Elin Hilderbrand - The Castaways

All in all, the Chief estimated, there must have been a thousand people.

It was hotter than Hades. Bright and sunny, without a trace of the wind that had capsized Greg and Tess’s boat. The island was teeming with tourists. At the edge of Main Street there was a clear delineation between those vacationing and those grieving. The summer people wore their Lilly Pulitzer prints and carried lightship baskets as they shopped for hydrangea bouquets. The locals were somber and subdued, wearing a depressing amount of black. Nearly all of them were weeping behind their sunglasses.

The Chief was wearing civilian clothes, a black suit bought for civilian funerals. He was working, too, trying to supervise crowd control (this would have been easier in his uniform) and teaching his summer cops, who had been on the job exactly nine days, which street was India and which was Federal. The hearse was parked in front of the church. The Chief was to be a pallbearer in addition to everything else. It might have been easier to delegate someone to take his place, but Andrea insisted that he carry Tess into the church and then again to her grave. He would do it.

Once the service started, things were easier. The Chief and Andrea were up front with Kacy and Eric, and Delilah and Jeffrey and their boys, and Phoebe and Addison. Chloe and Finn had asked to be allowed to sit in the very first row, all by themselves.

You’re sure? the Chief asked.

Nods. Then, from Chloe, the self-appointed spokesperson, “We’re sure.”

Those two kids were wiser and more composed than many of the people sitting behind them. They were holding hands (again, it seemed, at Chloe’s insistence). Finn was wearing khakis, white shirt, navy blazer, and navy tie, the exact outfit he had taken his first communion in two months earlier. Chloe was wearing a navy sailor dress that she deplored (her word, used this morning, with Andrea). It was her parents’ funeral; she was supposed to wear black. But her closet revealed nothing black except a velvet Christmas dress two sizes too small, and so Andrea had steered her toward the navy sailor dress. There were, predictably, tears, and a lot of misplaced anger directed at Andrea, but Andrea had emerged from her cocoon of despair to deal with the kids, especially Chloe, with kindness and patience. Chloe put on the navy sailor dress, and as consolation Andrea allowed her to carry a black sequined cocktail purse. The result, in Andrea’s words, was part Shirley Temple, part Coco Chanel. In the purse, Chloe had put Tess’s broken red sunglasses with the white polka dots, Tess’s gold cross from her confirmation at St. Eleanor’s in Dorchester, a package of Kleenex (at Andrea’s suggestion), a Chapstick, a copy of the picture of herself and Finn that she had slipped into Tess’s casket, and a copy of the letter she had written for Tess, ditto. Nothing of Greg’s. She’d put nothing in Greg’s casket, and neither had Finn. Andrea must have noticed this, but did not comment on it, and the Chief followed suit. Both kids had been very attached to their mother. Greg had been a good father, though he had complained to the Chief and everyone else that Tess loved the kids so completely that there was no room for Greg to parent them, except around the edges. He played lullabies for them on his guitar, he read them Harry Potter (though Tess disapproved, she thought it was beyond them and scary to boot), he helped them do flips off his shoulders at the beach, he took them to the Scarlet Begonia, where he bought them a lunch of cheddar potato skins and Coke. Tess complained to Andrea and everyone else that Greg was less like the twins’ father and more like some prodigal uncle just returned from following the Grateful Dead, who showed up to break the rules and disrupt routine.

Tess and Greg had had their battles, just like everyone else. And now here they were, in caskets, side by side, as the organ played the processional hymn and the ushers checked each pew for empty space. Could they squeeze in one more person? The church was like a Cineplex during the 8 P.M. showing of a block-buster movie.

A ripple went through the church. The Chief did not like ripples; a ripple meant an assassin in the crowd. He craned his neck. April Peck and her mother were headed down the left aisle. Andrea dug her fingernails into the soft underside of the Chief’s thumb. Delilah groaned. Even Phoebe pursed her lips and shook her head.

April Peck was wearing a denim halter dress, as though she were ready for a day at the Hyannis mall. Her mother, Donna, wore a black floral caftan that flowed to her ankles and a black scarf wound around her head. The Chief did a double-take: Donna had lost all her hair, it looked like. Cancer? This was a momentary distraction. The Chief could not believe the girl had had the guts to show up. What exactly was she trying to prove? The Chief had half a mind to escort the little minx right back out of the church. She could stand in the street, where Greg’s other students had gathered. April Peck thought she was special, she thought she deserved a seat inside. Had the mother not been wearing that headscarf, the Chief would have made a move.

The priest reached the altar. In the name of the Father… Everyone genuflected, but not the Chief. He had been raised a Unitarian and did not love all the high-church rigmarole-the hands, the prayers, the responses that everyone else seemed to know.

“A light has gone out,” Father Dominic said. “Two lights. It is a beautiful day of sunshine, but we spend it in darkness.”

The Chief tried to concentrate on the service, but then, too, he wanted to monitor the twins. All he could see of Finn was an inch of pale neck caught between the straight line of his summer haircut and the starched collar of his shirt. Chloe turned frequently to whisper to him, though Finn did not react. What was Chloe saying? She had developed a fearsome personality already; she was quick and clever, polite with adults, bossy with her brother. The Chief smiled. The twins were an example of the miracle of life. They were healthy, intelligent, complex human beings. But for so long they had been nothing but an idea, a yearning, a project, a wish helped along by the daily lighting of candles and a prayer chain. Tess had lost three pregnancies, one of them in a terrible accident, well into the second trimester. The twins, when they arrived, were a gift, and Tess never let herself forget it.

The priest finished. Delilah stood to give the readings. Andrea did the prayers with a stiff upper lip, and then Jeffrey rose to do the eulogy. The church was silent. Jeffrey had the bearing of Abraham Lincoln-tall, lean, stately-and he was an orator, too. That was a Cornell education for you. Jeffrey talked about meeting Tess for the first time when she was fifteen years old, a sophomore at Boston Latin, and so naive about the world that at dinner that first night, while helping Andrea set the table, she put ice cubes in Jeffrey’s beer.

The church laughed. It was so Tess. Even at thirty-five, there had been things she was so naive about.

April Peck was in the church. The Chief, who liked to know where his sniper was, had her pegged in row nine.

Danny Browne had found opiates in the blood. Tess shooting heroin? This was impossible; there was a mistake with the tox report.

The night before, the Chief and Andrea had gone through the Coast Guard bag. Andrea took the broken sunglasses for Chloe and Tess’s flip-flops for Kacy, but they were way too small. Together they asked Eric if he wanted Greg’s guitar-there had been a period of time when Eric was keen for Greg to teach him to play-but Eric said he wanted to think about it. When Andrea saw the macaroons still watertight in their Tupperware, she burst into sobs. The delicate emotional business of going through the personal effects ended then and there. The Chief pitched everything else, except for the guitar and the overnight bag. There was a whole house full of stuff to be gone through, and the will to administer. Addison had been named executor back in 2000, when Greg and Tess bought their house. The will had been written before Chloe and Finn were born and had never been updated. Never been updated! No guardians named! This was an egregious oversight on Greg’s part; it was one of a million loose ends that would surface, the Chief was sure, once the man’s life was examined. Andrea was adamant about taking the kids. Tess’s brother Anthony agreed, saying, You were not only her family, you were her best friend.