Empire Falls

.
    “Think of Puerto Vallarta.”
    “I will.”
    “Promise me you won’t lose heart.”
    “You need to go,” she said, pointing to the dockworkers below, who had begun to detach the foot ramp .
    He saw that this was true, but took a moment to address Miles. “Maybe we’ll meet again,” he said, offering the boy his hand to shake, and when Miles did, he noticed a big blotch of poison ivy on Charlie’s forearm .
    “Charlie,” Grace said. The ramp was being pulled away now .
    They faced each other. “Grace.”
    “I know,” Grace said. “I know. Go.”
    And then he was off, waving and hollering to the workmen below as he hurried down to the lower deck. Without protest, they wheeled the ramp back into place, and when he’d safely descended, Charlie shook hands with each man, as if, collectively, they’d managed to pull off some complex and wonderful feat. Then, as the whistle blew and the ferry began to push back from the slip, Charlie Mayne continued to stand there at the very edge of the dock, waving to them. He continued to wave until he was small, pausing only, Miles could tell, to scratch his forearm. Miles couldn’t help feeling sorry for him, left behind on the island without any ointment, with nothing to relieve his suffering. Eventually, then, he realized his mother was no longer at his side .
    The island had disappeared entirely and the thin line of the Cape Cod coast was becoming visible on the horizon when Grace returned to the deck. Miles could tell she’d been sick again, and as she came toward him, wobbly and weak, she looked so little like the figure who had materialized out of the morning mist that he wondered if maybe he’d dreamed it. In case he hadn’t, when she sat down next to him, he said, “I won’t tell Dad. I promise.”
    He knew she’d heard him, but it was as if she hadn’t. She took his hand, and neither of them spoke until the ferry pulled into the harbor at Woods Hole and bumped roughly against the sides of the slip before coming to rest .
    They were standing at the rail, Grace gripping it with white fingers, until she took a deep breath and said, “I was wrong.”
    He started to say something, but she shook her head, stopping him. “I was wrong when I said things were going to be different when we got back home,” she said. “Nothing’s going to change. Not one thing.”
    He hoped she was right, but feared she wasn’t. On the dock below there was a man wearing a Red Sox cap, and seeing this caused Miles to remember that he’d forgotten his mitt. He could see it on the nightstand next to his bed back at the cottage. Right where he’d left it .

PART TWO

CHAPTER 9
    E VEN BEFORE Miles crossed the Iron Bridge on his way to Mrs. Whiting’s, he was not in the best of moods. The last several days had been gray and drizzly, too wet to get any painting done at St. Cat’s. This morning the skies had finally cleared, offering the prospect of a long, brilliant afternoon under a high sky the color of a robin’s egg. On a day such as this, Miles thought, a man frightened of heights might just surprise himself and find the courage to paint a church steeple. Or might have if he hadn’t gotten a call from his employer saying she had a surprise for him if he cared to drop by that afternoon. Though he knew better than to get his hopes up, Miles briefly considered the possibility, as he turned between the two stone pillars and into the circular drive, that the old woman had changed her mind about the liquor license. Or maybe she was still thinking he should be mayor and wanted to inform him that she was funding his campaign.
    But no sooner had he parked in front of the main house, climbed out of the Jetta, and started toward the front door than the precise nature of Mrs. Whiting’s surprise became clear, and it stopped Miles dead in his tracks. The far door of the two-car garage, the one that usually remained shut, now stood wide open, revealing in its bay the old beige Lincoln with its wheelchair license plate. At this sight, Miles Roby, a grown man, had to summon every ounce of intestinal fortitude he possessed to mount the steps and ring the bell instead of getting back in his car and leaving a thick patch of burning rubber on the asphalt. Which was precisely how Max would’ve handled the situation, Miles knew, and standing dutifully at the front door, he wondered, as he often had throughout his adult life, what it was in his character that prevented him from