Beloved (69 page)

****

All night long she was too depressed to sleep. At dawn she got up and put on the only clean outerwear she had, a long denim skirt and a gray collarless knit top, and struck out for the nearest beach. She
'
d taken to walking along the shore recently when she felt moody or out of sorts; there was something about the sound of the sea lapping at the sand that put her thoughts in perspective.

It was a foggy morning in an easterly wind flow, not a good beach day: Jane saw one man, one dog, and that was about it. There was a time when she
'
d have preferred it that way, but today she felt the isolation deeply.
Her sense of emptiness was profound:  she was
without a home, without a dream, without a man to love her. She had survived quite well without them before she came to
Nantucket
; she would have recommended her lifestyle to anyone. But things were different now. She
'
d fallen in love, and the love wasn
'
t fulfilled. That, she hadn
'
t planned on.

She walked on alone, the wind tugging and pulling
like an impatient child
at her skirt
.
The fog was lowering, bringing with it a mist so heavy it was nearly drizzle. She wrapped her arms around herself in the chill damp air, trying to keep warm, wondering what it was she could have done to make Mac commit himself to her.

She
'
d played hard to get; she
'
d played easy. She
'
d been spirited; she
'
d been humble. She
'
d fallen in love with his island, his land, his house, his people, his trees. She
'
d told him that money didn
'
t matter, and neither did her parents
'
opinion. She even let him have the Napoleon. And yet here they were, sharing the same little rock in the universe, and still a world apart.

Somehow, she felt closer to Judith right now than to Mac. Judith had understood
—
the way a man could not
— how paralyzing heartache could be for a woman. A man had to climb that mountain, build that bridge, run for office no matter how hard he was bleeding inside, if for no other reason than that other men expected him to do it. Not so, a woman. Her own sex was too sympathetic to her hurt.

What the hell,
she thought, staring out at the sea, trying to rally herself back to the condo in
Connecticut
.
I
'
ll climb the mountain, build the bridge, run for office.

But the sea seemed to be saying something else.
Without him? Why?

Why, indeed. Like Judith, Jane had no answer. She wandered onto the wet, hard sand, drawn by the seductive hiss of the water, and then waded into the edge of the sea itself. Her leather sandals became stained dark by the water; it fascinated her. She walked a few steps farther. The hem of her denim skirt turned dark and sluggish, floating at first, then gradually sinking. The sea was still very cold. It crept up her calves, inch by inch. Except that that wasn
'
t true: It was Jane who was creeping, inch by inch, into the sea.

It must have felt this way for Judith,
she thought with
surprising detachment.
Colder, though. How far before it was over? Did she walk in over her nose? Probably not; she wouldn
'
t have to
..
.
her gown would have got waterlogged before that and pulled her under.
.
.
or the undercurrent ....

Suddenly Jane stumbled into a small hole on the sandy ocean floor; her right leg
buckled and she dropped waist-
high into a cold rush of water. Shocked by the icy sensation, she righted herself and turned to discover how far out she
'
d waded.

"
My God.
"
She fell into a panic that she was reenacting Judith
'
s destiny step by ghastly step, and began racing for the shore. But one doesn
'
t race through the sea, especially in heavy, billowing denim; the wade back to the beach was agonizingly slow. When Jane broke free from the water, she ran like a springer spaniel to high ground, her heart pounding madly from the effort to get there.

She wrung the excess water from the bottom of her skirt, shaking from her experience. She hadn
'
t been so frightened since
—
since
yesterday,
she thought grimly. Since the ordeal by fire.
And now, by water.
Life on the island was getting a little too biblical for her taste.

The more she thought about it, the angrier she got. If she and Mac had made a commitment to one another, Phillip would
'
ve abandoned his plans for an empire, and she would never have had to go brooding on this beach. In short: no fire, no water.

Jerk
.

Jane left the beach and went back for her truck, then drove out to Lilac Cottage. In the gloomy fog the house looked forlorn and forsaken; she could hardly bear to look at it. She hurried around to the back door and found, sitting on her back stoop, a gallon-sized nursery pot filled with dirt and with a card stapled to its rim:

Plant this where you wish. It may not work
.

It
'
s late in the season.

Jane squatted down and brushed a little of the mounded dirt gently aside to find a small bud rubber-banded to the stem of another rose.
Mac had
budded Ben
'
s rose onto Judith
'
s. What had the police sergeant said?
"
Mac
'
s the guy when you want to get the job done.
"

So Jane climbed back in the pickup and headed out for the newly constructed house near the Quaker Burial Ground. The fog-turned-
drizzle had now become drizzle-
turned-rain.
The sky was dark, angry; t
he wind plastered her wet skirt against her legs
and drove stinging rain at her face and arms
as she struck out over the grassy cemetery, trying to remember the location of the new house from when she
'
d walked there with Mac months ago. She
sighted
the house, away to the north, but there was no sign there of Mac
'
s dark green truck.

