The Mermaid Collector (25 page)

I mean are his hands now freezing to the touch. Does he smell of salt water all the time, not like someone who might have stood in the path of an ocean breeze, but like a man who has sunk deep under the sea and slept there, so deeply that when he kisses you, you can
taste seaweed on his breath.

“I mean,” said Lydia, “if he seems different to you than when he left on that sail.”

“Well, of course he’s different,” Millicent snapped. “What a foolish thing to even ask. One would expect an
episode like that leaves a man changed. I’d sooner worry if my husband
wasn’t
changed. Is that all you mean?”

No,
Lydia thought but didn’t say,
and you know it’s not, you impossible woman
.

But when Millicent Banks rose and departed, leaving Lydia to follow the maid back to the door and outside, Lydia began to wonder if it wasn’t something shared among the men, but rather something unique to Linus. Riding back, quiet beside the Keenes, a new fear bloomed within her. What if somehow Linus had known of her time with Angus? Had her face betrayed her when she’d met Linus on the landing? Had he known even then? How could he have? It had been all he could do to put one foot in front of the other, his body gaunt and slow, his eyes floating numbly over the crowd in which she had been swallowed up. But what of the gossip? Had he believed it, believing the whispers of strangers over the affection of his own wife?

“I want to go to Rachel’s,” Lydia said later that same week, meeting her husband on his way to the lighthouse. It seemed he never came indoors anymore, and when he did, it was merely to sleep for a few hours before sunset or take a bowl of soup. He’d lost so much weight. Some days when she’d see him slip past the window, he looked spectral to her, his eyes always fixed on something far away. “Pearl will be there,” she added, “and I would very much like to see my sisters.”

“All right.” Linus answered her as if she were a stranger at the window of a train station, requesting a
ticket. His voice was even and utterly without opinion. Didn’t he want to know how long she intended to be gone, or when she planned to leave? Didn’t he worry for the safety of their unborn child, unfounded as any worry was? The Linus she used to know would have teased her about his needing to come too to make sure Rachel’s brother-in-law didn’t flirt with her as he was wont to do after cribbage and bourbon; he would have tickled her until she’d screamed for mercy. The Linus she used to know would then have sat down on the grass and pulled her into his lap, telling her which of tonight’s stars he would claim for her.

“This baby is everything we’ve wanted, Linus,” she whispered.

“I know it is.”

“Then why don’t we ever talk about it? Don’t you ever think about our baby?”

“All the time, Lydie. I can’t think on much else anymore.”

His words should have soothed her, but they didn’t. Lydia waited for him to say more, to say anything, but no words followed. He simply shifted past her and continued down the path.

“YOU’RE AS WHITE AS A
ghost,” Pearl announced, taking her sister’s hands as soon as she stepped off the train two days later, “and your hands are like ice.”

Lydia never had to say a word. No sooner had she walked into Rachel’s house than she was swept up in their care,
nestled and pillowed like a featherless bird accidentally tipped out of its nest. She drank tea and even a few glasses of sherry. They made her roasted chicken and sponge cake scented with rosewater, but she couldn’t keep anything down.

“He’s so pale,” Lydia whispered. “He’s so
thin
.”

“Forget about him,” said Pearl. “It’s
you
we’re worried about.”

Lydia shook her head. “He used to read me his log book every night. Now he hides it as if it were full of secrets. Sometimes he doesn’t even come in for meals. All the other wives think I’m mad,” she confessed, Rachel and Pearl on either side of her on the sofa. “They say it’s just what can happen when you carry a child. That your mind isn’t your own sometimes.”

“What absolute nonsense,” said Pearl. “It’s a child, not opium. Have you tried talking with Linus?”

“He won’t talk to me,” Lydia said. “I’ve tried; I’ve
begged
.” She closed her eyes, tears seeping out the corners; Pearl dried them with her fingertips. “He’s my whole life, Pearl,” Lydia whispered. “He’s everything to me.”

Rachel had asked her husband, Edward, to make a fire, even though it was still warm enough to keep the windows open through the night. “She can’t get warm,” Rachel explained. “She’s chilled to the bone.”

“Call a doctor,” Pearl ordered Rachel’s husband, without waiting for Rachel to concur. “Call one now.”

