True Blue (Hubbard's Point)

by Luanne Rice

  “How are you as a carpenter?” Zeb asked.

  “Not bad,” Michael said, scowling as if he couldn't believe how badly his father had missed the point.

  “I hear you did a good job building a barn at your mother's house.”

  “It was a tack room,” Michael said. “That we added onto her stable. That's all. But, yeah, I helped.”

  “How would you like to build your aunt a barn?” Zeb asked. He felt Rumer's eyes on him, shining with tears.

  “What do you mean?” Michael asked. “When?”

  “This week. Right now. She needs a place to put Blue.”

  “But I still have school—” Michael said, frowning.

  “After school. You can help me,” Zeb said. “Because that's what I'll be doing. Building a barn for Blue. Right by your aunt's office, in the field where Old Paint's barn used to stand.”

  “Zeb,” Rumer said. She moved closer. She was crying, and she rubbed her eyes as if she thought she might be dreaming. “What about California?”

  “We're not going,” Zeb said, pulling her into his arms right in front of the kids, not caring about anything except that they loved each other, that she understand that he'd do anything for her.

  “What about your new lab?”

  “Someone else will run it. I'll find a place out here. Don't worry. That's my past,” Zeb said, his lips nearly touching hers.

  “And this is our future?” Rumer asked.

  Zeb looked around. The house was filled with old things: faded slipcovers, wicker warped by years of salt air, black-and-white photographs of both families, baskets of shells gathered when the girls were small. The air swarmed with ghosts. Memories bounced off the walls. He pictured the glass and chrome and stainless steel of the brand-new research center on the California coast, and it drifted straight away.

  “Yes,” Zeb said, lifting Rumer right off the floor into his arms. “This is our future.”

  By the time Sixtus had taken his first hot shower in a week and had dinner with Rumer, the sun had made its day's transit and started down over the trees beyond the golden marsh. It was dark now, but he still felt the shock he'd experienced upon seeing what the new neighbors had done to the property next door.

  “Home again,” he said, sitting beside her on a bench in the kitchen.

  “I can't believe you're here, Dad,” Rumer said. “Instead of halfway to Galway”

  “Well, neither can I. This isn't quite the way Clarissa and I planned our sabbatical.”

  “What happened?”

  “Ah, change of heart,” he said. “Guess I got homesick.”

  He watched as Rumer adjusted the baby rabbit—the latest to be rescued from the yard—in her hand, trying to get it to take more formula. The sight gave him a pang—Rumer was always taking care of something. He shifted in his chair. His joints ached. His bones creaked. But he was awash with the joy of being home, of being with his daughter.

  “Elizabeth was here,” Rumer said, her voice low and steady.

  “I know. Michael told me. You think Elizabeth might have mentioned it to me herself.”

  “She made the decision to come on the spur of the moment.”

  “After I told her about Zeb,” Sixtus said, feeling sad. The byzantine workings of his eldest daughter's mind never failed to dismay him.

  “Well, she and I had some things to work out,” Rumer said.

  “Ahhh,” Sixtus said.

  “What is it, Dad?” Rumer asked, looking worried.

  “Nothing,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “Just tired from my trip.”

  “Was your trip okay?” she asked. “Was it everything you hoped?”

  “In a way, more,” he said. “Which is why, perhaps, I decided not to continue.”

  “I thought you always wanted to sail across the Atlantic”

  Sixtus smiled, watching the way Rumer finished feeding one infant rabbit, let it down on the floor, and walked out to the hutch for the other.

  “Yes. But I wanted to sail home more. I'm gone just a couple of weeks,” he said, gesturing, “and my house is overrun by rabbits.”

  “I'm sorry, Dad,” Rumer said, smiling. “Zeb and I rescued them from the house next door. Everything is changing so fast. I hate to think of you coming home to it all.”

  “They clear-cut the lot,” Sixtus said. “Steering home, into the cove, I looked for that tall, tall pine, and it wasn't there. I've navigated by that tree for thirty years, from the time it had grown taller than any other…”

  “It's all going to change,” she said. “On Tuesday, the day after Labor Day.”

