Spinning the Moon
Page 71
“Papa!” Rebecca ran to him and propelled herself into John’s arms. He staggered slightly and did not lift her. Instead he put his hand on her head and walked toward me. A loud cheer spread out from the gathering men. His face was blackened with ash, a bleeding cut bisecting his left cheek. He stopped in front of us but did not say anything.
To my surprise, Daniel struggled to a stand, supporting himself against the tree. “I will watch Rebecca. You two have much to talk about.”
The two men faced each other, one man’s expression wary and the other impassive. John’s voice was deep and hollow, singed from the smoke. “I could not save Clara. She regained consciousness while I was carrying her through the door. She struggled with me and ran back inside. That is when the wall collapsed and I could not go back in.”
Daniel stared at John for a brief moment, his face ashen. “She told me she killed Elizabeth and Philip. I had no idea. . . .”
He turned away then and took Rebecca’s hand. With slow, halting steps, he walked to the huge magnolia that Rebecca had hidden behind and he sat, resting his head against it as if still in great pain, and nestled her under his arm.
John collapsed next to me and I listened to his ragged breath. He coughed, then turned to look at me. “Judge Patterson told me everything. It is beyond my comprehension how you could have believed the worst of me.” Anger and pain emanated from his eyes, but he reached for my hand and clutched it tightly as if making a peace offering. His touch told me that despite the anger, his relief at finding me alive was all that mattered.
The emotions of anger and relief chased each other in a circle in my own mind, along with questions yet to be answered. “It is not as if you have always told me the truth. Rebecca saw you on the secret stairs, bringing up Elizabeth’s traveling bag. Yet you did not think it important enough to tell me, and I was left with no choice but to believe the worst.”
He let go of my hand and ground the heels of his palms into his eyes. “I only did that to protect myself. I truly believed that she had killed herself and had tried to implicate me. Hence the traveling bag to make people believe she was leaving and to give me motive to kill her. And, to seal my fate, the placement of my glove and the gris-gris. I shudder to think what would have happened if I had not been the first to discover her body. I knew you would never accept my story if you learned of the traveling bag, so I kept it secret. If I had not heard Elizabeth’s threats to kill herself, even I would have had difficulty accepting it.”
“But there was also the letterbox and the missing letters. Even though I found your pipe in the attic and the burning letters in the fireplace, you still denied any knowledge of the letterbox. I knew you were lying to me, but you wouldn’t tell me the truth.”
He sat so close to me our shoulders touched, our heat nearly matching that of the flickering flames. “I took the letterbox from the attic and buried it. But after I heard you and Rebecca talking about it, I dug it up again to remove the letters. I did not have the key, so I had to unscrew the hinges and removed the letters before reburying it. I did not want to risk you ever finding them and reading them.”
Tears stung my eyes and I was not sure whether they were from the burning building. “You should have trusted me with the truth. That is all I have ever asked of you.”
“And you should have trusted me to take care of you. All I wanted was to protect you.” He took my hands and brought them to his lips. “I want us to start over—far away from this place. We will go back to Saint Simons, if that is what you want, and rebuild your home. I love you, Cat. I have since the first moment I saw you dancing barefoot on the beach.” He closed his eyes and I could feel his blood pulsing in his hands. “Please give me another chance to make you happy.”
I took his face in my hands, using my thumbs to wipe off the dark smudges on his cheeks. “Even when I thought the worst of you, you still managed to claim my heart. I do want to start over—but I want to start with no secrets between us. They are like dark shadows in the corners of our lives, and I cannot live with them.” I touched my lips to his, sealing my fate. “I need to know what was in Elizabeth’s letters.”
His hands reached up to cover mine and I felt them tremble. “Do not, Cat. You do not know what you are asking.”
I didn’t release him. “Yes, I do. I am stronger than you think.”
He dark eyes searched mine, our faces close enough to kiss. “When I tell you, I want you to know that you are not alone. And that you are loved and cherished by me and that nothing else matters.”
Fear blossomed in me then—not fear of my own mortality, for I had already faced that, but fear of losing my final innocence. But his touch gave me strength. “Tell me,” I whispered.
His hands tightened on mine, and his eyes did not leave my face. “The letters in the letterbox were from your husband, Robert, to Elizabeth. They were love letters, dating from before her marriage to me up until the time of his return to Saint Simons after the war.”
I started shaking then, as bright bubbles of light seemed to surface and explode in my brain. He continued. “They talked of their intimacy and of a child they conceived when Robert was in Maryland in the army and she visited him there.”
Rose’s voice came back to me. There be two men in your life—two men you share your life with. But one of them is not who you thinks he be. He betray you in a terrible way.
“Oh, God,” I whispered, shaking uncontrollably now. Still, he did not let me go.
“Rebecca is their child.”
I wanted to scream in denial, but my voice, hoarse from the smoke, deadened my grief. John gathered me in his arms and held me close, his kisses on my hair soft and gentle. I felt as if I were drowning in a sea of betrayal that threatened to pull me under and steal the life from me. He let me cry until I had no more tears left.
When I was finished, John brought my tear-streaked face up to his and kissed me. Grabbing his hands, I allowed him to pull me out of the darkness. I reached for him, feeling the beginning of my salvation in the beating of his heart. The darkness still tugged at me, as I knew it might always do, but John would bear me up to face it.
Together, we walked over to Daniel to claim Rebecca, and then took her home.
EPILOGUE
Sometimes I come down to the beach and take off my shoes, delighting in the feel of the shifting sand beneath my feet. I can listen to the waves now without hearing the cries of my lost child, and I am more at peace than I have ever been.
I have begun to swim in the ocean again, and John has asked me to teach Rebecca and our son, Samuel, when he is old enough. We will do so together, John and I, as we have done everything in our lives since the night of the fire.
Robert and Elizabeth’s betrayal will always be with me, like a scar from an old wound. The pain is gone, but at times the fingers of my memory touch the ridges of the scar, a medal of survival and a reminder of John’s love for me. Forgiveness is an elusive ghost to me still, but I try. Every day I try.
My home and family have become a great tide pool of my own creation, and my love the dam that protects them from the encroaching waves. I can face the vastness of the ocean now, with the salt wind whipping at my hair and banishing the gnawing hunger from my soul, and feel only possibility and an overflowing well of contentment.
When I think back on those first tumultuous months of our marriage, I see it as a macabre dance: John and I waltzing around a circle, with the dark shadow of betrayal lurking in the middle, waiting to consume us. But now the light of my beloved island shines on us, illuminating the corners of our lives and our hearts. We take delight in the building of our house and the joyful cries of our children. His touch strengthens me, and mine him. We have waited all of our lives for this, and know that we are blessed.
Photo by Claudio Marinesco
Karen White is the New York Times bestselling author of twenty novels, including Flight
Patterns, The Sound of Glass, A Long Time Gone, and The Time Between, and the coauthor of The Forgotten Room with New York Times bestselling authors Beatriz Williams and Lauren Willig. She grew up in London but now lives with her husband and two children near Atlanta, Georgia.
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