“Maybe I’m not all she has,” Rose said.
Liam felt his pulse racing. She wouldn’t look away.
“Maybe not, Rose,” he said.
They gazed at each other for a long time, and Liam felt himself making a new promise, too deep for words.
By the time Lily walked back into the room, everything was clear. Outside, the sun had set, and the footlights had come up on the tall monument. Liam saw it glowing out the window. He thought back many years, to the day his brother was born. He thought of how much love there was in the world, of how impossible it seems that it will ever be taken away.
Gazing down at Rose Malone, watching her mother brush her hair and get her ready for bed, her last night in this hospital, he realized something he’d never known before: it had to do with Connor, and his parents, and Lily, and Rose, and Liam himself. He had never realized it before, but now he knew he’d never forget it. He had to tell Lily, and he had to tell her tonight. And he had something to show her, that not even he could believe.
After Rose gave the nurses their pinecone earrings, and the doctor came for one last visit, and the night nurse gave Rose her sedative, and Rose fell asleep, Lily gathered up her things. She kept looking around the room, thinking she’d forgotten something. But she had her bag, her needlepointing stuff, her hotel key, the pine pillow Liam had brought. Liam waited at the door, watching her—with anticipation, but as if he wanted to give her all the time in the world.
They walked outside, and the night air felt so hot compared to the air-conditioned hospital chill. Lily felt nervous and keyed up about tomorrow, but also exhausted. She headed for his truck, when she felt him grab her arm.
“What?” she asked.
“Come with me,” he said.
Lily gave him a puzzled look, but he didn’t explain. He led her in the opposite direction, toward the city park. Kids were hanging out at the band shell, laughing and playing music on a radio. Liam steered her around the public garden, straight to the reflecting pool. The monument, lit by bright halogen lamps, rose into the hazy sky. Lily saw its image shimmering in the long pool of water, and she felt a pang of homesickness for the sea.
“I miss …” she began.
“What do you miss, Lily?”
“Salt water,” she said.
“It’s right down the hill,” he said. “Melbourne Harbor …”
“I know,” she said. “But I miss Cape Hawk. And even more than that, I miss my home.”
“I thought Cape Hawk was your home.”
“Before Cape Hawk,” Lily said. Her throat was tight, memories flooding in of warm sand, silver-green marshes, and a beloved rose garden tended by a woman she had loved her whole life. What did it mean? Lily usually held herself together so well, especially gearing up for one of Rose’s procedures. But right now, she felt as if she might die of old sorrow and longing.
“The night Rose was born,” Liam said, “you were crying for home.”
“I knew I’d never see it again,” she said.
“And you cried out ‘I need you, I need you …’ ”
Lily nodded, staring up at the granite column. He was waiting for an explanation, but Lily couldn’t trust herself to give it. She felt as if an earthquake was just starting deep inside. She needed to contain it—hold back the emotions, try to keep the plates from shifting. She felt the waves beginning, rising, and she didn’t want to test their power.
“Who did you need, Lily?”
“I want to tell you, Liam,” she said. “But I can’t.”
“Don’t you know you’re safe? I’d protect you from anything.”
“You can’t protect me from my own heart. It breaks when I think of her—I can’t talk about her.”
He was so silent for so long; crickets sang in the bushes, and animals rustled in the woods. Lily’s heart ached—for love so deeply buried, she had almost forgotten it was there. She saw flashes of an old smile she knew so well, blue eyes, silver hair, gnarled fingers closed around the wooden handle of a garden trowel.
“I wish I could introduce you to her,” she said, letting her gaze move upward, to Liam’s deeply set blue eyes. “She’s someone who was very important to me—the most important person, until Rose. Liam, I don’t seem very grateful to you, I know. But that’s changed this time. I know what you’ve done for me, for Rose. Thank you for staying with us. The waiting has been so hard … I’m so scared, Liam.”
“About the surgery?”
Lily nodded, hugging herself. The crickets sounded so loud. She looked up, saw bats circling the monument in the orange light. Her heart split, to think of Rose’s school report, the one she had done on echocardiograms and the sonar of bats.
“I’ve never been like this before. Rose is just—well, you know. Everyone says she’s ‘such a fighter,’ and she is. She is! She’s had this condition since she was born. You were there—you know. We’ve just lived with it, never questioned it. I’ve followed her lead, and she’s always been so brave. But this time—Liam, the waiting is so much harder. What if something terrible happens? Or what if the surgery doesn’t work?”
“It will work,” Liam said, standing very close. She couldn’t stop looking into his eyes—he sounded so sure.
“I just can’t stand waiting,” she whispered.
“You told me you had someone you wished I could meet,” he said. “It’s the same with me,” he said. “I wish I could introduce you to my family.”
“I know Jude,” she said, puzzled at the change of subject. “And Anne, and all the other Neills. Camille—”
Liam shook his head. “Others, who aren’t here anymore. It’s why I wanted to walk you over here, to the monument. I stood here with my father the day my brother was born.”
