“What are you doing here on the island?” she asked finally. She’d been curious since she first met him. What was an Australian, motorcycle-riding priest doing tucked away in this remote little corner of the world?
He shrugged. “Oh, you know, the oldest story in the book. A girl.” He took another handful of cherries from the carton, offering them to Maggie. She accepted a few but waved off the rest.
“On San Juan?” Maggie asked.
“No.” He laughed. “Slim pickings for girls here. No, back home, in Perth.” He picked out a rotten cherry from his hand and launched it out to sea with a languid overhand toss. “Her name was Lucy. We were high school sweethearts, and we planned to get married after college. But after a while, she realized she didn’t have the same calling I did.” He paused. “She saw what it meant to live as a priest’s wife—the late-night telephone calls, the hospital visits, how committed you have to be to the people you serve. It wasn’t a life she wanted. She broke off our engagement three months before the wedding.”
“Ouch,” Maggie murmured.
Griffin nodded. “Yeah, you got that right. She told me I had a choice—her or the collar. And I couldn’t choose her. I couldn’t give up what I knew I was meant to do with my life. And then she got a job at the local news station. I got tired of seeing her face on a billboard every time I went out for coffee, so I looked for a parish somewhere far away. And this is what opened up.” He spit a cherry pit toward the water. A lick of wave caught it and sent it spinning wildly out with the current.
“Do you ever regret it?” Maggie asked.
“Coming here or becoming a priest?”
Maggie shrugged. “Both. Either.”
Griffin shook his head. “I’ve never regretted becoming a priest. Coming here . . . Sometimes I wonder if I could have stuck it out in Perth to be closer to my father and sister.” He paused, considering. “But I’ve learned to love the island and the community here.”
They sat together in companionable silence, finishing their cherries. Maggie glanced sideways at Griffin, his clean profile turned away from her, gazing out at the water. She was beginning to believe she had indeed misjudged him, that there was far more to Griffin Carter than a collar and a cleft chin.
“That miracle you need,” he said, interrupting her thoughts. “Want to tell me about it?”
She hesitated but found that she did. In a long string of words the truth tumbled out—about Marco’s death and the enormous debt, about Jane Bigelow and the wills naming her guardian, about giving up the Regent Fellowship and the very real threat of losing the yellow house. She described her feeling of helplessness to do anything for Lena, who was still unresponsive, lying as pale and inert as a warm marble statue day after day. She spoke so fast the sentences were tripping over each other. It was a relief to speak them out, as though her tongue were a release valve on a pressure cooker. Once more Griffin said nothing, just listened to her. She talked and talked, the words finally slowing to a trickle and then stopping completely. She felt emptied out but strangely relieved. No wonder people go to confession, she thought.
Griffin studied her carefully. “I think you may need more than one miracle,” he said finally.
She laughed, a bleak sound. “You got that right. Got any bright ideas?”
He was silent for a long moment. Before them the surf washed over the rocky shore, the rhythm almost hypnotizing in its calm monotony. Everything felt peaceful here, unhurried and in its proper place. Gazing out at the water, Maggie could almost believe that everything would be okay. Almost, but not quite.
“I don’t know how to fix things,” Griffin said finally, “but I know no sacrifice goes unrewarded. Keep doing the right thing even though it isn’t easy.”
“Still think everything’s going to turn out all right in the end?” Maggie asked, an edge to her voice. She was thinking of the conversation they’d had in Lena’s hospital room. Of the beatific Julian of Norwich and her assurance that in the end all would be well. She still couldn’t bring herself to believe it.
Griffin turned to her and nodded. “I do, yes,” he said mildly. “I don’t know how, but I think it will be okay in the end.”
Maggie shook her head, thinking of Ellen waiting at home with the children, of Lena lying still in the hospital bed, of the mysterious, guilt-ridden Daniel Wolfe, of Marco. The sensation of calm evaporated in an instant.
