Sweet Salt Air

by Barbara Delinsky

  Charlotte was thinking that Julian had a heart attack after all, that he was hospitalized, in intensive care—when she heard background announcements, the likes of which she knew all too well. “Are you at the airport?”

  “Yes.” Nicole said in the same small voice. “He’s at his gate, I’m at mine. Is that poetic?” she wailed softly. “What a nightmare.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Tomorrow. I don’t have the strength right now.” Coming from a woman who usually ran on at the mouth, the confession spoke volumes. “Would you believe, the flight’s way late. There’s bad weather just east of here, so nothing’s landing.” The PA system came on. She went quiet, then said a weary, “Finally. My plane’s in range. But here’s the problem, Charlotte. I won’t get to Portland until ten, which means that I won’t get to Rockland until midnight, so there’s no way I can get to the island until morning.”

  “Where can you stay in Rockland?”

  “There are some nice inns. I’ll stay in one.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I don’t have much choice, y’know?”

  * * *

  Charlotte would have gone to get her if she’d had a way of doing it, but boats that shuttled Quinnies to the mainland always did so in daylight. The occasional sunset cruise went out, but by the time darkness fell, every slip in the harbor was full.

  She wanted details on that meeting with the doctor. Waiting was an agony, but it sounded like what Nicole had been through was worse. What to do to make things better?

  Had she been a baker, she would have whipped up a batch of those marble macadamia brownies, and had them waiting. Since she didn’t bake—and since marble macadamia brownies would be nothing new to foodie Nicole—she wrote up Melissa’s interview and, after polishing Anna’s, printed both out. Nicole would be pleased.

  Placing the pages on the kitchen table beside a vase, which she would fill with fresh flowers the next morning, she took a breath, put her hands on her hips, and looked outside. Denial worked as long as you had something else to do, but she had just run out. It wasn’t dark yet, but she couldn’t wait a minute longer. She had to talk with Leo.

  Chapter Eleven

  FEELING AS MUCH URGENCY AS trepidation, she set off. The breeze crossing the road was stronger than it had been the past few nights, rustling the leaves in the trees, cooling her arms and legs. Uneasy, she glanced at the sky. Clouds were gathering in the west, likely from the storm system that had delayed Nicole’s flight. The humidity was already up, and along with it, the volume of her hair. And then there was the thick sea smell.

  Rethinking the walking plan, she returned to the house, changed into jeans, and took the Jeep. Minutes later, she parked just beyond the Cole curve.

  If he worked on the roof tonight, he would be putting down plywood. But it wasn’t night yet. And with a storm coming on? She wasn’t sure he would work at all.

  Rounding the curve, she saw the house in daylight. The shutter Leo had hung was straight, but others were not, and while the tar-papered roof was an unbroken expanse, the clapboard body needed a coat of paint. The poor thing was threadbare.

  The foliage around it was another matter. Even in the overcast, she saw myriad shades of green, one more vibrant than the next.

  When Charlotte had asked Leo where Cecily was buried, he hadn’t answered. Now she half suspected that the ashes were sprinkled over these grounds, a fertilizer in perpetuity to chalk up to the Cecily mystique.

  As Charlotte started down the drive, she studied the front windows for signs of life. Where she thought she remembered curtains from Cecily’s time, now there were blinds, and though they were slatted open, she couldn’t see much. She did smell the gardens, though, and stopped when a certain sweetness hit her. It whisked her back to the night before, when she had cut through on her way to the beach. Following her nose down that row now, she stopped at the end near the woods, where the shrubbery was nearly as tall as she was. No herbs here—these were small white flowers in bloom, their petals star-shaped, smooth to the touch and strong of scent. When she brought her fingers to her nose and inhaled, her insides quickened.

  Frightened, she wiped her hands on her jeans. She didn’t know what Cecily’s message was, but it made her feel less in control. She had come here with a purpose, and it wasn’t sex.

