by Meg Donohue
“I wouldn’t have told you. Amir and I—we made a pact. We didn’t want to be separated. We didn’t want to leave, as crazy as that sounds. Horseshoe Cliff . . . the farm . . . the sea . . . we loved it there. It was our whole world. Even Bear couldn’t destroy our love for it. Or at least we tried not to let him.”
Will nodded, but I knew he could not really understand.
“But eventually Amir ran away, didn’t he?” he asked.
I nodded. “I never heard from him again. And I left, too, with the help of your mother. So Bear managed to get rid of us after all. I guess in the end he won.”
“No,” Will said. He had not let go of my hand. “I don’t think he did.”
WILL CHARTERED A yacht to take us from Portofino to Monterosso al Mare, one of the towns of Cinque Terre. There, our pace slowed. We took long naps under colorful umbrellas on the beach and swam in the ocean. The Ligurian Sea was shockingly warm—an entirely different swimming experience than the one offered by the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Northern California. When I swam in California, I was always moving. I rarely allowed myself to simply bob in the water; it was too cold. The Mediterranean encouraged floating, and we obliged. I learned that Will, like his sister, Emma, was a strong swimmer. Still, while I would happily float about for an hour or longer, Will would head back to shore much sooner. He would kiss me before swimming away, teasing that he feared if I stayed out much longer, I would turn into my namesake and slip away from him forever.
If the sea encouraged floating, the town encouraged eating. A boat pulled up to the beach and offered plump anchovies and mussels in paper cups piled high with slices of lemon. For lunch, we had dry white wine and focaccia slathered with pesto.
In the afternoons, we retreated to our hotel room’s shaded balcony overlooking the sun-soaked coastline. We sat in our bathing suits and let the breeze from the sea wash over us. Will read while I wrote. I had not really decided what I was working on. I wrote descriptions of the Italian landscape, snippets of dialogue. I lost myself in a world that was half real, half imagined.
It was there, on the balcony in Cinque Terre, that the sensation of being watched overcame me again for the first time since Will and I had shared that kiss months earlier in San Francisco. On a path below our balcony, a dark-haired man paused and then walked toward the sea. His bare torso was lanky; his skin brown. My heart raced. I leaned forward in my seat, Amir’s name on my tongue—
The man called out in a merry torrent of Italian to someone farther down the path.
I sank back, my face flushed.
I squinted at the sparkling water, the boats bobbing offshore. How could I not think of Amir in a place like Monterosso? The cliffs around me were crowded with pastel buildings and darker than the golden bluffs of my home, but the sea that crashed against them sounded the same. The air was warmer but held the same primal scent, the half struggle, half embrace where land meets sea.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Will asked.
I looked over at him. He sat back in his chair, shirtless, his arms speckled with the ghostly kisses of Ligurian sea salt. His hair was turning blonder and more disheveled by the hour. He looked relaxed, his smile vaguely suggestive.
“You know,” I said, “this place suits you. The water brings out the blue of your eyes. I didn’t think it was possible for your eyes to be bluer than they already were, but the Ligurian Sea has proved me wrong.”
He clapped his book shut. “Well, that’s it then.” He stood and walked around the table and pulled me up, laughing, into his arms. “We’ll just have to stay forever.”
WE FLEW FIRST class back to San Francisco, just as we had on the way to Italy. Our seats were even the same, 1A and 1B. I wondered if it was the same plane. I had never in my life experienced two weeks that had passed so quickly. I wasn’t sure I liked the feeling. Our time in Italy already seemed like a beautiful dream. I was glad that I had written so much of it down in my journal. I drank the glass of champagne that was offered to me and it helped to steady the fluttery feeling in my stomach. Will held my hand and listened as the flight attendant detailed our strategy for survival in case of emergency. I rested my head on Will’s shoulder, overcome by a rush of love for him.
I wondered if life went by more quickly when it was easy, if that was the trade-off you accepted.
THE LETTER HAD arrived while I was away.
