Lightkeeper's Wife (18 page)

“I know you love me,” Tom said.

“Oh, I do, I do.”

“So marry me.”

“I can't.”

Tom stood then, and slid the ring into his pocket. “Don't tell me it's Billy. Please don't tell me that.”

“I won't marry again, Tom, regardless of the circumstances.”

“Don't you see how wonderful it could be?”

“Yes, but I was married to John for many years, and I don't want another husband.”

They went back and forth until Tom was utterly frustrated.

“I need to take a wife,” he said. “My career, my age…if it can't be you.”

“Is that a threat?”

“No.” Tom hesitated. He looked down into the leather creases of his boots and brushed his palms along the thighs of his linen trousers. “I've been courting someone in Barnstable. I knew you wouldn't have me, Hannah, but I had to ask you one last time. You understand?”

Hannah stiffened. “I'm not going to ask you who. Not yet.”

He sat beside her and they held hands in front of the fire for a long time before Tom took his leave.

The letter arrived that afternoon, delivered by Sam Potts on special order from Mrs. Nora Paine. “I'll need you to sign here, ma'am,” the man said.

Dear Hannah,

I'm sorry to write with this news. Your husband's body has been found. Evan Pierce and his father were hunting near Dennis Pond and found John, covered in leaves beneath a lean-to of branches, where the men hide while waiting for deer. They were quite shaken and saddened to bring this news to our family, and they helped your father take John to the undertaker. We'll bury him in the family plot on Summer Street, if that's what you want. Please send word as soon as you can, and let us know when you'll arrive.

I hesitate telling you in a letter but want to spare you the misery of not knowing. John was badly beaten and showed signs of having put up a struggle: bruises on his fists, blood beneath his fingernails. A bullet wound in his stomach ended his fight. With the wagon gone, we can only assume that he was robbed on his way home, perhaps mistaken for a merchant who carried money. Of course, there's no way to know.

I'm saddened for you, dearest Hannah, and my only consolation is that you will have some peace knowing that he is properly buried among loving family.

All my love, and condolences,

Your loving mother

Hannah dropped the letter on the floor and stared out the front window toward the road, where her husband should've appeared atop his wagon all those months ago. The windowpane shivered in the wood frame. She placed her hand against the cold glass to steady it. When had she given up waiting for John? Her life had changed almost imperceptibly at first. Then day by day, week by week, she'd moved on without him.

A dull ache clenched like a fist in her chest. She went to the kitchen window and stared at a line of three ships pointing south, sails ghostlike against an ashen sky. At John's desk she opened the logbook to record the wind direction and speed she'd taken earlier. Notes made, she flipped back through the book until she reached John's careful script, so different from her own loose marks. She ran her fingers over the square letters, down rows of numbers and names of ships, to his last marks in the logbook. The emptiness she felt upon turning the page to her own notations overwhelmed her, and she sobbed. The finality was what she'd wanted, but now she wished she didn't have to know. Not knowing had allowed her to go on with always the possibility of his return.

In the bedroom, she absently gathered her clothing into a suitcase. What do you wear to your husband's funeral? Whatever she didn't have, her mother would provide for her. She went to the kitchen to wash the dishes, but each plate felt unfamiliar in her hands. Each bowl seemed to take hours to wash. She didn't notice that she was shaking, until a cup slid from her hands. Hannah left the rest of the dishes in the sink and rushed along the lighthouse passageway as if she would find John at the other end. She climbed the stairs to the lighthouse landing. This was the only place where she felt him with her. Not in Barnstable or in a cemetery or anywhere else. This had been their home, and this was where she'd said good-bye to him months ago. Saying good-bye to him again felt like an unnecessary grief. She wanted to feel the relief his body was meant to bring, but she only felt newly scathed by loss, and an emptiness around her as wide as the ocean's graveyard.

***

Billy reached the lighthouse by early afternoon and half the bottle was gone. The girl's voice still hung in her ears. Billy unbridled Nellie and leaned against the horse for balance as she led her to a stall. She spilled oats across the floor as she filled the bucket, then she let the horse eat a carrot from her hand. “Atta girl,” Billy said, patting the horse's rump as she left the stall, waiting to hear the latch click before walking away.

