“Yeah, he did say he had planned to marry you.”
Faye shuddered at the thought. Maybe Fiadh had loved Conor, even though they were only children. Maybe if Fiadh hadn’t come to her rescue, Faye would have drowned in the bay instead, and Fiadh and Conor would have married. She drew a black curtain over the thought.
“Dear,” she said. “That girl is long gone. You have nothing to worry about there.”
“Well, I’ll kill him if he tries anything.”
She put her hand on his chest, and he drew her in with a rush of movement, new and insistent. She said his name, and he covered her mouth with his. He took her hand and put it on him, releasing her mouth, groaning at her touch. Lifting her hips, he pulled her nightgown up to her belly. He slid his palm between her legs, and Faye gasped at her body’s wetted response to William’s hand cupped over the whole of her like a mouth, fingers like a tongue. She was embarrassed at the thought of it until it became the thing that was happening, William diving there, airless and searching, then back to her lips, the flavor of him now so foreign. When he found his way inside her, the joining flung their eyes open to each other. Some great fever broke, spilled into hidden tributaries beneath her skin. She belonged with William. The wanting, she understood it now.
Chapter Nine
1961
Faye pushed herself to standing, mopped sweat off her neck. The flower garden was in full bloom, but it was a fight to keep the weeds out now that her pregnant belly made bending that much harder. She pulled the cloth gloves from her hands.I give up,she thought.Let them grow.Plus, this bending couldn’t be good for the baby. Her doctor had told her to avoid overexertion, and certainly this weeding would count. She’d promised William she wouldn’t take any risks with her pregnancy. She’d even given up cabbage and raw apples, though she did sneak a little chocolate here and there. She sat on the steps, spread her legs, and leaned back to give the jutting baby more room. It wouldn’t be long now, and as much as she’d marveled in the strangeness of pregnancy and her changing body, she was ready for the baby to arrive. She was about to go in for lemonade when William pulled into the driveway, towing a rickety trailer. Her heart sank at the sight of it.
William, beaming, practically skipped around the front of the truck. “She’s a beaut, right? And before you say it, I know we need things for the nursery. But I got a great deal on her.”
A wooden rowboat not ten feet long, buxom yet sleek, white paint peeling, varnish chipped. But fine somehow. Faye did not know boats, did not want to. She and William had seenThe Philadelphia Story, Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant reminiscing about someboat they had once sailed. They’d called it “yar.” A thing beautiful and safe, capable and solid. Fishing boats in the harbor would never be called “yar”—beautiful to some, she supposed, but so unsleek, gulls chasing them like street urchins begging for coins. But she often admired the sailing boats, their red and white wings on blue horizons, how free and American they seemed. It was one thing to admire boats and their purposes. It was another entirely to be in one, at the mercy of a boat.
“Even came with Shaw & Tenney oars,” William said, as if that meant anything to either of them. “I’ll fix her up, and we can put her in at the cove next summer. I don’t think your folks would mind us keeping it there. We can christen her with a bottle of Jameson! We’ll have to come up with a name of course, for the boat and the baby soon enough.”
Faye couldn’t get a word in edgewise, though she was too stunned to speak.
“Not exactly a yacht, but it would be fun to paddle around. We could take a picnic, you and me and the baby. How does that sound?” He ran his hand along the weathered gunwale, knocked on it for good measure.
Faye stared at the needy tender, at her husband and his gleaming eyes. Her legs wobbled as if she’d spent a week at sea. “My,” she said. She felt a stab in her hip so sharp she expected someone had cast a stone at her. She reached for the pillar to steady herself. She’d had a purple bruise on her swollen hip, big as a grapefruit, from slamming into the gunwale before spilling into the bay. On the passage across the Atlantic, she found a knot of rope to sleep on, to aggravate the injury, a penance for sinking Fiadh and taking her place in terrible America. In terrible America, it had taken weeks to heal. She had stood with Jean on great granite boulders behind a new house, their dresses flapping like sails in the wind in terrible America, where food was good, doors were solid, where bedding was clean and neighbors smiled, where bruises and memories faded. In terrible America she’d found a home and a man thatwas beautiful and safe, capable and solid. The terrible America that she and Fiadh and Elisabeth had feared was not so terrible after all. As it turned out, America herself was yar.
