She smiles her sad, private smile and goes off into the night, leaving Fiona to think on what she’s just heard and wish she had not so many doubts about the word if.
Megan shifted in the lawn chair, unable to get comfortable. She’d made the coffee too strong this morning, still trying to get the proportion right, and it was burning a hole in her stomach, making her jittery and headachy. Or maybe it wasn’t the coffee.
Last night she’d dreamed of Shetland, of the wide, moody ocean and walks along the cliffs. Of knitting lace next to the fire with her extended female family, of riding Shetland ponies over the heather, of fog and storms and moon paths on the water.
She’d woken this morning, body next to Stanley, mind still in the dream, except the dream seemed more like a memory, of her rising early to see her father off in his boat, helping prepare his breakfast and packing his lunch. While she listened, her dream dad had talked winds and tides, fogs and seagulls, how fishing wasn’t what it used to be, how other fisherman were doing—well, poorly, retired, injured, ill. A hard life. A frowning, tight, cold life.
Around her now, North Carolina smiled warmly, drowsy with laziness and conceit. Homesickness pierced her for a place she’d never been. The freedom of the sea. The battle to survive, keeping one close to the edge, open and alive. Was the dream about Shetland? Or a mishmash of memories and remembered stories of her seaside birthplace, Newfoundland, where Fiona’s daughter, Bridget, emigrated to from Scotland?
The window of the garage apartment went up with its distinctive grating rattle. The screen raised next, got stuck halfway, lowered. Elizabeth would try again, then her blond head would poke out to greet the morning and her landlord.
Megan grabbed her coffee, jumped up and rushed into the house. The second she crossed the threshold, she started laughing. What was she running from? Crazy woman.
From Vera’s room, the sound of scuffing slippers. Another morning. Another breakfast to get. Another day to spend with her children and half-husband, getting meals, organizing, listening, refereeing, offering support and validation. The life she’d embraced for so many years threatened to overwhelm her with its insignificance.
She stepped into the kitchen, grabbed the sunflower-strewn notepad and wrote briskly, “Gone for a walk,” left the note on her chair pulled into the middle of the room and let herself out the front door, giggling again, this time from nerves.
A grown woman running away from responsibility like an adolescent playing hooky from school. At the bottom of the porch steps, she stopped. This was silly. She was perfectly up to the task of having coffee with Elizabeth and Vera again this morning.
She just didn’t want to.
Her dream of Shetland had changed right before she woke up. The low rocky coast had raised itself into high black cliffs teeming with birds, nesting and wheeling in the salty air. Stanley had been there next to Megan, his plain-as-toast wife, but with eyes only for the dark beauty who dominated the other half of his life.
Her giggles faded. She’d found the picture in Stanley’s wallet years ago when she’d been short of cash for groceries and hadn’t wanted to waken him after a late night. She’d known immediately it was Genevieve. That beautiful face staring at her, dark exotic eyes, wavy thick dark hair, full lips, high cheekbones…The physical manifestation of what had hurt plenty as a concept nearly knocked the wind out of her. Megan had put the picture back in his wallet and had taken more cash than she needed, a petty gesture she still didn’t regret.
She headed past David’s quiet house, where he’d be asleep or nursing yet another hangover. The dream was a dream, brought on by her return to lace knitting, by her daydreaming ideas for Sally’s dress. The Shetland story of Gillian was a fabrication of her mother’s and had nothing to do with her adult life.
“Hey.”
Megan turned. David, stepping out on his porch in jogging shorts and a T-shirt, holding a mug of coffee.
“Hello.” She crossed her arms over her chest.
“Where are you headed this fine morning?”
Megan retraced a few steps. His color was good, eyes clear. He didn’t look hungover, just morning-rumpled. “I’m taking a walk.”
“At this hour?”
“Obviously.”
“Hmm.” He peered up at the sky. “Any pigs flying today? Usually you’re out in the garden by yourself.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’m up early too, Megan.”