  Sixtus felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. Like sailing through high seas, he felt as if he'd just fallen off a ten-foot wave. “It's too much,” he said. “Next, you'll be telling me you're moving back to California with Zeb.”

  “We love each other, Dad. We always have, but it took us until now to realize that it's more alive than ever. It's not going away.”

  “No, of course it's not…”

  “I can't leave you, Dad,” she said. “Or the Point.”

  Sixtus swallowed. His hand was shaking too much to reach for hers—if he even tried, he'd blow the whole thing—of course she had to go. So he clasped his own wrist to hold it steady and took a deep breath. “Oh, but you have to,” he said in a low, deep voice. “You can't lose each other a second time.”

  “I'm not leaving.”

  She was talking about sacrifice, Sixtus thought. His beloved daughter wanted to give up her own happiness in favor of staying here, looking after him. Edward, her father, her animals… When would she be happy? When he was dead? When all the Dames de la Roche were gone?

  He thought of his own mother, of the sacrifices she had made for Sixtus and his brother. She had held on so tight—to her sons, the babies, her livelihood, everyone's well-being but her own. It had eventually destroyed her… Sixtus knew, with all his heart, what he had to do.

  Touching Rumer's shoulder, he led her outside. They stood in their yard under the canopy of summer stars. A whippoorwill called from down the hill, across the marsh, and locusts rasped in the oak trees.

  “Do you trust your mother?” Sixtus asked after a moment.

  Rumer looked up, tried to smile. “Of course.”

  “Then listen to her.”

  “Dad… she's gone.”

  “Sweetheart, if you really love this place the way you say you do—if you really think it's the place of love, spirits, and eternity that you claim to—then you know your mother is right here. Right now, Rumer! Tell me what you think she's saying.”

  “That I should be with Zeb…”

  “Ahh, Clarissa,” Sixtus whispered.

  “Right here, Dad. Zeb knows it too. He's building me a barn—right in the meadow beside my office. He's having plans drawn up; he's already ordered the wood. He and Michael are going to build it together.”

  “Zeb's staying? He doesn't want you to go away with him?”

  “No, Dad. We couldn't. This is our place.”

  “After all this time,” Sixtus said, amazed at the magic of life.

  “I want to be with him, Dad,” Rumer said. “It's what I've always wanted.”

  “Dreams need to come true,” Sixtus said, “when you've been dreaming them all this time…”

  “I have,” she said.

  Sixtus nodded. They stood quietly on the rocky ledge at the top of their yard. Sixtus had come to this home—the place of Clarissa's childhood—nearly four decades ago. She had welcomed him, made him feel like a part of the place from his very first day.

  “Do you know how much I love it here?” Rumer whispered.

  “I think I do,” he said. “I've watched you nearly every day of your life.”

  “I wish Elizabeth could feel the same way.”

  Sixtus took a deep breath. Summer was ending, but he had the fall—with leaves to rake and pumpkins to carve. Then winter, with dustings of snow to cover the yards and trees and rocks and beach. Then sprin
g, when it would be time to clean out the gardens and sand and paint the Clarissa, get it ready for another season of sailing. There was all that time for him to think about what he had seen and felt in Canada, for him to reach out to Elizabeth, love her a little more. The rhythm of Hub-bard's Point would get him through it all.

  “Forgive her, Rumer,” he said softly, reaching out to touch his daughter's face.

  “I already have, Dad,” she said.

  Sixtus felt a lump in his throat. “That's good,” he said. “Forgiving your sister will set you free. Now—let me be, will you? I had a long, hard voyage, and I'm glad to be home.”

  “I'm glad you are.”

  “Do you have plans?”

  “To meet Zeb,” she said. “We have a long overdue date tonight…”

  “Ahhh. That's good,” Sixtus said. “Very good.”

  “Is there anything I can get you before I go?”

  “Just a hug and a kiss, Rumer,” he said. “Like when you were my little girl.”

  “I still am,” she whispered as she put her arms around him. She was such a good person; she was patient. She had waited all these years to be with the man she'd always loved, and she'd made an amazing life for herself.

  Sixtus wished his mother could know Rumer. His chest filled with pride.

