Elin Hilderbrand - Summer People

“ Quid -net?” This was a part of the island Winnie had heard of but she couldn’t remember ever going there, and she certainly wouldn’t be able to find it on her own. “Why Quidnet?”

“Dad and I went there once, a few years ago. A secret road. A meadow surrounded by trees on one side and water on the other. It was a cool place, and I don’t know, it was like the two of us discovered it.”

“Where was I?” Winnie wanted to know.

“At home,” Garrett said. “With Mom.”

At home with Mom, the liar, while Garrett and Arch explored the island together. Winnie liked the sound of this less and less. Garrett was commandeering the mission.

“You know, Garrett,” Winnie said. “It’s not like it’s Daddy in that urn. It’s just the remains of the body that belonged to Daddy.”

“I know,” Garrett said defensively, but Winnie saw him clench the urn. Of all of them, Garrett was the most protective of the ashes-after all, they’d sat in his room all summer. To be perfectly honest, Winnie didn’t like to think about the ashes. Her father’s burned remains. She wanted to scatter them so they’d be gone. So she could be left with the memories of her father that lived in her mind. Dr. Schau, however, had reminded them in the final therapy session before they left for Nantucket, that scattering the ashes was an important symbolic act. It was one tangible way to say good-bye. Winnie felt a pang in her chest at the thought of Dr. Schau. After they did this, how would they ever be able to face Dr. Schau again? She would think they were evil children-stealing a coping mechanism, an avenue of healing away from their mother. And then there was Marcus: You wouldn’t know a problem if one bit you in the ass. It wasn’t as if Beth had committed a crime. She hadn’t hurt anyone physically, and she hadn’t broken any laws except for one that Winnie and Garrett held in their heart: We should know everything about our mother.

“I’m having second thoughts,” Winnie said. She clenched the wheel as they rumbled over the ruts in the dirt road, and yearned for her biscuits. She wanted one, now. She pulled over to the side of the road, located the biscuits in the console, and stuffed one in her mouth over Garrett’s protests. She drank some of her Coke. “Remember how Dad always said, if you have a choice between the right thing to do and the easy thing to do, choose the right thing?”

“Well, what about Mom?” Garrett said. “She chose the easy thing by lying to us for seventeen years.”

“It probably wasn’t easy,” Winnie said. “It’s never easy to lie because you’re always so afraid someone will find out.”

“Trust me, Winnie,” Garrett said. “We’re doing the right thing. She lied to Dad, too, don’t forget.”

“I guess,” Winnie said. Garrett was older than her by four minutes, and he had put himself in charge. But, in a brilliant twist of fate, she was driving the car. She could turn around and go back to the house; she could foil this plan. Winnie ate the second biscuit. The butter greased her lips. “I don’t know, Gar-rett.”

“Come on,” he said. “You’re the one with the marriage certificate.”

True, true. The marriage certificate was in the back pocket of her jeans. Winnie thought of Melon smiling at her with such compassion, as if to say, You poor girl. Your mother and David Ronan.

“You’re right,” Winnie said. She finished the second biscuit, drank some more Coke, and signaled left, even though there wasn’t another car for miles. “Let’s go.”

Nantucket was bigger than Winnie realized. She’d been coming here every summer since she was born and yet her experience of Nantucket consisted of the south shore from Cisco Beach to Surfside, and the roads that led into town. Once or twice a summer they drove out Milestone Road to get ice cream from the ’Sconset Market, and two or three times they’d done the Mile-stone-Polpis bike path as a family. But driving through the moonlight with Garrett and her father’s ashes, Winnie saw whole sections of Nantucket she never even knew existed. The winding dirt roads between Monomoy and Shimmo, for example. There were whole neighborhoods-lots of people lived here. How did Garrett find these roads? He went exploring with Piper, he said. He directed Winnie back to the Polpis Road and they cruised past Quaise, Shawkemo Hills, and Wauwinet.

Winnie put her window down and the night air rushed in. They had the radio on, the oldies station, hoping they would hear a song that reminded them of their father, and as it turned out, every song that played reminded them of Arch. “Here Comes the Sun,” by the Beatles, “Red Rubber Ball,” by Cyrkle, even “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” which he used to sing to them as kids. Winnie started to feel like they were doing the right thing. It was a perfect night, the island was as beautiful as she’d ever seen it, and their father’s spirit was filling the car.

Garrett gave her plenty of warning before her left hand turn on to Quidnet Road; she put on her blinker.

“You’re doing a good job driving,” he said.

This pleased her. “Thanks.”

He told her to take another left onto a dirt road. The road was bordered on both sides by tall trees that arched above them. A tunnel of trees, and every so often through a break in the leaves and branches, Winnie spied the crescent moon.

“We’re almost there,” Garrett said.

After a while, the trees on the left hand side opened up to a meadow, and beyond the meadow was the flat, calm water of Nantucket Sound. Winnie caught her breath. “This is it?” she said.

“Yeah,” Garrett said. “It’s cool, isn’t it?”

“You came here with Daddy?”

“That one time he and I went surf casting out at Great Point?” Garrett said. “We explored on our way home and found this place. He said he wanted to bring you and Mom here for a picnic.”

“Really?” Winnie said. “Where should we stop?”

“Up here,” Garrett said.

Winnie pulled onto the shoulder. The radio was playing Linda Ronstadt singing “Long, Long Time.” Garrett opened his door and they both blinked at the dome light. “Let’s do it,” he said.

Winnie’s heart pounded in her ears. She was unable to move.

“Garrett?” she said.

He came to the driver’s side and helped her out of the car. He kept his arm around her as he steered her into the meadow. There were Queen Anne’s lace, black-eyed Susans, and a thicket of low blueberry bushes.

Garrett opened the urn. He put the top of the urn by his feet, and when he straightened, he reached into the urn, but then he withdrew his hand.

“You first,” he said. “You throw first.”

“Why?”

“Because you were his little girl,” Garrett said. “He loved you best.”

Immediately Winnie’s eyes were blurred by tears. She sniffled. “Oh, Garrett, you know he loved us exactly the same.”

“He loved us a lot,” Garrett said. He was crying, too, and this made Winnie cry harder. She knew she would never forget this moment as long as she lived. Her twin brother, this hidden meadow, and the water beyond it, the music in her head, her mother’s secret in her heart. Winnie slipped her hand into the urn. The ash was fine and silky with a few chunks. The remains of her beloved father, the man she loved first, the man she would always love beyond any other man, even Marcus. Winnie called up the memories she had left: her father across the table from her at EJ’s Luncheonette eating his red flannel hash; her father in the balcony of Danforth’s indoor pool, whooping like a rodeo cowboy as a signal to her to give the last lap of the race all she had; her father on any one of five thousand nights coming in to kiss her good night on the forehead, never shutting the door without saying, “I love you, Winnie. You’re my only little girl.” He had been a great lawyer-that was why his obituary ran in all of the New York papers, including the Times -but he’d been an even greater father. This, she realized, was the highest compliment anyone could give a man.