by Susan Wiggs
When he opened his eyes, he was astounded to see that she was crying. Huge silent tears rolled down both cheeks, giving her the look of a weeping angel, heartsore for all eternity.
“What?” he asked tautly. “What is it? Did I hur—”
“No.” She clutched her chemise back together and gripped it, white-knuckled. The tears never stopped as she spoke. “I feel so huge and such a mess. All I want is to be unsullied for you, as a bride should be. We never got to have that moment, Jesse. That first time, free of the past. Ah, how I wish I could come to you, all fresh and new and clean. You must think—”
He pressed his fingers to her lips, now wet with tears. “Don’t tell me what I think,” he said, pressing her against the bedroom wall and lifting her hands away so that her chemise gaped open again. Frustration built inside him. “Goddammit, don’t tell me what I think.”
“But I can see it in your eyes. Why couldn’t I have met you first?”
“If you hadn’t met Granger first, you would never have ended up here.”
“I know, but listen—”
“No, you listen. I’m not sure who decided that a man expects—wants, dreams of, whatever—an untouched virgin bride in order to be satisfied. Why any man would prefer a shrinking, untried girl to a woman who knows the heat of pleasure, a woman whose body bears the evidence of passion, is beyond me. There aren’t words to say what it’s like, standing here with the lamp burning low and your breasts bare—” He had to stop to catch his breath. He wasn’t accustomed to giving long speeches. Particularly on the subject of a woman’s breasts. Particularly when all he wanted was to take her to his bed.
“You mean I don’t disgust you, looking like this?” she asked in a small voice.
“Disgust me?” he repeated incredulously. “Is that what you think?”
“A moment ago, when you looked at me and then closed your eyes, I thought you might be wishing things could be different. That I was pure. That I was all yours.”
“I won’t lie. I do wish things were different. Part of me does wish I’d been the first man to touch you. To kiss you. To hold you and put my babe in your belly. No doubt you’ve wished the same about me.”
“But instead we came together so...damaged, the two of us.”
“Yes. Damaged.” The truth tasted bitter in his mouth. “But when we’re together, it’s better. We’re whole and new. I didn’t close my eyes because I was disgusted. I did it because I’ve never in my life seen a sight as beautiful as you look to me now, and I wanted to savor that.”
“Jesse—”
“I’ve never wanted a woman like I want you.” As he spoke, he peeled her dress and chemise down over her shoulders, letting the clothing drop to the floor. Then he removed her pantalettes and stockings and carried her to the bed, drawing back the coverlet and setting her down. He hurried to get out of his clothes.
She lifted her arms toward him. “Come to me, Jesse. We’ve waited too long.”
“Then,” he said with a wicked gleam in his eye, “we can wait just a little longer.”
“No, oh, God—”
“Just a little longer,” he repeated, bending over her, his tongue tracing a slow, damp path down the side of her neck, lingering at her pulse, then going lower. She was as evocative as the sea itself, surrounding his senses, filling him with such overwhelming beauty and power that for a moment he felt disoriented, a dreamer shaken awake to find a reality more colorful and more wondrous by far than anything he could imagine. The sweetness of milk was there, and then the taste of Mary herself, which he had tried so hard to forget, tried in vain to forget.
She cried out softly as his mouth and hands made love to her. He could feel her fingers clutching his shoulders, his back, and it felt good to know she wanted this as much as he did.
“Now, Jesse, now,” she said, so quietly he almost didn’t hear. “We’ve waited long enough.”
Only the knowledge that before this night was out, they would do this again—and perhaps again after that—made him comply. He touched her gently, and his hand trembled a little when he remembered, just for a flash, the baby. He remembered the night of terror and ecstasy and confusion followed by the long, bleak loneliness of separation.
But with her breathy sighs in his ears, he returned to the present, to the belief that something good and strong had happened between them, that this could work. The silky texture of her, all moist with wanting him, caught him up in a grip of unbearable need. Nearly trembling with the effort to be gentle, he braced himself above her and eased into her, waiting for her to rise up to meet him and join with him.
Ah, there. The warmth. The closeness. The intimacy that was so deep he had no sense of himself and of her separately, but of the two of them together, completion. The blackness in his soul was fading. He could feel it like the sun burning away the shadows, bringing light and heat to a place that had known only darkness and ice for years.
With an exultant cry, edged by pain and ecstasy, he poured into her, surrounded her, covered her, a cocoon. Though he had made love to her in the past, this time there was a sense of fulfillment he had not felt before.
“Jesse, Jesse,” she whispered, her voice lilting in his ear. Just that and no more. His name. “Jesse.” Yet in her voice he heard a world of meaning.
The night passed slowly, for he made love to her again, then cradled her while she slept. But he didn’t sleep. He couldn’t sleep. He was overwhelmed by what had happened between them, by the changes that were taking place with each moment. He still resisted the pull of her, still knew that loving her was dangerous, but he accepted in some distant part of himself that she had won. She had made him want to love her.
