Morning Glory

by Sarah Jio

  “What?”

  “Tom, who lived on Boat Street and knew Penny, took me into his confidence the month before he died. He said they’d all been in on a ‘pact.’”

  “A pact?”

  He nods. “I didn’t think much of it at the time,” he continues. “Tom wasn’t in good health at the end but spoke as if he wanted to get something off his chest. Before I could ask him anything further, his nurse interrupted us. I never did get a chance to learn what he meant by that. I can only assume it had something to do with Penny.”

  I think of the others on the dock. Most are relative newcomers, having arrived during the past fifteen years. And at least two houseboats have been empty for some time, only rented out occasionally. Then I think of Jim’s parents. “What about Naomi and Gene?”

  “It’s a touchy subject,” he says. “Jim’s awfully protective of them. None of them like to discuss the past, so I don’t.”

  “Well,” I say, “we’ll see what Joanie comes back with.”

  Alex shrugs. “If there was any foul play, it would have come out.”

  “But it was the fifties, don’t forget,” I add. “They didn’t have DNA testing or computers or any sophisticated crime analysis.”

  Alex nods. “I’ve thought a lot about Penny over the years, and I have to say, your discovery of the chest makes this all a little more eerie.”

  The air feels suddenly cooler, and then I notice that the sun has dipped behind a cloud. A little boy on the hill has fallen and scraped his knee. His mother runs to him and pulls out a bandage from her purse. I think of Alex’s past. A war photographer. I wonder about the atrocities he must have seen.

  “What was it like?” I ask him suddenly. “In Sudan?”

  He doesn’t respond right away, and at first I worry that I’ve offended him. What if this is a taboo subject? He clasps his hands together, and I think about apologizing, asking a different question, but then he finally opens his mouth to speak. “It was raw,” he says. “My brain was imprinted with images I’ll never be able to get out of my head. Mothers being separated from their babies. Death. Destruction. Humans being slaughtered. I saw just how ugly the human spirit can get and also how beautiful it can be.” We watch as the little boy with the skinned knee embraces his mother. “There weren’t a lot of happy endings over there. And it still kills me that I couldn’t save those people. I couldn’t do anything but capture them on my camera. The only thing that kept me going was knowing that no matter what happened after I left, they wouldn’t be forgotten. I vowed to preserve the memory of their plight.”

  I remember seeing the framed covers of Time and Newsweek on his wall. “You were so good at what you did,” I say.

  He takes a deep breath. “No one can do that kind of work forever. But a piece of my heart”—he pats his chest—“will always be with those people.”

  “Was it hard adjusting back to American life after being in a war zone?”

  He nods vacantly but doesn’t elaborate. I wonder what he must have endured.

  I feel a raindrop on my cheek. “What? Rain?”

  “That’s Seattle for you,” he says, the smile returning to his face. “Rain always sneaks up on you.” He stands up and I follow. “Better get back before we’re drenched.”

  Dark clouds are rolling in all around, and the rain’s intensity increases as we paddle back across the lake, which looks like wrinkled gray velvet. By the time we reach my dock, we’re soaked, but somehow, I don’t mind.

  “Door-to-door service,” Alex quips, as he parks the kayak in front of my deck. I feel a little disappointed that our excursion is over. I think about inviting him in. But just as I open my mouth, I notice a figure standing on Alex’s deck. A woman. She’s huddled under an umbrella and she’s holding two blue balloons. Of course, his birthday. She looks familiar for some reason, and then I realize where I’ve seen her. The cookbook. His coauthor. His ex. Kellie.

  He notices her presence just as I do, and an uncomfortable silence falls over us.

  “I’d better—”

  “Well—”

  We both talk over each other, then smile. “Thank you,” I finally say. “For letting me share your birthday with you. I had a wonderful time.”

  “Me, too,” he says before glancing back to his deck. She stares at us but doesn’t smile.

  “Well,” I say, climbing out of the kayak, “I’d better let you go. You have a guest.”

