The Widow's Walk (31 page)
Authors: Robert Barclay
“I've carried it all my life,” Garrett said. “My parents told me it was a birthmark, and I had always accepted that explanation. However now I know differently, Constance. I even bear Adam's bullet wound scar from his duel with Jack Rackham. I am truly part Adam and part Garrett.”
After rolling down his sleeve, he took her into his arms again.
“So please tell me,” he said. “Can you find it in your heart to love both of us at once? Because that is who I am now, and from this day forward I always will be.”
At that moment everything became clear for her at last, and her imprisoned love for Garrett finally broke through its bonds. It was a great and all-encompassing ardor that she had once done her very best to suppress because of the love she had felt for Adam. She could now also accept that although Adam was really gone, much of him had survived in Garrett, the one man in the world who loved her enough to free her from her many decades of torment. Without a scintilla of hesitation, she pulled him to her and gave him a passionate kiss. At last all of her inhibitions about Garrett had vanished, and her sudden liberation felt joyous, invigorating.
“Yes, my darling,” she answered him. “Of course I can love you now. I have waited so long . . .”
Garrett then turned back toward the
Intrepid
and watched the many barrels of oil and bone continuing to be unloaded. This voyage had been highly successful but had also caused him to make a fateful decision. After letting go a long sigh, he looked back into Constance's eyes.
“Although part of me is now a whaling captain,” he said, “I am done with all of this. I've already seen enough of it to know. Instead, I want to stay home with you at Seaside and begin my new life. And if you'll have me, to start a family.”
His news was like music to her ears.
“Of course, my darling!” she answered joyously. “There is nothing that could make me happier!”
Relieved, Garrett cast his gaze past the
Intrepid
out to where the horizon of the Atlantic met the sky. He was finally home. This was where he belonged, and he had at last found the one woman he was meant to love. Even so, he still carried regrets. He would desperately miss his friends and family whom he had left behind when he and Constance made their leap of faith. They would be desolate, of course, all the while assuming he had fallen from the widow's walk to his death on the rocky shore below, his body having apparently washed out to sea. But it did him no good to wonder about such things anymore, and he knew it.
Brooke Wentworth had been right. This had all been a test of love designed to ascertain whether he and Constance deserved the chance to free her. He now also understood that in the end, the
mora mortis
had put him and Constance together because it was with her that he rightfully belonged. Moreover, the experience had changed him. His amazing love for Constance had made him more reflective and more tolerant. He was no longer one to laugh at the eternal verities, or to scoff at the possibility of forces in the universe that were far greater than mankind, for he had now experienced the true power of such wondrous things.
Then he finally smiled a bit as he remembered something his father recently said to himâthe same father he still loved so much, but would never see again:
“If you want to hear God laugh, just try telling him your plans . . .”
As for Constance, like Garrett she still didn't fully understand how or why all this had happened, nor did she believe that she ever would. Even so she was content because in the end, the fates had been kind. She was finally happy, and that was what truly mattered. Constance now fully realized that of all the men in the world, Garrett was her one true soul mate, and she was at last free to be with him in every way that true love demanded.
Before escorting Constance from the pier, Garrett took a moment to look up at the bright red pennant still attached to the
Intrepid'
s mainmast. Constance also raised her face to admire it.
“Do you want to take the pennant home with us?” he asked. “If so, I will order one of the crew to fetch it.”
Constance shook her head.
“No, my love,” she answered. “It has done its job, and we shan't be needing it anymore.”
Garrett smiled at her.
“Then at last it's time to go home,” he said.
However, as they began walking to the waiting carriage, a growing look of concern crossed Constance's face. The change in her expression was not lost on him.
“What is it?” he asked.
“If you no longer go to sea,” she said, “then how will we live?”
To her surprise, Garrett let go a little laugh.
“Do you remember the hundred-thousand-dollar check Brooke gave us, that day out at Fairlawn?” he asked.
“Certainly.”
When Garrett again looked into Constance's eyes, he smiled mischievously.
“Well,” he said, “before we took the leap of faith I cashed her check and converted all those funds into gold bars. Then I loaded them into the back of my Jeep and buried them in the woods behind Seaside. When I finished, I made the wish that those gold bars and Brooke's letter were what I wanted to accompany me, should our leap of faith succeed.”
