Anxious Hearts (9 page)

The kiss doesn’t end for a long time. And then there is another kiss. And another.

“Are you in pain?” I ask. “Your leg, I mean.”

“Nah,” Gabe says. “Just twisted it I guess.”

Later, Gabe climbs into the tent, which he’s pitched on a level patch of ground near the high-tide line. I climb into the tent with him. Gabe smoothes out his down-filled sleeping bag and gestures me toward it. “Here, Evangeline. You sleep here.”

I climb into the sleeping bag. He zips it up around me.

“But where will you sleep?” I ask.

“Outside,” he says. “Under the stars.”

“No,” I say. “It’s going to rain.” I unzip the sleeping bag and hold it open.

Gabe looks at me, tilting his head, confused.

“Stay here,” I say. “With me.”

Gabe takes off his jeans and climbs into the sleeping bag. With me.

That night I sleep, I think, or maybe I don’t sleep, to the dual rhythms of Gabe’s slow, pulsing heart, so deliberate and clear, and the unmistakable creep of the tide, tossing tiny splashes closer and closer to the tent, slowly encroaching, eroding, rinsing away anything that came before. Feeding whatever is next.

Gabriel

“I
T MATTERS NOT WHEN THE SHIPS ACT, OR
whether they do,” Gabriel said. He stood up straight, square, and confident on the rock-bench in the orchard under the stars overlooking the sea. He spoke in the old tongue, the one only the elders still used, and even then only at important ceremonies and sometimes in church.

“It matters not to us, my love. We are bound. Tonight, I know that I love thee, and that I wed thee, that as husband to wife I take thee, whatever chances or mischances befall us. With the infinite mine eternal witness, I swear to love and protect thee until death parts us.”

Neither spoke for minutes, long minutes, until Evangeline whispered, almost inaudibly. “Not even death will part us,
Gabriel. We will be together forever,” she said, touching her forefinger to Gabriel’s lips. “Forever.”

She descended the altar and settled at the far end of the orchard, protected from the wind. He followed her, and lay beside her in the moss. She curled next to him.

Evangeline’s hands moved down Gabriel’s shivering body. She caressed his chest, feeling his fevered, anxious heartbeat in her fingers. She grabbed at his midsection, his forearms, drawing his hands to her kirtle-laces. He felt her open his trousers, and with a single, eternal motion, she bent into and around him, encircling him with a slow, resolute strength, guiding him into her.

Gabriel lay, enraptured and unmoving on his back, staring longingly and needfully into Evangeline’s dark eyes as she enveloped him. He lost his breath watching her movements and pulled her closer to him, deeper, moving together, until both he and she inhabited each other, until they both lay naked and silent under the stars and apple trees, kissing beads of sweat from each other’s lips, folded together into Evangeline’s cornflower cloak with Gabriel, softer now, still inside.

Together, they listened to the tide below, approaching, approaching.

eva

Gabe and I stay in the sleeping bag all night, sleeping and waking and sleeping again. Touching. Breathing. Feeling. Like the drive out to the lighthouse listening to Led Zeppelin, I never want it to end.

Morning is near. Gabe crawls out of the sleeping bag, pulls on his jeans, and steps outside the tent. I have been awake for a long time, listening to him breathe, and as soon as he’s out of the tent I pull on my own jeans and follow him.

He turns toward me, buttoning his plaid flannel shirt. He runs his hands through his hair.

“Good morning,” I say.

Gabe grabs my shoulders and presses me up against a birch tree. He kisses me, and I taste sleep on his tongue.

He is a part of my history now, after the way we held each other during the night, the way we moved together, the way he pressed into me, eyes and arms and hips. I’d wondered about that moment all my life, wondering when it would happen. I always worried that I’d be embarrassed, that I’d do something wrong, that it would hurt, that I would regret it.

But I wasn’t worried last night. I was just
there
. And Gabe was there with me. And now, we are together, leaning against the birch tree on the morning after, and I have no regrets.

“See you,” he says, and steps away.

“Where are you going?”

“I’ll be back, angel,” he says, and I believe him. He won’t disappear. He can’t. Not anymore. He turns and walks into the woods, limping like yesterday.

I stand against the birch tree and watch him go, listening to each fading footstep, each crack of a distant branch, straining my ears until every last sound of him has faded, until he is gone. The first rays of morning begin to stream into the clearing, but I don’t move.

Later, I turn on Gabe’s radio and set about straightening up the campsite, humming along to pop songs I can’t understand. I air out the tent and rinse the dishes in the spring, then start to gather firewood to add to Gabe’s pile. I don’t know how long we’ll be here, but you always need
wood. Da’ taught me that. I stay close to the campsite in case Gabe comes back.

