Safe & Sound (11 page)

Mrs. Kendrich was an older lady in her late fifties or early sixties. She had lived on the island her whole life. She warmly greeted us, giving us a small tour of the house and letting us know that dinner would be promptly at three o’clock. The house was already filled with the wonderful smell of baked goods. I had no doubt that dinner was going to be delicious. We had a couple hours to settle in and freshen up after our morning travel.

“That was the best meal I have eaten in a long time,” Lanie said. The rest of us nodded in agreement. We had just finished eating dinner and now sat on the back porch overlooking the ocean. Stella was sipping a glass of red wine. Lanie was finishing her glass of white wine and Harry was nursing a beer. I held fast to my bottle of water as I tucked the blanket Mrs. Kendrich had given me over my lap. I looked out at the view. It was the most calming thing I had seen in weeks. The four of us just sat there in silence as the sun dipped down over the horizon. We all decided to call it an early night and headed to bed. Breakfast was going to be served at nine and then we had a couple hours before we needed to meet up with Jamie Prescott, captain of the
Lady Grace
, who would take us on our voyage.

The next morning, after breakfast, I dressed in a warm pair of knee-high socks, jeans and a chunky wool sweater. After lacing up my hiking boots and pulling on a knit cap, I headed off for a walk down the beach, solo. Harry, Stella and Lanie all offered to accompany me, but I needed some time on my own. I mindlessly walked down the beach until I came upon a wooden pier. The pier was mostly deserted with the exception of a few old men fishing. I wandered down to the edge of the pier where the cold wind seemed to cut through my clothes. I leaned over the edge and looked out into the ocean. My only thoughts were of Jay and if I was doing right by him. As I stared in the distance, I could see the sun start to emerge from behind the clouds; the rays warmed my cheeks and the wind seemed to die down. In that moment, I could feel Jay’s presence and a sense of peace I hadn’t felt in a long time fell over me. Another cloud moved in and the warmth of the sun disappeared from my cheeks, but the peace I felt continued. I knew that this was the right thing.

We met Captain Prescott and the crew of the
Lady Grace
mid-afternoon. They helped us dress in all-weather gear and explained to us that it was unusual to be heading out so late in the day but that they understood my request and were more than happy to oblige. We all boarded the 55-foot boat and headed out to sea. It wasn’t very long before Stella turned a pale shade of green and had to go below deck to lie down. The rest of us tried our hand at fishing when we reached our destination. The chilling wind off the ocean cut around us, but none of us seemed to mind too much. Captain Prescott took his time in explaining each aspect of fishing to Lanie and me. Harry, having fished most of his life, needed little instruction. Lanie gave up after an hour and headed below deck to check on Stella.

At that moment my rod gave a huge jerk. The captain shouted for me to hang on. Harry stood behind me, making sure I didn’t go overboard with my fishing rod and line. The crew helped me reel in a large bluefish. It weighed nine pounds. I instructed them to release it back into the ocean but prided myself on my first catch. The crew was still joking with me about my reaction when the captain interrupted to tell us the sun was about to set. I nodded solemnly and went below deck to get Lanie, Stella and Jay’s ashes.

Harry, Lanie, Stella and I stood at the back of charter by ourselves. The crew had respectfully declined our invitation to join us and seemed to have disappeared. Stella popped open a bottle of champagne and poured three full plastic cups. Harry declined and opened a beer. I leaned out a little farther over the edge and pulled the top off the canister. Harry stood to the left of me and lifted his beer up.

“To Jay,” he said.

Lanie and Stella stood on the other side of me and raised their plastic cups. “To Jay,” they said in unison.

“Peace my love,” I whispered and tilted the canister into the wind, which whisked around and carried the ashes out over the water.

The three of us stood there watching the ashes dance away in the wind and fall into the water. Suddenly, the boat pitched left and we all went tumbling. Harry caught me right before I fell in.

“I got you,” he whispered in my ear as he pulled me back to me feet.

I had a funny feeling in my stomach but brushed it off. We all toasted Jay’s honor one more time as the sun sank below the horizon. The captain emerged and asked me directly if it was alright to return to shore. I nodded and we all headed below deck to warm up while we coasted back to shore.

Thanking Captain Prescott and his crew for their assistance in my quest was a humbling experience. As we disembarked the
Lady Grace
, the crew all stood on deck and saluted me. Each of us seemed to be lost in our own thoughts as we headed back to the bed and breakfast. Stella excused herself almost immediately when we got back, saying she had some work to catch up on. Lanie sat with Harry and me for a while longer, drinking and sharing stories, but she soon excused herself as well, leaving Harry and me alone. Harry continued to work on his twelve-pack of beer as we sat and shared stories of Jay. I knew most of them by heart, but I didn’t mind sharing them again. It was comforting. Sometime after midnight, I stretched and said I was ready for bed. We had an early morning back to Greensboro and I still needed to pack. Harry indicated he would be up for a little bit. I nodded and left him alone with his thoughts.

It was a little after three in the morning when I heard the door to our room open and close. I sat up slightly and turned the light on, looking at Harry. He looked disheveled as he stumbled around the room.

“Oh, Harry,” I said, getting out of bed to help him.

“It’s just you and me left,” he said as I tried to get him to sit down so I could take off his shoes.

“Yes, Harry. It’s just you and me,” I said, playing along.

“Do you mean it?” he asked, looking at me.

“What do you mean?” I asked, confused by his statement.

“It’s you and me. We can take care of each other. I know we can.” He slurred his words.

“What are you talking about, Harry?” I asked, abandoning the idea of taking off his shoes. I now stood and looked at him.

