Beatrice dug her toes into the sand. “I know this love between all of us sustains me. Sometimes we have to be surrounded by something to be reminded of what it really truly is—love, I mean. I love Lachlan. He loves me. It’s beautiful. That’s all I know for now. When I get home, I will go to him and if he’ll listen, I’ll tell him I love him. I have and I will. Marriage, if it’s important to him, is important to me. I’ve been selfish . . . and scared. But my fears have nothing to do with him and everything to do with the past. We carry these things, these burdens from the past, forward and hurt those who had nothing to do with it.”
“Will he listen?” Daisy asked.
Beatrice allowed the question to sink in. “I don’t know. He might be done with me and that would hurt. But I am still who I am. There’s something inside I want to show to the world, and I was afraid that getting married again would keep me from finding it,” Beatrice said. “Like your swan maiden, Victoria.”
“Did Tom keep you from it when you were married?”
“Yes.”
“Has Lachlan ever?”
“Not even once.” Beatrice held up her hands as if in surrender. “Not even close. You know, when I chose Pegasus, I thought it was because she could fly, but it’s because she’s unafraid, she lifts herself up even as the world tells her to stay on the ground. Now . . . I know.”
Daisy’s voice came choked with emotion. “And the starling, me, always needing to be in a crowd, always needing approval, always needing someone around. I thought that the best thing in the world was having more and more people around, but it’s kept me from flying, literally and figuratively. That murmur has kept me in a safe place. I don’t know what that means yet, but I don’t need to know. I fell for that idiot Bumble guy under the pretense that I need constant companionship.” She turned to Victoria. “And you, our beautiful Bird of Paradise . . . where were you last night and parts of today? Flying on those fancy feathers?”
“The opposite.” Victoria sat quietly, now wearing a simple shift of dark blue, her hair in a ponytail and her face free of makeup. “I’ve been talking to Red. I know you don’t believe me—and I wouldn’t either—but we’ve just been talking. It’s true. He’s been living out here and telling me about it, and I’ve been just listening. A simpler life . . .”
Rose laughed. “Right, Victoria.”
Victoria shrugged, sat back on the towel. “I’m telling you the straight up truth, with a splash of vodka.” She lifted her drink. “But still the truth.”
Daisy sighed. “Why did we ever think men were the answer?”
Rose was quiet before she said, “Because sometimes they are?” But this time Beatrice heard it in her voice—she wasn’t so sure anymore.
“No,” Beatrice said. “They are never actually the answer, but they can be part of something greater in our life.” Beatrice spoke slowly and quietly, wanting to find the truth that was slowly arriving in lessons from their bird icons. “Those movies—they were right in some ways: love is worth the chance. But after that—it’s up to us. We have to keep our eyes open. We have to pursue our own true self. Sometimes love isn’t what we thought. Sometimes it doesn’t work out. Sometimes it shatters our hearts. But it is always worth the chance with a good man.”
“Yes!” Rose stood up. “I have to tell you a story. All of you.” She stood to face them, backlit by a moon more subtle than the night before, hidden behind the clouds. Only a week ago it had been half waning, when Lachlan had walked away from her, and now it sat bloated and full over them. “Victoria, when you told me about the swan maiden myth, I knew the truth. I chose that bird because of one reason, and that same bird has come to show me another truth. I chose a swan because it meant lifelong union, but in truth, I have given all my feathers to a man who does not deserve them. To a man who has wanted to take those feathers to stuff his own pillows and bed and comfort.” She slammed her foot into the sand, then dug her toes below. She was quietly crying now. She coughed and spoke with firmness. “We have to get out of our own way, know what keeps us back, what our wishes are that we are putting onto them, or our fears that we place onto them. In college, we picked someone and then placed all our dreams on top of them, used our dreams to give these guys a Superman cape, never looking closely enough to see who they really were.”
Daisy tilted her head toward Rose. “Is Chip . . . not . . . ?”
Rose shook her head. “He moved out two months ago claiming he had fallen in love with some woman he met on an airplane. An airplane! But he’s come back, begging, telling me he was a fool and it was a huge mistake and he loves only me, forever. I believe him but . . . I don’t.”
“Oh, sweetie, and you didn’t tell us because—”
“Because I was the one who put that Superman cape on him, and I didn’t want any of you to know that my swan was an ugly duckling.”
The four women huddled around each other, their heads bent and touching foreheads in a circle. The night settled upon Rose’s words and they knew, each of them, that they had chosen the bird all those years ago that spoke to them even now in a way they’d never expected.
* * *
When they told the story later, the story about their last morning on the island, they couldn’t agree on whose idea it had been to take the kayaks out on the coastal river side of the island. Victoria? She swears it wasn’t. But Daisy and Rose swear it was. Beatrice believes it was Daisy, but either way, Daisy and Rose were in a double kayak, an orange one so battered it looked like it had been chewed up and spit out, while Beatrice and Victoria rowed in single blue kayaks that Red had dragged from under the house.
“Be careful,” he’d hollered out before they left.
The first half hour had been dreamy as they rowed across the river smooth as a lake, clouds reflected like a world existed below the water, the sun beating down and the breeze cooling them off. For a while they bobbed side by side holding on to each other’s kayaks so they could float.
“What will you do when you get home?” Victoria quietly asked Rose. “I mean . . . will you let Chip come home?”
“That’s the first time you haven’t said his name three in a row.” Rose smiled at Victoria. “That was nice.” She trailed her fingers in the water and then looked up. “I don’t know. There’s so much I haven’t done because he asked me not to do them—and I still, since the day I graduated, want to write a book. Write something other than a grocery list. I’ve been doing it quietly late at night for a few years, but nothing has come of it. It’s all garbled words that never turn into anything.”
“Well,” Victoria said taking off her sunhat and gazing directly at her friend. “Now you go on and don those swan feathers and . . .”
“If I can find them.”
They all paused simultaneously, as if something beneath them had been turned on full blast; their kayaks began to move rapidly on their own, heading for the sea.
“Whoa!” Beatrice grabbed her paddle.
“Shit.” Victoria pulled her sunhat on quickly. “The tide. It’s going out.”