True Blue (Hubbard's Point)

by Luanne Rice

  At that, Michael lurched forward, but both Rumer and Zeb grabbed his arms.

  “Are you her parents?” the man demanded.

  “Why don't you get out of here?” Zeb suggested— not with rancor, but for the man's own good. His face was scarlet; he was apoplectic.

  “I want her name, I want her address, so I know where to send the cops. Are you her fucking parents? Jesus, she's a nutcase. She oughta be locked up. I'll see to it that she is—I'll testify! Who's responsible for her anyway? You? You her parents, or what?”

  “I'm responsible for her,” Michael said.

  “Michael—” his father began.

  “I'm responsible for her,” Michael repeated, shaking himself free of his father and aunt, standing tall before Quinn's accuser. “She's my friend. Anything you have to say to her, you can say to me.”

  “Fuck you,” the man said, laughing. He shook his head and climbed into his truck and drove away.

  When the coast was clear, Quinn ran up the steps from the boat basin. She was holding the exterminator's silver can, and she put it down to run into Michael's arms. “I heard you defending me,” she said, holding him tight. “Thank you, thank you.”

  “We need to talk,” Zeb said sternly.

  “First,” Quinn said. “We have to get rid of that.” She pointed at the can. “I thought about taking it out to sea and dumping it—there's that hazardous waste dump marked on all the charts of Long Island Sound, just south-southeast of the Hunting Ground. What's a little more poison? But that's what they would do. I'm not going to kill one more fish in the sea.”

  “We could call poison control,” Rumer said. “That's probably the best thing. Or the police—head this guy off at the pass and let them deal with it.”

  “We could explain the whole thing,” Mathilda said.

  “What would we explain?” Zeb asked.

  “What I did,” Quinn said. “And why. The important things in life. Where we are. Who we're with. Hubbard's Point, each other… those are the important things of life. In Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, people are always dying for what they love and believe in: Right, Michael?”

  “Right,” Michael said.

  “Well, those are the things I love and believe in. The things I'd die for. We could explain that we love this place…”

  Zeb nodded.

  “Enough to die for,” Quinn reminded him.

  “You're some girl,” Zeb said.

  Rumer was silent. Growing up at the Point meant everything. It gave kids—and grown-ups—a sense of belonging, lifelong friends, and a place to come home to. It had brought her and Zeb together once, and it had brought them together again.

  “Thanks,” Quinn said.

  “You like nature, don't you?”

  “Every bit of it.”

  “Maybe when you finish school, you could come out to California and work in my lab.”

  “Really?” she asked, and Michael stepped forward, looking interested.

  Rumer's heart fell. Zeb had always said he was going back to open the mission center. But Mattie caught her eyes, gave her a supportive, calming look.

  “Sure,” Zeb said. “You're just the kind of avid researcher we're always looking for.”

  “Wow,” Quinn said, beaming, considering the possibilities.

  Rumer stood still, taking it in. People grew up here and left: It happened all the time, every year. As unthinkable as it was now that Quinn would ever want to move away, it had been just that hard to imagine Zeb at her age leaving. Rumer was the aberration—the person who stayed her whole life. Just then a town police car drove up. Two officers got out, looking stern. Behind them, the pest control truck came to a screeching stop.

  “That's her,” the man sputtered, pointing. “She assaulted me and stole my can! Ran away, down the hill, probably threw it in the water or something. Little freaking vandal! Ask her where she put it! Go ahead— ask her!”

  “Officer, the can of poison is right there,” Rumer said, stepping forward.

  “You're Dr. Larkin, right?” one cop asked. “The vet?”

  “Yes, she is,” Mathilda said.

  “We're all upset,” Zeb said. “If anything, Quinn picked up on my anger. It's been rather volatile here, considering—”

  “I appreciate what you're saying,” one cop said calmly, “but we do have to question the young lady.”

  “No,” Michael said, stepping in front of her.

  “It's okay,” Quinn whispered tenderly.

