Sweet Salt Air

by Barbara Delinsky

  “Were you with him while I was gone?”

  “Back and forth.”

  “What do you see in him?”

  “There are times when I haven’t a clue. He has serious baggage.”

  “But you’re spending nights with him.”

  “I love him.”

  Nicole’s green eyes widened. “Seriously?”

  Startled by her own admission, Charlotte considered the words. Thinking them was one thing, saying them aloud another. Forcing herself to breathe, she said, “I guess so.”

  “But you’re leaving in four weeks.”

  “I know.”

  “And he won’t leave.”

  “No.”

  Shifting to the adjacent topic, Nicole asked, “How’s work going?”

  “It’s going.”

  “What’s left?”

  Charlotte reeled off the list. She tried to make light of its length, but with most entrées and their related interviews still not done, not to mention intros, connectors, and closings, there was lots to do.

  Nicole let out a frightened breath.

  “We can do it,” Charlotte assured her.

  “But I may have to leave again,” she warned. “If the doctor wants Julian in Chicago, I can’t let him go alone. Should I ask for an extension of my deadline?”

  “No.” An extension wouldn’t help Charlotte. She had to be on a plane in four weeks. “I’ll make it happen if I have to pull all-nighters the whole last week,” she promised. This wasn’t only about work ethic. It was about atonement and redemption.

  That said, three was a crowd. Tension between Julian and her could make for uncomfortable days. “I’m happy to work at Leo’s.”

  “No,” Nicole said, suddenly decisive. “Work here. Julian needs to talk with you, anyway. You’re one of the reasons he came.”

  * * *

  Julian didn’t seek her out until the next morning. Charlotte had already been into town for an interview and was at the patio table, typing it up on her laptop, when he emerged from the house. Wearing surprisingly stylish cargo shorts and a wool crewneck sweater—Nicole’s doing, she bet—he looked marginally rested.

  Deliberately, she finished typing her thought. Then she sat back in the chair and waited. He owed her something after all she’d done for him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said wisely, conscious at some level of her anger. Nicole’s doing, too?

  “Do not judge me,” she warned softly. “My sympathy for you only goes so far.”

  He glanced at the nearest lounge. “Do you mind if I sit?”

  She moved her head. Whatever.

  He stretched out, crossed his ankles, and pushed his hands into his pockets.

  And since he had opened the dialogue, Charlotte was only too happy to take part. “The last thing you should be is angry at me,” she said. “I did what I had to do. I wanted Nicole to be happy.”

  He sat, seeming deep in thought. As she watched him, she wondered for the gazillionth time how she could have ever been in his arms. She felt no physical draw at all.

  Finally, he said, “I had no idea.” About the child.

  “That was the point. I never wanted this to spoil your marriage.”

  He made a sardonic sound. “Funny how health issues can trump most else.”

  He didn’t have to elaborate. Annoyed as she was—unsympathetic as she wanted to be—Charlotte hadn’t missed the tremor in his hand when he ate or the way he favored his right leg and too casually touched the backs of chairs to steady himself when he walked past.

  “Did she look like one of us?” he asked quietly.

  Feeling a twist of the old pain, Charlotte was somber. “I don’t know. She was covered with gunk. And I was crying, so everything was blurred. They took her away right after that.”

  “Did you ever regret it?”

  “Of course I regretted it. She was my child, my baby. But keeping her would have been wrong. I thought it then, and I think it now.” She was clutching the wrought-iron arms of the chair. With a conscious effort, she relaxed her grip. “It’s done, Julian. You can hate me forever, but she has a happy life.”

  He still seemed troubled. “Did you ever think about looking for her?”

  “I’m not allowed to do that. Nor are you.” She glanced up at the pergola with its lavish canopy of small, peach-colored roses, but their fragrance failed to take her to a happier place.

  “Even just going to her school and watching her on the playground without her knowing?”

