“What’s the purpose of a flare?”
“To get someone’s attention.”
“Could it have alerted your people?”
“I doubt it.”
Lydia sat up. “Could it have caused the storm?” She spoke the words as they occurred to her and immediately realized her logic was obviously drained.
The edges of Connor’s mouth curved up. “No.” He seemed delighted by her half-awake supposition, but she felt idiotic. She laid her head back down on the arm of the divan.
Connor stood and walked to the linen closet. He opened its door as if he had lived in the house his entire life. After pulling a blanket from the upper shelf, he closed the closet and stepped back into the parlor. He shook the blanket open and spread it over her. Then he kissed the top of her head and returned to the chair by the fire.
* * *
Thin strips of yellow light sliced between the long rectangular shutters and beamed into the living room. Connor yawned and stretched his neck to either side. His muscles ached and told him he would regret the night spent sleeping upright in an armchair, but he’d been determined to make sure Lydia stayed in the house during the storm. She had slipped past him at the beach and nearly drowned, and he vowed never to underestimate her again.
The room was washed in silence; the only movement came from specks of dust that swam in the shards of sunlight. The air outside had stilled.
Connor fixed his eyes on the blanket folded neatly on the empty couch opposite him. Lydia was already gone. The old journal that she had held most of the night was now on the rug beneath the sofa. He picked it up and left the living room.
His footsteps echoed through the empty kitchen as he walked to the back door. He marched to Lydia’s cottage, entered without knocking, and called out her name. When there was no answer, he laid the old journal on her desk and left her office. He rounded the main house and took a shortcut on a path through the edge of the forest to the shore.
The sea folded calmly under a cloudless sky, and the sun formed a crenulated circle as it climbed from the horizon. Its reflection off the water was already too brilliant for naked eyes. Connor squinted as he trekked the last length of sand-strewn forest. He cleared the wind-whipped grasses and descended a steep bank of sand.
The tide had come in, and with it three bodies, lifeless and inert. Their clothing was dark and soiled, and it caught the seaweed and foam that failed to wash out with the waves. Lydia was kneeling in the wet sand, hunched over the body of Luke Owens, the young man whose rebellious choice had inflicted her with the most despair.
Connor knelt beside her in the wet sand. Luke’s face was bluish-gray. Lydia closed the boy’s eyelids with the palm of her hand. She turned to Connor and dropped her forehead onto his shoulder.
She shook silently.
He wrapped his arm around her and anticipated violent sobbing, but it never came. He understood death and loss. She had encountered those things before and surely would again, but he wanted to make it all go away for her.
He would take it on himself for her in an instant if it were possible. As a naval aviator, he frequently put himself in harm’s way for a greater good, but this desire to sacrifice his wellbeing to secure one particular individual’s contentment was foreign to him.
Sitting mere inches from the empty shell of a recently departed soul, Connor’s purpose bound to the life of another. This tragedy would not break Lydia, and he wouldn’t rest until he saw her through it. In that moment, on the shore of a land the rest of the world did not know existed, he relinquished his allegiance to his former life and directed his devotion to Lydia Colburn of the Land.
John arrived and Luke’s mother with him. Others came and wept too. Lydia pulled away from Connor without looking at him. He stood and held out his hand to help her up. She moved directly to the other bodies and confirmed their deaths as the resident doctor, wearing the stoic expression of a physician at work.
Levi stamped through the grass pulling a wooden cart. He motioned Connor over to one of the bodies. The onlookers around that particular corpse were only gawking. No one wept for that man. Connor helped Levi lift Frank’s body onto the cart. He glanced at the military-issued boots on the corpse and was glad Frank Roberts was dead, though the torment of knowing that Lydia took the blame made him wish he had killed the creep himself. He let the thought simmer as he helped Levi move the cart over the sand to the path that led through the forest.
