by Luanne Rice
“You're having what Saint John of the Cross would call ‘a dark night of the soul,'” Aunt Aida said. “Follow it through, darling. Try to abide with the feelings, and know that you're being shown something you've never seen before. Have faith that morning will come.”
Stevie swayed as waves of despair washed over her. A dark night . . . on such a beautiful summer day. She loved and trusted her aunt too much to dispute anything she said. But she could hardly believe that the feelings would pass. Summer's colors seemed dim, gray, as they had when she went color-blind after her mother's death. She felt that at last, after so many illusory paths, she had found lasting love, happiness right on her doorstep . . . and that now it was gone forever.
Aunt Aida said a blessing in Gaelic, and then Stevie hung up and lay back down. Tilly lay on the bed beside her, stretched out against Stevie's right leg. Stevie petted her gently. She had had the cat for so long—truly, Tilly had been with her through it all. Stevie thought about what her aunt had said . . . to abide with the feelings. She looked across the room at her easel—and the blank paper. She knew she should work, but she couldn't. Her heart hurt so much.
She had received six postcards from Nell—one of Inverness Castle, on which she'd written, “The castle's nice, but not half as magical as Aunt Aida's!”—and one of Loch Ness. The rest had been from the Orkney Islands, where her father had taken her on business, and Nell's messages had duly reported on the sand, seaweed, and shells.
Last week she had received a note from Jack.
“We're settling in—sort of,” he wrote. “How are things with Aida, and setting up the foundation? I've jumped right into the job—designing bridges to connect refineries to other outposts in the Orkneys, mainly occupied by people involved in North Sea oil development. Nell let me know how she feels about it by cutting a picture out of the paper of ducks killed in an oil spill—in the town to be served by my first bridge. The poor birds were covered in black crude, and Nell drew a balloon over their heads with the words, ‘Stevie, write your next book about how oil kills ducks!' Nine years old, and she's already an activist. I know she misses you.”
She had first focused on the photo—which he had enclosed in the letter. She had seen all too many pictures like this—waterfowl tarred by spilled oil, unable to fly or escape, sometimes held down in the water until they drowned. When she was a child, such pictures had made her sad—now they made her angry.
During other difficult periods of her life, she had used her work to get through. Each of her divorces had been so painful, and she'd survived each by doing another book—and by falling in love again. Even the breakups had been charged with a sort of raw energy—that had driven her to her easel. She hadn't succumbed to depression then—so why should she now?
Outside the window, the brilliant light of Hubbard's Point seemed to explode. It bounced off the water and white sand. The flowers in the backyard absorbed the light, gave it back. The light of Hubbard's Point was rare, incredible—especially from Stevie's house on the hill. It was as if her parents had chosen this location with the knowledge that their daughter would become an artist.
Through all her summers here, the wild light had inspired her to go forward—but today she turned away from it, her back to the window. The darkness inside was weighing her down, and she couldn't fight it—even the brilliant sunshine couldn't penetrate.
When the phone rang, Stevie almost didn't answer it. Who could it be, that she would want to talk to? Tilly just lay there, inert and uninterested. Stevie listened to the ringing—five times, six—and then she reached over to pick up.
“Hello?” she said.
She swore she heard the whole Atlantic Ocean passing over the line, announcing the caller's great distance . . . a time lag, and then a madly exuberant voice: “Stevie! It's me!”
“Nell!” Stevie said, sitting bolt upright.
“Did you get my postcards?”
“I did—I love them.”
“I've been on beach patrol . . . every chance I get, I make my dad drive me to a new one. There are lots of them here.”
“Well, Scotland has a lot of coastline,” Stevie said.
“Did you like what I reported, on the weird shells and the eelgrass?”
“Yes—excellent reporting, Ms. Kilvert.”
Nell giggled, and the sound was so tender and familiar, Stevie felt it in her ribs, her collarbones, her heart.
“The Isle of Harris is supposed to have pink sand and palm trees—we're going there soon. Not for business, but for a fun weekend,” Nell said, sounding so excited that Stevie actually felt her heart fall. Come on—pull yourself together for her, she told herself.