  Rumer took in Michael's furrowed brow, Quinn's loving gaze. She and Zeb were standing close together—they were all united. Closing her eyes to preserve the moment, Rumer wondered, like a child, why such closeness couldn't last forever.

  “I'll be fine,” Quinn said.

  Michael nodded.

  “Young lady?” the policeman asked.

  “I'm right here,” Michael said, looking into her eyes as she turned toward the two cops.

  “Arrest her!” the exterminator said viciously.

  “Be careful,” Zeb said in a low, grave voice straight to the policeman.

  “I wish Sixtus were here,” Quinn said, letting out a sob. “Everything at the Point's changing! He wouldn't let this happen. He wouldn't let someone cut down the trees and poison the rabbits…I wish he were here!”

  “So do I,” Rumer said, moving to Quinn and holding her, looking into Zeb's eyes.

  “So do we all,” Mathilda said as the policeman stepped forward. While Quinn answered his questions, Rumer and Zeb flanked her. Rumer felt Zeb's closeness and heard her own loud heartbeat. Glancing across Quinn's head, she saw Zeb's eyes glitter dangerously.

  His gaze had nothing to do with the Point, with police, with Quinn in trouble: It was all about Rumer, about wanting her, about another reason they had to wait.

  The tugboat rocked from side to side in the wash of a big fishing trawler heading out to sea. Sixtus sat in the deck chair beside Malachy, dangling his drop line over the side. Mackerel were running, and the two men were pulling them in as fast as the fish could swim by. The school looked black from the top, but canting over, they showed a flash of stripes, like shiny silver tigers swimming underwater.

  “Another one,” Sixtus said, yanking the fish aboard.

  “What's that, seven now? Almost enough for dinner.”

  “Yes? What are you going to eat?”

  “You're saying you can eat seven mackerel yourself?”

  “They're small.”

  “Still. Seven?”

  Sixtus nodded. He thought of another long stretch of sailing, of arriving in Ireland; he wondered how the cooking would be in Irish nursing homes. Although he had eaten well here in Nova Scotia—dining with Malachy, with Elizabeth, and by himself on some of Lunenburg's best fish and lobster—he was hungry for Rumer's cooking.

  Hungry for Hubbard's Point tomatoes, Silver Bay corn, Black Hall lamb, Quinn's lobsters: He was hungry for home.

  “Well, I guess we'd better keep fishing if you think seven isn't enough. Got to fatten you up for the long, lean spell ahead.” Malachy checked the bait on his hook, dropped it back over the side. “What's your departure date anyway?”

  “Tomorrow,” Sixtus said.

  “Ireland's waiting,” Malachy said. “Been there all these centuries, but don't waste another minute getting there, eh?”

  “Right,” Sixtus said. “Eighteen days across the Atlantic from here…”

  “Someone else might scarf up your bed in the rest home.”

  “Well, I probably won't check myself in just yet.”

  “No, bears some investigation, hmm?”

  “Exactly. Besides, that's not the main purpose for the trip. It's my sabbatical, you see. Mine and Clarissa's.”

  Malachy just nodded gravely, smoking his pipe.

  “Nice seeing your daughter?” Malachy asked.

  “Elizabeth? Yes, it was.”

  “She's a beautiful girl,” Malachy said. “I go to all her movies.”

 
“She'd be glad to know that.”

  “So, you toured the island together a bit? Went in search of your roots?”

  “I'm a big tree,” Sixtus said. “Got roots everywhere.”

  Malachy nodded. “Don't we all?” he asked. “A person can't get to our age without sending out a root here, a root there.”

  “Spreading ourselves thin.”

  “You think so?”

  Sixtus shrugged, watching the black and silver fish flash by the bright red hull. The Clarissa was waiting for him, just down the dock, ready to go.

  He had thought he had a greater destiny—his journey into the past, but also a way out of Rumer's hair forever. But coming here, seeing Elizabeth, had brought something back: the deep love that existed between all generations of his family. He knew he would give anything to see his mother again. And he knew he didn't want to die an ocean away from Rumer.

  Suddenly, sitting on deck with Malachy, Sixtus felt the wind go right out of his sails.