When Ronnie mentioned that I had received mail, for some reason, I immediately thought of being on the balcony in Monterosso, the sensation that I was being watched, the man who had looked so much like Amir.
A thorny sensation spread across my throat when I saw Bear’s scraggly handwriting on the envelope. I opened the letter with shaking hands. There was no polite buffer of “Dear Merrow” on which to hang any hope. He simply said what he had to say, and in so doing, yanked me back in time.
I know what you did to Rei. You and him.
I want my money. You don’t get to run off with it.
I know what you did, Merrow Shawe. All that you have, I can take away.
Chapter Seventeen
Rei’s bank account must have finally run dry. Though I did not have much money to spare, I began to send Bear a little each month. I hoped it would be enough to keep him from ruining the pleasure I had found in my work with Learning Together, my friendships with Rosalie and Emma and Ronnie, my relationship with Will. What would they say if Bear told them that he believed that Amir and I had killed Rei and stolen her money? I lived in fear of him showing up at my work. At night, I felt his grip around my calf, his fingers pressing an old wound.
The money I sent was not enough for Bear. He threatened to come to San Francisco. I hid his letters in a box at the back of my closet. I kept the stone that Amir had given to me in that box as well, and so every time I received a letter from Bear, I also thought of Amir. But I was always thinking of Amir, really. Amir lived inside of me. He lived in the stories I wrote, in the characters that had a connection to the earth, the children without parents, the men who loved and hated with equal passion. I saw him in each child whom I sat beside at Learning Together. I did not know where Amir was, but I knew that he was alive. I felt his presence when I went for icy swims in the ocean. I continued to feel that I was being watched, and I preferred to think that it was Amir doing the watching, or the spirit of my mother or my father or even Rei, rather than Bear circling ever closer.
WITH WILL BY my side over the following years, I saw parts of the world that as a girl I had hardly dared to hope I might someday see. Brazil. Alaska. Japan. France. Egypt. The more we traveled, the more I understood how uncomfortable I felt when I was not near a coast. When we visited places that were inland, away from a body of water, I felt unsettled. No matter where I was, my thoughts traveled to Horseshoe Cliff. When I was a teenager, each home I had broken into had left me longing for a new life; now, each new place I visited left me longing for a home to which I could not return. This feeling did not erase when I returned to San Francisco. There was something within me that held itself apart from the city; untouched for years, it began to ache. On buses, the windows shut against the wind, the ache worsened. When I walked, I was aware, always, of the pavement below me. I missed the soft yield of dirt below my feet. The golden glow of the cliffs at sunset. The black velvet night sky strewn with an extravagance of stars. Horseshoe Cliff was mine by then—I’d inherited a third of the land on my eighteenth birthday—but I wondered if I would ever see it again.
Once each month, Will and I had dinner with his family. If it had been up to me, we would have seen them more often. I adored the Langfords, and I did not like when too much time passed between visits. Will thought my love for his family was sweet, but he preferred to maintain a bit more space from them. I continued to swim with Emma, and I snuck in lunches with Rosalie between our monthly dinners.
During these meetings, Rosalie and I spoke of my work at the tutoring center, and my writing. We talked about the latest art exhibits and plays
that she had seen. We rarely spoke about Will, or my relationship with him. I did not know whether to think that was odd or normal. One day I simply asked her.
“Don’t you want to know how Will and I are doing?”
She glanced up from the leek soup she had ordered, her spoon paused midair. “Aren’t you doing well? Everything seemed fine at our last dinner.” Her expression grew concerned. “What happened? Did you have a fight?”
“No, no. But you never ask me about him, and I don’t know if that’s because you don’t want to pry . . . or if you . . .” I trailed off.
“If I don’t approve of you dating my son?” When Rosalie set down her spoon it made a surprisingly loud clatter. “Merrow Shawe. How could you even begin to think that? You are a lovely couple. You’re perfect together, really. I’ve never seen either of you as happy as you seem to be when you’re together.”
