“Sixty years, and you’re nearly eighteen now. So yeah, seventy eight. You’ll be a spring chicken, like Little. She’s still got twenty two years left.”
“Twenty two?” he asked, baffled.
“I’ll tell you next time,” and then my sentence dropped like a fishing line sliced, the captive creature just a ripple in the water. There was no next time. Only the smoke trail from a plane across the sky. And if he left for school he may not be here when I returned. I looked at the cove and shuddered at the thought of sitting here without him. Lines without him. Life without him.
He unfolded his piece of paper. “This is a first,” he said. “I’ve never quoted myself before.”
“Yourself?”
“I wrote this. For you,” he swallowed and looked at it, before handing it to me.
“Are you going to read it?” I asked, taking it from him. He shook his head and signaled me to read it on my own. With unsteady fingers that made the edges of the crisp paper tremble I settled it into my lap and read to myself.
On summer days I’ve walked amidst
A fire on the hill,
Like India’s faithful dirges sung
Atop the burning coal-
I’ve laid among the golden flames
That flicked and swayed above
And while the light enclosed my face,
I barely even moved-
It danced before my hazy eyes,
Entwined with fogs of Calm
A blaze that hid the world away-
While I slept slow and warm.
I stared at the words long after I finished; at his handwriting on the paper, messy and slanted, and beautiful.
“I know it’s stupid,” he finally said but I shushed him before he got any further.
“Don’t. It’s perfect. It’s my wheat field, right?”
He nodded and cleared his throat. “I’m going to imagine you there. When I think of you.” It didn’t much matter what he said next. He would think of me.
“I’ll be there,” I said. “But I don’t know where to picture you. I guess I’ll just imagine big brick buildings, ivy, trees. That probably covers most colleges, right?”
He grinned and I looked up at his scar, traced it down to his lips as he spoke. “Imagine me here. At home. I’ll be back a lot.”
My breaths quickened to keep pace with my heart. “I want to come back for the holidays,” I said softly, trying to conceal the feelings rushing up inside me.
“I’ll be here,” he said with a smile. “But there’ll be snow by then. You might realize that you’re a tourist after all. Not sure a farm girl can handle Maine in the winter.”
“I’m tougher than you think,” I tried to say it like a joke but the lead weight of good-bye wouldn’t release my words. They sank to the ground.
“No coward soul is mine,” he muttered.
“Tomorrow you’ll be at lines with Sarah,” I said, unable to keep the complaint in my mouth any longer. “I’ll be gone.” I knew he couldn’t change it, so I can’t say why I wanted him to argue with me.
“I know.” He gently reached for my hand and turned it palm side up. His rough finger stroked the white skin, slowly, thoughtfully.
“Nathan?” He met my eyes and I could see the ocean waves in his dark blue orbs. “Did you know that Cleo and I are graduating early? Like Claude. Just one more year and I’ll be away at school …”
“Decided to mention that, did you?” he said with a grim smirk. He squeezed his hand around mine. “Go Huskers?” he asked quietly.
“Maybe. I’m starting to like the East Coast. If you ignore the people, of course.”
“Of course.” He released my hand and took a steadying breath. “So tomorrow morning, huh? This is it?”
No. No. This isn’t it.
This can’t be it.
Why couldn’t he ever hear what my mind was shouting? “I suppose so.” I tilted my head back at the sky and inhaled. Long, quiet minutes passed as we watched the sky grow dim, his hand still clutching mine.
I finally asked him, “Are you ready to go home? Are we through?”
His eyebrows tilted down like the question perplexed him. “No,” he answered as he watched a gull cut a slim, white line over our heads, “We’re not through. But I’ll walk you home.” He rose first and gave me his hand, pulling me up in his firm grip until I was so close that our bodies almost touched. He looked down, his face bending over mine and what thoughts raced through his mind, I’ll never know. I don’t remember thoughts. Just sensations. Something like drowning. In the best possible way.
I felt the kiss in his eyes, so instinctual and pervasive that the ghost of it tingled on my lips, but Nathan refused to move any closer. That stubborn glint burned in his eyes.
He might have had the strength to resist, but I did not. I raised my face, watching his eyes tighten. With uncommon understanding, Nathan gently turned to the water and looked at her while he spoke to me. “I’d be a hypocrite, after what I said to Will.”
