Twice Loved (copy2) (29 page)

Chapter 13

ZACHARY MORGAN’S FUNERAL WAS HELD TWO DAYS LATER. IT WAS
a flawlessly clear day, and gulls scolded from an azure sky while mourners pressed in a wide, deep circle around the grave. Laura’s mother was there, along with Jane and John Durning and all their children. So was Josiah, as well as aunts, uncles, and cousins of both Dan and Rye—so many on the island were related. Friends, too, had come to pay last respects, among them DeLaine Hussey, the Starbucks, and everyone who worked at the countinghouse, which was closed for the afternoon.

Laura wore a black bombazine dress and a coal scuttle hat with a nubby veil that covered her face to the chin. She stood beside Dan and his family while Rye faced her from the opposite side of the grave. He stood in the traditional pose of funereal respect—feet spraddled, the palm of one hand clasping the back of the other over his lower abdomen. From behind her black veil, Laura studied his somber face while the rector’s monotone drifted above the silent gathering. Then it, too, fell still, and the bombazine crackled as Josh shifted restlessly and pressed against Laura’s legs. He jerked on her hand and she looked down.

“Are they gonna bury Grampa in the dirt?” Josh asked plaintively, his voice carrying clearly across the silent graveside. “I don’t want Grampa to get buried in the dirt.” Laura smoothed Josh’s hair with a black-gloved hand, leaning over his head to whisper comforting words as the muffled sound of weeping increased upon the heels of his innocent question.

Straightening, Laura found Rye’s gaze on her from across the grave. Josh started whimpering, and Rye looked at him with an expression of helplessness.

Beside Laura, Dan bent and picked up Josh in his arms, whispering something, while again Rye’s gaze followed, fixing on the child’s palm, which rested on Dan’s cheek as the two exchanged words too soft to be heard across the grave. Laura leaned near them, her head close to Dan’s as she rested a hand on Josh’s small back, and they whispered. When she turned to attend the proceedings again, she found Rye still watching the three of them with the same wounded look. But she sensed Ruth observing every exchange of glances, so she dropped her eyes to the black-draped coffin with its spray of summer gladiolas and chrysanthemums from somebody’s island garden.

The final prayers were intoned and the last hymn was sung. At a soft word from the minister, Rye and three others leaned to grasp the ropes while the weight of the coffin was released from wooden slats across the grave. Then the ropes creaked and the coffin swung slightly as it was lowered and finally touched the earth. Rye went down on one knee, pulling his rope up hand over hand, while Laura trained her eyes on that knee, battling against a new freshet of tears. As Rye again stood up, she blinked and saw the black fabric of his trouser leg now covered with a pale dusting of sand. The sight of it clinging there created a new surge of sorrow within Laura. She lifted her eyes behind the black veil with a look of desolation while the silence was broken by the soft sound of weeping, and Laura longed to go to Rye, to brush the sand from his knee and the agony from his brow. His eyes said a hundred things, but she understood one above all others: when? Now that this has happened—when?

She turned away, unable to offer even a reassuring glance, no matter how badly she wanted to. There was Hilda weeping as the first spadeful of dirt fell, and Dan with his eyes filled, too, and Josh, too young to understand, but forced to be here by rigid religious custom that Laura was helpless to change.

It was past midafternoon when the funeral party repaired to the home of Tom and Dorothy Morgan to share foods provided by friends and neighbors from all over the island. Black-clad matrons tended to setting out meats, pies, and breads on the trestle table in the keeping room, replenishing bowls, and constantly washing dishes and pewterware. Beer was abundant, for here on Nantucket it was as common a drink as water, being taken on every whaling voyage as a preventative for scurvy.

Tom Morgan’s house was a saltbox like most on the island, consisting of a keeping room with two linters and a loft, scarcely enough room to hold the many who came to offer condolences. Rye stood in the yard with an overflow of men who drank beer, smoked pipes, and discussed news of the day. A Harvard graduate named Henry Thoreau had perfected a new gimmick called a lead pencil ... some were saying there was danger of depleting the ocean of whales while others said such an idea was crazy ... talk moved on to a discussion of the profits to be had by converting whaleships to haul ice from New England to the tropics.

