The Gilly Salt Sisters (49 page)

She chose the child.

Later, after Dee was recovering and the machines had stopped their beeping and nurses had taken some of the tubes out of her nose and arms, Claire wondered why she simply hadn’t prayed for
both
Jordy and Dee. Was that maybe the way the human brain worked in emergencies, she wondered—shutting down critical blood vessels and nerves, vanquishing distractions, so a person could make impossible decisions? Or was this defect of loving too narrowly unique to her own hardened heart?

“We’re never going to eat all this, you know.” The flatness in Dee’s voice sometimes tipped her most banal statements toward profundity. It drove Claire crazy. In this instance, however, she had to concede that Dee had a point. They hadn’t even started on the Bundt cake from yesterday, and here Claire was piling lime sponge on top of it. A plate of plastic-wrapped doughnuts sat
festering in the far corner of the counter, by the jug of wooden spoons, and the refrigerator harbored a week-old coconut custard. Claire sighed and stared down at the pan in her hands.

“Well, I’ve already gone and mixed the batter. I might as well bake it.”

Dee checked Jordy’s diaper and then, satisfied with the results, rearranged his clothes and slung him back over her shoulder, patting his back a little harder than Claire would have. Claire bit the inside of her cheek not to say anything.

“Why don’t you sell all that stuff?” Dee asked.

Claire looked up. “What?”

“At the farmers’ market in Wellfleet on Saturday.”

It was stunning, really. The girl was duller than a box of rocks, but she flashed the occasional sign of intelligence. It wasn’t a bad idea at all, Claire thought. The flavored salts she’d introduced in Hyannis were taking off. Maybe her baking would, too. The paltry amount of money she had left in her bank account was almost gone and the farm still had a heavy cloud of debt squatting over it, but maybe Claire’s confections could help start to dispel it.

Dee’s voice pulled her back to the kitchen. “I could come with you. Well, Jordan and me. You know, for an extra pair of hands. Actually, four extra hands.” Jordy let out another mew.

Claire eyed her, considering. Dee had been a terrible waitress, she remembered. Polite enough, but sulky and tragically inaccurate with her orders. She could never remember how customers wanted their coffee, how they took their eggs, or whether they preferred honey or syrup when it came to their pancakes. Or never
seemed
to remember. Now that Claire thought about it, Dee had always known what
she
wanted with no trouble.

She snapped back to the problem at hand. It would be healthy for Dee to get out of the house and mix with a little society. It would be good for them both. “Why not?” she said.

Who knows?
she thought. Maybe Dee would turn out to be something of a saleswoman after all. She’d obviously sold herself hook, line, and sinker to Whit. Maybe a flirtation with the
outside world wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for Salt Creek Farm. Maybe it was just what they needed.

O
n Saturday morning Dee changed her mind. “I’m not feeling so well,” she complained, pressing a hand to her temple. “The baby was fussing half the night, and I’ve got a headache something awful. I’m going to stay here and sleep with him.”

Claire tried to hide her relief. Clattering around the kitchen with Dee slumped at the table while she baked was one thing, but being boxed behind a table together for hours in the heat was hardly an appealing prospect. Claire leaned down and gave Jordy a kiss, cupping the warm bulb of his head.

“Be good,” she whispered, and went off to find Jo, who had some salt deliveries to make to restaurants and some errands to run. “Do you want us to bring you anything?” Claire asked, but Dee just shook her head.

A couple of hours later, Claire was sold out of everything at her stand.

“If I could, I would eat one of these every single day of my life,” her last customer raved as she devoured Claire’s final banana muffin. “What did you put in here?”

Claire shrugged. “Sea salt, vanilla, and a little something secret.”

“It’s heaven. You should open your own shop or something.”

Claire began to protest but then stopped. It wasn’t such a stupid idea. Why
couldn’t
she open her own shop? When was the last time she’d had anything of her own? She was living in her sister’s house with her husband’s mistress and son, working her family’s salt flats. Even Icicle, her very soul, had been a gift from Whit. Claire looked at the woman, who was licking the last crumbs off her fingers like a famished cat. She was wearing tasteful brown lipstick and an enormous pair of diamond studs. Her capri pants were starched, her blouse clean, and she had on French espadrilles. Once Claire had dressed just like her. “Maybe one day,” she said.

“Well, take this.” The woman dug in her purse for her card. “Let me know if you do. These muffins are to die for.” Claire took the card and then glanced at her watch. She still had forty minutes before Jo was due back. Across the aisle one of the vendors was selling peaches so ripe they were almost weeping.
Cobbler
, she thought.
And peach-and-pepper jam.
She was halfway to the fruit stall before she realized that Ethan was standing under its awning. She hadn’t recognized him in the shadows, and she hadn’t seen him since she’d left him half naked in the sand.

“Ethan,” she said, coming up behind him. The one person she was both desperate to encounter and ashamed to. He was wearing his collar, she noted, but with a short-sleeved shirt that showed off the graceful bows of his forearms. If she looked hard enough, Claire bet, she could find his pulse. It was the same spot where she’d kissed him over and over. She stared down at her shoes, tongue-tied.

“Claire.” Why did her name always come out of his mouth like music ringing from a bell? She felt the vibration in her stomach and the backs of her knees. “Your hair,” he said, “it’s—”

“Down.” She reached up and smoothed the frayed ends.

“I like it. It suits you.”

