Empire Falls

stabilize. One day in late February, they’d stopped in at the fish market, where a hand-lettered sign was affixed to the lobster tank: DON’T TOUCH THE MALE AND FEMALE LOBSTERS . “So,” she asked the man behind the counter, “exactly which lobsters can we touch?” It had taken all of Miles’s willpower not to seize her in his arms and dance a jig out the door and right up the middle of the street.
    So when she asked last week why he was so dead set against going up to Empire Falls over the break, he’d lied, reminding her that he might very well be arrested. The dread possibility of being separated from him was still sufficiently scary for her to drop the idea immediately. He felt guilty playing on this fear, but what choice did he have? Predictably, his brother had been a tougher sell. The last time they spoke on the phone, David asked point-blank if they were remaining on the island for Tick or for himself. “Have you thought about Janine?” he asked. “This hasn’t been all that easy on her either, you know.”
    Miles couldn’t dispute that fact. Not after putting their daughter in the Jetta and speeding away from the shooting as if he had legal custody, as if the child’s mother had no right to a voice in the decision. At the time, of course, he’d thought of nothing but escape. During the long, bleak Vineyard winter, though, he’d had the opportunity to think everything through, and the thinking had changed exactly nothing. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel bad for his ex-wife, who didn’t deserve this, and of course he was grateful to her for not coming after him with cops and lawyers. Six months after their flight from Empire Falls, he still hadn’t spoken to Janine, nor had Tick. In fact, he’d told only David where they were, though he assumed Janine knew. Once things had calmed down, she’d have figured it out, and if she’d called Peter and Dawn they’d have told her.
    That had been their sole stipulation. Of course, they said, he could have the house for as long as he needed it. They’d seen the news, and agreed with Miles that the best thing for Tick might very well be to get her out of there, away from the school, the reporters and all the rest of it. But they’d both refused to lie to Janine. Fortunately, she hadn’t called, and neither had anyone else, like Horace Weymouth or Father Mark, both of whom were likely to have figured out where they’d gone. Maybe not exactly where, but it was a small island, especially when emptied of tourists.
    He couldn’t help smiling at the idea of David, who’d barely spoken to Janine since she took up with Walt, being the one to point out his arrogant disregard for her. According to David, she’d gone through a transformation of her own, quitting her job at the health club and coming to work as a hostess and waitress at her mother’s restaurant, where she’d put back on most of the weight she’d Stairmastered off during the previous year. She had little to say about her marriage, which David suspected was already rocky. The Silver Fox had made the transition from the Empire Grill to the new Callahan’s smoothly enough, but he no longer stripped down to his muscle shirt and wouldn’t play gin with Horace anymore. If he was tempted to observe that his wife was gaining weight, he controlled the impulse, which was smart.
    “I can’t get used to you siding with Janine,” Miles told his brother.
    “Don’t be a jerk,” David said. “I’m siding with Tick. I think you enjoy having her all to yourself. You like having her need you. Keep it up and she always will.”
    “She’s never going to get her hands on my daughter,” Miles told him.
    Silence on the other end for a beat. “I assume we’re now talking about Mrs. Whiting?”
    “We are,” Miles said, not so much embarrassed by his vague pronouncement as by how easily his brother could translate it.
    “Miles, I have to tell you, I think you’ve gone a little crazy on this subject. She left town a week after you did. She’s been gone all winter. Her house is for sale.”
    “Let me know when it sells.”
    “She’s already unloaded most of her commercial real estate, right down to the Empire Grill. She’s made a fortune on the Knox River project, and since Bea turned down her offer and got a lawyer, she’s left us alone. She’s pulling out, Miles.”
    “You could be right,” Miles said, though he didn’t believe it for an instant.
    “If it’s Jimmy Minty you’re