As the pale gray of dawn washed the sky with a hint of light, a small sound came from the room below. The noise was so quiet he was certain Mary would never hear it, but she sprang awake.
“That’ll be our son,” she said, a sleepy smile on her face.
The tiny sound crescendoed to a wail of anger.
“Just like his father, he is. All bluster and temper, but soothed easily enough.” She leaned down and placed a warm kiss on his mouth, then gathered the top quilt around her and hurried on light feet to feed the baby.
Just like his father, he is.
Jesse slammed a fist into the empty pillow beside him.
* * *
On watch at the lighthouse that night, Jesse couldn’t stop thinking about Mary. Asleep in the bed they shared once again. He wanted to be with her, wanted it with a sharp craving that pierced him like a physical pain.
What had he gotten himself into? Where was his armor?
She was making him depend on her. Making him count on her love. He didn’t know if he could stand to do that. But a part of him no longer cared. Recklessly he longed to open his heart to this fragile woman with her iron will.
Restless, he climbed up to the beacon house and stared out at the sea and the sky. A cutting chill shot through his wool jacket, howling up under the eaves.
But there was a shattering clarity to the night. Not a single cloud softened the edges of the cool white slice of moon. In distant, icy beauty the stars glared down at him and down at the waves biting the shoreline.
It lingered, that sense of futility he carried with him. He lived at the edge of a force he couldn’t overcome. The sea ruled him. At its whim, it had taken away all he held dear. And at its whim, it had given something back to him. Mary and David.
But for how long?
After a time he went back inside. He turned up the lamp and took out the logbook. He opened it to the first entry dictated by Mary, the one she had insisted on telling in her own words. He had laughed with her that night.
There was not another woman in the world who could make him laugh.
After that, she had dictated other entries. He rere
ad them like an old man visiting the memories of his youth, feeling wistful yet a little distant. Mary had taken it upon herself to describe a geoduck clam—”and a great terrible tube of raw flesh it was!”—and to give her version of the rescue of the Russian fishermen—”Sure and the Great Almighty Himself would agree that it’s a horrid dangerous thing... But the fearless lightkeeper had no thought for his own safety as he battled for the lives of the poor Russians...”
A puffin was “a little waddling elf of a thing” and sea lions were “selkies—I know it by their eyes. I can see the human souls inside them.” As he read over the words she had dictated, he caught himself smiling. No one he’d ever met saw the world in quite the way that Mary did. Her quirky, off-center view of things was both unique and charming. She saw colors and visions with the untrained and uncritical eye of a true believer. She believed in magic and destiny and love, believed strongly enough for both of them.
And she had the power to make him believe.
In the log, he came to his own record of the birth of Mary’s child: “30 September 1876, five o’clock of the morning. Mrs. Mary Dare Morgan was delivered safely of a son.”
What a wealth of emotion he had managed to conceal behind the terse entry.
“Yoo-hoo!” Mary’s voice called up the stairway, followed by the familiar bong of oversize boots climbing the iron stairs.
He jumped up from the worktable. Dread clutched at his chest. She had not been here in weeks. Was there some emergency? Something with the baby? The thought caused the back of his neck to prickle. He hurled himself down the stairs, meeting her as she was coming up. One look at her face took the edge off his fear. She was smiling brightly and looking particularly appealing in a caped mackintosh and wide-brimmed hat.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Nothing serious.” She opened the overcoat and held out a swaddled bundle. “I’ve got to go down to the Jonssons’. Palina isn’t feeling well.” Before he could reply, she thrust the bundle into his hands. He caught a glimpse of Davy’s downy hair and dark blue eyes, open wide.
“Mind the lad for me while I go. Erik said she’s just a wee bit under the weather, but we don’t want Davy catching anything from her, do we?”
“Can’t you wait until morning?”
“She’s ill. I’ll not make her wait.” Without further ado, Mary turned and clumped down the stairs.
“Damn it, I can’t watch the child and the station at the same—”
“He’ll be no trouble at all,” she called, her voice echoing up through the lighthouse. “I’ve just fed and changed him.”
“But—”
“He’ll be good as Burren gold from County Clare.”
“I don’t know how—”
“Goodbye!” The lower door shut behind her.
Jesse stood unmoving on the iron stairs. He stared down at the baby in his arms. The baby stared back.
“Christ on a crutch,” he muttered under his breath, borrowing one of Mary’s expressions. “What the hell am I going to do with you?”
The baby blinked slowly. It was as if he were a fairy child, pale as the moon, his face as perfect as the heart of a rose.
In spite of himself, Jesse felt a smile tugging at his mouth. The baby’s mouth moved, too, but he didn’t smile. He screwed up his tiny, perfect face and let loose with a huge howl of sheer misery.
The sound of the baby crying was hardly new to Jesse, but this was the first time Mary wasn’t close at hand to comfort and silence him. Jesse was alone, the lad was crying, and he didn’t know the first thing to do about it.
