put it off any longer. She dumped the magazines into the recycling tote, and went out onto the deck at the back of the house, where she found Mac leaning on the balcony with his back towards her, staring out across the blue-green mountains, a half-drunk beer in his hand.
His shoulders stiffened as he heard her approach.
‘You gave me one helluva scare today,’ he said, without turning around.
‘I know. I’m sorry.’
‘If anything had happened to you—’
‘It was stupid. I don’t know what I was thinking—’
‘It was beyond stupid,’ he said, swinging round abruptly. ‘But it was also fucking brave.’
Amy felt about two inches tall. It’d be so much easier if he yelled at her.
It hadn’t just been her life she’d risked when she’d climbed out onto that roof after Raylan Adams: what would have happened to Nicky if she’d fallen? Eighteen-year-old boys might think they didn’t need their mothers, but Amy knew better.
And Iris? What about Iris?
If Amy had got herself killed, it would’ve sent her sister straight back into the dark place she’d been in after Finn was born; and this time she might not have come back.
Amy took her responsibilities as older sister seriously.
She’d literally been there for Iris’s entire life.
Their father, Bob, had worked fourteen- and sometimes sixteen-hour days to keep his wife in the style to which she was determined to become accustomed, and that style hadn’t included the dull but essential minutiae of motherhood: clean school uniform, lunch money, getting to the bus stop in time.
So it’d been left to dependable, practical, responsible – yes, boring – Amy to take care of things.
She’d given Iris sensible advice about sex and boys, and picked up the pieces when Iris hadn’t taken it.
She’d rescued her sister from the mess of her own making and looked after her son, Finn, when Iris couldn’t, and if she was occasionally overbearing sometimes, she knew Iris understood it stemmed from love, not malice.
‘It wasn’t brave,’ she said. ‘It was reckless. And selfish.’
‘Don’t be sorry. Don’t ever apologise for being who you are.’
Now she felt even worse. MacGill Smith was a good man.
He was a good husband, and a good father.
She never had to worry about whether he’d come home drunk or broke or even at all.
He’d never looked twice at another woman, or blown the budget at the Mohawk Casino like so many husbands in town.
He deserved more consideration than she’d given him lately.
She knew how lucky she was to still be in love with her husband after all these years; how lucky to know he was in love with her.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said again, her voice suddenly thick.
‘Hey,’ he said, putting his arm around her and pulling her close. ‘Hey. Enough of that. Come on. It’s all good.’
They stood for a moment in companionable silence, staring out across the mountains. It was a view she’d woken up to her entire life.
A hundred feet below them, hidden by the bright acid-green leaves of early summer, was her parents’ old house, where she and Iris had grown up.
When each of his daughters had married, Bob Gray had given them the choice of a cash lump sum, or a plot of land on the same mountain ridge.
Iris had taken the cash – Jesse Spencer had already been building his McMansion on the lake by then – but Amy and Mac had chosen the land where they would build their own home: twelve acres wooded with maples and beeches and silver birches overlooking the Green Mountains.
The house had been a labour of love. They hadn’t been able to afford to hire a builder, so they’d done most of the work themselves.
Mac had spent eight months just clearing trees from the site where they’d planned to build, working evenings and weekends after putting in a full day’s work at the marina scraping barnacles off the bottom of other people’s boats.
They’d had no choice but to hire someone to blast through the rock ledge and pour concrete foundations, but Mac had framed the two-storey house himself.
He’d cut the sheetrock using only a handsaw, since power tools had been beyond their budget.
He’d carried heavy sheets of shingles on his shoulders up and down a ladder for an entire summer to finish the roof, and shovelled out rocks one at a time to make space for a septic tank.
It had taken them another year to save enough to pay an engineer to bore seven hundred feet into the rock to find water and put in a well. Then, while Mac had tiled the bathroom and built the kitchen cabinets, Amy had painted the house, put up curtains and varnished the bannisters.
Mac had been in a ditch laying wire in the rain, exhausted, when Amy had gone out and handed him a pair of baby booties, her way of breaking the unexpected, but not unwelcome, news. They’d moved into their home just seven weeks before Nicky was born.
Over the years, Mac had added the wide-planked wrap-around deck they stood on now, and a three-season sunroom to make the most of the property’s southerly exposure.
When Helen had no longer been able to manage – or afford – the old family home on her own after Bob’s death and had guilted Amy into letting her move in with them, Mac had built an in-law apartment to the side of the property with its own entrance and a ramp so she hadn’t had to worry about stairs.
He’d done all the work himself. He might be the boss of Stowebury Marina now, but he still liked to get his hands dirty, as evidenced by the perennial grease beneath his fingernails.
Amy loved this house like a second child: she’d left instructions when she died for her ashes to be scattered beneath the paper birch outside their bedroom.
‘I nearly forgot,’ Amy said, turning to her husband. ‘We did have one bit of good news today. The prom committee signed off on hiring the Lady.’
‘I heard,’ Mac said. ‘Jesse told me.’
‘It’s going to be OK, isn’t it?’ Amy said. ‘The prom, I mean. Some of the parents are a bit worried—’
‘It’ll be fine. Enough talking about work. In fact, enough talking altogether.’
Mac framed her face with his calloused hands. He kissed her softly on the lips, and then on the neck, and it was so unusual for them to behave like that these days, to be gentle, to be tender, like newlyweds, that Amy felt a wave of heat and longing sweep through her.
‘I can’t imagine a world without you, Amy Gray,’ Mac said, taking her hand and leading her back inside. ‘And I hope I never have to.’