  She struggled to stay composed. “What I’m saying, Julian, is that letting them take her from my arms was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but she isn’t mine anymore. Do I wonder sometimes? I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t. But to spy on her, then walk away a second time?” She gave a slow headshake.

  “What if she comes looking for you someday?”

  “Please. I can’t go there. This isn’t about the baby. It’s about the cord blood.”

  “That’s fine for you to say,” he argued with an anger of his own. “You’ve had ten years to come to terms with it. I haven’t.”

  He stared at her. She stared back.

  “Does she know about the stem cells?” he finally asked.

  “I doubt it.”

  “If she needed them and her parents came to you, what would you do?”

  “If I had them, I’d give them. If they’ve already been used, I can’t.”

  “Is she well?”

  “I do not know. There is no contact at all. Nothing.”

  Seeming to finally get the point, he stared at the ocean again, before meeting her gaze. “How do you retrieve the cord blood?”

  This was better. This she could handle.

  Then again, perhaps what she felt was relief. Venting her anger at Julian gave a kind of closure to that night on the beach. What came next was part of moving on.

  “I call. The bank will overnight whatever you need. They froze separate one-milliliter samples for the sake of matching. They also did DNA testing when the cord blood first came in.”

  “Is that standard?”

  “I don’t know about other banks, but it is for this one. They use the results for identification purposes as much as anything, kind of like a serial number. So if you doubt she’s your child—”

  He waved off the possibility.

  Grateful for that at least, Charlotte mellowed. “You should know, Julian, that I hadn’t planned on telling Nicole any of this.”

  He swallowed. “It worked out. We’re stronger, she and I.”

  “I’m glad. She’s my best friend. I would do most anything for her sake.”

  He took a deep breath and raised his eyes to hers. “Then it’s time. I want the cord blood. Will you make the call?”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  SINGLING OUT THE SMALL RECTANGULAR tag from others on her key ring, Charlotte called the number there and gave the necessary information. After a follow-up fax to confirm her identity, the cord blood was on its way to Chicago.

  And what was there to say then?

  Julian had already been in touch with the doctor, but called back now with shipment details.

  Nicole sat beside him on the patio, looking like her heart was in her mouth as the arrangements were defined. She left him only for the minute it took to go to the garden, pick another clover, and return.

  And Charlotte? With her part done, she headed for the beach and walked until she found a sheltered rock. Nestling in, she hugged her knees and stared out. Under a steady wind, the ocean was a mass of whitecaps that hit the shore in a reverberating rush, all wet and mired with spume. But she didn’t feel the wildness inside. She wasn’t upset. Nor was she gratified, though. And she certainly wasn’t smug. Sitting alone with granite at her back, cold sand under her butt, and the wind whipping her hair over her face, then away, over and back, hiding then exposing, she wasn’t sure what she felt at all.

  “You okay?” Nicole asked, seeming surprisingly strong against the eleme
nts in her jeans, sweater, and thick-wrapped scarf.

  Charlotte felt a prick of annoyance. She had left the patio to give Nicole and Julian private time. But this was hers. “Everything good back there?” she asked in what was, in essence, a polite dismissal—as in, unless you need me, please leave.

  “I guess. Once Hammon gets the cells, he’ll start work in the lab.”

  With a brief nod, Charlotte returned to the sea, but the hint must have been too subtle, because rather than leaving, Nicole began to talk.

  “Once the cells are thawed, Hammon has to select out the regulatory T cells. They’re the ones that hold the secret to a cure, and you only find them in umbilical cord blood. Know why? A baby may not be compatible with its mother—like, different blood type or whatever. Regulatory T cells make it possible for the baby to thrive in the womb regardless of that. This is the same reason you don’t need a perfect match when you do a transplant using regulatory T cells. They’re like magic bullets. We’re just beginning to understand the kinds of illnesses they may help.”

  Holding her hair back on the side farthest from Nicole, Charlotte glanced up as a seagull flew past, but it was another subtle gesture missed.

