So I drive, and let my thoughts run.
I know why Erin is leaving. However she feels about Penny—scared of commitment, scared of being gay or scared of coming out, bored, ambivalent, or just not in love—she must be angry about Penny and Pfeff. Nothing’s keeping her on this island if she doesn’t want to be here.
But what about Yardley? Why isn’t George with her? Why is she so mad at her father?
I could easily crawl into the shell of my own misery and never find out. It’s none of my business, and I certainly have enough to keep my mind occupied. Our family believes that silence shows respect for someone else’s interior life. I could pretend it’s perfectly normal that she’s leaving midsummer, and Yardley would probably appreciate it.
But I reach out. Without Bess, without Penny, without Rosemary （really）， and now without Yardley, there will be no one on Beechwood who is my ally. Yardley and I have been every-summer compatriots. We have shared probably one hundred bags of potato chips, read the same books squashed together in the hammock. We have paddled kayaks together, sung campfire songs, picked berries on the Vineyard. We have built imaginary worlds and hunted for lemons.
I gesture that she should stand by me at the wheel. “You want me to drive?” she asks.
I put my arm around her. “I don’t want you to go.”
“I can’t stay.”
“Why not?”
Erin can probably hear snatches of what we are saying, but not much. The motor and the wind make conversation impossible from one end of the boat to the other.
Yardley sighs. “So you know when you asked me about that photo? Of your mom and the guy, whatever, from a long time ago, with the face scraped off?”
Buddy Kopelnick. “What do you know about it?”
“Nothing, not that,” says Yardley. “But what I said to you, remember? When you asked, during the Lemon Hunt?”
“You said not to get involved.” But now the conversation comes clear. I can see Yardley’s face that night, lit by the moon, her yellow floral dress, her hands gripping a wicker basket with a large yellow bow. “You said something like, let the stupid grown-ups deal with their emotional garbage and their illegal stuff. Something about shady guys coming over.”
“Yeah,” says Yardley. “That’s it.”
“Is that what this is about? Why did I not even remember that till now?”
“You were dealing with your own worries; it’s fine.”
“What shady guys?” I ask.
“Yeah, exactly. ‘What shady guys?’ is the question. The thing is, once that came out of my mouth, once you asked me about the family and stuff they might be hiding, that changed everything. I heard myself say those sentences aloud, I was just like—what did I mean, ‘illegal stuff’？ I kind of knew what I meant, but I had never actually spoken to anyone about it. I was just like lalalalala, if I look the other way and think about something else, this isn’t really happening.”
I nod.
“But you—the thing about you, Carrie, is you’re willing to say things. You ask questions. Everybody else wants it all swept under the rug. When I said that to you, about illegal stuff, I was like, Oh. Okay. There’s something bad here.”
“What?”
“My dad—the way he makes his money.” Yardley shakes her head. She takes a moment. “He’s like a money guy that no one ever suspects because he wears a suit and went to Harvard, but he does like all kinds of financial stuff for these white-collar criminal people.”
“My god.”
“I made this friend in sixth grade,” she says. “Jenny Neugebauer. Jenny used to come to my house, sleeping over and all that. We were friends for years, ’kay? But at the start of tenth grade, she disappeared. She never called, or wrote. Like, poof! Gone. All she is to me now is a sweater she let me borrow that I never gave back.” Yardley sniffs and glances at Erin before continuing. “People at school said Jenny’s mom lost all her money, like her business went under and completely ruined her. So Jenny had to go live with her grandparents in Florida. Anyway, I miss her. I never got to say goodbye. And then I went to the library in Edgartown a couple weeks ago,” Yardley goes on. “I had been thinking about what I said to you. I wanted to look up some people my dad works with. Business friends of his who have been over for like, pork chops and applesauce. They ask me how my classes are going, you know. And when I looked them up—it was very bad news.”