“New Hampshire—famous for maple syrup and quickie divorces. I need to see Mom anyway. Not that she’ll see me, you know. She doesn’t remember anything that happened after 1980. She thinks there are just the two Star Wars movies. I’m not going to tell her any different. I must get my living-in-the-past tendencies from her.”
“She has dementia. She has an excuse. You don’t.”
“You’re right. I don’t have an excuse to live in the past, so I won’t live in the past anymore. I will move on with my life and into the big bright future. I can’t wait to see what this beautiful world we live in has to offer me—can you?”
Her anger gave her a rush of energy like she hadn’t felt in years. She stuffed clothes and socks and shoes and underwear into the suitcase, haphazardly but with purpose. Hagen watched her with bemusement at first, a look that slowly turned to realization as she slipped on her jeans. She wasn’t kidding.
She snatched her book off the floor and flattened the pages Hagen had crushed by throwing it across the room. She found her purse and her charger. She grabbed her phone. And as soon as it was in her hand, she felt it buzz with a text message.
Faye—forgot to tell you that they need an answer by tomorrow. If you want the job, let me know soon as you can.
“You’re actually leaving,” Hagen said, and she heard the first note of sincerity in his voice all evening. They were an ironic couple, never saying what they meant. Irony had failed them tonight.
“You want children, and I can’t give them to you.”
“We can try IVF. We can adopt. We can—”
“I don’t want to try IVF, Hagen. I don’t want to adopt. I don’t want...”
“What do you want?”
What did she want? She looked at her handsome husband with the good job that paid all the bills and took all her worries away. He could give her everything she was supposed to want.
“I don’t want to die here,” Faye said.
It wasn’t the dying that bothered her in that statement. It was the here. She didn’t want to die here in this cold, cold house with this cold, cold husband she slept with in a bed made of cold, cold iron.
“And I will die here if I stay,” she said with cold iron finality.
The look on his face said he believed her even if he wasn’t willing to admit it. She waited. He didn’t say anything more.
She paused at the bedroom door. She’d stay at a hotel tonight, then fly to her aunt’s house in Portsmouth tomorrow. She’d file for divorce there and let Hagen have everything. There would be nothing for the lawyers to fight over as long as she didn’t ask for anything. She’d be divorced by June 5, her thirtieth birthday. Ah, June—a great month for weddings, a better month for divorces. Widowed and divorced, two miscarriages and two failed IUI treatments, all before she turned thirty.
Give the lady a prize.
“You won’t contest the divorce?” Faye asked.
“No,” Hagen said.
Faye nodded.
“For what it’s worth,” Faye said, “I wish...”
Her throat tightened to the point of pain.
“What, Faye? What?”
“I wish I’d never married you. For your sake. Not mine.”
She looked at him, and he looked at her. She wondered if they’d ever see each other again. And she waited for her tears to come but they were gone, the valley dry again.
“Yeah, well,” he said, “you’re not the only one.”
And that was it. He didn’t weep. He didn’t scream. He didn’t argue. He didn’t beg. And when she picked up her suitcase and left Hagen alone in the bedroom, he didn’t follow her. It was over.
She put the suitcase in the trunk of her Prius—a gift from Hagen that he would probably demand she give back—and hit the button to open the garage. Before she backed out, she pulled her phone from her jeans pocket.
She reread Richard’s email. Sounded like a big project, this fund-raiser calendar thing. Landscapes, houses, ladies in dresses... She hadn’t worked a big job like that since getting married. She hadn’t done much of anything since getting married. But she’d need the money. And she’d need the distraction.
Faye hit Reply and typed her answer.
Richard—I just left husband.
In other words, I’ll take the job.