  “I, well,” Alex fumbles. “Yes. I’ll see you around.”

  “I’ll see you around.”

  Inside, I peel off my wet clothes and take a warm shower, then put on a sweater and leggings and reach for my phone.

  “Joanie?”

  “Hi, honey—everything OK?”

  “Yes, yes, fine,” I say. “I, well . . .”

  “What is it? You’re nervous about something.”

  “I’ve been keeping something from you,” I say. “I met someone.”

  “Ada, really?”

  “Yes, and he’s wonderful. His name is Alex, and he lives in a houseboat across the dock.”

  “Is he cute?”

  “Um, yes!”

  She squeals across the line, and I have to pull the phone away from my ear momentarily.

  “What does he do?”

  “He’s a photographer,” I say. “He was a war photographer for years, but now he specializes in food photos, for cookbooks.”

  “He was a war photographer?”

  “Yeah, in Sudan.”

  “Oh,” she says.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I’m sure it’s no big deal.”

  “You’re sure what’s no big deal?”

  “Oh, I’m thinking of a specific situation, one probably not relevant to you, but, OK, I’ll share: A girl in our department dated a foreign correspondent for U.S. News & World Report. He was in Somalia. Anyway, he came home with a terrible case of post-traumatic stress disorder and almost killed her.”

  “You are adorable for your concern, but Alex does not have post-traumatic stress disorder. Besides, he’s been home for years now.” I feel the familiar worry tugging at the back of my mind, partly because Alex seems too perfect, and also because I don’t know the full extent of his story. His grief. Kellie. All of it. But I extinguish my uneasiness.

  “Well,” she says, “just be careful, you. Take it slow. This is your first relationship after James.”

  Her words sting a little, and I suddenly fear I’m betraying James’s memory, betraying our love.

  “I know,” I say. “But Joanie, I haven’t felt this way about a man since I met James. That has to be a good sign, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she says. “It is. And I’m happy for you. I just want everything to go perfectly. I don’t want you to experience any more hurt.”

  What I want to tell her is that my heart has already been pushed to the most painful place possible, the brink of no return, and I’ve survived. There’s strength in that. But I can’t find the words to explain how I feel, so I simply agree with her. “I know,” I say. “And I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  I hang up and reach for my laptop. I type “Penny Wentworth” into Google and wait expectantly.

  Chapter 13

  PENNY

  Hello?” I say into the phone, trying my best to mask my sadness.

  “Penny?” It’s Mama, and she sounds concerned.

  “Hi, Mama,” I say as cheerfully as I can.

  “You’ve been crying, haven’t you?”

  I dab a handkerchief to my eyes and shake my head. “Of course not; I’m just a little stuffed up today,” I lie. “I must be coming down with a cold.”

  “Well,” she continues, “I do hope you’re taking care of yourself. You know, Caroline’s daughter Mary took sick in her first trimester and lost the baby.”

  “Mama, I’m not pregnant,” I say.

  “But you may be, soon.”

  Her words reverberate in my e
ar. They taunt me like the schoolchildren who used to make fun of my pigtails on the playground. “Mama, I’ve been married for three years—don’t you think it would happen by now, if it was going to happen?”

  “Honey, we can plan and wish and hope all we like, but sometimes these things just take paths all their own,” she says. “Remember how I got you?”

  Mama had me when she was seventeen. I never knew my father, just that he was a navy sailor who was deployed shortly after they met, and he died at sea not long after. She’s never said if they were married, and I’ve never asked. And yet, it doesn’t matter. Mama loved him so much that no other man can replace him. I imagine I would have loved him too. I’ve concocted quite a picture of the father I never knew—his warm smile, broad shoulders, and strong hands. And I can never look out at open water without wondering about him.

