Last Day

by Luanne Rice

  “When you said she wanted me to know about us,” Kate said, “what does that mean?”

  “We were together,” he said. “She was my person; I was hers.”

  She stared at him. He wasn’t much older than thirty, seven or eight years younger than Beth.

  “What about the fact she was married?” she asked.

  “Pete didn’t deserve her. He was a bastard, and she’d had enough. She stopped being able to pretend and put up with it, even for Sam’s sake. She was going to leave him.”

  “And be with you?”

  “She was already with me.”

  “But she was living with him.”

  “Presence is only part of it. Intent and feelings are what count.”

  He held out his left hand, showed her a ring. White gold or platinum, etched with fine markings. “She gave it to me, and I gave one to her. We designed them together. They were going to be our wedding bands, but we figured, why wait to wear them? They were our promise to each other.”

  Promise to each other. The same phrase had run through Kate’s mind just hours ago, remembering the blood sister ceremony. She leaned over the table to examine the ring’s delicate engraving more closely, but the dim light made it impossible.

  “Earl Grey,” the waitress said, setting down the blue-and-white bone china pot and two mismatched chipped porcelain cups and saucers. She poured the tea, then took a pewter sugar bowl off another table and left it with a pitcher of milk.

  “Beth wasn’t wearing hers,” Kate said as soon as the waitress walked away.

  “She only wore it when we were together.”

  “Did Pete know about you?”

  He frowned and looked troubled, didn’t speak as he stirred sugar into his tea.

  “Did he know, Jed?” she repeated.

  “I’m not sure. She was going to tell him.”

  “Tell him what?”

  “That we were in love. That she was divorcing him.”

  Kate sat up straighter. She thought of what Conor had said, about Pete’s anger building as he realized everything he was losing.

  “When?”

  “Well, she planned to when we saw each other a few days before he left on the boat trip.” He paused. “But I don’t know if she followed through.”

  “Why wouldn’t she let you know?”

  “I never spoke to her again. We were together that day—at my tent, don’t think it’s weird, Beth was the most, I don’t know, refined, elegant, whatever you want to call it, person I’ve ever known, but we were happy there. She could let all the bullshit go, all her unhappiness, and just be. Just be Beth. She left my tent that day, and I headed out to Fishers Island. She was supposed to talk to him, and she never called to let me know if she did.”

  “Why didn’t you go looking for her?”

  He stirred his tea, the milk swirling in the amber liquid, and was quiet for a long time. She had the feeling he was figuring out something to say. Inventing it as he went along? She waited.

  “I wanted to. I felt like getting a ferry back from Fishers, going to see her. But I thought maybe he’d talked her out of it. That she’d changed her mind,” he said finally. “It was up to her to tell me, and she didn’t.”

  “Really? But you were so sure. You gave each other rings. You promised each other.”

  “I know that. I hate myself for doubting her. But I live in a fucking tent. She’s Beth Woodward. She comes from all that. Maybe she decided she didn’t want to give it up.”

  Kate thought, The money is Beth’s, not Pete’s. He’d be the one giving it up.

  “To Beth a promise is a promise,” Kate said instead. But was that true? Even after the ceremony, the vows marked with blood, she and Beth hadn’t stayed close. “Are you the baby’s father?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Were you?”

  “You went through my tent. I know you took the sonogram.”

  “A ring, a baby,” Kate said. “But you didn’t even go to see her when you couldn’t get in touch. To find out what was wrong. What if it was a problem with the pregnancy? Especially if the baby was yours.”

  “Look, she wouldn’t tell me, okay?”

  “Whether you were Matthew’s father?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “At first, when she found out she was pregnant, she said I was. But about a month before she died, she backed off from that. She told me it was possible Pete was.”

  “Did she even know?” Kate asked.

  “She must have,” Jed said. “Because when she and I got together, there was nothing between her and Pete. She said it had been over a year. That’s why I was so sure.”

