The Night Mark

by Tiffany Reisz

  “Miss Faye, what brings you out here?” he called across the lawn. “Come to take pictures of the sound? Nice evening for it.” He pointed his paintbrush at the sky. Red-and-gold clouds crowded together over the water, creating a ruby-and-citrine sunset. “Red sky at night, sailor and painter’s delight.”

  Faye sat on the stone bench next to his chair and looked him in the eyes. At first he didn’t seem to want to return her gaze, but eventually he gave in and looked at her.

  “I need to know everything you know about Carrick and Faith Morgan,” Faye said. “Everything. And I know you didn’t tell me everything, so don’t pretend you did.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

  “You know. You performed Carrick’s funeral mass. I’m guessing you heard his confessions, too?”

  “Faye, I’m a priest.”

  “You’re a retired priest.”

  “Once a priest, always a priest. I won’t betray a parishioner who put his trust in me. There are rules.”

  “I don’t care about the rules. I have to know about them. I have to know what you know about Faith Morgan.”

  “Faith Morgan—why do you have to know about her? She died in a storm almost a century ago.”

  “In a storm? Are you sure? Because last time we talked, she fell off a pier and drowned.”

  Pat’s eyes narrowed. He looked up to the sky. “Was it a storm? It was. I know it was. But a pier...that sounds right, too.” He turned and met her eyes. She saw fear in his. He stood up and put his hands to his head, lowered them and faced her.

  “The pier,” he said. “I remember the pier. Faye, what’s happening?”

  “I don’t know. But I think you do.”

  “You went into the water, didn’t you?” he asked.

  Faye slowly nodded. “Pat, I’m going to tell you about a miracle. You’re a priest, so I assume you believe in them.”

  “I want to believe in them.”

  “Then believe in this,” Faye said, taking his paintbrush from his hand and placing it on his easel. She took both of his hands into both of hers. Hers were steady. His weren’t, but she knew they weren’t shaking because of his tremor. In his eyes, she saw fear. Maybe he didn’t want to believe in miracles. Maybe he was afraid to.

  “What’s the miracle?” he asked.

  “I am Faith Morgan.”

  19

  Faye told Pat the truth, all of it, and he listened without speaking until she reached the end of her tale.

  She thought it had started raining until she realized the two drops of water on her wrist hadn’t come from the clouds above but from the eyes of the priest whose shaking hands she held.

  “You believe me,” she said. It wasn’t a question. A man wouldn’t weep when told a lie, but he might when told a truth he didn’t want to hear.

  Slowly, he nodded his head. He pulled his hands from her grasp and stood. She followed him over to the dock that looked out on the marshy sound.

  “‘I grow old/I grow old/I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled,’” he said.

  “T. S. Eliot. ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,’” Faye said. “I read that just last week at the cottage. Carrick has a first American edition on his bookshelves.”

  “Eliot died in ’65. Same year Carrick did,” Pat said, kicking a pebble off the dock and into the water, where it made hardly a ripple. “As for me, I could have died when I went out to the lighthouse.”

  “You said you decided against killing yourself.”

  “I did. It was a foolish whim, and when it passed I wanted to ask God’s forgiveness. Despair is a sin, but I’d say it’s the sin God forgives most often and most easily. So I rolled up my trousers, waded in the water and took my rosary out of my pocket. That rosary was special to me. Carrick gave it to me before he died.”

  “Silver beads? Medal that says ‘S. Brendanus’?”

  “Saint Brendan, yes. Patron of sailors. I was holding the rosary, praying my way through the first decade, when my hands got a tremor. Dropped it right in the water. I dived for it. A wave hit and threw me under. I really didn’t think I’d come up again. What a nasty trick that would be for the ocean to kill me not ten minutes after I’d decided not to kill myself. But somehow I made it to the surface again. God knows I was fighting for my life. When I came up everything looked different. The sky was dark and getting darker, but the lighthouse, it was shining. I saw the light flash and I thought I had died. But then I saw the house that hadn’t been there before and the long wooden pier in the water. I saw a woman standing at the very edge of the pier, like she’d found where the sidewalk ends.”

  “Did you see her face?”

  “No.”

  “What did she throw in the water?” Faye asked.

  “Herself,” he said.

  “Are you sure?” Faye asked.

  “I’m sure. The water was choppy, but not choppy enough to pull a girl down off a pier. She jumped, Faye. I saw her jump into the water.”

  “Why would she jump? She was finally free from her husband.”

  “I don’t know. And don’t think I haven’t wondered about that every single day of my life.”

  “What happened next, Pat?”

  He shook his head. “I tried to save her. It was the damnedest thing. I took off swimming after her like I was twenty-five again. I knew how it felt to swim these waters when I was young and strong. I did it often enough when I was pastor here in the sixties. But before I could reach her, another wave hit me and I went under. When I came up again, the dock was gone, and the cottage, and the lighthouse was dark. I felt like an old man again. Sometimes I wish... I wish I could have stayed.”

