by Luanne Rice
“Sailing by yourself?” she asked.
“Yes, Rumer.”
“From here to Nova Scotia,” she said. “And then to Ireland… that's the North Atlantic, Dad. The storms get bad out there—the waves are so big…”
“My boat is sturdy,” he said. “A Herreshoff.”
“But the arthritis,” she said. “You have so much pain, Dad. How will you do it? How will you manage—to react quickly, when you have to?”
“This might be my last chance,” he said. “I've given it so much thought, honey. I don't want to die without sailing the Atlantic.”
“Then don't go alone,” she said, taking his hand across the table. “Charter a bigger boat, with a captain. Please, Dad.”
“The Clarissa's, big enough, sweetheart. I wouldn't be the first man to cross in a New York 30.”
“Then take someone with you.”
“This is my dream; I'm going alone,” her father said, smiling into her eyes. Reaching across the seat, he held her hand for a moment, then squeezed her fingers and, as if he had already started to leave, gently slid his gnarled hand away
“Your dream,” she whispered.
“If I leave to follow mine,” he said quietly, “maybe you'll stay and find yours.”
“I live my dream,” she said, “right here in our house, with you, with my work…”
“That's not enough,” he said. “Taking care of an old man, trading your life for mine… I won't have it. No, Rumen I want you to take something from life, something really wonderful, all for yourself.”
“It's all right here, Dad,” Rumer said, watching the summer heat shimmer above the estuary's green rushes and blue water. “You know that. Stay.”
“Sometimes a person has to visit where he came from to find out where he's going,” he said. “Life never stays the same—as much as we love today, tomorrow's coming fast. You understand?”
Rumer shrugged, but deep inside she did understand. Was that why Zeb had come back to Hubbard's Point? To look back so he could know where he was going next?
Shaking her head, Rumer knew it didn't matter. What Zeb did was none of her concern. But knowing that her father was about to take off on such a dangerous journey filled her with worry. Her father had been the most solid part of her life; she couldn't imagine what she'd do without him.
“You'll be fine, Rumer,” he said quietly.
“Oh, I know that, Dad,” she said. “I just hope you will—”
“I'll have your mother with me,” he said gruffly. “In spirit, in my heart. She'll look after me. And you'll have…”
“Edward,” she said.
“No comment,” her father said.
“Good,” Rumer said.
She thought of the farm, of the smell of loam and livestock, of Edward's warm brown eyes, the feeling of his arms around her shoulders. But she still felt empty at the thought of her father leaving.
“Will you be home for dinner tonight?” he asked.
“Probably. But I think I'll go up to the farm for a while. Bade Blue, see Edward, plant some flowers along his front walk…” Working in the earth always made her feel safe and balanced. Her hands were shaking, and she tried to hold them steady in her lap. What was happening to her?
“Taken Michael up there yet?” he asked.
“No. I wonder whether he'd remember,” she said. “I think it would kill me to learn that he doesn't.”
“One sure way to find out,” her father said.
“I wish they'd never come back,” Rumer said.
“Don't say that,” her father warned, shocked by her bitterness.
“It's taken all this time to get over it,” she said. “And now they're here, and you're leaving…” Tears sprang to her eyes. “Sorry, Dad,” she said brushing at them. “I'm just feeling sorry for myself.”
“Everyone needs a little of that now and then,” he said. “But I promise you, Rumer, all will be well.”
And then it was time to head back for afternoon office hours. She kissed her father's cheek, and together they drove through town. The ground of Black Hall felt so solid beneath their wheels, and Rumer tried not to think of huge waves, of gale winds, of a relatively small boat on a marvelously huge sea. They drove past the white churches and green marshes, the fish store with its great cod weathervane.
Rumer's hands were still trembling; her heart shifted in her chest. Zeb's arrival had changed everything. Rumer had felt the air was charged since the initial jolt of seeing him; in spite of the hot, sunny day, she felt it now. She thought of what her father had just said, about visiting the past to see the future, and she went spinning way back in time.
Michael had been two.
Elizabeth called Rumer in the middle of the night— it was three o'clock in Connecticut, midnight in Los Angeles. Slurring her words, crying, Elizabeth had been drinking.
“Michael won't fall asleep,” she sobbed into the phone. “He just cries and cries.”
“Is he sick?” Rumer asked, alarmed. “Does he have a fever?”
“No, it isn't that… he's upset. He's always upset!”
“Why, Elizabeth?”
“All the yelling.”
Rumer gripped the phone, half wanting to hear everything about Elizabeth and Zeb fighting, half wanting to hang up before her sister said another word.
“You're happy, I suppose,” Elizabeth said, sniffling. “Nothing would make you happier than to know Zeb and I aren't getting along.”
“No, Zee,” Rumer said. But her heart was beating hard, the way it did when she was trying to convince herself of something false. Even when her brain was attempting to accept something she found unacceptable, her heart would know the truth.
“Sure. You want us to hate each other, don't you? Want our marriage to end so you can say ‘I told you so,’ so you can have him!”
“Elizabeth, stop,” Rumer said. “You're wrong. But forget all that—is Michael still upset? Where is he?”