  “Aaah,” he said.

  “What's that?” Malachy asked.

  “I'm not sure,” Sixtus said. “I feel as if I might have just figured something out.”

  “At your advanced age?”

  “You mean at our age there's nothing left to learn?”

  Malachy chuckled, biting his pipe. “Jaysus! For a schoolteacher, you're a little dim if you think such a thing. Surely you know that now is when the real learning starts—we've gotten all that youthful crap out of the way.”

  “Youthful crap…” Sixtus said, turning the phrase over in his mind.

  “You know what I'm saying, man. All that ego, bravado, machismo, positioning, manipulating, maneuvering, traveling, trying to get the girl, the promotion, the research grant. Get my drift?”

  “I do,” Sixtus said. “Except you left out guilt and resentment. Getting rid of guilt and resentment.”

  “Two of the biggies—my mistake.”

  “Do you believe, Malachy,” Sixtus began, “in the sins of the fathers—and mothers?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And do you believe that children have to answer for them?”

  “Interesting question. Why—are you referring to your daughters?”

  Sixtus thought of Rumer and Elizabeth, then down a generation to Michael, then back to his own parents. His father had died in Galway, and his brave mother had moved their twin sons right here to Nova Scotia. She was buried in Fox Point, just a few miles from the Cuthbert Children's Home.

  “My daughters,” Sixtus said. “And myself.”

  “Fathers and daughters,” Malachy said. “Mothers and sons. The good Lord was working overtime when he invented those complicated relationships. Frankly, that's why I enjoy working with dolphins so much.”

  “I want to visit my mother's grave,” Sixtus said. “And then I think I'll be ready to leave.”

  “Well, I'll drive you, of course,” Malachy said. “Unless your daughter—”

  “She's busy,” Sixtus said softly.

  “Ahh. Well, whenever you're ready. After you eat your seven mackerel. Then you're off to Ireland?”

  “You know those roots we talked about before?” Sixtus asked.

  “Sure do. Nova Scotia, Galway… yours are all over.”

  “Well, every tree has a taproot,” Sixtus said. “That's the important one. The one that makes it live or die. My taproot—” He stopped, momentarily too choked up to continue.

  “Is in Connecticut,” Malachy said gently “At Hub-bard's Point, with Rumer. Of course it is. I've known that all along. Why go searching for the capillary roots when you've already located the main one? You're going home, aren't you?”

  “I am, Mai,” Sixtus said. “I am going home.”

  ON HER SECOND night in Rumer's house, the mother rabbit stopped feeding two of the babies. Rumer sat still, quietly observing: The mother continued nurturing the others, but she turned her back on the two smallest and left them abandoned in the corner of the cage.

  The sun hadn't yet come up; Rumer had been awake, on edge, wishing that Zeb would appear. The anticipation made her dizzy. He was so physically near, just down the street, and she pictured him lying in bed. She wondered whether he had slept as badly as she, whether he was feeling the connection between them—not quite brand-new but not like anything they'd ever had before—glowing like a golden thread.

  Sighing, Rumer packed up the rabbits and drove over to her veterinary office on Shore Road. Years ago, a dark brown barn had stood on this bend in the road, housing a brown and white pinto horse that Sixtus had jokingly called “Old Paint” whenever they drove by. Rumer had always loved horses, and that pinto had been one of the first.

  Rumer had bought the barn and surrounding land, but in her second year of ownership, a big storm knocked the barn down. She remembered it now, and for some reason her gaze went uneasily to the place it had occupied. Timbers of barnboard stood naked, like an abstract sculpture.

  Unlocking her office, Rumer grabbed a small bottle and some boxes of infant animal formula. On her desk was a note Mathilda had left at the end of the day yesterday: “Edward called.”

  Rumer jammed the note into her pocket. She wrapped one baby rabbit in a washcloth and fed it from the heated bottle. She fed the others, then made rounds of the patients—a post-op Border collie, two spayed cats, and a dehydrated beagle.

