Remarkably Bright Creatures(72)

“This town sure has its characters, doesn’t it?” Sandy muses, watching him. “Adam always tried to describe Sowell Bay’s . . . well, uniqueness. But I must admit, I didn’t understand until I came here myself.”

“Yes, well.” Tova studies the tile. She’s probably included as one of the town characters.

“You know, I never thought I’d live in a small town. Everyone’s so friendly, but also so . . . I don’t know. Up in everyone else’s business?”

“We prefer to say we care for one another.”

A tight, thin laugh escapes Sandy’s coral-colored lips as she lofts a bag of cherries onto a nearby produce scale. “Adam insists I’ll get used to it.”

“I’m sure Adam is correct.” Tova forces a smile. What do people gab about at Charter Village? Will she be a character there, too? Perhaps she’ll meet someone who was friendly with Lars. Would that be a good thing or a bad thing?

“Speaking of Adam.” Sandy leans in and shifts in her jeweled sandals, as if, suddenly, she’d rather not be in the produce section of the town’s only grocery store right now. “I feel like I should apologize for his behavior at the chophouse. Drinking like that, at noon! But he’s been under so much stress, with the move, and at work, and—”

Tova cuts in, “It’s quite all right, dear.” She means it.

“Right.” Sandy still looks deeply abashed. “But there’s one other thing. About that . . . conversation.”

Tova waits for her to continue, uncomfortably aware of her heart’s increased pace.

“He remembered her name. The girl your son was seeing, I mean.”

The piles of cherries blur into a swirling sea, pink and red. Tova leans on a produce scale, bracing herself against this sudden dizziness, her brain now running mad circles now around the words The girl has a name.

“Mrs. Sullivan? Are you okay?”

“Quite,” Tova hears herself rasp.

“Okay.” Sandy hesitates, sounding unconvinced. “Adam didn’t think I should say anything, but I just figured if I were in your shoes . . . I mean, if I had lost my child and there was bit of information I hadn’t known, even something small . . .”

You would want to know. Tova allows her eyelids to squeeze shut, trying to slow the spinning.

“Anyway, her name was Daphne, or so Adam said. He couldn’t remember her last name, but he did say she went to his high school.”

“Daphne,” Tova repeats. The name is thick and lumpy on her tongue, like an old piece of chewing gum.

A long moment passes. Finally, Sandy murmurs, “Well, now you know, I guess.”

Tova watches her pick up her grocery basket. The skin is pulled tight around the woman’s watering eyes. “Thank you, Sandy.”

With an awkward nod and a quick touch on Tova’s arm, Sandy ducks away toward the front register. From the corner of her eye, Tova catches Ethan staring at her.

He closes the gap between them, still holding a cantaloupe in each hand. “What was that Sandy Hewitt just said to you?”

Tova frowns, suddenly feeling like a rosebud under a cold dark sky. Pinched shut. “It was nothing.”

“She said a name.”

“It’s long-ago nonsense.”

“She said Daphne, didn’t she?”

Tova holds up her bags of cherries. “I think I’m ready to check out. Can you take these to the register and ring them, please?”

THERE WILL BE no supper tonight.

Two pounds of peak-season Rainier cherries, along with a hasty collection of other grocery items, are abandoned on the counter in Tova’s kitchen. Next to them, her pocketbook lies askance, right where it was carelessly flung, instead of in its proper place on the hook by the door.

Upstairs in the attic, Tova plows through the piles of linen and china, barely aware of the mess now. On the last shelf by the window, bottom row, is the book: Sowell Bay High School, Class of 1989.

Thirty years ago, she had pored through this volume, searching for something. Anything. And it would be remiss to leave out that, on occasion, she or Will had revisited the yearbook in the decades between, whenever some small spring leak of nostalgia broke through their hardened dyke. She has every photo of Erik included between its covers committed to memory.

But Tova isn’t looking for Erik this time.

Her mouth feels numb and dry as she flips to the index. The print is so tiny that she needs her readers; her fumbling fingers find them in the breast pocket of her blouse and jam them onto her face. She yanks in a hard gulp of air when she sees the name, and it stays there, caught in her chest, as she runs her finger down the columns of type, devouring every last word, until finally she reaches the end of the Zs and releases the ragged breath. There is only one.

Cassmore, Daphne A.

Pages 14, 63, and 148.





An Impossible Jam


Stop giving me that look.”

In response, while still glaring at Cameron, the octopus hooks the tip of an arm through the tiny gap over the pump filter in the back of the tank. A threat.

“I know you can hear me.” Cameron rubs his forehead wearily. What is he even saying? Octopuses can’t understand English. Or any other language. Right? “You hungry, bro? Where were you earlier when I was circling the building with a bucket of mackerel? You’re too good for that?”