  Backing away from the flowers, she continued down the drive. As she approached the house, the bushes moved, and Bear came out. A long-ingrained fear whispered, but it died down when he shuffled to her side, head up, eyes beseechful. He was a sweet old thing, nothing to fear.

  The man was something else. She had no idea what to expect.

  The house had no porch, just three steps and a landing. A tarnished knocker waited. Needing time to gather herself, perhaps to take courage from the scent of herbs, rising now over that of the small white flowers, she settled on the second step with her feet on the ground. Bear came and sat close beside her. Elbows on her knees, she touched the coarse hair between his ears and traced the furrows on his brow. He closed his eyes, seeming enraptured.

  That ended abruptly when a whistle came from the back of the house. Ears perked, eyes worried, the dog looked toward the sound, then at Charlotte again.

  “He’s with me!” she called to Leo. She didn’t look around until bootsteps approached, and even then she hesitated. Stretch marks were only part of it. There was also the sex.

  But both were fact. She couldn’t change them. Stoical, she raised her eyes.

  For an alleged thug, he was clean-cut. Short hair helped. Likewise the shadow of a beard where scruff had been. And attractive? The same prominent cheekbones and firm jaw that had screamed attitude when he was younger were now just plain male. Same with his very adult body, which explained the physical side of what happened last night. The other side was what made her nervous.

  He seemed unsure, though his face didn’t betray much. It was all in his eyes. Seeing them for the first time in daylight, she realized they weren’t black, but a very dark blue—and wary as they went from her to the dog.

  “Figured it out, huh?” he said.

  Charlotte stroked Bear’s head. “How old is he?”

  “I don’t know. I got him from a shelter when I first got out of jail. The vet there guessed three.”

  That would have been ten years ago, making Bear thirteen. “What’s the life span of a dog like this?”

  “Nine to twelve. He’s part Rottweiler, part mutt. Mutts live longer. I’m counting on that.” He stood six feet away, staring at her with barely a blink. “So you know my secret. What’s yours?”

  It was all she could do not to look away, but she owed him this. Quietly, she said, “I did have a baby. I mean, I gave birth to it. But I gave it up.”

  “Why?”

  “I wasn’t married. The father was.” Hearing it aloud, she felt rotten to the core—in recklessness and depravation, very much her parents’ daughter, which she had never, ever wanted to be. That was one of several things that had haunted her these ten years.

  “Why were you with a married guy?”

  “He wasn’t married at the time. He was engaged.” She swallowed. “To my best friend.”

  She waited for judgment, but Leo remained expressionless. “Did you love him?”

  “Lord, no. That’s what was so stupid. It was once, and it was totally meaningless. We’d had too much to drink.”

  His eyes held hers. “We weren’t drinking last night.”

  “Yeah, well”—she did look away then—“that’s the other part of this that scares me.”

  “You were scared because I saw stretch marks?”

  Something struck her then. “How did you know what they were?” she asked. He was so sure about it. Yet he didn’t socialize. He wasn’t married, wasn’t a father. At least, he didn’t have a wife or kids on Quinnipeague. Maybe elsewhere?

  “I used to spend weekends on the bluff.” Overlooking Okers Beach. “With binoculars.”

  With bino
culars. “That’s bad,” Charlotte said. “They’re still at it, y’know. We saw them last weekend. And yeah, some of the women weren’t bothered that their stretch marks showed.”

  “But you were,” he said, dragging her back to the subject at hand. She supposed it was good, if difficult on her end.

  “I don’t let them show,” she admitted. “I don’t tell people about this.”

  “You told me.”

  “I kind of had to, after what happened.”

  “It was just sex.”

  That hit her the wrong way. “It was honest. If you didn’t see that, then I wasted my time worrying about it all night. Sex is sex, but that was something else. Don’t ask me what, because I’ve been trying to figure it out, but that’s the only word that comes up right now. Honest.”

  His expression did change then, mirroring her anger. His voice was low and hard. “Okay. Let’s talk honest. Why are you here?”