  She finished at seven, an hour before Mattie was scheduled to arrive. Stretching, she felt the pent-up energy of waiting for time alone with Zeb—every time it seemed about to happen, some new cataclysmic event would occur to interrupt. Felled trees, aggressive exterminator: What would be next?

  Knowing of only one thing that could relieve the tension she felt, Rumer climbed into her truck and headed north to see Blue. She would have just enough time to ride Blue and talk to Edward before returning to work.

  Reaching Peacedale Farm, she drove up the stony driveway. Edward was nowhere to be seen—he was always up at this hour—but the first-floor windows were open, the cotton curtains blowing lightly in the breeze. Petting some of the barn cats, she walked straight across the yard to the stone wall where Blue stood waiting.

  “Ready for a good ride?” she asked. “A nice early ride down by the river…”

  “Rumer?”

  At the sound of her name, she turned around. Edward stood there, hands in the pockets of his old khakis. She swallowed, remembering their last night together, the way she had behaved after seeing Zeb at Dana and Sam's wedding.

  “Hi, Edward,” she said, walking toward him. “How are you?”

  “Well, I'm fine,” he said in his slow New England twang. “And you?”

  “I'm fine too.”

  A look of worry crossed his brow, and Rumer stopped smiling. She could see that he had bad news to deliver. “What is it, Edward?”

  “Haven't seen you in quite a while.”

  “I know.”

  “Seems you've been pretty busy. Blue's been wondering…”

  “I'm never too busy for Blue,” she said. “I've been up here every day.”

  “Just at times when you know I'm not likely to be around?”

  “Oh, Edward,” she said.

  “Spending lots of time with Zeb?”

  “Not lots,” she said. “But some.”

  “That's unavoidable, I would think. Considering your history together. I've finally realized that.”

  “There's a lot to talk about,” she said.

  Rumer watched the sun break through the trees across the meadow, butterscotch light pouring across the stone walls and gray rocks. She thought of how wrong Edward was about their history, how much it had gotten in the way.

  “I've been seeing someone new,” he said. “Annie Benz.”

  “Yes, I saw her here the other day,” Rumer said. “I'm glad for you, Edward.”

  “How good of you,” he said. “To be glad for me.”

  Rumer stood still. She felt Edward's tension, waiting for her to rise to the bait of his sar
casm. She wore the old clothes she'd fed the rabbits in, and she was covered with patches of shed fur and drops of spilled formula.

  “I left you a message at the office,” he said.

  “I know—I came instead of calling back.”

  “I've been thinking…” Edward said, the pain returning to his eyes. “I must ask you to find a new home for Blue.”

  “For Blue?”

  He nodded, gray hair falling across his lined fore head. His eyes crinkled in the sun from the brightness. “I'm sorry, Rumer. But it makes Annie uncomfortable to have you here. We're very new, you know? I don't want anything to upset her. And she knows what you meant to me. How I had one day hoped things would be more serious…”

  “This is Blue's home,” Rumer said, stunned. “I just… I just never thought of him living anywhere else.”

  “I could offer to buy him from you,” Edward said. “But I know how you feel about him. You can keep him here for as long as it takes; I know you'll find someplace good to board him—Black Hall Stables maybe. Or River Farms, over in Hawthorne.”

  Rumer held herself together and nodded stiffly. “I'll find something, Edward,” she said. “As soon as I can.”

  “I'm sorry,” he said. “It's complicated. I've spent a long time waiting for things to be different between us, but since that doesn't seem to be happening, I need to get on with my life….”

  “I'm sorry it didn't happen,” Rumer said.

  “Are you really?” he asked.

  Rumer swallowed but didn't reply.

  “I didn't think so.”

  Edward sounded cool, and his eyes were grim. Regardless of how she defined their relationship—friends, almost lovers—this was a breakup, which by definition meant that it couldn't be easy. Still, Rumer felt a lightening of spirit, as if a huge weight were being lifted from her shoulders.

  “You've been wonderful to let me keep him here all these years.”

  “It meant I got to see you every day. And please feel free to ride him now, anytime, until you find a new place.”

  “Edward—I'm sorry…” So am I.