The Gilly Salt Sisters (26 page)

A huge gust of wind swooped across the dunes and almost knocked her sideways as the sky began spitting a heavy mist. She stumbled a bit, buttoning the highest button on her coat collar, her bare fingers tingling in the cold. As she neared the marsh, she stopped in the middle of the empty path, the wind urging her to keep traveling, to step through the grasses and down to Salt Creek Farm, even while her better sense screamed at her to stop and mind her own business. She took another pace forward. Joanna wouldn’t be out in weather like this, she calculated. Dee would have the place all to herself. Maybe she could even poke around in that barn.

But she was wrong. She wasn’t as alone as she thought. A dark, glossy car pulled up next to her, spraying sand over her loafers, its engine purring. Dee squinted through the wind, wiping rain
from her forehead, but she didn’t need to look twice to know who it was. Only one man in Prospect drove an auto that shiny. She glanced into the interior of the car, but the seat beside him was free and empty. Whit was alone. He leaned over and opened the passenger door for Dee, letting out a pulse of heat. “Get in,” he said. “You look like a drowned rat. What are you doing out here?”

She hesitated for a fraction longer, but the lure of warm leather and the low rumble of the engine tempted her too much. She slid into the front seat as a burst of legitimate rain splattered over the windshield. “Taking a walk,” she answered, shaking water out of her hair. “What are
you
doing out here?”

Whit put the car back into gear and continued idling down the rutted lane. “I dropped Claire off at home and am on my way to see Jo.”

Dee lurched forward in her seat as they rattled over a pothole and she bit the corner of her mouth by accident. “Jo?” she echoed, dabbing at the corner of her lip. “What on earth for?” Whit glanced sideways at her, and Dee’s pulse sped up. She took a deep breath and smoothed her skirt over her knees. After Claire and her father, Dee thought that Whit might be next on her list of people she wanted to hide her visits to the marsh from. “I mean, do you call on Jo often?” she asked, folding her hands demurely in her lap.

Whit didn’t look fooled. “Only when there’s unfinished business,” he said through clenched teeth, pulling the car up to the barn and turning to Dee. He raked her with his eyes, dragging his gaze over her breasts and back again, until Dee couldn’t take it anymore and she looked away, blushing. He raised his hand, and for a moment she thought he was about to stroke her cheek, but he put the car keys into her palm instead. “This won’t take long,” he said, closing her fingers over the metal. “I’d like very much to give you a ride back to town. If you get cold, start the engine.”

And then he was jogging across the muddy marsh with his jacket held half over his head, squinting against the slashing rain.
Dee watched him and then leaned back in her seat, spreading her hands on the fine leather. The car was so luxurious she wanted to sleep in it. She guessed Whit must have come to visit Joanna with some sort of business proposition, and she wondered how that would go. Jo didn’t seem like she’d be too agreeable when it came to that kind of thing. Jo wasn’t really agreeable when it came to much.

Dee closed her eyes and listened to the rain falling on the roof of the car. The sound cocooned her, making everything feel dreamlike. Well, it kind of was. After all, here she was waiting in Whit Turner’s car—on a Sunday, no less—parked at what might as well have been the edge of the world. She closed her fist tightly around the keys, liking the way the metal felt as it bit into her skin, both cold and hot at once. It matched what was going on inside her.

Whit startled her, reappearing without her seeing him, throwing the door open so suddenly that Dee grew chilled all over again. He was soaking wet, his hair dripping onto his collar, his cheeks running with rain, and he was pissed, Dee could tell. He took the keys from her without a word and threw the car into reverse so hard her head snapped.

“So… um, it didn’t go well?” she finally said, peeking at Whit from beneath her eyelashes and wishing she had a towel to give him. He didn’t answer, just clenched his teeth and bounced the car hard over the lane’s potholes.

They passed St. Agnes and reached the last turn before town. Dee straightened up in her seat, arranging her coat, which had fallen open. She was feeling foolish all of a sudden.
He thinks I’m just a kid
, she told herself.
He’s just being nice.
She reached into her pocket and felt the knot charm that Mr. Weatherly had given her. Maybe it was working after all, when she least wanted it to.

They were on the wrong side of Tappert’s Green. Another stretch and a bend and they’d be on Bank Street. Back at the diner. Back to her room with the dormer ceiling and the creaky bed and her father muttering to himself through the walls. Dee
sighed, and Whit glanced across at her, and then, without warning, he pulled the car over to the side of the road and turned off the engine.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his eyes crinkling at the edges again, his lip curving in a most pleasing manner. “Here I have a lovely companion sitting next to me, and what do I do but go and ignore her?” Dee blushed, but before she could say anything, Whit leaned across the console and put one hand up to her cheek. “What wouldn’t I do,” he murmured, stretching even closer.

Dee held her breath for a moment and half closed her eyes. This was her last chance, she knew, to push him away, to tell him he had the wrong idea after all. Instead she leaned into him as he touched his lips to her neck and then opened her lips to his mouth, letting the hot point of his tongue shock hers. He pulled away a little and took a breath.

“Damn,” he breathed, “you’re tastier than anything in your father’s diner. I’ve wanted to do that since the moment I first saw you.”

Dee hid her smile. She knew she should probably be scrambling out of the car right about now, but there was something thrilling about this moment. She brought her palms up to Whit’s cheeks, feeling as if she were taming a large cat, and started kissing him again, letting all the pain and boredom of the last few months melt away as Whit undid her coat and worked his hands up under her sweater.

“You like that, don’t you?” he said, his fingers tracing light circles over her breasts.

And she did. Whit was nothing like any of the doltish boys she’d been with before, with all their panting and jerky impatience. He knew exactly what he was doing and why. In fact, Dee thought, he probably knew her better than she knew her own self.