He didn’t want to leave Lydia on the beach. He thought of practical logistics and considered suggesting they load all three bodies on the cart at once. But when he saw more of the boys’ family members arrive, he was astonished at how the coldness of war had calloused his heart to human remains.
As Connor and Levi moved the cart toward the path, John stepped close and whispered something to Levi. Levi nodded and continued away from the beach while John walked back to the mourners. Connor followed the cart as Levi pulled it along the forest path and into the center of the village.
A young woman and her small child were walking down the cobblestone street. When they noticed Frank’s body on the cart, the woman drew her child close to her and turned back around.
The cart’s wheels rattled as Levi pulled it across the cobblestones and to the back of the chapel. He directed the cart to an outbuilding that Connor hadn’t noticed before. He’d given little thought to the graveyard that lay dark and quiet behind the chapel.
Levi unlatched the rickety wooden door on the shed, and the extent of his duties as the overseer’s son became clear. Frank Roberts had no family, so they would have to take on the role of undertaker.
Levi pulled the cart into the shed, and Connor helped him move the body onto the dirt floor. The shed smelled of mildew, and the morning light that came through the cracks in the wooden walls illuminated several spades. They left the corpse in the shed and pulled the cart back to the beach to retrieve the other bodies.
When Connor and Levi returned to the shore, Walter’s family had already removed his body. Luke’s covered remains had been moved from the edge of the encroaching water. John informed Connor that the boy’s father was on his way with a wagon.
Bethany and many of the teenagers whom Connor recognized from the festival had gathered. Lydia stood near Luke’s body, expressionless. Luke’s father arrived and scooped his son from the sand. He looked at Connor, his eyes thick with sadness, before he turned and carried his son away to be buried.
As the mourners filed behind them to leave, Luke’s mother turned to Lydia and said something in a shrill tone then continued walking. Connor couldn’t hear exactly what Mrs. Owens said, but once everyone else was gone, Lydia buried her face in her hands. Before Connor could get to her, she composed herself and followed the others away from the beach.
Levi trudged past Connor. “Come, Connor. We have a hole to dig.”
* * *
With the gruesome task of burying Frank’s corpse complete, Connor left the graveyard early in the afternoon. Exhaustion and hunger reduced his senses and clouded his mind, but his anger against the dead stalker drove him past the Colburn property and down Frank’s well-warn path through the forest to the dilapidated cabin on the bluffs. With every shovelful of dirt Connor had dumped into the fresh grave, he had thought of the ways Frank had violated Lydia without ever touching her. As he stomped to the cabin, Connor anticipated the cathartic release of destroying anything that could cause her further harm.
Connor threw open the cabin door. It crashed into the wall behind it and sent dust and splinters into the air. Leaving the door agape, he charged to the bed and dropped to the floor. He dragged the stacks of sketches from beneath the mattress and carried them to the fireplace.
After tossing a lit match onto the first stack of gray leaf pages, Connor squatted by the hearth. He watched the hungry flame grow and slowly fed it more of the drawings of Lydia. She probably had no idea that Frank had sketched a single picture of her, and Connor wanted to make sure she never
knew. As he dropped the last page onto the fire, he stood and walked to the old trunk where he had found the locator beacon when he searched Frank’s cabin weeks before.
The trunk was empty now. Frank had taken all of Connor’s gear with him out to sea—the helmet, the parachute, the flashlight—because he thought those things had the power to get Lydia’s attention. Now Lydia was in agony because of Frank’s stupidity. But Frank wasn’t the only one to blame.
If Connor’s parachute had not carried him to the shore in front of Lydia, maybe none of this would have happened. His hungry gut tightened with guilt. Maybe he should have left the Colburns as soon as he’d recovered. Maybe he should have told John about Frank’s sketches, or even burned down the cabin when Frank was still alive. He should have died when his aircraft malfunctioned and spared them all this misery.