2
Faye made the divorce easy on Hagen and he stayed true to his word and made it easy on her. Faye asked for nothing but the Prius and the twelve thousand dollars she’d had in her bank account on their wedding day. He handed over the car keys and wrote her a check. And that was that. He got the house, the other car, the boat, the money and the all-important bragging rights. She’d left town, which gave him the freedom to conjure up any story he wanted. He could tell the world she’d cheated on him with every man alive if he so desired to play the cuckold. He could say she’d refused marriage counseling if he wanted to play the martyr. Or he could tell them the truth—that he wanted babies and her body clearly wasn’t on board with this program. She’d lost Will’s baby. She’d lost Hagen’s. And the two insemination attempts had failed.
Three strikes was an out, but four balls was a walk.
Faye walked.
It was easier to do than she’d thought it would be. Hagen hadn’t put up a real fight. Knowing him, he’d probably been secretly relieved. The past four years she’d slowly lost touch with the world until everything had started to take on the feel of a TV show, a soap opera that played in the background. Occasionally, she’d watch, but never got too invested. Finally, she’d simply switched off the television. The Faye and Hagen Show was over. No big loss. The show only had two viewers and neither of them liked the stars.
A couple months on the coast would do her good. The saltwater cure, right? Wasn’t that what the writer Isak Dinesen had said? “The cure for anything is salt water—sweat, tears, or the sea.” Faye should get more than enough of all three photographing the Sea Islands in the middle of summer.
As soon as she’d packed her bags and drove away from Hagen’s house for the final time, Faye hit the road. In summer tourist-season traffic, the drive from Columbia to Beaufort took nearly four hours. Who were all these people lined up in car after car heading to the coast? What did they want? What did they think they’d find there? Faye wanted to work, that was all. She wanted to do well with this assignment since one good job led to another and then another. Life stretched out before her from now until her death, her work like the centerline of the highway and if she kept her eye on that line maybe, just maybe, she might not careen off the edge of the road.
Faye took the exit to Beaufort, the heart of what was known as Lowcountry in South Carolina. It felt like its own country as the terrain turned flatter and greener and swampier the deeper she drove into. After the exit, she passed a huge hand-painted sign off to her right. Lowcountry Is God’s Country, it read in big black letters. Interesting. If she were God she’d pick the Isle of Skye in Scotland maybe. Kenya. Venice. But Lowcountry? Seemed an odd choice. She wondered what being “God’s country” entailed, and then she passed four different churches, four different denominations, and all in a quarter-mile stretch. Clearly God owned a whole lot of real estate around here.
Faye made it to Beaufort by dinnertime. Needing to conserve her money, Faye had rented a room in Beaufort. Just one room in someone else’s home. She wouldn’t have a private bathroom, a situation Hagen would have found an unacceptable affront to his dignity, but Faye found she didn’t mind, not at all. Now that she didn’t have to think of anyone’s needs but her own, she’d discovered just how little she needed.
The house was on Church Street, a faded Southern Gothic Revival river cottage, a revival someone had forgotten to revive. White paint in need of power washing, three tiers of verandas missing a baluster or five, Spanish moss and ivy competing for ownership of the trees... Faye liked it immediately. It was owned by Miss Lizzie, a woman who rented the rooms out mostly to college kids attending the University of
South Carolina’s Beaufort campus. So few students attended classes in the summer, however, that Faye had ended up with what Miss Lizzie said was the best room in the house.
Faye’s hopes were not high, but Miss Lizzie, an older black woman with a spray of pure white hair around her head like an icon’s nimbus, welcomed her into the house with a wide smile that seemed genuine. Faye did her best to match it. The third-floor room she’d been given surpassed Faye’s low expectations by a large margin.
“Here you go,” Miss Lizzie said. “I keep this as my guest room. No kids up here. I’d hate to put a grown woman like you in the same hall as my college boys. They get a little rowdy. You’ll like it up here if you don’t mind the stairs. My sister stays here when she visits but she’s not coming round again until October. Too hot for her.”
