THE EDGE OF THE WATER

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Chapter One

The request was simple but the distance was long-from one coast to the other, and Molly was still unsure if she would follow through with it. One step at a time, she reminded herself. Unable to afford both her rent and the trip, Molly had placed her belongings, including a stack of unsold paintings, in a small storage unit, packed up her truck and started the drive from Seattle to Maine. It took longer than anticipated and so when Molly arrived in Maine a week later, she was almost out of money. Why had she made this trip in the first place?

When Molly saw the sign to Hopeville, where she would catch a ferry to her final destination-Ridgeport Island, a feeling of dread came over her. I'm really losing it, she thought to herself. Thinking back to the day a few days before her fortieth birthday when she decided to just pack up and go, Molly knew she had acted irrationally. During the drive across the country, it had been easy to ignore her impulsive actions as she had spent the entire time thinking about her ex-boyfriend Joel who had very suddenly broken up with her. The Midwest states had been the most pathetic as the only stations that came in on the radio played country music that only served to fuel the fire of her rejected heart.

With much trepidation, Molly arrived in Hopeville and followed the signs for the ferryboat. Getting in line for the 11:00 am boat, she immediately noticed that the ferry line looped around the corner. Molly pulled up and parked her old truck behind the last car. As she shut off her engine which always gave a few sputters before stopping, Molly gave a sigh herself. 'You've been a good scout,' Molly said aloud to her old truck realizing it was fairly amazing that the 1963 vehicle had made the journey without breaking down. I must have some luck on my side, Molly thought as she jumped out of the truck to buy her ferry ticket.

There was a small shack toward the front that she assumed must be the place to buy tickets. Molly took a big whiff of ocean air before going in to get a ticket. The salty air was invigorating and lifted her mood.

When Molly stepped into the shack, there were a couple of people already in line. An older man got in behind her. It was close to the departure time, and Molly was a little worried about getting on the ferry. The man in back of her pulled on his suspenders and the snapping sound startled her. She quickly turned around to face him, then felt embarrassed about how obviously on edge she was.

"How many vehicles can they get on this ferry?" Molly asked the man quickly.

"Depends on the size and how many trucks are in line," he said.

"Ain't many trucks going on this time a day so I suppose right about where that yellow truck is parked is the cut off for the 11:00 o'clock."

Molly noticed that the man was pointing at her truck. "That's my truck," Molly said, "I sure hope I make it on. It's been a long trip."

"Where you coming from?" The man asked. Her reply was cut short by a loud shout from the other side of the ticket window.

"Car and passenger? What do you need?" a woman behind the window asked Molly, who was next in line.

Molly turned away from the man towards the window. "Just the car," she said. "I don't have a passenger."

"Car and passenger then," the woman said matter-of-factly.

"You're the passenger," the man behind her explained. "I sure hope you get on. And I hope you leave a little room because I'm right behind you."

Molly stepped out of the way of the counter. As she walked back to her truck with her ticket, she wondered if the protocol for ferryboats is the same as with buses. Maybe she should have given up her space for the older man. She didn't have much time to ponder this possibility, however. When she got to the truck, the line had already started moving and she quickly got ready to board the boat.

Molly pulled forward after a ferry attendant waved her onboard. He motioned several times for her to drive up a little further forward until she was practically touching the bumper of the car in front of her truck. He held his hand up for her to stop and wedged a block under her tire. She had made it, but not by much. The man who had been behind her in the ticket line was the last one on board. Molly smiled as she saw him being waved on. Then she turned her own vehicle off and sat for a moment, looking around. She saw that other people were getting out of their vehicles, weaving through the parked cars to a stairway and re-emerging on a passenger deck above. Molly decided to follow them. The other cars had parked just as closely as she so she had to turn sideways and squeeze herself between them to get to the entry of the stairs.

Once on deck, she leaned against the rail and took in yet another generous breath of the ocean air. As she inhaled, she closed her eyes, and as she exhaled she opened them again. Molly dropped her elbows down and leaned her chin against the white painted iron railing. She suddenly remembered being on a larger, but similar boat with her Uncle. When she was a child, he would take her every summer to Martha's Vineyard. She used to love to rest her chin on the side of the ferry and look down to watch the white froth dance off the side of the boat. Molly kept looking across the water. In the far distance she could see the mast of a sailboat. She thought some more about her Uncle who had been from a seaport town in Ireland. He had always dreamed of having a boat of his own. It had been a while since Molly had thought about her Uncle. She remembered on one of their trips, they had stopped in a souvenir shop for some salt water taffy, and in that store they were selling cans with sailboats painted on them that advertised they were full of Cape Cod Sea Salt Air. Molly remembered how disappointed she had been when, after pleading with her Uncle to buy her one, and opening it, there was no sudden ocean breeze gusting out of the can. Her Uncle had tried to explain that it was just a gimmick, but she had been a child. She hadn't understood the empty promise of that kind of joke. Molly missed her Uncle. The last trip she took back East was to his funeral. It was hard to believe she had no family left.

