Learning to Swim (23 page)

We kept walking, but near the resort, he paused again. “So I’m supposed to just leave you to sleep in a wet heap on the jetty?” he said. “For the sharks or the morning swimmers to find you?”

“There are no sharks and I’m not particularly afraid of the morning swimmers,” I said.

He grinned. My heart beat furiously, but I wasn’t up to the challenge of broaching that topic yet. “I’m not going to sleep,” I said quickly, to change the subject.

He groaned again, that half-annoyed, half-pleased sound from the depths of his stomach that I was beginning to enjoy. “Come on,” he said. “I can get us into a cabin.”

My stomach twisted and I stopped. “Rory—I’m not going to sleep with you,” I blurted out.

He smiled, but kept walking. “That’s okay; I’ve always thought sleeping was a solitary activity.”

I ran a few paces. “You know what I mean! Rory, I’m serious!”

He stopped and turned to face me, this time his face serious. “I know. So am I. I would never make you do anything you don’t want to do. It’ll be warm in a cabin and we can sit down.” I had never felt more comfortable taking his hand.

I did, however, feel vaguely guilty as he came out of the office with a ring of keys in hand and I followed him to cabin 24. But visions of a kind, cheery Mrs. O’Brien were the last thing my brain wanted at the moment and so I sat down at the kitchen table, my eyes on Rory.

There was a small block of wood in the middle of the table, with the same words painted across each side.

“What does that say?” I asked.

“
Céad mile fáilte
,” he said. It sounded like “cad meel-ah fall-shuh.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“It means, ‘a hundred thousand welcomes.’ It’s Irish.”

“I …” …
didn’t know that was a language?

“Most people here call it Gaelic, but over there, they just call it Irish. Not many people speak it anymore, but I’d like to learn.” He disappeared into another room.

The fatigue hit me all at once. My eyes were heavy, and I moved to the couch across the combination kitchen-living room. I knew if I so much as put my head down, I’d be out like a light. I was also soaking wet, and so I perched on the edge of the couch instead.

“How did you know about the seals?” I asked. “The ones we went to see?”

“It’s a resting colony, a haul-out. People aren’t allowed to go down there, there’s some sort of law, so everyone knows where they are.”

“Are they always there?” I asked.

“No, around this time of year they go seek out secluded caves where they’ll have their babies. Did you see their eyes? They have amazing eyes. They’re huge and round and super complicated since they have to be able to focus them both in water and in air.”

I’d rather stare at yours.
I couldn’t stop looking at his own huge, beautiful eyes.

And then a big white fluffy towel hit me in the head.

“I won’t look,” he said, already turning back to the kitchenette.

I smiled and hesitated only a minute before slipping out of my clothes and wrapping the huge towel around myself twice. Then I curled up on the couch and tried to keep my eyes open. I figured I wouldn’t be very romantic when I was snoring, and I was determined to remember this night for the rest of my life (or at least long enough to recount to Rosie).

Rory appeared in front of me. “You know there’s a bed,” he said.

“I think that would be tempting fate, Mr. O’Brien,” I said.

“Whatever you say, Miss Manchester.” He disappeared into the bedroom and returned a moment later with a pillow and a blanket. “Lift your head.”

He slipped the pillow under my wet head and spread the blanket around me. As he leaned over to tuck the blanket around me, I grabbed his shirt. I held it for a moment before he took the initiative and bent down to kiss me. It was soft, comforting.

He finally pulled away.

“Where are you going to sleep?” I asked.

“I think it’s the gentlemanly thing to offer to sleep on the floor, but since there’s an open bed …”

I laughed. “I have a better idea.” I lifted the blanket for him to join me on the couch.

“You’re so kind, saving me the trouble of having to sleep on the floor or that wonderful empty king-size bed.” He slipped in beside me. We had to lay on our sides to both fit. Our faces touched on the pillow.

“Are you all right now?” he asked.

I nodded into his forehead. A sob got choked in my throat and I laughed, shaking my head. “At least I thought so.” He slipped an arm under my neck and rolled me into his chest. The gesture made me want to sob. “What am I going to do?” I said.

“What do you want to do?” he asked.

“I want to stay here forever.”