“Connor,” she said. The little boy who had been killed by a shark …
“Yes,” he said. “The day he was born, my father and I were standing out here. I was just three, and I was really worried about my mother. She was in the hospital, and I didn’t understand. My father pointed up at the monument, and he told me a family story. My great-grandfather had fought in the war.”
“Your father’s grandfather?”
“Yes. Tecumseh Neill—the son of the sea captain that founded Cape Hawk, the one we named the boats after. He was over in France, and letters were very scarce. Even his father, the fearsome whale captain, was terrified that his son would never come home.”
“What happened?”
“My father told me that his grandfather had been wounded on the battlefront and was last seen lying in a muddy trench. His squadron had retreated—and when they got back to camp, he was gone. The word came that he was missing in action. The whole family waited for word, but thought he must have been killed. Time went past—weeks and then months.”
“How awful,” Lily said.
“Everyone gave up hope except his sweetheart—my great-grandmother,” Liam said. “She just knew.”
Lily nodded eagerly—she understood that. The connection that was there, even when you couldn’t see the other person. She had never lost it, for the woman in the garden that she loved so much. It glimmered, alive in her now. And she had it for Rose, always.
“She knew that he was alive?” Lily asked.
“Yes. She was positive. But every day that went by without word was like torture. She knew he was there, but she couldn’t get to him. She knew that he needed her—just as she needed him.”
“Your father told you, because you needed your mother,” Lily said.
“I did. And I believed, in that three-year-old-boy way, that she needed me.”
“I’m sure she did,” Lily said, thinking of Rose at three, of the hospitalization here, and of how every second without her had been excruciating and almost impossible to bear. “What happened to your great-grandfather?”
“He had been badly injured behind enemy lines. He was taken to a field hospital, and it took months for the word to get out. At first, it was just a rumor. Just a hi
nt, that maybe he was alive after all. My great-grandmother didn’t care about the rumors—because she had something better. She knew for sure—in her heart—that he was coming home. And he did, Lily. He spent time as a prisoner of war, but eventually he came home to her.”
“She knew.”
“Yes, she did. All that time.”
“She waited for him.”
“It’s what I want to say to you right now, Lily Malone,” Liam said. “People say Rose is a fighter, and she is. Just like my great-grandfather. But as much as anyone, my great-grandmother is the hero of the story.”
“She never gave up on him.”
“No, she didn’t. Some things are worth fighting for, Lily. And some things are worth waiting for.”
Lily stared up at him, the monument silhouetted behind his head, her heart pounding in her chest. He was talking about his great-grandmother, so in love with her husband, their connection so mysterious it didn’t need letters or telephone calls or spoken words. And he was talking about three-year-old Liam Neill, waiting for his brother to be born—so he could meet him for the first time, and see his mother again. And he was talking about Rose, just about to have the final, and most important, surgery of her life, replacing the old VSD patch once and for all. But he hovered over Lily, his face just inches away, and she knew—he was talking about something else too.
“You told me once,” she whispered. “That Rose was a miracle girl. You told me you’d tell me what that means. Will you tell me now?”
He nodded. He put his arms around her—both arms, and the left one felt just as tender as his right. She had the feeling her legs were dissolving; she leaned into him, hoping her heart wouldn’t fly out of her chest.
“The night I helped deliver Rose,” he said, “and watched you give birth … she brought me back to life.”
Lily couldn’t speak. She thought back, remembered the crashing pain—she had been traumatized by what had driven her to Cape Hawk, so much so that she was in hiding like a wild animal in a cave, not even daring to go to the hospital—for fear that her husband would be looking, or that the news accounts would cause doctors and nurses to recognize her, to call the police.
Liam had been the only person she dared trust—and only by necessity. Because he was there.
“Brought you back to life?” she asked finally.
He nodded, brushed the hair from her eyes, and caressed the side of her face.
“The shark that killed my brother,” he said, “killed my whole family as well.”
“He took your arm,” Lily said.
“He took my heart,” Liam said. “And you and Rose gave it back to me.”
“You hardly knew us—”
“I know,” Liam said. “I guess that’s what made it a miracle. A stranger I’d never even met—you. In a cabin, in the middle of the woods. Giving birth to this beautiful, tiny little girl. And trusting me enough to bring her into the world.”
“I did trust you,” Lily whispered. And she knew that—given what she was running from—that in itself was a miracle.
“There’s something else I want to show you tonight,” Liam said. “If you wouldn’t mind taking a ride with me.”
“Anywhere,” she whispered.
The passenger seat of his truck was cluttered, so when Lily climbed in, she had to push his laptop aside. He drove through the park, through the stone gates, and down the hill toward town. Melbourne Harbor twinkled with lights—the business district and hotels, restaurants and houses. Liam drove past the citadel—the old battlements that had once guarded the harbor, dating back to when the land was known to the French as Acadia.
They headed southwest, along the south shore. Lily felt the tug of home—whenever she was in a vehicle pointing toward New England, it overcame her. She wedged herself lower in the seat, feeling the sea breeze through the open windows. She felt a special tingle tonight, almost as if her grandmother was calling her name.
The sky was filled with stars. They swung low on the horizon. The rock scree slanted down to the Atlantic, and the constellations seemed to spring straight out of the ocean.