  Standing on the rock, Sixtus looked up at the stars and reached into the sky. He closed his eyes and thought of Clarissa, and he pulled her down against his chest, straight into his heart. Clutching his wife, he stood very still. He gave thanks for everything: his family, his love, the fact that he had made it safely home. Eyes shut tight, he saw meteors streaking through the purple-black sky. The stars were in motion tonight.

  Joints aching, not caring, Sixtus Larkin began to move. The music of the spheres propelled him. Gently holding his wife, feet gliding over the gray rocks of their hilltop in Hubbard's Point, they danced beneath the dark star-filled sky.

  To GET TO the Indian Grave, Rumer crossed the beach. The night was clear, with just the smallest hint of fall: a chill lay just beneath the soft breeze. Her feet made footprints in the wet sand, and the waves washed them away. Her father's words played in her head, making her rush faster—she had to see Zeb. They had made this plan that morning, but it had been twenty years coming.

  The water felt warm. It frothed around her ankles, and Rumer thought of a nighttime swim she and Zeb had taken when they were sixteen. The sea had surrounded their bodies, exciting and scary in the dark, holding them afloat, side by side. Treading water, their feet had brushed each other, and they had held hands and looked into each other's eyes as they stayed afloat.

  Rumer had felt the water streaming around her body, the intermittent bump of Zeb's knees and thighs against hers. Their hands were clasped at the surface, and small waves broke around them, filling their eyes and mouths with water.

  The Wickland Rock Light beam had passed over their heads, and Rumer had thought of her ancestor dying in a shipwreck just a mile away She had wondered whether the captain had held Elisabeth's hands, whether they had held hands and tried to help each other to shore.

  “If this were a shipwreck,” she had said to Zeb, her eyes stinging with saltwater, “I'd save your life.”

  “Funny you should say that,” he said, gripping her hands harder, “because I'd save yours first.”

  “Good thing I know lifesaving,” she said, “because I'd get you in a rescue hold and pull you to shore.”

  “Like this?” he asked, putting his arm around her neck and in a sidestroke swimming them both to shore. Underwater, a big fish scraped her leg, and she shrieked. But Zeb didn't let her go—he just kept swimming till he had her safely on the sand.

  Hurrying down the beach, Rumer remembered how it had felt to be held by him. Playing around, it had always been so easy to touch each other. Life at the beach had always been so physical—swimming, climbing trees, playing football. Zeb was always giving her a boost, carrying her down the sand, pulling her through the water.

  Swimming that night, had he thought of kissing her? She had wanted him to. A week later, the kiss had come to pass, and it had turned her inside out.

  But that leap from being best friends to something more had been more daunting than any big fish swimming past in the deep darkness. Rumer hurried now, knowing that Zeb was—finally—waiting for her up ahead.

  In pitch darkness she climbed the steep path by the fallen tree, past the ruins of Fish Hill, through dense oak woods, and right across the culvert in the deepest and swampiest creek in the marsh.

  She had brought a flashlight. It dipped and bobbed as she walked along the sandy trail, trying to avoid the thickest hanging vines and drooping branches. Mosquitoes seemed attracted to the flashlight's beam, and they hovered in front of her like a filmy and buzzing gray cloud.

  Out at sea, just past the breakwater, the more powerful beam of the Wickland Rock Light swept the sky. Back and forth, keeping ships on course. Overhead, stars hung in the late summer sky, the constellations ready to march forward through September, into autumn.

  Spiders had spun their webs everywhere: connected to branches, tall grass, cattails, and a dead tree. Rumer felt the silk across her nose and lips, hands and shins. Wiping them off, they stuck to her fingers. By the time she reached Zeb, standing on the small rise where the Indian was buried, Rumer was laughing.

  “Now you know what it's like to be an earth scientist,” she said.

  “Give me a black hole any day,” he said, taking her into his arms.

  They kissed, and then stepped back to wipe more spiderwebs from their cheeks. More swamp bugs hummed in their ears. When the lighthouse beam split the sky, it caught a bat zooming through the trees.

  “Spooked, Mayhew?” she asked.

  “No way, Larkin. This is my turf as much as yours.”