I am a million miles from Franktown, a distance that blocks out the guilt I feel about running away in the first place. I know Da’ must be frantic. I see him, still in his chair in the kitchen, watching the phone, as if staring at it would make it ring, afraid to call anyone to ask if they’ve seen me because he’s afraid that the line will be busy when I call him. I see the dried tears, caking the corners of his eyes, and I want to reach out and wipe them clean.

But I am with Gabe now. Nothing else matters. Ada knows this to be true. She’ll explain it to Da’.

I spend all morning and afternoon gathering firewood from the fallen trees in this part of the forest. I stack them precisely, twigs on one side, logs on the other. When I am finished and scoop water from the spring to drink, the pile of tinder is taller than I am.

At dusk I light a fire so Gabe can find his way back in the dark. I lay beside it to watch the flames and wait.

Gabriel

G
ABRIEL AND
B
ASIL RODE WITH A MAJESTIC AIR
, straight-backed in saddles and dressed in embroidered wedding coats crafted by Mademoiselle Gallan, the seamstress. Basil, father of the groom, wore a green coat with buttons carved from halibut bone. Gabriel wore black. Deep, pitch-black. The choice reflected the importance of the ceremony—true black was the most expensive color to produce, reserved only for high occasions. The coat was a gift from Basil, who’d been saving for it for years.

Gabriel averted his gaze from the harbor as they rode, lest he catch sight of the ships whose existence he so vigorously wished to deny. He felt for his birchbark in his foresleeve, lashed tightly against his veins. Its presence soothed him.

At the entrance to the Bellefontaine orchard, bathed in the cloudless, late-morning light, the assembled population of Pré-du-sel and the surrounding hills, every Cadian that Gabriel and Evangeline knew and many they did not, awaited the arrival of the groom and his father. Women wore wood lilies in their hair, brushing lint from their husbands’ felt tunics. Children in knickers and sundresses wriggled through the crowd, hiding-and-seeking among the skirts and pantaloons of their elders. The older women tended the feast, baskets of bread and apples and pears and cheese laid out carefully on sheets of linen, and buckets of cider for after the vows were exchanged. Noisy groups of neighbors and relatives chattered and gossiped and laughed. None spoke outwardly of the ships, though all knew of them. All knew that this could be the last wedding in Pré-du-sel, but none said so.

Michael the fiddler, with a long shock of white hair and elastic legs and arms, struck a merry tune on his strings, a lively, vibrant melody that complemented the birdcalls from the woods and the squeals of laughter from the children. Garlands of autumn flowers were wrapped around the apple trees like ribbons on maypoles, and petals were scattered around the grass. At the sound of Michael’s song, the guests scurried to the orchard, dancing in circles.

Père Felician looked up from the crowd to see Gabriel and
Basil approaching. He beseeched the crowd to part, to open a path in the middle of the apple orchard, a path to the stone altar where awaited Gabriel’s intended. Abruptly, Michael stopped his jovial tune. The crowd answered with a rustle as they moved aside. Gabriel drew a sharp, strengthening breath and steadied himself on his horse.

The crowd parted to reveal the stone altar. There was Père Felician, who would preside over the exchange, his high-collared parson’s cloak stiff and severe beneath his youthful face, his expression brimming with vitality and conviction, with delight in the moment and faith in the future. Benedict was there, too, balanced on his cane and draped in the embroidered stole worn by him, and his own father, and his father’s father, on their wedding days, and which he would pass to Gabriel today.

And there, between the priest and her father, stood Evangeline, enrobed in layers of airy white silk and lace that flowed weightlessly from her veil to the graceful fluid sleeves that swayed below her hands to the richly embroidered overlay atop the skirt caressing the grassy ground at her feet.

Even through her veil, Evangeline’s eyes of midnight sapphire, reflecting every color the sun showered on them, commanded Gabriel’s notice.

Spellbound, Gabriel could do no more than stare, in
passion and thankfulness, astonished at the indescribable hues of her eyes, the eyes into which she, today, would grant him indefinite allowance to stare, endlessly, forever. Could it truly be? Gabriel willed this image of Evangeline into his memory, determined never to forget this moment.

Michael struck a new tone on his strings, a sober melody passed down from the ancients, the traditional wedding music that signified the arrival of the groom to collect his bride from her father. All eyes turned toward Gabriel and his father. They dismounted, handing their steeds over to a boy who walked them to the barn. Basil, beaming in the attention, smoothed flat his coat and led his son down the orchard-aisle, tipping his head at all he knew, which was nearly everyone.

Gabriel followed several paces behind, stalwart and steady and serious, eyes focused forward, only forward, grateful and humbled by Evangeline’s adoring gaze.

eva