Hannah and I shared a bedroom; there were only two in the house back then. Our walls were knotty pine, as was common on the Cape, and the overall feeling inside was dark and cozy and safe （to me, anyway）。
But outside . . . that was paradise. It was like we were the only ones in the world. Most of the other houses nearby were owned by summer people, so we were the only local kids around. Hannah taught me every bird, from blue herons to barn swallows. Deer stepped across our paths, foxes and coyotes scampered and skulked, little skunk families trundled by, and it was everything a kid could ask for. My sister wasn’t quite as outdoorsy as I was, preferring books to climbing trees, but she was a solid companion. Not as fanciful as I was . . . I loved building fairy houses at the bases of oak trees, pretending to ride horses down the bumpy roads. By the time I was six, I could go off on my own, as long as I didn’t go near the water. I had to be “within earshot,” but otherwise I was free, which, to be honest, was what my mother preferred. She was a lawyer who consulted with other lawyers, constantly on the phone.
I knew Mom liked Hannah more . . . the lower-maintenance child who didn’t ask to sit on her lap. “Find something to do, Lillie,” she would say if I requested her time, and the message was clear—unless arterial blood was soaking my clothes, unless I was projectile vomiting or running a fever of over 102, she had better things to do. Back then, I assumed my mother loved me . . . sort of. Just not the way my friends’ mothers loved them. Beth’s mother would sit and chat with us at the kitchen table, offering us coconut macaroons she made herself. Carlita’s mother couldn’t walk past her without touching her hair or dropping a kiss on her head.
I remember watching in wonder as my friends ran into their mothers’ arms off the school bus, faces lit up with joy. My mom was there, too, at the intersection of Collins and Rose Roads, waiting in her car, tapping her finger on the steering wheel. She never even unbuckled her seat belt, let alone got out of the car for an embrace. “How was your day?” she’d ask, but NPR would be on the radio, and I learned to echo Hannah and say it had been fine （which it generally was）。
Our father was different. I only saw him for a couple of hours a day, but his lined, harsh face would soften at the sight of me, and even when I was eight, he still picked me up. He wasn’t much for talking, but his big rough hand dropping on my head or a wink from across the kitchen table made me feel so special. Some nights, he’d sit on the edge of my bed or Hannah’s and tell us that he’d seen a whale that day, or dolphins. He might give us a particularly pretty scallop shell he’d tucked in his pocket. His hands were scarred from a thousand little cuts—the price of shucking scallops every day. I’d trace the map of lines on his hand, glad he was home, proud to be the daughter of Pedro Cristóv?o Silva, fourth-generation fisherman.
I also knew I was his favorite . . . at least in the sense that I was more like him. I was a true Silva. I could shuck a scallop at five, knew how to steer the boat out of the harbor at seven, and loved nothing more than tagging along with him and his crew when he let me. Hannah, on the other hand, got seasick and started gagging before we were even away from the wharf.
To her credit, Mom rarely lost her temper. She was just . . . irritable, and that irritation could rise till she gripped the kitchen counter and clenched her teeth and muttered to herself. The bedroom door might be sharply closed, her sign that we were not to disturb her.
I understood my parents didn’t get along. Beth’s parents hugged and kissed and teased each other, flirted with each other, complimented each other. It was as if “parents” meant something entirely different at her house. Dad worked long hard hours, gone before dawn, back for dinner, in bed by nine or earlier. Mom was always on the phone or in front of the computer.
When they were in a room together, tense irritability and dissatisfaction stewed and bubbled in the air. Mom was stylish in that quiet, WASPy way—reserved and elegant, her blond hair in a perfect, slightly asymmetrical bob, her makeup flawless. She wasn’t a Cape Codder . . . she’d grown up in New Hampshire. They met when Mom was on vacation with her parents just after she graduated from law school. Dad was a good-looking guy, and maybe she was sticking it to her snobby parents, but she got a job at the district attorney’s office in Barnstable and married him six months later. “He swept me off my feet,” she said. “At the time, it seemed romantic. Then again, I was naive and irresponsible.”