  You’d think I would hate the sea because its waters took my father from me, but I don’t. It intrigues me, even calls to me, somehow. Every day after school, I’d take the long way home just so I could look out from the top of the hillside to the Puget Sound. I’d watch the seagulls fly overhead, swooping down and calling to me, as if daring me to follow them. Sometimes I’d find a spot on the hill a mile from my house and gaze at the frothy waves crashing onto the shore and imagine what it might feel like to sail away, beyond the horizon. Mama said I was her water baby, though she never uttered those words in the presence of others. She didn’t trust the water, for either of us. She refused to teach me to swim, and yet she accepted my love of the shore, as long as I kept it at an arm’s length.

  “You’re right,” I say as a passing boat sounds its horn outside.

  “You’re not still going out in the canoe alone, are you?” Mama asks.

  Although she loves Dex down to the very last fiber of his being, she doesn’t like that he lives on a houseboat. She would never admit that her fear of water is the sole reason that I can’t swim. When we were married, she pleaded with Dex to move back to his house on Queen Anne Hill. But he’d rented it out, and besides, when Dex makes up his mind, there’s no changing it.

  “I wear a life vest whenever I go out in the boat, Mama,” I say. “You don’t need to worry about me, you know.”

  “It’s a mother’s job to worry about her child.”

  I pull back the curtain beside the living room window and see Jimmy outside, sitting on the back deck reading a comic book, his chin propped in his hand. I wonder if Naomi worries about him. I wonder if her love for her child is just as strong as Mama’s. I close the curtain quickly, before Jimmy can see me.

  I wrap four cinnamon rolls in waxed paper and tuck them in a sack before walking out to the canoe. I paddle across the little channel between Collin’s dock and mine. He’s working on the boat, and his back is turned to me, but he looks up when he hears the canoe slide against the dock.

  “Oh, hi,” he says, grinning. He wipes a bead of sweat from his brow.

  “Hello,” I reply, holding up the sack of cinnamon rolls. “Just making good on my promise.”

  He walks toward me and takes the bag in his hands, then unwraps one. “Cinnamon rolls?”

  “Yeah,” I say, smiling as I reach for an oar. “Well, I’d better be getting back. I hope you enjoy them.”

  “Wait,” he says. “You won’t stay? Just for a bit?”

  I look over my shoulder self-consciously. I don’t know why. Dex isn’t there. And what do I care what Naomi thinks, or anyone else on the dock, for that matter? “Yes,” I finally say. “I guess I could stay for a moment.”

  I tie the canoe to a cleat, and Collin takes my hand to help me out. He points to the sailboat. “Come sit on the boat with me.”

  My eyes widen. “Really?”

  He nods. “I’d love to show it to you.”

  I climb into the boat after Collin and sit beside him on a wooden bench seat. “She has a long way to go,” he says. “But I think she’s coming along quite well.”

  “You’ve done a beautiful job,” I say, running my hand along the smoothly sanded railing.

  He takes a bite of the cinnamon roll in his hand, and I wonder how long it takes to complete a boat. Another month? Another year?

  “She should be all ready by the end of summer,” he says as if reading my mind.

  I realize how lonely the dock will feel without Collin there, without the sailboat bobbing on the water. “I suppose you’ll be leaving then,” I say, without looking at him.

  “Yes,” he says. “I’ll sail her to San Francisco. My client will take her from there.”

  “Does it make you sad?” I ask, admiring the woodworking on the bow, where planks are forged together so they look almost seamless. “It must be like giving a baby up for adoption.”

  He looks at me for a long moment, and I see a familiar glint in his eyes. Sadness? Regret? I’m not sure. “It is,” he finally says. “But I try not to get too attached. It’s always hard, but it’s better that way, knowing that there’s an end.”

  I nod and look away.

  “Hey,” he says. “I was thinking of taking her out today. “Would you like to join me?”

  I shake my head. “No, I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well,” I say, “I—”

  “See? You have no excuses.” He stands up and begins to untie the sails. “We’re going sailing.”

  He adjusts the rigging and then motors the boat toward the lake. At their full height, the sails look majestic, and I watch in awe as he maneuvers the boat with such precision.