“Well, at least that makes one of us.” She got to her feet, brushing sand from her jeans. “I think I’d better get back.”
Griffin stood, empty carton in hand. Together they wound their way up the path from the beach to the parking lot.
Griffin handed her the helmet. “One more thing,” he said, as though it were an afterthought. “What the priests said about your name, they were wrong. Mary Magdalene was one of the greatest women in history. She’s been branded in history as a harlot, but there’s not a shred of evidence for that. Mary Magdalene’s legacy is one of sacrifice and devotion toward those she loved. You should be proud to share her name.” He straddled the motorcycle and gave her a lopsided smile. “Ready?”
On the ride back Maggie gripped Griffin tightly around the middle. They wound through the island, down long, looping curves of road that cut through yellow prairie lands and thick stands of fir, hemlock, and cedar pressing tall and close to the berm, the ground beneath them thickly furred with salal and sword ferns. Ahead of them a small black-tailed deer peered from the forest and froze, nose twitching as they roared past.
Over and over Griffin’s explanation of her name ran through her head. Mary Magdalene, a woman known not for her scandalous past as the priests had always said, but for her devotion and sacrifice. For those she loved, Griffin had told her. For the first time Maggie felt an affinity for the woman whose name she bore. Perhaps they shared more than a name. Perhaps that was not such a bad thing after all.
Chapter Twenty
WHEN MAGGIE GOT BACK FROM HER RIDE WITH Griffin, she found two packages waiting for her. Daniel’s volumes of poetry. She made herself wait until the children were in bed, then hastily put on her pajamas and crawled under the covers, tearing the shipping envelope off the first one. It had a picture of a salmon on the front, struggling up a rocky outcropping against a strong freshwater current. She hesitated, wondering if she should even read these books. Her conversation with Daniel in his cabin had been deeply unsettling. But a powerful curiosity overcame her qualms. She clicked on the bedside lamp, opened Salmon Song to the first page, and began to read.
She had planned to approach his poems clinically, as pieces of research to help her better understand the tragedy of Marco’s death. She hoped Daniel’s writing would give her a glimpse into the inner workings of his troubled mind, bring some meaning to his attempted self-destruction. But his words did something else entirely.
His poems were a love song to his fractured family and his childhood, at times heartbreaking in the vivid, frank way they portrayed his years growing up on the reservation with an alcoholic father and a grandmother who held the family together by stubborn force of will. He described the brokenness and poverty of his upbringing, the shame that encompassed even the simple act of buying a loaf of bread. One poem in particular caught her attention. It was an elegy for himself, the little boy lost to the man he had become with his tuxedo and, as he put it,
a glass case of wine
stored
at precisely 54
degrees,
a bottle
would have paid
the rent,
meant
the roof was safe
over
our heads.
Maggie ran her fingers over the lines, caught by an unexpected emotional response. His words resonated with her. She understood his conflict, coming from a life of deprivation to one of almost extravagant refinement. She’d felt the same way more than once, holding a glass of Dom Perignon at an awards dinner, thinking briefly that the bottle cost more than her mothe
r’s entire monthly food budget. It was a contradiction she carried within herself, sometimes less easily than others. Daniel’s style was spare but not simple, with an undercurrent of sorrow, the tone quietly heartbreaking even if the words were not. He was very, very good.
Reading the poems, she’d begun to draw a sketch in her mind—not of Daniel’s face, the dark swoop of hair across his brow, those deep, sorrowful eyes, but of his spirit, an artist’s sharp eye for the raw moments of beauty and pain. His was a soul that saw the world as broken, and both loved it and longed for it to be transformed.
Finishing the first volume, Maggie pulled the covers tighter and opened the second one. It was past one in the morning but she couldn’t stop. In the cabin Daniel had been a stranger, a quiet man turtled inside a shell of silence and guilt. But here, on these pages, he was not hidden, he was not unknown. Reading the lines he’d written, she felt as though he was laying himself open to her, showing her the inner workings of his soul. And to her surprise, she found she understood him very well.
