Twice Loved (copy2) (48 page)

“Aye, me too.”

“Aren’t we foolish?”

“Nay, just in love, wouldn’t y’ say?”

“Yes, I’d say.” She smiled wistfully. Still he didn’t move, so she invited, “Would you like to come in?”

“More than anything in the world.” But his black boots remained firmly planted in the white shells.

“Well, then--”

“But I won’t.”

“Y ... you won’t?”

He shook his head slowly. A grin eased up along one side of his sculpted mouth. “Two more days ... I’ll wait.”

She released a shuddering breath and glanced at the harbor, then back at him. “Two more days.” Then she admitted, “I’m a little scared, Rye.”

“So am I. But excited, too.”

She let her eyes linger on his. “Aye, excited,” she agreed softly, intentionally slipping into his nautical vernacular.

He cleared his throat and shifted his feet. “Well, Josiah’s all ready t’ go. How about Josh?”

“Josh has been treating me like I just kicked his dog. I don’t know how he’s going to act when it’s time for good-byes.” They thought of Jimmy Ryerson, Jane, Hilda ... Dan. And for a moment shadows crossed over their faces.

“Aye, the good-byes’re goin’t’ be hard, aren’t they?”

She nodded, then forced herself to smile, for his sake.

“Well, then ...” He backed away two steps.

The closer it came to departure, the more the finality of the venture gave them pause. So many uncertainties lay ahead, miles to cross, dangers to face. And what would Josh’s attitude be? But as brown eyes met blue, Laura and Rye drew from each other the reassurance that together they could conquer whatever the future might bring.

“I’ll come for y’ myself around nine on Thursday.”

“We’ll be ready.”

Still he remained on the path below, gazing up into her deep brown eyes, reluctant to leave. Finally, with a small guttural sound in his throat, he crossed the distance between them and lifted the palm of her ringless left hand to his warm lips. “Josh’ll come ’round,” he reassured. Then he spun away and ran at a forced trot down the hill.

***

At that very moment, in a yard near the foot of the lane, Josh was on his knees on one side of a marble pit circled by a line drawn in the sand. Taking aim with a cat’s eye balanced on his thumb, he suddenly straightened and looked across the circle at Jimmy.

“Hey, Jimmy?”

Jimmy Ryerson was counting the marbles in his cache and stopped at the interruption. “You made me lose count. What?” he demanded.

Josh scratched his head, leaving a gray smear of dirt on the blond hair, and finally asked the question that had been puzzling him for weeks. “What’s a adventure?”

Chapter 22

THE LITTLE GRAY LADY 
of the Sea was as good as her nickname on Thursday morning. A thin haze of fog covered the shoreline, and above the island, the sky was a somber iron gray. The town came awake to its never-changing sounds—the morning chimes of the Congregational church tower, the clang of the smith’s hammer, the crackle of canvas catching wind, the 
shushh
 of waves beneath pilings, and the rumble of wooden wheels on cobblestones.

A pair of freight wagons pulled up before the gaping door of the cooperage, where only the fireplace and tool bench remained as before. Two stevedores jumped down and headed inside to begin rolling heavy barrels out and loading them. A gnarled old cooper with a head of hoary curls stood beside a long, lanky younger one, whose blond mane tangled about his face like beached kelp. A slow coil of blue smoke lifted above their heads as the younger man put his arm around the older one’s shoulders, squeezing hard.

“Well, old man—”

A stretch of poignant silence slipped by.

“Aye, son, she’s been a good ol’ place.”

They lifted their eyes to the rafters, the small window above the tool bench, the worn steps to the lodgings. The voice of a woman dear to both of them drifted back in memory, calling

them to breakfast, to supper, to bed. Together they stood in the confines of the building that smelled of cedar and pipe smoke and always would.

Josiah removed the fragrant brier from his teeth and spoke quietly. “I’d like a few minutes alone with y’r mother. Go on now, get y’r woman.”

Rye drew a deep, quivering breath, let his eyes pass one last, lingering time across the walls of the cooperage, then answered throatily, “Aye, then, we’ll meet y’ at the wharf.” He squeezed the burly shoulders once more, then turned quickly toward the street.

With a long-legged leap, he mounted a wagon, gave a single sharp whistle, and peered back over his shoulder to find a large yellow Labrador bounding onto the scarred boards behind him. The dog jogged eagerly to the forward end of the wagon and rested her jaw over the back of the driver’s seat, gave a few wags, and they set off.