He glanced at the pile of ashes that whispered as they moved in the hearth. On the other hand: if he hadn’t landed where he did, Frank would still be alive, stalking Lydia. Connor took one last look around the vile cabin. Frank would have eventually lost patience with simply watching her and sketching her.
Lydia deserved to be free of him. If Connor’s arrival had led to Frank’s demise, it was worth it all in the end.
Connor closed the cabin door and brushed the dust from his hands. No one would ever know about the sketches of Lydia. Frank Roberts would never bother her again. As he walked back to the Colburn property, his guilt dissipated along with the anger.
Chapter Fourteen
Lydia stopped outside her cottage and shook all the sand from her dress that she could before she stepped inside. The borrowed dress was now stained with saltwater. She closed the door and leaned against it, letting her head fall back to the doorframe.
Her whole body ached. She couldn’t deny her fatigue any longer. Everyone and everything else in the world would have to wait for her to recover. She turned the lock on the door of the medical cottage for the first time in broad daylight.
With shaky fingers she unbuttoned the row of pearl buttons down the front of the dress. The dirty, borrowed garment dropped to the floor at her feet. She left it where it fell and climbed the stairs.
She sat at her dressing table and looked with disgust at herself in the mirror. She unraveled the little braids Mandy had fashioned in her hair the evening before. The braids were knotted, and the sea had washed out most of the pins. She picked a piece of seaweed away from her scalp then bathed and combed her clean hair with rigid, mechanical motions.
When she got into her bed, eyes half closed, she couldn’t remember coming home. She crawled under the covers and fell asleep without stirring for a comfortable position. Despite being in a bedroom flooded with sunlight, a dreamless sleep smothered her.
She awoke late in the afternoon. Her eyes shifted occasionally from one aspect of her bedroom to another, but her body remained motionless. Her mind wouldn’t focus. She hated sleeping during the day.
Each moment she tried to rest another torturous thought burst into her awareness. Each image brought with it the emotions she had felt in those moments—emotions she usually buried in order to carry on effectively. Now those feelings bubbled to the surface and threatened to shadow her existence unless she dealt with them.
She stared at a miniature vase on the corner of her dresser. The late afternoon sunlight illuminated the thick layer of red glaze used to make the clay vase look more beautiful than it actually was. Bethany had made the vase when she first started working at the pottery yard. The clay was rough and poorly molded. She only displayed the imperfect item because her young sister’s effort made it seem special. The shiny glaze held her gaze but not her attention.
She thought of Ruth Owens. The grieving mother had poured words poisonous with blame on Lydia as she left the shore that morning. Luke had made a series of bad choices that led to his death. So had Walter. Lydia had tried to save the boys, nearly losing her life in the process, but that didn’t loosen the grip of guilt from her heart.
She thought of Frank’s death and regretted her attitude and actions toward him while he was alive. She had spent years afraid—not of him—but of what others might think about her because of his attention. She had inwardly despised him and the embarrassment his unwanted affection brought upon her. Her outward portrayal of utmost purity was simply a glaze over her prideful heart like the glaze on Bethany’s substandard vase.
As the sun lowered in position, its light struck a pattern in the quilt on her bed. The colors caught her eye. She moved her head slightly and noticed the pillow under her face was wet. She wiped her eye with the back of her hand and moved a stream of tears that flowed without permission. She neither tried to stop it nor encourage it but allowed herself the natural release of crying.
It was dark outside when Lydia emerged from her bed. Unconcerned with the hour, she poured a glass of water and sat on top of the rumpled bedcovers. As she sipped the tepid fluid, she remembered seeing something on her desk that morning. The memory seemed blurry, like a dream; still, she went down the steps to her office to confirm it.
She tiptoed to her desk as if making a sound in her own home would alert a needy village to her wakefulness. There on her desk—just as she had pictured—was the journal Isabella gave her during the storm. Lydia knew she left it in the parlor of her family’s home and realized Connor brought it to her cottage when he searched for her that morning. The magnitude of his concern struck her deeply.
