1929 (45 page)

“When we get there.” He stared straight ahead
with a stone expression.

“Get where?”

“The lighthouse.”

∞∞∞

“What do you mean someone bought it?”
Jonathan sat down hard on the couch with a shocked expression.

“I went to measure the windows for Arianna
again, and the owner stopped me on my way in.” Caleb paced
Jonathan’s living room. “He was apologizing all over the place.
Said an investor had come along, gave him an offer he couldn’t turn
down. It paid off the building with plenty left over for him to
retire on.”

“So, it’s gone.” Jonathan turned his head
toward the fire.

Ava’s heart began to race, her eyes fixed on
Jonathan. He had been living for this, and now he might go back to
that dark place.

“It’s gone,” Caleb repeated, his hands on his
head. “This is gonna kill Aryl.” He appeared on the verge of panic.
“What are we gonna do, Jon? He’s going to be back tomorrow night.
And I have to tell Arianna something.”

“Give me a minute to think.” He closed his
eyes and rubbed his temples, something he had always done when he
was making very important decisions. It was quiet for several
minutes before he stood up and looked at Caleb.

“Let’s go.” He reached for his coat by the
door.

“What are we doing?” Caleb followed him but
still looked scared.

“The only thing we can do. We’re going to
scour this city looking for a similar deal. Knock on doors cold if
we have to. When Aryl gets home tomorrow night, we’ll at least have
a few leads we can work on.” He turned to Ava and put his hands on
her shoulders. “It’s going to be fine, Ava.” He bent down slightly
to meet her eyes, which were starting to mist. “No, don’t cry. I’m
going to fix this. Something will work out. I promise you. I’m
going to fix this.”

“I know you will,” she said and smiled
through her tears, grateful to see him strong and willful.

He pulled her into a tight hug. “Don’t say
anything to Arianna. Not just yet.”

∞∞∞

Aryl parked the car and walked quickly to the
passenger side. He practically yanked Claire out of the front seat,
slammed the door, pulled her along behind him over the rocks and
tide pools toward the lighthouse and she struggled to keep up.

“Aryl, this isn’t exactly my idea of a
romantic reunion with our lighthouse,” she complained to him. They
got to the door and found it chained shut. He rattled them in
frustration then looked toward the car.

“I think there’s a crowbar in the back,” he
said and turned back.

She grabbed his arm. “No, Aryl. Tell me what
this is about.”

He looked over her shoulder, down the hill of
jagged rocks at the base of the lighthouse and watched as several
large waves crashed against them. Claire turned her face away from
the spray.

“He left me his boats,” he said softly, his
eyes fixed on the sea behind her. “He left it all to me. The boats,
all the equipment, everything to run a fishing business.”

“What does that mean?” She stared at him, her
mouth fallen open, not caring about the spray or the chill.

“It means we have some decisions to make.” He
took her hand, went to the car, slower this time, for the blankets
and basket, and led her down to a sandy patch of beach amid the
rocks. “I’ve rolled it over several times, and it comes down to one
of two decisions.” He spread out the blanket and sat down next to
her. “We can sell it all and use the money for investing in real
estate in New York, or we can move back here. Give it a go.”

She took a few minutes to process the
possibilities. He took her hand and played with her ring, twirling
it around her finger and studying the engraving; a lighthouse with
their initials linked in hearts at the base, identical to his own
ring. “I’m torn right down the middle,” he admitted.

“What about Jon and Caleb? Where would this
leave them if we moved here?”

“Well, naturally, I’d want them to come, too.
Get out of the city. Question is, would they?” He shook his head,
discouraged. “Jon hates manual labor. Caleb wouldn’t mind fishing,
but I don’t know that he’d want to come back here. He tried like
hell to get away from this town. And with the strife with his
father . . . and Arianna?” He laughed a hard laugh. “She’d go nuts
here.”

“Aryl.”

“Hmm?” He kept his eyes on her ring.

“Look at me.”