At the bottom of Crooked Record Lane, the vehicle lurched to a stop while the man squinted up at a quaint little saltbox with silver-brown weatherbeaten shakes. A woman appeared at the door. She was dressed in a traveling cape of dove gray wool over a simple dress of lemon yellow gingham and a matching bonnet with a satin bow knotted just behind her left jaw.

She raised a gloved hand to wave in greeting, and a boy slithered around her skirts, caught sight of the lanky cooper, and stared at him with a surly expression. But at sight of the child, the dog broke loose and loped forward in her aging gait. The sullen look changed to one of surprise. The winsome eyes and mouth opened in dawning delight, and Josh could resist no longer. He came to meet the dog halfway, falling to his knees in the middle of the path, scrunching his blue eyes shut as the Lab bestowed a wet hello to the rounded curve of the boy’s face.

“Ship! Ship!” Instinct made him begin to ask the man, “Is Ship ...” Then, remembering, he turned to ask his mother instead. “Is Ship goin’ with us?”

“Why don’t you ask Rye?”

He looked up at the tall cooper he had once liked so much. “Is Ship goin’ with us?” Josh asked at last.

Rye came near, dropped to one knee, and gave the dog’s flat head an affectionate rumple. “Why, o’ course she’s goin’ with us. Nobody should be without a watchdog where there’re wolves and bears and raccoons t’ raid the storehouse.”

“W ... wolves ’n’ b ... bears?” Josh’s eyes widened. “Really?”

“Aye, but we won’t have t’ worry, not with Ship along.”

“Is it really gonna be a adventure?”

“Aye, son. And have y’ made up y’r mind yet if y’r goin’t’ talk t’ me while we make it, or are y’ bound to keep a button on that lip?” Lowering his voice, Rye added, “It hurts y’r mother and me a lot, y’ know. Especially y’r mother. She wants t’ see you happy again, but she wants t’ be happy, too.” He paused, then declared softly, “We both love y’, Josh.” Josh’s eyes dropped to the dog. In a small voice, he said, “Jimmy, he said ... well, he said your papa ... well, if he’s goin’ along, he’ll be my grampa.”

Rye’s expression softened, and his voice went lower. “Aye, son.”

“And ... and you’ll be my father?”

From the doorway Laura watched, her heart filling her breast with wingbeats as the man in the dark breeches, light sweater, and jaunty black fisherman’s cap bent near his son with one arm braced upon a knee.

“Aye, son. I am y’r father, as y’ve known for some time.” Josh raised uncertain eyes, very much like those that looked down on him. “Will I have to call you Papa?”

Rye swallowed, studying the piquant face of his son, realizing how difficult it was for the child to accept the sudden changes thrust upon his life. In a kind, caring voice, Rye answered, “Nay, Joshua. I think there’ll only be one man y’ll ever think of as Papa. Nothin’s goin’ t’ change that, you know. Y’ can keep on lovin’ Dan as much as y’ ever did.”

“But I won’t see him no more, will I?”

“Michigan’s a long way from Nantucket, Josh. I’m afraid not. But maybe when y’re grown up, Nantucket won’t seem so far. Then y’ can come back for a visit.”

Unmoving, Laura waited, willing the child to make peace with his father so that their lives might know their rightful share of contentment.

Josh was silent for a long time, hunkered before Rye half despondently. The dog took a desultory lick at Josh’s chin, but he seemed unaware. At last he raised his eyes to the blue eyes in the tan face above him. In a very businesslike voice for a five-year old, he declared, “I decided I’ll call you Father.”

Their eyes searched, questioned, and Rye’s body strained with repressed love for the boy. Suddenly they moved as one, Josh shooting to his feet, Rye’s arms widening, and for three thundering heartbeats they were chest to chest as love had its irrepressible way.

Seeing father and son healing at last, Laura’s eyes misted. Joy burst through her heart, and she thought now the best time to intrude upon the scene.

“Are you two going to stay down there all day or are you going to come up here and help me carry things out to the wagon?”

Josh backed away. Rye looked up toward the top of the path, then slowly got to his feet. Stretching his long legs into a calculatedly lazy stride, he began moving toward her while commenting in an undertone, “Y’r mother’s lookin’ quite saucy t’day.”