His every instinct urged him to flee the lighthouse, to go after Mary and insist that she keep Davy with her. But the sight of the beacon’s track swinging past reminded him of his duty. He had to stay and tend the light.
Frustrated and furious, he stomped to the gear room and gave the equipment a turn. It was awkward, working with the screaming baby in one arm while he cranked the gears with the other, but somehow he managed.
Then he went up to the mezzanine. The hollow interior of the tower magnified Davy’s cries until they reverberated like thunder in Jesse’s head. He couldn’t escape it. He couldn’t run away. He had to stay and weather the storm.
“Come on there, young sailor,” he said gruffly. “That’s enough of that.” Mary spoke to the baby constantly. The sound of her voice usually soothed him. “No more crying now, little one,” Jesse said.
The child stopped crying and stared at him. A single tear fought its way clear of a round blue eye. Jesse began to hope the storm was over.
Davy took a deep breath. Then he loosed a fresh yowl, longer and stronger than the previous ones.
“I scared you, didn’t I?” While panic set his heart to knocking in his chest, he tried walking in a circle, pacing the periphery of the small room. “You’re not used to my deep voice, are you?” He felt more desperate and foolish with each passing moment. “Calm down now, there’s a lad. Calm down.”
The baby cried harder, stiffening his tiny spine and braying out his misery. Jesse had thought he’d known what it was to feel powerless. But before this moment, he hadn’t known anything. In a strange way, this was worse than the sea, because the howling baby posed more than a physical threat. Davy’s misery threatened Jesse’s heart.
He had to be logical, to think rationally. He set the baby on the table, cradling the small head in his hand. He gently unwrapped the blanket, trying to see if a stray pin or hook might be bothering the child. But no, the diaper was dry, the pins fastened neatly and cushioned so they didn’t touch the delicate skin. It struck Jesse how perfectly formed this child was, even with limbs flailing while he squalled as if the very demons of hell were haunting him.
Jesse wrapped him up again, making a sloppy job of winding the pale yellow blanket. Mary made it look so simple, maneuvering the child and the blanket as easily as kneading dough. Perhaps children were like horses—they understood instinctively if the person handling them was inept.
What else? Jesse asked himself. She said she’d just fed him, so the problem couldn’t be hunger. A small brazier kept the room warm, so the lad couldn’t be cold.
The moments that followed were the longest of Jesse’s life. He knew no more helpless feeling than this, than being alone in a room with a crying baby who wouldn’t stop, no matter what. This was one problem he couldn’t turn his back on, couldn’t walk away from. Davy was totally dependent on him. The baby couldn’t be talked to, reasoned with, ignored. He—and his bawling—just were.
Damn her, Jesse thought. Damn her for leaving him alone with the child. What if an emergency came up? What if someone needed rescuing? She didn’t seem to realize the chance she was taking—with the baby, with Jesse, with other people’s lives.
She knew he couldn’t look after a child all by himself. Was this her idea of a joke? Or a test of some sort? If she thought throwing him together with the baby and then abandoning him was a way to get him to care about Davy, she was dead wrong. If anything, he knew now, more than ever, that he was never meant to be a father, especially to a child he hadn’t sired.
He scowled at the living proof he held in both hands, at arm’s length. Davy’s face was growing redder and redder. Mary had told him that infants’ tears, like the tears of the elderly, were sparse and only appeared in a time of extreme distress.
“Looks as though I’ve brought you to a moment of extreme distress,” Jesse said.
The baby inhaled with a frightening whoop, then cried louder. His little body shook from head to toe. Jesse drew his shoulders up to his ears. There was no sound in creation quite so disconcerting as a baby crying. “Stop,” he said, knowing his words would have no effect. “Just stop. Please. Goddammit, I don’t know what to do.”
A few years back, Dr. MacEwan had treated an infant for severe bruises
to the head. Fiona hadn’t actually come out and said it, but she had implied the baby had been injured by its father attempting to silence his cries.
Jesse despised himself for even thinking about the incident. The crying was making him crazy, but not crazy enough to hurt a defenseless infant.
Singing. Sometimes Mary sang to the boy and it quieted him. But Jesse didn’t know any songs.
Pacing, holding Davy beneath the arms while the boy’s pedaling legs dangled free, Jesse looked at the squalling face. He racked his brain. Surely he knew a song, one song, one—”Ah. Here’s a ditty for you. From my days at university,” he said. “Although some might say my singing is a form of abuse.” Jesse sang with gusto, off-key, raising his voice above the baby’s wails:
“Grass widows and princes, a warning I sing
Of the sad wicked doings of David the King
With Bathsheba, wife of poor Major Uriah
Who was bathing one day, when the king
chanced to spy her....”
The baby fell still. His little head wobbled on his neck, and his eyes gaped wide. His mouth formed a small, red “O” of surprise. Jesse couldn’t tell whether the child was staring at him in horror or in happiness, so he stopped singing.
Immediately, the infant started wailing again.
Immediately, Jesse began to sing again:
“What man could resist such an awful