“My father's been working himself to death,” Nell continued. “He does nothing but toil at his drafting table! I have to remind him to eat. It's a nightmare.”
Stevie smiled at the expression, then asked, “And what about you? Have you seen your school yet? Met your teacher?”
“Uh-huh, Dad's going to have to travel all the time, so he found me a tutor. She's nice. Miss Robertson. I showed her your book.”
“You did?”
“She saw the dedication and said that you and I must be really good friends.”
“We are,” Stevie said. “Maybe you can tell her about the real-life hummingbirds. . . .”
“I will,” Nell said. “I miss you.”
“Oh, I miss you, too, Nell.”
They were silent for a few seconds. Stevie wondered whether Jack was standing there.
“I wish I were back there, at Hubbard's Point,” Nell said.
“The beach will always be here, Nell. Whenever you come back,” Stevie said, welling up with tears.
“I know,” Nell said.
“Keep up the beach girl reports,” Stevie said. “They're really great.”
“I will,” Nell said. “Are they really helping?”
“They really are,” Stevie assured her. Another long minute of silence stretched out, and then Nell said a soft goodbye and hung up.
Stevie lay back on her pillow, holding the phone. The dial tone rang in her ears. If she closed her eyes, she could almost see Nell: her green eyes, short brown hair, big smile. She could almost see Jack walking up the hill behind her, on the way to visit. She could almost hear their voices . . .
But it was just the dial tone. The strange thing about a phone call like the one she'd just had was that it made her loneliness even deeper. She thought of her aunt's words: Abide with the feelings as long as you can. It seemed almost unbearable.
Tilly lay motionless, lost in a dream. Closing her eyes, Stevie tried to hold on to the sound of Nell's voice, that she'd heard just a few minutes earlier, and the sound of Jack's, that she'd heard weeks before. But the voices were already gone. . . .
JACK WAS swept up in the whirl of moving to a foreign country, getting Nell settled, and starting a new job. The relocation department at IR—the engineering firm was named for its founder, Ivan Romanov—had found Jack and Nell a house on the outskirts of Inverness, in the shadow of the Western Highlands. It was an old vicarage, built of river stone, dating back to the 1600s.
Nell's first impression had imprinted itself on his memory—she'd been overtired from the flight, hungry because she hadn't liked the food on the plane, sullen because she had set the alarm on her watch to beep at exactly three o'clock every day—the precise moment she had said goodbye to Stevie and Peggy—and it had just beeped.
They had climbed out of the airport taxi, stood on the sidewalk in front of the bleak, imposing gray manor. Although Georgian, elegant in design, something about it seemed institutional.
“What is this?” Nell asked quietly.
“It's our house,” he said.
They were met at the door by Ms. Dancy Diarmud, the IR relocation liaison. She was about thirty-five, very pretty, trim in a cherry red wool suit. Bright and friendly, she greeted them warmly.
“Welcome to Scotland,” she said, shaking hands. “Mr. Kilvert.”
“Jack,” he said. “And this is Nell.”
Dancy smiled, and led them through the first floor—a living room, dining room, parlor, chapel, kitchen, pantry, and what she called “the flower-arranging room—the vicar's wife often prepared the funeral arrangements.” Nell gave Jack a brooding look. Although numerous, the rooms were small, the ceilings low. There were front stairs, curving up from a narrow hall, and back stairs, proceeding up, steep and vertical, in what Dancy called “the stair closet,” from the kitchen.
She walked them through the bedrooms—six of them. There was a sameness to rental property, Jack thought. No matter how expensive looking the sofas or beds or paintings were, they had a soullessness to them—as if they were never meant to be lived with for long. They were like the one-night stands of furniture. He thought of Stevie's lived-in house, with so much of her present in every inch, and his chest hurt.
JACK GOT SETTLED at work. IR had planned a series of cocktail parties, to introduce him to the other engineers and the clients—oil executives based in London, Moscow, and Houston.