  When we’re at the center of the lake, he turns to me and says, “Want to take the reins?”

  I shake my head quickly. “No. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “I’ll teach you,” he says, grinning. “It’s really easy.”

  “OK,” I say, stepping toward him timidly.

  He takes my hand and places it on a long wooden shaft. “This is the tiller,” he says, keeping his hand firmly over mine. “It steers the boat.”

  He steps back and smiles at me. “It’s the best feeling in the world, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I say. The wind is having its way with my hair, but I don’t care. I don’t have a care in the world right now. I feel exhilarated and unhinged.

  “Where should we go?” Collin asks me. There’s a sparkle in his eyes, and I think there’s a sparkle in my eyes too. I feel it. I feel alive.

  “Let’s sail to the Caribbean,” I say suddenly.

  Collin nods playfully. “The lady wants to sail to the Caribbean, so to the Caribbean we shall sail.”

  “What if we get shipwrecked?” I ask.

  “And wash up on a deserted island?” Collin adds.

  I nod. “I can’t swim.”

  “I can,” he says, taking the tiller in his hand again. “We’ll be fine. Besides, we have these cinnamon rolls to sustain us.”

  I sit down on the bench beside him.

  “What does your husband do for a living?” he asks suddenly.

  “He’s an artist,” I say, feeling tense at the mention of Dex. “A painter.”

  “Oh,” he replies.

  “Does that surprise you?”

  “Well,” he says, rubbing his chin, “I just assumed he was in business. Seemed like the only reason to explain why he’s gone so often.”

  “Dex is an important artist,” I say, a little more defensively than I intended. “He has a studio downtown. He works very hard.”

  “Listen,” he says, smiling. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound critical, it’s just—”

  I cross my arms. “It’s just what?” Mentally, I run through my list of deepest fears: That we’re not well suited? That he’s so much more sophisticated than I?

  Collin shrugs. “What I mean . . .” His voice trails off. “How can I say this best?” He pauses for a moment. “OK, I’ll just say it.” He takes a deep breath. “If I had a wife like you, I wouldn’t ever want to leave.”

  I feel my cheeks redden. “Oh.
Well, thank you, I guess.” I retie my scarf, then turn back to him. “You know what this boat needs?” I ask, changing the subject.

  “What?”

  “Cushions.”

  “It does,” he agrees. “Next time we go out, I’ll bring some pillows from the sofa.”

  “No,” I say. “I was thinking that I could make them. There are some foam blocks in the closet, some fabric, too. I’m not sure what the materials are for, but they’ve been there forever. If the stash is not completely moth-eaten, I can sew some cushions.”

  Collin shakes his head. “I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

  I want to tell him that I fear I may go crazy in that little houseboat all by myself day after day without a purpose, without a project. “I want to,” I say.

  “Well, if you can sew as well as you can bake,” he replies, “then I can’t refuse.”

  I smile, and walk toward the front of the boat. I feel Collin’s eyes on me as I duck under the sails to the starboard side, but I misjudge the distance between the deck and the sail, and my head hits the heavy wooden section at the bottom of the sail. At first my vision blurs. All I feel is a dull ache, and then I lose my balance and everything goes dark.

  Chapter 14

  ADA

  Alex meets me in front of my houseboat at five. “I’m taking you to dinner,” he says.

  I look down at my outfit: leggings and a thin sweater, hardly dinner attire—certainly nothing I’d wear to a restaurant in New York. “Let me go change.”

  “No,” he says, smiling. “You look perfect just as you are. After all, this is Seattle. People wear jeans and fleece to the fanciest places.”

  I grin. “All right, let me get my purse.” I run into the house, pull my hair into a ponytail, and swipe on some lip gloss, then grab my purse before returning to the dock.

  Alex offers me his arm, and we walk up the dock to the street above the lake. “Serafina is just up the hill,” he says. “If you don’t mind a little hike.”