Summary

Chapters 17 & 18

When the time comes for Call and Caroline’s wedding, Louise does not visit New York with her parents. Instead, she volunteers to stay home with Grandma: “Perhaps my soul, now as calloused as my hands, could have borne such a wedding. I don’t know. I was glad not to be put to the test” (Page 229). Grandma doesn’t understand where Louise’s parents have gone, and she asks for clarification constantly. One afternoon, Grandma surprises Louise by bringing up “that heathen” – the Captain – and saying that when she was growing up, she used to be in love with him. All Louise can do is sit in silence and listen as Grandma, in a rare moment of sanity, recounts her heartbreak when Hiram Wallace left the island after that terrible storm. Hiram had been a grown man then, and Grandma only a...