  His tone took her aback. “Today? Now?”

  “No. Every night since last Wednesday.”

  “I didn’t come Saturday,” she said meekly.

  “Why come at all?” he shot back. “Here you are, just perfect for me, knowing how to put on a roof, like you were recruited to seduce me. Is it the cookbook? The herbs?”

  She sat straighter. “Seduce you. I didn’t plan what happened. Did you not get the bottom line of what I said before? The last summer I was here I made a major mistake. Why would I want to make another?” She realized she’d said more than she should have, but the words were out. Honest? Oh yeah. She stared at him for another minute, then stood, bowed her head, pressed her brow. “This is not working. It’s getting dark. I should go.”

  “Don’t,” he said quickly, with what she actually thought sounded like vulnerability. When she dared a look, his expression was guarded. “I just needed to know.”

  “Whether I’m using you?” she asked. “If that was true, would I be as obsessed as I am about what we did?” She reconsidered. “Maybe ‘obsessed’ is too strong. Troubled, is more like it. I don’t do this, Leo. I don’t travel around the world having affairs, and if you’re worried you might have made me pregnant, don’t. I protect myself. I’ve seen the downside of carelessness.”

  His voice was lower than ever. “A baby isn’t a downside.”

  To her horror, her eyes filled with tears, but she couldn’t stop either the tears or the words. “It is if you grow it for nine months and feel it move inside you, then watch it being born and hold it in your arms and love it even when it’s covered with blood, and just when you’re thinking you can’t give it up, a nurse takes it away and you know you’ll never see it ever again—” She stopped short. Folding her arms over her middle, she forced herself to calm.

  He didn’t speak for the longest time. “Sit,” he finally said, adding a low, “Please.”

  She sat mainly because her legs wouldn’t carry her far. They were limp, like they’d been pulled tight, stretched, and suddenly released. Her whole body felt that way, no doubt from the run she’d taken earlier, though the emotional element now didn’t help. She didn’t usually talk about the baby—didn’t ever talk about the baby. Truth be told, she didn’t think about it much. The girl was with good parents. She was benefitting from the kind of life Charlotte couldn’t begin to give her. All things considered, Charlotte had made the right decision.

  Leo sat at the other end of the step, leaving a body’s width between them. Bent forward, he had his elbows on his knees. His hands were linked, his eyes on the drive. “That was an eloquent argument.”

  Charlotte watched Bear. The dog was oddly soothing. “I didn’t intend eloquence. Usually I have to work at it.”

  “You mean, your writing. I googled you. You’ve been doing this a while. Did you always want to be a writer?”

  She was about to answer the question when she paused. “You googled me?” She eyed him askance. “You’re connected out here?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t live the life of a hermit in a house at the far end of the road.”

  “I’m not … entirely a hermit.” He seemed uncomfortable. “I surf. I know what’s going on.” He sat back, elbows on the upper step, not quite nonchalant but as close as she’d seen him to it. “The pieces you write—how long do you edit?”

  “Until it’s right.”

  “How do you know when it is?”

  “I just do. I guess that’s part of the skill. I’m not the best writer in the world, but I’m a picky reader. When I reread a piece and feel like my subject has come alive, I’m done.”

  He considered that. Then his brow furrowed like Bear’s. “Do you ever spend a long time on a piece and end up throwing it out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because an editor says it’s bad?”

  “Because I do.”

  “What if an editor asks you to do something you think is wrong?”

  “Wrong?”

  “Something that would compromise you as a writer. Has that ever happened?”

  Charlotte didn’t have to think long. “You mean, like the time an editor asked me to fabricate a piece?”

  “Did you do it?”

  She met his eyes over her shoulder. “No. She won’t ever hire me again, but that’s okay. There are other publications.”

  When he looked off down the drive again, she studied his profile. Though dusk softened its lines, they were surprisingly intelligent for a guy who wasn’t supposed to be bright. And for a guy whose social skills should be primitive? Okay. So he surfed the Web. That certainly wouldn’t make him a master of small talk. She had been with countless sophisticated people who couldn’t think to ask her anything more than how many pieces she wrote in a year.