  He sounded miserable.

  “So what happened a month before she died?” Kate asked. “To make her be unsure?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe there was just one time with him; maybe he forced her. I can’t stand to think of either possibility. I think back six months before she died—February. That’s when Matthew was conceived. We were so happy; even before we found out she was pregnant, we knew we wanted to be together.”

  Kate thought about that. If Beth had any doubts, why had she given him the sonogram? Had something happened last summer to make her want to push Jed away?

  “This must be hard on you,” Kate said.

  “Fuck yeah, it is. But in my mind, in my heart, I know for sure I am Matthew’s father,” he said. “I feel it, Kate. She told me she’d stopped being with Pete long before she and I got together. But then . . .” He trailed off, as if remembering something painful. “After a while, during the pregnancy, she began to seem so sad.”

  “About the baby?”

  “About the whole thing. She cried a lot, and I had no idea how to help her. She said Sam would be upset—she already had to deal with her father having Tyler. She was really worried about Sam. I said I’d be Sam’s stepdad; I’d do anything to help her. But she just seemed to get farther away from me.”

  “Did she say more about it?”

  “She said she’d messed up her life, that everything was so complicated. I told her I loved her and our baby, and she could count on that—that she hadn’t messed up her life, that we’d have a great life.”

  Kate heard the passion and tears in his voice. She waited for him to be able to go on. “That’s when she said, ‘No one can count on anyone.’ I was shocked—I didn’t know what she meant. She told me she couldn’t plan anything—being with me, staying with Pete. It was because of him—he’s the one who messed her up. He treated her so badly.”

  “But she was so happy to be having the baby,” Kate said. “She told me—I could see it in her.”

  “I know,” Jed said. “She loved Matthew. It was the rest of her life that was making her crazy. Including me.”

  “You?”

  “She loved me. But she felt pressured. I didn’t want to put that on her, but she felt it anyway. She didn’t want to keep me hanging—but she couldn’t be sure she should leave Pete, upset Sam’s life that way.” He shook his head. “I figured she would sort things out once Sam was at camp and Pete left on his trip. I thought she’d tell me the truth, that I was the father. She wouldn’t feel so caught in the middle.”

  “Except you didn’t see her. Why, Jed? If you expected to hear the truth from her, why didn’t you just go over there?”

  “I told you! I was on Fishers Island. Beth arranged it, having me stay with her friends, give their grandkids drawing classes. I didn’t want to go. I wanted to be there to celebrate with her after she told Pete. I thought we’d be together then—for the rest of our lives.”

  “Did you tell her you didn’t want to go to Fishers Island?”

  “Of course. But she had made the effort for me, and I didn’t want to turn down a paying gig. My goal is—was—to pay my own way with her. She said she needed time alone. She was drowning in everything—the responsibility for everyone’s happiness, doing the right thing for Sam, for everyone she loved, and for us. I told her all I needed was her.
She didn’t answer.” He coughed as if he was choking. Tears streamed from his eyes.

  Kate felt tense, watching him. His emotion was hot, pouring off him. She felt it on her own face, scalding her cheeks.

  “I had no idea what to think,” he said, sounding as if he was about to explode. “Maybe she’d changed her mind about us—the guilt, the pressure, was too much for her. I’ll be honest; I was pissed. Hurt, whatever.” The anger seemed to leak out of him. He took a deep breath and peered at Kate. “Can you believe that? I wasted all that time feeling sorry for myself when she needed me.”

  Kate couldn’t reply or even look at him.

  “You hate me?” he asked. “Well, I hate myself. What if I’d gone earlier and could have stopped it?”

  “Yeah, what if you had?”

  “I would never have thought of what happened to her. That he could do what he did to her.” His voice broke again. “Kill her.”

  “Did Pete think the baby was yours?” Kate asked. She felt sick, thinking of what he might have done to Beth if he had.

  “I have no idea.”

