—
And yet I could not get Becka’s words out of my head: that her father was not trustworthy. I wondered what I had done, agreeing to live in Maine, with his new family now preoccupying him so much, and how I had given up my home in New York.
* * *
—
And then I remembered this: When I lived with William and the girls in Brooklyn, we had a little porch off our bedroom on the second floor, and one morning William found that a squirrel had made a big nest right there on the side of the porch, and he spoke to me about it, and he had decided, I think I decided with him, that the nest would have to go. It was too close to the house. And so William had taken a broom and swept the whole thing away.
And what I remembered is this: that for an entire day and night, and straight through the next day, that squirrel made the sound of crying. The squirrel had cried and cried and cried. Because its home had been taken away.
* * *
I looked around at the lace curtains on the windows and I thought: Mom, I don’t know who to trust! And my mother—the nice one I have made up over the years—said to me immediately: Lucy, you trust yourself.
* * *
I went outside and sat on the stoop of the place I was staying in. I sat there thinking about the girls and William, and David—how gone he was—and how we would all be gone someday. It was not that I was sad as I thought this, I just understood it to be true.
And then this thought went through my mind:
We are all in lockdown, all the time. We just don’t know it, that’s all.
But we do the best we can. Most of us are just trying to get through.
* * *
—
A man walked by, scowling slightly above his mask, busy in his thoughts. There were window boxes across the street with lots of green and the bright yellow of pansies. A few cars went by on the street.
* * *
—
And then a gray car pulled up and William stepped out. He had his brown rolling little suitcase with him. I stood up and held out my arms. “Oh William,” I said. We kept standing there embracing, we two old people on the sidewalks of New York, where we had arrived together so many, many years before.
“Closer,” I said. “Closer.”
And William pulled back for a moment and said “If I hold you any closer, I’ll be behind you” before hugging me again; I could feel his arms encircling me. Then he said quietly, “I love you, Lucy Barton, for whatever it’s worth.”
A tiny shiver of foreboding passed through me then, a shiver of foreboding for myself and also the entire world. And I stood there holding on to this man as though he were the very last person left on this sweet sad place that we call Earth.
For my husband, Jim Tierney
And for my son-in-law, Will Flynt
With love and admiration for them both—
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to acknowledge the following people who helped me bring this book to fruition: First and always, Kathy Chamberlain, my first reader. Also, my editor, Andy Ward; my publisher, Gina Centrello; my entire team at Random House; Molly Friedrich and Lucy Carson, Carol Lenna, Trish Riley, Pat Ryan, Beverly Gologorsky, Jeannie Crocker, Ellen Crosby, my daughter, Zarina Shea, and the wonderful Benjamin Dreyer.