Sawkill Girls

“There it is!”
Charlotte leaned against the deck railing, the wind whipping her honey-brown hair around her face.
“Don’t lean out too far,” said Marion. She sat on the polished black bench across from the railing and held her mother’s gloved hand tightly in her own, anchoring it in
place on her lap. Charlotte, seventeen-nearly-eighteen, glanced back with a magnificent roll of her eyes.
“Marion,” she said. “Honestly.”
Marion, sixteen-nearly-seventeen, agreed. Since birth, she’d been a bit of a fusser-something she’d prided herself on, if only because it drove Charlotte batty to have Marion always chirping at her shoulder – but since their father died, her ability to nag and worry had skyrocketed to a whole new level.
Really, what did anyone expect?
There were only three Althouses left now, two and a smudge on their mother’s bad days. You couldn’t know which day would be the last one, and you couldn’t trust Charlotte not to lean out too far or run too fast or fall in love too easily, and you couldn’t trust their mother with pill bottles or sharp objects.
So Marion didn’t. She held their purses and followed doggedly behind their every flighty, stumbling step.
“It looks amazing out here.” Charlotte pulled out her phone to snap pictures. “It’s like this… this thing, perched out there on the water. A beetle. A monster. Some magical lost place.”
Marion would have preferred to be napping in their car’s back seat, not talking to anyone and not looking at the rocking water and, maybe, not waking up.
But her mother wanted fresh air, hoping it would settle her stomach, and Charlotte refused to sit around being boring – God, perish the thought of Charlotte Althouse ever being accused of such a thing. So Marion sat without complaint and watched Sawkill Rock approach on a sheet of gray waves.
The island really did look like a thing. Black and solid, craggy. A little bit fearsome, a little bit lonely. That part didn’t bother Marion, though. She would have lived on a barren dusty rock with no horses or people or yachts tied up at the docks, if she could have. Just her and Charlotte and their mother, a little clean white cottage, a pebbled path down to the water for sunbathing. That’s all they needed – quiet, and one another. To be left to themselves for a while. No constant doorbells and phone calls. No more sympathy cards.
The salt-specked wind surged past them. In Marion’s grip, her mother shivered. Marion glanced at her and took stock: Pamela Althouse.
Eyes fairly bright, observing the deck, the passengers, the water. Shoulders not so stooped as they could be. A small smile tugging at her lips as she watched Charlotte snap selfies at the railing.
Smiling was a good thing. Their mother, for now, was not in danger. Not of sneaking off, fog-brained, to unearth a knife. Not of rummaging through Marion’s luggage for the hidden medicine. Marion could relax.
What a joke.
Marion had never been good at relaxing, and now, after, she was even worse at it. Her mother had often teased that Marion was born with ten lives’ worth of tension knotted in her shoulders.
My little rock, her mother would say. My grave little mountain.
“Having second thoughts?” Marion gently nudged her mother’s side.
“Not at all.” Her mother breathed in, her eyes falling shut. “The sea air is invigorating, don’t you think?”
“It’s definitely cold.”
“This is just what we need. A change of scenery. New faces, new roads.”
A familiar litany. Marion nodded. “You’re right, Mom.”
“I’m excited to meet the Mortimers, aren’t you?” Her mother squeezed her hand once, gently, before releasing her. “Such lovely people, on the phone. They breed award-winning Morgans. I told you that, right?”
“Yep.” A hundred times. “They sound great. Real down to-earth types.”
“I thought you’d like them,” her mother said with a little nudge. “A family of women who keep their mother’s surname, generation after generation? Men that come and go, and never stay in the picture? A matriarchal dynasty.” Her mother smiled a little. “Isn’t that your thing, darling? Girl power and all that?”
Marion rolled her eyes. “Mom. No one says ‘girl power’ anymore. That being said, the surname thing is kind of cool. But… then there’s the fact of their filthy rich-ness.”
“Oh, Marion. Don’t be a snob.” Her mother clucked her tongue, fumbled with her zipper. When her fingers began to shake, Marion took over and zipped up her mother’s jacket to the neck. “The Mortimers are good people,” said Mrs. Althouse, her voice muffled in her scarf. “I have a sunny feeling about this. Val, their daughter. She’s Charlotte’s age. Did I tell you that? I’m sure I did.”
At the mention of Val Mortimer, Marion looked away, down the ferry deck, to the rows of parked cars. Their faded blue station wagon, rust lining the wheel wells, was a plucky little weed in a garden of Range Rovers.
“Yeah, Mom,” she said quietly. “You told me about Val.”
Actually, Marion had looked up Val online, because Marion wasn’t the type to let things remain uninvestigated. That’s how she found out that Val Mortimer was just the kind of bright-smiled, gorgeous, damaged girl to whom Charlotte would easily attach herself. Last year Val had lost a friend – a girl their age whose death had gone unsolved, her body never found. So Val and Charlotte had both suffered losses. Both had, presumably, endured the endless cloying condolences of friends and neighbors. Both were carelessly, shockingly beautiful – long limbs and perfect noses and poreless pale skin. Lips that curved just right. Their online lives a parade of endless friend lists and beaming, perfectly filtered photographs snapped at parties, bonfires, dances, football games.
Marion was holding out hope that Val Mortimer would be too much of a snob to befriend the housekeeper’s daughter. Charlotte was hard enough to keep track of on her own, without someone like Val in the picture.
“Selfie time!” Charlotte sang, flinging herself down on the bench beside them. Before Marion could protest, Charlotte had pulled them all close and touched her phone.
“Lovely,” she declared, turning the screen so Marion and Mrs. Althouse could see. “That’s us. The Althouse girls.”
Marion leaned in to take a look.
Yes, that was them all right:
Charlotte. Pink-cheeked, windblown hair falling in wisps around jewel-blue eyes. Worn parka framing her face in faded red nylon.
Mrs. Althouse. Dark, graying hair. Tiny lines of grief, new and alarming, etched around her eyes and mouth. Her zipped-tight jacket making her look small and squashed.
And Marion. Pale and serious. Dark-haired, gray-eyed. A near-copy of her mother, not as old and tired. Awkward, though. Not quite smiling. Looking not at the phone but rather out to sea.