The Last Romantics(99)

“Thank you,” I said.

Luna picked up the velvet box and held it out to me.

“Keep it,” I said. “For Rory. Maybe someday he’ll want it. Maybe he’ll want to hear its story.”

She nodded and replaced the box on the table.

I followed her along the dark hall, to the front door. “Good-bye, Fiona,” she said.

Behind me the door closed with a solid twisting of the lock even before I was down the steps, down the walkway. The wind was blowing strongly now, the trees dancing wildly with its force, so bitterly cold on my face and neck that I was relieved to the point of tears when at last I reached the shelter and quiet of the car.

As I started the engine, a truck was coming up the long driveway; it passed close enough for me to glimpse the interior. A handsome man, with sharp lines to his face, but I saw only his profile in those brief seconds of passing. Then I was beyond the truck, turning onto the main road, heading back to the ferry terminal.

*

“It’s happening,” Caroline told me over the phone. “Renee’s in labor.”

“How is she?” I was back in New York, in a cab driving home from the airport.

“It’s not going that well. I think they’ll probably have to do a C-section.”

“I’ll come straight there,” I said. “I won’t go home first.”

“No, that’s silly—” Caroline replied quickly, and then stopped. “Yes,” she said. “That’s probably best.”

“Did you call Noni?”

“She’s taking the train from Bexley. The kids are on their way, too.”

I leaned forward to tell my cabbie the new destination and held on as he pulled abruptly to the side of the road.

“I’m glad you made it back in time,” Caroline said, her voice in my ear as the cab swung into a U-turn. “How was the trip?”

“Fine,” I replied without hesitation, and was hit by a wave of motion sickness from the car’s abrupt change in direction. “I’m glad I made it back in time, too.”



The drive to the hospital took ages, the traffic heavy, a battalion of honking New Yorkers inching along the Cross Island Parkway. Thirty minutes in, my phone battery died, and I sat back against the seat and closed my eyes. I tried to doze, but my heart thudded against my chest. An image of the boy Rory kept rising before me like a vision, a ghost.

When finally I arrived at the hospital, it was past 9:00 p.m. A bored receptionist tapped Renee’s name into her computer.

“Looks like she’s in the maternity ward,” she said. “Out of surgery.”

“Surgery?”

“C-section.” Tap-tap-tap. “I don’t see a room number. You’ll have to ask on the ward.”

But on the maternity ward, I couldn’t find an on-duty nurse, and so I wandered, peeking into rooms, pulling my suitcase behind me, with an increasing sense of worry. Where was my family? Had I missed them all?

And then at last I found her.

My sister was asleep, propped up with pillows, her face pale and calm. Caroline sat beside the bed, her two hands holding Renee’s right, her head bowed as though dozing or praying. Noni, Lily, Beatrix, and Louis sat in chairs scattered around the room. They were all asleep, breathing lightly, legs stretched before them. And there, within arm’s reach of Renee, was a small cot and inside it the compact bundle of a baby. The sight of the small, delicate head, the shock of black hair, even darker than Renee’s, delivered to me a hot shiver that moved from my center and extended out to the tips of my fingers and toes. I loved him, immediately and completely. Almost, I imagined, like a mother.

“Caroline?” I said quietly, and she lifted her head.

“Fiona,” she said. “You made it!”

I bent down to hug my sister. Since her split from Nathan, Caroline had taken to rubbing lilac-scented oil into her skin—on the pulse points, as she called them—and it gave her a lovely fragrance, as though a summer garden hung around her neck. I lingered now in the hug to enjoy it. I realized I was trembling.

“Fi, are you okay?” Caroline asked.

“Yes, yes,” I said. “Lots of traffic. Long drive.”

“Your conference?”

“Yes, it was fine, all fine,” I answered, looking to the floor.

Our voices had awakened Renee, who began to stir. She opened her eyes and said with a sense of urgency, “Where is he?”

I felt an immediate disorientation. How did Renee know? Had I mumbled it on the phone to Caroline? Was the information so dangerously compelling that it appeared on my face? In that brief moment of Renee’s waking, I accepted that already my sisters knew about Rory, and I felt only relief. Here in this hospital room, filled with everyone who had loved Joe, we would discuss what to do about his son. This was not a secret I would carry alone into the future. I began to formulate the words, to start the answer: Yes, I know where he is.

But Caroline spoke first. “He’s right here, Renee. Here’s Jonah.”

The cot was beside the bed. Of course, I realized. The baby.

And the room shook and swirled around me, the floor dropped, and into that empty space I threw Luna, her son, the house on the island. I threw it all down, away from my sisters, my nieces and nephews. Away from my mother. I threw it all into the bottomless dark, and the linoleum tiles closed up again, shielding Joe’s son from view, protecting him from us and us from him. It was a burial of sorts. A final good-bye.