He lifted his head, and she could see the
exhaustion of the last few days and the weight of the dilemma in
front of him. “What do you say we think about ourselves? Just us.
What’s best for us? I know we care about our friends, but maybe
this once, we can make our own decision. Based on what we want.” He
shifted uncomfortably and looked away. “Aryl, you have been the one
to keep everything and everyone together through this crisis. Jon
leaned on you so hard I thought you would collapse under the
weight. Caleb tried to help, but he isn’t a natural leader. You
are. Make a decision for us, and if they follow, great. If not?”
She shrugged and gave a weak smile.

“What do you want to do?” he asked, hoping
for a nudge in one direction or another to make the decision
easier.

“I want to be wherever you are.” She pushed a
few wisps of hair off his forehead. He laughed and squeezed her
hand.

“That doesn’t help. This is big. We have to
decide this together. Could you really live here? Be married to a
fisherman? It’s a whole different life.”

“I could.” She looked back at the waves
crashing against the base of the lighthouse. “I’d adjust,” she said
quietly.

“It would be a risk, Claire. I haven’t fished
in years, I don’t know that I’d make money right away, and I’d be
gone a lot.”

“Sounds like you’ve already thought about it
then.”

“I’ve entertained the thought.” He looked
around him and took a deep breath. “It’s so clean here. The pace is
slower and the people are familiar. When I look at people here, I
don’t see hard, desperate faces. It’s a different kind of
struggling.”

“Sounds like you’ve made your decision.”

He smiled as convincingly as he could, even
though his heart was still very much divided. “I just hope the
others will want to come.” He saw her frustration before she looked
away. “We’ll come regardless, Claire,” he said as he pulled her
chin back to face him. “I wish you could understand how it is with
us.”

“I’m trying.”

“Hungry?” He began pulling things out of the
picnic basket.

“A little. What’d you bring?”

“I’m not sure,” he said with a grin. “I threw
it all together in such a hurry.” He pulled out a jar of pickled
beets, a half-loaf of bread, a chunk of salami and a half-pint of
jam. She laughed harder with every odd thing he pulled out. He
ripped off a chunk of bread and tried to dig out some jam with his
pocketknife.

“I’m sorry the lighthouse is locked,” she
said.

“I can still break the chain, you know,” he
said and smiled suggestively.

“Aryl, we have a lot to do before we leave
tomorrow,” she said with a distant tone. He looked at her,
disappointed. He could see her contemplating the drastic changes on
the horizon. She got up, walked down the rocky shore, and threw
bits of bread to the seagulls, who squawked excitedly. The look on
her face gave Aryl the feeling that she had forgotten that he was
even there.

“Maybe next time,” he whispered.

∞∞∞

They were quiet on the ride back to his
parents and when they pulled up alongside the house, he told her to
go on inside, that he would catch up.

“I want to work on the swing. Don’t say
anything about our decision. We’ll talk to them over dinner.” He
gave her a kiss on the forehead, walked to the backyard, and opened
the shed to dig out tools and some scrap wood. He set to work
replacing the short vertical slats on the seat and tried to
rehearse how he would word the proposition to Jonathan and Caleb.
Wondered, worried really, about what their reactions would be;
would they decide to stay? He felt weak when he wondered if he
would be able to move here without them. He couldn’t picture them
apart after all they had been through.

He didn’t hear his father calling until the
third time that Michael Sullivan bellowed his name.

“Oh, hey, Pops.” Aryl looked over but didn’t
stop working.

“I was beginning to rethink that part about
you not being born deaf,” he teased as he glanced over the swing,
now nearly fully repaired. “I was gonna get around to that.”

“It’s nothin’, Pops. I needed something to
do.”

“It’s been a hell of a week, hasn’t it?”

“That’s an understatement.” Aryl stopped
sawing and stood straight, wiping sawdust off his pants. “What time
is it?” He looked up at the sinking sun, wondering how long he had
been outside.

“Almost dinner. So, have you made your
decision?”

“Yes.” He went back to sawing the last slat
and fitting it into the frame. “We’ll talk to you guys over
dinner.”

