“He wrote Harris a note,” I tell Holland. “At least, I think he did. But he never sent it. It was a Narnia thing. They must have had games where Harris was Peter, Dean was someone else, and Kingsley was Eustace.”
“What did it say?” she asks.
Oh, Peter Pevensie of Narnia,
I have heard your news. I think of you all the time.
—Eustace Scrubb
58
A bit morethan a year ago, Holland explains, when Kingsley first began showing signs of dementia, Tipper Sinclair had a talk with Meer. It happened because she stopped by Hidden Beach. She had an appointment with Kingsley for him to show her a couple new paintings for a family acquisition.
But Kingsley wasn’t home. June and Brock had taken the car to a crafts market for the morning. Tatum was at school. So only Meer was there to answer the door.
They called Kingsley’s phone to find out where he’d gone, but he didn’t answer. They went up to the studio, but he wasn’t there. Meer hadn’t seen his father since breakfast.
What followed was a long hunt for Kingsley, all over the property. Finally, they took Tipper’s car slowly along South Road, calling his name.
They found him at the gas station, sitting on a bench with a couple attendants, drinking an orange soda. The workers had convinced him to stay when they saw him wandering down the road. They were trying to get him to call someone to pick him up. He had his phone with him, but he wouldn’t make the call. He said he was fine.
Tipper and Meer took Kingsley back to Hidden Beach. Together, they settled him upstairs in the studio, where he began to paint.
Once they were alone again, Tipper took Meer for a long walk on the beach and told him his father had been born Kincaid Sinclair.She explained the history of the brothers and that she was Meer’s aunt. Tipper said Kingsley had asked her never to reveal his parentage or their family connection to June or Meer. In fact, Kingsley kept his family of origin secret from everyone.
Tipper told Meer she thought Kingsley was ill. And that Meer needed to know about his extended family if his father was really sinking into dementia. She told Meer about Holland, Johnny, Cadence, and Mirren, all his cousins once removed, all close to his own age. Plus some little cousins as well. And Meer told Tipper about the half sister he’d never met, Matilda Klein.
A couple months later, Tipper Sinclair died. And Kingsley began showing so many signs of dementia they could not be ignored. He had incidents of rage. Paranoia about money.
With Meer’s future as a caretaker locked down as long as his father was in this state,
with Kingsley more and more determined not to see a single doctor,
with June so overwhelmed she was no longer taking responsibility for anything but Kingsley,
with Tatum dying to leave on graduation but unwilling to abandon his adoptive family,
Meer needed help.
He was isolated. And frightened about what was happening to his father.
He couldn’t keep on with things the way they were.
So he found his cousins on social media. Holland and Mirren responded to his messages, while Cadence never did. Mirren told Meer not to press it, saying Cadence lived in her world of fairy tales. Johnny wrote back saying good luck, dude, but he didn’t want to unearth the family skeletons.
To Holland and Mirren, Meer explained the whole family history he’d learned from Tipper. The plan was to find each other on the Vineyard in July, after Holland finished a first-half-of-summer rowing intensive and once Mirren was settled on Beechwood.
“You rented the house to be near Meer?” I ask.
“And you. And of course I hoped to know Kingsley, as well. I got really obsessed with him.”
“Did you know about the dementia?”
“No. Meer just said he was having a tough time with some stuff at home, and he wanted to know his extended family. Maybe we could like, claim our kinship and heal some of the rifts the older generation had created. He had tried to reach you a bunch of different ways,” says Holland. “On social media, mostly, and trying different email addresses, but I think he also sent a letter to your high school? Like a paper letter.”
“I never saw any of it.”
“You’re a poor communicator.” She grins. “I’m not surprised you don’t check DMs. Anyway, Meer figured you were ignoring him and got the idea you were more likely to come visit if he wrote to you as Kingsley, and if he offered you a painting.”
