Sweet Salt Air

by Barbara Delinsky

  He stopped an arm’s length away, staring at her with shadowed eyes. After a minute, he blew out a short breath. From the exertion of swimming? Not likely. It might have been a question: What did I expect? Or a warning: You’re pushing me. Mostly, it felt like a bald statement: We’re in trouble.

  But wasn’t that what she wanted? If there was a price to pay for this, what was one more price? And it wasn’t just her. We, his expression said. This wasn’t a one-way thing.

  His leg tangled with hers. At the same time, he tethered her by the hair and brought her to his mouth. The loss of breath then was for real. Part moon, part ocean, his kiss was like nothing she’d ever experienced. It was commanding, but not hurtful—thorough in the way she needed. By the time it was done, her arms were around his neck, her legs around his waist. The cold water should have depressed his need, but did not. The next wave brought a taunting undulation.

  Breathing hard, he propelled them toward shore. They were barely in the shallows, their legs still washed by the surf, when he set her on the sand and levered up only enough to tug at her panties. She helped, but one leg was all they managed. Holding that leg, he looked at her, giving her one last chance. Are you in or out?

  “In,” she whispered, and he was. Head back, eyes closed, he held himself there for what seemed an eternity, before looking at her again. He seemed surprised. So was she. She hadn’t been conscious of wanting him, hadn’t drooled over his body while they worked or dreamt about it afterward. The way he fit into her now, though, satisfied something deep inside.

  Wanting another kiss, she brought his face down, and the hunger was fierce on both sides. In time, she needed air, gasping at the power of what she felt. His thrusts went beyond the rhythm of the surf, creating sensations so strong that she cried out.

  He went still. “Hurt?”

  She laughed into a moan, moved her head no against the sand, and, crossing her ankles, pulled him deeper. It went on and on and on, both the lovemaking and the spasms at the end. Her body or his? She was too into it to know or care.

  When he finally slipped to the side, she lay back, breathless and limp. Eyes closed, she refused to see anything around her. He stayed close, his abdomen to her hip and one leg over hers. She didn’t fall asleep, though the sense of release was so great that she might have. She simply lay there for however long, totally drained.

  Then she felt something. It was his hand, moving over her belly in a slow, tentative way that had nothing to do with sex—and in a flash, reality returned. Sitting up fast, she turned away and hugged her knees. When she looked back, he was on an elbow, frowning.

  “You have a baby,” he said.

  She swallowed, shook her head no.

  “Those are stretch marks,” he stated.

  She had always been careful to hide them. One-piece bathing suits were good for that. Same with silk camis. But she had never been so taken with sex as she’d been with Leo, and it was night. The dark should have kept her secrets.

  Not that she had thought any of this out ahead of time. She had come to Leo’s to be punished. But sex? Punished? He hadn’t been a brute of a lover at all. Powerful, yes. But far from cruel, and that was as upsetting as the other. Sex with Leo had been … amazing. It wasn’t supposed to be like that.

  Frightened, she looked around for her clothes and quickly pulled them on. Leo was sitting up now, watching her, but he didn’t speak, and as soon as she pushed her wet feet into her sneakers, she made for the path. She didn’t pass the dog, barely heard the crunch of the forest floor or felt the sand matting her wet hair. When she came out into the garden, she hurried through the rows, down the drive, and onto the road. She didn’t look back, couldn’t look back. And when she reached Nicole’s house, she closed the door and sank to the ground.

  She had run to Leo’s to escape a mess. Now she had created another.

  * * *

  There was only one thing to do. After showering away all signs of the night, she wrapped herself in a fleece blanket on the sofa downstairs and, picking up Salt, escaped into a world where love beat the odds.

  At least, she thought it did. An hour later, though, she was worried. The lovers were perfect for each other, but they were rooted in such different worlds that only a sea change in one would keep them together. She didn’t see it happening. The author had painted both in fine detail; she knew them well. They had overcome silence and secrets, and had changed in the deepest possible ways—but their differences remained huge. They simply couldn’t change more and stay in character.

