There was some banjo music on now. Faith had missed the hootenanny era, but Tom loved bluegrass and she was trying to educate herself for his sake. It was quite an effort. She found it hard to listen to most music. Despite her mother's rigorous training at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, as soon as Faith heard the openingbars, be they Scarlatti or Scruggs, her mind started to wander.
Soon after, they turned off the main road onto the first of many little roads that would eventually land them on the Moores' peninsula.
Patricia had steaming bowls of chowder waiting for them. Robert was anxious to get out on the water before the tide turned, so they sat down to eat right away. After the house in Aleford, the camp was always a surprise.
This was Robert's house. He had discovered the spit of land jutting out just south of Kittery while sailing one day and had fallen in love with it. They used to camp on it when the children were young. At that time, the only structures were a dock and boathouse. Then five years ago they had built a magnificent contemporary house. The architect had been a client of Robert's and Robert had liked him immediately. When he saw the man's work, he knew this was whom he wanted to build his house. This house contained, rather than the hodgepodge of generations that furnished the Aleford house, Robert's collection of twentieth-century photographs; sleek, sublimely comfortable Italian furniture; and some of the beautiful Amish-type quilts Patricia had started making lately. The huge glass windows brought the pines and granite rocks into the house and at times it was hard to tell if you were inside or out.
They were eating on the deck. Patricia ladled the soup into chunky pottery bowls with which they could pleasantly warm their hands. This was followed by a big salad and more sourdough bread, which was Faith's contribution. Jenny had made a blueberry cobbler with blueberries frozen the past summer to finish the meal. It was perfect. Faith would have been content to sit and bask in the sun all afternoon, but Robert was plainly eager to get going.
“Come on, come on," he complained, "We're going to lose the wind and the tide will be turning before we're started."
“ Good, Daddy," said Jenny. " Then we can clam ! “
He turned to her in mock disgust. " Some sailor.”
Jenny was going to watch Benjamin and at the last minute Patricia decided to stay behind and work on her latest quilt. Faith suspected she wasn't as ardent a sailor as Robert and only went to keep him company.
The three of them set out and before long the house was a pinprick in the midst of the dark green line of pines stretching far up the coast.
Robert let out a sigh of pure animal pleasure. "Sometimes when I 'm out here I wish I never had to go back to shore.”
Clearly he was in a pensive mood. Tom said something noncommittal about wishing things like that himself sometimes. Faith knew his technique well enough by now. He would draw Robert out, unraveling the thread of his discontent, then help him knit it all back up into a more wearable garment. He really was a very good minister. She let their voices play about her and closed her eyes.
Presently she heard Robert say, " I've been pretty stretched to the limit, Tom, what with the two houses to keep up and Robby 's tuition. And the wedding was going to set me back a good deal. I won't pretend that the money isn 't damn handy.”
Faith kept her eyes closed. She had the feeling that if she showed signs of being awake, Robert would stop talking. They were tearing across the water now at a terrific clip. Robert 's voice picked up and the words came faster.
“It sounds horrible, especially now, but I've always hated her. Maybe I resented her coming into the family when she was a child, but I like to think that if it had been a different child, I would have loved it. From thebeginning she did nothing but cause trouble. When Jenny was born, I actually feared she might harm the baby. She was about seven years old then. She knew what she was doing. We had a nurse at first and she left the room for a moment when Cindy was there playing. When she came back a few minutes later, Cindy had taken Jenny from the crib and was balancing her on the windowsill. She said she wanted to see if she could fly like baby Superman, but that was just Cindy covering up. Obviously she resented having another girl around, try as we did to avoid playing favorites. Patricia really has been a saint.
“Cindy never bothered Rob much. Well, he was a little boy to her and she was only interested in older boys. He wasn't any kind of threat to her, although she used to tease him cruelly. I had to speak sternly to her on several occasions and she would look very sorry, then start in on him again when my back was turned. You didn't know him when he was Jenny's age, but he was a bit chubby and Cindy drove him crazy. She had all sorts of names for him. You can imagine.”
Tom could and, remembering a similar phase in his own adolescence, wondered why Rob hadn't killed Cindy then.
Robert had made some minute adjustments to the sail and was back at the tiller. The Moores had an assortment of boats—the inevitable Boston Whaler ; rowboats, canoes, and dinghies for the kids to mess around with ; Robby 's boat, a Snipe, his pride and joy, which he raced, with his father as crew ; then this old Dark Harbor sloop lovingly restored and cared for by Robert. Cindy had not been interested in boats, or in New Hampshire much.
“ I was glad that Cindy didn't like to come here. She never wanted to rough it, which was all right with us. She didn 't have to and she seemed happy to go to camps with less primitive accommodations instead. Maybe we were two families : the Moores and the Moores plus Cindy. We certainly didn't intend it to be that way in the beginning. Patricia 's mother was still alive when we took Cindy and she warned us not to expect her to be like Rob. `She's been badly spoiled from the start,' she said, `Just do your Christian duty and run for the cellar when trouble comes, because she's going to bring you plenty.' Her grandmother was the only one Cindy minded and I think she was afraid of her."
“It's too bad she couldn 't have taken her then. Maybe that 's what Cindy needed—the old-fashioned `spare the rod and spoil the child approach.' Not that I think it's right," Tom said.
“ She didn 't want her. She knew she didn 't have too many years left and I think she wanted to have some peace and quiet. She liked her little house on the corner by the river. We would have been happy to have her in the big house—she had been born there and raised her children there, but she said she wanted a change and her own place. A remarkable woman. Patricia 's a lot like her—they look soft, but underneath there's that native bedrock. Besides, Patricia wanted Cindy very much. We had been married for a long time before Rob came along and Patricia always wanted lots of children. We hadn't seen a lot of Cindy. They lived in California, you know. Patricia was terribly upset about losing her sister and she had just had a miscarriage, but here was a ready-made daughter and she was excited about having her. I have to admit I was too, at first. But it didn't last, especially for me.”
He grew quiet and it seemed the conversation was at an end, but then he seemed to painfully drag an unbidden thought to the surface.
“You know, Tom, I'm sure that a man is involved in this business. Cindy had no scruples when it came tomen. It's crazy to think it's Sam, but she could have driven him to it. Hell, she could have driven me.