Even as I felt relieved, I wondered if her assessment was true. Was I happier than I’d ever been? In so many ways, I was. And yet there was a void inside of me that throbbed even at that very moment as I sat so calmly across from Rosalie.
Her smile wavered. She seemed to be considering saying more, and then she did. “If I’m being honest, the only thing that worries me is the possibility that the hesitation you sense isn’t mine, but your own. Will is in love with you. I believe that when he looks at you, he sees his future.”
I found that I was holding my breath as I listened to her. She noticed and reached across the table to give my hand a sympathetic pat.
“If I were your mother,” she said, “I would tell you that you should not run from joy. I would remind you that you deserve love. I would say that just because something is easy doesn’t mean it is wrong.” She pulled her hand back and rested it in her lap. “I would tell you not to live in the past when there are people right here in your present who love you so very much.”
I swallowed. It had been nearly eight years since I had last seen Amir. “It’s hard to let go.”
“Oh, Merrow. You don’t need to let go. Just free up one hand so you can hold on to someone else, too.”
SIX MONTHS LATER, Will gave me a large blue sapphire ring and asked me to marry him. When I said yes, he slipped the ring onto my finger. It was the most beautiful piece of jewelry I’d ever seen.
“Is it okay that it’s not a diamond?” he asked. “I thought you might like this better. It’s an antique. The stone reminded me of you—well, of us, really. It made me think of our time in Italy.”
I looked at him, feeling overwhelmed with love. “The Ligurian Sea.”
Will nodded. He was right; the stone looked like the Ligurian Sea, which was the very color of his eyes. I loved that ring with a ferocity that sometimes confused me. I had never had a ring before, and I felt different with one on my finger. What a strange comfort a circle is, I thought, with no beginning or end but only that smooth, eternal curve.
What I soon learned—what we both learned—was that, for me, that ring was enough. Having an actual wedding ceremony did not strike me as particularly important. When we were first engaged, Will and I spoke, vaguely, about the idea of a spring wedding, but the spring quickly came and went. Instead of planning a wedding, we spent much of our time looking at houses. The prices were astounding to me, but Will had plenty of money. My own salary barely covered my living expenses and my portion of the rent for the apartment I shared with Ronnie. I had always known that the Langfords were rich, but it was only as Will and I were house hunting, and our realtor continually flashed her big, excited smile at me and cooed over my engagement ring, that I realized I was rich now, too.
I longed for a home by the sea. Will preferred a house that was on the Bay, closer to his office. But one day the realtor showed us a house in Sea Cliff with a small balcony off the master bedroom that overlooked the ocean, and when we stepped out onto it, I could see immediately how much Will liked it. The water below was not the jewellike blue of the Ligurian Sea, and the sandy crescent of Baker Beach was not dotted with bright umbrellas, and of course the view of the Golden Gate Bridge left no question as to our location, but still, there was something about that balcony that was undeniably reminiscent of the balcony off our hotel room in Monterosso. There was even a small bistro table with two chairs angled in an inviting way.
Will grinned at me. He gestured toward the table. “Did you set this up?”
I laughed and shook my head in wonder. “It’s amazing, isn’t it?”
The realtor looked back and forth between the two of us, her expression equally baffled and delighted. She backed toward the bedroom door. “I’ll leave you two to discuss,” she said, and disappeared inside.
It seemed like fate that this house had come on the market just as Will and I were searching. I leaned against the railing and looked out. I breathed in the sea air and felt a sense of peace. I already knew how this house would feel when the fog rolled in, buffering it from the world. It would become a fortress, safe and glowing with warmth amid a silver sky. I knew how the ocean would sound at night from the bed when the door to the balcony was left open, and I knew that the cold, wet air would creep in and wash over everything, leaving a hint of salt on my lips. I knew how it would feel to walk on the beach that lay below early in the morning before anyone else was awake, and how the green sea glass that would wash up onshore would feel in my hand, something once sharp now softened by the grip of the sea.
