Twice Loved (copy2) (28 page)

When she lifted her eyelids it was to feel Rye’s gaze on her, and she turned to find his head rested tiredly against the wall, his face turned her way. His arms were crossed on his chest, feet flat on the floor, and knees widespread while his somber blue eyes studied her. She read in those eyes the memories of the afternoon that came back with a haunting beauty. But there was hopelessness, too, in the mournful yet loving expression, and for long minutes she was unable to tear her gaze away. But then, of one accord, they turned their heads to face the bay again.

Just then Dan sighed. His shoulders lifted, then slumped, and he stared at the boards between his feet. Laura rested a palm on his back. Rye’s eyes followed it. Dan looked back over his shoulder at Laura, then at the harbor again. As if seeking the comforting assurance that life still went on, he asked, “Where’s Josh?”

Laura felt Rye’s gaze move to her again as she answered, “He’s at Jimmy’s house.”

“Did he have a good time at Jane’s?”

It was all Laura could do to answer, “Yes ... yes, he loves it there.”

“What did they do today?”

Guiltily, Laura scoured her brain for a shred of the prattle that had hardly infiltrated her mind while she and Josh had walked home. She sensed Rye holding his breath, waiting for her answer, and suddenly remembered what Josh had said. “They made salt-water taffy.”

From the corner of her eyes she saw Rye’s shoulders wilt with relief as his eyelids drifted shut. Laura experienced a new agony at the duplicity she and Rye were practicing. Then, to her horror, Dan stretched, rubbed the back of his neck, and commented, “I don’t know if it’s the mention of something to eat or what, but I keep thinking I smell oranges.”

Rye shot up off the bench while Laura’s face burned, but Dan didn’t turn around.

“Are you hungry, Dan?” Rye asked.

“No, I don’t think I could eat if I tried.”

But Rye went away just the same and returned with coffee, again taking up his place on the far side of Dan and keeping his eyes off Laura with an effort.

Twilight came on. They finished their coffee. Someone brought sandwiches, but nobody ate. Dan sighed again, rose from the hard bench, and walked aimlessly up the wharf to stare out over the water, his back to Rye and Laura while only the width of his absent shoulders separated them.

Soon he returned, took his place between them, and leaned back tiredly, then began speaking quietly. “I remember when the news came in that you were dead, Rye. Has Laura ever told you what a sea widow goes through?”

“Aye, a little. She said y’d got her through it.”

A sound came from Dan’s throat, a rueful half chuckle, while he shook his head tiredly, as if the memory must be cleared. Then he bent forward, again presenting a forlorn curve of shoulders to the two behind him while he went on in a heavy voice that seemed dredged up from the depths of despair.

“I was the one who got the job of going up to ... to your house to tell Laura your ship had gone down. They sent me because the news came into the countinghouse and I was there working. And they knew, of course, that we were ... we were best friends. I’ll never forget how she looked that day when she opened the door.” He paused, dropping his chin to his chest momentarily before he lifted it and stared vacantly across the harbor.

Laura wished Dan would lean back and cut off her view of Rye, but he didn’t. Rye sat tensely, frowning at the back of Dan’s neck.

“Do you know what Laura did when I broke the news to her?” When Rye remained silent, Dan glanced back over his shoulder briefly before facing away again. “She laughed,” he said sadly. “She laughed and said, ‘Don’t be silly, Dan, Rye can’t be dead. Why, he promised me he’d come back.’ It would have been so much easier if she’d broken down and cried then and there, but she didn’t. Not till months later. I suppose it was natural—her denial, I mean—especially since she had no corpse for proof.”

Laura’s palms were damp. Her stomach felt cramped. She wanted to leap to her feet and escape, but she was forced to sit and listen while Dan went on.

“After that, every time a sail was sighted, she’d run to the wharves to wait, certain that the ship was bringing you back, still claiming there’d been some mistake. I can see her yet, hurrying down the square with that awful, too-bright smile pasted on her face, and me wondering what to do to get her to admit the truth and go on from there. I remember one evening when there were no sails at all, the first time I caught her haunting an empty harbor as if willing you to appear. I told her there were no sails, that she was deluding herself, that you were never coming back, that people were beginning to titter about poor, odd Laura Dalton who hounded the wharves waiting for her ghost husband. She slapped me ... hard. But afterwards she burst into tears ... for the first time.”