“Nobody ever wants summer to end,” he agreed.

“No,” I said. “I want the summer to end. I want everyone in the big houses to go home. I want to stay; I want to see what Oyster Beach looks like in the winter.”

“Then do it,” he said after a thoughtful pause.

“I can’t. I don’t have any money.”

“Get a job,” he said simply.

“Where? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not exactly qualified for much.”

“Lucky for you, not many qualifications are needed for cleaning cabins or serving burgers on Main Street. But I can tell you, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.” He was smiling. “You can ask any of the O’Brien kids about that.”

“It’s got to be better than going back with them,” I said instead.

“Cora, what do you
really
want?” he said. “You don’t really want to stay in Oyster Beach. That’s just a form of running away, which is preferable to going home for you. But you’ve gotta think about what you
really
want. From what I know of you, you don’t want to run away. You want to find something. Your life. But you’ve got to think about what that means. Where that is.”

I was silent for a long time. I could feel him relaxing, his breathing becoming more regular.

“How did you know you should go to Ireland?” I finally said.

I thought maybe he hadn’t heard me. I was about to check to see if he was asleep when he finally replied. “I didn’t. It was just an idea. An idea that wouldn’t get out of my head until I tried it. But I was never sure it was what I
should
do. I’m still not sure. In fact, when I met you, Oyster Beach regained a lot of its old luster.”

I leaned back so that I could look him in the face. “So why are you going?” I asked.

“Are you asking me to stay?” he said.

“Are you saying you would stay if I asked you?” I said.

We were looking each other in the eyes, but he was the one that finally backed down with a small laugh. “No, I don’t think so,” he said. “We’re eighteen. I believe what’s meant to happen will happen.”

I looked at the cabin wall. Decorated with gaudy prints of birds and pheasants. “I don’t think I buy that,” I said. “That only leads to a life of idleness. I’ve been waiting for things to happen all my life. I don’t want to do that anymore.”

We lapsed into another silence.

“Let’s not talk about the future anymore,” I finally said. I burrowed down beneath the blanket. He pulled his arm out from under my head to dig something out of his pocket. It was the tin whistle.

It reminded me instantly of my conversations with Mr. Hall. I wanted to tell Rory everything I’d heard, every single thing Mr. Hall had said, but it seemed too big for me to get my words around. And I was way too scared to broach the topic of his own mysterious parentage. I finally ventured forth with, “I never knew her first name.”

“What?”

“Mrs. O’Leary. I never knew her first name was Lia.”

“Yeah, short for Cordelia. But everyone always called her Mrs. O’Leary, for as long as I can remember. Even Mr. O’Leary.”

“You knew him,” I said, as I watched his fingers deftly twirl the whistle around themselves.

“Yeah, but I was just a little kid when he died. He taught me to play this,” he indicated the whistle, “but I don’t remember him much.”

“The way Mr. Hall tells it, Mr. O’Leary sounds kind of mean.”

Rory shrugged. “He really loved her, and she loved him. But sometimes that isn’t enough.”

Love not enough?
This struck me the wrong way. “When isn’t that enough?” I said.

He thought about this. “Well, when somebody belongs somewhere …” He struggled with his words. “I guess you just have to be where you belong … Mrs. O’Leary never felt like she belonged here in Oyster Beach.”

“That sounds just like … she told me something once,” I said.

“Oh yeah? She tends to do that a lot.” He was trying to lighten the mood.

I smirked. “I mean something that didn’t ring true to me.”

“Yes that is odd, her stories are always so realistic.”

I laughed outright. “You know what I mean! She seems so open and accepting of everyone—and everything. But then one day she told me, completely seriously, she said, that we need to let things be in their places. Even me. That everything has a place.”

“I think so, too.”

I looked up at him seriously. “That doesn’t make sense. That just sounds like an opportunity to tell people to go back to where they came from. Doesn’t that mean I shouldn’t be here?”

“Oh, Cora,” he sighed, his eyebrows scrunched up. “Where you belong is not necessarily where you came from. It’s wherever you
want
to be. That’s where your place is.” He paused, still flipping the whistle absently. “And I don’t think our place is always where we expect it to be.”