“Thanks.” Claire was finding it difficult to catch her breath. She sometimes felt that over the past thirteen years her veins and arteries had constricted themselves to their smallest functional sizes, allowing her body’s blood to circulate, but nothing extra. Not laughter. Not affection, and certainly not passion. At least not until Ethan had come along again. She’d been so ravenous for him that morning in the dunes that she hadn’t even felt remorse, but what was she supposed to do? Sometimes, it seemed, the only way to exorcise the past was to relive it.

She clasped her fingers behind her back now and bit her bottom lip. Her problem, she realized, was that she was a woman who always had everything she didn’t want. And maybe now that included Ethan. For he wasn’t the same as the boy who’d left. He was a man with twelve years on him that Claire knew nothing
about. She’d been foolish to try to make herself believe that history didn’t matter.

“What are you even doing out here?” she finally asked. Too late, the answer came to her.
Avoiding you.
He blushed. “Same as everyone else. Shopping. What about you?”

Was this what they were going to be reduced to? Claire wondered. The kind of small talk they might have made at a cocktail party? She couldn’t imagine a future filled with chitchat about the weather. “I’m selling some things I baked,” she replied.

“Business going well?”

She tried to keep her voice light. “I sold out of everything in two hours. If you come next week, I’ll save something for you.”

Ethan looked pained. “Claire, about that. I don’t know how to say this, but… I’ve requested to be transferred. Wait—” He took her hand when she tried to pull it away. “I saw your sister the other day, and it started me thinking. What if I’m making a mistake?”

Claire felt her throat pinch closed. They were the words she’d longed to hear from him for so long, but years too late. They were ghost words. Even if he did break his vows for her, Claire realized, she’d never banish the specter of God hanging between them. She hung her head. When was she going to learn? Love wasn’t a list to be kept in the heart. It was the duties you got up to fulfill every day and the sacrifices you made. Jordy had made her see that. She shook her head, unable to force words out, and Ethan let go of her hand, tears welling in his eyes. “I guess we’re done here,” he choked.

Claire turned away. She couldn’t look him in the face anymore. “Yeah,” she managed. “I guess we are.”

She could feel his eyes on her back as she walked toward her stall. Next week, she decided, she’d make devil’s food cake spiked with rum, and she’d charge her customers double for it or let them stand there salivating. From now on, nothing of hers was going to be free for the taking again—not when it came to cooking, not when it came to Whit, and especially not when it came to Ethan Stone and her poor mangled heart.

S
he and Jo drove back to Salt Creek Farm with the windows in the truck cab cranked all the way down. It didn’t help with the heat, but at least it moved the air around, even if the breeze made conversation difficult, which was actually fine with Claire, since she was feeling about as friendly as a scorpion. They rolled onto the lane leading down to the marsh. In the distance the marsh was its usual summer patchwork of violently odd colors—magenta, green, iron red, and brown. With the heat and sun came algae and microorganisms, and then the mud in the salt flats bloomed into a harlequin’s coat.

They still hadn’t talked about what was in Ida’s letter, not since the hospital, but it was growing between them like the season’s heat.
If she knew who he was to her all along
, Claire mused,
why was she so angry when I went and married Whit?
It wasn’t as if Jo ever could have. In fact, the idea was distressing, really. Claire wondered if Jo and Whit ever kissed before Jo read Ida’s letter, and if Whit ever suspected their real relationship. If so, he’d done a remarkable job hiding it.

I should burn that letter
, Claire thought. It was upstairs in her bureau drawer now. She’d grabbed it out of Jo’s hand in the hospital and never given it back, but Jo hadn’t asked for it. Even so, it wasn’t Claire’s to keep, and she was tired, she realized, of carrying the load of her sister’s burdens. The truth was out now, and besides, there was only so much atonement one could make in life.

The cicadas were screaming, and a row of pelicans dipped and rose like a squadron of bombers cruising the horizon. Evening was settling over the marsh like a square of silk. Icicle would want a gallop on the beach and a splash in the surf, and then Claire would give him his feed. She felt the knot that had twisted in her stomach at the farmers’ market begin to unravel. By the end of her ride, she hoped, her muscles would have relaxed completely and she’d be able to breathe again. As she neared the barn, however, she saw that the doors were open, which was odd. She’d been
extra careful about closing them. She frowned and swung one door wider, a wave of heat hitting her as she took a step inside, and then she froze.

Icicle was collapsed on the floor, his hooves stilled in the hay, his flanks rigid and his nostrils dry. Already the flies were gathering. In disbelief, Claire sank to her knees and put her hand on his loyal chest. There was no life in him, as she knew there wouldn’t be. She sat gasping for a moment, as if she’d just taken a fist to the stomach, and then she bent her head over him and wailed.

Sniffling, she closed Icicle’s great solemn eyes and rubbed her cheek against his, wishing she’d been with him for his final moments, wishing she could have saved him, for Icicle hadn’t been just a horse to her. He was the nobler part of her soul. Without him Claire wasn’t sure what would happen to her better instincts. She ran her hand over his ears and down his forelock, then up under his neck. She searched the straw around his body, and her eye caught on a tiny slip of paper. A wrapper for a brand of cinnamon gum Whit loved. Claire plucked it up and inspected it. There was no code hidden inside, no secret signal to her. But then such subterfuge wasn’t Whit’s style. His message was clear enough. The only thing left to save now, Claire knew, was her own self.