Shadow of a Life (11 page)

“
He’ll be teaching me
everything he knows about ship building, of course.”

Sophia laughed out loud. The poor
young man had no idea what he was getting into. Her father was
delusional if he honestly thought he could build a ship. Her
father’s father and his father and his father had all been
seafaring men. For generations they had been integral in the slave
trade industry. By the time Sophia’s great grandfather took over
the family business, they owned an entire fleet of ships and would
sail them from Africa to the southern United States and all over
the Caribbean. The products being shipped had changed in the last
century, but the business was still hanging in there when
Jeremiah’s father took over. However, within a few years of taking
the helm of the business, Jeremiah had completely run it into the
ground. The man had no idea what he was doing and wasn’t willing to
spend the time it took to properly get anything done correctly. He
was selfish and only wanted to participate in activities that would
directly benefit him. He lived for instant
gratification.

When Sophia was just a
little girl, maybe five or six, he lost his last ship, the
Aurabelle,
when it was
taken to pay off old debts. A huge shipyard was under construction
in Newport News and the railroad had recently been completed in the
area so it was a prime location for an attempt at returning to his
old “career.” The sea was in the Goodwin blood and Sophia knew that
her father itched to get back into the shipping business, but
building his own was ludicrous.
Ship
building? Really, Pa?

“
Follow me and I will take
you to my father.” Every fiber of Sophia’s being prodded her to
tell Nicholas to run and never look back, but the thought of not
getting to look at his beautiful face again made her keep her mouth
shut.

“
I’ll make you a deal,” he
said, smiling. “You lead my horse and I will carry this load of
water for you.”

He was a gentleman, too? He couldn’t
be more perfect. “I will take that deal,” Sophia said, smiling back
at him.

As they approached the house at the
top of the gentle slope, the back door opened and Sophia’s mother
came out, yelling about Sophia being lazy and slow before she even
looked up. When she finally realized Sophia was not alone, her
countenance abruptly changed and she slapped on a phony
smile.

In her sickeningly sweet voice she
cooed, “Aww . . . you brought company for breakfast, my sweet
Sophia.”

“
Mother, this is Nicholas
Trenton, Father’s new apprentice. He’s here to help Father build
his ship.” The words came out roughly and her eyes bored into her
mother, asking a million silent questions.

“
Oh. Of course. Come on in.
I’m Jeremiah’s wife, Elsa. I’m sure he will be delighted to know
that you’ve arrived.”

Jeremiah rose from the breakfast table
when they entered the room and quickly shook hands with Nicholas.
He wasted no time turning on the charm and his new apprentice was
soon laughing as Jeremiah recounted tales of life at sea. Sophia
didn’t know whether there was even a semblance of truth in any of
the stories, but she loved the sound of Nicholas’s laughter so for
once she wasn’t embarrassed by her father’s lies. Even Nicholas’s
beautiful blue eyes sparkled when he laughed.

Nicholas told of his family and how he
came to be looking for an apprenticeship. His father had lost his
legs while fighting for the Confederacy during the war. After
living as a bedridden invalid for many years, he finally succumbed
to his injuries and died when Nicholas was just a baby. Nicholas’s
Mother and older sister had recently contracted tuberculosis and
had both passed on. He found himself orphaned and alone at the age
of seventeen and badly in need of steady work.

At length, Jeremiah pushed his chair
away from the table. Sophia knew that it was her cue to begin
gathering the breakfast dishes and to get on with the morning
chores.

“
Come on, Nicholas, my boy,
I’ll show you to your living quarters and then we can get in an
honest day’s work,” Jeremiah said.

Sophia laughed to herself at that
remark. Father didn’t know the meaning of honest, but the part that
stood out most was the part about Nicholas staying with them
indefinitely. That spring was full of all kinds of
possibilities.

