Pictures of Emily (6 page)

“Lord, how I wish—” His words broke off and his expression changed, hardened a little, as if he’d just remembered who he was and who she was. His hand fell away from her face.

He couldn’t stop now! “What do you wish?” she asked, not quite able to keep the desperation from her voice.

“I wish…” He smiled a little crookedly, laughing at his own foolishness it seemed. “I wish you were just a little bit bad. No, change that. I wish I were a little bit good.”

She couldn’t believe he’d ever done anything bad. He’d called her untouched, but as contradictory as it seemed, untouched was the very word she would have used to describe Sonny. With her, she knew he’d meant untouched in the physical sense. With Sonny it was something more. Something that transcended physical bounds.

“What have you done in your life that could be so terrible?” she asked.

His eyes clouded. She could almost see his thoughts turn inward. “It’s what I haven’t done.”

She hated the sadness in his voice, hated the weariness. As if he’d given up. “You talk as if your life is over,” she said.

“Sometimes I feel like it is. Sometimes I’m ready for it to be.”

“Don’t say that. You’re young.”

“I’m tired. Tired of playing the game.” The expression in his eyes changed. Now they seemed to reflect the wasteland of his soul. She stared at him, trying to feel what he felt, and she became aware of a faint glow around him.

White touched with gray.

His aura was white. She thought she’d only imagined it the day he’d pulled her from the water. Darkness had been falling, and she’d been anything but clearheaded.

“You’re white,” she murmured in puzzled amazement, hardly aware that she spoke the words aloud.

“White?” His eyebrows drew together. “That’s what you said on the wharf. What are you talking about?”

The island people were used to her strange gift, some even seeming to accept it as simply a part of the ways of St. Genevieve. But Emily hadn’t been very old when she’d learned not to mention it to mainlanders. They didn’t understand.

“It’s nothing,” she said, hating to trivialize something so special, yet unable to face Sonny’s scorn.

“Come on. Tell me.”

She took a deep breath. “Sometimes… when I concentrate on someone long enough,” she said, unable to meet his penetrating gaze, “I see a glow around them. An aura.”

“A glow?”

“Well, I’m not sure if I actually see it with my eyes. It’s more of a feeling.”

“And you say my…
aura
is white?”

“Yes. But white is good,” she rushed on to explain. “It symbolizes purity of heart.”

He gave her a funny smile, and she could tell he was wondering about her mental state.

“And what color is your aura?” he asked.

“I’ve never seen my own, but Greta—she’s a midwife with second sight—she told me it’s blue.”

“Blue.”

“Not light blue and not dark blue but somewhere in between. Blue means…” Well, she could hardly tell him that blue meant she was a loving person. “Blue is a good color, too.”

He shook his head. “I’ve never met anybody like you.”

“You don’t believe me, do you? About the colors?” She knew he wouldn’t. He came from a world where everything was based on reality, on things that could be seen and felt and held in one’s hands.

“It doesn’t surprise me,” he said. “When I first saw you, I thought you were a mermaid…someone magic and mystical.”

“I’m real.”

“I know.” He sighed, then smiled. And the smile held a trace of the longing she’d thought she’d seen earlier, and it also seemed to hold a trace of regret.

He looked down the hallway, past her. “You’d better run along,” he told her. “Before somebody sees you with me.”

She suddenly realized she didn’t want to tell him goodbye. She would have liked to get to know him better. She would have liked to make him smile, maybe even make him laugh because she was sure he didn’t laugh very often.

But they were worlds apart. She was a fisherman’s daughter who made pretty kites. He was famous, a beautiful man who made the world sigh.

She managed to pull forth a brave smile, managed to look directly into his storm-colored eyes.

“Goodbye, Sonny Maxwell.” She pressed the jacket into his hands. “Thank you.”

He stood there, regarding her with a calm, world-weariness. She wished she could change things and be the person to plant a bit of hope in his fallow heart.

Since she was the daughter of a fisherman and a child of the sea, she said, “I hope that someday you find a boat that takes you where you want to go.”

He smiled a little at that.

Not waiting for an answer where there was none, she turned and hurried away so he wouldn’t see her tears.

* * *

Sonny watched Emily go. He’d never wanted much in his life, but he suddenly wanted to stop her and ask her to stay a little longer, to talk to him about her magic colors, to lighten his darkness a little more.

