Sylvie moved to an apartment at Parker Ridge in Blue Hill. She seems content, despite there being “too many old people around.”
I have no information about who is living in Leeward Cottage. True visions form in the depths of our souls in the locus of humility. I stepped aside, and that was that. It’s not my business anymore. We put no stipulations on the transfer. My father always disdained wills that controlled descendants from beyond the grave, and I agree with him about that. It wasn’t easy for me to give up control, but I wasn’t alone in doing it, which helped. Now I am completely at peace with our decision. I have an open invitation to stay there, but I never will. Yes, it’s too painful, for one thing. For another, I don’t belong there, which is the exact opposite belief as I held all my life. Once seen, such a truth cannot be forgotten. Saul on the road to Damascus. I didn’t see Jesus, but I got the message. Robert teases me about this apartment, which is also on Native American soil. It will be sold at my death and the money donated to a legal fund for poor Philadelphians. The city doesn’t yet make enough brotherly love to be without need of aid.
I have continued to correspond and talk with Heidi, learning her past story a bit at a time. Her aunt renamed her after the main character in Heidi, the children’s book, and secured her unruly hair in braids. I so regret that I took the report of her death at face value and didn’t pursue it further.
I have also talked openly with Robert. For forty years I have feared what he thought after seeing me walk out of the Chalet in the dawn hour of that horrible morning. He must have figured out that Nan had been inside after the deaths. I was always worried that he thought I was helping him in life to secure his silence about those deaths. You know what he said when I brought it up? That he was grateful to me for saving Nan, and he always believed he’d be close with her again. He didn’t even know that no one else knew I’d gone over there that morning. He was a child, with a child’s interpretation of the events. It’s awful what we do to ourselves by not talking openly.
So now I have filled you in, though perhaps you already know all of this and far more from where you are, which I’m sure is the best place if it is any place. Theo wrote me a full description of your last days at his house in Umbria. It was good that you finally went to visit him, and had that time with him and the M girls, who adored you. He wrote that when you saw the Giotto frescoes in the Basillica di San Francesco in Assissi you had a vision of your own. You saw a great white light enveloping all the people who’d gazed at the images over all the centuries and how they were kinder for at least a few minutes after leaving that place. “How Polly is that?” Theo wrote. Yes, it is you, always seeing the best. You saw me in that light, and I cannot begin to quantify the difference that made in my life. And I saw the same in you. Through you, I saw the best in Dick. He was high-minded and stuck by his principles even when that did him no good. I wish I had told you I had a better opinion of him than the one I routinely expressed, but I imagined I’d get to that on my deathbed, when you’d be holding my hand. But you died first, as you thought you would. “Peacefully in her sleep,” Theo wrote, “during an afternoon nap in the hammock, after a plate of pasta.” Good for you. A simple death. You earned it.
“She was speaking of you just before she drifted off,” Theo wrote.
Was that Theo, being kind?
Or were you remembering my epitaph?
I loved someone.
Did you—dear friend—finally realize who it was?
Acknowledgments
My agent, Henry Dunow, read this manuscript in various forms and parts many times and offered excellent editorial advice. He believed in the book and remembered the characters over years of changes. It is a great solace to know another person is also keeping in mind a growing world and story.
Marysue Rucci, my editor at Scribner/Marysue Rucci Books, offered an enthusiastic response that was a monumental relief and inspiration. I had my doubts about the appeal of two old ladies in Maine, but she dispelled them in the most heartening possible way and gave me great notes through several drafts.
Jonathan Karp, Simon & Schuster CEO, offered crucial encouragement, first in the form of an extended contract and then with his enthusiasm for these pages and sage suggestions. His insights made the book better.
My family, Larry Dark and Asher Dark, both novelists themselves, support me in many ways, including making vegan dinners and reading and discussing sections of this manuscript and books in general. That they understand what I do is an extraordinary bonus to their being my favorite and most admired people.
Diane Goodman and Heather Upjohn were the earliest enthusiastic believers in this book and gave me confidence to keep going. I am grateful for the attention to part or all of these pages from Jo Ann Beard, Wendy Owen, Lisa Gornick, Heidi Holst-Knudsen, Lee Phillips, Bonnie Friedman, Jessica Greenbaum, and Christina Baker Kline. Christina deserves further thanks for being good counsel and ever generous. Nancy Star and I meet regularly to discuss our progress and laugh at how lost we can feel along the way. All of this support means so much to me.
Rigoberto Gonzalez published an excerpt called “A Private River” in Ploughshares when he was a guest editor. That chapter doesn’t appear in this book, and I am grateful it made it into the world on its own.
The Grove Street Gang, The Coven, and A.B.L.E. offer friendship and ongoing writing chat.
I have work I value deeply at Rutgers-Newark teaching in the MFA and the English department. Figuring out how to be helpful to my MFA students and discussing books and stories with them has taught me a great deal about fiction. My excellent colleagues are paragons of creativity, scholarship, and dedication.
I’d like to thank the following people who worked hard for this book to come into the world:
At Scribner, Nan Graham, Stuart Smith, Brian Belfiglio, Jaya Micelli, Katherine Monaghan, Brianna Yamashita, Zoey Cole, and Sasha Kobylinski.
At Simon & Schuster, Jackie Seow, Carly Loman, Samantha Hoback, Julia Prosser, Elizabeth Breeden, Zack Knoll, Brittany Adames, and Hana Park.
Thank you to Kate Lloyd at Kate Lloyd Literary.
Thank you to Jeffrey C. Ward for creating a map of a place that existed in my imagination.
VCCA, Yaddo, and Macdowell gave me support so valuable that it can’t be measured. I always wish I were there.
I wrote this book over a number of years during summer breaks from teaching and did research as necessary along the way. The following books were of great help: Changes in the Land by William Cronon, Women of the Dawn by Bunny McBride, The Penobscot Dance of Resistance by Pauleena MacDougall, Notes on a Lost Flute by Kerry Hardy, Maine’s Visible Black History by H. H. Price and Gerald E. Talbot, A Quaker Book of Wisdom by Robert Lawrence Smith, and Birds of Maine by Peter D. Vickery. Much of what I learned isn’t explicitly reflected in the book, but I hope the story embodies the knowledge I gained from these readings and from other sources.
My animal and bird friends, indoors and out, sat with me through all the many hours it took to call my imaginings down to the page.
As a child I learned that I lived on land where indigenous peoples had lived for hundreds of years. I never stopped thinking about this and wondering what to do about it. The question found its way into this novel. I hope we all find a just answer.