Something hot ran down my shoulders into my ribs. Disappointment flavored with relief. It wasn’t that he didn’t see me, he just convinced himself he shouldn’t. Same outcome, but the subtle difference meant everything. “If you let him hit you, you’d be even.” I’m not sure I knew I said it out loud or that it was funny until his laugh, buoyant and free, broke loudly over my head.
“Nice logic, Jennifer.” He sighed the word “Tempting” in a way that made it impossible to tell if he was tempted by the punch or the kiss. Before I could respond, he grabbed my hand in a decidedly friendly way and tugged me forward. I nearly dug my heels into the sand trying to retrieve the stunning tension of hope, but he had made up his mind. I couldn’t beg. When he walked, I obeyed, allowing him to lead my weak, reluctant feet over the sand and dirt and grass to the back door. I prayed he would stop, break his rules, see me how Newell never let himself see Little, but he opened the door and held it with his outstretched arm, waiting as I passed under. My hair grazed his hand as he closed the door behind me. The faint touch shivered on the back of my neck and I stopped to catch my breath. He stopped too, still and silent. We paused there, not more than a handful of seconds, unable to do anything more but look at the floor together, before he walked into the living room.
Mother and Sarah looked up from a photo album as we entered, the quilt from my bed was wrapped around my mother’s shoulders. It looked very right, piled around her neck, protecting her. At great sacrifice I left Nathan’s side and sat beside her. She pulled me under one arm, the blanket engulfing me and I smelled her familiar scent mingled with the clean, powdery smell that clung to everything in Sarah’s house.
“Are you bringing this home?” I asked, fingering the tiny, familiar squares. I loved the idea of her keeping it, but it didn’t seem right to take it from its home where Hazel made it.
“I think so,” Mother answered, rubbing my arm.
Nathan stopped in the doorway, leaning against the thick wooden frame. He looked tenderly at Sarah as she sat across from her sister. The same way I looked at Hester on the rock. “Good night, Sarah,” Nathan said with a knowing smile that said,
I know it is a good night for you
. He looked to my mother and I. “It was nice to meet you, Claire. I hope you come back soon. We’ll miss you, Jennifer.” I tried to understand the strange set of his face, tried to hear his mind over the sound of his words. “I’m glad you came. I’ll see you again.” I felt my mother’s stare, Sarah’s eyes fastened to my pink cheeks but I ignored both of them, not able to acknowledge anyone but him.
“I’ll miss you, too,” I said, my throat swelling around the wounding words. “I hope you’re right.”
He gave me a small wave and turned. When the door clicked closed behind him something splintered and fell inside my chest. I took a quick breath, surprised by the physical pang. I avoided Sarah’s concerned gaze – avoided her pity.
My mother turned the page of the album. “He seems like a nice boy,” She murmured. I couldn’t even find the power to nod. An odd, concurring ‘hm’ came out of my throat. She pointed out a photo of her mother, saying, “That was her first year here, before she met my dad.” I looked at the blurry face and blonde hair of the girl who fell in love with a Smithport fisher. She was short, like Claude, slight like Sarah, defiant like my mother. I wondered what trait we shared, other than the thick, light hair. Maybe just our love for the two women looking at her photo.
I tried to concentrate on that accomplishment – the fact that they sat in the same room – and forced myself to ignore the instincts that called me back outside, urged me to run across the cove and talk to him. The compulsion to speak to Nathan throbbed inside of me, but I stayed and looked at the pictures, my head on my mother’s shoulder until I grew too heavy with the sadness to sit upright. I took myself upstairs and slid into bed, opening the window wide to catch the sighs of the ocean. Tonight she sounded like my heart felt. One breath after another. And nothing else.
At nine o’clock, when the last of the light seeped out of the dark sky, I pulled myself back up, crept downstairs and found Sarah alone in the living room. She looked up when the stairs creaked. “Where’s my mom?” I asked, looking toward the kitchen.
“She went for a walk down to the water. We thought you went to bed.” Sarah said, closing her eyes.
“I tried. Are you all right?” I asked.
One eye popped open and scanned me critically. “You told her you wouldn’t come home unless she came to get you?”
“I didn’t really mean it,” I sighed.
“That was playing with fire, Jennifer.”