  “You just said you were pissed. You could have refused to go to Fishers Island. You must have known there would be fireworks if Beth gave him that kind of news.”

  “You have no idea how guilty I feel about that. I think about it every day. What did she tell him; how did he react? What was that last day of life for her? I drive myself crazy thinking about it. Nothing you say can make me feel worse than I do already.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her throat tight, knowing how much time she spent thinking about Beth’s last day too.

  He stood up, started to leave. Her hand shot out and grabbed his wrist.

  “Don’t go,” she said. “Jed, I’m just so glad my sister was loved. That she was happy with you. I believe you when you say that.”

  “She was. We both were.”

  “The drawing you did of her—it was beautiful. I could tell, just by looking at it, that you adored her.”

  “That’s the word I would use too,” he said.

  “Can I ask you—how did you decide where to pitch your tent?”

  “Beth,” he said. “She took me to the island to draw flowers, but then she showed me that spot up the hill. It was private, under the pines, and she loved the sound of the brook.”

  The brook.

  Kate looked at his face, still streaked with tears. He had a faraway gaze in his eyes, as if everything he cared about was distant. What did it feel like to adore someone and to be loved this way?

  “Can I see your ring?” she asked.

  He pulled it off his finger, placed it in her palm. The metal felt warm.

  “You designed it, you said?” she asked.

  “We both did. The hearts were hers, the words were mine. Same line on both rings. My idea. I wanted the line to be about her, for her, and I needed it next to my skin.”

  Kate held the ring to the flickering Edison bulb in the brass sconce on the wall. The line was engraved in tiny script, but she knew it well.

  “It’s from a poem she used to read to me,” Jed said.

  Kate closed her eyes and couldn’t speak. The words were from “West-Running Brook.” Beth and Jed were each other’s north, and the brook ran west.

  “Pete thought—lots of people did—that Beth was settled, that what you saw with her was what you got, a lady who lived in a big house and dealt with high-priced art and rich collectors. She was so much more than that. She wanted to give it all up for me, go everywhere, feel everything.”

  Kate was silent, thinking of the poem: contraries in love.

  “She wouldn’t have given Sam up,” she said after a moment.

  “No. Never. She would have fought him for Sam—we both would have.”

  Kate turned the ring to see the other markings. The hearts were Beth’s, Jed had said. Under each were three dots.

  “Ellipses? To be continued?” she asked.

  “No. Those are drops of blood.”

  Kate’s pulse quickened. She pictured the scrawled hearts on the back of the canvas and on the last page of Vasari’s The Lives of the Artists, the book at Mathilda’s house.

  “Blood hearts,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said, sounding surprised. “That’s what she called them.”

  “Did you ever see Moonlight? The painting?”

  “She told me about it. How it was stolen during that time, when they tied you up and your mother died.”

  “You never saw the back of it, the unpainted side? What was drawn there?”

  “No,” he said. “She never even showed me the canvas. Why are you asking about the back?”

  “No reason,” Kate said, still staring at the hearts on the ring. “I was just wondering.” Then, “Where did she keep her ring?”

  Jed reached into his pocket, pulled it out, placed it on the table.

  It was beautiful, smaller than Jed’s. Beth had worn it. Kate picked it up. She closed her eyes and felt her sister’s passion. She turned it over and over in her hand, but Jed reached over and took it from her before she could slip it onto her own finger.

  45

  The first Saturday after school started, Kate went to the hardware store and bought an eco-friendly gel that wouldn’t leech into the sea. She filled a bag with safety goggles and gloves. She and Sam met Lulu, Scotty, and Isabel at Little Beach, and they scrubbed the boulders, removing the graffitied paint from the granite and quartz. After a while, Lulu, Scotty, and Kate left Sam and Isabel to finish the job and sat on a beach blanket to supervise. Julie walked the tide line, looking for sea glass.

