The Twilight Wife

by A. J. Banner

  Van’s gasping for breath.

  Earl takes Van’s pulse, and then the two men maneuver Van onto the stretcher while the younger firefighter talks into a radio. “We need an airlift at Helipad 1 on Mystic . . .”

  Van is lying on the stretcher, an oxygen mask over his face. We all stand back, Nancy crying. I wrap an arm around her shoulders.

  The men hoist the stretcher and carry Van to the front door.

  “I’m going with you,” Nancy says, grabbing her coat from a hook by the door.

  “We’ll take care of things here,” I say. “Don’t worry.”

  “Thank you.” She grabs her purse and whips past me. The dogs try to run after her, but Jacob grabs their collars. My breath is trapped in my throat. Jacob holds the front door open with one hand, for the medics. As they pass, Van looks at me, his eyes wide with terror. The diver rises below me in the churning water, his eyes wide with terror. He’s gasping for breath. I swim toward him, fighting the current. Another diver comes up behind me. The third diver, the diver below us, points back over his shoulder to his compression line. He’s not getting any air. He’s drowning, drifting away, and I can’t reach him.

  “He’ll be okay,” Jacob says on the drive home. We cleaned up the dishes and fed the dogs before we left.

  He reaches across the seat to hold my hand. “They gave him the Epi shot in time.”

  “I can’t get his face out of my mind,” I say. I feel mildly nauseated.

  “It was a freak accident . . . something he ate.”

  A freak accident, like me hitting my head.

  “We didn’t have any shellfish at the table,” I say.

  “It was something else. He must have developed an allergy to milk or peanuts.”

  “So late in life?”

  “He’s not that old, and yeah, it’s been known to happen.”

  “Poor Van. Poor Nancy.”

  “This will bring them closer together.”

  “It shouldn’t take a medical emergency,” I say.

  He squeezes my hand. “I’m sorry about all this. You don’t need any more trauma.” His eyes are soft, caring.

  “It did bring back a strange image of another diver. It looked like he was drowning.”

  He lets go of my hand. “You saw someone drown?”

  “Gasping for air, or . . . I don’t know. Yes, drowning. I don’t know when or where. But we were diving.”

  “You never went diving without me. We never saw anyone drown.”

  “Someone was running out of oxygen. Another diver.”

  “Nobody was running out of oxygen.”

  “I thought I saw . . .”

  “Your mind must’ve been playing tricks when you saw Van wearing the oxygen mask.”

  “Must’ve been.” We’re quiet the rest of the way back, watching the dark fields flit by. The island takes on a new, mysterious personality at night. Forms that were once easily identifiable as animals or trees become unrecognizable shape-shifters.

  At home, he makes a fire, pours himself a stiff glass of whiskey. “What a damned night.” He collapses on the couch.

  The sky is clear, moonlight casting an eerie glow through the window. “What if they don’t get him to the hospital in time?” I say.

  “Like I said, they got the shot into him.” He swirls the whiskey in his glass. “You should get some rest.”

  “I’m not sure I can get any sleep tonight.” The synapses in my brain are firing.

  “You could take one of your sleeping pills,” Jacob says, downing the rest of his drink.

  “I’m not taking any more drugs. I’m going for a walk.”

  “Now?” He sounds incredulous.

  Let’s take a midnight walk, Aiden says, holding my hand.

  “The moon is full. I’ll take a flashlight.”

  “It’s not safe,” Jacob says.

  “There aren’t any predators on the islands. No mountain lions or bears.”

  “But there’s the guy down the beach.”

  “He’s harmless.” I dress for the cold. Out in the icy air, I feel free, relieved to be alone. I need to talk to Sylvia. I can’t fit all the puzzle pieces together. Van’s frightened eyes haunt me, the eyes of the phantom diver.