February 19th 1930

Aryl hugged his parents goodbye at the train
station and Kathleen cried as if she would never see them again, in
spite of her mood the night before when she practically did
cartwheels with the news of them moving home. The whistle blew as
Aryl lifted Claire up onto the platform and then turned to wave at
his parents again.

“I’ll telegraph soon and let you know when
we’ll be back.”

The train jerked forward as they found their
seats, and Aryl sat by the window, feeling anxious about going
home.

“No matter what, right?” Claire took his hand
and squeezed it.

“No matter what.”

∞∞∞

“What’s that smell?” Claire wrinkled her
nose, looking in all directions as they stepped off the train. Aryl
waited for their bags, and he couldn’t help but notice the smell,
too. It was the smell of an overcrowded city, a world away from the
sound of crashing waves and foghorns and the heavy salt air that he
was already beginning to miss.

“There’s enough left to get a cab home,” he
said, digging in his pocket, stepping out into the street to hail
one.

∞∞∞

“Caleb, stop pacing,” Arianna said. Caleb
continued to pace Jonathan’s living room. Arianna sat with Ava on
the couch, struggling with a piece of knitting. She had taken the
news well, given that Jonathan had been the one to tell her and had
been extremely convincing that something else would pan out long
before the baby was born. She had begun to play the role of
supporter to Caleb, who was worried to the point of nausea.

“I need to just get this out and over with,”
Aryl said and knocked.

Jonathan opened the door quickly, Aryl’s fist
still in the air.

“Hey, we’re back.” He set his bags down by
the door and took a seat at the table. “We need to talk.”

Caleb looked from Aryl to Jonathan, confused.
He sent Jonathan a look that asked whether, somehow, Aryl had found
out, and Jonathan answered no with a narrow flash of his eyes.

“Something came up when we were in Rockport.
We need to have a serious talk.” The others joined him around the
table.

“Something happened when you were gone, too,”
Jonathan started. “A pretty serious disruption in our plan.”

“My news could be considered the same. Flip
you for who goes first.” He pulled out a quarter, and Jonathan
called heads before Aryl caught it.

“Damn. The one time I didn’t want to win,”
Jonathan grumbled. “Okay, here it is. Someone bought our building.
Just outright bought it, offered the old man three times what he
owes. Caleb and I have been out the last two evenings looking
around, talking to people, and we haven’t exactly come up with
anything concrete, but a few leads might be promising. We’re going
to find something, don’t worry about that.” Jonathan waited a
moment for Aryl’s reaction.

“So, the building is out?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And you haven’t found another deal to
replace it?” Aryl’s eyes narrowed, seeing the situation turned in
his favor. Without the building, it might be easier to sway his
friends into leaving.

“But we’ve been trying like hell.” Caleb
shook his head.

“How’d you guys like to go fishing?”

Caleb and Jonathan looked at each other,
confounded.

“Look, fellas, here it is. My uncle left me
his entire fishing operation in his will. Claire and I have talked
about it, and we think it’s a good opportunity to get out of the
city and still be able to work towards being our own bosses again.
We all have family that we can stay with until we get our footing.”
Caleb shifted uncomfortably in his chair as Aryl continued. “And
with hard work, it could be profitable.”

“That’s some news,” Jonathan said, surprised.
“What all did he leave you?” Aryl listed off the inventory. “And
what would we need to get this operation going?” Jonathan asked,
already working on the basics of a business plan in his head.

“Nothing. Everything is in good repair. One
of the boats needs more work than the others, but there’s four
total, so we can repair that one in our spare time. There’s one for
each of us. The commercial buyers that my uncle worked with know my
family. We would literally step into his shoes. Hardest part, I
think,” he said, leaning back in his chair and searching all of the
faces around the table, “is going to be refreshing my memory and
teaching you two the trade.”

Everyone was silent. Aryl noticed the two
other wives were concentrating on their husbands’ faces; studying
them, waiting for a reaction, some indication of what they might be
thinking. Aryl looked across the table.

“What do you think, Ava? Should we go?” Ava
looked surprised that he would ask her, looked to Jonathan and back
to Aryl. Jonathan nudged her leg to answer.