“Say what you want,” Elizabeth said, sobbing as the ice clinked in her glass. “But I know how you feel. I see it in your eyes when we get together—it's not the same between us, Rumer. You've turned against me. Even now you sound so cold! You think I stole him from you, when you two were never more than friends.”
“It's three o'clock in the morning, and—”
“You never used to mind when I called you late!”
“Listen! You said Michael was crying. Never mind about us,” she said, relieved to get off the subject of her sister and Zeb. “Tell me about Michael.”
“Now you're going to say I'm a lousy mother.”
“Shush, Zee. Just tell me—”
“He's sitting in his crib, holding on to that dumb stuffed horse you gave him.”
“He is?” Rumer had asked, remembering the delight in Michael's eyes as she'd pressed the toy into his arms.
“Whatever. He's holding it, rocking, saying boo, boo, boo…”
“He's saying Blue…”
“Oh, whatever it is, it's driving me—”
“Elizabeth,” Rumer said, interrupting her. “Let him come stay with me for a while. Will you? Sounds like you could use the break…”
“I'm leaving for Scotland next week,” her sister said, “to start filming.”
“Well, would Zeb mind? Would he let Michael come stay with me?”
“Zeb,” Elizabeth said, her voice rising as if she wanted her husband—in the next room, out on the terrace, somewhere just out of earshot—to hear, “would be relieved, I'm sure. Says he can't leave Michael alone with me for a minute…I'm the lousy parent. He's just wonderful—an astronaut, a national hero.”
“Elizabeth,” Rumer said. “Calm down. Can Michael hear you?”
“He's the hero, and I'm—what did you call me, Zeb? A drunk?”
“Elizabeth, stop,” Rumer said, seething with frustration, wanting to transport herself bodily through the phone line. Mixed in was the old anger at both Elizabeth and Zeb bubbling up again.
“Elizabeth,” Rumer repeated, picturing Michael's face buried in Blue, wanting to grab him up into her arms.
“I was great,” Elizabeth said. “I know when I'm doing my best work, and that was it… now I'm heading off to the Outer-fucking-Hebrides to work with the same director, and he's treating me so differently—as if I let him down. Zeb couldn't care less, Michael's all upset—how can I leave him with his nanny when he's like this?”
“Michael wants to come out here,” Rumer had said softly. “He does, Elizabeth.”
“He what?”
“He's calling Blue,” Rumer said. “My horse. Michael loves him.”
“Blue—Auntie's horse?” Elizabeth asked, her mouth just brushing away from the receiver as if speaking directly to Michael.
Rumer had heard him squawk: “Yak! Boo! Boo!”
“Huh,” Elizabeth said, her tone changing dramatically. “He's saying he wants to see the horse?”
“Boo!” Michael yelped in the background.
Elizabeth laughed—it was forced, Rumer remembered now. As if her sister had actually found nothing, nothing at all, that was funny about the situation. “You were my husband's first love,” Elizabeth said, “and now you're my son's.”
“Don't think like that,” Rumer said sharply.
“Hmmm,” Elizabeth said, ice and glass clinking again.
Nine days later, with Elizabeth filming in Scotland, and Zeb down in a Houston lab, examining satellite photos of strip-mining in West Virginia, Rumer and Michael couldn't be pried apart.
Rumer would take him on long rides through the countryside, to see her horse. The time had flown too fast, and every second with her nephew had become precious beyond words.
Remembering that now, driving through town with her father, Rumer thought of what he had said: “If I leave to follow my dream, maybe you'll stay to find yours.” Her eyes filled with tears, thinking of her father sailing away. But the thought of Michael so near, right now, soothed her heart, and she wondered whether her dreams were closer than she'd thought.
Michael was walking up the road, covered with salt spray and smelling like lobsters, when he saw his aunt coming down the hill with a box filled with small plants. She looked confused, as if she just happened to find herself in her own yard and forgot how she'd gotten there. Quinn had gone to market with the lobsters and Michael's father was home, waiting for him.
“Hi, Aunt Rumer,” Michael said.
“Hi, Michael.”
“Going somewhere?”
“Yes,” she said, balancing the low wooden box on the bed of her truck, looking over at him and seeming to make up her mind. “I have to take this flat of petunias to my friend Edward's farm and plant them in his garden. Would you like to come?”
“Sure,” he said, casting a glance at Winnie's cottage. His father was sitting on the porch, staring out to sea. Anything was preferable to another evening of trying to talk to each other. Michael climbed into his aunt's truck.
They drove along the shore, past some wide green marshes and a fish market. Even though the sea was miles away, everything seemed salty. The old weathered shingles on some houses, pristine white clapboards on others; the oxidized green copper flashing along the rooflines; the ship weathervanes; the seascapes in the art gallery windows; the white churches. A lot of the gardens were overgrown, filled with flowers of white and green and blue, as if the colors of the sea had poured over the rocks and into the land.
“That's where Quinn's parents used to work,” his aunt said, pointing out a yellow Victorian house on the main street.