The ferry ride to Ridgeport was not long. Molly was surprised to see the lighthouse and the Ridgeport dock appear so quickly in the horizon. As the Captain steered the boat into the dock, he bumped its edges lightly until it fit neatly up to a ramp that was lowered and ready to let cars off. Molly quickly returned to the truck. As she waited to disembark, her thoughts turned to her destination that she was now approaching and how she got there in the first place. She thought back to the day she received Electra's letter and how intrigued she was by the address on the return envelope. 'Electra Richards, 3 Misty Cove, Ridgeport, Maine.' What kind of place is named Misty Cove? Molly looked behind her at the deep blue of the Atlantic and realized that the mysterious letter and all that it contained had become, if not the motivator, the purpose for her trip. Suddenly, she was terrified to be faced with the reality that may soon be upon her.

The note had been short. It was as if whoever wrote it did not expect it to reach the person for whom it was intended.

"Dear Molly, the letter began. "My name is Electra. I was adopted and I am now trying to locate my biological parents. I have reason to believe that you might be my biological mother. I was hoping that if you are, in fact, the mother of a daughter who was born on July 6, 1981, at Brigham Women's Hospital in Boston Massachusetts, that you would be willing to meet me. I have already been in touch with my biological father, Jimmy O'Conner. Enclosed is my address- Respectively, Electra Richards.

Molly had tried to write a response until her wastebasket was full of discarded wads of paper. She didn't know what to say. What if I say the wrong thing and Electra decides that she does not want to meet me? She had thought over and over. In the end, Molly decided to drive to Maine and see Electra in person. Her life up to that point had come to a grinding halt and she just didn't think things could be going any worse for her. Some of Molly's paintings were on display in a tavern back in Bell Town in downtown Seattle. After being on display for two months, only one had sold, and the owners had asked her to collect them. She couldn't bear to bring the unsold paintings back into her apartment. In fact, she could hardly bare to go back to her apartment herself. She had lived there with her boyfriend, Joel, until just a few months earlier when he packed his bags and left her after three years. The letter from Electra had arrived a week before Molly's fortieth birthday and the same week she was asked to retrieve her paintings. The trip to see her estranged daughter had become the sole purpose of her life.

Molly had thought that by the time she was thirty, she would be married and have kids. When thirty came and went and she was alone, she had justified it by the fact that she was young and she had her career as an artist ahead of her. But when she found herself carrying the unsold paintings to her truck, still alone, and a few days away from forty, she felt she had come to the end of a path. She knew it was a clich-but she needed to find herself. The letter that had arrived with an address to her past suddenly opened up that path for her. She would take the trip and find her daughter. Maybe along the way, she would figure out her life.

Molly was now only miles away from her destination, and she hadn't figured anything out about her life. She put the truck into gear and drove up the ramp onto the island. Still following the directions she had printed out from the Internet, Molly arrived in front of the house whose number matched the address on the return envelope from Electra. She had assumed back in Seattle that this would be some kind of small cottage in Maine, and so she was a bit taken aback when at the end of a neatly-combed, pebble driveway, there was before her a mansion similar to what Molly had only seen in movies. Unsure if she wanted her presence to be known, she parked off to the side of the road and slowly walked up the U-shaped, gravel driveway that led to the entrance of the house.

Finally, Molly stood in front of the door that symbolized the end of her path. She raised her hand to knock on the door. Then she paused. The lion's face on the large brass knocker stared back at her, challenging her to take it in hand. Molly knew this action wouldn't simply be about knocking on a door. It would be about the door that would be opened after many, many years. She thought of all the miles she had traveled and the money she didn't have that she spent. She thought of her apartment all crammed into a tiny storage unit, and not wanting to have done all that for nothing, she scolded herself, and raised her hand once more.

Like a statue, she stood with her hand almost touching the knocker until a bird flying past broke her thought. She tried several more times to knock on the door, but it seemed to her to be just out of reach. Finally, she gave up. Molly lowered both her hand and her head as she slowly retreated to the truck. The harsh sound of the vehicle's door slamming unnerved her and she sat in silence for a while before starting the truck up. She wanted to cry. Each day of the trip, she planned out the drive and decided where to stop for food or sleep. Now that she had arrived, she had no plan left. It seemed to her that she suddenly had no purpose at all.

