The Lowland

sandwiches, sticks of cucumber and carrot, almonds and sliced fruit. She shared this simple food with him, and because the light lingered, it became their dinner. In the course of conversation, while Joshua was playing at a distance from them, she mentioned that she and Joshua’s father lived separately. This had been the case for nearly a year.
    She looked out at the water, her legs folded, her knees bent, her fingers clasped loosely around them. Her hair was like a schoolgirl’s that day, in two braids that trailed over her shoulders.
    He didn’t want to pry. But without his having to ask she said, He’s with another woman now.
    He understood that she was making something clear to him. That though she was a mother, she belonged to no one else.
    It was the presence of Joshua, always with them, always between them, that continued to motivate him to seek Holly out. It kept their friendship in check. Under the broad sky, on the beach with her, his mind emptied. Until now he had worked through evenings and weekends without a break. As if his parents were watching him, monitoring his progress, and he was proving to them that he was not wasting his time.
    One particularly warm day, when she wore a sheer button-down shirt, he saw the contour of one side of her body. The curve of her underarm.
    When she unbuttoned her shirt and removed it, revealing the bathing suit top she wore underneath, he saw that her stomach was soft. Her rounded breasts, set wide apart, faced slightly away from one another. Her shoulders were spotted with freckles from many summers in the sun.
    She lay out on the beach while he played with Joshua at the water’s edge. Joshua called him Subhash, just as Holly did. He was a mild-tempered boy, speaking only when spoken to, drawn to Subhash but also suspicious of him.
    They formed a tentative bond, skipping stones, and playing with Chester, who pranced into the water to wash himself, shaking off his fur, bounding back with a tennis ball in his teeth. Holly lay watching them through her sunglasses, lying on her stomach, sometimes closing her eyes, napping a little.
    When Subhash came back to her, to dry off his quickly tanning skin, she neither lifted her eyes from the book she was reading nor moved away as he settled himself beside her on the blanket, close enough for their bare shoulders nearly to touch.
    He was aware of the great chasms that separated them. It was not only that she was American, and that she was perhaps almost a decade older than he was. He was twenty-seven, and he guessed she was about thirty-five. It was that she had already fallen in love, and been married, and had a child, and had her heart broken. He had yet to experience any of those things.
    Then one day, going down to meet her, he saw that Joshua was not there. It was a Friday, and the boy would be spending the night with his father. It was important for Joshua to continue to have contact with him, she said.
    It disturbed Subhash to think of Holly speaking to Joshua’s father, making this plan. Behaving reasonably toward a man who had hurt her. Perhaps even seeing him, in the course of dropping Joshua off.
    When a light rain began to fall soon after the blanket was spread, Holly invited him to join her for dinner at her home. She said there was some stew in the refrigerator that would be enough for them both. And he accepted, not wanting to part from her.
    As the rain turned steadier he followed her toward Matunuck in Richard’s car. He still thought of it that way, even though, when Richard moved to Chicago, Subhash had bought the car from him.
    After the highway the landscape turned flatter and emptier. He drove down a dirt road lined with bulrushes. Then he arrived at the restrained palette of sand and sea and sky.
    He pulled behind her into the driveway, bleached shells crackling under the tires as he slowed to a stop. The back of the cottage overlooked a salt pond. There was no lawn at the front, just a bit of slanted fencing, bound together by rusted wire. Here and there were other single-story cottages, plainly built.
    Why are the windows boarded up? he asked, noticing the house that was closest to hers.
    In case of storms. No one’s living in that one now.
    He gazed at the other homes that were visible, all of them facing the sea. Who owns these?
    Rich people. They come down from Boston or Providence on the weekends, now that it’s summer. Some stay a week or two. They’ll all be