“Oh.” She hovered, embarrassed and pleased to think of him watching her, wanting to keep moving, wanting to stay. “I didn’t know that.”
“Why would you?”
She felt herself blushing. “Did you drink bourbon by yourself last night after Ella ditched you?”
“Nope.” He took the last gulp of coffee. “Did my brain cells a favor and skipped it.”
“Good idea.”
“I have them occasionally.”
She took another step toward him, then right up to his porch. He wasn’t scowling, his tone was light. A little more like the old David, which gave her courage. “I’m reading Hemingway. A Farewell to Arms. I thought maybe we could talk about it sometime…If you wanted to.”
His eyebrow lifted; lips curled; Mr. Sardonic was back. “Are you asking me for a date, Mrs. Morgan?”
She clenched her fists, face burning. “Stop it. What’s the matter with you? We used to be able to talk like normal people. Now you act as if it’s my fault Victoria left you.”
David looked startled. “I wasn’t trying to make you feel that way.”
“Well you have.”
He laughed humorlessly, rubbing the back of his neck. “So you want to dissect Hemingway?”
She lifted her hands, let them fall. “I miss talking to you, is all.”
“I miss you, too, Megan.” His eyes were calm and direct, staring down at her from his porch. Not a trace of sarcasm.
She felt a burst of familiar adrenaline. “Then why do you keep pushing me away?”
“Because I’m single now. You’re not.”
“What difference does that make?” She asked before she thought, then couldn’t look up at him anymore. “It shouldn’t make any difference.”
“But it does.”
“You’re afraid people will talk?”
“Ha! After what’s been published about my wife, my marriage and me, I no longer give a crap what other people think.”
“Then what? The truth, David. No more cute lines.”
“Okay.” He put his cup down on the porch railing and braced his hands on it. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to keep quiet anymore about what Stanley is doing to you. I’m afraid I’ll spend every minute of my time with you showing how little he deserves you, trying to get you to stand up for yourself and tell him where to go. And I’m afraid in the midst of this noble attempt at helping you, I will find I have selfish motives for trying to get you to leave him because of what we were to each other a million years ago and probably still could be if we got the chance.”
His words rose up and came at her like a too-big ocean wave. She spun around and walked away, fast at first, then broke into a jog, then a sprint, wishing Wiggins Street was a runway and she was an airbus with a flight plan to Anywhere But Here.
A few houses later she veered off the road, dropped back to a walk on a familiar path through the woods, climbed up Gambler’s Hill to her favorite spot, a stream which had found an assortment of flat, tilted rocks and fashioned itself a gently cascading waterfall. She used to come here often after she first found out about Stanley’s other family. It was a place to escape to while the kids were in school, when the four walls of her life had been too oppressive. And she’d had some idea that if she left all her tears here there wouldn’t be so many to poison the atmosphere in the house.
Under and around a tree branch, she found her favorite rock, perched on it, breathing too hard and not just because she was out of shape. She didn’t want to hear or understand or think about wha
t David had just said. Forget talking to him about Hemingway. She’d Google information she needed to know. Someone—many someones—would have written articles on A Farewell to Arms. She didn’t need David for that.
The water slid, splashing and rushing importantly over the arrangement of mossy rocks for a short way before disappearing again underground. Morning sun caught flung drops and made them sparkle before they fell, watering ferns on the leafy forest floor or rejoining the flow. Rhododendrons grew; saplings in the shade of their older siblings tried their best to become trees as well. Why had she stayed away from this place for so long?
“Megan.”
She jumped, not having heard his footsteps. David found a rock close to hers and sat, gazing around him.
“You followed me here?”
“Sure, why not? I love this place.”
She stared at him as evenly as she could with her heart refusing its regular rhythm. “I come here when I want to be alone.”
“I know.”
“Then why would you—”
“I want to talk to you.” He turned his lazy grin on her, but his hands stretched taut and clawlike on the rock behind him.
“And as usual, you run away from anything that doesn’t feel good.”
