Beyond the Tides

by Liz Johnson

  “Mr. Whitaker?”

  Whitaker nodded, his hold on Meg’s shoulder visibly tightening even as she patted his hand.

  “I’m Dr. Wong. I’d like to talk with you for a few minutes.” She eyed Oliver and Meg before adding, “Alone.”

  “I’d like my daughter to come with me,” Whitaker said.

  Meg’s face paled. “Someone should stay with Mom.”

  Oliver hadn’t planned to say anything, but the words popped out. “I will.”

  Meg’s glare landed on him with all the force of a tidal wave. “I don’t think—”

  Whitaker cut her off. “Thank you, son.”

  Meg didn’t even attempt a smile, her eyebrows saying more than enough. She followed the doctor into the hallway, their murmured voices too low to understand.

  Oliver took the opportunity to really look at the room. It was bland, only the bright lights of the monitor near the head of the bed breaking up the tans and browns and plain old whites. The low moans of the patient in the bed on the other side of the curtain broke the silence. Otherwise all was still.

  There was a plastic chair along the wall, and Oliver scraped it across the floor toward the bed, then lowered himself into it. “Hey there, Mrs. Whitaker.”

  Her hand, pale and laced with veins, opened and closed slowly. Oliver reached out and tucked his fingers into her grip.

  “Heard you’re having a rough day.” He kept his voice low, not really expecting a response. When she squeezed his hand, he smiled. “But you’re going to be all right. Your family and these doctors are going to take good care of you.”

  The corners of her lips lifted in the tiniest smile. Maybe it was real. Or maybe he just hoped she was alert. Either way, he gave her hand another press.

  “Mama Potts always says Cows ice cream will fix anything. Broken bones. Hard days. Bad memories.” He smiled at the memory of his mom setting a heaping bowl of the sweet treat from the island’s dairy in front of him after he lost a tooth in the regional hockey championship, and after he’d gotten stung by a bee as a kid, and after his brother Eli had left.

  Okay, maybe it wouldn’t quite fix everything.

  Mrs. Whitaker’s eyes fluttered, and he held his breath. Lord, let her open them. Let her wake up with nothing more than a headache.

  As she settled, her agitation easing away, her eyes remained closed. She had strange eyes. Whitaker said they’d been beautiful. The most beautiful he’d ever seen. Oliver could believe that. He remembered the light in them, the way they used to shine with life. Meg had inherited the same vibrancy.

  But they weren’t like they’d been when he was a kid. Mrs. Whitaker’s eyes were strange now. Lost. Unfocused. Maybe it was too much to hope that a bump on the head might help them find their focus again. Or that it might lead to an explanation of what was going on behind her lost gaze.

  The voices in the hallway rose, Meg’s words crisp, drawing his gaze toward the door. “But we have been waiting. We’ve been on the list to see him for the last year. There are never any openings.”

  “She’s tired of waiting,” Mrs. Whitaker whispered.

  Oliver swung back toward her. Only slivers of her blue eyes were visible beneath drooping lids, but the strength of her grip on his fingers increased.

  “She’s scared too,” she said.

  He nodded, not sure if he should agree. Or even if Mrs. Whitaker would remember having this conversation. In the end, all he could say was, “She loves you a lot.”

  He could have kicked himself in the rear end for that one. He didn’t need to defend Meg Whitaker, and he didn’t really want to either. His goal was civility. Maybe a step or two beyond civility toward Meg.

  But this was Mrs. Whitaker. He owed her more than he wanted to admit to anyone—let alone to himself. The least he could do was try to put her at ease. With a grin he said, “Give her a pair of skates and Meg could be an enforcer for the Maple Leafs. At least where you’re concerned.”

  The corner of her eyes crinkled. “She’s a good girl. She didn’t have to come home.”

  It was his turn to squint at her. What was that supposed to mean? Meg had taken a job at the high school after going to school for more years than anyone could have paid him to study. Her return had practically made the front page of the local paper. “Local Kid Proves Brilliance and Brings It Back Home.”