  I walk to the water’s edge. The shoreline looks different in darkness, the driftwood like bodies stranded in the sand. On a rocky stretch of beach, I sit on a boulder and watch the lights of distant freighters on the horizon. Far from the city, the stars jostle for space in the night sky. I’ve been here before, in the dark, my mind rife with regrets and worries. I always loved the beach at night, even when I was very young. I sneaked out my window to be alone with the sea. The moonlight on the waves calmed me. I catch an image from long ago, of Jacob walking toward me on a night like this one, on a beach with a view across the Puget Sound. We were waiting for Aiden to arrive. He was late—we were all going somewhere together. Jacob kept checking his watch, sighing with exasperation. I said maybe we shouldn’t go. I didn’t feel well. Jacob said we could go without Aiden. The guy doesn’t like the symphony anyway. Ah, so that’s what it was. The symphony. But it was my stomach, roiling and heaving, that kept us from going, in the end. Right there, I threw up in the sand, sat down to catch my breath. I apologized to Jacob, but he said not to worry. He brought me a glass of water and stayed with me until I felt better.

  * * *

  I’m lying on my side at the edge of the bed, facing the bathroom door. Moonlight casts mottled patterns on the wall. I follow the movement of shadows. Jacob’s tucked his knees against the backs of my legs, his arm heavy on my waist. His familiar smell envelops me. But it’s not his voice I hear in my ear. It’s Aiden’s. I’ve missed hanging out with you, he says in my memory. I’ve missed him, too. But we’re not here—we’re somewhere else. I know the shapes of the furniture—a tall antique dresser, a window much like this one. I can’t hold on to the place or the time. But Jacob’s arm becomes Aiden’s arm around my waist. You came back. I was worried you wouldn’t.

  How could I not come back?

  We have so much to talk about, he said.

  Jacob pulls me close. I wait until he snores, and then I slide out of his arms. I can’t sleep at all. I go into the garage and pull my scuba suit off the wall. Our tanks and equipment gather dust on a shelf. What happened on the dive?

  I put on the scuba mask, listen to my own loud breathing. Attach the cylinder to the BCD, Jacob says in my mind.

  I’m trying, I say.

  Attach the regulator to the cylinder valve. Then open the cylinder valve. He’s patient, but I’m frustrated. I can’t do this so quickly and easily. Diving is new to me. But not for him. He’s experienced. He’s logged thousands of hours in training.

  So why did we put ourselves at risk diving in the pass? He told me to stay close, not to stray. I would be okay if I just stayed behind him. Did I? Or did I break the rules?

  * * *

  Jacob picks up a pot of beet plants to put in our shopping basket. He has driven me east across the island to Mystic Nursery, hidden on an acre of lush forest.

  “I’m not a big fan of beets,” I say, eyeing the plant in the basket.

  “I love them,” Jacob says. “But get what you want.”

  Carrots, parsnips, globe onions, cauliflower. I choose a variety of root crops and leaf crops to plant in the fall. They’ll mature in the spring. Jacob chooses his own plants, and when we get back to the house, we cart them all out to his mother’s old garden. This corner of the property feels haunted, as if his mother still wanders through her overgrown series of weedy, raised beds, the stone borders thick with moss. “How long has it been?” I say, pulling up my hood in the spitting rain.

  Jacob looks around the garden and smiles. “After I stopped coming out to the island, long after my dad died, she still came out to tend the garden now and then. Before she got sick. She was here maybe . . . fifteen years ago? She died twelve years ago.”

  “I’m so sorry. This garden must ha
ve been special to her.”

  “It was the only place my dad wouldn’t follow her,” he says. “He was allergic to lavender.” He points to the thick lavender bushes still thriving in two of the raised beds.

  “So the garden was her sanctuary,” I say.

  Jacob nods sadly. In the few images of her in his photo albums, she’s at the water’s edge, wearing a headscarf and waving from a distance, or seated at a restaurant across from Jacob, wearing huge sunglasses.

  He brought his camera out to the garden, and he snaps a photograph of me digging a spade into the ground, turning over the damp soil.

  “Hey, come on,” I say. “I’m a mess.”

  “A beautiful mess.” He snaps another shot.

  “I’m not a gardener.”

  “You started digging here last summer. But we didn’t have time to plant anything. We were on vacation.”