  Unable to bear the suspense, she flipped through to the last pages, the ones Nicole had sobbed about. Minutes later, she slammed the book shut, buried it under a pillow in the corner of the sofa, and, heartsick, went to bed.

  Chapter Ten

  TUESDAY’S MEETING IN CHICAGO WAS tough from the start. Whereas Peter Keppler had an easy way about him, Mark Hammon was an academic. A slender, bespectacled man who wasn’t prone to small talk, he studied Julian’s file at length, turning from one page to the next, frowning, going back, removing his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose, glancing at Julian, replacing the glasses, returning to the file. When he finally spoke, he expressed serious reservations about Julian being a candidate for a stem cell transplant.

  What little relief Nicole felt was offset by Julian’s frustration. His face was tight with it.

  “You’re thinking that I’ve only been at this for four years,” he argued, “but my reading says that stem cell treatment is the most promising when it’s done in the early stage of a disease. I’m the perfect candidate.”

  Hammon didn’t look convinced, though he considered it a while before saying, “You tend to have serious side effects. There are less risky things to try first.”

  “What we’ve tried hasn’t worked.” When Hammon named two drugs that Julian hadn’t tried, he only waved a dismissive hand. “The side effects of either one can be worse than the disease, and the promise of payoff isn’t as good as with stem cells.”

  “Given your physiology and your history of reaction, an autologous transplant would be better.”

  “Using my own cells? With another patient, I might agree. But I’ve been on so many drugs that I doubt my own cells would be any good, and testing for that would only waste time. Time is the issue, Mark. If there’s any chance of salvaging my career, I need to act now. I want to take a step that holds real promise. I know the risks.”

  Frowning, Hammon pushed at his glasses. “You know them? I’ve seen them. In some cases after we introduce cells, we can’t control their growth, so tumors result. In other cases, the drugs we use to depress the immune system and avoid the rejection of transplanted cells turn out to be toxic. One of my early patients died from the chemo itself.”

  “What if we found a good match with donor cells?”

  “Even then.” But he stared at the file. “No mention here of tissue matches with family members.”

  Julian was silent.

  “Parents? Children?” He asked, including Nicole in the discussion.

  “They haven’t been tested,” she said, darting a nervous look at Julian, whose eyes warned her against saying more.

  Hammon tipped his head; testing relatives would be a logical first step.

  “What about umbilical cord stem cells?” Julian asked. “My kids were born before freezing cord blood was an option, but even if they were tested now, umbilical cord cells are the ones that hold the most hope. They don’t require an exact match, and they carry regulatory T cells that can repair the damage and possibly even reverse the disease. That’s from your own research.”

  “True. But using cord blood cells is even more experimental. In your case, there’s still an excessive risk of rejection. Infusing those cells into your body could be lethal.”

  “I could go to Mexico,” Julian dared.

  Hammon didn’t blink. “You’re too smart for that.”

  “For sure,” Nicole told Julian, horrified by the thought. De
sperate for an alternative, she turned to the doctor. “What if Julian tried another standard therapy and it didn’t work? If the disease begins to progress beyond what it is, would you consider donor stem cells?” She didn’t want anything experimental, period, but if Julian was determined, later was better than now.

  “I might, but the risk would remain.” He was looking at Julian. “Stroke, pervasive infection, paralysis—any one of those could leave you worse off than you are. Your mind is good. You have years of productivity ahead, whether you’re in the OR or not. Besides, I’m not the only one doing research. This is an emerging field. In six months or a year, we’ll know more.”

  “He’s right, Jules,” Nicole begged. “Six months won’t hurt.”

  Julian turned on her. “Six months could be forever for me. What part of this picture don’t you see?” Dismissing her with a look, he faced Hammon again, but Nicole heard little of what they said. Nor did she speak. She had been silenced as surely as if she’d been slapped.