  “Did you know what had happened? Did you understand it?” Faye’s relief that she wasn’t the only one who’d been there, who’d been part of this mystery was knee weakening. She could have cried.

  “I thought I’d passed out,” he said. “I thought it was all a dream. But telling myself that didn’t sit right with me. I’m not prone to denial. I went to the hospital and got tests run. They all came back clear. I wanted to believe it wasn’t real even though I knew better. On my better days I’m a man of faith. It’s easy to say you believe in miracles and signs and wonders, and that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in all our philosophies, but when something happens you can’t explain except by calling it a miracle, you can’t imagine how hard that is on your faith. Faith is believing without knowing, without seeing. But when you see...” He stopped and looked up at the sky as if seeking the face of God. She hoped Pat saw it. All she saw were clouds, but such beautiful clouds that if one believed in God, one might imagine Him or Her as a painter.

  “I thought I was crazy, too, for a little while,” Faye said. “When I woke up and there was Will in my bedroom, I kissed him. I thought it was the best dream I’d ever had in my life. And then when I realized I was somehow Faith Morgan, that I was Carrick’s daughter, I thought I was in a waking nightmare.”

  “Faith was not his daughter,” Pat said, his voice firm and final. “And Carrick Morgan would never lay a hand on a woman unless she wanted his hands on her. He was a good man.”

  Faye didn’t tell him how much it hurt to hear Carrick spoken about in the past tense. Carrick is a good man. Carrick is, not was.

  “He told you about Faith?” Faye asked.

  “He did. And I can tell you a little of what I know because he told me over dinner one night, not under the seal of the confessional.”

  “Please tell me anything you can about her.” Faye said her when what she meant was me. Tell me about me, she wanted to say to him.

  “Faith’s real name was Millie Anne Scarborough.”

  “Millie Anne Scarborough,” Faye repeated, testing the name in her mouth and finding it foreign.

  “Millie’s parents were old money, but when her father died when she was sixteen, her mother discovered there was none of that old money left. No money, but plenty of debt and thr
ee daughters who needed husbands. The only way to get out of that debt was to marry the girls off to wealthy men. Luckily they found takers for all three girls. One senator’s son, one bank president and one former navy officer who’d inherited a fortune from his industrialist father.”

  “Marshall.”

  “Lieutenant Marshall J. Carlyle of the Carlyle Steel fortune. He was forty years old when he married Faith, and she’d just turned eighteen. Marshall and Chief Carrick Morgan had been buddies in the war, served on the same ship. They kept each other sane, Carrick said. Kept each other alive. They were very close. Then the war was over and they returned to their civilian lives. Carrick took a job at the Boston Light. Marshall Carlyle finally decided to get married and have children. He wanted a young girl, and he wanted a pretty girl, and he had enough money he could snap his fingers and get both. Millie fit the bill. Carrick said Marshall caused a minor scandal by inviting him to the wedding. Rich, old-money socialites didn’t usually invite poor-as-dirt Irish Catholic sailors to their weddings, especially not the society wedding of the year. Carrick went, though he didn’t want to. Had a soft spot for Miss Scarborough himself.”

  “He loved her a little bit,” Faye said. “He said something about wanting to stop the wedding. He saw her crying before the ceremony.”

  “No stopping that wedding. Not with a fortune spent and another fortune to be gained or lost. She married him—God help that poor girl. Her husband ruled the house with an iron fist.”

  “She ran away from him. I know that. How did she get to the island?”

  “Train from Boston to New York. Hid in the big city a couple days, then hired a driver to take her to South Carolina. Marshall and Carrick had stayed in touch, so I assume that’s how she knew where to find him. She didn’t tell him she was coming, though. I don’t think she told a soul. Just walked out of her house and disappeared. Turned up on Carrick’s doorstep one night. She told him her husband had tried to kill her. So Carrick took her in, told everyone she was his daughter who’d come to stay with him now that she was out of school. A believable enough story then. People still think she was his daughter to this day. No need to correct them and cause a scandal. Might as well let sleeping dogs lie.”

  “How did she come to be ‘Faith’?”

  “Old nickname her grandmother had given her. She and her two sisters all had nicknames as little girls—Faith, Hope and Love. Millie was Faith.”

  “Is that why you painted her? Because you knew you saw her the night she died?” Faye asked.

  “She didn’t die that night. She died later in the storm. So strange,” he said, raising his hand to his forehead. “I remember both.”

  “I had a dream about her. I dreamed I was running away from my husband. I wore a black dress and a black veil. Widow’s weeds. It was Faith’s dream. Or maybe one of her memories she let me see.” Faye leaned her head back, looked at the darkening sky. “Why is this happening, Pat? What does it mean? Is it reincarnation? Was Will really Carrick in a past life? Was I Faith?”

  “Catholics don’t believe in reincarnation.”

  “Then what do you think it is?”