They rounded a bend, came upon the lighthouse at the outer edge of Melbourne Harbor. Its beam flashed across the sky. Liam turned left, taking an unpaved road out to the farthest reaches of the lighthouse’s promontory. Now he reached across for his laptop; he balanced it on his knee, turned it on. Lily saw the screen light up with green and purple dots of light.
“What are they?” she asked.
“Sharks and whales,” he said.
“How can you see them?” she asked, fascinated.
“I run a catch-and-release program,” he said. “To research migratory and predatory patterns.”
Predatory. The word had old associations, and made Lily shiver.
“Which ones are sharks?” she asked.
“The purple ones,” he said.
“Where are they?”
“This screen represents this coastline right here,” he said. “See the darkest section? That is the landmass—southern Nova Scotia, from Melbourne to Halifax.”
“I never really noticed before how Nova Scotia is shaped like a lobster,” Lily said, staring at the computer screen and the island’s silhouette against the lighter, slate-colored sea—filled, alarmingly, with purple dots.
She glanced up at Liam’s face. He looked so content and gentle—how was it possible, considering that the sea was filled with sharks just like the one that had killed Connor?
“Why do you do it?” she asked. “Dedicate your life to studying something so evil?”
“Sharks?”
“Yes.”
“They’re not evil, Lily. They’re dangerous, though. There’s a difference.”
“What is it?” she asked, thinking of another predator.
“Sharks don’t kill to inflict pain or suffering. They kill to eat. It’s just their instinct—the way they stay alive. I had to learn that about them, so I could stop hating them.”
Lily thought of her broken heart, and Rose’s. She knew that a human shark had caused the hurt and stress that had nearly ripped her apart, driven her from her home, caused Rose to be born with four heart defects. “How can you stop hating something that did such damage?”
“You have to,” Liam said. “Or it will kill you too.”
Lily stared at the purple lights on the screen. Then she looked out the truck window. They were facing south. A few hundred miles away, straight across the water, was Boston; beyond that was her old home. She wondered how many sharks were swimming between her and the place she loved so much.
“I know about hatred,” she said.
“I know you do,” Liam said. “It’s one of the reasons I wanted to bring you here tonight.”
“How do you know? Does it show?”
He paused, staring out at the dark sea. The lighthouse swung its beam across the smooth water, illuminating it in four-second flashes. Then he turned to her. “It does show,” he said. “You let some of your friends in—Anne, the Nanouk Girls. But you’ve kept yourself and Rose hidden from everyone else.”
“You should talk,” Lily said, smiling.
“I know—that’s why I recognize it in you. I’ve got this computer program, to help me learn about the thing I hated most.”
“I’ve done my best to study him,” Lily said. “But he’s not like a shark—he inflicts hurt on purpose. I know a little about the dynamic.”
“You can get lost in it,” Liam said, turning the computer screen to face Lily. “If you’re not careful, all you see are the purple lights. You forget to look for the green ones.”
“The green ones?”
“Whales,” he said. “The most gentle animals in the ocean.”
Lily studied the screen. “There aren’t many whales on here,” she said. “Look at all those purple lights—and only three green ones.”
“Whales are harder to tag,” he said. “We don’t like to crowd them.”
“So you�
��re saying there might be lots of undercover whales?” She smiled.
“Yes,” he said. “Along with one very visible one.” He tapped the screen with his finger. “This one right here.” He hit a few keys, and the whale’s ID showed up in a window. Lily read out loud.
“MM122,” she said.
“That whale was in Cape Hawk just a week ago,” he said. “She disappeared for a few days, but that was only because I had narrowed the program to track her in familiar waters—the area I always expect to find her in the summer months.”
“The whale swam down to the southern shore?” Lily asked, feeling a shiver run down her spine. She knew but didn’t know.
“Specifically, to Melbourne,” Liam said. “The waters closest to Melbourne.”
“Is that surprising? Unusual?”
“Very.”
“Why?”
“She’s a beluga,” Liam said. “Belugas rarely travel south of Cape Hawk. They are northern whales.”
“But why would this one be here?” Lily whispered. Liam lowered the laptop and reached across the console between them. He held her hand. She felt a new shiver go down the backs of her legs. Liam held her hand only rarely. His palm and fingertips were rough, from all the work he did on boats. Lily felt a chill, and she was afraid he had taken her hand because he was about to tell her something that was going to scare her.
“To be near Rose, I think,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s Nanny,” he said.
Lily stared at the blinking green light marked “MM122.” Then she lifted her eyes to look out at the endless black sea. The lighthouse beam spread across the water, highlighting whitecaps of small waves. Liam took a pair of binoculars from his door pocket. He scanned the surface, then stopped.
“It’s too dark to see,” he said, “but she’s there.”
“She can’t possibly be here because of Rose,” Lily said.
“Why not?” Liam asked. “Why isn’t it possible?”
“Because she’s a whale—she can’t feel emotion. She can’t know how much Rose needs her and loves her.”
“Why can’t she?” Liam whispered, touching Lily’s face. His hand was warm, and she leaned into it.
Luanne Rice Page 19