Molly felt an immediate need to drive away from Electra's house and rethink what she was doing. She started up the truck and drove on, though she had no idea where she was going. She continued down the narrow road that had been paved, but had many potholes. Either side of the road was lined with different sized pine trees. Every so often there was a break in the trees and another small gravel driveway. In most cases she couldn't see the houses that lie at the end of those neatly combed driveways. They were tucked away. When Molly got back on to the main road, she wondered which end of the island was closer. She took a right. Maybe I should drive straight off this island, she thought-and pictured herself slowly sinking to the bottom of the ocean, a crooked smile on her face.

Someone passing her on the road going the other direction waved to her and Molly thought for a moment that they were mocking her imagined departure. Whatever sense of purpose or will had brought her to this point had ceased to guide her and she was again at a point in her life where she absolutely did not know what to do. Giving up her baby was a decision she had made so many years ago and it didn't seem right at the time to reverse it. Anyhow, it looked as though things must have turned out well for Electra.

The island was only 13 miles long and eventually the road ended at a small, ocean park. This is a dead end in more ways than one, Molly mused. At the park's entrance, there was a round driveway and a sign that read, "Ridgeport Town Beach." She parked and walked down a footpath, pinecones crunching under her feet. Molly was happy to see some white birch trees amongst the many pine trees. It wasn't often she saw those. She loved how they each had bits and pieces of their white bark peeling off as if to offer a passerby a piece of notepaper. Molly recalled when she was younger how she had written a poem on such on a piece of birch. She smiled at the memory.

Not far down the path there was an opening to the beach. Looking ahead she saw that there were several similar paths for beach access. She wandered down the first one which led to a small rocky beach. It didn't quite look like an inviting place to stop. The second path led to another rocky beach, however this time Molly spotted a picnic table where she decided to take a seat and gather her thoughts. Molly stared out at the ocean, mesmerized by the water's rhythm as it slowly crept up to the shore. It appeared as though the tide was coming in. The warm sun made her sleepy and so she stretched out across the length of the bench. When the sun started to feel as though it was burning her cheeks, she rolled to the side with her face away from the sun and she fell asleep.

Molly wasn't sure how long she had been napping when a black fly bit her ankle. The sting of the bug bite caused her to wake suddenly and bang her head on the top of the table. Molly shifted from the bench to sit on top of the table. Rubbing first her sore head and then her eyes, Molly focused again on the gentle waves breaking against the shore. She hadn't been sitting like that for long before she felt the presence of someone else nearby. Instead of being afraid or alarmed, however, she felt a warmth envelope her, as if the sun had come out from behind a cloud. She closed her eyes and turned her head up to the sky to bath her face in the warm glow. Then she heard a voice directed at her,

"Is that your truck up there?"

Molly saw that the voice came from a man who looked to be around her age. The man was a local named Nathan. He had jumped down from a large rock that separated the first beach. He was walking towards her with his arms out as he balanced himself stepping across the different sized rocks. Nathan was wearing jeans and a blue sweatshirt that had a sailboat and a logo which as he got closer she could see said, "Ridgeport Boat Yard." His sandy hair was disheveled as though he had recently taken off a hat.

"Yes it is. Is it in your way?" she responded when Nathan had come even closer.

"Naw I'm on foot," he said in a thick Maine accent. "I was just noticing the Washington State plates. Did you drive that thing clear across the country?" While he waited for her to answer Nathan looked around to see if she was with anyone.

As Nathan reached the picnic table, Molly at once noticed his eyes. They reminded her of her Uncle's. He had sparkly blue eyes too. The familiarity made her feel instantly at ease and she continued speaking to him as though they were old friends.

"Yeah, I'm amazed it made it," she said.

"What year is it?"

"It's a 1963,"

"Phew! Cars rust before they get that old out here."

"Yeah, that was the first thing I noticed when I moved out West. Lots of old cars

"So how long did it take you?" Nathan said and then fishing for information added, "You didn't drive that thing yourself did you?"

"I did drive myself," Molly answered thinking to herself she probably shouldn't be telling a strange man that she was alone.

"That's a long drive," Nathan said. He hadn't meant to pry any further, but before he could stop himself he had already asked, "Are you here to see family?"

(Continues...)

Excerpted from THE EDGE OF THE WATERby ELIZABETH FENTON Copyright © 2008 by Elizabeth Fenton. Excerpted by permission.
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