  “You lost Will in a tragic accident. Carrick lost Faith in a tragic accident. Reconciliation, maybe? Restoration? Hell, it could be reincarnation. All I know is that I don’t know.”

  “You’re a priest. You’re supposed to know these things.”

  “There’s nothing in the Bible about time travel, my dear. Seeing visions, yes, but not...not anything like this. We are in deep water here.”

  “It’s not much of a restoration with me in this time and Carrick back in 1921. I can’t stand the thought of him thinking I’m dead. He’s there right now, broken the way I was when Will died.”

  “But he’s not, Faye. Carrick’s dead. Has been since 1965. I can take you to the cemetery right now and show you his grave. It’s right next to...”

  Pat choked on whatever he was about to say next. He simply stopped speaking and could not go on.

  “Mine,” Faye said. “Right? His grave his next to mine.”

  “Next to Faith Morgan’s.”

  “The Faith Morgan who died in the storm?”

  Pat nodded. “She’s buried here in Beaufort. Anything with her real name on it was buried with her. Even after she died, Carrick wanted to protect her from her husband.”

  Faye’s heart tossed and twisted like wind chimes in a storm. Her own grave was here in Beaufort. Strangely, it didn’t bother her, the thought of seeing her own grave. But Carrick’s? She couldn’t bear to see Carrick’s. She hadn’t even allowed Will to be buried in the ground under a headstone, fearing that if she buried him in the earth and put up a monument to him, she would never leave his tomb. If she saw Carrick’s grave...

  “Pat... I refuse to believe I went back in time ninety-four years by accident. Of all the people to go back, it was me—the widow of a man who looks just like Carrick. The one woman on earth who would want to be there and stay there. Me. And I was the one who went. I won’t know why unless I go back.”

  “Go back?” Pat faced her, stared at her, eyes wide and stunned. “You can’t possibly mean that.”

  “I can mean that. I was happy there. Do you know what it means to be able to say I was happy anywhere?”

  “You were there six days. Six. That’s a vacation, Faye. You know what they say—nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. You don’t want to live in 1921. Penicillin hadn’t even been invented yet.”

  “I won’t get sick.”

  “You can’t know that. Do you know what the infant mortality rate was back then?”

  “What does that matter to a woman who can’t have babies?” Faye shook her head, wanted to laugh and cry, but did neither. “Pat—I was almost eaten by an alligator. Carrick killed it with an ax and Dolly turned it into stew for dinner. Trust me. I know that 1921 isn’t safe. I also know my husband was killed in 2011 when he tried to change a tire for some meth heads. Life is dangerous and it kills us eventually. Right?”

  “You can’t live in the past.”

  Faye stood up and walked away from Pat a few steps before turning around and facing him.

  “You sound just like my ex-husband. That’s such a condescending, male thing to say. It sounds rational. It sounds like something smart to say, but it’s meaningless. We are all the sum of every single day we’ve lived. We are our pasts. Not only can I live in the past, I did live in the past, and it was the first time I was living in a long time. And if the past wants me to live in it, why shouldn’t I? At least the past and I have met. The future’s a total stranger.”

  Pat walked over to her, put his hands on her shoulders.

  “You know Carrick isn’t Will and Will isn’t Carrick. Will’s no more alive in 1921 than he is in 2015.”

  Faye didn’t meet his eyes, couldn’t meet them.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “But he’s not dead, either.”

  “Faye, look at me.”

  She sighed and met his eyes.

  “Carrick doesn’t know who you are,” he said. “He thinks he’s in love with his war buddy’s young wife. You deserve better than being loved for something you aren’t. You should be loved for you, as Faye. And Carrick—he’s not Will. And he deserves better than that, too. He deserves to be loved for who he is, not who he reminds you of. I don’t have to tell you that, do I?”

  “I would have told him, but I thought...I thought he’d send me to a mental hospital. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Maybe I would have in his shoes. But I’m not Carrick. The man I knew would have heard you out, and he would have bent his own soul backward to believe in you.”

  “If I tell him the truth, he might not love me anymore.”

  “If you don’t tell him the truth, it’s not you he loves.”

  Pat’s words hurt because they were true. She nodded. “I’ll try.”

  “That’s all I ask. Carrick was a dear friend to me during a hard time of my life. He told me his
secrets and I told him mine, and we both respected each other more after. That doesn’t happen often. I almost envy you. I’d like to shake his hand again, tell him how much his friendship meant to me.”

  “I’ll do that for you. It would be my pleasure.”

  “You’re really going to do this?”

  “Dolly had to spend a night in the lighthouse with Carrick to keep him from throwing himself into the ocean. A seventeen-year-old girl—a girl I love and adore—had to sleep in front of a doorway to stop a suicide. If I can save her from that, if I can save Carrick from that... How can I not go back?”

  “Is that the real reason? Or is that how you’re justifying what could very well be a suicide attempt of your own?”

  Faye crossed her hands on her chest over her heart.

  “I love him, Pat.”