But Matt kept his eyes on the ocean beneath which only God could see.
He wished he could too. See what God could see, that is.
Captain Hurd didn’t hurry. They rode the troughs that Matt might have skipped stones in—Matt and Mrs. MacKnockater. Another pang. They slowed as they passed each island, as if to enjoy the light glinting off the mica in the rocks. So they didn’t reach the buoy of the first string until around 2:30, and when they pulled them up, the traps were disappointing: no lobsters at all in the first four, three total in the last two. Matt banded the lobsters and dropped them into the live tank. The second string of traps had no lobsters at all. The third was better: four in one, three in another, all legals. But the fourth string! The fourth had five lobsters in the first trap! And all the others had three or four, all good size, all legals.
“Guess we know now where we should have put all the strings,” said Captain Hurd.
While Matt stowed the traps and ate the last of the terrible brownies, they headed back to the Harpswell docks.
The sun was lower now, and the sky had begun to take on that yellow color that it takes in fall afternoons. Soon everything would be washed in gold—the rocks along the island shores, the high pines, the higher clouds, and even Mrs. MacKnockater’s house, where she was standing on the porch, looking out through her binoculars as the trawler was chugging past. She waved.
Captain Hurd waved back.
Matt did not.
“Wave to Mrs. MacKnockater,” said the Captain.
Matt looked at him.
“Wave to her.”
It had been a long time since Matt Coffin had done something that someone told him to do—except maybe Mrs. MacKnockater. He looked up at her. She was still waving, still watching through her binoculars.
He guessed he might as well wave.
“And that house there. Green shutters. Down the ridge from Mrs. MacKnockater’s? That’s mine. Just so you know if you need something.”
“Like what?”
“Just so you know.”
At the docks, Matt and the Captain tied Affliction securely, bow to stern. They unloaded the live tank and flushed out the seawater. They secured all the traps, washed down the bait bucket, stowed the buoys, and flushed the engine. It was almost suppertime, and Matt was hungry. Terrible brownies and one tuna fish sandwich with too much mayonnaise weren’t a whole lot.
“I’ll get these weighed and sold,” said the Captain. “Be here tomorrow morning and you’ll get your fifteen percent. Meanwhile”—he reached into the swarm of banded lobsters—“take these two to Mrs. MacKnockater.”
“Why?”
“To apologize for being a rude jerk. Someone waves, you wave back. Maybe she’ll be in a forgiving mood and boil one up for you—but don’t count on it. I wouldn’t if I were her.”
Matt took the two squirming lobsters, one in each hand.
Not much later, Mrs. MacKnockater heard someone kicking at her back door. It was more than a little annoying, the kicking. So when she pulled open the door, she was ready to point out that even someone with quite low intelligence should be able to manipulate a doorbell, and there was Matt, with his two squirming lobsters.
“From Captain Hurd,” he said.
Mrs. MacKnockater nodded. “Come in,” she said. “I’ll put the water on to boil. They’ll be done in no time.”
Matt looked at her. “No time?”
“Poetic license,” said Mrs. MacKnockater, and turned to find her lobster pot.
And it wasn’t no time, but Matt thumbed through the illustrations in Treasure Island, and when Mrs. MacKnockater told him to, he went and washed up, and she didn’t ask him anything about where he’d been—probably since she knew she shouldn’t—and she handled the lobsters as well as Captain Hurd did, in and out of the boiling pot, and onto the plates, and onto the table, a small pot of melted butter next to each of them.
“It looks like you two must have had a good haul,” she said.
Matt nodded.
“He usually does,” she said.
Matt nodded again and opened up the first claw.
He ate quickly.
He paused at his second claw. “You know the Captain?”
Mrs. MacKnockater, halfway through her first claw, paused too. “We’ve known each other for quite a long while,” she said, and smiled when she turned back to her claw.
Matt watched her.
“I’ll go get some more butter,” said Mrs. MacKnockater, and she went into the kitchen.
He wondered about Captain Hurd and Mrs. MacKnockater as he headed down the steps of Mrs. MacKnockater’s front porch that Friday night. He wondered as he walked the pathway down the ridge and into the dark pines. He wondered as he walked down toward the shore and Captain Cobb’s old fishing shack.
He wondered as he got inside, and closed the door behind him, and lit the lantern, and lay down, so very alone.
Six
When Meryl Lee got back to Margaret B. Netley Dormitory after the opening ceremony, she found Jennifer combing Charlotte’s hair in her room, and Ashley sitting on the floor, and all of them laughing, laughing, laughing.
Until she walked in.
Then, quick silence.
She looked at the suitcase she had left open on her mattress.
Not everything in it was folded as neatly as it had been.
“Is your name really Kowalski?” said Ashley.
“Yes,” said Meryl Lee.
“Really? Because I’m not sure I’ve ever met someone from Eastern Europe.”
“I’m from Long Island.”
“Oh,” said Ashley.
“Aren’t you going to unpack?” said Jennifer.
Ashley stifling a laugh.
Meryl Lee looked at the closet, filled with Jennifer’s blouses and dresses and regulation St. Elene’s Academy white shirts and green and gold plaid skirts and green and gold sweaters and green blazers with the gold St. Elene’s cross insignia—eight of each—all on their pink plush hangers, with lavender, pale yellow, and light blue sweaters on the shelf above.
“Not just now,” Meryl Lee said.
She decided to make up her bed, even though she hadn’t packed anything like a green satin duvet. She put her suitcase on the floor and took the bedclothes out of one of the shopping bags, and while she stretched the slightly damp sheets over the mattress, Jennifer and Ashley and Charlotte talked about Stephanie, about how wonderful Stephanie was, about how Stephanie knew everyone and had even once met Ringo like Jennifer had, about how Stephanie always knew exactly what to wear and how she had the nicest clothes and how she would never be caught dead in a public school sweatshirt like some girls wore, about how they wished Stephanie was back from Budapest.
Meryl Lee tried to come up with some smart and beautiful and wonderful thing to say. Something like how someday soon she was going to Budapest and she would do the same things in Budapest that Stephanie was doing, whatever they were. But she couldn’t come up with anything smart and beautiful and wonderful to say, and she wasn’t going to Budapest anytime soon, and she did have a public school sweatshirt in her suitcase, and it was her favorite thing to wear mostly because she’d worn it when she and Holling . . .
She took a long time making her bed while Jennifer and Ashley and Charlotte talked about Stephanie, who had been to Brussels with Jennifer twice, and how they had shopped all around La Grand-Place and how maybe next summer they would go to London together after Stephanie got home from Budapest because they loved going to Europe together.