  Parents of high schoolers at church talked about how much their kids loved Meg’s classes. But no one—including Mama Potts—had ever talked about why Meg had left the capital. Then again, he’d never asked for the details.

  One week, church had been the same as it had been for years, with familiar heads of hair ahead of him and little girls wearing hats. The next week, Meg’s long blonde hair had hung over the seat right in front of him, blocking his hymnal, as she took her spot in the Whitaker family pew. He hadn’t needed to know why. It just was. So he’d figured out how to avoid her. Until now.

  And now he wanted to know why. Only he wasn’t sure that Mrs. Whitaker could tell him the truth.

  Finally he mumbled, “That was nice of her to come home.”

  Mrs. Whitaker nodded, her head slumping to one side. “It was my fault.”

  “Oh, I’m sure . . .” He wasn’t certain what argument he intended to make, but a sudden shift in her eyes stopped him. They had turned sharp, direct.

  “I fell. More than once.” She shook her head, a self-deprecating laugh on her lips. “More than a dozen times, probably. Can’t exactly remember.”

  Oliver mustered a smile in response. Her words made his breath catch, but she wasn’t looking for sympathy. This was the truth he’d thought she might not know. She knew what had happened, what had landed her in the hospital again. At least for this moment.

  “And sometimes my memory . . . well, it’s like there’s a blank space where there should be . . .” She shook her head. “More.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Whitaker.”

  “Oh, don’t be sorry for me.” She reached across her thin body and patted his hand. “I remember you. I remember . . . you were a good boy. You took care of your mom and your brother too.”

  His face burned and he ducked his head, suddenly a seventeen-year-old boy again. Swiping his free hand down the leg of his shorts, he tried not to remember. He tried not to dwell on the kind words, on how they kindled the embers in his chest, unfamiliar and welcome.

  “You were so handsome.”

  The fire stretched from his face to the tips of his ears, and he shook his head, not able to look up from the patch of tile between his sneakers.

  “Still are.”

  “No, ma’am.” That was a blatant lie, and he wasn’t going to let it slide. Eli had taken his role as the eldest brother to heart and teased Oliver since childhood about his ears. A look in the mirror was enough to remind him of the broken nose that had never healed right. He’d grown into most of his features, but he’d never been the good-looking one.

  Everyone on the southern shore knew that Eli was the handsome one—the talented one too. At least he had been ten years before. Levi was the baby and the bookish one, though he’d rarely spoken more than a few words in a row since he was fifteen.

  Oliver didn’t have any of those traits. He wasn’t talented or particularly book smart, but he could reel in a lobster trap. He could balance a ledger, navigate a boat, and manage not to get pinched most days. And the lobsters didn’t seem to mind if he wasn’t a standout in other areas.

  Neither did Whitaker.

  He didn’t need Meg to think him handsome or smart either. He wouldn’t mind if she agreed with her mom on a few other points though.

  “Don’t argue with me, Oliver Ross.” Mrs. Whitaker’s slight smile sliced through the sharp edge of her words. With another pat on his hand, she said, “You have kind eyes.”

  He began to nod his halfhearted agreement when someone cleared her throat behind him. He didn’t need to turn around to know it was Meg.

  five

  Why did
you do that?”

  Oliver whipped around at the accusation in Meg’s question as she marched up his driveway. “Why did I do what?” He hadn’t seen her since the hospital, since he’d left her with her dad and driven back to Victoria by himself almost a week before.

  She stood before him now in his front yard, fire in her eyes. “You know what I mean.”

  Actually, he did not. He’d done a lot of things since the hospital. Like finishing up inventory on his own, fixing the handful of broken buoys, and buying the materials he needed to replace the six broken lobster traps and replace some frayed line.

  Dropping a saw onto his makeshift worktable, he swiped his forehead with the back of his hand. He’d nearly finished the frame on the first new trap, but he stepped away from it. Whatever had Meg up in arms probably wasn’t about some new wood and netting. At least he hoped not.