Constance gasped.
“My God, Garrett!” she said. “Do you really think that the gold came back with you?”
Garrett stopped walking and took her hands into his.
“I do indeed,” he answered.
“Then that means . . .”
“Yes,” Garrett said. “Before we took the leap, I did a little research. In today's currency those gold bars are worth about three million dollars. We're filthy rich!”
Pausing for a moment, he looked deeply into her eyes.
“How fine ye are to me, wife,” he said.
As she realized that at last all the promises had been made and all the pacts had been sealed, Constance smiled.
“And how fine ye are to me, husband,” she answered.
Just as the happy couple rounded the next corner, Eli spotted them and began happily running their way. Thinking, Garrett pursed his lips.
“You know,” he said to Constance, “there's something that you must begin doing right now, or people like Eli will start to wonder about us.”
Constance gave him a quizzical look.
“And what might that be, my love?” she asked
Laughing a little, he put one arm through hers.
“You must start calling me Adam.”
 |
A
FTER GRADUATING
from Colgate University with a B.A. in Economics and a minor in art history, Robert Barclay enjoyed a successful career in business, also serving as chairman of his industry-related consulting group. After selling his business and moving from upstate New York to Florida (and with some rather successful prodding by his wife), he was finally able to devote his full attention to something he had always wanted to doâwrite a book. Rob lives in sunny south Florida.
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W
HEN
I
FIRST
STARTED
contemplating the premise for
The Widow's Walk
I was enjoying what I like to call my “happy time.” Put another way, my “lazy time” might be a more accurate description. I had just finished the revisions for my very forgiving editor, Lucia Macro, on my previous book,
More Than Words Can Say
. I was not yet under contract for another book, I had no looming deadline, and my time was pretty much my own. Even so, in this business the wheels of creativity must be kept turning or they begin to rust, and so I soon found myself in search of a new premise for another book.
The Widow's Walk
became my third love story for HarperCollins, and I think its premise is an interesting one. Oddly enough, if I intentionally attempt to devise a premise for a book, nothing comes of it. But if I simply let the project rest on the “back burner” of my mind and I go about my normal business, an acceptable idea always seems to surface on its own.
This was certainly the case with
The Widow's Walk
. After putting the previous book to bed, I began struggling to come up with a good premise for another one, and true to form I could not invent an idea that pleased me. And so I did what I always do and just tried to forget about it for a while. Although this rather illogical process works for me, it is not an altogether easy thing to do. Have you ever made a truly conscious effort to
not
think about something for days on end? Unless you must, I don't recommend it!
About one month later my wife, Joyce, and I attended a family wedding in the Baltimore area. Joyce's son Paul rented a house in which we could stay, accompanied by him and his wife, Katie, and their two children, Elizabeth and Allison, ages eleven and eight. When we arrived at the house it exceeded our expectations. It was located on a spacious, tree-lined street, and given that it was August the leaves were still lush and full.
A long veranda lay at the front of the house overlooking the street. The veranda held several wonderful old rocking chairs. During the week that we stayed there I began rising earlier than the others each day and then making a pot of strong coffee. Until I get my coffee each morning I can be a real bear, but that's another story entirely.
Anyway, I would then take my morning joe out onto the porch, where I would sit all alone in one of the lovely old rockers and watch the occasional car and pedestrian pass by. Those mornings held a slight chill, as the sun came up and the birds began singing. It was such a lovely scene that I guess my subconscious mind began trying to somehow incorporate it as part of the premise for a new book.
As the mornings passed in this way, I began imagining how nice it would be to have such a large house as this situated by the ocean, where I could sit on my spacious veranda and watch the restless waves assault the shoreline anytime I chose. Such wishful thinking certainly wasn't yet a full-blown book premise, but as I was soon to discover, the seed of one had at last taken root.
During our trip to that house, I noticed that several homes in the area had widow's walks located on their roofs. I knew very little about widow's walks, save that they were reputedly used by the wives of whaling captains to gaze out over the ocean in search of their husbands' returning ships. Curious, one morning I left the porch and walked all around the house, trying to find whether this particular home had its own widow's walk, but it did not.