  September skies were bluer than August, the sea cleaner, less churned up by boat traffic. A good breeze blew the tops off low waves, sent beach grass skittering and tracing circles on the hard sand. Kate had always loved this time of year, when vacations were over and she and her friends had the beach to themselves. Even over here, this hidden, private place felt more isolated. People weren’t likely to come through the path.

  Kate walked down to the water’s edge, picked up a piece of tide-scoured driftwood. Bleached silver by salt and sun, bark scraped off, it was a foot long, the thin, sharp tip of a broken branch. When she returned to the blanket, Scotty was on the phone with Nick, and Lulu was lying on her back, face to the sun.

  Waiting for Scotty to finish her call, Kate looked at her right index finger. For nearly a year after that day in Mathilda’s library, when they were teenagers, there had been a fine scar on the pad, from where she had pricked it, coaxed blood to bubble out. The mark had long since disappeared. When Scotty hung up, she shaded her eyes to look at Kate. So did Lulu.

  After smoothing a patch of sand beside the beach blanket, Kate used the branch to write the letters K, B, L, S. She encircled them with a heart.

  “Do you remember?” she asked.

  “Blood sisters,” Lulu said. “We wrote in the book.”

  “A long time ago,” Scotty said.

  “Time wasn’t supposed to matter,” Kate said.

  “And it didn’t,” Lulu said, holding out her hand, grabbing Kate’s. “Not to me.”

  “Feeling sentimental?” Scotty asked.

  “More like confused,” Kate said.

  “About what?” Lulu asked.

  “My sister’s secrets,” Kate said.

  “Which we helped her to keep,” Lulu said.

  “Are you blaming us?” Scotty asked.

  “We promised never to keep secrets from each other,” Kate said.

  “Beth and I were fourteen,” Scotty said. “You two were fifteen. We didn’t even know, really, what secrets meant. Look at them.” She nodded toward Sam and Isabel. “They think they’re so grown up, but they’re babies.”

  “I think we knew exactly what secrets were,” Kate said slowly, “when we were young. How powerful they are, how they can hurt. I think we’ve forgotten as we’ve grown up. At least Beth and I did. She was my sister, and I had no idea about her real life.”

&n
bsp; “Jed?” Lulu asked.

  Kate nodded. “She was leaving Pete for him. She wanted to marry him. I didn’t even know he existed.”

  “Kate,” Scotty said. “I don’t mean this in any sort of cruel way . . .”

  “Nice way to start your thought,” Lulu said dryly.

  “Take it as you will. But Beth was in love. Head over heels, madly in love. Feeling that way lends itself to secrets—makes it more delicious, maybe. However, it was never all one thing. There were some issues . . . she couldn’t make up her mind about. And, Kate, she was being sensitive to you.”

  “How?” Kate asked.

  “Well, love isn’t your thing. That kind of love, anyway.”

  “Scotty, is that vodka in your water bottle?” Lulu asked.

  “She’s right,” Kate said.

  “You loved Beth, you love Sam, you love us,” Lulu said.

  “That’s not the same as in love,” Scotty said.

  “Will you please shut up?” Lulu asked.

  “I meant it in a good way, truly,” Scotty said. “When you think of the fucking nightmare it can be, finding the right person, and even afterward—all Nick seems to do these days is run and train. He’s clearly trying to escape something; I only hope it isn’t me—ha. I really am sorry if it came out wrong, Katy.”

  “It’s okay,” Kate said, giving her friends a big smile, reassuring them that she was fine, not offended. “But, Scotty, what couldn’t she make up her mind about?”

  Scotty frowned for a second before speaking. “Well, um,” she began.

  Kate had a sudden, shocking feeling she was trying to get her story straight. “Just tell me. Don’t be afraid of hurting my feelings.”

  “Okay. It was just the pregnancy. You can’t even imagine what it’s like if you haven’t been . . . Sorry, but it’s like, expectant-mom brain. Hard to make decisions.”

  “Like whether to stay with Pete?” Lulu asked.

  “Like that,” Scotty said.