Chapter 7 - THE CRACKED DORY
Winter arrived in the second week of December with an ice storm that took down three hemlock trees along the southern property line and knocked out the county power grid for forty-eight hours.
In the old days—the Denise days—a power outage would have been a five-alarm logistical crisis. Denise hated the cold; she hated candles because the soot marked the ceiling paint; she hated the smell of wood smoke because it settled into her dry-cleaned sweaters.
For Daniel, Ethan, and Lily, the ice storm was a holiday.
Daniel dragged three heavy wool mattresses from the spare bedrooms into the formal living room and laid them out in front of the massive stone fireplace. He had spent four days splitting seasoned white oak, and the hearth roared with a deep, orange heat that pushed the cold back to the frost-coated windowpanes.
They cooked hot dogs on long steel skewers over the coals.
Lily wore three pairs of mismatched socks and Sarah’s oversized green winter hat, which slid down over her eyebrows every time she tilted her head back. She sat between Daniel’s boots, watching the sparks climb up the flue like orange fireflies.
"Is the power ever coming back?" she asked, her mouth ringed with mustard.
"Probably tomorrow," Daniel said, turning a skewer. " linemen are working down on Highway 9. Why? Do you want the lights back?"
Lily shook her head vigorously, the green pom-pom on her hat whipping back and forth. "No. I like the dark. The dark is cozy."
Ethan was sitting on the corner of the mattress, a notebook open in his lap.
He wasn't doing schoolwork. He was drawing. It was the first time Daniel had seen him draw since the summer. Under Denise, drawing had been restricted to the desk in his bedroom because she claimed markers stained the quartz counters and graphite dust ruined the linen upholstery.
Daniel leaned over to look.
Ethan was drawing a boat.
It was an old, wide-bottomed rowboat sitting on a bank of mud, surrounded by tall marsh grass. It was a crude, eight-year-old’s version of the cracked watercolor hanging above the mantle—the red dory Sarah had painted in Maine. Ethan was using three different shades of red crayon, layering the wax to make the wood look weathered and peeling, exactly the way his mother had done with her water-thinned pigments.
"That's really good, Ethan," Daniel said quietly.
Ethan stopped his crayon. He looked up at the painting on the wall, then down at his paper.
"Mom showed me how to do the shadows once," Ethan said. His voice was soft, natural, devoid of the hesitation that used to come whenever Sarah’s name was mentioned in the house. "You don't use black for the shadow under the boat. You use dark blue. She said black makes it look like a hole, but blue makes it look like water."
Daniel looked at the drawing. He saw the smudge of indigo wax along the keel.
"She was right," Daniel said. He reached out and touched Ethan’s shoulder—a firm, easy touch that didn't make the boy flinch anymore. "She knew a lot about light."
"Dad?"
"Yeah?"
"Are you going to get married again?"
The question dropped into the warm circle of the fire like a piece of dry cedar, popping sharply in the silence. Lily stopped chewing her hot dog and looked up, her wide gray eyes moving between her brother and her father.
Daniel set the steel skewer down on the hearthstones.
He looked at his children. He saw the question behind the question: Are you going to bring another stranger into our house? Are you going to leave us alone again?
"No," Daniel said.
He didn't hesitate. He didn't qualify it.
"Not for a very, very long time," Daniel continued, looking Ethan directly in the eye. "And never, ever someone who doesn't love both of you more than she loves this house, or the furniture, or me. But mostly, Ethan... no. It's just us. The three of us. That's the crew. That's the whole team."
Ethan looked down at his drawing. He picked up the blue crayon and added another stroke of shadow along the hull of the boat.
"Okay," Ethan said.
It was a small word, but it had the weight of a signed treaty.
Later that evening, after Lily had fallen asleep with her head on Daniel’s thigh, the ice outside began to thaw, dripping from the eaves with a steady, rhythmic tink-tink-tink against the aggregate driveway.
Daniel sat in the dim light of the dying embers.
May you like
He picked up Ethan’s drawing from the floor. He carried it over to the bookshelf, took down one of the expensive modern ceramics Denise had left behind—a hollow white cylinder that had cost two hundred dollars—and set it on the floor. In its place, he propped Ethan’s drawing against the dark oak paneling, right beside the mason jar filled with Kennebunkport sea glass.
In the faint orange glow of the hearth, the red dory looked like it was floating.
