“Nick,” she murmured. His face was soft in the early-morning light—a mix of moon and predawn sun coming in the one window where he had kicked out the plywood the night before, a lifetime ago. Morning approached—she had a class, she had a job, she had a family.
A family: Phil, Molly, Jack. Their pure belief in her sent her to her knees; she bent to the ground with the full knowledge of what she’d done. She fumbled for the flashlight that she remembered had fallen to the side of the sleeping bag. She groaned, found her hand on a hard object and lifted it: Nick’s shoe. She dropped it and searched again for the flashlight. She found it, grasped it like a lifeline and flicked it on. The room lit up like a tank of water.
She was dizzy. She pulled her crumpled sweater from under Nick, covered him up with the sleeping bag and his flannel shirt. She took extreme care not to wake him as she found her corduroys where they’d been flung on the wooden floor. She turned the flashlight off, moving with a panic-flooded mind, a bilious taste of guilt filling her mouth. So this is what it feels like to be an adulterer—a filthy adulterer who’d momentarily found freedom in rationalizations. She couldn’t catch her breath in the underwater feeling of guilt, she dressed as quietly as possible.
Where exactly was she? What time was it? She grabbed Nick’s donated coat and staggered to one side of the living room. She had to leave here, leave what she’d done. It couldn’t have happened. Amy Reynolds wouldn’t have made love to another man. She slid the coat over her shoulder, remembering Nick’s hands slipping it off, feeling his hands all over her body. She stumbled to the front door; it was locked. She began to sob and trip through the house, looking for a way out, any way out. Then she remembered the window he’d pried open. She flung herself over the windowsill and fell into the spiked bushes outside.
She’d never been so cold, so empty, as though no blood ran through her veins. I didn’t do this. I didn’t do this. She began to half-run, half-stumble toward the boat on the beach, to escape from Nick, from herself.
She fell onto the sand, searching in her mass of whirling thoughts for a solid resting place, for a decision. She jumped into the grounded Tender. Its tip was buried in the sand as its hind end bobbed in the waves. Her hand shook violently as she held the flashlight over the ignition to find the keys. None.
She leaned over the back of the boat, lifted the rear seat to see if he’d hidden them in the empty well. She shook with fear and cold, and the flashlight fell from her hand, plopped into the sea with a lone splash.
“No!” she cried out and dipped her hand in the icy water, grabbing at only liquid as she searched for the key. Desperation and panic mixed with the freezing air and sea. She found nothing inside herself of courage or sustenance as she stumbled back onto the sand. She was a coward—only cowards ran away. She wrapped her arms around her middle, attempted to find a way out, a solution, and found she was unable to command anything of herself but shame.
She grabbed the chain Nick had given her. It snapped, gave way and she threw the chain and cross—evidence of her sin—to the sands she’d wanted to save, to the island whose salvation she had convinced herself was a decent reason to bring them back together.
She looked up to the black bowl of sky and spied the full moon—bloated and high above her, half-hidden behind a cloud-distended sky. This time she found the moon she thought she’d lost, and she swore that amid the owl’s call and the frog’s marsh-song, she heard it mocking her with its obvious resplendent presence, saying, “I’ve always been here.” And now she followed it.
The clouds separated to impart the full light of the moon, and she never looked away as she followed. She vaguely sensed the brush of cordgrass, the sinking squish of mud and then the hard crack of shells. She ignored the cold, the harsh path, and the fear kept at bay by the light that led her through thick underbrush. She followed the moon until a cloud diluted its beacon and allowed her to stop, rest—just for one minute.
Piercing morning sunlight sliced through Nick’s eyelids and he rolled onto his side, not wanting to wake up and face another day without Amy.
Amy.
