The Why of Things: A Novel by Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop Read Free Book Online

seemingly oblivious to the scratch of thorns against her bare legs, though he can’t imagine that she doesn’t feel them. She walks to the far edge of the quarry, where the gas slick has gathered, and crouches down.
    Anders frowns. He has spent most of the day with Eve. After breakfast at George’s, while Eloise and Joan took the station wagon to the grocery store, Eve had chosen to accompany Anders in the old Buick to the Building Center. He had thought the Buick, a convertible that spent the winter underneath a tarp in the garage and that Joan and Eloise have now taken to the beach, would lighten Eve’s mood, but as Anders did his errands, Eve had only trailed behind him wordlessly, clearly preoccupied. He tried to talk to her about how she felt about tenth grade, and whether she thought she’d go out for varsity lacrosse this year; she shrugged. He tried to talk to her about what she planned to do this summer, since at the last minute she’d opted out of the program she’d been enrolled in, building houses in South America; she shot him a look and wondered aloud whether Joan had put him up to the question. The only topic she showed an interest in discussing was the truck in their quarry, and how it may have come to be there.
    Eve has always been free spirited, independent, and tough, but lately that toughness has become impenetrable, sometimes abrasive. Anders understands that Sophie’s death has left her reeling, but it is not something she is willing to discuss. Anders isn’tsure, even if she were willing, what he would say, and the niggling knowledge that he should fills him with a dual sense of responsibility and failure.
    Anders turns around, bends down to make sure the compass rose is securely in place before leaving the garden. He pauses, unsure of whether to go to his daughter, who is still crouched down at the water’s edge, or to leave her be and start bringing out the rest of the porch furniture from the garage. He has, he feels, nothing to offer her—no solace, no understanding or explanation—as much as he wishes that he did. Before he can decide one way or the other, suddenly Eve stands, and then Anders can hear what has gotten his daughter’s attention: the growing sound of crunching gravel. The tow truck is finally making its way up the drive.
    *  *  *
    T HEIR local beach is at the head of a rocky cove, and at high tide is just a small strip of sand. This afternoon the tide is out; lines of pebbles and seaweed stripe the beach, making it look as if the tide has gone out in discrete steps instead of gradually receding, every stripe a record of what each retreating wave has left behind. Joan has rarely seen the tide so low; off the point, clammers are out on mudflats she didn’t know existed, their cuffed pants like bells around their legs, and the sandbar extends beyond its normal bounds into the bay.
    Eloise has spent the past half hour burying her mother; Joan lies in a trough covered by sand. Her daughter has carefully sculpted her body into the shape of a mermaid, her lower half neatly scaled with mussel shells, her wrists adorned with seaweed bracelets. Eloise has also built her two large breasts, the nipples of which she has covered with sand dollars. Or maybe the sand dollars are her nipples; Joan isn’t sure. Right now, Eloise is at theedge of the beach, among the rocks, in search of other objects with which to decorate her mermaid mother.
    The sand feels good. It is a cool and reassuring weight, and though part of her is curious about what is going on at the quarry, Joan is just as glad to be here. For a weekend, the beach is quiet; there are a handful of teenage girls sunbathing, and a young couple with a naked baby, and a very large woman who has been effortlessly floating since they arrived almost an hour ago, her body its own raft. Her endurance is impressive; Joan felt the water with her toe when they first arrived, and it is frigid.
    There is a small plane performing stunts