“I know. But it worked, didn’t it? Aren’t you glad?”
A tired smile lit her face and Charlie whined happily, as if he felt her pleasure. “Indescribably.”
“Me, too,” I said. “You two look good together.” My feet padded against the thick wooden planks of the floor and I walked behind the couch, gently touching her head. “I think I’ll go join her.”
“Jennifer,” Sarah’s voice caught me at the doorway to the kitchen. “I’d bet good money that he’s here in the morning.”
I only met her eyes for a moment. I was too fragile to avoid the way the hope pulled into my chest like a deep breath. It was just enough to dull the shards of disappointment.
“Thanks, Sarah.”
I slipped outside into the still night. The wind was the only thing stirring as I crossed the shadowed yard. Unlike the night with Nathan when the moon was a bright circle, tonight it hung lopsided in the sky, looking punch drunk and weary – the morning after.
My mother stood far from the water, taking in the black shapes of the land and trees against the sky. “Mama?”
She turned slowly to me and then back to the water. “You were so quiet I thought you were asleep already,” she said.
“Hardly. I was just thinking. About leaving. It’s going to be hard for me. I fell in love… with this place.” There was a certain power in saying it so plain – in almost admitting out loud to another human being that I loved him.
“I know,” she said bracingly. “But it will still be here. We can come back.”
“Is that what you told yourself all these years? That it would still be here when you were ready to come back?”
She gave a laugh and shook her head. “No. I told myself it fell into the ocean. Then I didn’t even have to think about it. It didn’t exist. I think I believed my own lie.”
I sat down at her feet, feeling the cold sand through my clothes. “I’m glad you came.”
Her doubtful eyes pressed me. “Even if it means leaving?”
“I was coming anyway,” I admitted. “Tuesday.”
Before she could vocalize the stunned question on her face I told her that I never really decided if Little was right. “I kept worrying it was wrong, to blackmail you that way.”
“No, this time the crazy woman was right. I’m glad you did it.” She sank to the ground next to me, pulling the hair from her eyes. “You’re grounded. But not for long.” The next time she spoke it was with a different voice, something more personal. “I feel like I’m seventeen again tonight,” she said and I knew she wasn’t telling me as a daughter. She was talking to another woman. “I feel like the night after her funeral when I sat out here and tried to understand what it all meant. I tried to decide what to do. I thought Sarah would know … I don’t think I realized that she was just a kid, too.” her voice trailed until it was just a sigh mingled with the breeze. “I think that is a special gift – knowing how to blame the right people. I wonder what my life would have been if I stayed when Sarah came home.”
“Do you regret it?” Only after I asked did I realize I feared either answer.
“You? Your dad? Never.” She proclaimed. “I found love. I got a girl who looks like a golden wheat field. What regret is there in that?” And when she said the word ‘golden’ I remembered Nathan’s line.
Nothing gold can stay.
It sounds conceited to say, but I understood for the first time that he meant me. I was the gold. He was warning me. He was warning himself. I don’t know what happened to my face when I realized, but I never heard my mother’s next words. She caught my expression and stopped speaking altogether. For a moment she studied me and when I met her eyes she said very gently, “And there was Harvey. It’s hard to leave the first boy you love when you’re seventeen.” My eyes felt hot as the tears collected. “But you know what Emerson says, right?
When half gods go, the gods arrive.
I always loved that one.”
That’s when the tears dropped and she pulled me under her arm. I didn’t agree with her- the implication that there was something or someone better than Nathan. But she gave me a line. In the quiet moonlight, on her beach, she played the “non-game.” I didn’t need to confess the turmoil inside. She didn’t need to say she knew. It settled around us as surely as if we spoke the words aloud. I smelled her neck as I leaned into her, thinking of how she didn’t have a mother when the heartache hit her.
“Will you promise me something?” I asked.
She nodded her head and squeezed my arm. A light from a single boat flashed far out at sea and we watched the tiny dot make its way over the vast waters.
“Please don’t tell Cleo. She’ll never forgive me.”
My mother chuckled and shook me lovingly. “She’ll figure it out eventually.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” I pulled up my head to see her. Her face looked like the ash covered ground after a forest fire. Decimated. Destroyed. Peaceful. Just about to burst into new life. She deserved a new secret to plant. A good one.