He set the scarf and the blanket onto the floor, then picked up Cedric’s red fireman’s hat, what was left of it. Ignoring the part of the hat where the plastic had melted from the heat of the crash before the plane succumbed to the sea, he thought again about how special that hat was to his boy. It was plastic and cheap, something he’d bought on a whim while on a rare non-working weekend when he’d taken his son to downtown Diversion. He took him into Hammond’s general store, and he said, “get anything you want, son.” All Cedric wanted was that cheap, plastic toy. So, he bought it. And Cedric loved it that fireman’s helmet. Never went anywhere without it. Slept with it. Cried when his mother took it away from him for his bath. Cedric wanted to be a fireman when he grew up, but thanks to Harcourt, Cedric would never get that chance.
Harcourt squeezed his eyes closed. The box sat there, waiting for him to open it. But he wouldn’t open the box that day. He hadn’t opened it in a long time. “I’m sorry,” he said to the box and the people inside he couldn’t face. He slumped to the floor, holding the box in his lap, as his shoulders bounced and his heart shattered again.
An hour or so later, Harcourt headed back to the mansion, his heart heavy and spirits dipping as he took the footpath to the house. He was surprised to see Molly McCarthy’s old truck at the back of his house. He’d given her the day off since she planned to go to Victoria for the weekend.
Molly was one of those senior citizens that could run rings around people half her age. She lived down the hill, about a mile away at the bottom of Dogwood Canyon Road. She was his only close neighbor. There was another house up the hill even closer, but it was a vacation rental cabin that never seemed to be rented. Just seeing her car lifted his spirits somewhat. After the funeral, after he’d come back to stay in Diversion to get away from everyone and grieve in private, he’d had zero intentions of meeting any neighbors. He planned to spend his year of grieving, speaking to no one, and becoming a hermit and growing a beard. He planned on staying locked up in the big place, until the emptiness of it all killed him dead, and he stopped hurting so bad. But it hadn’t worked out that way. Only three days after he’d moved back in, that very same truck rolled up to his house.
He met her in the driveway, hoping to get her to leave, but she’d heard about the tragedy and she’d been a close friend of his wife. She’d taken care of Cedric, and helped with things whenever Sharon needed a break or needed to drive herself to Port Hardy for something.
The tragedy hit Molly hard. When she expressed her condolences, for the first time it didn’t seem fake or full of pity like everyone else. She too was in real pain and it comforted him to know he wasn’t alone. After the initial condolences were over, however, Harcourt expected her to leave. Instead, she went to her car and pulled out a sack of groceries and motioned for him to come over and take it from her.
“What’s this?” he remembered asking her.
“Food,” she said.
Without invitation, she lumbered into the house and made herself at home in his kitchen. Over the next few hours, she recounted her memories of Sharon and little Cedric as she placed a casserole in the oven, washed the dirty dishes piled up in the sink, and made room for the groceries inside the refrigerator.
She sat with him as he ate his first proper meal since leaving New York, and over the next week, Molly McCarthy was the only speck of light that broke through the morass of pain and grief that clung to Harcourt’s soul like hot tar clings to a roof.
She stopped by every few days to cook and make sure he ate something. She cleaned and did laundry and even picked up his mail from the post office in town. She distracted him with bits of news and gossip, and never stopped looking for ways to help. After almost a month of her continual kindness, Harcourt came out of his bubble of pain long enough to realize that he couldn’t tolerate her kindness and charity another minute.
“You aren’t welcome on this property again, Molly, unless you agree to accept a salaried position.”
The arrangement turned out better than either might have expected. Molly came and went as she pleased, squeezing her visits between her busy life as a grandmother and president of the Diversion Gardening Club. Yet, despite the loose schedule, Harcourt was never left wanting for anything. She handled everything, including household cooking and cleaning, but she also hired and dealt with any handymen and landscapers so Harcourt didn’t have to. When a wicked storm blew over their side of the island two days before Thanksgiving, Molly arranged to have the fallen tree cut into pieces and hauled away. When a dead squirrel plugged up the septic system, Molly contacted the plumbers and watched as the men got it out.
There could be a million reasons why Molly hadn’t gone to Victoria yet. She probably wanted to make him dinner. She was such a momma hen when it came to food. But she wasn’t in the kitchen.
He moved past the kitchen, into the formal dining room, then into the hallway and called out into the big house, “Molly, where are you?”
“In your office.”
Sure enough, Molly was in his office, knees bent on the floor as she crouched behind his desk trying to do something with a plastic object in her outstretched arms. She groaned with the effort, then lost her balance, and the plastic object clattered to the floor. “Cheese and rice!” she said.
Worried that she might have hurt herself, Harcourt rushed over. “Can I give you a hand? Here. Please, take my arm. And by the way, what the heck are you trying to do?”
Molly recovered and her cheery round face beamed at him. She stayed behind his desk and picked up the plastic object. She handed it to him. He could see it was a computer camera. “Hold this right on top of the screen while I plug it in.”
Harcourt did as he was told, while Molly grunted and groaned until she managed to get back into the kneeling position and plug the cables into his company’s desktop computer. He reached over and helped her to her feet. She smiled, clearly satisfied with her work, then dusted her hands off on her skirt before pushing an errant gray curl out of her face.
“Are you going to tell me what this is all about?” Harcourt asked, unable to stop a lopsided grin from forming on his face.
Molly was always doing something unpredictable around his house. Instead of answering him, Molly’s eyes narrowed in concentration and she shuffled past him, then moved to his desk and sat in his chair. She turned on his computer and began to toy with the camera and the keyboard, typing in commands. Soon, a red light glowed on the camera and Molly’s live image appeared on the screen.
“Oh,” she said, apparently surprised to see her face so close up. She backed up a little, then spoke. “Testing, testing, one two three.” A little voice graph pulsed up and down indicating that the sound was working. “All set,” she said, beaming with her accomplishment as she spun the chair around and let Harcourt help her to her feet. She picked a piece of paper off of the desk and handed it to him. “Follow these instructions, and you should be all set for your call. Just remember that it’s going to start exactly at twelve o’clock our time, which, in case you’ve forgotten, is going to be three New York time.” Molly stopped talking long enough to give Harcourt an appraising look. “You should probably change clothes, maybe a shave as well.”