  It’s therapeutic to get down on my hands and knees, digging in the soil, making room for new life. We work in tandem, digging holes, dropping the plants inside, and adding new, organic soil. I uncover a faded, handwritten plant marker that reads, Thymus citriodorus “Aureus.” I hand the marker to Jacob. “Is this your mother’s writing?”

  “Yeah,” he says, sitting back on his heels. His eyes cloud over with sadness. “This was her favorite plant ever.”

  “Thymus citriodorus?” I say.

  “Lemon thyme. I looked everywhere at the nursery, but I couldn’t find any. She loved lemon thyme lotion, the smell of lemon. Everything had to be lemon thyme with her. I wish I could’ve found some in her honor.” He presses the marker into the soil behind the plant.

  “We can keep looking,” I say. A few minutes later, I find another marker. Allium schoenoprasum. Chives.

  “Wow, I can’t believe I missed these,” he says.

  I find no more markers. We plant such a variety of herbs and vegetables, tilling up the soil as we go, that the raised beds look transformed when we’ve finished. The garden takes on a cheery, hopeful demeanor, waiting for the sunshine and rains of spring.

  “Do you think the plants will survive?” I say.

  “My mother knew where to put them,” he says, as we head back through the yard. I’m pleasantly tired. When we reach the house, I remember a flash from last summer. That’s your mother’s old garden? I said. So many raised beds.

  She spent a lot of time out there, Jacob said to me. She had a green thumb. Sometimes I feel her here, like she’s watching me.

  Like a ghost? I said.

  Not exactly, he said with his signature touch of suppressed irritation. Like a mother watching over her son.

  I’m riding my bicycle down to see Van on his boat. He came home from the hospital this morning and went straight back to work. He’s anchored a mile south of the harbor in a secluded bay. I follow a narrow dirt road down to the water’s edge. The fields and forests race by, autumn clouds tumbling across the sky. Driftwood litters the beach, and tethered to a weathered dock, Van’s boat gently bobs on the waves—a large dive and salvage vessel painted in red and gray. There are no other boats, no houses anywhere in sight, nobody on the narrow beach.

  Van emerges from the cabin in a striped sweater, knit cap, jeans, and boots, squinting although the sky is not bright. “Kyra!”

  “Van.” I’m gripping the handlebars so tightly, my fingers hurt. I loosen my grip and walk my bike the rest of the way on the dock.

  “Come aboard.”

  I put down the bike, and he takes my hand, helps me onto the boat. I’ve stood here before, on this faded deck with its faint smell of salty sea and new paint.

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” I say.

  “It was not my idea of a trip to Disneyland.”

  “How did it happen? Do you know what you ate?”

  “Complete mystery, but I’m a changed man. Every time we dive into a wreck, I put my life on the line. But this time, I stared death in the face over dinner.”

  “Don’t joke. You never know what’s going to happen. Life can change in an instant.”

  “You know that as well as I do.” Van leads me into the cabin. Laid out on tabletops are the rusty remains from sunken ships—old shoes, wine bottles, and ceramics. The room is also packed with equipment—metal tools and cameras, dive gear, scuba suits hanging on the walls. Life jackets, ropes, a dinghy. “How can I help you?” he says.

  “What do you know about the diving accident?”

  “Only what Jacob told us.”

  “I feel as though someone else was there. Was it you?”

  “Me!” He looks startled. Then his face closes, concealing . . . what? “What makes you say that?”

  “Someone else was there.”

  He frowns at me. “It wasn’t me.”

  “I wonder who it was.”

  “How do you know someone else was there? Did Jacob tell you that?”

  “He said nobody else was there. But I’m seeing images of a third diver. I’m certain the third diver struggled for air. What could cause someone to run out of air while diving? The nitrox you told me about, could that do it?”

  “You could get oxygen toxicity. If you don’t keep an eye on your gauge.”

  “But you could survive, get rescued.”

  “I suppose. It’s possible, yes.”

  “What else could go wrong?”

  “Lots of things. You could lose your tank if you don’t secure it to your BC—your vest. The strap expands in the water. If the strap slips, you’re in trouble. Or the regulator could malfunction. Happened to me once.”

