Orphan Train

quickly now. Vivian sends Sarah an e-mail. Sarah calls. Within days,
     she and her dentist husband have booked a flight to Maine for early June. They’ll
     bring their eleven-year-old granddaughter, Becca, who grew up reading Blueberries for Sal and is, Sarah says, always up for an adventure.
    Vivian reads some of the e-mails out loud to Molly.
    I always wondered about you, Sarah writes. I’d given up hope of ever finding out who you are and why you gave me away .
    It’s exciting, this getting-ready business. A troupe of workers marches through the
     house, painting trim, fixing broken baluster shafts on the porch facing the bay, cleaning
     the Oriental rugs, and patching the cracks in the wall that appear every spring when
     the ground thaws and the house resettles.
    “It’s time to open up all the rooms, don’t you think?” Vivian says one morning over
     breakfast. “Let the air in.” To keep the bedroom doors from slamming shut in the wind
     from the bay, they prop them open with old hand irons Molly found in one of the boxes
     in the attic. Having all those doors and windows open on the second floor creates
     a breeze that blows through the house. Everything seems lighter, somehow. Open to
     the elements.
    Without asking Molly’s assistance, Vivian orders some new clothes for herself from
     Talbots on her laptop with a credit card. “Vivian ordered clothes from Talbots. On
     her laptop. With a credit card. Can you believe those words just came out of my mouth?”
     Molly tells Jack.
    “Before we know it, frogs will be falling from the sky,” he says.
    Other signs of the apocalypse proliferate. After a pop-up ad appears on her screen,
     Vivian announces that she plans to sign up for Netflix. She buys a digital camera
     on Amazon with one click. She asks Molly if she’s ever seen the sneezing baby panda
     video on YouTube. She even joins Facebook.
    “She sent her daughter a friend request,” Molly tells Jack.
    “Did she accept?”
    “Right away.”
    They shake their heads.
    Two sets of cotton sheets are taken from the linen closet and washed, then hung to
     dry on the long clothesline beside the house. When Molly plucks them off the line,
     the sheets are stiff and sweet-smelling. She helps Terry make the beds, stretching
     the clean white sheets over mattresses that have never been used.
    When is the last time any of them felt this kind of anticipation? Even Terry has gotten
     into the spirit. “I wonder what kind of cereal I should get for Becca,” Terry muses
     as they drape the Irish Wreath quilt on the girl’s bed, across the hall from her grandparents’
     suite.
    “Honey Nut Cheerios are always a safe bet,” Molly says.
    “I think she’d prefer pancakes. Do you think she’d like blueberry pancakes?”
    “Who doesn’t like blueberry pancakes?”
    In the kitchen, while Molly cleans out cabinets and Jack tightens the latches on the
     screen door, they discuss what Sarah and her family might want to do on the island.
     Stroll around Bar Harbor, get ice cream at Ben & Bill’s, eat steamed lobster at Thurston’s,
     maybe try Nonna’s, the new Southern Italian place in Spruce Harbor that got a rave
     in Down East . . .
    “She’s not here to do touristy things. She’s here to meet her birth mother,” Terry
     reminds them.
    They look at each other and start laughing. “Oh yeah, that’s right,” Jack says.
    Molly is following Sarah’s son, Stephen, on Twitter. The day of the flight, Stephen
     writes, “Mom’s off to meet her ninety-one-year-old birth mother. Go figure. A whole
     new life at the age of sixty-eight!”
    A whole new life.
    It’s a Maine postcard day. All the rooms in the house are ready. A large pot of fish
     chowder, Terry’s specialty, simmers on the stove (with a smaller pot of corn chowder,
     a nod to Molly, beside it). Corn bread cools on the counter. Molly has made a big
     salad and balsamic dressing.
    Molly and Vivian have been roaming around all afternoon, pretending not to watch the
     clock. Jack called at 2:00 P.M . to say that the flight from Minnesota landed in Boston a few minutes late, but the
     puddle-jumper to Bar Harbor airport had taken off and was scheduled to land in half
     an hour, and he was on his way. He’d taken Vivian’s car, a navy blue Subaru wagon,
     to pick them up (after vacuuming it out and giving it a good wash with dishwashing
     liquid and a hose in his driveway).
    Sitting in the rocker in the kitchen, looking out at the