It was not a simple realization. She was conflicted, both intrigued and repelled. He was to blame for Marco’s death, and for that she should hate him, pure and simple. His careless action had taken the life of the only man she’d ever loved. But something about Daniel drew her despite the role he had played in Marco’s death. She didn’t want to like him, did not want to identify with him through his poems on those pages. But she did.
When she finished the second volume of poetry, Maggie set it down, clicking off the light, trying to sleep. It was no use. She lay awake for more than an hour, feeling torn and disconcerted. Finally giving up on sleep, she put Daniel’s books in the nightstand drawer and pulled on her running clothes. She tiptoed down the stairs and through the darkened house. The clock on the stove read 4:05. Sammy heard her footsteps and rose from his bed in the mudroom, tail wagging, eager to go along. She patted his head but left him inside as she let herself out, determined to run until her emotions were more under control. She opted for the road this time and used a headlamp to light her way in the dark. All was still around her as she ran. No cars passed her, no lights broke the darkness.
When she returned an hour later, she was winded but clearer-headed and calm. She rounded the house and circled the back lawn a few times to catch her breath and cool down. She was sweating, even in the chilly gray of the morning. It was getting light, almost sunrise, although she guessed it was only a little past five. Sunrise came early here during the summer, the days stretching long this far north of the equator. It looked as though it might rain, with clouds mounding on the horizon, the rising sun showing as only a faint pink tinge around their edges. She knew she would regret her sleepless night later, but at the moment she felt refreshed and calm, enjoying the silence as night gave way to day.
Maggie paused at the fence overlooking the Firellis’ private half-circle beach, letting the cool salt breeze fan her flushed face. In the growing light she noticed a figure sitting on a driftwood log on the beach below, motionless and staring out to sea. Her heart lurched as she took in the camo pants and black hair pulled back in a ponytail, the broad shoulders clad in an old blue fleece. Daniel. His head was bowed, and he was hunched in upon himself. He looked desolate, sitting there alone.
She took a step back, not wanting to be seen. Her heart was pounding. She thought of the two books in the nightstand upstairs, feeling guilty somehow, as though she had been caught spying on him. She turned to go inside but hesitated. Something drew her, an impulse she couldn’t pinpoint. She wanted to see him again. Maggie wavered for a long moment, caught in indecision. Then without giving herself time to think, she clambered down the steps to the rocky beach.
He glanced up when he heard the crunch of her footsteps on the pebbles. He didn’t say anything, but she saw a flicker of surprise cross his face as she approached. Perhaps he had thought she wouldn’t want to see him again. She sat down without invitation at the other end of the log, facing the water, not looking at him. He didn’t say anything and neither did she. Together they stared out at the tide, the only sound the steady wash of the water over the stones, a lulling, lonely cadence.
After a long silence Maggie spoke. “I’ve been thinking,” she said slowly. “About Marco.” Her voice caught a little, and she swallowed before continuing. “He chose to save your life.” She stopped, suddenly unsure of how to go on. “I know you feel responsible for his death, but it was an accident that he drowned.” She bit her lip, weighing her words. “If he hadn’t gone into the water to help you, he’d still be here and you . . . you’d be drifting five hundred feet down there in the kelp right now. And that might be what you wanted, but it isn’t what happened.”
Daniel was watching her intently with those dark, sad eyes. He said nothing. She drew a deep breath, steeling herself, and then continued. “Marco’s dead. Nothing can change that now, but he gave his life to save yours. That’s the biggest gift anyone can give another person. So don’t treat it lightly, don’t throw it away. If you do, you’ll waste the life he gave for you.”
The words spilled out of her, both a challenge and an absolution. She was surprised to find she meant them. She didn’t look at him as she said them, but she could feel his eyes on her, assessing.
“You loved him,” he said. It was not a question.