The production schedule was intense—he had to visit the Orkney Islands, to see the sites where his bridges would be built—stone spans pleasing to the islanders, yet rugged enough to accommodate the refinery traffic currently handled by ferry boats. Luckily there was no shortage of extraordinary beaches for Nell to visit.
The chain of seventy islands stretched north from the northernmost point of mainland Scotland. A short flight from Inverness landed them on Ladapool, one of only seventeen inhabited islands. The landscape was wild and mystical, all sea and sky, with sites of ancient cairns and standing stones, reminding him of the Scottish trip he'd taken with his family, of how Madeleine had been so intrigued by the power and magic of standing stones.
Unfortunately, just around the corner from some of the most spectacular bays were Brooks Oil refineries, tankers waiting to offload—offshore at anchor, supply ships clogging docks, and parking lots lined with oil trucks. Jack couldn't help thinking of the photo Nell had cut out of the newspaper . . . and of the book she wanted Stevie to write about birds affected by the oil spills.
Nell came along on the trips. While Jack walked the road, talked with other engineers, viewed the site plans, she did her schoolwork with Miss Robertson. During free time, she scurried down the roadside to the beach—a long stretch of pebbly sand along a glassy-smooth protected cove. The shape reminded Jack of Hubbard's Point—a half-moon bay, embraced by headlands. He could almost see where the raft should be, the raft where he and Stevie had made love . . .
He forced his attention back to the other IR engineers while Nell collected shells. When she was finished, she came up to stand beside him—with eyes steady and grave.
“What's wrong?” he asked her when he had a break.
“Nothing,” she said.
“You look upset.”
“I'm just thinking,” she said. “Trying to memorize everything about the beach. So I can report to the beach girls.”
“Ahh,” Jack said. He reached into his pocket, gave her a small notepad and his fountain pen. He didn't have to tell her how precious the pen was—it had been his college graduation present from his sister.
“What're these for?” Nell asked.
“For taking notes. So you don't forget anything that you might want to tell the beach girls.”
She'd solemnly nodded her thanks. Then, while the other engineers resumed conferring about the bridge, she'd scrambled back down to the beach.
“So,” said Victor Buchanan, a senior IR engineer. He was tall and burly, red-cheeked, with shaggy gray hair. Jack knew that he was one of Ivan Romanov's top people—he had signed off on hiring Jack. “Do you always bring your daughter on-site?”
“Yes,” Jack said.
“A good nanny would help you with that.”
“We have a tutor. And I want Nell with me.”
Victor and two of the others laughed—Leo Derr, a young, clean-cut Englishman, and April Maguire, a smart American woman, an MIT and Structural alum, just like Jack. He had worked with her many times—she had been instrumental in setting up interviews directly with Romanov himself. The laughter seemed good-natured; so Jack smiled.
“She doesn't get in the way of my work,” Jack said to the others, standing on the road in Ladapool.
“We were just thinking of your social life!” April said.
“She basically is my social life,” Jack said, smiling wryly.
“Well, we have a good old time,” Victor said. “Tonight we'll be heading off to the Golden Peat—it's a place for tasting scotch from all the distilleries around here. Single malts . . . not a place for a wee one!”
Jack shrugged, trying to look disappointed. The truth was, he wanted as much of his free time as possible to be Nell-centered. She'd been shaky ever since arriving in Scotland. Her nightmares were back—Dr. Galford had given him a name in Inverness, and he knew he had to call. Now she wasn't just crying for Emma—she was crying for Stevie, Peggy, and Madeleine, too. How could he have taken what had already felt awful and made it this much worse?
“You'll want to find yourself some good child care before next month,” April said quietly, when the others resumed looking at plans. Jack wondered about the twinkle in her eyes.
“Why?” he asked.
“Well, because we're getting another team member.”
Jack had heard rumors that Ivan himself was planning to oversee this project. The Brooks Oil Company was one of the firm's biggest clients, and he wanted to make sure the bridge was built on time and under budget.
