The Gilly Salt Sisters (48 page)

But Dee didn’t hear her. She was already half asleep, so Jo tiptoed out of the room, closing the door gently, looking up and down the corridor for Claire. She found her at the other end of the hallway, by the elevator bank, pacing. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and she was sniffling.

She swiped the back of her hand under her nose. “I knew she was carrying Whit’s baby, but I’d kind of pushed it out of my mind. God. I feel so stupid. Jealous of an eighteen-year-old dropout with no money, no friends, and no family.”

“She has us,” Jo said quietly, but Claire didn’t make it look like that was a good thing.

“I know,” she said, and clamped her mouth tight. They stood for a moment, shoulder to shoulder, close but not touching. Jo thought about the babies Claire had lost. Did something like that leave scars, Jo wondered, each time it happened? Was Claire roughed up, too, and put back together all wrong? She had never thought about it before, but it made perfect sense.

All these years she’d believed she was the one who’d rescued Claire that day in the barn, but what if she were wrong? What if Claire had been the one who’d saved Jo by marrying Whit?
How much does Claire really know about that letter?
Jo wondered. It was obvious that Ida had written it, but it wasn’t clear to whom. Jo squinted at Claire, and Claire scowled in return.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Jo said. “I have to go home and check on the salt. What do you want to do?”

Claire wiped her eyes. “I’ll stay here with Dee.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay, I’ll be back, then, later.”

They embraced quickly, folding each other close—hands spread across the other’s back, cheeks turned in opposite directions, willing to give sisterhood a try but handicapped by the fact that there was only so much intimacy in this world that either one of them could bear.

A
fter the antiseptic air of the hospital, the summer heat smacked Jo like a wet hand when she walked outside. She drove back toward Salt Creek Farm with the windows of the truck open, letting the breeze lick over her. She was thinking about Whit. Jordy
did
have his eyes, and that had been a jarring reminder. What other traits of his father did Jordy carry? Jo wondered. Once she had loved Whit better than anyone else in the world. Would she come to feel that way about his son?

As she drove past St. Agnes, she noticed that the light in the window was on, and she spied Father Stone kneeling by the altar in prayer. She pulled the truck over and turned off the engine, watching him, but he didn’t move, and Jo thought that was strange. No man—not even a priest—would stay bowed down before the Lord for so long unless he was carrying some heavy sins, she thought. She put her hand on the truck’s door handle but then hesitated. If she went in, she would be interrupting a moment she had no right to break into.
The heck with it
, she finally thought, yanking the keys out of the ignition, and then strode over to the battered sanctuary doors and flung them open. Inside, the early-morning light streamed over the figure of Our Lady like a rebuke.

“Can I help you?” Ethan startled up from his bent position in front of the altar, his face so twisted that Jo almost couldn’t place him. He raised his eyebrows when he recognized her, looking almost relieved. “Oh, it’s only you, Jo. What on earth are you doing here?”

“Do you have Father Flynn’s address?” Jo wasn’t in the mood for pleasantries either.

Ethan’s frown deepened. “Somewhere. He left it in case I had any questions. Why?”

“
I
have some questions.”

Ethan didn’t move. He glanced out the window, as if he really had been waiting for someone else and was disappointed to see only the empty lane. Slowly, he got to his feet. “Is it anything I can answer?”

Jo put her hands on her hips. What would Ethan Stone think, she wondered, if she told him the real reason she hadn’t grown up to marry Whit Turner? Would he be so shocked? Would he regret leaving Claire then? Jo sighed. “Just so you know, Claire’s at the hospital. Dee had the baby last night. A little boy. She named him Jordan.”

At Claire’s name Ethan’s ears turned red and he coughed, making his eyes water. “I’ll have to stop by later and give her my best.”

“Claire? Or Dee?”

Ethan blushed. “Dee, of course. I’m afraid Claire and I have had… a sort of falling-out.”

Good Lord in heaven, Claire
, Jo thought,
what have you gone and done now?
“I’m sorry,” she said.

Ethan put his hands in his pockets and said through tight lips, “I’ve made a request to be transferred. You should tell that to your sister.”

“I see.” Jo cleared her throat. “Why don’t you tell her yourself?”

Ethan hung his head. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

Oh, Claire
, Jo thought.
When will you learn?
Claire’s heart was going to break all over again, but this time it would be a mess of her own making. Jo squared her shoulders. “Can you just get me Father Flynn’s address?”

Ethan blinked several times, pulling his eyebrows together again. “Of course. One moment while I find it.” He disappeared, leaving Jo alone with Our Lady.

Reluctantly, Jo turned to face her. The paint on her skirts had faded to faint pastel, Jo saw, as well as the pale of her flesh. Her hands were almost invisible, save for the eye that Jo had painted
on her palm, and the row of fishhooks looked more sinister than Jo remembered, their curves hasty and crude. Hesitating, she touched the Virgin’s empty face and found herself wishing she had some salt—or anything—to offer. But it wouldn’t have done any good. History hadn’t been changed at all, certainly not by her mother, and Jo knew how she’d tried.

Mama had told Jo the story before she died. She’d come to the sanctuary as soon as she could after giving birth during that terrible nor’easter, she said. The roads were frozen, the houses buried under feet of snow, and trees were tossed from their tips to their roots across the lane. The church had been empty, and Father Flynn was stuck in town, as was Jo’s father. Jo’s mother was exhausted after giving birth, but she thought,
Now or never
. She packed a sharp chisel in her coat pocket and set forth out of doors.