  “He cultures the T cells and expands them,” Nicole went on. “I mean, the numbers are ridiculous. He may get a few million from the original sample and then expand them in nineteen days to, like, a thousand times that, so he’ll have enough for an adult transplant. This guy is good, Charlotte. This is all research for him, so he’ll keep track of every little detail. He’s going away in September, so he wants to do the transplant by the middle of August to make sure he’s around for two or three weeks afterward to be sure Julian’s okay.”

  She was trying to sound confident, like this was all just another medical procedure, and she wanted reassurance. But Charlotte wasn’t in the mood to coddle her. Pushing up from the rock, she said, “I think I need to walk,” and set off.

  “Want company?” Nicole called, sounding frightened.

  But Charlotte tuned that out. “No.” She didn’t understand what she was feeling, she only knew she didn’t want Nicole around.

  Walking toward the tail of the island, she crossed patches of sand, skirting boulders and low rocks. She stopped when she reached the spot where she had been with Julian. There was no pain from that memory now. Nicole knew what had happened and was benefitting from it.

  But Charlotte felt pain from something. Trying to figure it out, she stood for a time, oblivious to the punishing wind, before continuing on.

  As she neared Cole land, the route roughened. Boulders were larger at spots, spilling at length into the sea. She debated swimming around them. Hell, she was wading in and out of the shallows already, and with the gush of the incoming surf, her sneakers and lower jeans were wet. If the rest of her got wet, too? She would dry.

  That said, she wasn’t suicidal. The water was wild, the depth of the rocks unknown, and undertow a possibility. So she turned inland, climbing up over granite, plodding through heath and thick grass, then scrambling back down when sand reappeared. Two, three, four times she did this, the last being the hardest. Here was the forested patch bordering the spot where she first swam with Leo. The boulders were more jagged here, the woods dense. She stumbled over roots and tangled underbrush, and scrabbled on all fours over the trickiest rocks before reaching sea level again.

  The beach where they had made love was a puddle. Splashing through, she continued on over a floor of stones, over a last granite patch, through the overhang of trees and around the curve to the tip of the island and Leo’s house.

  The office door was open. He would be working.

  But she didn’t go in. This wasn’t about him. It was about feelings that disturbed her but that she couldn’t name, and about needing to be at the most soothing spot on Quinnipeague.

  So she walked all the way to the end of the dock and sat cross-legged with her elbows on her knees. The ocean was as wild as before, but the last outcropping of rocks over which she had climbed was a natural breakwater, calming the surf at the dock. In keeping, his boat rocked gently against its lines.

  No, this wasn’t about Leo. But she didn’t feel the full effect of the soothing until his footsteps vibrated on the dock.

  Bare feet was all she saw. He scratched the top of her head, then leaned over her. “You okay?” he asked just as Nicole had, but with an entirely different effect. Lowering her face to her knees, she began to cry.

  “Hey,” he whispered, lowering to his haunches. His hand slipped to her nape, stroking gently, but he let her cry.

  In time, she took a ragged breath and, wiping her face, raised her head. “Oh God,” she whispered, embarrassed. “Where did that come from?”

  He didn’t answer, simply sank down, folded his legs, and faced her.

  “He wants the stem cells, so I made the call,” she said, looking anywhere but at him. “I should feel pleased that I was able to help. Or relieved that it’s done.” Her eyes filled again, her voice high and broken. “So why do I feel so … nothing?”

  “Empty.”

  She pushed her fingers against her eyes. “Yes.”

  “They were yours all this time, Charlotte. Now they’re gone.”

  “But it was just blood, frozen away in some anonymous repository.”

  “It was a link.”

  “I gave her up. I’ve been just fine without her.”

  “It was a link,” he repeated quietly.

  Chin in her hands, fingers spread over her face, she admitted a soft, “Yes.” And now the link was gone. “But that isn’t why I kept them—” She caught herself. “Or maybe it was and I didn’t know it? Why else would I be upset now?”

