Kitty stepped back and gestured with her elbow for one of the other women to step forward. The crowd was completely silent, looking at the semicircle of women, paying attention. “Marian,” Kitty said when no one spoke.
Marian wore a sleeveless summer dress and had removed the apron that had covered it when she’d worked in the kitchen. Her chest was large, her legs and arms well-muscled, her hair improbably dark brown for a woman her age. Her voice was big, and she projected easily through the yard. “My life has been shaped by these women.” She gestured to the line behind her. “Including Ginny. Every spring, Mom would begin packing. I could hardly wait for the school year to end. On the mailboat coming over to the island, my heart would be beating so fast, I couldn’t keep still. My mom would scold me for dancing. All for this.” Her hand swept around the yard. “All to be here. I loved every moment of it—softball league, vicious croquet games, Sunday chapel, meetings of the Wednesday Club. And you all know me, tennis, tennis, tennis.” The crowd chuckled, low and appreciative. They did know her. “But most of all, I loved my friends. Kitty, Laura, Amy, Dianne.” Her chin quivered and her voice grew thick. “And Ginny. Wonderful Ginny. Generous Ginny, her final resting place hidden, unmarked, unacknowledged. We’ll miss her always.”
Marian stepped back quickly. Two women holding hands took her place. They were undoubtedly sisters. They had the same dark, blond hair shot through with salon highlights, the same deep-set gray eyes, and the same angular planes to their faces. They were both lean, though one was taller. Both stood with one hip higher than the other, though it was impossible to tell if it was due to a physical defect, legs of differing lengths, or merely a habit of posture.
The shorter one spoke. She felt no need to introduce herself. Everyone in the yard knew who she was. Everyone but me. “Some people thought Ginny’s life must be lonely. They felt sorry she never married or had children. That she was an only child, her parents long gone. But Ginny had a rich life. She loved her work as a teacher in Portland. And she loved, more than anything, her life here on the island. She was a great cultivator of friends, a person who brought others together. Once you were in her life, she never let you drift out of it completely. The people of Chipmunk Island loved her. The Wednesday Club loved her. Our children loved her. We were all her family, and we all feel her loss.”
When the woman finished speaking, her taller sister hugged her around the shoulders and bowed slightly to the crowd, as if to say, “She speaks for us both.” Then they stepped back, still one unit, joined together.
The last woman stepped forward. She was tall and stylish, though she wore nothing more formal than a tailored, sleeveless blouse and a pair of perfectly fitting fern-green shorts. Her thick, gray hair swept below her shoulders, beautifully cut. “Ginny was my best friend.” She stopped, waving her hand in front of her eyes, as if to dispel threatening tears. She swallowed hard, looked at the grass beneath her feet, and looked up again. “You’d think after five years I could get through this.” She paused again, then resumed, voice quivering. “I loved her. That is all.”
Kitty looked at my mother, who shook her head slightly. “I loved her” seemed like a fitting end to the remembrances. But Kitty said, “Jacqueline,” in a tone that was a command, not a request, and put a hand on Mom’s elbow, not pushing exactly, but patting and propelling her forward.
Mom stood in front of the group, clearly not at ease. She was a reluctant public speaker in the best of times, but her well-honed sense of duty prevailed.
“Most of you will not know me,” she said. “I’m Jacqueline Snowden. I live in Busman’s Harbor. Ginny and I . . .” Mom cleared her throat and continued, “were best friends in high school. We met early in our freshman year, and I was thrilled to discover she spent her summers close by. I lived on Morrow Island in those days, an only child, a lonely existence. I started begging my father to bring me to Chipmunk, where Ginny was and where, amazingly, she had friends. I spent at least one night a week at Ginny’s house.” Mom gestured toward the gray house. “Those visits are among my happiest childhood memories.” Mom’s voice broke and I stepped forward, ready to go to her side, but she soldiered on. “Ginny and I, we didn’t lose touch, exactly. Each of us always knew where to find the other. But our lives diverged, and our friendship devolved to Christmas cards and promises, never kept, to visit each other.” Mom paused again. “I cannot tell you how much I regret that now. Ginny was a true friend—loyal, funny, smart. The keeper of my secrets, who cheered me on whenever the going got tough. I hope I was as good a friend to her.” Mom looked up at the crowd. “If any of you are thinking now, about someone you loved with whom you’ve lost touch, I urge you to reach out. Today. While you have a chance. Don’t regret the words left unspoken, the appreciation never expressed. I loved Ginny. I hope she knew.”
Mom moved back into the line of women. No one stepped forward from the gathered crowd. The service evidently at an end, Kitty waved toward the picnic tables. “Let’s eat.”
I went to my mother and put my arms around her.
CHAPTER TWO
The finger sandwiches on the picnic table were arranged in symmetrical patterns. There was chicken salad, salmon, watercress and butter, ham salad, and brown bread ones filled with cream cheese. All were cut into triangles or rectangles, the crust removed. It seemed like the kind of food one teenage boy could demolish in thirty seconds, but there were no teenagers in sight, so I supposed it would be enough. I put one brown bread and one ham salad sandwich on a paper plate along with a deviled egg and a pile of veggies.
The punch was a very improbable color between pink and bright red, but there were also pitchers of lemonade and iced tea, and beer and sodas in a cooler next to the picnic table. I took a beer, Sam Adams, figuring I’d earned it.
The conversations I had with people were biographical—children, grandchildren, jobs or former jobs, where they lived on the island and off. Mom and I stayed long enough for me to get the members of the Wednesday Club straight, though I shorthanded them like the Seven Dwarfs. Kitty was the bossy one, Marian, the fussy one, Laura, the elegant beauty, Dianne the older sister, Amy the younger one.
Kitty, Dianne, and Marian had husbands among the attendees. Amy was long divorced. Laura had never married, but several of the other club members assured me she “had a beau in the city.” New York City, they meant. All of them except Laura had grown children, none of whom were in attendance. I definitely wasn’t up to remembering who belonged to whom.
In between my chats with people, I returned to the snack table to help myself to the desserts. I especially loved the apricot bars, which were tart and sweet at the same time. I ate three of them.
After the party, Mom and I stayed to help clean up, ferrying the platters inside the house for washing and putting the leftover food into plastic bags that were dispersed to the members of the Wednesday Club. Kitty, Marian, and Dianne’s husbands emerged from the group and pitched in, putting the picnic tables back in the center of the yard and taking the trash off somewhere.
Mom was subdued even as we worked, though she smiled and responded to anyone who addressed her. People were extremely curious about the restoration of Windsholme and angled without subtlety for invitations. Mom told them to come out to the Snowden Family Clambake and she’d give them a tour. That interested me. She was willing to have them come, but not eager. They’d have to pay for a clambake meal to see the house.