William ran to her side, propped her up. “Are you okay? Is it the baby?”
She smiled as kindly as she could muster. “No, no. I’m fine. She’s yar. Truly.”
“Then what is it?”
All this time in America, living so close to the water. She’d spent hours upon hours walking the beaches, collecting rocks and shells and tiny treasures. She loved to wade into the water, swim a little if the temperature was right. But, in her life, she had been on four boats: a mail boat, a clinker punt, the O’Kanes’ boat come to the rescue, and a great ship crossing the Atlantic. Would this be the fifth? A wooden tub made seaworthy by her own husband, who knew little of her seasickness and from what it was truly born?
Her tongue was a cold stone in her mouth. She did not want to deny William but struggled to keep the hesitation out of her voice. Tiptoe, tiptoe. “Do you remember at the wedding, when Conor mentioned an accident? I told you it was a local tragedy, a girl who drowned.” She could do it. Right now. She could set the record straight. He would not leave her. She was carrying his child. The baby kicked her then, a reminder of everything she stood to lose. No. She couldn’t risk it.
But that boat would not do.
“Sure ...” William said, confusion in his voice.
“It was the day before we left Ireland. A boating accident actually.” Faye flicked at her ear like a watchful pest had lit there. “A family in the village had taken in two sisters. Refugees.” She found a way to make the lie a truth. “German girls. The three of us were friends.”
“Germans? How did German girls get to Ireland of all places? Were they Jews?”
“Jews? No. The Irish wouldn’t accept Jews. In fact, I believe the children had to be Catholic, not even Protestants were allowed. It was ahumanitarian program. Meant to be temporary. Shamrock Something. They got them from”—the gray stone, the iron fences, Elisabeth—“a barracks or church, somewhere near Dublin. I don’t recall specifics.” Truth and fear tugged Faye in opposite directions. “We were playmates, in the fields and on the shore. They didn’t know much English.” Faye ached for Fiadh then, for the girl who took in these strangers. “We played with the O’Kane boys, sometimes. But then my parents decided to move to America. And these girls and I, we took our little boat out into the bay. But there was an accident, William. A terrible, terrible accident.”
“Oh. I see.”
“I stood up in the boat. And then the German girls did too. And one of them fell in.” Faye rubbed the phantom pain on her hip. “I dove in and tried to save her. And she kept pushing me down, down and under the water, over and over.” Faye remembered her hands in Fiadh’s hair, her fingers tangling. “A fishing boat came to our rescue and pulled us out of the sea. But ...” Tears poured down her face. Such a betrayal! To deny Fiadh and Elisabeth this way! “She didn’t survive. It was my fault. If I hadn’t been so careless ... standing up in the boat like that.” A breeze blew up the path, swirling the clippings and weeds Faye had pulled.
“But you tried to save her. That was brave of you.” William put his arm around her shoulder, and she tilted into him. Oh, she was not brave. Not one bit.
“The boat was like this one. It would be a terrible thing for ... for my parents. To see that boat. They felt guilty because we girls shouldn’t have been allowed to take it in the first place.” Faye sat up, wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. It’s such a ...” She stuttered. “Such a sad, sad story. But truly, she’s a fine boat, William, and your heart was in the right place. But no. We mustn’t let them see it. Especially not my mother. She is so tender in her way. And please. Never mention the accident. It would be too much for them.”
“Whatever happened to the other girl? Back to Germany, I suppose?”
Faye’s eyes glazed over. She did not want to imagine Elisabeth anywhere—not dead or alive, not in Ireland or Germany or a grave. Her head ached. “I don’t know.” That, at least, was the truth.