  Unfolding his legs, he turned her and pulled her close. With her back to his front, he cinched her in with his arms, but the quiet of that only lasted until she looped her fingers around his wrists.

  “Jeez,” he breathed in horror, “what in the hell happened to your hands!”

  She straightened them, only then seeing the scrapes. Some were a superficial white, some more pink, others outright crusted with blood. “I had to hike to get here. It was either that or swim.”

  “You couldn’t drive?”

  “And spoil my dramatic departure from the house?” she asked, self-mocking. “Absolutely not.”

  “Let’s get those cleaned,” he said, but when he started to stand, she clamped her arms on his to prevent it.

  “Let’s sit here. Just a couple more minutes, okay?”

  * * *

  After a healthy disinfecting with sage soap and a cup of passionflower tea sipped for calm, Leo dropped her back at the house. Nicole was at the kitchen table with her laptop, eyes on the door in anticipation when she came through, but she didn’t speak, for which Charlotte was grateful. The cells were gone. Nothing Nicole said could bring them back.

  Determined to move on, Charlotte asked, “Are you blogging?”

  “Just finished. There was an interesting piece in today’s Wall Street Journal comparing farm-raised and wild salmon. Readers always wonder. So I talked a little about PCBs. I mean, we don’t know exactly how harmful they are, but they’re definitely there in farm-raised fish. Right now, I’m writing the introduction to the chapter on FISH.”

  Charlotte heard nervousness in the chatter. But if the talk was of fish, she could bear it.

  “No PCBs here, it’s pure sea-to-table,” Nicole went on, “but I want to change the name to SEAFOOD. A lot of people think of FISH as white fish or fish with a soft skin as opposed to SHELLFISH, like lobster and scallops. But I don’t want two separate chapters. SEAFOOD covers it all, don’t you think?”

  “Yes.”

  She frowned, thoughtful. “That’s actually a good idea for a blog—fish versus shellfish, what each includes and why. Cookbooks sometimes confuse the two, but they really are different.”

  She babbled on, definitely nervous energy, Charlotte realized. She would be second-guessing the stem cell route, w
ondering if these weeks would be the best she’d ever have with Julian again and whether he would be functional after this treatment was done.

  Had Charlotte been the frenzied type, she might have babbled, too, though not about fear for Julian’s health, and not about losing the cells. She understood herself more now, and while she hadn’t expected to feel buyer’s remorse, it was what it was. Leo had said it; those cells were a link. Gone now, she had to let go.

  Her own nervous energy was quieter, and it had less to do with UCB cells than with time. She was leaving in four weeks. The comfort Leo had given her just now was sweet, so sweet, and perfect for her. She would never find it in another man. She had been around long enough to know that. But it was the same old same old. He wouldn’t leave and she couldn’t stay. What to do?

  “Hel-lo?” Nicole called softly.

  Charlotte blinked. “Sorry. What did you say?”

  “I said we need to brainstorm. I am freaking out about what we have left to do in a very short period of time, and the only way I can see us getting through is to make lists and assign dates and put everything on a schedule. They want a completed draft by August fifteenth, but I don’t even think I’ll be here then. Can we redo the schedule to speed things up?”

  * * *

  We just spent two hours with a calendar, Charlotte e-mailed Leo later that afternoon, while she was organizing the interviews on her laptop. Made an accelerated outline for the rest of the cookbook. She printed out four copies of the schedule—one for each of us to keep in clear sight, one for the note board in the kitchen, one for her purse. Nicole likes organization.

  Too much? he wrote back.

  Maybe, but who am I to judge? I slipped through Yale on the seat of my pants, while she graduated magna from Middlebury, so clearly this works for her.

  I didn’t graduate from college. I didn’t even go.

  And look at you now, Charlotte replied, knowing he was testing her to see if she cared. You’re more successful than any of us.

  That was beginner’s luck. I’m writing squat today.

  Because you were busy playing shrink. Thank you, Leo. You helped.

  Anytime, Charlotte. Another session tonight?