I moved my cheek to his chest and thought about his words. Maybe I’d misunderstood Mrs. O’Leary. She wasn’t telling me I belonged with Owen Carlton and other heirs, she was telling me I needed to figure out where I felt I belonged.

I fell asleep to the sound of the tin whistle and the feeling of Rory breathing, his chest rising and falling below my cheek as he tried to play quietly.

Chaillfidh Seamus Ar

Seamus’s Shed

The next morning, Rory woke me up by gently kissing my forehead.

“No,” I moaned. “I want to sleep.”

“We have to get up now; I have to go to work.”

Work. The Ritzes
. My stomach plummeted from whatever glorious dream I’d been in.

He set about tidying everything and returning things back to their proper places, just how we’d found it, while I put my damp clothes back on. Then he went to the front office, replacing the key ring and dumping the wet towels in a big bin. Nobody was there manning the desk yet.

Really dodged a bullet there
, I thought. I couldn’t imagine facing kindly Mrs. O’Brien with tousled hair and rumpled, barely dry clothes. Talk about the walk of shame.

“You want to see Mr. O’Leary’s shed?” Rory asked.

I hesitated only a moment at the thought of running into one of the Ritzes. I nodded and felt high as a million clouds as we walked down the boardwalk hand-in-hand. I defied a Ritz to say anything about this—or the boy I was holding hands with. I secretly hoped someone from the big houses would see me as I walked into the Ritz yard with the hired help.

But no one was around. Mr. O’Leary’s shed was near the back of the property, a dark, one-room, wooden building. There were a few roof tiles missing; it was obvious this little building hadn’t been kept up—the inhabitant had probably always been too busy keeping up the rest of the property to work on his own little corner of it.

Rory led me inside, where four bare walls stood over a sea of boxes. There was a high wooden counter that ran the length of the room, a mess of tools and things spread along it. There were nails all over the wall above it, but all were empty now. Opposite the counter there was a group of iron chairs and a workbench arranged in a circle. And boxes—boxes everywhere.

“What are the chairs for?” I said.

“This was like his den,” Rory explained. “He used to have company here. His friends, like Mr. Hall, and townspeople would visit. He had all kinds of stuff here—not just work stuff. And it was decorated and everything.” He paused and gestured toward the door. “There were posters all around there. And he kept a lot of personal stuff here. I don’t know why he wouldn’t keep it at home. Like these animal skins.” He picked something leathery up from a big wooden trunk that was under the counter. “There’s another smaller one just like it. Mr. Hall said there used to be three, but one was lost a long time ago. They were Mr. O’Leary’s most prized possessions—worth a lot, I guess.” He put it back and picked up a big knot of fishing wire. “He kept a lot of his fishing collection here, too. This, on the other hand, can’t be worth anything.” He dropped the tangle back into the trunk. “I think this was his home away from home.”

“Did Mrs. O’Leary ever come here?” I asked.

Rory shrugged. “I don’t know; I doubt it. I think it was kind of his place to get away from everything at home. He used to bring Aidan and me here when we were kids. But I don’t remember ever seeing her here.”

I gazed thoughtfully around, trying to imagine what it must have looked like, what it must have been for the mysterious fisherman. If the Ritzes ever appeared here to give instructions, orders. I somehow doubted that a Ritz would step foot in here. He brought Aidan and Rory here, but none of the other O’Brien children? They were younger than the rest, it made sense. But the things Mr. Hall had implied wouldn’t leave me, either. I wondered if Mr. O’Leary had been in here shortly before his boat went down. Maybe it was the last place he was—collecting his fishing stuff before departing. Never to return.

“Anyway, I’ll be done here in a few days,” Rory said. “I’m going through everything. Broken stuff gets tossed in a pile for Mr. Hall to look at. Everything else boxed up, cleaned up, moved out.”

“Moved out where? Who’s taking all his stuff?” I asked.

Rory shrugged. “Somebody suggested selling it.” He put a foot on the big wooden trunk. “There’s gotta be a fortune’s worth of junk in here. Mrs. O’Leary could use the money. She doesn’t seem interested in any of this stuff, but who couldn’t use extra cash?” He threw me a glance. “Well, you know what I mean …”