But he didn’t reach out for people.

If you don’t reach out, your hand can’t get knocked away.

The day his mother had taken him to the boardinghouse, he’d cried for her. A woman he’d never seen before, a woman with a harsh face and cruel eyes, had come and told him his mother didn’t want him.

Nobody wants you.

Nobody wants you.

Nobody wants you.

Sonny stared down the empty hallway—and felt something he hadn’t felt in a long time. Loss.

* * *

The next day, Sonny sent his luggage on ahead to the boat while he checked out of the hotel. When he stepped outside, a gust of damp sea air lifted his hair and crept down the collar of his jacket. His eyes turned to the sky above the wharfs end, searching for a glimmer of color—for Emily’s kite. For the first time since coming to St. Genevieve he could detect no bright splash against the slate gray of the sky. He strained his eyes, but the kite wasn’t there.

Doreen stopped beside him, her gaze following his, settling on the ferryboat that waited in the harbor. “Back to civilization,” she said, satisfaction in her voice. “Back to cement sidewalks and neon lights. Traffic jams and cable TV.”

Sonny was only half listening, his thoughts on Emily and the absent kite. He turned to Doreen. “Why don’t you go to the dock without me? I’ve got to check on something.”

The satisfaction in Doreen’s face was replaced by irritation. “The boat leaves in an hour. If you miss it, you’ll be stuck here another week.” She shuddered, from the chill or the thought of being stuck on the island, he didn’t know. Maybe both.

“If I don’t make it back in time, I’ll hire a boat to take me to the mainland.”

She grumbled and drew her head lower in her coat, like a turtle drawing into its shell.

Sonny didn’t linger. Hunching his shoulders against the wind, he turned and headed for the narrow cobblestone street that led to the village kite-maker’s shop.

He’d been by it more than a few times. It was a bright spot of color in an otherwise drab alley.

On the way, he passed a few people who looked as if they might be mainlanders getting an early start on the tourist season.

The narrow shop window was full of colorful kites. Fantasies and dreams. Emily’s kites were like none he’d ever seen. He could imagine how they would capture the heart and imagination of a child.

There were unicorns and fairies, a huge butterfly, an unfamiliar winged creature—possibly a product of Emily’s imagination. And there was a dragon, not as big as the one Emily had been flying the day she’d fallen into the ocean, but a dragon all the same, complete with bumpy tail and fiery eyes.

If I had a child, he thought, I’d buy her one of Emily’s kites.

He turned the ornate gold knob and pushed a shoulder against the heavy wooden door. A bell jangled above his head as he stepped inside.

Once again he felt the strange sensation he’d felt upon entering Emily’s house—the sensation of stepping into another world, maybe even another time. But here the feeling was enhanced and made a little mysterious by the heavy scent of fabric dye and damp, ancient wood.

It wasn’t Emily who stepped from the small back room, but Claire.

She looked up at him, not with the hero worship this time, but worry. Her hands were twisting the hem of her shirt. “Emily’s sick, so I’m watching the shop,” she told him.

“Sick?”

“She’s home in bed.”

Claire chewed her bottom lip, as if wondering if she should say more. She stared up at him with her long-lashed green eyes. “Papa doesn’t believe in doctors,” she suddenly blurted out. “Not since Mama died. And anyway, there’s no doctor on St. Genevieve.”

Sonny’s heart thudded in his chest.

Claire’s mouth began to tremble and her huge eyes filled with tears. “I’m worried. This morning when I went in to see why Emily wasn’t up yet she didn’t even know who I was.”

Claire began to cry. “I-I tried to put out her kite like she always does, but the wind kept making it fold shut, and I didn’t want to lose it. Emily has always put out the kite. For years and years. And now I’m afraid if the kite’s not out something bad might happen to Emily!”

Good Lord. Doreen had been right about these people and their superstitions.

Sonny wanted to run to Emily’s house, but he couldn’t leave the distraught Claire alone. He helped her lock up the shop, then she followed him to the harbor, where Doreen was waiting impatiently.

“Here—”

He shoved the folded kite into Doreen’s hands. “Help Claire put this up.”

“What is it?”