But Rye’s interest in the conversation died when he saw Laura step from the back linter, carrying a bucket. She crossed the yard to the sweep well and leaned over the rock coping to hook the rope handle in place. Rye quickly scanned the yard, looking for Dan, but finding him nowhere in sight, he excused himself and crossed to the sweep. It consisted of a long post, offset on a forked support that was anchored in the ground. It was weighted on its short end by a stone cradle, while the longer end of the pole hovered above the mouth of the well, making it easy to bring a full bucket up, but a struggle to get the empty bucket down. As Rye approached, Laura was leaning over the coping, straining on the rope.

“Let me help y’ with that.”

“Oh, Rye!” At the sound of his voice, Laura straightened with a snap. The rope slipped from her palms and the sweep pole flew into the air. She pressed a hand to her heart and quickly scanned the yard. Her coal scuttle hat was gone, the veil no longer shielding her face.

“Y' look tired, darlin’. Has it been bad?” One of Rye’s hands closed on the rope, but he made no further move to lower it, looking instead into Laura’s distressed eyes.

“I think you must not call me darling anymore.”

“Laura—” He seemed about to drop the rope and take a step toward her.

“Rye, lower the bucket. People are watching us.”

A quick glance confirmed it, so Rye tended to the task, forcing the pail down, hand over hand, until they heard it splash below.

“Laura, this doesn’t change anything.”

“How can you say that?”

“I still love y’. I’m still Josh’s father.”

“Rye, someone will hear.”

The pail was back up. He rested a hand on its rope handle while it hung, dripping, above the mouth of the well, the sound echoing up to them in faraway musical blips while he filled his eyes with her. “Let them hear. There isn’t a soul in this yard who doesn’t know how I feel about y’ and that y’ were mine first.”

The shadows beneath her eyes seemed to darken as she cast a furtive glance at the curious people who studied them. “Please, Rye,” she whispered. “Give me the pail.”

He reached above the well coping, and her eyes followed the strong muscles beneath the black suit jacket while his shoulders turned away and he hefted the pail. When he swung around he disregarded the hand that reached for the pail, turning toward the back linter, giving Laura no recourse but to follow at his side. He paused to let her move ahead of him, then followed into the cramped space containing ranks of wood and an assortment of wooden pails and tubs hanging on the wall. Inside, they were momentarily out of sight of either yard or house.

Laura glanced nervously toward the door leading into the keeping room from the rear, but it remained closed. “Rye, I can’t—”

“Shh.” His fingers touched her lips.

Their eyes met—troubled blue eyes fixed on worried brown ones.

The touch of his fingers on her flesh was like balm, but she forced herself to pull back. “Rye, don’t touch me. It only makes it harder.”

“Laura, I love y’.”

“And don’t say that ... not now. Everything is changed, don’t you see?”

His gaze roved over her face, studying the depths of her eyes, where he read things he did not want to read. “Why did this have t’ happen now?” he asked miserably.

“Maybe it was a message to us.”

His expression grew stern, and his voice was a hiss. “Don’t say that—don’t even think it! Zachary’s death had nothin’ to do with us, nothing!”

“Didn’t it?” She studied him levelly.

“No!”

“Then why do I feel like I personally sent that boat bow over stern?”

“Laura, I knew that’s what y’ were thinkin’ while we sat on the wharf beside Dan that night, but I won’t have y’ believin’ such a thing.” He still held the bucket in one hand while with his other he squeezed her upper arm, making the bombazine sleeve crackle in the confines of the linter.

“Don’t you?”

Her eyes remained steadfastly on him, forcing him to admit the awful possibility. He wanted to answer no, but could not. The evening light bounced off the white shells outside the doorway, reflecting inside and lighting her face from below, giving her an ethereal glow, like an angel of judgment. She reached for the handle of the pail, but he refused to relinquish it. He studied her face, wanting her back worse than ever, now that he’d again had a taste of her body. Yet it was not her body alone he craved. He craved a return to things as they used to be, contentment, peace, sharing their home. And now their son. Yet Rye Dalton, even in the depths of his want, could not deny her words or force her to come back to him any sooner than she was ready. Their hands slipped close together on the rope, and he raised his free hand to touch her jaw.

“Is it so wrong for us t’ want t’ be together when we love each other?”

“What we did was wrong, Rye, yes.”

His eyes took on a new pain. “How can y’ call it wrong, Laura, knowing what it was like—what it always was like between us? How can y’ walk away and st—”

The kitchen door suddenly opened.

