Orphan Train(82)

“It’s terrifying,” Vivian says.

“So what happens next?”

“Well, a phone call, I suppose. Or an e-mail. I have her e-mail address.” She holds up the newspaper.

Molly leans forward. “Which do you want to do?”

“I’m not sure.”

“A call would be more immediate.”

“It might startle her.”

“She’s been waiting for this for a long time.”

“That’s true.” Vivian seems to hesitate. “I don’t know. Everything is moving so fast.”

“After seventy years.” Molly smiles. “I have an idea. Let’s google her first and see what we find.”

Vivian makes an “abracadabra” motion with her hand over the silver laptop. “Fast.”

SARAH DUNNELL, IT TURNS OUT, IS A MUSICIAN. SHE PLAYED VIOLIN with the Fargo Symphony Orchestra and taught at North Dakota State University until her retirement several years ago. She’s a member of the Rotary Club and has been married twice—for many years to a lawyer, and now to a dentist who is on the symphony board. She has a son and a daughter who appear to be in their early forties, and at least three grandchildren.

In the dozen or so photos in Google images, mostly head shots of Sarah with her violin and Rotary award ceremony groupings, she is slim, like Vivian, with an alert, guarded expression. And blond hair.

“I suppose she dyes it,” Vivian says.

“Don’t we all,” Molly says.

“I never did.”

“We can’t all have gorgeous silver hair like yours,” Molly says.

Things happen quickly now. Vivian sends Sarah an e-mail. Sarah calls. Within days, she and her dentist husband have booked a flight to Maine for early June. They’ll bring their eleven-year-old granddaughter, Becca, who grew up reading Blueberries for Sal and is, Sarah says, always up for an adventure.

Vivian reads some of the e-mails out loud to Molly.

I always wondered about you, Sarah writes. I’d given up hope of ever finding out who you are and why you gave me away.

It’s exciting, this getting-ready business. A troupe of workers marches through the house, painting trim, fixing broken baluster shafts on the porch facing the bay, cleaning the Oriental rugs, and patching the cracks in the wall that appear every spring when the ground thaws and the house resettles.

“It’s time to open up all the rooms, don’t you think?” Vivian says one morning over breakfast. “Let the air in.” To keep the bedroom doors from slamming shut in the wind from the bay, they prop them open with old hand irons Molly found in one of the boxes in the attic. Having all those doors and windows open on the second floor creates a breeze that blows through the house. Everything seems lighter, somehow. Open to the elements.

Without asking Molly’s assistance, Vivian orders some new clothes for herself from Talbots on her laptop with a credit card. “Vivian ordered clothes from Talbots. On her laptop. With a credit card. Can you believe those words just came out of my mouth?” Molly tells Jack.

“Before we know it, frogs will be falling from the sky,” he says.

Other signs of the apocalypse proliferate. After a pop-up ad appears on her screen, Vivian announces that she plans to sign up for Netflix. She buys a digital camera on Amazon with one click. She asks Molly if she’s ever seen the sneezing baby panda video on YouTube. She even joins Facebook.

“She sent her daughter a friend request,” Molly tells Jack.

“Did she accept?”

“Right away.”

They shake their heads.

Two sets of cotton sheets are taken from the linen closet and washed, then hung to dry on the long clothesline beside the house. When Molly plucks them off the line, the sheets are stiff and sweet-smelling. She helps Terry make the beds, stretching the clean white sheets over mattresses that have never been used.

When is the last time any of them felt this kind of anticipation? Even Terry has gotten into the spirit. “I wonder what kind of cereal I should get for Becca,” Terry muses as they drape the Irish Wreath quilt on the girl’s bed, across the hall from her grandparents’ suite.

“Honey Nut Cheerios are always a safe bet,” Molly says.

“I think she’d prefer pancakes. Do you think she’d like blueberry pancakes?”

“Who doesn’t like blueberry pancakes?”

In the kitchen, while Molly cleans out cabinets and Jack tightens the latches on the screen door, they discuss what Sarah and her family might want to do on the island. Stroll around Bar Harbor, get ice cream at Ben & Bill’s, eat steamed lobster at Thurston’s, maybe try Nonna’s, the new Southern Italian place in Spruce Harbor that got a rave in Down East . . .

“She’s not here to do touristy things. She’s here to meet her birth mother,” Terry reminds them.

They look at each other and start laughing. “Oh yeah, that’s right,” Jack says.

Molly is following Sarah’s son, Stephen, on Twitter. The day of the flight, Stephen writes, “Mom’s off to meet her ninety-one-year-old birth mother. Go figure. A whole new life at the age of sixty-eight!”

A whole new life.

It’s a Maine postcard day. All the rooms in the house are ready. A large pot of fish chowder, Terry’s specialty, simmers on the stove (with a smaller pot of corn chowder, a nod to Molly, beside it). Corn bread cools on the counter. Molly has made a big salad and balsamic dressing.