Dr. Farnsworth arrived within a few hours; Lydia tried to stay awake, but her eyelids failed her.

“She hasn’t a fever,” Farnsworth concluded, briefing the sisters after his examination. “It’s likely that the pregnancy could be the reason for her confusion, her condition. It’s common for women to react so.”

“Useless,” hissed Pearl as she stood at the window and watched the man climb back into his carriage moments later. “I hope he doesn’t expect to be paid for that rubbish.”

“Pearl,” Rachel scolded, “Dr. Farnsworth is a good man.”

“Has it not occurred to anyone that something might be truly wrong with Linus? I mean, be sensible, Rachel. It’s lunacy. That not a
one
of those men can remember what happened the entire time they were shipwrecked? And that old goat says our sweet sister is the one who’s confused?”

“Keep your voice down,” Rachel whispered, feeling Lydia’s forehead for fever again, even though the doctor had assured her there was none. “It’s not as if I have any answers, either, you know.”

When Lydia woke several hours later, she smiled to see her sisters still at her side. She reached for each of their hands, gripping them tightly.

“I’m going back with you,” announced Pearl. “You can’t go home alone in the state you’re in. I won’t let you.”

Lydia shook her head, terrified at the thought. How could she bear to have her sister see the anguish on Linus’s face? Lydia knew she would never be able to contain her guilt. It would all come rushing out—and no matter how much Pearl might promise to keep her sister’s secret, Lydia knew she couldn’t ask Pearl to carry such a burden.

“No,” said Lydia, biting at her lip to keep from crying. “I’ll be fine; I promise. You’ll come after the baby’s born.”

But Pearl kept her eyes leveled with Lydia’s, not yet ready to agree.

“Really, you’ll see,” Lydia said, pressing her sister’s hand to her cheek. “I won’t let you leave.”

A FEW DAYS LATER, LYDIA
boarded the train and returned to the Point just before sunset. She was sure,
so
sure, that Linus would be there to meet her, but the house was dark, the only spot of light in the whole property that of the tower.

When she saw the door to the oil house ajar, she walked across the lawn and stepped in the doorway, finding Linus there, his back to her.

“I’ve missed you,” she said, certain he would turn to her, but he kept on with his inventory, offering her a brief glance over his shoulder.

“Have you eaten?” she asked. “I can make chowder.”

“I’ll be in later,” he said. “I’ve got too much to do just now.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “What’s happening to us, Linus?”

He paused in his stacking, letting his hands drop uselessly to his side. Lydia stared at those hands, those hands that used to find her flesh at every opportunity, those hands that once couldn’t be apart from her body. How long had it been since he’d touched her?

It was true. He knew. The distance between them, his
coldness, had nothing to do with his wreck and rescue. It was Angus. Linus knew what she’d done; he knew the child she carried wasn’t his. He’d heard the rumors, and to her despair, he clearly believed them. And why shouldn’t he? Had she thought she could keep her betrayal from the man who had known her better than anyone?

“Take me away, Linus,” she whispered. “Take me somewhere new. Somewhere far away from here. We’ll have our baby in a new house, in a new place.”

He turned to her finally, his eyes drained of interest, of concern. “Don’t be foolish, Lydie. We can’t possibly leave here now. You know that.”

Then, without a word, Lydia turned and stepped out of the doorway, fighting through a biting wind to get back to the house, sealing herself in, shivering even as she drew a chair to the very edge of the fire she’d stoked in the parlor, close enough that sparks landed on the hem of her skirt. She watched them brighten briefly, then die, thinking it might not be so awful if one caught, to feel something other than the pain of this heartbreak.

Sometime later, while she was putting away the chowder Linus never came to eat, she heard a creak in the kitchen doorway and turned to find her husband standing there. Her blood ran cold. He was looking at her as if he hadn’t seen her for some time.

No, she decided, as he turned and walked back out into the night. No, that wasn’t it.

Linus was looking at her as if he had no idea who she was.

P
RESENT
D
AY

THE WOMAN HOLDING THE BABY
was named Petra, and the baby was named Mia. Dean explained all of this while Tom stood stiffly at the mantel, tearing absently at a soft section of the wood with his thumbnail, sure he could have dug down to the pith.