*****

Much to Sophia’s relief, it turned out
that her father wasn’t intending to build a ship from the ground
up. He had somehow managed to buy a small, salvaged ship after it
ran aground during a storm. It was in poor condition and her father
intended to restore it to its original beauty so that he could
return to the sea as a merchant, ferrying cargo up and down the
Atlantic Coast. Sophia hadn’t yet figured out what her father’s con
was going to be, but she was sure there would be one at some point
that involved the new—er, old—ship. Her father, two of the crewmen
from his earlier sailing days, and Nicholas made up the team that
would attempt to renovate the boat and would eventually sail
her.

The boat was anchored not far offshore
from where their little home sat near the coast. Sometimes, on the
rare day when Sophia would finish her chores early, she would walk
down to the rocky beach and stand as close to the water as she
could. She would stand there until the afternoon breeze carried the
voices of the men working back to her waiting ears. There were the
rough voices of her father’s crewmen and her father’s deep, hearty
voice. Sometimes she even heard the young voice of Nicholas
drifting back toward her. That is what she waited for. Besides, she
didn’t know why, but there was something about the sea that pulled
at her. Even when the men weren’t hard at work on the ship, she
would sometimes go to the beach and watch the horizon. Nothing felt
better than letting her golden hair loose to blow in the breeze
while water lapped at her bare toes. She felt as if she was waiting
for something . . . or looking for something . . . but she could
never be sure of what it was.

Evening had become her favorite time
of the day. The men would paddle their little boat in just before
dusk and the crewmen would head for their shack farther down the
road, but Nicholas and her father would come into the house for
dinner. She did her best to help her mother without complaining and
tried to make every meal a feast. Was it true that the way to a
man’s heart was through his stomach? Before Nicholas’s arrival,
Sophia had been biding her time, waiting until she was just a
little older and could marry a decent man and leave her parents for
good. She felt horrible for feeling that way, but she had never
felt close to them and she honestly didn’t think they would miss
her much when she was gone. But then, with Nicholas around, her
life wasn’t so bleak and she wasn’t in such a hurry to find someone
to whisk her away. She could only wait and dream and hope that
Nicholas felt the same way about her as she did about
him.

After the evening meal had
been served and cleaned up each night, they would gather around the
fire and her father would tell tales or read aloud while she worked
on the basket of clothes to mend. It was
almost
as if they were a happy
family.

Sometimes Nicholas joined in the
storytelling. Sophia loved it when he participated because his
stories were always sincere and from the heart. His tales didn’t
need to be embellished like her father’s did. Nicholas would tell
stories of his childhood and the antics he would get into. He had
been quite a mischievous child in his younger years, but by the
time he was eight or nine his father had been gone for long enough
that Nicholas himself had become the man of the house. His mother
worked as a maid for a wealthy family in town and was gone from sun
up until sun down. He and his older sister, Elizabeth, were left at
home to cook and clean and make any needed repairs to their home.
Apparently Elizabeth, who was just two-years older than him, had
always been sickly and would tire easily while doing the simplest
of chores. This put a great burden on Nicholas’s
shoulders.

“
Elizabeth was the first to
come down with tuberculosis. That was just over four months ago,”
Nicholas explained one night. “My mother tried desperately to care
for her and help her to recover, but it was of no use. She passed
away two weeks after she started coughing up blood. I tried to take
care of my mother when she too started showing signs of the
terrible disease, but there was nothing that could be done. She was
so heartbroken from losing Elizabeth that she lost the will to
live. We buried her next to Elizabeth only eighteen days later.”
The mood in the room was somber. In the space of less than a month,
Nicholas had lost everyone he cared about and his whole purpose in
life. Sophia couldn’t imagine being in his shoes.

Not long after his mother’s death,
Nicholas sold his family’s few belongings and ventured out with his
beloved horse, Mabel, to look for steady work and greener pastures.
He made his way from North Carolina to Virginia where he met
Jeremiah Goodwin, looking for a hard-working apprentice. The
circumstances that had brought Nicholas to the Goodwin’s door were
tragic, but Sophia felt that fate had somehow put her hand in
it.