They twined around each other further, navigating the clumsy console between them, Dee’s skirt riding higher as Whit’s hands went exploring, and just when she was ready to lean back and let him have his way with her, he cleared his throat and sat up.

“The rain’s stopped,” he said, lifting his head from her neck. “It’s clearing up.” He rearranged his wet shirt and combed a hand through his hair. “You
are
young,” he said, cocking an eyebrow at Dee, “but not so innocent, I think.” She blushed and tried to look wicked, then stopped, worried that she just looked pinched instead.

Whit circled her wrist with his fingers, pressing hard on the tendons. “We can’t be seen like this,” he said. “You’d better get out of here.” Dee pouted, and he chuckled. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell you when and where we can meet.” He watched her slide out of the car into the freezing wet. “I’ll come into the diner tomorrow—after my wife, of course. You can give it to me hot.”

And with a delicious grin, he slammed the door and rounded the final bend into town, leaving Dee to stumble back to Bank Street alone, thoughts of Claire’s red hair and white skin mingling with the press of Whit’s lips on her throat until everything was a twist of confusion for her. Was she hungry for Claire’s husband or just Claire? she wondered. Which Turner would she really be serving tomorrow at the Lighthouse anyway—man or wife—and where was the dividing line between them?

She reached the diner and glanced into one of the front windows, darkened in the late afternoon, and her reflection caught her off guard. She stared at her face—leaner in the window than in real life, dotted with water droplets—and it occurred to her that maybe she was the line. Before she could think too hard about that, however, she moved, breaking the image into pieces and scattering the doubtful part of her back into the rain, leaving behind only a solitary pane of glass, unreflective in the autumn gloom.

S
hovel fast on a Sunday
, Jo’s mother used to say when Jo was growing up and the year got cold enough for the salt to be hauled from the ponds to the barn.
Lucifer’s got time on his hands, but we don’t.
This would be just when the first threat of the season’s rain was shimmering on the horizon, when neat V’s of geese were streaking the sky with their plaintive honking and frantic wings.

This particular year Jo had ended up with salt heaped only to her hip. It would barely be enough to keep her in good with the fishermen through the winter, and certainly not enough to keep the bank at bay. Come spring, she knew, Harbor Bank was going to want to skim more fat off the land than she had to give.

She’d cleaned out her life’s savings and been dismayed to discover that it amounted to only the three months of back mortgage payments plus two extra months. She tried to do the math on all of it and failed. Somehow the bank had won the round. She presented them with a lifetime of work, and they reciprocated with five meager months in return.
Oh, well
, Jo thought, trying to push the worry out of her head the way she was shoving around the piles of salt.
I got one more season to make it all last.
Winter. The longest months with the shortest days. A time when the marsh froze and everything hung suspended. From down the lane, she could hear the tarnished bell of St. Agnes clanging out a dented version
of a song. In a few more weeks, she knew, even that would freeze, plunging the marsh into an icy and profound silence.

She tugged open the barn doors and shoved the barrow across the threshold just as the first fat drops of rain started to plop, noisy as gulls on the wing. She huddled inside the doorway, watching the changing sky, and then she went on with her business: upending the barrow, unloading the salt into an empty wooden box, sweeping up the scattered grains that had fallen to the wayside.

She pulled the cover into place over the storage box and brushed her hands together, wrinkled palm to smooth one. Usually she wore gloves, but she’d forgotten about them today, and now it was too late. If she wasn’t careful, she knew, dust and dirt would settle into the whorls of her scars and stain her hands mocha. A scuffling noise outside the barn interrupted her thoughts, and then, cutting through the noise of the rain and the wind, Whit Turner’s voice flew up to the rafters, where it hovered and hung in judgment.

“I know you’re in there, Joanna,” he called through the crack of the barn door, scraping his shoes on the wet clay. “Open up.”

What could he want? She hesitated, her heart pounding for six, and then she took the biggest breath she could and flung open the door, squinting in the rain. “Don’t you take a single step closer,” she said. She’d grabbed an old scythe left behind by one of her doomed male ancestors, but the blade was rusted and unreliable-looking, and Whit just flicked his eyes over it. She lowered the tool and leaned against the splintered threshold, hoping the backs of her knees would harden from the jelly they’d turned to. “To what do I owe the honor?” she asked.

Every time she got close to Whit these days, she was always surprised to see how the years were crimping the skin around his eyes and jaw and how his hair was starting to silver at the temples. He must have just come from Mass, Jo realized, for he was wearing a fine woolen blazer and pressed trousers—clothes her sister had no doubt chosen for him with care. She looked for any sign of the boy who’d taught her to whistle a hornpipe, who could palm the ace of hearts and make it reappear from her sleeve,
but failed to find even a glimmer of him. Instead she saw Ida taking on a second life in the features of her only son, and for a quick heartbeat Jo was almost grateful for the scar tissue dimpled across her cheek, forehead, and chin. No one would ever be able to invade her face, she realized. She would always simply be herself, whether she liked it or not.

“Are you the one behind the nonsense I’m hearing about Ethan Stone’s return?” Whit asked, his lips white with rage.

She let out a careful breath, trying not to show her surprise. To be honest, she wasn’t sure how to answer that question. It was true that two weeks ago Father Flynn had sat in her front parlor and told her that his soul was heavy. She’d poured him a cup of tea. “Then you should lighten it,” she’d replied, and handed him the drink.

Father Flynn had sipped and then sipped again, his face growing ever more thoughtful. “What’s the only way to fix a hole, my dear?” he’d asked.

Jo had taken her own taste of tea. “Why, fill it in, I guess.” Her answer had seemed to please the father.

“Exactly,” he’d replied, nodding. “That’s just what I was thinking.” He leaned over and gave her a quick peck on her smooth cheek. “Thank you. You always say the right thing.”