“Unlike you coming back to Comfort.”
“Touché.” He leaned down, dipped his hand in the water, let drops drip off the ends of his fingers.
“What did you want to talk about?”
He glanced at her. “Not going to make this easy, are you?”
“About as easy as you’ve made it for me the last three months.”
“Fair enough.” He shook his hand dry, leaned back again.
“I bought a recording recently. Gundula Janowitz, singing Strauss’s Four Last Songs, do you know it?”
“The piece or the recording?” She stopped him from answering. “Never mind. No to either.”
“The songs are Strauss’s last, written when he was eighty-four to poetry about facing death. Beautiful poems, not railing against the dying of the light, but accepting it. Now that day wearies me, my ardent desires will receive more kindly, like a tired child, the starry night. There’s a moment in the third song when the soprano comes in after a violin solo that made me think of you.”
“Why?” She was afraid of his answer, afraid to discover she hadn’t shoved her feelings for him as neatly away as she thought.
“Because when you’re listening, the rest of the world stops, and the physical response to that aural beauty is so intense you can literally feel something lifting you up.” He stared into the woods, face in perfect profile, body still. “You want the sensation to go on and on, but you can’t capture it; you have to accept that it’s going to slip out of your grasp every time. Even knowing that, you keep wanting it back, keep trying to make the impossible happen.”
Megan’s heart swelled and opened, a peculiar breathless sensation. She stood, every muscle wanting to run away again. “What am I supposed to say to that?”
“Whatever comes into your head.”
“Okay. Those were beautiful words. But you’re also flirting with Elizabeth and probably sleeping with Ella.”
He burst out laughing, making her want to sock him, the way she once socked a female tormentor at another new school, pow, in the solar plexus. “You jealous?”
She was. “Get over yourself, David.”
“Believe it or not, I’m trying to get over myself.”
“With alcohol and anger? By sleeping with someone who—”
“I’m not sleeping with Ella. I’m flirting with Elizabeth, but we both know it’s harmless. Alcohol and anger…at least they’re real.”
“Not real. They’re escapes. Easier.”
“Than telling yourself nothing’s wrong?”
“Than doing the hard work of confronting what’s hurting you and keeping on in spite of it.”
“And you’re doing the hard work of confronting Stanley how?”
She sucked in a breath, suddenly annoyed by having to talk over the constant chattering of water. “That’s not what I meant. I’m still living. I’m not trying to destroy myself.”
“Not trying, maybe, but you are. Shut into the house, serving children and your mother-in-law and your part-time husband. That’s your chosen life?”
“And you’re not shutting yourself away?”
“I am shutting myself away. So is Ella. We’re deep in anger and depression, playing them both to the hilt. She’s good company when I need to dive into the bitterness, and vice versa for her. Because there’s no avoiding the pain, just postponing it. Grief will have its day one way or other.” He picked up a rock, flung it toward the water; it hit a stone with a sharp crack.
“Both of us are still counting the pain in months. How long have you known about Stanley, fifteen years?”
“What do you want from me, David?”
“I thought I told you.”
“You want me to leave Stanley.”
“Yes.”
“So you can have me.”
“Not for that reason.” He looked away to pick up another rock. “But that summer we were together…it ended because of circumstances, not emotion.”
She fisted her hands, ready to tackle him to the ground. “You never told me that. Just that it was over.”
“I thought I was doing you a favor.”
“Some favor, breaking my heart for no reason.”
He threw the second stone into the woods, probably wishing he could have aimed it at her, got up and brushed his hands together. “You married Stanley about ten seconds later.”
She was nearly panting with rage. She wanted to find the rock he’d thrown and hurl it at his head. “I married him because my father was moving the family again. Because I was eighteen and finally old enough to fight being dragged all over the country in a futile search for enough success to satisfy my father’s black-hole ego. Do you think if I’d known how you felt I would have made the same—”
“Megan?”