“Oh, excuse me.” Ruth Morgan confronted them with reproof in every unsmiling muscle of her face. “We were beginning to wonder if Laura dropped down the well, but I can see what’s taken so long.”

Rye flashed Dan’s sister a look of sheer loathing, thinking that if she’d ever gone out and gotten herself frenzied with a man, she wouldn’t have such a burr under her corsets when somebody else did. Ruth Morgan was nothing but a dried-up old maid who wouldn’t know what to do with a man if she had one, Rye thought as he strode angrily into the keeping room and clapped the pail down.

The remainder of the day found Laura growing increasingly uncomfortable as Ruth Morgan’s censure became more evident. At times she ostentatiously held her skirts from brushing Laura’s hem as they moved about in the keeping room, clearing away dishes and foods. Rye did not leave, as Laura hoped he would. Instead, he was one of those who remained as night drew on and the men moved inside to continue drinking the everlasting beer. But Dan had already overindulged and had reached that maudlin stage of drunkenness accompanied by depression and self-pitying gibberish.

He sat at the trestle table in the keeping room, elbow to elbow with a group of others, his head slung low while his arms sometimes slipped clumsily off the table edge.

“The old man was always after me to be a fisherman.” He swayed toward the companion at his left and looked blearily into the man’s eyes. “Never liked the stink of fish, did I, Laura? Not like you and Rye.” He twisted to pick her out where she sat with the women while Rye stood near the fireplace, looking on silently from behind Dan’s back.

Laura rose. “Come, Dan, let’s go home.”

“Whatsa matter? Did Rye have t’ leave?” Dan turned a loose, inebriated smile to the circle of men at the table, and brandished a floppy hand. “Party’s over for my wife once Rye Dalton’s not around anymore. Did I ever tell you—”

“You’re drunk, Dan.” Rye interrupted as he moved behind the slouched form. “Time to put your glass down and go home with Laura.” He took the mug from Dan’s hand and set it on the table with a decisive thud.

Dan twisted at the waist, turning watery eyes up at the man looming behind him. “Well, if it isn’t my friend Rye Dalton, the one I share a wife with.” He smiled crookedly.

Horrified, Laura saw everyone in the room look away uncomfortably. Feet shifted, sounding like thunder, then an awful silence hovered in the tense air.

“That’s enough, Dan!” Rye spoke sharply, skewering the drunk man with a look of warning, ever aware of Laura waiting uncertainly behind them with Josh at her side, and of Ruth, standing in the dark corner of the room, her eyes snapping.

“I just wanted to tell the story of the three musketeers who grew up sharing everything. But I guess they all know it anyway.” Dan’s eyes went from man to man around the table, finally coming back to rest on Rye. “Yup! Guess they all know about it. No sense tellin’ ’em what they already know. Where’s that wife of ours, eh, Rye?”

Laura’s face was poppy-red while Rye’s looked thunderous. He stood stern and unmoving, scarcely holding himself back from plucking Dan to his feet and slamming a fist into him to shut him up.

“She’s 
your
 wife, and she’s waitin’ for y’ to gather yer wits and go home with ’er. Now put down the mug and stop makin’ an ass o’ yerself.”

Murky eyes appealed to the circle of faces. “Am I making an ass of myself?”

Finally, one of the men suggested, “Why don’t you do what Rye says? Go on home with Laura now.”

Dan smiled stupidly at the tabletop, then nodded at it. “Yup, I guess you’re right. ’Cause if I don’t, my friend here will.”

“Dan! Have y’ forgotten y’r son is in the room?” Rye snapped, the anger growing more evident in each word.

“My
 son ... now there’s a subject I’d like to take up, too.” Rye waited no longer. With power spawned by rage, he clutched the shoulders of Dan’s jacket and jerked him to his feet, sending the table screeching back as Dan’s body jarred against it. Rye spun the limp form around and clutched Dan’s lapels roughly, then ground out his next words through nearly clenched teeth. “Y’r 
wife
 is waiting for y’t’ straighten up and take her and Josh home. Now are y’ going t’ do it, or do I have t’ crack y’ one to bring y’ to your senses!”

Sobered somewhat, Dan yanked himself free of Rye’s grip, shrugging his jacket back into place, then wavering a moment while trying to gather dignity that could not be restored in one so far gone.