Days turned into months and
before anyone could believe it, summer had come to a close. The
summer days had been unusually warm that year and everyone was a
little relieved when the autumn breezes began to blow, and the
leaves on the trees changed from green to vibrant shades of yellow,
brown, and red. At the same time, Sophia felt melancholy, as if
something good was about to come to an end. In reality, the ship
her father had spent his summer repairing was finished, and he and
his little crew—Nicholas included—were preparing to set sail on
their first voyage in the newly christened
Mist Seeker
. She was much smaller
than Jeremiah’s previous ship, the
Aurabelle
, and could easily be
managed by a four man crew. The plan was to sail her to
destinations along the eastern coast of the United States, taking
small loads of merchandise to coastal towns along the way. Sophia
had no doubt that her father would be carrying illegal cargo at
times—that’s just how he was—and she hoped that he would not
involve Nicholas in anything that would corrupt his gentle
nature.

A few days before the men were set to
leave, Jeremiah sent Nicholas on an errand into town to pick up a
few last-minute supplies for the ship. Sophia was asked to
accompany him to get some items that Elsa would need at home. Other
than their first meeting many months before, Sophia had not been
alone with Nicholas, though she longed to sit and talk with him.
She could hardly contain her excitement as they made their way down
the rutted lane in her father’s creaky old wagon.

“
Are you excited for your
trip? Have you ever sailed before?” she asked Nicholas.

“
Never. This voyage will be
the first of many things for me. I’ve dreamed about seeing the
world and traveling to places completely different than anything
I’m used to, but I honestly never thought my dreams would come
true,” he answered.

“
Are you nervous at all, Mr.
Trenton? The sea can be a dangerous place.”

“
The only thing I am nervous
about is that I might find my stomach can’t tolerate the sea and I
will spend many miserable days being seasick over the side of
the
Mist Seeker’s
rail. And, Sophia, please call me Nick. Surely we are friends
enough to drop the formalities. Besides, I’m not that much older
than you.”

Sophia’s heart soared. Not only did
the person she couldn’t stop thinking about consider her a friend,
but he also went out of his way to point out that they weren’t so
different in age. Surely that had to mean something.

“
I’m sure you will find the
sea to be soothing rather than sickening, Nick,” Sophia replied
with a smile in his direction.

Nick returned the smile and kept his
eyes on her for more than just a glance.

“
And what of you, Miss
Sophia? What plans do you have to while away the time until your
father and I make our grand return?”

She wished she could answer that she
planned to lie in bed and do nothing but dream, but that would only
embarrass her, and it wasn’t as if her mother would let her become
lazy anyway. No, she was sure that things would return to how
they’d been before Nicholas arrived in the spring and Sophia would
find herself being forced to do most of the work around the house
while Elsa lazed about. But she couldn’t tell Nick that.

“
Winter is almost upon us. I
plan to spend most days inside with my sewing and handwork and
helping my mother keep the house. Perhaps it will snow and I can
make a snowman for my birthday at the end of the month,” she
beamed.

“
Your birthday, huh? And
when might that be?”

“
The last day of the month.
I’ll be seventeen, you know.” She didn’t know exactly when
Nicholas’s birthday was, but she was fairly sure it fell sometime
in the early spring. For at least a few months they would be the
same age in number.

They arrived in town and Nicholas,
ever the gentleman, helped with Sophia’s errands before proceeding
to buy the things on Jeremiah’s list at the local general store. A
few people in town greeted Sophia, and many more turned to have a
second look at Nicholas. The most playful greetings came from the
local bachelorettes. He had been handsome when he first arrived in
Newport News in the spring, but the hard work in the summer sun had
turned Nicholas from boy to man, and his physical appearance was
not one to go unnoticed. She knew a few of the girls her age
because she had attended almost a year of school at the little red
brick schoolhouse after her family moved to town. Jealousy crept in
when these same girls looked at Nick. It was all she could do to
stop herself from putting a possessive hand on his arm. He must
have sensed something was amiss because he reached down and took
her hand, placing it on his arm just below the elbow as any
gentleman would do when escorting a lady through town. Her heart
fluttered and she sincerely hoped that her palm wouldn’t start
sweating through the sleeve of his shirt. That would be
mortifying.