Stanley. Tramping through the woods on his big feet, lips smiling under his sienna mustache, gold eyes taking in the situation, judging, no verdict yet.
“Hi.” She took a guilty step toward him, trying to control her shaking. “We were—”
“Hi, David. The kids wanted their breakfasts, Megan. I gave them cereal, wasn’t sure if there was anything else.”
“Cereal is fine.” She wondered if he could see her tears, knew it would give her away to wipe them now.
“Everything okay here?”
“Yes. Fine.” She walked to him, zombie on the outside, cement mixer on the inside. “I’m coming home.”
He put his arm around her when she stood next to him. “Hey, you have designs on my wife, David?”
David didn’t respond to his laughter, stood quietly watching Megan. “Why shouldn’t she have as good a deal as you do?”
Beside her, Stanley’s body went still. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”
“Fair enough. For what it’s worth, her virtue is intact. But I probably didn’t need to say that either.”
“No, I trust her completely.” He hugged Megan to him. “Oh, meant to ask the other night, David, how’s your book coming? Think it’ll outsell your wife’s?”
David smiled grimly, a boy lost in the woods next to Stanley’s huge and commanding presence. “Undoubtedly not.”
“Stanley.” She tugged him toward the path. “Let’s go.”
“I’m ready.” He swung around, keeping her next to him, though there was scarcely room on the path for two. “See ya, David.”
Megan’s tears rose again; she stumbled on a root. Stanley’s powerful arm tightened to keep her from falling. On the road she pulled out of his embrace, squeezing him first so he wouldn’t take offense.
“What was all that about, Megan? He giving you trouble?”
“Not really. He makes me tired is all.”
“He’s so miserable, he wants everyo
ne around him to suffer too.” Stanley made a sound of disgust. “First rule of sales, never surround yourself with negative people. They suck the positive energy out of you.”
“So you’ve said.” Over and over.
She made herself breathe normally. Stanley didn’t deserve her delayed rebellion. If she were going to take a stand, fifteen years ago was the time. Not now, when he had every reason to believe they were settled, and so had she.
“He’s always had an attitude, like he’s better than everyone around here. His dad was nowhere, his mom was a drunk, but you’d think he was Prince of England the way he acted. Well, what goes around comes around.” He stopped outside their house. “People get what they deserve.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to say, I don’t deserve what you did to me. But maybe she did. She’d gotten herself engaged after an absurdly short time, and then put blinders on and let life happen. Even the day she found among their papers the misplaced mortgage statement for his other house. Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Morgan, 110 Allgood Street, Roxboro, North Carolina. Everything changed, except…David was right. Nothing really had. She’d just put on bigger blinders.
“So I must deserve you, my beautiful one.” Stanley glanced down the street, then smiled lovingly into her eyes and bent down, insisted on a longer kiss when she tried to pull back. She complied, responding with obedience, then enjoyment, then passion, the familiar touch of his lips safe and reassuring after her emotional bruising in the woods.
A noise behind her, footsteps climbing to the porch next door, and she realized, sickeningly, why Stanley had kissed her out in the street like this, with so much love and so much possession.
Her brilliant salesman husband had just closed another deal.
Chapter Eight
On a warm night in late June, a month after Gillian showed up in Eshaness, Fiona; her mother, Mary; Aunt Charlotte; Granny Nessa and two neighbor women, Aileen Thomson and Kenna Mouat; sit outside the Tulloch house to do their knitting. After a brief chat about the upcoming midsummer dance at the laird’s house, talk turns predictably to Calum. The women are worried. The day before, the sailboat he’s tied every day as firmly and securely as the last was found drifting, nearly out to sea. His catch has been low on recent trips and the previous week he lost a precious net overboard. The older women, Granny Nessa and Kenna Mouat, repeat legends of finmen causing mischief for the human men their women are pursuing and say Calum must take care. The next generation, Mary and Aunt Charlotte, scoff. Finmen! The old ones probably believe Gillian is a witch, too! Nessa and Kenna mutter and make signs of the cross.
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