I know what it sounds like
this pity.
I know I have everything to lose.
Maybe I already have.
“Bad storm blowing in,” he tells me on day sixty-four.
We close the windows and most of the shutters, leaving the ones in the kitchen so we can keep watch on the barn, the sheep, and the chickens tucked into their henhouse for the night.
I light candles and ladle salted carrot soup into two bowls with thick slices of bread. It’ll be cold tonight, windy, hard to sleep. We eat at thekitchen table, beeswax candles flickering from nubs melted on the windowsills, and once the bowls are back in the sink, he opens a lower cupboard and places a bottle of dark liquid on the table, along with two squat glasses that we’ve never used before.
“Might as well have a dram, since I doubt we’ll sleep.”
The bottle is nearly full, unlabeled, and he pulls the cork, filling the two glasses before sliding one toward me—that same shivering light in his eyes that I’ve grown to love. His smile lives there, in his eyes more than his mouth. He has become known to me. Familiar. Like a tide I didn’t notice rising until I was knee-deep in it. I’ve tried not to name it. I’ve told myself that these days, here with him, are about survival. That anything I feel is just proximity, circumstance. But the truth of it is sitting here between us. Unspoken. Built by the hours and the silence.
The wind roars against the house and he lifts his glass, tipping it to mine. “Slàinte Mhath,” he says.
I oblige, tapping the edge of my glass to his. “To getting off this island.”
His mouth tucks flat, eyes to his glass. “Aye.”
We both drink, but he swigs back nearly half his glass, while I sip gingerly. I recognize the taste, some form of whiskey, hard and bitter, and it tumbles into my stomach with a thud.
I bite down on a cough.
Clay smiles, nodding. “Neil Hagdorn,” he says. “My old neighbor made the stuff. Kept us warm through some bloody cold winters.”
“It’s—” I touch my throat. “Not what I’m used to.” I’m a glass-of-red-wine-in-the-bath kind of girl. A cocktail at the café with James on a Friday night. Whiskey straight, without even an ice cube, is like a punch to the gut. Yet, I take another drink, a larger sip, because I need it. I need something to deaden all the doubt making a racket inside me.
When I lower my hand from my throat, he nods at me. “Ye’re wearin’ it.”
I’m not sure what he means, but when I follow his eyes, I realize he’slooking at the necklace, where Nana’s tiny scallop hangs beside the cowrie shell he gave me. I smile. “Of course. It’s lovely.”
Most days I keep it tucked inside my sweater, pressed to my skin. Two shells. One that represents the past, a home I’m trying to get back to. While the other has meaning I’m unsure of.
He pulls his eyes away, back to the whiskey.
We are silent for a time, listening to the storm grow in strength outside, and I allow my eyes to skip down the features of his face. The scruff of his beard is a few days grown. He’s shaved himself a handful of times since our evening on the porch, but he’s not as skilled. He’s nicked himself along his chin. Tiny marks. Yet he hasn’t asked me for help.
Maybe he senses the strain from last time still hanging in the air.
Maybe he doesn’t want to feel whatever that was again.
Or he’s afraid to.
I know I am.
Still, I squint at him across the table, marveling at the passage of time. “It really is remarkable,” I say, already feeling a little loosened from the whiskey, my edges blurred. “You haven’t aged at all.”
The comment makes his mouth pucker down, and he settles back against the wood chair, hand against his glass, swirling it in a circle. The cut on his thumb has long since healed and only a smooth scar remains. “The sea can play tricks on ye. It canna always be trusted.”
“This is more than that,” I answer. “This is something else—something beyond logic. It’s as if time has no bearing here, on the island.” It’s a relief to say these words aloud, even if I know it makes him uncomfortable.
“Perhaps what we know of time is only a partial truth.”
I lean forward against the table, taking another sip of the whiskey. “But how is it possible?”