She slid the box of fish from the back of the wagon and carried it into the house. The smell recalled the early days of pregnancy when she couldn't stand any strong odors.

Billy lifted a heavy pot onto the stove and let the flames burn full blast. When she heard Hannah's boots scrape the passageway, she wiped her hands distractedly on the dishrag and bent down to hide the bottle in the cabinet beneath the sink, behind the potatoes and onions where the bottle settled itself in the corner. She closed the cabinet and stood as Hannah turned into the room.

“What's wrong?” Hannah asked.

“Nothing. Why?”

“You look scared.”

Billy shook her head. Hannah's nostrils flared and her eyes widened as she smelled the liquor. “If you're going to drink, at least have the dignity not to lie.” Hannah stood with her arms across her chest and stepped back from Billy. Everything about her, from the smell of liquor on her breath to her sullen expression, disgusted Hannah. She hated her then for wearing John's shirt, hated her for living and breathing in the kitchen where her husband should be. She wanted to slap her, to shake her awake. Her mother pretended not to notice her father's regular trips to the woodpile, but Hannah couldn't stand it, not for another minute.

“I want you out,” she said without raising her voice. “I can't stand your lying and drinking. You told me you were done with that.”

Billy walked past the chairs scattered around the dining table and felt Hannah's eyes on her. “It's just that girl, Mesha…just this once, that's all.”

“I don't want to hear it. It doesn't matter to me why you're drunk. I can't trust you, and I want you out of my house.” The anger Hannah felt upon saying these words startled her. How could Billy do this when Hannah had to go to her husband's funeral? Even though Billy didn't know about John yet, Hannah felt especially hurt.

“What's wrong with you?” Billy held Hannah's furious gaze and tried not to look away.

“You can leave in the morning,” Hannah said.

“I can leave right now.”

“Don't be foolish,” Hannah said.

“So now I'm foolish? After everything I've done around here you're going to kick me out?”

“You can stay in the barn tonight. Be gone in the morning.”

Billy knocked over a chair on her way out of the house. Hannah didn't bother to pick it up.

***

Hannah prevailed upon Tom to take care of the lighthouse while she went to Barnstable. Her family held a private, graveside service. John's parents couldn't afford to make the journey, and so sent their sympathies along with money for a wreath. Hannah stood beneath the bare oak trees, their branches etched against a silver-gray sky as if in charcoal, and tried to connect the casket perched by the grave with the man who'd been her husband. Her father had identified John's body and discouraged her from viewing him to say good-bye. After so many months in the woods, he was no longer her husband. The wind rushed over the Paine family and stirred up the odors of moist earth, rotting leaves, and fresh-cut wood from the new casket. The minister read from his Bible, and they stood with heads bowed, but Hannah didn't hear his words. When the minister stopped talking, she was grateful for the quiet. Her father dropped a handful of dirt into the grave, but it wasn't until Hannah released dirt from her own hand onto the casket that she fully realized the extent of her loss. She started to fall onto the ground, but her father caught her by the elbow. He wrapped his arms around her until she let go a sob that shook her body.

Her parents' friends stopped by, delivering beef stews, whole chickens, vegetable casseroles, and pies. They wanted to talk with Hannah about John, what a fine man he was, how they'd searched and come up empty, and now this, by chance. They wanted to talk about what could've happened to him, like the townspeople gathered onshore after shipwreck, endlessly trying to figure out how the ship could've gone aground. Hannah tried to avoid these people with their good intentions and occasional tears. She said, “Thank you,” and took her leave and nobody questioned her or thought she was rude.

Every day was like every other day—one after the next. She cried and ate the food her mother prepared from the offerings of friends. Her parents were always close. They moved around her tentatively, as if testing for injury, and she let them. Why not let them take care of her? She felt sick, worse than sick. She wanted to turn herself inside out and empty out her grief once and for all, but it lingered and broke free at unpredictable moments. One night, her mother reached across the table and placed her hand over Hannah's, and Hannah broke down. One night, she woke to the sound of her own sobbing.