Jo imagined Mama’s surprise when, stepping into the church, she saw not just Our Lady but a second, more earthly Madonna—Ida May Dunn—crumpled at the feet of the Virgin, a newborn babe in her own arms, her clothing stained and rumpled.

The two women recoiled at first and then struck their deal, united in a common desire for secrecy. Jo’s mother had come to break a curse, and Ida had come to unload one. And so it was done. Mama hammered the face out of the Virgin, hoping to put a crack in the past and somehow save Henry, and Ida helped her, and when it was over, neither woman left empty-handed. Mama walked out of the church with two babies instead of one—a girl to cancel out her doomed boy—and Ida departed with the last glimpse anyone would have of Our Lady’s face, never guessing how it would come to haunt her.

“Here you are.”

Jo jumped. Ethan had returned with Father Flynn’s address. He held on to her hand a moment before he released it. If he knew what she needed it for, he might not give it to her at all, she reflected. Didn’t priests always protect their own? On the other hand, maybe it would give him some peace when it came
to Claire. He wasn’t the only man in Prospect to have sinned on a spectacular scale, and no doubt he wouldn’t be the last.

“Thank you,” Jo said, putting the address in her pocket. She stared into Ethan’s troubled eyes and was tempted to tell him how much Claire still cared for him, but it wasn’t her place. She wasn’t her sister’s keeper, much as she sometimes felt she was. Hard as it was, she was going to have to get used to that, and maybe, just maybe, Claire would start to do the same in return. Jo gave one more uneasy glance to Our Lady and headed back into the full daylight, knowing that the scrap of paper in her pocket could provide either a beginning or an ending to her story, or maybe neither. Fate wasn’t always so clearly written, and even when it was, who was to say it always stayed that way?

D
ee came home to Salt Creek Farm with Jordy in the middle of July, and to welcome him—the marsh’s little king, its boy treasure—Claire embarked on an unparalleled march of culinary offerings. Each morning she rose before the sun and turned out marbled rings of cake, raisin and anise scones, flaky sheets of phyllo dough drizzled and rolled with honey, salt, and a secret blend of herbs. She scented ramekins of crème anglaise with rose water and orange, and made a peanut brittle so simultaneously salty and sweet that it confused her tongue into rapture.

It was a joy having a baby in the house, and Claire’s body seemed to reflect that. Her clothes grew snug in all the right places, emphasizing her hips and breasts, putting extra swing into her steps, and her newly released hair began to settle into pleasing ripples and waves. She spent so much time in front of the steaming oven and stove that her skin became infused with the oily scents of vanilla, caramel, and brown butter. She dipped her fingers in so much chocolate and cocoa powder that she stained the tips of them a smoky espresso color.

“Nature’s finest manicure,” she pronounced with a laugh, waving her nails at Dee, but Dee didn’t seem to notice. She was limp as old lettuce these days. Maybe it was the strain of taking care of
a newborn, or perhaps it was hormonal. The nurses had warned all of them about that. The “baby blues,” they called it, but Dee’s blues seemed to have darkened from standard periwinkle to a dangerous indigo of late. Claire frothed a bowl of eggs harder and started sprinkling flour into the bowl.

“What do you think?” she asked Dee, checking to make sure she was still in the room. Sometimes she crept away before Claire even noticed, sneaking up the stairs to her room, where she would sleep for hours on end, letting Claire and Jo fuss and cluck over Jordy, changing him, swaddling him, heating his bottles like a pair of competing hens. “Clove cake, or lemon-lime? I could do either.”

Jordy was on the table, nestled into the ample curve of an enormous wooden salt bowl that Claire had lined with a quilt. Dee had been horrified with this arrangement at first, but she relaxed as soon as she saw how well the bowl cupped the baby.

“All Gillys get cradled in this,” Claire reassured her. “My mother used to say it’s what hardened our spines.”

Claire glanced at Jordy now, marveling that in six short weeks his eyes had changed to hazel, his hair had thickened, and he’d learned to suckle his fist. As if he sensed he was being watched, he woke with a startle, but he didn’t cry. Claire waited to see if Dee would pick him up, but she didn’t, so Claire banged her wooden spoon on the side of her mixing bowl, trying to snap Dee out of her funk.

Lemon-lime, Claire decided, reaching for the zester. It suited her mood. She squeezed some drops of citrus juice into the batter and tossed away the crushed fruit halves. The problem with happiness was that it was such a brittle net, she thought. Lately she didn’t dare test it, for she worried it would snap under the pressure and spill out whatever she’d snared, leaving her with nothing. Maybe that’s what Jo had been trying to tell her on her wedding day, she mused now, with those horrid hooks painted on Our Lady’s gown—that sometimes you had to be cruel to feed your
own soul. Claire remembered the day she’d let that fish go on the beach with Whit standing behind her. Maybe she had made a mistake after all, letting it slip away. She could see that now.

Jordy let out a mew, and Claire twitched, but Dee unfolded his receiving blanket and hoisted him to her shoulder. Claire loved the way Jordy felt in her arms. He shared the same comforting heft of a sack of flour. Whenever she got the chance, she sniffed him as she would one of her pastries, wishing she could smooth icing over his velvety tummy and lick it off. She was ashamed to admit there were times when she almost thought he might be—should have been—hers.

For a moment, at the start of the C-section, the doctors hadn’t been sure Dee was going to live. She was bleeding, her blood pressure had dropped to an almost subhuman level, and a nurse began readying a crash cart. Altogether it had been a terrifying moment for Claire, but not because of the graphic drama unfolding in front of her. On the contrary, it had been so very terrible because Claire had been forced to make an uncomfortable moral choice: For whom was she going to root? The baby or Dee? Mother or infant? Old life or new?