“More than I should have,” she answered honestly, voicing a truth she had never spoken to anyone before. She stared straight ahead, surprised by her own admission. It began to drizzle lightly, tiny pinpricks of water dotting her face and hands. She folded her hands between her thighs, letting the rain bead on her hair, her forehead and cheekbones. It felt cold and lonely out here, a little wild with a distant storm blowing in over the sea. The clouds had turned from pearly pink to a somber steel gray.
“At some point we all love someone like that,” he said gently.
She turned and looked at him then, the sharp planes of his face, the understanding in his eyes. For a moment she saw him as he’d been in New York—smiling, so debonair and handsome, on top of the world.
“I know who you are,” she said suddenly. “I saw the pictures, the awards, you with Rudy Giuliani. Why are you here?”
He flinched as though her words were a lash. He didn’t answer for several long minutes, so long she thought he would not reply at all. It began to rain a little harder, still just a heavy, spitting mist. Neither of them moved.
“I loved someone,” he said finally. “Same as you. Too much and not enough.” He gazed out at the water. “And when I lost her, I lost everything.”
Maggie bit her lip, fighting back a sudden rush of grief. They sat together, not speaking, as the rain sifted gently down on them, their silence grown suddenly easier with a shared sorrow, letting grief and memory ebb and flow with the steady wash of the sea.
“This can’t be happening,” Maggie murmured in stunned disbelief. “Not now.” Still holding the phone to her ear although the call had already been disconnected, she wandered into the kitchen. Her head was pounding and she felt fuzzy, no doubt a product of her sleepless night.
Ellen glanced up, her fingers poised over the piecrust she was crimping. “Bad news?” She gave Maggie a worried frown. “Is it the hospital?”
“No.” Maggie shook her head, setting the phone down on the counter gently, as though it might explode in her hand. “No, it isn’t anything about Lena. That was George.” She stared at the phone, still shocked by what the accountant had told her. “One of the banks called the loan.”
Ellen brushed a strand of silver-blonde hair away from her cheek, leaving a streak of flour. “What do you mean, ‘called the loan’?”
Maggie glanced out toward the deck, checking to make sure the children couldn’t hear. They were sitting at the picnic table with sheets of construction paper, gluing on objects they’d found on their nature hunt that morning. Jonah was affixing the bones of some small mammal to his. Gabby had a fistful of leaves and was trying to glue them on all at once,
but the breeze kept catching them and one by one they were fluttering away. She lowered her voice anyway.
“George said with the kind of loan Marco took out the bank can demand payment at any time. Usually they don’t. You just repay monthly with interest, but one of them must have gotten worried that Lena was going to declare bankruptcy after Marco’s death. They called the loan. We have thirty days to pay it in full.”
Ellen wiped her hands on her apron, nodding slowly, taking stock of the situation. “How much is it?”
“Ninety thousand dollars,” Maggie said bluntly, too shaken by the bad news to cushion the blow.
“Oh good heavens.” Ellen looked shocked. “That much?”
Maggie winced and nodded. “And that isn’t the worst part.” She braced herself to deliver the next spate of ill fortune. It seemed impossible that there could be more. There had been so much already.
“What’s the worst part?” Ellen asked. She braced herself against the counter and waited for the blow.
“Marco put this house up as collateral. So if we don’t pay the loan in full, the bank takes the property.”
As she spoke the words, Maggie felt their full impact for the first time. Ninety thousand dollars. It was an impossible amount to scrape together in thirty days. They were going to lose the house. The inevitable truth dropped like a lead weight in her stomach. We can’t lose this place, Maggie argued with herself. We need it too much. The children needed the stability of a familiar space, and Lena would need a home to come back to if and when she woke up.
And Maggie—it was the only home she had left. She couldn’t lose it. She swallowed hard, trying to force down the panic she could feel ballooning in her throat. She forced herself to breathe in and out through her nose, trying to be calm and strong, trying to think. She could not afford to crumble. There was no one to pick up the pieces.
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