Stop, Dan, stop! Laura begged silently. Why are you doing this? To punish us? But again he went on.

“She stood there facing me defiantly with the tears running down her face, and she said, ‘But don’t you see, Dan, he’s got to come back because ... because I’m carrying his baby.’ That’s when I first understood why she’d continued to deny your death as long as she had.”

Laura stared at the harbor now, dry-eyed, recalling the vigils she’d spent here while willing the sea to return Rye to her. And it had ... but too late. He sat now only a body’s width away from her, but separated by a chasm as deep and wide as hell’s while the soliloquy went on.

“I followed her one day—it was November, I think, with the beginning of a sleet storm coming out of the northeast. When I caught up to her, she was standing at the top of the cliffs, staring at the ocean as usual. But this time I could see she was resigned. God, she made a pitiful sight with the rain pouring down on her face and her not moving, as if she didn’t know or didn’t care it was there. She’d ...” Dan swallowed loudly. “She was rounded out already, and when I told her she shouldn’t be out there in that wind and rain, that she had to think about the baby, she said she didn’t give a damn about the baby.”

Not one of the three moved so much as a muscle. Dan’s back might have been carved of stone while the eyes of Rye and Laura remained riveted on it. His voice dropped to a scarcely audible murmur.

“This time I slapped 
her
.
 It nearly killed me to do it. I... I thought she’d been standing there thinking about ... about killing herself, and the baby with her.” Dan dropped his face into his palms. “Oh God,” he muttered against his hands, and the silence grew crushing before he finally raised his face, drew a deep breath, and went on. “That was weeks after the news of your death, but it was the first time she cried, I mean really broke down and cried like I knew she hadn’t before. She said her heart had drowned with you. That was exactly how she said it—‘my heart drowned with Rye’—but at least she’d finally admitted you had drowned.

“After that, she finally agreed we should have a funeral.” At last Dan rested his shoulders and head against the building again. He closed his eyes, and he rolled his head tiredly from side to side. “I never want to go through a thing like that again. There we were, praying for ... for ...” But he seemed unable to go on.

After a long pause he cleared his throat. “A funeral like that is hard on a woman. I don’t want my mother to have to go through that.” Then, abruptly, he rose, clumped down the echoing wharf, and stood staring out at Nantucket Bay, leaving the two behind him to wonder at his reason for delivering the painful recital.

At times it had sounded as if he were preparing himself to relinquish Laura to Rye, admitting he’d won her only by default. Yet at other times he seemed to be making it clear he was maintaining his claim on both her and Josh.

Rye Dalton interlaced his fingers across his belly. Inside, it fluttered from the vivid pictures Dan had drawn. Though his eyes were on the woeful figure before him, he was ever aware of Laura. He wanted to reach across the space that separated them and take her into his arms, kiss her eyelids, and soothe her for all she’d suffered over him. He needed very badly to touch her in an affirmation of life while they waited together for the verification of death. He loved her; she was the one he longed for, quite naturally, in this time of tragedy. Yet he could only sit with his hands pressed hard against his belly to keep them from reaching.

The mists came up, eerie fog fingers lending a ghostlike effect to the scene as the townspeople returned to the wharf with the uncanny timing of those who live by the tides. It was neap tide, that time of the lunar month when the difference between high and low tides is smallest. Did that mean the chance of a body washing in was better? Laura wondered. How odd that after living on the island all her life she didn’t know the answer to that question. Would a body be bloated after being in the water for four or five hours? As she watched Hilda return with the others, Laura relived the dread she had borne once before while imagining Rye’s body, claimed by the sea, fed upon by fishes. She wanted to go to Hilda and comfort her, but there was no consoling this anguish. If a wife was spared the uncertainty of a bodyless death, she must then suffer the nightmare of viewing the unsightly, distorted corpse, or worse, a portion of it, should the fish have been hungry.

As the search party formed, their voices were hushed and respectful. They carried lanterns, now, that burned their precious whale oil—for such an occasion it could be spared. The hazy haloes of light refracting off the thick salt air seemed to bear witness to the fact that Nantucketers did indeed live 
and die
 by the whales.