  “Isn't this romantic?” she asked, steadying herself.

  “Yes, Rue. I was just thinking—no wonder we've both suffered so much over the years, missing this the first time around.”

  “Why do you think all the young lovers of Hub-bard's Point have been making tracks here for so many years?” Rumer asked, hearing something slither through the reeds, splashing into the tidal creek.

  “Because it's scary,” Zeb said, pulling her close, “and it makes people press up against each other.”

  “I didn't need to be scared to want to do that,” Rumer said, tilting her head back and kissing him. They held each other for a long time, ignoring all the buzzing around them, completely lost in how far they had traveled to get to this place.

  When they stopped, she stood peering at him in the starlight. Her heart was beating so fast, she felt as if she had swum a mile. Zeb's blond hair was mussed, and his blue eyes were vigilant, as if he were ready—at a moment's notice—to pick her up and carry her away from the mosquitoes or anything else. But it was his T-shirt that endeared him to her most ferociously.

  “Camp Courant,” she read, shining her flashlight on it. The Hartford Courant had sent them each a T-shirt one year, thanking them for being such fine newspaper deliverers. Dark green, emblazoned with the paper's distinctive lettering and an image of enthusiastic children enjoying camp, the shirt was faded and torn.

  “You kept it all this time?” she asked.

  “I stuck it in a trunk,” he said. “And left it in Winnie's garage. Hubbard's Point things that I didn't want to throw away but couldn't quite see taking to California.”

  “Because you always knew you would come back,” she said, touching the frayed, holey green fabric stretched across his chest, brushing his skin underneath.

  “I suppose I did,” he said.

  “I never thought I'd see this shirt again—” she began, but had to stop for a minute and make sure her voice wouldn't break. “Actually, I never thought I'd see

  you again. When Winnie told me you had rented her cottage, I was shocked. I lay awake night after night, wondering what I would say to you when I saw you again.”

 
“You didn't want to see me at all.”

  “No, I didn't,” she agreed.

  “So we needed safe topics,” Zeb said. “Michael, your father…”

  “Stars,” Rumer said, looking up at the sky. “I thought we'd talk a lot about the Milky Way, and what it was like for you to be up there and look down here.”

  “Watching you, Rumer,” Zeb said. “Flying through space, I was keeping track of you. I used to wonder what you were doing, whether you had met someone new. I'd picture you riding the horse Michael told me you'd gotten, Blue, and that made me think up a new constellation.”

  “What is it?”

  “A girl on a winged horse,” Zeb said.

  “Like Pegasus…”

  “Yes,” Zeb said. “Only this horse flies very low. He keeps close to the ground, just clearing stone walls and privet hedges. Rabbits can feel the wind in their ears as he passes overhead. The girl loves him. She takes him on amazing adventures—over the sea, across the Wick-land Shoal, up to the Indian Grave—and every night she steers him home.”

  “Where is home?” she asked.

  “Hubbard's Point, of course.”

  Rumer swallowed—of course. The only home she had ever known…

  “It's changing,” she said, feeling a tug in her throat.

  “Because of Franklin?” he asked.

  She didn't reply, because she couldn't quite trust herself to speak.

  She took Zeb's hand, and as if she were the girl steering the star horse on their nightly adventure, she began to lead him across the narrow stream. Marsh grass tickled their legs. Rumer had bare feet, and her toes sank into the soft, warm mud. The ground grew hard, and rocks were everywhere. Making their way up, they held hands.

  The Indian Grave stood on top of the hill. Climbing the last few feet, Rumer and Zeb looked down on it. Legend had it that the man buried there had been a member of the Nehantic people. His family had been some of the natives from this beautiful area; his ancestors had hunted and fished here, lived in tepees set up on the Point.

  Moved inland to a reservation, the natives had spent less time here by the sea. This man—Uncle Lote, according to the gravestone—had worked for one of the wealthy families at Tomahawk Point. Rumer remembered coming here on a walk with Zeb's mother once; gazing at the grave, she had grown solemn. When Rumer had asked why, Mrs. Mayhew had said because it was sad Uncle Lote had had to work for people who had stolen the land that was rightly his.