  “Seriously, I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

  Huffing, she sent a piece of hair bouncing off her forehead. It settled right back where it had come from, so she brushed it behind her ear. He got the feeling she’d like to brush him aside just as easily. But that wasn’t going to happen. Especially when he had so many unanswered questions about why she’d come back to the island and just how much she’d given up to do so.

  “With my mom. At the hospital.”

  He lifted a shoulder. “What about it?”

  “You were holding her hand and . . .” Her voice lost steam as she tried to put words to whatever had set her off. Shoulders slumped and head bowed, she sighed.

  “How’s your mom feeling?”

  She looked up, eyes filled with a thousand questions. “She’s getting better. Her head is healing.”

  He knew Meg meant the external injury only. Whatever was going on inside her mom probably wouldn’t ever heal. “You’ve been with her this week?”

  She nodded slowly. “Dad is so worn out.” He could see the weight of the admission literally push her shoulders closer to the ground. “He can’t keep an eye on Mom and take care of the house.” Her gaze shot up to meet his. “Please, don’t tell him—or anyone—that I said that.”

  He waved it off. She didn’t even need to ask.

  Silence hung heavily between them, only the call of the morning birds filling the air. She stared at him, clearly expecting a response. He stared back. Her eyes were wider at this time of day, her chin firmer.

  He didn’t really think chins changed in firmness, but there was just something stiff about Meg. Something that suggested she was holding herself together and it took every bit of her strength to do it. It dared him to try to crack her shell, to see what softness was beneath.

  “Your mom was really good to me when I was a kid.”

  Of course, by kid he meant seventeen. Her kindness had continued after he’d destroyed Meg’s robot. In fact, Mrs. Whitaker had never said a thing about it. She had even arranged for her husband to hire him. Any chance of owning the business was entirely because of her. He couldn’t not hold her hand when she was alone and scared in a hospital room.

  “And she was reaching out her hand,” he continued. “I just thought I could give her something to hang on to.”

  His ears stung at the memory of what Mrs. Whitaker had said to him. He’d never been more grateful that his hair covered the protruding appendages.

  Meg sighed. “I didn’t know you knew her.”

  “I suppose there’s more than a few things you don’t know about me.”

  Her eyes flashed bright for a moment.

  “And I guess there’s some things I don’t know about you. Like why you came back from uOttawa.”

  She opened and closed her mouth, a fish without water. Her hands fisted at her sides, her shoulders rising and falling with great breaths.

  Part of him wanted to let her off the hook and not press for a response—a tiny part of him. But the majority won, and he leaned forward. “Couldn’t hack it?”

  Color crept from her neck upward, swallowing each of her facial features until she favored a steamed lobster. That made him grin. Or maybe it was that he knew he’d gotten under her skin. That wasn’t exactly conducive to his plan. She wasn’t likely to give up the business at this rate. But tomorrow was a new day. Maybe he could make up for it then.

  And today she’d accused him of . . . well, he didn’t know for sure. But whatever bee had been in her bonnet, she’d definitely thought it was his fault. A turnabout seemed fair.

  She let out a tight breath between clenched teeth. “I earned a degree.”

  “And you had to go all the way to Ottawa for a fancy piece of paper just to teach right here in Queens County? You could have gone to UPEI like everyone else.”

  Eyebrows meeting above her nose, she said, “Like everyone? I don’t recall you attending uni.”

  He didn’t even wait for her words to land before stomping forward, his hands on his hips, chest out. “I don’t recall saying I wanted to waste four years and a houseful of cash.”

  “I didn’t waste four years.”

  “You were gone six.”

  She stepped toward him, her posture matching his, elbows bent and shoulders back, her long fingers still tucked into fists. He couldn’t help his smirk. Was she going to hit him? Did she think it would hurt? Sure, she was tall, but her hands didn’t look much stronger than her mom’s had been in the hospital.

  Her eyes flashed. “Were you paying attention, Ross?”

  “Hard to miss in a town this size.” Also, her dad had reported on every one of her accomplishments. Oliver hadn’t had much of a choice but to hear about Meg’s academic pursuits. Not that he’d minded much. It had been nice to know that he hadn’t completely ruined her chances to pursue her dream.

