Fortune's rocks: a novel by Anita Shreve

Author:Anita Shreve
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Man-woman relationships, New England, FIC000000, General, Romance, New Hampshire, Historical, Young women, Fiction, Mills and mill-work
ISBN: 9780316781015
Publisher: Hachette Digital, Inc.
Published: 1999-12-02T05:56:04.439862+00:00

• III •

Fortune’s Rocks Revisited

ALL THE WAY to New Hampshire from western Massachusetts — from the Berkshires to Springfield by carriage, from Springfield to Rye by train, to Ely by electric trolley, and then to Fortune’s Rocks again by hired carriage — Olympia has pondered the problem of gaining entry to a house that has been locked for years. Will it be boarded up and impenetrable, as she suspects it will be? Or have vagabonds disturbed the quiet sleep of a house in shame? Is it conceivable that Josiah and Lisette, in their rush to clean up after the disastrous gala, left the door unlocked, thus allowing the curious to enter the scene of Fortune’s Rocks’ most recent, and perhaps its greatest, scandal?

The landscape is familiar and yet not, exhilarating after so many landlocked years away but frightening in its alterations. Where once there were long stretches of sea and rocks, now there are cottages of varying sizes and styles, so many in Rye alone that if it were not for the recognizable boardwalk, she might not know where she was. They pass a bowling alley she does not recall and a new arcade that seems like a strumpet set between two dowager hotels. Already, in this second week in July, the boardinghouses are crowded with holidaymakers, the beach thick with bathers in costumes that seem more daring than she remembers. But as the carriage leaves Rye altogether and draws nearer to Fortune’s Rocks, a kind of calm begins to settle over the seascape and over her agitated spirit as well. Fewer changes have been made here, with only the odd unweathered cedar shingles signaling new construction.

She unbuttons her cloak (its wool so suitable for the cool of the Berkshires, but too hot for the coast of New England in July), and it occurs to her that little of the clothing she has brought with her in her flight from western Massachusetts will be comfortable or appropriate at the beach. Beside her, the driver, a lean and angular native with a good growth of beard on his chin, spurs on the horses, and her heart kicks a beat inside her chest. They turn into the narrow winding lane that will take them to Fortune’s Rocks, and she thinks: What if the house is no longer there at all? What if, in these intervening years, the cottage burned to the ground, and her father simply did not tell her? Or has he, unbeknownst to her, sold the house, and will she find, on its porches, small children who are unfamiliar to her?

But before she can wonder further, the driver rounds a bend, and she sees with a sudden ache the familiar crescent of summer houses, the rocks at low tide poking their black noses above the sea like seals, the beach at Fortune’s Rocks. She strains forward in the carriage. They round yet a farther bend, and then she sees the house itself: her father’s cottage, once a convent, now abandoned.

A sound escapes her, and the driver looks over at her.

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