Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

leave a note, the way he did if he’d walked to the grocery store. Mother would say, ‘He was always considerate enough to leave me a note when he went anywhere.’ But he hadn’t really gone anywhere. He was there in the kitchen, poor thing.”
    â€œDo these boats ever get loose?” Kevin pictured his own childhood kitchen. He knew that a .22 caliber bullet could travel for one mile, go through nine inches of ordinary board. But after the roof of a mouth, the roof of a house—after that, how far did it go?
    â€œOh, sometimes. Not so much as you’d think, given how fierce these squalls can be. But every so often one does, you know—causes a ruckus. They have to go after it, hope it doesn’t smash up on the rocks.”
    â€œThen the marina gets sued for malpractice?” He said this to divert her.
    â€œI don’t know,” Mrs. Kitteridge said, “how they handle that kind of thing. Different insurance arrangements, I guess. Acts of negligence or acts of God.”
    At the very moment Kevin became aware of liking the sound of her voice, he felt adrenaline pour through him, the familiar, awful intensity, the indefatigable system that wanted to endure. He squinted hard toward the ocean. Great gray clouds were blowing in, and yet the sun, as though in contest, streamed yellow rays beneath them so that parts of the water sparkled with frenzied gaiety.
    â€œUnusual for a woman to use a gun,” Mrs. Kitteridge said, musingly.
    He looked at her; she did not return the look, just gazed out at the swirling incoming tide. “Well, my mother was an unusual woman,” he said grimly.
    â€œYes,” Mrs. Kitteridge said. “She was.”
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    When Patty Howe had gotten done with her shift, taken her apron off, and gone to hang it in the back room, she had seen through the dusty window the yellow daylilies that grew in the small patch of lawn on the far side of the marina. She pictured them in a jar next to her bed. “I’m disappointed too,” her husband had said, the second time, adding, “but I know it must feel like it happens just to you.” Her eyes moistened now, remembering this; a great swelling of love filled her. The lilies would not be missed. No one went to the far side of the marina, partly because the path that ran right in front was so narrow, the drop-off so steep. For insurance purposes the place had recently posted a KEEP OUT sign, and there was even talk of fencing it off before some small child, unwatched, scrambled off into the brush there. But Patty would just snip a few lilies and get going. She found the shears in a drawer and went out to get her bouquet, noticing when she stepped out that Mrs. Kitteridge had joined Kevin Coulson in the car, and it gave her a feeling of safety, having Mrs. Kitteridge with him. She couldn’t have said why, and didn’t dwell on it. The wind had picked up amazingly. She’d hurry and get her flowers, wrap them in a wet paper towel, and stop off by her mother’s on the way home. She bent over the rugosa bushes first, thinking what a sweet combination the yellow and white would be, but they were alive in the wind and her fingers were pricked. She turned to start along the path to where the lilies were.
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    Kevin said, “Well, it was nice seeing you, Mrs. Kitteridge.” He glanced at her with a nod meant to signal a goodbye. It was bad luck that she’d encountered him, but he could not be responsible for that. He had felt responsibility about Dr. Goldstein, whom Kevin had genuinely come to love, but even that had receded as he had driven up the turnpike.
    Olive Kitteridge was taking a Kleenex from her big black bag. She touched it to her forehead, her hairline, didn’t look at Kevin. She said, “I wish I hadn’t passed those genes on to him.”
    Kevin gave the slightest roll of his eyes. The