She took the ancient journal upstairs and lit an oil lamp on her bedside table. She climbed into bed, and her cold feet were thankful to be back under the covers. Pulling the quilt to her waist, she relaxed against the headboard and opened the old book.
Despite the years since the journal’s completion, the penciled writing was still bold and easy for Lydia to decipher. The journal detailed a painful division in the third generation of Colburns in the Land and a freak storm that followed their feud. Lydia understood the correlation Isabella drew between the storm in the journal and last night’s storm—both were harsh and rainless, and both occurred after rebellion in the village.
Still, Lydia refused to dwell on pointless speculation or call the storm divine judgment. There would always be some tragedy in life, some rebellion, some mistake—whether malicious or accidental—but she refused to live trapped by fear. Anymore.
After Lydia soaked in every morsel of the ancient details, she curled the old book into her arms. She’d read many journals written by Lillian Colburn and considered her writings to be the standard in matriarchal wisdom. She hadn’t found the prophetic voice in the secret journal that her aunt did, but she was honored nonetheless to be trusted with the private heirloom.
After Lydia put out the light, she thought of Connor and how he’d remained with her through her ordeal. She recalled his actions and his questions and his palpable concern. He’d demonstrated his commitment to guard her physically, and at the same time he also showed his desire to guard her heart.
As with her treatment of the storm’s cause, she would not speculate if she needed Connor’s protection, because she wanted it. She’d been so afraid of what joining her life to another might take away from her that she had not considered what it could bring. Dreaming of those possibilities was perhaps what caused the feeling her peers referred to as intrigue. Though the feeling was becoming more enjoyable, mere infatuation of Connor wasn’t enough to change her life and his.
It would take more than that. It was his heart—the immaterial substance of his existence—that assured her of his merit. However, it did little good to consider marriage now. He wouldn’t want her anymore. Frank had revealed his deadly stunt was because of his affection for her. She had failed to save the boys. The ordeal would tarnish her image in the village and ruin her chance of receiving the title Doctor.
What respectable man would court a disrespected woman?
Connor would probably go on to another village, as far as he could get from the foolish spectacle of her and her vi
llage. She preferred to distance herself from anything less perfect and so she would understand if he did.
* * *
Connor was the last person in the Colburn house to arrive at the breakfast table. Lydia hadn’t emerged from her self-imprisonment in nearly twenty-four hours, and it caused his mood to fluctuate between annoyance and alarm. No one spoke as the dishes of food were passed around the kitchen table. He stretched his arm reluctantly over Lydia’s empty seat to accept the bread basket from John. Both he and her father had tried knocking on the door of her cottage to no avail.
The food passed from one person to the next, and John held another dish out to Connor over Lydia’s empty plate. He pictured her in her cottage either mournfully broken or immaturely wallowing in self-pity. If the former, she needed his comfort. If the latter, she needed his correction.
His patience ended.
He accepted the dish from John then stood and filled Lydia’s plate with food. He picked up the filled plate, dropped an open napkin over it, and looked at John. “Unless you object, sir.”
John shook his head.
The others watched Connor, their eyes wide. How long would they have gone without doing what he was about to do?
He walked to the cabinets by the pantry, opened a drawer that was stuffed with tools and old utensils, and found two long nails. The nails chinked when he dropped them in his shirt pocket. The Colburn family silently watched him as he stepped past the table.
Cold air gushed into the kitchen when he opened the back door. He quickly closed it and walked to Lydia’s cottage. With the plate of food in one hand, he knocked firmly on her door with the other hand to allow her one last opportunity to open the door herself. When he received no answer, he crouched to inspect the keyhole. He set the plate of food on a pavestone, took the two long nails from his shirt pocket, and proceeded to pick the antediluvian-style lock. With one nail he easily found the internal pin and with a quick turn of the second nail, the lightweight lock clicked open.
The Land Uncharted (The Uncharted Series Book 1) Page 20