The child looked up the long man beside him. “What’s saucy?”

But only Rye’s rich laughter answered his son’s question as they mounted the path together. At the step, Rye hooked one boot over its edge, leaned on the knee with both palms, and let his gaze rove over the floor-length cape and the long triangle of yellow gingham it revealed.

“And what are you laughing about, Rye Dalton?”

“Is that any way t’ greet y’r groom on his weddin’ day?”

Her jaw dropped. “Today!”

“Aye, t’day. If I have t’ commit mutiny t’ get the captain t’ perform the ceremony. That is, if we don’t miss the Albany packet while we stand here yammerin’.”

With a gay smile she swung inside, followed by Rye, Josh, and Ship.

The house was stripped of all its former warmth and appeared forlorn now, its furnishings having been systematically rifled. Those that remained were to be sold by Ezra Merrill, and appeared sadly abandoned in the small rooms, which had been divested of all personal items. Rye avoided analyzing his surroundings, quickly tipping a barrel instead and shouldering it through the door. It was a day that would, by its very nature, repeatedly plunge them from optimistic joy to nostalgic sadness. The best they could do to get through the difficult moments of tugging memory was to put them behind as quickly as possible and look forward.

But when the last of the barrels was loaded and Rye returned to the house for the two black satchels that remained, he found Laura with her back to the door, running her gloved fingertips reminiscently along the edge of the fireplace mantel. Nearby, the doors to the alcove bed were opened, its tick and quilts gone, leaving it nothing but a hollow wooden box. Rye watched Laura’s eyes turn to it and linger. Next she moved to the beckoning door of the linter room, and he stepped up quietly behind her shoulder. She glanced back at him, unsmiling, then together they gazed inside at the wooden bedstead.

“I’ll make y’ a new one,” he promised softly, understanding that she truly did not pine to take the old one along, but that it deserved this moment of elegy. Upon it their marriage had been consummated. From it he had gone to sea. Upon it Joshua Dalton had been born. And to it Dan had come.

For the first time today, Rye touched her, in much the same fashion he had touched his father. “Come,” he encouraged softly. “It’s time t’go.”

They turned from the bedroom doorway, crossed the keeping room with lagging steps that echoed in the still space where once their laughter had lilted. There was no laughter now. They stepped from the house, shut its door for the last time, closing it on a phase of their lives both sweet and sad. The stark white scallop shells clicked together in the familiar crunch that had meant home for so long. Halfway down the path, they turned one last time to impress the image of the little saltbox into their memories.

***

If it was difficult saying good-bye to their dwellings, the scene on the wharf was impossible. Everyone was there—Jane and John Durning and all six of their little stair-steps; Jimmy Ryerson and his parents; Dahlia Traherne; not only Hilda Morgan, but Tom and Dorothy as well; Chad Dalton and his parents, along with a large entourage of Dalton relatives— even Cousin Charles with his wife and three children. Joseph Starbuck had come, and Ezra Merrill and Asa Pond.

And standing in the background at the fringe of bravely smiling faces, looking as if she was trying to hold back tears, hovered DeLaine Hussey.

And, of course, there was Dan.

He was one of the last to arrive, and at first as he stole up quietly behind DeLaine, Rye and Laura were unaware of his presence. Laura was in the arms of Dahlia, who pressed a cluster of recipes into her daughter’s palm. “These’re your favorites from when you were a little girl.” The tears started then and grew more insistent as Jane bestowed the next goodbye, a fierce hug in the middle of which she released a shattering sob beside Laura’s ear. Rye was being passed from aunts to uncles while Josh and Jimmy Ryerson knelt one on either side of Ship, surrounded by Josh’s cousins, all of them for the moment jealous of Josh’s adventure, his acquisition of the dog, and the possible dangers of bears and wolves.

But then Cap’n Silas motioned the crowd to clear space for the stevedores to drive the wagons to the gangplank and unload them, and as the crowd parted, Rye and Laura glanced up the chasm to find Dan there, the thumbs and forefingers of both his hands slipped inside his vest pockets, a beaver hat on his head, and an expression of tight control on his face.

The eyes of the departing couple swerved to each other, then back to Dan, and a hush seemed to fall over the crowd before a self-conscious chatter swelled again.

The last of the barrels was loaded aboard the 
Clinton,
 and suddenly everyone winced as the deafening steam whistle blew over Steamboat Wharf.