It was Saturday morning and Sam and Cynthia had taken her two children to Lighthouse Point to watch Claude race his boat. The day was sunny with a brisk wind whisking cumulus clouds across the sky.

“How’re you doing in that house all alone?” Cynthia asked.

“Cynthia,” Sam said, “if you’re leading up to telling me I need to see a neurologist or a psychiatrist, you can drop it right now.”

She drew back, “No, no. I was just asking.” They rested on a blanket above the rocks looking out toward Children’s Island. Estridge class boats, their sails full, were rounding the point and heading toward the open water. “What I meant was, your life seems so uncompli . . Claudia,” she yelled, “come away from the rocks. You’re too close to the ledge. Vickie, you too.” The kids squirmed back across the grass on their tummies.

“We’re seals, Mommy.” Claudia said lifting her head and shoulders. “Seals sit on rocks.”

“Well, pretend the grass is water and swim around here.” She turned back to her father. “I mean, there’s just you. You can get up when you want, eat when you want, read or work on your novel. No worries, no pressure.”

“Uh huh,” Sam replied. He was lying on his right side, with his head propped on his elbow. The pose appeared casual, but his shoulder, where he’d torn his rotor cuff some months before, was starting to ache, so he sat up. “Yes, it’s peaceful, like this last week,” he said sarcastically. “I got up at five, sat in front of the computer and stared at a blank screen until I was ready to scream. Got breakfast and drove to Kathleen’s to pick up Teresa and Jimmy and brought them back to the house. And you should see the house. The dining room is now an office. Papers and supplies stacked on the table around the computer. There’s a new Media One cable running across the floor to her computer, wires hidden behind the draperies, an office chair where a dining room chair used to sit. I can almost manage to ignore her, but I can’t stand to see Jimmy moping around the house. So I take him to the swamp or the park. And then yesterday, when he and I came home for lunch, there was Russell talking with Teresa. I about died, but they both smiled at me like everything was hunky dory. Jimmy and I ate peanut butter sandwiches on the deck so we wouldn’t bother them. I wanted to tell Teresa to stay away from him, but at the same time I was hoping they’d make up so she’d go home.”

“What happened?”

“After a few minutes he came out to the deck, kissed Jimmy good bye and left to return to work. I asked Teresa if she was going back to him, and she said not right away. Then she gave me a coy, little smile and said, ‘It’s kinda like we’re courting again.’”

“That’s too bad,” Cynthia said. “I’d hoped she’d leave him. Russ’s got problems, but Teresa doesn’t help the relationship either.”

“What don’t you like about her,” Sam asked.

“She’s a whiner and a complainer.”

“She is that,” Sam said, “but I’ve seen another side of her since she stood up to Russ. She’s a hard worker and the one who holds the family together. And, strange as it seems, they love each other.”

“Well, I’m glad they’re not my problem.” That said, she turned her attention to the sailboats as they darted past.

“But why’d you ask about my living alone? Your life getting complicated?”

“Not complicated, just busy. Patients all day long, fights with insurance companies, arguments with HMOs and, on top of that, hospital politics. Then picking up the kids at day care, shopping, cleaning the house. It goes on and on.”

“Well,” Sam said, “you’re sitting out here today at this beautiful spot watching Claude sail by.”

“Right. Watching him play while I mind the kids. At least we’ll be going to the club for dinner and that’ll be fun.” They were members of the Odyssey Yacht Club not far from where they were sitting.

Sam looked at his daughter, her shoulders tense, holding her knees with her arms. She was wearing shorts and her bare legs were pale from lack of sun. Her arms and neck, somewhat tanned, were thin. As a child, she’d had straight blonde hair. Now it was still straight but had turned to brown and was pulled back in a pony tail. Her face had an austere beauty, taut and determined. This was the first time that Sam remembered hearing Cynthia suggest her life was less than perfect. Usually she hid her feelings by instructing other people how they should run their lives. Sam decided to open the door a crack more.

“I remember when you graduated from med school, you were so anxious to get started interning, you didn’t even want to take a few weeks off.”

“What I remember about my graduation is that Mom took me out to dinner, because you were away on a business trip.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” He’d said that a hundred times.

“Mom covered for you like she always did, and we did have fun.” She sure can rub it in, he thought, but he was determined not to get hooked.

“She told me about it when I got home. Said all you talked about was the organization ‘Doctors Without Borders’. You wanted to finish your internship and volunteer to go to Somalia.”

Cynthia said nothing for a few moments, then turned to her dad. “And did she tell you what she said?”

“No, not that I remember.”

“I’ll never forget it. She said, ‘Follow your dreams while you can, or you’ll lose them.’” Cynthia sighed and looked back toward the water.

He gazed sadly at the back of her head — so young, he thought, to be without dreams. But isn’t that what I’ve done? Lost my dream.

When Cynthia turned back to him, her eyes were moist. “What were her dreams? Did she ever follow her dreams?”