Cap’n Silas dispersed them in parties of two and three to comb the length of the inner harbor. Again, Laura, Dan, and Rye moved together, paralleling the whispering waves as they’d done countless times in years past. The gulf stream had warmed the summer waters to a balmy seventy-two degrees, yet Rye was chilled by dread as he moved to his grisly task, wading barefoot through the shallows, wondering when his foot might strike a soft, inert lump. Dan and Laura were shuffling through the wet-packed sand of the tide wrack.

Rye carried the lantern as the three inched along, more slowly than any of the other searchers, for fear of being the ones to stumble upon the corpse. The lantern revealed a black shape ahead and the three halted, their eyes instinctively seeking one another. In the glow of the burning whale oil and surrounded by fog, their faces were mere glimmers.

“I’ll check it,” Rye said, clamping his jaw and moving ahead. When the wavering light fell on the dark mass, he sighed with relief and turned back to Dan and Laura. “It’s just a log.”

They advanced again through the fog-thwarted night, the two men and the woman who seemed, by tradition, both of theirs. And during the hours of the search they shared her equally, and she them, without thought of possessing or belonging. All enmity was, for the time, gone, displaced by the need to remain close, to support one another and draw sustenance for what lay ahead.

***

The body was found shortly after midnight, “neaped” on the shore after the tide had turned back to sea. The church bell signaled the message. At the sound of its muffled knell in the distance, three heads snapped up. Nobody moved. Rye stood yet in the water. Laura, still in her white dress with its hem gray and ruined, looked like a ghost beside Dan in his dark, shrunken suit.

Rye broke the silence. “They must have found him. We’d better go.”

Yet they were reluctant to turn back. Waves slapped softly at Rye’s ankles. The night air was thick and blanketing. The eerie bonging of the bell sent shivers up their spines.

Finally, Rye moved to Dan’s side, placed a hand on his arm, and felt shudders there. “Are you all right?”

Dan seemed to be staring at nothing. “Let’s just hope the sea returned a whole body.”

Rye moved his hand to the side of Dan’s neck and let the pressure of his palm speak a message too poignant for words. He turned, the lantern swinging squeakily on its hinges, and as if by some silent signal, Rye and Laura moved to flank Dan as together they made their way back, trudging desultorily through the fog, with shoulders often touching.

The sea had been generous. It had returned Zachary Morgan whole, undistorted. It was the living who felt distorted by the events of that day and that night, for in the moment just before parting, when Dan stood hollow-eyed, weaving as if ready to collapse, he reached a hand to Rye in thanks. As their palms touched and then clutched, they found themselves again roughly clinging while Laura stood in the shifting mists, watching.

Separating from Dan, Rye turned to her and ordered softly, “Take him home to bed. He needs some sleep.” Speaking the words, Rye felt as if he, too, were drowning.

Laura’s eyes were incredibly weary as she looked up at Rye. The tracks of tears painted colorless lines down her cheeks, reflecting the light from the lantern. Then suddenly she moved close, swirling about Rye like the night mists, her arms momentarily easing his pain as she pressed her cheek against his.

“Thank you, Rye.”

Over her shoulder, Rye saw Dan looking on while a single, raspy word came to his own throat. “Aye.” His hand touched the small of Laura’s back for only a brief second, then she and Dan were gone, into the eerie fog that shut them away and left Rye isolated, alone.

Heaving his tired legs up the lonely steps to the loft above the cooperage, he pictured Laura and Dan going to bed together, comforting each other. He fell onto his own bed with a weary sigh, eyes sinking shut, wishing for arms to comfort him, too. The day’s events passed before him in hazy review, and he rolled over, curling his body toward the wall.

Then without warning, Rye Dalton wept, anguished sobs of hopelessness and grief such as he had not known since he was a boy. Ship heard and came ambling across the dark loft to stand beside the bunk uncertainly, emitting a sorrowful whine of compassion. While her nostrils dilated, the dog turned questioningly toward the place where the old man lay. But there was no answer. Ship whined pitifully again, but the sounds from the bed continued and no loving hand reached out to assure. So she laid her chin on the warm back and whimpered while shudders lifted the ribs of her master, even after he at last slept in exhaustion.