“Ivan?” he said.
April waved her hand, laughing. “No. If it were Ivan, you'd be so busy, we probably wouldn't be heading off to the Golden Peat. Someone else. A ‘hired gun,' just like you used to be . . . we're subcontracting part of this job back to your old company.”
“Structural?” Jack asked, his heart kicking over.
April nodded, smiling wider as if she'd heard company rumors. “Exactly. Francesca is coming on board.”
As everyone went back to work, he glanced over at Nell, combing the beach. One hand cupped, she filled it with shells and pebbles. Occasionally she'd transfer them into her pocket and sit down to take notes, intense and focused.
His daughter was taking Stevie's assignment very seriously. He could almost picture Madeleine at the same age, walking on other Scottish coastlines, collecting impressions to share with her best friends. Jack remembered seeing her at a desk in the hotel, bent over postcards, writing ferociously.
He had felt strangely envious—he'd realized that he'd never had friends he felt that passionately about, to interrupt his holiday and to sit down and write anything. Yet Maddie had done it . . . and Nell was doing it now, her posture an uncanny echo of her aunt's. The funny thing was, they'd both written to the same woman: Stevie.
He stared at his Nell, huddled over the notepad, scribbling furiously. Was she reporting about the rockiness of the beach, the dark gray color of the clouds, the chill in the salt air, the wind blowing straight off the sea? As it happened, they were on the west side of an isthmus, connecting two parts of a narrow island halfway up the archipelago. To the east, he could see the North Sea. But if he looked west, he could see the North Atlantic—a straight shot to North America.
Hubbard's Point was out there somewhere, Jack thought. If Stevie was walking on her beach, they could almost see each other. Almost.
If there weren't three thousand miles of ocean between them.
He looked at Nell again, wondered what she was writing. Would Stevie share Nell's thoughts with that other loyal beach girl?
Would Stevie send Nell's cards on to Maddie?
What are you doing here? he asked himself, not for the first time—not even for the hundredth time—since arriving in Scotland. Meeting Stevie had done something to him: it had stopped him in his tracks, unhooked him from the cycle he'd invented, of running and hating and hiding—from his sister,
from their tragedy.
From the truth.
The wind blew into Jack's eyes, making them sting and water. He turned away, back to his colleagues, back to the comparatively simple chore of building a four-lane bridge to replace the old cart path inclined to flood at high tide.
Chapter 24
NELL FINISHED HER SCHOOLWORK, then ran down to sit on a driftwood log. Her father and the other engineers were trying to figure out how to build a bridge pretty enough for the islanders and practical enough for the oil company to get their trucks back and forth from the refinery. Nell knew her father didn't think she paid attention to his work, but she did. She cared about the bridges he built. She cared about every single thing he did.
Her notebook was getting filled with lots of things. She took notes about the cold water, silvery driftwood, channeled whelks, and tiny clam shells. She took off her shoes to feel the water temperature and wrote: cold! When birds flew overhead, she shielded her eyes from the sun and viewed their shapes. Then she tried to draw outlines on the page.
This beach, like others she and her father had visited in the islands, was covered with large smooth stones and small pebbles. Some of the stones were black, and looked gnarled—like walnuts. The first time she picked one up, her fingers got all greasy. When she tried to wash them, the grease just got stickier.
Her father had been standing with Mr. Buchanan and Mrs. Maguire. When Nell had run up, to show her father, Mr. Buchanan had grimaced and rolled his eyes. “The downside of this particular project,” he said, offering Nell his handkerchief. Nell was confused, especially when Mrs. Maguire told him to put his nice linen hanky away and pulled out a small foil-wrapped square instead. She said to Nell's father, “You'll need to lay in a stock of these if she's going to roam the beach.”
Nell's father took the square, tore it open, and wiped Nell's fingers clean. Their eyes met, and her father smiled his reassurance.
“What is it?” Nell asked.
“Oil,” Mr. Buchanan said. “Brooks has very sophisticated cleanup measures, but some always manages to slip through the booms.”