  They were there for another thirty minutes. She managed to shake the doctor’s hand when they left, but her stomach was in knots. Fear? Worry? There was also anger. She told herself that she had no right to feel it, that Julian was just trying to survive and she had only upset him more, but the arguments were empty. There was a whole other side to this that he didn’t see. She couldn’t seem to put that fact aside.

  He took her elbow as they entered and left the elevator, and, as soon as they reached the street, drew her out of the stream of pedestrian traffic to the privacy of a granite wall. “What was that about?” he asked in a voice that was uncharacteristically emotional. “Was it necessary to embarrass me in front of a colleague?”

  She might have pointed out that he had embarrassed her right back, if she hadn’t been reeling from it still. “All I did was to say that the doctor had a point.”

  “You sided with him. That’s not what I needed in there.”

  “You’d go to Mexico and have a procedure done in a no-name clinic? Jules, this isn’t only about you.”

  He might as well not have heard. “Hell, Nicole, don’t you get it? Experimental treatments are done at the insistence of the patient, and they can’t express doubts the way you did. I’ve been there, baby. I know how it works. A doctor believes in his technique, but until he’s done it a certain number of times, he can’t know for sure if it’ll work and, if so, on which patients. The first patients are always the ones who demand the procedure and are willing to take the risks. You sided with him. That was counterproductive.”

  “I’m frightened,” she tried, wanting to diffuse the situation, much as she had wanted to do in the doctor’s office, but it didn’t work now, either.

  “You’re frightened?” Julian countered. “What about me? This is not a walk in the park. I know the risks, but the alternative is worse. You aren’t the one who stands to lose everything!”

  Turning abruptly, he set off at a rapid pace toward the hotel. She had to trot every few steps to keep up, but he was so lost in his snit that he neither noticed the occasional waver in his gait nor seemed to know she was there.

  She was acutely aware of both, and while the first tugged at her heart, the second stoked her anger. His health wasn’t the only thing at risk. It looked like their marriage was going right down the tubes. And it wasn’t her fault. She was trying to understand what he felt, was trying to ease things for him. But she could do no right. He needed someone to blame, and she was it—like she had given him MS.

  He wanted it to go away. Damn it, so did she. But it wasn’t going to happen, and the longer he denied that, the more miserable he would be. Life didn’t always go as planned. There were graceful ways of dealing with bad things that happened. What he was doing was only making it worse.

  Back at the hotel, they packed and checked out, then took a cab to the airport. They didn’t speak, other than to direct the cabbie to their individual airlines, Julian for a flight to Philadelphia, Nicole to Portland. She didn’t offer to go home with him, and not simply for fear of rejection. Just then, she needed Charlotte more than Julian, therapy more than another fight.

  Her drop-off came first. When the cab stopped at the curb, Julian reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze. She tried to smile, but couldn’t. Oh yes, she feared for her marriage. But anger percolated, and, being a new emotion for her, she had little control. Scowling, she climbed out, took her bag from the cabbie, and set it on the curb. Then she ducked back in.

  “For the record,” she told Julian in a shaky voice, “you are dead wrong. I love you. You are my husband, my life. If I lose you, I do lose everything.” Not trusting that she wouldn’t burst into tears, she slammed the door, grabbed the handle of her bag, and wheeled away.

  * * *

  Charlotte felt every inch of her body that day, but she refused to think about Leo. It was easier with each passing hour and no call from Nicole. That gave her plenty to worry about. She had always been in charge of her life—as a child because her parents were emotionally absent, as an eighteen-year-old heading to college on full scholarship, as a pregnant twenty-four-year-old with a secret no one else in the whole world knew.

  Now her future seemed to weigh on forces she couldn’t control.

  So she took refuge in ones she could. She spent hours that morning on Anna McDowell Cabot’s interview, adding to what she had written the night before. After driving out to the farm to ask several follow-up questions—and still no word from Nicole—she met with Melissa Parker. Whereas Anna was in her seventies and had lived in Quinnipeague all her life, Melissa had married into it at thirty. Now forty, she was a pastry chef here. Since she had studied in New York prior to meeting her husband, she and Charlotte had an instant rapport. She worked out of her home, which boasted a spanking-new industrial kitchen. This was where they met.