He shot straight up, fell to his side in the tangle of sleeping bag, confused, clothes half on. He glanced around the room as quickly as he could with his eyes still bleary, his thoughts sluggish. She was gone. He stumbled to his feet. Where was she? How the hell had he slept through her getting up? He hadn’t slept soundly in almost thirty years, and he had to pick now, with Amy sprawled across his body. And yet he knew why he had finally, blessedly fallen into this sleep—because she’d been there, across him, on him.
He groaned, tripped as he tried to pull on his jeans, fell onto the floor, sending a searing pain through his hip. “Damn, damn.”
He yanked on his shirt and sneakers and began to call her name. He looked down—her clothes and boots were gone; the other flashlight was gone. He yanked on his coat and moaned.
He shouldn’t have allowed them both to fall asleep. He had been prepared for her flash of shame and guilt when the light came in. He’d prepared what to say—but now she was gone.
He fished in his pocket and found the boat keys. He jumped out the open window and screamed her name. He glanced around like a skilled hunter, checking the ground, spying broken frozen grass. He followed the footsteps to the beach, but then they led back toward the marsh, away from the maritime forest and the house. Oh, God, not the marsh.
Dread flooded him; his toes were numb, his hands quivering more from fear than cold. The moon was still descending even as the sun rose. Nick pulled his coat sleeve back from his wrist: five thirty a.m. She could have been wandering for hours.
He followed her dented footsteps until he reached the soft ground of the marsh where her tracks were camouflaged in the thick grasses. There was nothing else to track.
“Amy!” he screamed.
Only the crickets and owl answered his call.
He jogged back to the boat to find his cell phone, staring at it even as he understood what he must do with Amy lost in the marsh of a barrier island, a maze of dead ends and false exits inhabited by cottonmouth snakes and alligators. Red wolves lived in the thicker parts of the forest, and if she headed the other way—toward the sea—the oyster beds were like razors, sharks played in the shallow surf, and more alligators roamed the tidal stream emptying into the sea.
He punched 911 and closed his eyes on his own fear and tears, feeling as if he were in one of his slow-motion dreams where he could not run, could not correctly dial the phone.
The phone rang and rang; the echoing sound rubbed his nerves raw until the operator answered and he told her there was a woman lost on Oystertip Island and to send the Coast Guard.
He found he remembered the Hail Mary from his childhood, and he uttered this prayer over and over. On his hundredth or maybe thousandth one, sirens blared across the beach; boats pulled up and disgorged men in uniforms, walkie-talkies squawking from their belts.
Sporadically and in broken sentences, Nick told the uniformed men which way he believed Amy had gone. Questions and answers came like gunshots in the flashing lights of the boat, in the beacons they carried.
“How long has she been gone?”
“I don’t know. It could have been hours.”
“You’re trespassing.”
“I know.”
“Was she drunk?”
“No.”
“Is she your wife?”
“No, she’s Phil’s wife.”
“Do we need to call her family?”
Nick rattled off Amy’s home phone number, which he’d long ago memorized. He began to follow the men with the radios and medical kits through the woods.
A hand grabbed his arm. “Sir, you cannot go with them. You’re already trespassing. I can’t let you go.”
Nick swiped the Coast Guard officer’s hand off his arm. “You can arrest me, but I’m going. I lost her . . .” Nick chok
ed on a sob. “Let me find her. Now.”
The Coast Guard officer released him. “Okay, man. But I didn’t tell you to go.”
Nick pushed his way through the woods, calling Amy’s name, this time not reaching for a prayer but for the remembered feel of Amy in a sleeping bag next to him.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Something glacial and piercing ran through her forearm. Amy grabbed at it, cried out, tried to lift her hand against an unknown weight. Her eyes popped open and disorientation spread through her with the pain. The room was bright—too bright. She squinted to see the shapes and bulk of what appeared to be a metal room. Industrial mauve curtains hung in pleated folds. A metal pole stood next to her bed, dripping fluid into her arm through an IV with an amber tube. A pink plastic pitcher stood sweating puddles on a metal bedside table.
