“Anything, Miss Benjamin.”
She squared her shoulders. Charlie was right. Everything was settled here. She was ready to step into the future she had long wanted. “I’m looking for passage to Harbour Island.”
He stared at her. “You what?”
“Passage.” This time her voice squeaked. “To Harbour Island in the Bahamas. Within the week if possible.” Surely Father wouldn’t return by then.
“Why are you asking me?”
This was the moment of truth. “Because I need someone I trust to escort me there.”
“Me?” He looked flabbergasted. “Now, miss, that’s kind of you, but there’s one big problem with that idea.”
She couldn’t let him dismiss the request. “Please understand that I don’t intend to return. No one here will know you are my escort. I promise.”
“That’s not the problem.” He looked toward the harbor. “You see, there’s not a single ship heading that way. Not this week and not the next.”
Just like that, her plan deflated.
Days turned into weeks without word of a ship heading to Harbour Island. Neither did her father write or return. To Elizabeth, it felt as if the two men in her life had vanished. Yet only one would return, and not the one she wanted to see. When Father returned, all hope of reaching Rourke would disappear. Each day brought that inevitability closer.
By late November, she went through the motions each day, content to let Aunt Virginia run the household. Sometimes she played chess with Charlie, always losing, until he claimed she wasn’t even trying. Every day she walked to the harbor and checked the name of each ship. Then she spoke to the shipping agents. When the sun dipped low, she returned home disappointed.
Nothing could salve the ache in her heart.
“You must occupy yourself,” Aunt Virginia insisted. “Embroider, sew, do charity work, help your friend with the temperance league.”
Aunt meant well, but Elizabeth could muster no enthusiasm for any of the ordinary pursuits. She attended a temperance meeting with Caroline, but her mind drifted far away to Bahamian shores and she heard none of the speech. Sewing met a similar fate with just four uneven stitches by the afternoon’s end.
“Then practice piano,” Aunt insisted. “This lovely instrument hasn’t seen a moment’s use. Practice will perfect your playing.”
Elizabeth could not bear to touch the keyboard, lest her awkward attempts ruin the memory of Rourke’s beautiful playing. That night in the chapel, he had touched her soul. When the organist played “Blest Be the Tie That Binds” at Sunday worship, tears had rolled down her cheeks. The tune still echoed in her mind.
“Well,” her aunt grumbled, “you can’t go on like this. A young woman your age has her entire life ahead of her. You must look to the future.”
“My future is with Rourke O’Malley.”
Aunt’s sharp look told Elizabeth that she had voiced that thought aloud. She bowed her head and waited for the inevitable reproach.
None came.
Instead, Elizabeth heard only the clicking of Aunt’s knitting needles. She dared a peek. The woman was frowning. At Elizabeth’s glance, she stopped knitting.
“Do you think Captain O’Malley would want you to pine after him to such an extent that you waste your days?”
Deep inside she knew her aunt was right. Rourke would not want her to mourn. Love not only meant doing what was right, but it also meant hoping against all odds. She had tried, truly she had, but she could not find the strength.
She stood. “Please excuse me. I wish to lie down.”
Elizabeth did not wait for her aunt’s response. When she reached the hall, she saw Florie heading upstairs to clean. Cook was working in the dining room. Charlie’s tutor was drilling him in mathematics. That left nowhere for her to retreat except Father’s study. She hesitated but a moment. It was better than Aunt Virginia’s constant advice.
The study door was unlocked. She slipped into the cool darkness. The smells of pipe tobacco and musty books hung in the close air. She opened the windows and pushed open the louvered shutters. After drawing a deep breath, she looked around the scene of their last argument. The chairs were in order. No blood marked the spot where her head had struck. The desktop was empty except for blotter, pen, and inkwell—and one small volume. Inching closer, she recognized her mother’s diary lying open in the center of the blotter.
Her hands fisted. How could Charlie give it to him? Mother’s words were sacred, private. She would have accepted her children reading them, but not Father. Never Father. After all he had done to Mother, to know that he’d read her anguish punched the air from Elizabeth’s lungs.
She started to close the diary when she noticed that he had written in it. How could he? She dipped the pen in the inkwell, intending to scratch out the sacrilege he had scrawled beneath Mother’s words of forgiveness.