  Leo Cole was a surprise. She had known that last night on the beach, when he had been worried he was hurting her. She had no idea who he was.

  Seeming to gather himself, he looked at her. “What now?”

  “What what?”

  “Want to go back to the beach and screw?” There was a lift at the corner of his mouth that might have suggested a smile. Humor, too?

  “No,” she said, though not sternly.

  “Why not?”

  “First, because I don’t like that word. Second, because both of us need to know I’m not easy. And third, because it’s going to rain.”

  “No, it isn’t. Not ’til morning.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I have a weather station inside that gives me an hour-by-hour. It’s never wrong.”

  She had expected something organic, like his knowing when a storm approached from the angle of the herbs. “A weather station. And a computer. To look at your house, you’d think there’s nothing inside that didn’t come from the last century. Tell me you have a sixty-two-inch flat screen.”

  He shook his head no, then glanced up at the roof. “It’s getting dark. Want to help nail plywood to that tar paper?”

  * * *

  Charlotte wasn’t about to refuse. Leo asking for her help was a first. Was he sly? Oh yeah. Four-by-eight sheets of plywood were nearly as bulky as the storm shutter had been. It was a perfect task for two.

  Raising two ladders, they clamped on scaffolding and carried up the first of the sheets. Once it was there, he positioned it, then she held it straight while he secured it with a pop-pop-pop of the nail gun. Between them, they had a second and third sheet up in no time. She would have liked to use the gun, would have liked to feel a little power. But there was only one gun, and he didn’t offer to share. She allowed him the machismo by way of thanks for making what might have been a nightmare of a discussion less painful.

  They didn’t talk. Charlotte was fine with that. Her day had been filled with internal chatter, and though the issues hadn’t gone away, working with Leo was a respite.

  They were nearly at the top of the roof when her phone vibrated. It was Nicole, texting to say that she’d landed in Portland. When Charlotte finished reading, she found
Leo studying her.

  “Who?” he asked.

  “Nicole.” She returned the phone to her pocket.

  “Still in New York?”

  “On her way here.” She looked up to find his eyes on her mouth. He returned to work in the next breath, but her mind wandered. Even aside from recognizing stretch marks, he was a talented lover. She wondered where he normally satisfied himself.

  “Do you have a girlfriend?” she asked.

  “No.” Pow pow pow. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I travel too much.”

  “Where’s home?” he asked.

  “I have an apartment in New York.”

  “Was Nicole staying there?”

  “No. She was with her husband. My place is in Brooklyn, and it’s barely big enough for one. They can afford a hotel suite in Manhattan.” For what it was worth, she reflected. Money certainly didn’t buy happiness. She could still hear the misery in Nicole’s voice.

  They put up another two sheets before Charlotte had a thought. The hero of Salt cruised through the night sea to pick up his friend. Leo wasn’t exactly a hero, but he did live on an island. He was physically adept, a heroic swimmer, and if he was macho enough to wield a nail gun with command, he had to know something about a cockpit.

  “Can you drive a boat?”

  He snorted.

  Taking that for a yes, she said, “I need your help, Leo. She’ll have to stay over in Rockland if we don’t get her.”

  He seemed amused. “We?”

  “I can’t go alone. And you owe me.”

  “For what?”

  “Helping with your roof. Do you have a boat—or one you can use? Oh.” She remembered. “You don’t go to the mainland.”

  “Who said that?” he asked, seeming offended.

  Charlotte wasn’t about to bring the Cole curse down on Melissa. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It sure as hell does.” Letting the nail gun hang, he looked at her. It was only eye to eye—no mouth this time—but she felt it. Those dark blue eyes had depth, and what she saw there was pride. “I know how to get to the mainland. If I don’t go, it isn’t because I can’t, but because I won’t. I can get you there.”