Judith Brightman couldn
'
t have felt more frustrated when she
'
d stood on that rolling earth a century and a half earlier.

"
Jane! For God
'
s sake!
"

She turned and saw Mac; he
'
d stopped his truck in the middle of
Vestal Street
and was climbing over the stile, clearly convinced that Jane was mad.

"
Stop!
"
she yelled back to him, holding out the palm of her hand; if he got too close she
'
d never be able to keep herself in control.
"
John McKenzie!
"
she cried.
"
I leave tomorrow. Listen to me!
"

Her voice rose above the pounding rain, high and clear and true.
"
Since I came to this island, I
'
ve changed in ways I
'
d never have dreamed. I look at myself
—
and I don
'
t know myself! I
'
ve learned things I never thought I wanted to know. I
'
ve forgotten things that never should have mattered in the first place.

"
I
'
ve changed, Mac,
"
she cried.
"
And still you punish me! No!
"
she said again when he began to speak.
"
You had
your chance. You
'
ll tell me about Philip again. I was desperately wrong about that, and now I
'
m desperately sorry,
"
she said, her hands beseeching him expressively.
"
Still
you punish me.
"

His hands were on his hips; he was as soaked through as she was, despite the fact that the rain had begun to tail off as the squall passed over. He wanted to defend himself, she could see that; there was injured outrage etched in his face. But he was holding his peace, abiding by her command, forcing himself to hear her through.

Jane had one last thing to say. She took half a dozen strides closer to him, pointing a finger at him as if she were judge, jury, and prosecuting attorney in his case.
"
You think you
'
re an oak tree, Mac
—
so strong, so immutable.
Well, you
'
re
not,
"
she screamed angrily.

She gave him a dark, haunting look and swept a wet lock of hair away from her face.
"
You
'
re a human being; that
'
s all you are
—
and your time here is short, Mac McKenzie.
"

A sharp gust of wind, heralding a second squall, flattened the tops of the nearby trees, and was followed by a clap of thunder and a furious downpour.
"
I
'
ve
changed, Mac,
"
she shouted over the slanting, driving rain.
"
Now it
'
s
your
turn.
"

Mac was facing the wind, taking the brunt of the squall like a ship facing it broadside.
"
I can
'
t, Jane,
"
he said hoarsely, averting his body from the squall
'
s fury.
"
I
can
'
t.
I
'
ve been too long in the making.
"

A white rip of lightning on the other side of the rise produced another clap of thunder, this time deafening. Jane jumped and Mac said loudly,
"
This is dangerous! Go back to your truck.
Move!
"

She turned and ran, hardly thinking to challenge him, and sat in her truck, wet and shivering,
pounded by
a line of black rain
that
drummed the metal all around
her with a wild, frenzied beat while lightning flashed and thunder cracked repeatedly.

And when it was over, and the sky had lightened up again to
Nantucket
gray, she saw that Mac
'
s tru
ck had left, and she was alone.

****

When Jane
'
s mother saw Lilac Cottage she cried, which Jane thought was very endearing of her. Gwendolyn Drew seemed more emotional these days, and Jane was becoming fonder of her because of it. Jane herself was pretty much all cried out and able to speak calmly, at least about Phillip and the fire. But she kept Mac to herself, like a secret horde of memories boxed up and ready for shipping to
Connecticut
, to sort out when she had more time.

Jane
'
s father had never seen the before version of Lilac Cottage, so he was much less moved by the tragedy of the fire. Tragedy rarely moved Neal Drew in any case. He was a big believer in not dwelling on the past. As far as he was concerned, you took your hit or you took your winnings, and then you moved on.

So he stood there, this man who was so unstinting in his abilities, so stinting in his praise, and said to his daughter,
"
You let yourself get emotionally involved with a house.
"

"
Yep. I did,
"
Jane admitted as she idly peeled away a strip of blistered, charred wallpaper in the front room.
"
It was one of the most satisfying things I
'
ve ever done.
"

She turned and looked at her father. He was standing with his hands in his pockets in the middle of the room, a man of average height wearing modest clothes in an unassuming way. He was the kind of guy you
'
d walk right past in a bus station; yet she
'
d spent most of her life chasing down his approval.