She groaned as she tried to lift her head, find a focus point. Where was she? It looked like a hospital. The oversized door at the end of the room swung open and Phil walked in, blowing into a Styrofoam cup. He didn’t look up at her. She groaned again, unable to find her voice inside the nebulous and scattered pain of a closed throat.
He looked up, smiled. “Welcome back.” But his eyes did not match his smile. His mouth was tight, tired looking.
“Where am I?” she tried to ask, but a grotesque croak came from her throat.
“Don’t try to talk yet.” Phil placed his cup on the bedside table, sat next to her and clasped her hand. “You’re in Darby Memorial. You’ve been asleep, or out of it at least, for a full day now. You had hypothermia, a broken rib and some pretty bad cuts. You’re gonna be okay.”
He sounded robotic. Her dulled senses could not absorb the information as it came. She stared at him; there was something else wrong, something else. She searched in her fogged mind, lifted her hand, set it back down. Hypothermia . She closed her eyes; her eyelids were like thick cardboard and she didn’t have the strength to keep them open.
Phil rubbed the top of her hand. “Yes, go back to sleep.”
She shook her head no, but kept her eyes closed and searched the abyss of fear hissing at her center. What was it? Cold, she was so cold. Scared. Further back, further—before the cold and fear.
A sleeping bag, dark blue. Dust and scattered light. Legs and arms and hands and mouths. A diamond cross strewn on sand under a full moon.
The memory thrust itself to the tip of her consciousness. Her eyes flew open and she stared at Phil, at her husband. The set, tired look on his face expressed betrayal: her betrayal.
An animalistic groan came from below the roiling shame. She closed her eyes and could not look at his face again. The shame was worse than the physical pain and she scurried like a rat to a deep, dark place. She couldn’t come back. She couldn’t rise to the bright light, to Phil, to deception. Molly’s words echoed across her consciousness—It’s not in her . . . to do.
She reached for the quilt of rationalization and excuses she’d sewn for herself over the past few months; she needed it now to cover her guilt. She’d fashioned it stitch by stitch: They were different, they had never really broken their vows, they were cheated out of their life together, she was taken for granted, she needed him, there was a purpose. Yet all she found now was an infested, decayed quilt: useless and rotten. She was freezing cold—and empty.
She shivered. Phil’s hand covered hers; he called the nurse for another blanket and she began to weep.
He leaned over her. “What hurts, Amy?”
“Everything. Oh, God, everything,” she said, her eyes still closed. The hospital door scraped; the weight of a blanket fell on her body. Didn’t they know they could drop a thousand blankets on her, and she would still be freezing, deadly freezing?
Phil whispered, “I think she may need some more pain meds.”
A high-pitched Georgia accent answered him. “It’s not time yet. Another hour.”
Phil sighed. “Thank you.”
She opened her eyes, looked at her husband and said the first and the last thing—the only thing—she could find within herself, “I’m sorry.” The words came out in a whisper.
Phil’s eyes filled with tears. He squeezed her hand, did not answer. But she wasn’t looking for an answer—she wasn’t seeking absolution. There couldn’t be any, she knew.
She closed her eyes again, unable to tolerate his pain, her own too great for comprehension. She allowed the darkness to envelop her again and she slipped into its cold and blank tunnel.
The pain eddied and flowed as doctors, nurses and visitors came and went from the room. Amy brought her frayed and shattered self to the surface for the sake of her family: Molly wanting to play gin rummy, Jack needing to tell her about his chemistry test, and Phil’s hand on hers, always his hand.
She was lucky, said the doctor, who looked young enough to go to school with Jack. One fragmented piece at a time, her family told the story of the night she was lost on Oystertip Island. These broken pieces of information formed a border to a puzzle as her memory filled in the middle details. They told her she had somehow wandered into the marsh, the endless maze of dead-end trails and high grass. The search team had found her curled and shivering on an oyster bed at the edge of the sea. It had been seven in the morning when they finally found her, unconscious with a body temperature of 90.2 degrees. She now understood where the deep cuts and piercing pain on her left side were from—even a thick coat of down was no match for the slicing razors of broken and halved oyster shells.