“She was an artist with the camera,” Sam said. “At heart I think she was a photographer first and a designer second, but she did so well as a designer the company pushed her ahead. Before she knew it she was managing their marketing department nation wide. Other people were doing the designing and the photography.”

He paused briefly, then with a sad laugh, said, “I know of one dream she had. It was three years ago. One weekend we took the canoe over to the Deerfield River in western Mass. I paddled and she took pictures. There were a few people fly-fishing, an occasional cow chewing its cud, lots of water birds. She was getting some great shots.” Sam was smiling now as he relived that time. “We came to a bend in the river and heard this loud thrashing in the waters ahead. As we drifted around the corner we saw five Newfoundland puppies, maybe two months old, and their mother, romping in the water. A woman was in the water with them, tumbling and rolling and hugging the puppies. Sarah started taking pictures, then asked me to put ashore. While Sarah clicked her camera, the woman lifted the puppies onto the dock so they could jump off. Later she invited us to her house which was up the bank about a hundred feet. We sat on her porch and had tea. The woman, I can’t remember her name, suggested that Sarah should raise Newfies herself, so she could take all the pictures she wanted.”

“Mom raising dogs?” Cynthia said. “I can’t imagine it.”

“I couldn’t either until the woman called the huge, black mother Newfy over and had Sarah pet her. Before long your mom was digging her fingers into her thick, silky hair and hugging her. Then all the puppies came, still wet from their swim. Your mom got down on the ground and let them crawl all over her. When we left, Sarah said she was going to quit her job and raise Newfies.”

“But she died instead,” Cynthia added with finality. Sam shivered at her harsh words, but his daughter was looking out to sea and didn’t see him.

A man sitting at the tiller of one of the sailboats, waved frantically at them. Cynthia returned a half-hearted wave. “Dad, how would you like to take care of two grandchildren for about three months and come out here and wave to a son-in-law on weekends?”

“While you go to Africa?”

“Wherever.”

Late that afternoon Sam returned Teresa and Jimmy to Kathleen’s where Cynthia had already deposited Claudia and Vickie. She and Claude were having dinner at the club. Kathleen looked harried and Naomi, decidedly unhappy. Same old Kathleen, he thought. Says yes too quickly, and then regrets it. He made his goodbyes without going in and headed for home. On the way he stopped by a Thai restaurant called The Emerald Eye and bought Gai Gaprow to go. Thai food was getting to be a habit. He put Brahms's Third Symphony on the stereo and sat on his deck to eat chopped chicken with onions and peppers in hot basil sauce. Brahms's haunting third movement turned his thoughts to Sarah.

It was a soft July evening, the air still warm from the day. He noticed the sparrows were especially busy at the feeder and then realized why. Baby sparrows were trying out their wings and had joined their parents at the feeder. They perched on nearby branches waiting for their mother to get a mouth full of seeds, then shivered their wings rapidly as the older bird jammed food down their throats.

The plaintive theme of the third movement gave way to the exalted notes of the fourth, and Sam found himself thinking about the fun he’d had telling Cynthia about Sarah and the Newfy puppies. It was the first time he’d ever seen his wife so unabashedly joyful.
Then the thought struck him, whatever happened to the pictures she took? He’d opened her file cabinet in the study’s closet and found files going back to her college days at Rhode Island School of Design. Among them was a file labeled “Newfies”. It contained 8 x 10 enlargements of the pictures she’d taken the day of the canoe trip. The first one showed five wringing wet puppies barely visible in a clump of reeds, curiously watching the camera . Another was of the mother standing on the dock throwing her head in the air releasing a thousand beads of water frozen in a serpentine trail. In the third one, the five puppies, like rolly-polly bear cubs were trudging toward the house.

As he returned the folder to the drawer, he saw another one labeled “More Newfies”. These pictures, also 8 x 10s, were of the woman and her dogs except the puppies were twice the size of those in the first folder. Clearly they were taken at a later date, which meant that Sarah had paid the woman a return visit. Curious, he looked in the drawer again and discovered yet another folder. In this one the puppies were absent, but there were pictures of Sarah herself hugging the mother dog.

Sam leaned back in his chair so he could survey the entire collection. How strange that Sarah had gone back to the woman’s home and not told him about it. Why so secretive? Why had she kept this from him? And who had taken the pictures of Sarah? He returned his attention to the last group of pictures. One showed Sarah in a wide brimmed straw hat with a blue ribbon playing with one of the dogs. In another she was sitting at a table on the woman’s porch. Glasses and plates on the table suggested that she and the woman had been eating. Sarah was feeding the big Newfoundland a scrap of food, and a stream of drool ran down from the dog’s mouth all the way the floor. The camera was angled to catch the morning sun shining through the drool. But that’s not what caught Sam’s eye. It was the silk robe Sarah was wearing. He’d given it to her for Mother’s day the year she disappeared, ten months after their canoe trip when she first discovered the Newfies.

Chapter Eight