In the distance, across the mouth of the Bay, mountains rose from the ocean. My mother had taken my father to the beach on the day they met and pointed at the same view that I was looking at now. My father had said that the idea of living by the sea had seemed like the most wonderful sort of dream.
Even without turning around, I could feel Will watching me.
He walked to me and put his arms around me. “I love it, too.”
“But it’s so far from your office.”
He looked over my shoulder, taking in the view. “It’s perfect. It’s ruined any other house for me.”
The thing about Will was that, as much as he did love that house’s balcony—and he did, I could see that—he was saying the house was perfect because he knew that I thought it was perfect. His kindness moved me. I rested my head on his chest and tried to breathe in his particular no-smell smell, but I smelled only the sea.
IT WAS ON that balcony a few months later that we first discussed the idea of eloping. There was a larger patio on the first floor of the house, but we found ourselves gravitating to that little balcony nearly every weekend. I wrote and Will read. There was so much that I loved about Will, but his devotion to reading was near the top of the list. He read as quickly as I did, and we had already made plans to install floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in the living room downstairs as well as in our bedroom to house our ever-growing collection.
It was funny, though, how differently we treated our books. I see your books like to swim as much as you do, Will had said, smiling, as he helped me unpack the boxes that I’d brought from the apartment I’d shared with Ronnie. The novels in his hands were bloated with salt air from trips to the beach, their pages dog-eared and marked by my pen. Will’s books, I realized, were pristine. He treated them with a reverence that I supposed I understood but did not quite share. I thought that perhaps Will thought of books as possessions while I thought of them as sustenance. His relationship with books lacked the messiness and the hunger and the desperate sort of joy that mine held.
While Will read on the balcony that day, I worked on a story inspired by a coyote that I had seen recently while walking down our street toward the beach for my swim. After Pal’s death, I hated coyotes. But for some reason my bitterness did not flare at the sight of this one in the city; on the contrary, wonder spilled over me like water. The coyote had seemed both ephemeral and eternal, like a reminder of a not-so-distant other world, or another point in time that might be in the future as easily as in the past.
“You always look peaceful when you’re writing,” Wil
l said.
I looked up blearily. “Do I?” I laughed. “No, that can’t be true.” I could feel my forehead smoothing as I spoke; it was always furrowed when I wrote, I was sure of it, and I spent as much time chewing on the end of my pencil as I did writing.
“Well,” Will admitted, “maybe peaceful is the wrong word. Transported? Wherever you go when you’re writing, you like it there.” He closed the book he was reading. “You know, if you ever want more time to write . . . I hope you know you can have it.”
“Are you telling me you have the power to make the days longer?” I teased. “Why have you never shared this with me before?”
He smiled. “I just mean that if you ever decide that you want to leave your job—or take a break from it—so that you have more time to write, I’d support you.”
I knew he was only trying to be sweet, but I was surprised that he thought that leaving Learning Together would be something I wanted. “I like spending time with those kids. I like helping them.”
A crease formed between his eyebrows. “I know you do. And you are helping them. I just know how much your stories are going to help kids, too—bringing them happiness, inspiring them. I’m thinking of your future readers. It’s funny, but when we first saw this house, I immediately pictured you sitting at this table, just as you are now, looking so gorgeous and full of thought, gazing out at the water and writing.”
It was a lovely image. So why did my throat tighten as he spoke? Did a part of Will think of me as he thought of his books, as something curious and beautiful and fragile, deserving of admiration and careful handling? I did not want to be a well-kept possession.
Perhaps I was being too hard on him. It was simply easier for Will to understand my relationship with writing than my relationship with children who had nowhere to go when school let out. But I could not think of writing without thinking of Horseshoe Cliff—and children who needed stories, yes, but so much else, too.
When I thought of Horseshoe Cliff, I felt very distant from Will. It wasn’t a feeling that I liked. There was nothing for me at my childhood home—only Bear, scratching out letters to me that were full of threats. This was my home now, the one I’d made with the man I loved.
