“So what’s up?” I finally asked.
“Oh, nothing. I mean, well . . . I hadn’t seen you. I mean not that we planned to, but, you know, during lunch, we usually . . .” He stopped talking, and a dot of pink appeared on the top of each cheek.
“I walked over to your truck on Monday, but you weren’t there,” I said.
“No,” he agreed. “Sorry about that. I should’ve called. It was a busy week. It just got away from me.” His face went from pink to red.
Got away from him? He worked at the sail camp. I’d been a camper there years ago. You had to wait for the tide to be almost high to go out. The rest of the time was spent watching movies and waiting. Playing dodgeball and waiting. Tying knots and rigging sails. And waiting.
I didn’t say anything. Just opened my lunch and took out my sandwich, unwrapped it.
“Anyway, I’m actually heading to the airport. I have to go home for the weekend. I mean, back to North Carolina.”
“Is everything okay?”
He nodded, but it was more of a shrug with a halfhearted tilt of his head. Maybe, I don’t know, it said.
He opened his mouth to say something and then closed it. There was a long silence between us, and he seemed to be waiting for me to speak. The fact that I was quiet was surprising even to me—there was so much I wanted to ask him. But I was suddenly aware that I’d given as much as I was willing to give. I could have asked about Amy. I could’ve asked him to explain. But he was standing in front of me and hadn’t explained. And I could see he wasn’t going to.
All week I’d gone to the spot in the parking lot and felt my heart sink when it was empty. That seemed to be all the explanation I needed.
“I’ll be back next week,” he said. “Can I see you then?”
“You know where to find me,” I said, keeping my voice steady. “Have a safe trip.”
He fiddled with his hat again. Then he turned and walked out the door, the bell jingling as it closed.
Through the large glass window in the front of the store, I watched him leave, shielding my body behind the wall. He walked to the curb, stopped, and turned around, as if he might come back. But then he walked to the parking lot. When he faced me again to get in his truck, he was biting his bottom lip.
Long after he pulled away, I pictured him biting that lip. I knew the texture of that lip, the softness of it.
I wondered if a girl named Amy did too.
?20
Hope
I didn’t hear Jack come home, but he was next to me when I woke up. Sunlight crept under the window shade. The red numbers on the clock read 7:00. I sat up, put my hand on Jack’s shoulder. His eyes opened. They were glassy, disoriented.
“Jack,” I whispered. “You overslept.” It was Saturday. A workday for Jack.
He put his arm on my hip and closed his eyes. He pushed the sheet down until it was bunched around his middle. I pressed my hand to his bare chest. His skin was hot to the touch, slick under a thin film of sweat from his fever.
“I’m getting up,” he mumbled, but his eyes stayed closed.
“That’s it, Jack,” I said. “I’m calling the doctor. We’re going.”
He shook his head. “I need sleep. That’s all.”
He patted my hip, and I saw there was blood covering the back of his hand, dried and flaky, a deep gash on his knuckle.
“Jack. What happened?” I touched his wrist, and he glanced down, shut his eyes again.
“I banged it on the engine. It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. It’s deep. You need stitches.”
“I need sleep, Hope. Let me sleep.”
I sighed. “Let me clean it, and you can sleep. But if you’re still hot later, we’re going to the emergency room.”
He groaned and turned over, and I left to get a washcloth.
He was breathing deeply when I returned. I cleaned the blood off. If it hurt, he didn’t show it, not even a flinch when I swabbed some ointment in the cut, covered it with a bandage and wrapped it with gauze to keep it in place.
I climbed back into bed next to him, and looked down at him. He’d called last night to say he was working late, and I heard the weariness in his voice, the drained edge of it. Come home, I said, and he whispered, I can’t. And I thought of the last argument we had. And the one before that. I knew when he said I can’t, he meant I won’t.
Now, with his long body stretched out next to me, I reached out and put my hand over his heart, felt the rise and fall of it. He was leaner than I’d ever seen, muscular still, his shoulders and arms thick from years of heaving heavy traps out of the water, but the slight softness that had formed over his belly in the last years was gone, a hollowness in its place. I knew every inch of this body. Every nick, every scar, the shape of every limb and joint. His breath was ragged, his eyes clenched in pain even in sleep.
I put my head on his chest, turned until my lips were pressed against the wisps of dark hair. I felt the tears come, silently, swiftly. They trickled down my check and slid down to the hollow of his belly. I don’t know how long I stayed there, but when I sat up and wiped my face, an idea was forming in the back of my mind.
In the kitchen, Kat and my mother sat at the table, a puzzle between them, half-done. I said it before I could change my mind, before another day of living in the past slipped by.
“I think we should have a girls’ day at the Salt House today. You know, have lunch and go swimming. Spend the day together.”
Kat stood up so fast, she knocked her chair over. “Are you serious?”
My mother looked up at me, startled. “Well, now,” she said.
Kat jumped up and down, and my mother put her hand on her chest at the noise it made. Kat had been begging me to go to the Salt House for months, but in the last week or so, she asked almost daily, sometimes two or three times a day. So much so that it seemed to border on an obsession. But when I asked her why it was so important, she was vague, just saying she missed it.
Now, while my mother went upstairs to get ready and Kat went to her room, I called Boon and told him that Jack was sick and not to worry when he didn’t see him.
“I was just going to call you,” he said. “I was worried when I saw his boat still here. Manny said he was sick as a dog yesterday.”
“I didn’t see him, but he’s been fighting something for weeks. You know him, too stubborn to slow down.”
There was a pause then. It seemed as if Boon was on the verge of saying something, but the line was quiet.
“Boon? You there?”
“So Jack didn’t come home last night?”
“He came home late. Said he had to fix something on the boat.”
“But he’s home now? He didn’t just call to say he was sick, right?”
“What? No, he’s here.”
After a moment, he said, “You’ve seen him? I mean, put eyes on him?” There was a hesitation in his voice. As if he had to ask but wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer.
“He’s in bed. What’s going on?”
“Oh, good. That’s good.”
I waited for him to explain, but there was silence on the phone.