  So why hadn’t he asked more questions when she’d come home? Whitaker had been so eager to share her achievements. Oliver hadn’t asked why he stopped. Like the flip of a switch, one day had been all about perfect scores on exams, and the next, nothing.

  He tried to pinpoint that day, find the exact moment in his memory. They hadn’t been on the boat. It had been the off-season.

  His gut clenched. Had he been so consumed with his own dream—with securing his own fishing business—that he’d missed something so catastrophic that it had made Meg give up on hers?

  “Meg?” His voice cracked, and he sounded like a thirteen-year-old boy for a moment. Clearing his throat, he tried again. “Meg, did something happen with your mom?”

  Her labored sigh was nearly as effective as the roll of her eyes.

  “I mean, before last week.” He stared at his hands for a long minute, seeing the calluses across his palms. “Before she started getting sick.”

  Meg bent over and picked up a splinter of wood that had been hiding in the grass, a remnant from the nearly finished trap. She turned it over in her hands, letting whatever animosity had been between them drain away. She looked up to meet his gaze when she finally spoke. “You mean when she got sick.”

  He nodded slowly, not quite sure what he meant anymore.

  She let out a slow breath, squeezing the splinter in her fist. “She fell. Three times in a week. The doctors couldn’t explain it. Dad was . . . worried.”

  The way she said it, it sounded more like panicked. Oliver couldn’t picture the staid man riled up. Except about the love of his life.

  Meg probably couldn’t have pictured it either until she heard it in his voice, saw it on his face. Which was why she’d come home. Oliver didn’t have to ask. He knew.

  He sighed. “I’m so sorry.”

  Chewing on the corner of her lip, she squinted toward the water, toward the reflection of the sun, gold against the dark blue waves. They lapped gently at the water’s edge, hugging and tugging at the red dirt just beyond the knee-high grass blowing in the breeze.

  That water held every one of his hopes for a future that looked nothing like his past. But Meg seemed to see something very different.

  “The doctor at the hospit
al last week said she wants her to see a neurological specialist.” She shrugged. “She’s seen a dozen of them already.” Her gaze shot in his direction but seemed to look far into the distance. “They thought it was Parkinson’s for a while, but it’s not. It’s something else.” Wrapping her long arms around herself, she said, “Something they can’t identify.”

  Whitaker, who wouldn’t shut up about his daughter, hadn’t been as forthright about his wife. Oliver had known she was ill. He just hadn’t known she was deteriorating so quickly.

  He called himself all kinds of a jerk. He’d been poking at Meg when she’d really left uOttawa to help her parents. Just like her mom had said.

  “Listen, Meg, I’m sorry. I—”

  “You’ve been using that word a lot lately. You think it’s going to make any difference?”

  Clapping a hand on the back of his neck and bowing his head, he kicked at a clump of dirt. “I don’t know. But it’s true.”

  She met his gaze, her eyes distant and cool. “I’m sorry too. I’m sorry that I missed the rest of the inventory.”

  He shrugged. “It’s no big deal.”

  “Yes, it is.” She took a deep breath that moved her shoulders up and down. “We’re supposed to be working together. Right?”

  “I suppose.”

  “So . . .”

  He didn’t follow her thought. “What do you mean?”

  “I want to do my part.” She squared her shoulders, shoved another rebar down her spine, and stood up even straighter. He hadn’t thought that was possible. “I’m going to do my part.”

  He heard the truth in her words loud and clear—she wasn’t going to give up the business. She’d already given up uOttawa. She’d given up her teaching position too. She had nothing but Whitaker Fishing left.

  Squinting at her, he tried to find their similarities. Her words sounded so much like his own, but her fair hair hanging over her shoulder contrasted with the black mop on his head. The smooth lines of her nose and easy curve of her mouth were as much like his own rough features as a lobster and tuna.

  Nope. Wanting this business was where their similarities ended. Well, the business and stubbornness. Because she had to be all kinds of mulish to hold a grudge for ten years. And she’d done it with ease.