“I know, it’s so silly. I hated it for so long. Nearly drove me crazy with keeping me up. Sometimes, I’d punch him square in the back. Punch him! Trying to get him to stop.”
Mrs. Olecki set down the icing, ready to embrace Piper now, to absorb the tears she knew were coming on the lemon apron covering her heavy bosom.
But Piper kept talking. “It’s crazy, but last night, he didn’t snore. Not once. And I know he’s not using those Breathe Right strips I ordered from the mainland, because they’re still in the box in the mirror cabinet of the bathroom.” Piper spooned another serving of eggs onto a plate. “Isn’t that something? Been sleeping next to him for a year now—” It was really longer than that, Mrs. Olecki knew, as she had seen Tom, before he and Piper got married, sneak into the carriage house under the cover of night and sneak out again before the town was awake so as not to scandalize anybody. “And every single night he’s snored. I mean, like a freight train running through our bedroom. And last night—silence. I stared at him, his peaceful sleeping face, for the longest time, just waiting for it, but it never came. And the silence was too much. I couldn’t sleep!”
Piper giggled then, and Mrs. Olecki, who had been staring at her during the entire soliloquy, trying to make sense of it all, was glad she had set the piping bag down, for she surely would have dropped it. She opened her mouth to say something, but then closed it, not knowing where to begin with her questions.
“Have you ever heard of such a thing?” Piper said, putting the now-empty ceramic bowl in the sink and running water into it. “Snoring being cured just like that?” She snapped her fingers, still grinning.
Yes, death will cure a number of maladies, won’t it? Mrs. Olecki thought. But she knew to say it out loud would be cruel, even if true, and she swallowed the words down. Piper, not noticing her restraint, bopped over to the swinging door between the kitchen and the dining room to hold it open, and, having no choice, Pearl balanced the first-course plates in the crooks of her arms and waltzed them out to her waiting guests, where she would serve them and chat with them about their plans for the day, making suggestions for lunch or the best bird-watching or fishing charters, while Piper washed the dishes. But her mind spun while she conversed with a retired couple, Franny and Pat, visiting from San Francisco. By the time she got back in the kitchen, she had convinced herself that surely she had misheard Piper, or misunderstood what she was trying to say. Maybe Piper had been staring at a picture of Tom last night, missing him, as she surely did. Yes, that must have been it.
When the door swung back into place behind Mrs. Olecki, she saw that the dishes were clean and stacked in the drying rack beside the sink and Piper already had her apron off. She was holding a plate with two fried eggs, sunny-side up, and two links of leftover sausage. “Taking breakfast to go this morning?”
“Yeah, I hope that’s OK,” she said.
“Of course,” Mrs. Olecki said. “Just bring the dish back when you’re done.” She eyed the plate again. “I thought you didn’t like eggs.”
“Oh, they’re not for me,” Piper said. “For Tom.”
Mrs. Olecki’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. “For Tom?” she sputtered.
Piper’s eyes went round, innocent. “Yes,” she said, and breezed out the screen door, leaving a perplexed Pearl behind her. She thought again how she had lived long enough to see all the different ways people grieved. And how they were as varied as the waves that lapped up on Graver’s Beach at the far end of the island.
But if she was being honest, she had to admit—she’d never seen a wave quite like this.
Chapter 4
Frick Island was not widely known by anyone who didn’t live in the state of Maryland. It wasn’t even widely known by those who did. But the people who did know about the tiny island likely had heard of it by way of a dessert. More specifically, a cake: the Frick Island cake, eight to ten thin layers tall, each one carefully spread with frosting, traditionally chocolate. Currently twelve of those cakes filled two folding tables, shaded from the sun’s glare by white tents, on the patch of freshly mown lawn in front of the Methodist church. Small groups of people milled around them, pointing, admiring the practice it must have taken to get the layers the same thin width, the skill to keep the cake from toppling over. Anders joined them, snapping photos of the cakes and stopping a few tourists to ask questions, mainly: What are you doing here? He tried but failed to keep it from sounding accusatory. But really, the question he wanted to ask was: Why would anyone live here?
Around two thirty, a jowly woman with sparse eyelashes and bangs teased up high off her forehead announced that the first walk would start in fifteen minutes and directed people who had not done so to purchase their ten-dollar ticket at the folding table to her right. When she completed her address of the crowd, Anders approached her.
“Anders Caldwell,” he said, sticking out his hand for her to shake. “Reporter with the Daily Telegraph.” Even after three months, and despite the fact that it wasn’t the Times or the Post, he still got a small thrill from saying it—a sense that his six-year-old self, who stared wide-eyed in admiration at Christopher Reeve announcing, “Clark Kent, the Daily Planet,” would be impressed.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Lady Judy.”
Anders raised his eyebrows at this. Wikipedia had mentioned that most people on the island were descendants of the British, but the woman looked, and sounded, about as far from royalty as one could get. “Er, is Judy your last name?”
“No, last name’s Cullins—that’s with an i-n, not e-n.” She nodded toward his notebook and Anders made the notation.
“I see,” he said, and scratched his pen on the notepad. He cleared his throat. “How long have you been in charge of the Cake Walk here?”
“Oh, Lordt, honey, I’m not in charge. Or not more so than anyone else anyway. We all just kind of pull it together each year. Used to be a much bigger affair, right after the cake was named Maryland’s official dessert—what was that? Ten years ago. Anyway, that’s the way of things, iddn’t it? Feast or famine.” Anders noticed Lady Judy had the same affectation in her pronunciations as the boat captain. T words came out with a soft d sound. It was similar to the Eastern Shore accent he had slowly been getting used to, but a derivative of it—like the difference between a British accent and Cockney.
Since she’d brought it up, Anders asked the question that had been bothering him since he had noted the dwindling attendance—he estimated about sixty people at the event, which had once drawn nearly five hundred. “Why is the event held on a Thursday? I know it’s the summer, but wouldn’t it have a greater chance of drawing a bigger crowd if it was a Saturday?”
Lady Judy just stared at him, and then shrugged. “It’s always been on a Thursday. That’s the way it’s done.”