A Fine Line (30 page)

As we drove, Ethan explained to Evie that Plum Island, at the mouth of the Merrimack River on the Massachusetts north shore, was one of the prime bird-watching spots in all of North America. Sea birds and shore birds used it as a resting place on their migrations, and many parts of it were preserved as a sanctuary for nesting piping plovers and other
endangered and threatened species. Rare birds, tropical and Arctic and even European, were sometimes blown off-course to Plum Island by storms, and when that happened, word circulated fast in the bird-watching community.

Before his accident, Walt had haunted the place with his camera. “My dad loved birds more than anything,” Ethan told Evie. “And he loved Plum Island. It seems like an appropriate place to leave him.”

We crossed the bridge from the mainland, turned right, followed the sandy road that cut between the sand dunes and the salt marsh, paid at the gate, and stopped in the parking lot by the public beach. The lot was surprisingly full for a cloudy, cool mid-week morning, even in prime sun-bathing season. The cars sported plates from as far away as Pennsylvania and Ohio and New Brunswick.

Ethan carried Walt’s urn. I held Henry’s leash in one hand and Evie’s hand in the other. We followed the path through the dunes, and when we topped the rise at the beach, we saw that a crowd of about a hundred people were gathered there. It was a strange sight on a beach. They were all barefoot, but the women were wearing dresses and most of the men wore jackets and neckties. Many had binoculars strapped around their necks. They watched us as we approached.

Then somebody clapped.

The slow applause grew as we walked toward them, and when we stopped, the crowd of people formed a silent circle around us. Then one gray-haired woman stepped forward. I recognized her, and after a moment I remembered her name. It was Gladys Whyte. I’d met her walking her dogs on Mt. Vernon Street.

She went up to Ethan, touched his arm, and said, “All of us—” she waved her hand, indicating the other people
“—are birders. Fans of your father. Walter Duffy was an icon in the birding community. We came here today to say goodbye to him. I hope you don’t mind.”

Ethan blinked a couple of times, then shook his head. “I know my father would be honored. Thank you.”

And then, while gulls and terns, sandpipers and oystercatchers, cormorants and eiders, and, no doubt, myriad other more exotic species that I couldn’t identify wheeled over the water and paddled in it and tiptoed on the wet sand and squawked and tweeted and cooed back in the marsh grass, Ethan waded out to his knees.

I let Henry off his leash, and he paddled out to Ethan. The rest of us remained at the water’s edge and watched as Ethan took the top off Walt’s urn, held it high, and tipped it over.

As we drove back to Boston, Ethan, from the backseat, said, “I hope you guys will let me make lunch for you.”

Evie started to demur, but I squeezed her wrist. “That would be great,” I said. “We’d love to.” To Evie I said, “Ethan’s a great cook.”

She looked at me sideways. I just smiled.

“I didn’t know you’d invited people to your little ceremony today,” I said to Ethan.

“I didn’t invite anybody except you guys. I guess I might have mentioned it to Mrs. Whyte the other night when I was walking Henry. I didn’t even know she was a birder.”

“There are millions of birders,” I said. I was wondering if any of those folks who’d met us on Plum Island loved birds so much that they burned down buildings.

For some reason I didn’t think so.

Ethan opened a bottle of cabernet from Walt’s wine cellar and made crabmeat-and-avocado-and-lettuce sandwiches on pita bread and a tomato-cucumber-onion-and-basil salad, and we ate at the table in the walled-in patio behind Walt’s—now Ethan’s—Mt. Vernon Street townhouse.

Henry lay under the table, alert for falling crumbs.

Titmice and nuthatches flitted in the feeders, and song sparrows splashed in the bath. Ethan was continuing to tend the bird garden as Walt had done.

“This is such a beautiful spot,” said Evie after several minutes of silence.

“I’ve got to sell it,” said Ethan. “It’s no place for a college kid.”

“That’s a shame,” she said.

Ethan glanced at me, then said, “It makes me sad to think of some non-bird person living here.”

“Do you really like it?” I said to Evie.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I love it. It’s spectacular.”

“Want it?”

She turned and frowned at me. “What did you say?”

“Would you like to, um, live here?”

She dropped her chin down onto her chest and peered up at me out of the tops of her eyes. “What exactly are you saying, Brady Coyne?”

I glanced at Ethan. He was smiling. “I mentioned to Ethan that I might have a buyer for his place,” I said to Evie. “I know a lawyer whose office is in Copley Square who likes to walk to work, and this lawyer has a . . . a dear friend, a bird lover, in fact, who’s recently taken a job at a hospital
here in the city. The only question is whether the lady is ready to, um . . . to cohabit . . . I mean, to live with . . . that is, to share her life with the lawyer.”

Evie reached for my hand. “Say it straight, please.”

“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “Will you, Evie Banyon, come live with me, Brady Coyne, in this house?”

“This is a commitment, you know,” she said.

“I’ve thought deeply about it,” I said. “I am not being frivolous.”

“A
giant
commitment.”

“Yes. I agree.”

“Scary.”

“Yes, indeed.”

She put her hand on my shoulder and leaned toward me. I kissed her on the mouth.

“Okay,” she said.

“Is that like ‘I do’?”

She smiled. “Almost exactly.”

“We’ll have to keep the feeders filled and the bushes and flowers tended,” I said. “This will have to be a bird garden forever and ever.”

“I love birds,” she said. “And I love gardens. You know that.”

“You shouldn’t be too precipitous,” I said. I gave her my most serious expression. “There’s, um, something you should know.”

“Oh-oh,” she said. “What?”

“Somebody else will be living with us.”

“Oh?” She frowned. “And who might that be?”

I glanced at Ethan. He nodded. I patted my knee, and Henry scrambled to his feet, plopped his chin on my thigh,
and looked up at me with big adoring eyes. I scratched his ears and arched my eyebrows at Evie.

She smiled. “Henry?”

I nodded.

“Awesome,” she said.