Michael bought a smoker, which he set on the corner of the deck and would use to smoke sea bass and make bluefish paté. Diana began selling her embellished oyster shells to shops in Eastham and Orleans, and, just as Michael had predicted, when she raised the price, her sales first doubled, then tripled. For her birthday, Michael signed her up for watercolor lessons at the Castle Hill Center for the Arts, and Diana added painting to her hobbies. That summer, she displayed a few paintings at the farmers’ market, next to her shells, and watched, surprised, as the summer people bought them. The year after that, she was showing her watercolors at local art fairs, and as the new century began, a gallery in Provincetown took her on. Diana Carmody is a self-taught artist whose work explores the contradictions in nature and in the landscapes of the Outer Cape, where she makes her home. In still lifes and seascapes, Carmody forces the viewer to consider the spaces between the tranquility of sea and sky, the beauty of dunes and marsh grass, and the potent violence of wind and rain, thunder and lightning, the gallery’s brochure about her said. In her work, nature is restless, motion is constant, the threat of danger implicit in the churn of the waves or a darkening sky or an animal lurking at the border. Her work invites the viewer to consider her own expectations about safety and beauty. （“I don’t know what it means, exactly,” Diana confided to Michael, who’d replied, “It means they can charge five thousand dollars.”）
Eventually, Diana found a therapist, one of Reese’s friends, a woman named Hazel with short white hair and a thoughtful, quiet manner, who specialized in treating survivors of sexual assault. She taught Diana techniques for staying grounded, how to distinguish between her “emotion mind” and her “wise mind.” In her soothing, melodic voice, Hazel would point out when Diana was catastrophizing or personalizing, and urge her to reframe her thoughts, to look for benign interpretations, and consider the facts in evidence when Diana talked about feeling empty or worthless or inconsequential, or on the days when she woke up so full of rage it was all she could do not to scream at everyone she saw.
Michael’s sister, Kate, and her husband, Devin, eventually had three children, two boys and a girl. Diana’s sister Julia’s daughters were in elementary school, and Kara’s son and daughter were seven and eight years old when Kate and her husband had their third （and, Kate swore, their final） baby. Diana watched her sister nurse the latest addition, a girl they’d named Addison. She watched Michael take the baby, his arms engulfing the blanket-wrapped bundle until it all but disappeared, his smile crinkling his cheeks and turning his eyes into slits, and waited to see if it would hurt. She probed her feelings the way she’d sometimes poke at a bruise, testing to see how it felt. The babies, she found, didn’t break her heart the way she worried they would, and toddlers were exhausting. It was not until years later that she had cause to question her choices.
“I love it here,” her fourteen-year-old niece Sunny said, her voice dreamy, when she and her sister came to stay for a long weekend while Diana’s sister Julia and her husband celebrated their twentieth anniversary. “Aunt Diana, will you show us how to do the oyster shells?” Sunny asked, as Sasha, her twelve-year-old sister, stood slightly behind her, awaiting Diana’s answer. Sunny and Sasha both had dark hair and dark eyes, but Sasha was a petite girl who moved in lightning-quick darts, like a lizard, while Sunny was taller, good-natured and tranquil, with hair that fell in ringlets and her mother’s curvy build.
Diana showed them how to paint shells, and rode with them on rented bikes into Provincetown and all around the dunes. She took them to the cranberry bogs, and for walks along the jetty, and kayaking through the marsh. At night, Michael set up a tent in the yard, arranging camping lanterns in a circle around it. With a fire burning in the firepit, and the hot tub bubbling away, Diana thought it felt enchanted, even magical. The girls hadn’t wanted to leave, had demanded that Diana and her sister settle on a date for their return before they’d get in Julia’s car.
“You can send them here anytime,” Diana said. “They’re always welcome.”
“I’ll take you up on that. They look like they had a great time.” She beckoned Diana toward the railing that overlooked the water, away from the car, and the girls. When Diana was at her side, she said, “I’m glad Sunny had a good time. She’s been needing a break.”
Diana felt a weight settle against her chest. “What’s going on?”