MARIAN
I have always imagined that closing a book is like pausing a film midframe, the characters frozen in their halted worlds, breath held, waiting for the reader to return and bring it all back to life—like a prince’s kiss in a fairy tale.
—Ashlyn Greer, The Care & Feeding of Old Books
The sunporch has always been my favorite part of this house, a sanctuary at the sea’s edge, even at night. I’ve been sitting here since Hemi left, with the lights switched off and the sound of the sea all around me. There’s not much moon tonight and the dark feels heavy, empty, and yet too full of the past.
I’ve called Zachary and told him about his father. Told him everything. Or as much as a mother can comfortably tell a grown-up son. I kept to the facts, to names and places. He took it like I thought he would, like he’s always taken everything, by asking if I was all right. I told him I was. A lie, but sometimes that’s easier.
I tried to call Ilese, too, but there was no answer. I’ll try again tomorrow, but by then, her brother will have told her everything. They’ve always had a kind of connection, always able to sense when the other needs a shoulder. But it’s done now. The final shoe has fallen. No more secrets festering, waiting to be exposed.
There’s a peculiar sense of closure to it all, a sense of things ended, if not truly finished.
On the table in front of me are the books—Hemi’s and mine. I don’t know why I’ve brought them out here with me. Certainly not to read. Perhaps it’s so I can see them together one last time. Tomorrow, I’ll lay a fire in the parlor and do what I told Dickey to do all those years ago—burn them. My past and Hemi’s, up in smoke. It seems fitting that a thing that once burned so brightly—too brightly, perhaps—will finally be extinguished. A closure of sorts.
But will it be?
For more than forty years, I pretended it already was, shutting myself off from that time, those memories. So very careful. And then in the space of twenty-four hours—less than that, actually—I forgot to be careful. I saw his face and let myself remember, felt his arms, his mouth, and let myself hope.
I’ve clung so voraciously to my anger, steeping myself in blame and bitter memories, as a way to keep from feeling what lay beneath all of it. The unquenchable ache of missing him, feeling him when I’m alone and the house is quiet, gone but a part of me yet. The hollow place the lost years have carved in me. Grief for what might have been, for what nearly was.
Perhaps if I’d told him all of it. How badly losing him had broken me. How much I’ve ached for him all these years—still ache. But no. He made it clear that any window there might have been closed when I decided to keep Zachary from him. He had it right—I was the saboteur.
I gaze out toward the shore, imagining the horizon stretching beyond it, and wonder if I’ll ever be able to put the genie back in the bottle—to forget again. I’m certain the answer is no. This is what I have to look forward to now. Remembering the us that could have been—the family we could have been—had I chosen differently.
I should go in now and get on with whatever comes next. Supper. Bed. Tomorrow. But I don’t want to think about tomorrow. Not yet. I stare at the pebble-strewn beach below, the small crescent of sand where land meets sea, and remember Ilese and Zachary there as children, building castles and collecting smooth, shiny stones in a blue plastic pail. I’ve made good memories here. They’re enough, I tell myself. They’ll have to be.
The tide is out, and in the meager moonlight, the shore seems to give off a pale, almost unearthly light. I close my eyes, listening to the hypnotic rattle of the waves against the stones, the hushed push and pull like breathing. I breathe with it. In, then out. In, then out. Better. Yes, a little better. I can go in now.
I’ve just opened my eyes when I catch a small flicker of movement along the sand, a blur of dark against bright. It lasts only an instant, but I’m sure I’ve seen it. I watch, wait, but all is still. A trick of the moonlight, I tell myself. Then it happens again.
I peer into the darkness, willing my eyes to adjust. I can’t make out anything at first, but eventually I pick out an unfamiliar shape propped against the rocks that separate the beach from the road. Perhaps my neighbors have come back and opened up the house. Unlikely at this time of year, when many of Marblehead’s coastal homes have already been shut up for the season. Besides, it’s much too cold for an evening on the beach.
Curious, I go to the porch door and push it open. The sound of the sea rushes in on a gust of briny air. The shape, whatever it is, is still there, unmoving but clearer now. I step out onto the deck. My hair catches on the wind, streaming into my eyes. I shove it out of my face, my gaze still fastened on the rocks. I see it then, moonlight caught and reflected back in a brief, bright arc. There, then gone, but familiar somehow.
A flicker of memory. Fingers, long and lean, scraping back a wave of unruly dark hair. A wristwatch catching the candlelight. My heart does a little gallop. It’s madness, of course, the figment of a wishful imagination. And yet I find myself moving to the stairs, taking them carefully in the dark, clinging to the wooden rail until I’m finally standing on the beach.
The shadow is still there, an eerie presence silhouetted against the rocks. A man, I realize, with a dizzying jolt of recognition. My heels bite into the sand as I begin to walk, my progress awkward and halting. I feel rather than see him turn to look at me. There’s another glint of moonlight, a moment’s hesitation, and then he’s climbing down from his perch. He stands with his hands at his sides, legs braced wide, watching me approach. Even in the dark, I would know him anywhere.
“Hello,” he says when I’m finally standing in front of him. The word gets lost on the wind and sounds strangely disembodied in the darkness. “What are you doing out here?”
“It’s my beach. Have you been sitting out here all this time?”
“Not all. I sat in the car for a while.”
“Why?”
His shoulders bunch, then fall heavily. “I couldn’t make myself leave.”
I tell myself it doesn’t mean what I think it means, what I want it to mean, but the thrum of my pulse and the rush of the sea eclipse all thought. “It’s freezing. Where’s your coat?”
“The car.”
“Hemi, you can’t stay out here.”
“You want me to go?”
“No. But you can’t stay out here. Come inside.”
We walk back to the stairs, silent and a careful distance apart. Inside, I flip on a lamp and turn to look at him. His mouth is pinched and bluish, and there’s a whiff of cold clinging to him, a briny chill that seems to emanate from his clothes. Without thinking, I touch his face, grazing his cheek with the backs of my knuckles.
“You’re freezing.”
He stiffens slightly at my touch. “I’m fine.”
“Your lips are blue.”