  Though Quinnies under thirty would make a beeline for Melissa’s marble macadamia brownies, her specialty was an herbed brioche, a warm batch of which were on the counter when Charlotte arrived. Naturally, she didn’t refuse a taste, but she didn’t stop there. When Melissa raved about island sage, Charlotte sampled a sage croissant, then a roll laced with rosemary and basil, then a scone rich with thyme. Melissa felt that her skill had evolved since coming here, that Cecily’s herbs had enhanced her baking in ways she couldn’t begin to explain.

  “Did you ever meet her?” Charlotte asked, wondering if she’d get a different perspective from someone who wasn’t native to Quinnipeague.

  “Several times. She was sweet. Reserved.”

  “Reserved, as in secretive?”

  Melissa considered that. “More like private. I don’t think she had any friends in the conventional sense. I couldn’t grow her herbs. I tried, but they didn’t take. It’s too shady here. My soil doesn’t drain well.”

  “You must have done something to upset Cecily,” Charlotte said only half in jest. “Or Leo.” She couldn’t resist. “Do you know him?”

  “No. He’s happy staying out there at the house.”

  “That has to be isolating. He must come into town sometimes.” Those roofing materials hadn’t just risen from the sea.

  “I’m sure he buys food at the store.”

  “Doesn’t he have any friends?”

  Melissa shrugged.

  “Or travel?”

  “Travel.” She sputtered a wry laugh. “He doesn’t even go to the mainland.”

  Charlotte was startled. “Ever?” she asked, wondering what kind of man could bear the solitude. Even year-rounders, who did mix with other islanders, made regular trips to the mainland. “Does he work for people around here?”

  “He used to. I guess he still does. He’s good with his hands.”

  Charlotte wasn’t going near that one. “What does he do with Cecily’s herbs?” she asked, because his garden was a treasure trove, and he didn’t strike her as one to cook, himself.

  “That’s an interesting question,” Melissa said, seemingly puzzled. “I don’t re
ally know. Maybe he sells them, but he isn’t my source. I buy mine from Shari Bowen, whose soil does drain well and who needs the money. I think that’s what Cecily planned.”

  Sensing that she couldn’t push more on Leo without arousing suspicion, Charlotte simply nodded at the last. When it came to Cecily and the mystical, Melissa was preaching to the choir.

  * * *

  Her phone remained silent. As she left Melissa’s, she checked it, saw four bars, shook it, waited and watched. Nothing.

  Frustrated, she returned to the Wrangler. She was passing through town en route to the neck road, when she spotted a deep purple awning hanging off the porch of a small frame house. SKANE’S SKEINS, read orange script on the awning.

  Thinking that a piece of chocolate almond candy would lift her spirits, Charlotte pulled in behind several other cars. The shop was the living room of the house, refitted with floor-to-ceiling bins that contained more yarn than she would have thought a lone island would warrant. That said, the yarn was nearly as yummy as Charlotte knew the candy to be.

  Discipling herself on the latter, she browsed while other customers were helped, then introduced herself to the owner. A pear-shaped woman with bright red cheeks and hair, Isabel Skane had a pleasantly calm voice. Calm actually described the shop. Rainbow colors, softness, texture, low spa music—it was soothing. Charlotte browsed through the yarn, browsed through notebooks of patterns, put her favorites on a Wish List, and said she’d be back. Then, after helping herself to one candy from a bowl by the register, she popped it in her mouth, took a second to go, and returned to the Wrangler.

  * * *

  She was back at the house, typing up a rough outline of the material, when Nicole finally called.

  Her voice was small. “Omigod.”

  Charlotte’s pulse began to race. “What happened?”

  “Oh, Charlotte.” Defeat.