Something old and weird stirred in Michael. He glanced at his aunt, remembering times when he'd go to stay with her. The memories were good but distant. She had taken over when his parents were busy… he had flown with a nanny from California to Connecticut… and she would pick him up in a truck just like this one.
His aunt drove out of town, along the river, and into the countryside. Stone walls crisscrossed green hills, and deer grazed in laurel thickets. They came to a fork in the road and went left. The truck began to slow down, and then his aunt turned into a gate that said Peacedale Farm. Just before climbing out of the truck, his aunt handed him an apple. Smiling, she caught his eye. “You'll need this,” she said.
Michael nodded, lifting the box of plants out of the truck for her. She set them down by a long flower bed running beside the white house. Then they walked across the wide driveway, his aunt's boots crunching on the gravel. Michael was barefoot from his time on the boat with Quinn. The stones hurt the soles of his feet; he was about to tell his aunt he'd wait for her in the truck, when he heard a horse whinny.
There, standing across the field, was a dark brown horse. Its ears lifted, and it stood there, nostrils quivering as it smelled the air. Butterscotch light covered the stony field, buzzing with swallows and dragonflies. The horse tossed his head, and Michael's throat began to ache.
“He remembers you,” Rumer said, her hand on Michael's shoulder.
Michael walked across the stones to the white rail fence. He broke the apple in half and held one part out in his open hand. The horse cantered across the field, stopping eye to eye with Michael.
“Blue,” Michael whispered as the horse's velvety nose brushed his forearm. The horse ate the apple half as Michael petted his neck and looked into his dark, mystifying eyes.
“You knew each other a long time ago,” Rumer said.
“He's still alive…”
“He sure is,” his aunt said. “He might be old, but nothing's stopping him. Right, Blue?”
Michael hung on to the horse. Strange memories came into his mind: him crying for the horse, begging to be allowed to see him, a door closing on him. He heard his mother's voice, telling him he could get hurt; it wasn't good for him. Now he looked up at his aunt.
“Why couldn't I see him all this time?” he asked.
“Your mother didn't want you to,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because…” his aunt began, sounding choked up. She stopped herself, as if she weren't sure what to say. Michael could see her grappling with something, trying to decide. He was just a kid—there were certain things she probably didn't think she could—or should—tell him.
“Please tell me,” he said.
“I can't, Michael,” she said sadly. “She's my sister, and she's your mother…”
Michael waited, but she couldn't seem to look at him. He felt his own breath coming faster. He knew that something had happened between his aunt and his father a long time ago. No one ever talked about it, but he knew it had to do with the reason he hadn't been allowed to visit Aunt Rumer, or even talk about her, as if even the mention of her name were too powerful for any of them to handle.
Just then the door to the house opened. A man walked out—Edward, the guy his aunt had been with at the wedding. Lean and kind of regal, like a duke or something, his whitish hair curled over his collar. His tall brown riding boots gleamed like fine wood. A workman came out of the barn to meet him. Seeing Rumer and Michael, Edward waved to them.
“Hello, you two,” he called. “Rumer, Albert's showing me some water damage in the hayloft—come find me, okay?”
Aunt Rumer didn't reply. She just stood there, her shoulders shaking. Edward hesitated, waiting for her to reply.
“Okay,” Michael called out so his aunt wouldn't have to. Edward waved, then headed into the barn.
“Aunt Rumer?” he asked.
“Thanks for doing that,” she said, her face still hidden, as if she'd been crying.
“Are you all right?” Michael asked.
“I'm fine,” she said, still looking away.
Climbing the fence, he swung his leg over the old horse's back. Michael grasped the mane
, giving the horse a light nudge and galloping into the field. The salt air stung his eyes, fresh from the sea.
Quinn would love it here, he thought. He imagined flying by, sweeping her onto the horse's back. He thought of all the years gone by when no one mentioned his aunt's name—where had he thought she had gone?
Had he thought she had died? Or that his parents hated her?
He had loved her. He remembered that now.
When he turned around to wave to his aunt, to thank her for bringing him back to Blue, he saw her standing by the fence, her head resting on folded arms, crying as if she had a broken heart.
THE NEXT DAY, it poured rain. Standing in her office, Rumer listened to drops pelt the roof and the leaves on the trees outside. A car had lost control on the wet pavement, hitting a collie. Rumer and Mathilda had been in surgery all morning, saving his life. Now, having been behind schedule all day, they were just catching up with the last appointments.
“Quite a storm,” Mathilda said as the rain fell harder. “There's nothing like the smell of wet dogs to make me long for a sunny day.”
“I hope my father's outside right now,” Rumer said. “And imagining what this will be like, sailing through Georges Bank.”
“He always seemed like such a sensible father to me,” Mathilda said, clucking softly. “Or perhaps that's just because he has such a sensible daughter.”
“Thank you, Mattie,” Rumer said. “I'll tell him you said that.”
They treated a colicky spaniel, a basset hound with an upper respiratory infection, and two cats with ear mites. The phone rang frequently; the answering machine picked up. Mathilda would play back all calls, keeping a stack of messages for Rumer to return after office hours. Escorting in the last patient of the day, Mathilda cleared her throat. “Dr. Larkin,” she said. “You have a visitor.”