“It’s beautiful,” Faye said, wearing a smile she didn’t have to fake. She hadn’t been impressed by anything in a long time, but this room spoke to her in its spareness. The floors were hardwood, a deep cherry stain polished to a high shine so that in the evening sunlight she could see every last rut and groove on the floor, elegant as an artist’s brushstrokes. The wounds gave it character and beauty. The bed was a four-poster, narrow, like something she’d seen in preserved historic homes. It bore an ivory canopy on top and ivory bed curtains; an ivory bedspread with a double-wedding-ring Amish quilt in a shade of dark and light blue was folded at the bottom. In case she got cold, Miss Lizzie said. South Carolina in June and July? Faye was fairly certain she wouldn’t have to worry about catching a chill.
“Closet over there,” Miss Lizzie said, pointing at a buttercream-yellow door. “Dresser there. These doors lead to the balcony,” she said, indicating a set of French doors. “No screen doors, so try not to let the mosquitoes in.”
“Are you Catholic?” Faye asked.
“Of course not. I go to Grace Chapel. It’s AME.” The tone of denial Miss Lizzie employed made it sound as if Faye had asked her if she were a government spy hiding out on foreign soil. Then again, that was what many people once thought of Catholics in the United States.
“I saw the prie-dieu.” Faye pointed at the carved wooden kneeler by the bed. A ceramic gray tabby cat sat on top of it next to a lamp. “That’s why I ask.”
“The what? I thought that was some kind of step stool or side table.”
“It’s for praying. Private prayer. You kneel on this bottom step here and maybe rest your prayer book on the top part.”
“You’re of the Catholic faith?” Miss Lizzie asked, touching her chest as if to clutch at nonexistent pearls.
“No, but I’m a photographer. I did a photo shoot of Catholic churches for a book once.”
“I see. You here to photograph things?”
“For a calendar. A fund-raiser.”
“Well, that’s nice, then. Who doesn’t need funds these days?”
Faye laughed. “Anyway, it’s very pretty.” Faye touched the prie-dieu. It was simply carved but sturdy stained rosewood. The wood was lighter where the knee would go on the bottom board as if someone had prayed on it many times. Were his prayers answered? Why did Faye assume it was a he?
“It’s from the lighthouse, the old one,” Miss Lizzie said.
“Lighthouse? The one on Hunting Island?”
She shook her head. “Not that one. North of Hunting Island, there’s another island. Bride Island.”
“Bride Island? That wasn’t in my guidebook.”
“Only locals call it that. And it wouldn’t be in the guidebook. It’s private. Rich black lady owns it,” Miss Lizzie said with quiet pride. “Paris Shelby.”
“Any idea if Ms. Shelby allows visitors on the island?”
It sounded promising, an old lighthouse on a private island. Maybe it hadn’t already been photographed to death. Perfect subject for a preservation society calendar.
“I wouldn’t know. And Mrs. Shelby hasn’t been around much this summer.”
“Thank you anyway. Maybe I can find a way out there.”
“Here’s your key,” Miss Lizzie said, handing her a silver key on a brass ring. “Now, you remember this isn’t a hotel. I won’t be changing your sheets or bringing you breakfast. That’s your job.”
“I don’t need much of anything, I promise.”
“You can use the kitchen. We let the kids use it as long as they clean it up, so you can use it, too. The top shelf in the fridge is yours. I cleaned it off.”
“I appreciate it. I’m only here to work this summer. I’ll stay out of your hair.”
“My hair thanks you kindly,” Miss Lizzie said with a debutante’s coy smile. “There’s not much left of it to get into anyway.” She patted the wispy curls back into place and left Faye alone in her new home.
Faye set her suitcase on the luggage rack and her equipment case on the bed. A fine room. Perfect for her needs. She’d live the simple life this summer—no television, no movies, no surround-sound speakers and five remote controls only Hagen knew how to work. She’d sleep and she’d eat and she’d work, and when she wasn’t working she would walk or read or do nothing at all.
She lay on the bed, staring up at the canopy and planning her itinerary for tomorrow. A drive around the islands to scout locations and maybe a few pictures if the light was right. No time to waste. She was no one’s wife anymore. If she didn’t work, she didn’t eat. She should have been afraid, but she wasn’t. Supposedly she’d lost “everything” in the divorce and had been left with almost nothing. Turned out almost nothing was exactly what she wanted.