In the whispered voice of the defeated, Phil told her that when Nick awoke at five in the morning and found her gone, he’d called for help. If he hadn’t called, she would have lain unconscious as the tide, pulled unusually high by the full moon, rolled in at nine forty that morning. She wasn’t angry with Nick for this call. He’d saved her life. It wasn’t his fault. It was hers, only hers.
The police did not understand why she’d wandered into the marsh. They’d come to the hospital asking endless questions about whether she’d taken medication, whether she was drunk. She couldn’t tell them she believed she’d found the moon and was meant to follow it.
She assumed Jack and Molly didn’t know all the details. They somehow believed she’d gone to the house for preservation purposes and become disoriented on the property in the night.
Carol Anne held her hand. She didn’t lecture Amy about searching for change the wrong way; she didn’t give advice or deliver sarcastic comments. She gave only love.
The OWP members came and stood over her also. If she could have moved, if she’d any strength to run, she would have. At least Phil and Carol Anne stared down at her knowing the truth, but these four students stared down at her with undeserved admiration. They believed she and Nick had broken into the house in search of further proof of the home’s historic value, evidence to save it. They thought her courageous and worthy.
Phil left the room when they came. Revvy sat on the green plastic-covered chair next to her bed.
“You know Nick was arrested.”
Norah punched him on the shoulder. “I don’t think she needs to hear all this right now.”
“No, tell me,” Amy said. She needed to know every evil thing her sin had sown.
“Well, we pooled our money for his bail and now he’s kind of disappeared.”
Amy scooted up on her pillows, winced at the pain shooting down her left side. “What do you mean, disappeared?”
“Well, I think he’s camping out on the island,” Revvy said. “But if they find out, they’ll arrest him again. He’s kind of freaked out about what happened to you. He blames himself—said he turned around for one minute and you were gone.”
“It wasn’t his fault. It was all mine.” Tears filled her eyes.
Norah leaned down and grabbed Amy’s hand. “We’ll let you rest now. We’ll take care of everything. Nick still had the camera. The photos you took are being analyz
ed by the historical society.”
Amy nodded. They left believing in her brave and commendable effort to save Oystertip.
Though it seemed a lifetime, a constant battle, for only three days she faded in and out of consciousness before the experts told her all was now medically well; she was ready to go home. Little did they know about the sickness in her soul.
Phil arrived at the hospital with a pair of jeans and a black cashmere sweater; he knew these were her favorites. She sat on the bed and turned from him, slowly attempting to dress herself, slipping the underwear on below her open-in-the-back hospital gown. As she lifted her arms to put on her bra, she remembered the discarded white lace on the dusty floor of a crumbling home, and tried to stay her tears.
Phil reached for her. “Here, let me. The doc said your ribs would hurt for a while.” He pulled the bra down over her back, hooked it in place.
She wept harder, the tears ripping past the pain of her ribs, into the deeper place of suffering.
Phil crawled up on the bed, turned her around. “Here, I’ll slip your sweater over your head.”
“No.”
She wanted to explain that she did not deserve this, that he should not be here loving her, helping her, pulling clothing over her stained body. His quick turn from her told her he took it as a rejection. She sought the strength to tell him she wanted his help, needed his touch, but did not deserve it. Yet all she found was the same bottomless, whirling cold.
She slid her feet into her jeans and stood to pull them up. The pants gaped an inch away from her stomach. She turned to Phil; he was gone. The nurse stood in his place.
She set a chart on the bedside table. “Your husband went to get the car, sign your discharge papers. It’ll be about an hour.”
“Thank you.” Amy fell back on the bed, leaned her head on the pillow with her feet still on the floor, and closed her eyes. She wanted Phil back in the room.
Losing the Moon Page 26