“Mia,” Dean said conversationally. “It’s short for Maria.”

The woman looked up at him with enormous black-blue eyes, saying nothing.

“She’s shy,” Dean explained, steering Tom into the kitchen. “She’s just really shy. And her English isn’t great. She’s been in this country only a year and a half.”

This wasn’t happening, Tom thought as he and Dean walked out to the backyard, the air so sour with the scent of low tide, Tom believed he might actually throw up.

Dean took out his cigarettes, his hands shaking as he lit one. “You met her once actually. I brought her home after Thanksgiving last year.”

Tom closed his eyes, then swallowed.
The breeze. Think about the breeze.

“I don’t remember,” he said dully.

“She had bangs then. And these crazy red streaks.”

“I don’t remember, Dean.”

“Fine, then screw it.” Dean exhaled, squinting through the smoke.

Tom just stared at him. “A baby. Jesus Christ, Dean.”

“I was going to tell you eventually, Tommy. You know, at some point.”

“What point would that have been? When she started college? When she got married?”

Dean sucked hard on his cigarette, forcing the smoke out his nostrils.

“That’s where you were, wasn’t it?” Tom asked. “The last time you disappeared, you were with her, weren’t you?”

“I didn’t
disappear
, Tommy. Don’t be so fucking dramatic. Just because you don’t know where I am every second of the day doesn’t mean I disappear.”

“Do you love her?” Tom said.

Dean took a long drag; Tom watched him, waiting.

“Do you even
like
her?”

“Sure,” Dean decided. “Sure, I like her.”

But do you like her like I might have liked Tess Patterson?
The question flooded Tom’s mind, feverish and sharp.
Does she make you forget who you are, make you want everything all at once?

“Listen to you,” Dean said, letting the butt of his cigarette drop to the lawn and squashing it out with a few turns of his heel. “Since when are you the expert on love, old man?”

I’m not,
Tom answered to himself as he watched his brother make his way back to the house. He dropped to his heels and plucked the discarded filter out of the grass, rolling it in his palm.

There was a time he might have had a chance to be, but not now.

IT HAD BEEN YEARS SINCE
Tess had walked home. As a teenager, she’d done it almost every Friday night, sneaking out of the trailer, determined not to miss a chance to meet up with Pete on the green or at a bonfire on the beach. Sometimes she’d catch a ride, other times she’d bike it, but invariably when it came time to go home, she’d find herself walking, following the sandy shoulder in the dark and stepping farther toward the woods when a pair of headlights
would appear. Sometimes,
most
times, it was Buzz looking for her. He’d pass her slowly, turn around in the road, and pull alongside her. She’d get in, and they wouldn’t talk about it; they wouldn’t say a word the whole way. She would look out the window, away from him, glad for the dark so he couldn’t see how much she’d been crying.

Now the road was packed, and she was far from alone on it. The festival crowds were finally arriving, the flow of traffic thick and constant, headed for town and the larger inns farther up the road. The cottages would be filling up now. Buzz would be rushing around, probably panicked at her absence. She might have felt bad if she had had room for a thought other than the persistent and crushing memories of her fight with Tom. For the last half mile, she’d tried to avoid replaying every painful word, but she couldn’t. What was there to distract her but the rush of hot air from passing cars, the skinny pines on either side that provided her no shade? She was wilting from the humidity rising from the pavement, but then her deflated state had little to do with the weather.

She looked up in time to see a van, painted emerald green, its passengers—a young couple—waving wildly as they passed her. Behind them came another stretch of cars with out-of-state plates. Tess smiled in spite of herself, waving back. This was it, what she waited all year for—the magic of the Mermaid Festival. And she’d be damned if she’d let Tom Grace or Buzz or anyone else who refused
to believe in it steal that singular joy from her. Her mother certainly never did.

Rue, you do realize nobody from the Harbor actually dresses up for the festival; only tourists do
.

Buzz had made the announcement moments after he’d walked into the trailer that first summer and found Ruby and Tess in a sea of blue and green tulle, lengths of it draped over his recliner and the TV, strands of tinsel everywhere.