With help from a sleeping pill, Faye slept well that first night in her new room. In the early dawn hours, when the sun had just begun to peek into the room, she woke up and felt the strangest sensation, a sensation she hadn’t felt in more than four years.
Hope.
Hope for what, she didn’t know, but she knew it was hope because it got her out of bed before six o’clock. She knew there was something out there she wanted and something told her if she chased it, she just might catch it. She put on her bathrobe and opened the French doors, but froze when she saw the visitor perched on the wooden railing of the little balcony.
She wasn’t sure what it was—a heron or a crane or an egret—but it was a big damn bird, that was for certain. Two feet tall, white body, blue-black head and a long bill, sharp as a knife. Faye considered retreating but stayed riveted in place, staring.
“Have we met before?” she asked the bird. Its only reply was to turn its head rapidly toward the sun. She wasn’t sure if that was a yes or a no.
“Wait a second... I remember you.”
Faye recalled a cold morning on the Newport pier, a morning she would never forget, though she might want to. She’d gone at sunrise, early so no one would see her and try to stop her. On that winter morning, she’d found herself the sole visitor on that lonely pier, a sorrowful sight in her gray trench coat and Will’s ashes so terribly heavy in her hands. As she walked to the end she was tempted to keep walking. What was that old insult? Take a long walk off a short pier? Yes, that was exactly what she’d wanted to do. But then a large white bird with a black head had landed on a boat tie-up, startling her with its size and sudden appearance. They’d eyed each other for a few seconds before Faye had continued walking toward the end of the pier. She’d fully expected the bird to take off as she neared it, but it hadn’t. It stayed while she knelt on weathered gray wood and poured the ashes into the water and it stayed when she stood up again. It flew off only as she started to walk toward land. For a second—a foolish stupid second—she’d thought the bird was watching over her, making sure she didn’t take that long walk off that short pier.
“What are you?” Faye asked the bird, not expecting an answer. The bird merely shook its wings in reply, and Faye sensed it readying to take off.
“Hold on. Stay there one second, big bird. I want to get my camera. Just a camera. Don’t be scared.” Faye backed into the room, trying her hardest not to make the floor squeak und
er her feet. From her leather camera bag, she pulled out her Nikon. Carefully, she crept to the doors, but the moment she lifted the camera to her eye, the bird launched itself off the balcony. The one shot she captured was a blur of white in the distance. Faye laughed. Well, there was a very good reason she hadn’t gone into nature photography.
After an early breakfast of cereal and tea, she found Miss Lizzie weeding her garden out back. Faye sidestepped a discard pile of murdered plants. Discerning what was weed and what was garden took better vision than Faye’s twenty-twenty, and she wasn’t sure Miss Lizzie could tell the difference, either. Faye asked her if she knew anyone with a boat. Miss Lizzie suggested she talk to Ty Lewis in Room 2 on the first floor. He was a marine biology student doing some project on the islands over the summer. He went out on a boat often, Miss Lizzie said. Even if he couldn’t take her out he could probably point her in the direction of someone who could.
When she returned to the kitchen she found her man. Had to be him. He wore a T-shirt—a shark and octopus locked in battle on the front with the words The Struggle is Real underneath. He had dark brown skin inked with dozens of black tattoos up and down both arms—fish, it looked like, lots and lots of fish—and half a dozen silver piercings: eyebrow, both ears, nose and lip, plus a bonus upper-ear piercing. He had dreadlocks pulled back in a ponytail. He was also handsome enough Faye had to remind herself she was thirty, not twenty.
Twice she reminded herself of that fact.
“Are you Ty?” she asked, pulling a mason jar—Miss Lizzie’s version of iced tea glasses—from the cabinet.
“I am if you’re asking.” He gave her an appraising look and the appraisal came in high.
“I’m asking,” she said. “Faye Barlow. And don’t flirt with an old lady. Our hearts can’t take that much excitement.”