“A kite.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Maybe. Probably. Look, I can’t explain, but make them wait. Whatever happens, don’t let the boat leave without me.”

Then, leaving Claire with a bewildered Doreen, he hurried to Emily’s house.

On the way there, he’d told himself that this was none of his business, that he had no claim on Emily Christian. But maybe he did. He’d pulled her from the ocean, hadn’t he? Maybe that gave him some kind of right. He didn’t know. He only knew that he’d spent his life on the outside looking in, and that now, for the first time since early childhood, he felt the need to step in and get involved.

His knock was answered by Tilly. Babbie poked her head out from behind her. It struck him that Tilly didn’t look half as confident as she’d looked the other night. She seemed a little humble and subdued.

Worried. Like Claire.

“Emily’s sick,” she said. “And Daddy’s gone to get her some cough medicine.”

“I know Emily’s sick. I came to see her.”

Tilly seemed relieved to have an adult on whom to relinquish responsibility. “She’s upstairs. Come on.”

Emily’s room was the first on the right at the top of the stairs. The shades were pulled; a lamp near the bed partially illuminated the sheet-draped figure on the bed.

It looked like a scene from a wake.

Fear reached out to him, but he pushed it away. In the glow of the lamp he could see the slight rise and fall of her chest beneath the white cotton gown. He let out a breath in relief.

He stepped into the room, moving to the bedside through warm, fever-laden air. Her cheeks were flushed bright red. A scruffy brown teddy bear, the fur rubbed completely away, was tucked neatly in beside her.

He felt his heart crack a little.

The scene saddened and frustrated him at the same time. It was like something a person might have witnessed a century ago.

He placed a hand against her brow. Her skin was hot and dry. Dehydration.

His touch caused her to stir.

Her eyelids fluttered open. Her beautiful eyes were glazed with fever and he wondered if she even saw him at all.

“Emily—” Babbie whispered, coming up beside him, touching his hand for reassurance. “Your prince came back.”

Emily struggled to focus her attention on the child. “I see that, sweetheart,” she said through dry, barely moving lips. Then her eyes drifted shut again.

“I gave her Bare Bear for company,” Babbie whispered up at him.

“Emily’s really sick, isn’t she?” asked Tilly.

“Yes,” Sonny said. “She needs a doctor.”

“Papa says doctors don’t know what they’re doing.”

“He says they’re ducks,” Babbie added.

“Quacks. He says they’re quacks,” Tilly said.

Sonny didn’t want to scare them, but the ferry was leaving and he had to be sure Emily was on it. “All doctors aren’t quacks,” he said. “Emily is very sick. She needs a doctor now.”

He tugged the sheets and blankets free of the mattress and began bundling them around Emily.

“What are you doing?” Tilly asked.

“Taking her to a doctor.”

Tilly’s grasp of the situation amazed him. She quickly dragged out a battered suitcase and started filling it with Emily’s clothes.

Downstairs, a door slammed. A heavy footfall sounded on the stairs. “I got some cough syrup from the drugstore.” John Christian’s voice, drew closer, along with his footsteps. “Clayton said—” He stopped just inside the room. “Mr. Maxwell… What?” He looked haggard, his eyes red-rimmed. Sonny watched as the man struggled to make sense of Sonny’s presence in his sick daughter’s room.

“Emily needs a doctor, not cough syrup,” Sonny explained. “My guess is that she has pneumonia. People die from pneumonia.”

“Doctors!” John Christian raised a broad arm and gestured to something beyond the walls of the small bedroom. “I’ve got a wife lying in a grave on the hillside all because of doctors!”

“Senseless things happen. That’s no reason to give up on the entire medical profession.”

Sonny could see the indecision on John Christian’s face, the glimmer of tears in the big man’s eyes. And for the first time in his life, Sonny understood a little of the heavy burden of responsibility a parent must feel. The man’s shoulders slumped. “My God,” he said, more to himself than Sonny. “I don’t know. My Emily. Sara’s firstborn…”

Precious minutes ticked away. Sonny prayed that Doreen could convince the ferryboat captain to delay departure.

“I know a doctor in New York,” Sonny said. “He’s a pulmonary specialist. One of the best in the country. He’ll take good care of her.”

John Christian closed his eyes, his face a mask of pain.