The next morning, her father asked her to help with the lobster traps. They bundled up in the cold and wore gloves with the fingertips cut off so that they could mend the nets. Hannah retied the torn nets with twine and replaced broken wood slats as easily as she'd done it as a girl. She moved from one trap to the next, lost in the network of twine.

Her father worked slower, his fingers arthritic and stiff. When he went for his liquor bottle by the woodpile, Hannah ignored him.

“It's my back,” he said. “I can't bend over like that for long.” He sat and drank for a while without working.

The broken traps made Hannah think of the flotsam John used to gather after a storm. He often called her out to the barn to view his collection: a broken oar, a block and tackle severed in a storm, or a frayed length of rope. Garbage, she thought, but she watched his meaningful gaze and said, “You'll figure it out. You always do.”

He used the block and tackle to rig the system for hauling sailors and gear up from the beach. And now Billy used a scavenged lifesaving ring for the ship-to-shore rescue device. There was a use for everything, just as John had told her. She could hear his voice as clearly as if he were speaking over her shoulder, but she kept herself from turning around. Her fingers in the net held her focus. There was no way back to a place where John existed.

The sun bore down on them through the cold. Hannah unbuttoned her coat and stretched out her fingers, relieved when her father began talking about boats bought and sold and who was bringing in the biggest catch, anything to distract her from her own thoughts.

“I don't suppose Tom told you his news, not with everything that's going on.”

Hannah looked up from her work, her fingers tying a knot into the net.

“He's been courting Cassandra Wainwright.”

Hannah couldn't breathe for a moment. Even though he'd warned her, she couldn't stifle her surprise. “Cassandra Wainwright? Isn't she kind of prim?”

“Seems an unlikely match, but I've heard they're seeing quite a bit of each other,” her father said.

“But he just—”

“What?”

“Nothing,” Hannah said, stunned.

Hannah couldn't think of what to say. She felt betrayed, even though she'd turned him down. She'd known Cassandra growing up. She was everything that Hannah was not: wealthy, conventional, and well-mannered.

“She'll be visiting Dangerfield soon. I've heard she's quite curious.”

“Well, I better rescue Tom from the lighthouse. He's got business to attend to, I'm sure,” Hannah said. How was she going to manage the lighthouse without Billy, and with Tom focused on a new woman? She pulled a knot of twine tight and cut the end with a rigging knife. After weeks in Barnstable, and her father's traps mended and stacked, it was time to go home.

***

The ride took all day, and Hannah was exhausted as she put the horse up in his stall. She wanted a bath and to go straight to bed, but she didn't have the energy to get the tub or heat the water. Her body ached from the ride, and from crying. The passageway from the barn was dark, and she dropped her bag on the floor as if she was releasing a burden heavier than her suitcase. In the living room, she threw her coat onto a chair and sat before the fire. The heat eased her muscles and she closed her eyes. Tom must be up tending the lights. When she heard him come around the corner, she turned, but it wasn't Tom standing in the half-light.

Billy stepped into the room as if waiting for Hannah to kick her out again, but Hannah was relieved. After her trip to Barnstable, and Tom's upcoming marriage, she wanted something to stay the same.

“May I come in?” Billy asked.

“You might as well,” Hannah said.

Billy sat in the chair beside Hannah and stared into the fire, silent, as if preparing what to say. “I want to prove to you that I can do this,” she said. “You need the help.”

“I can't rely on you when you're drinking.”

Billy turned to face Hannah, and with the utmost earnestness, she said, “I promise you, Hannah, that I will not take a drink so long as I live under your roof.”

“You've promised that before, haven't you?”

“It's different now. I've got a stake in things here.”

Against her better judgment, Hannah wanted to believe that Billy could work on the lifesaving rig and help her succeed with the rescues. She didn't want to give up when they were so close. “We'll see how it goes,” Hannah said.