  “Was it accidental?”

  “Yeah. Why are you asking me this? You and Jacob survived. He’s an advanced diver. He had to go through rebreather training.”

  The word rebreather echoes distantly. “What about someone on a scientific dive? Documenting sea life?”

  “Depends. Inexperienced diver, out of shape, overexerts himself and uses up his air. He panics and rises to the surface too quickly. Fatal air embolism. Nitrogen bubbles in the blood.”

  “But what if a diver is healthy and experienced and isn’t ascending too quickly?”

  “Doesn’t happen to experienced divers. They check their equipment before they dive. It’s more common for a diver to misjudge, panic. If you’ve had a cold or allergies, you could still be congested. You’re not thinking straight, you use up your gas—oxygen, as you say. You breathe deeply but you feel like you’re not getting air. Your body gets stressed.”

  “Jacob is a master diver. He taught me to dive. And yet—”

  “Divers panic in the rough waters. About one in ten diving deaths is due to rough seas, strong currents. Diver can’t deal with it.”

  “One in ten. That’s a lot.”

  “It was probably the current. You fought it and got to safety.”

  “You’re right . . . but there’s something nagging at me. Something I need to remember.”

  “If you need any other help, I’m here until tomorrow. Then I leave for Colombia, got a job there off the coast. I’ll be back in about a month.”

  “You’re fast back to work after almost dying.”

  “Yeah, I gotta make ends meet,” he says, taking a deep breath. “For Nancy. She wants to do more things together, go to romantic places. Last romantic thing we did together was a night down at the B and B.”

  A thought comes to me. I turn to him. “The same one we stayed in when we first got here last summer?”

  “Yeah, out on the north side of town. There’s only one. You want to go back there?”

  “Just to see if I get anything . . . a memory.”

  “You’d better hurry over there. They might be closing for the season.”

  The Mystic Cove Bed & Breakfast Manor is a large Victorian mansion nestled in the woods, with a grand view of the sea. The wraparound porch has been restored, and the gardens and gazebos are impeccably maintained. I ring the bell at the front counter. The air smells of wood polish. A portly, dark-haired woman emerges from the back ro
om, her ruddy face beaming. She’s wearing a flowing, colorfully patterned dress, a long wool sweater over the top. “Ah, Mrs. Winthrop, how lovely to see you again!”

  “Call me Kyra.”

  “And you must call me Waverly.”

  “I’m relieved to find you still open.”

  “We close for the winter season in November. I wish we could stay open year-round. Maybe next year.”

  “Lovely place you have here.”

  “Thank you. Let me give you a hug.” She comes around from behind the counter to envelop me in a comforting embrace, then she steps back and touches her soft hand to my cheek. “My husband, Bert, passed away six months ago. He would have loved to see you again.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I say, hugging her again.

  This time, when she pulls away, her eyes are wet with tears. “Thirty-five years we were married, and we loved every minute of it. I hope you and your husband are as happy as we were.”

  “Did we seem happy?” I say.

  “You sure did. Is something wrong?” She searches my face.

  “No, not exactly. I was interested in the place we stayed last time we were here together.”

  “Gargoyle Cottage. Lovely cottage for honeymooners. You two arrived early summer of last year, I believe it was.”

  “I’d like to see the cottage again if it’s okay with you.”

  “Serendipity! Gargoyle Cottage is empty. We’re slow this time of year.” She grabs a key from the hook on the wall, pulls on a long coat, and leads me out the front door and along a path through the woods. The day is growing cold, a hint of winter wafting in. She leads me several yards away from the main house, to a secluded Victorian cottage on the bluff. “This may have been the servants’ quarters,” Waverly says, out of breath. “Originally.” The cottage is painted in solid blue and gold, with a double staircase climbing to a wraparound porch. Inside, the air smells fresh, the rooms furnished in ornate antiques, a four-poster bed from the 1800s taking up most of the bedroom.

  “This is amazing,” I say.

  “We take pride in our accommodations. I’ll leave you to look around. Just give me a holler if you want to book the room again.”