“Jill, I love you and I want to take care of you now.” He slurred his words again.

He stood and leaned over to grab my face and kiss me. At first the entire scene played out in front of me as if I were a spectator. It was only after Harry tried to force his tongue in my mouth that I snapped to the present.

“Harry, Jay was my husband,” I said, pushing him back.

He swayed a bit and fell back onto the bed. He fumbled, trying to right himself again. “But Jay’s gone. The SOB left us both didn’t he?” He continued to slur his words.

“You were Jay’s best friend. Now what? You just want to slide into his life where he left off? Do you think he left a place holder?” I asked, appalled at where this conversation had led.

“Maybe it’s in his will? ‘Should I go early, I, Jay Peter Greenfield, leave my wife, Jill Katherine Greenfield, to my best friend, Henry William Conner.’ Do you think that’s how this works?” I raised my voice as anger set in.

“Jill, calm down. It’s not like that. It’s just that I loved you too. Jay got you that night at the party and before I knew it, I loved you too. The bastard knew it too and didn’t care.” He was again on his feet, moving toward me. “Jill, baby …”

“Baby? … I’m not your baby.”

Harry ignored my protest and continued. “I know we would be happy together. These last few weeks have been so easy. We just fell into a good routine. Aren’t you happy?” he asked after a pause.

“Happy? These last week’s haven’t been happy. They have been the hardest things I have ever lived through. What we had going on, our living arrangement, wasn’t real. It was staged. Real love takes work. It takes effort. Jay understood that,” I spat back at him as I dodged his attempt to grab me.

“You are over-reacting. This isn’t how I meant to tell you. Jill, I know everything about you. Jay told me. Don’t you want someone who knows you, cares for you? I can pick up where Jay left off. It will be easier on both of us, being together.”

He again reached for me and I tripped over my bag and landed on the bed. Harry was on me before I could react. He leaned down to whisper in my ear. I could smell the beer on his breath and I wiggled to get myself free.

“Baby, this is right.”

He leaned over to kiss me again. I tried to get myself loose but was unable. Harry shifted his position, giving me the opportunity to push my knee directly into his groin. He howled in pain and rolled off me.

“You bitch,” he yelled.

“You’re clearly drunk and delusional. I’m going to stay with Stella and Lanie. Don’t you ever, EVER, touch me like that again.” I reached down for my bag and stormed out of the room. “We leave at 10,” I called over my shoulder as the door slammed.

I made my way over to Stella and Lanie’s door and knocked rapidly on it until Stella stumbled to open it.

“What the hell?”

“I’ll tell you later, but can I crash here?”

“Sure.” She moved to the side to let me in. I crawled in bed with her and Lanie and drifted off to sleep.

CHAPTER 14

T
he drive home the next morning was painfully silent. Lanie and Stella had tried all morning to get me to tell them what had happened, but I simply shook my head and said, “Later.”

Harry emerged from his room at 10 and climbed into the back of the Jeep, still drunk from the night before. I now sat behind the wheel with Stella on the passenger side and Lanie in the back with Harry, who had passed out, again.

“Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?” Lanie whispered, as Harry slept next to her.

“I do, but can it wait until we get home?” I said, trying to keep my eye on the road.

“Fine,” Stella said, clearly annoyed she would have to wait.

“What are you going to do about work?” Lanie asked after a couple minutes.

“I don’t want to talk about that either.”

“Nice try. You have to talk about something,” Stella said.

“Fine.” It was my turn to pout. “I don’t think I want to go back. The more I think about it, the more I know my heart is not in it. I loved everything about teaching, but what I loved the most was it was part of the life I shared with Jay. He was this high-profile, successful lawyer and I was this kindergarten teacher. Our professions were complete opposites, but we balanced each other out. Now I just don’t feel the same way about it. I had been thinking about it for several weeks now, mostly because Principal Bentley had started calling to inquire about my return.”

“When are you going to let the principal know?” Lanie asked.

“In the next couple days.”

“What are you going to do next?” Stella asked.

“I don’t know. For the first time in my life I don’t have a plan and it scares me. I know I can’t sit at home because I’ll go broke very quickly, but I don’t know what I can do,” I said.

“You could write,” Lanie suggested.

“What?”

“Everyone knows you love writing in that journal of yours. Maybe there is something worthwhile in there. You know, share your feelings with the world, kinda thing,” Stella said in the only way that Stella could. I couldn’t help but think her words echoed what Harry had said weeks earlier.

“Stella!” Lanie swatted at Stella from the backseat.

“What? She won’t let us ever read anything so we don’t know if it’s any good,” Stella said defensively.

“She has a point,” I said, looking at Lanie through the rearview mirror. “No one has read anything, so we don’t know if it’s any good. It’s more a hobby anyway.”

“You could be a lawyer,” Stella commented with a smirk.

“Or a psychologist,” Lanie added.

“Maybe a stripper?” Stella teased.

“What?” I exclaimed.

“What? I heard they make really good money.” Stella cracked up.

“Okay. How about no to all those suggestions. New topic,” I suggested. We moved on, chatting idly about nothing of consequence for the rest of the drive home.

When I pulled into my driveway, I told Stella and Lanie they could go inside and I would wake Harry. They both looked at me questioningly and trudged inside. I walked around to the side of the car and flung open the door that Harry had been leaning on. He would have fallen out had it not been for his seatbelt.

“What the fuck?” he said as he dangled precariously, trying to right himself.

“We’re home,” I said in the sweetest voice I could muster. I moved to the trunk and pulled out his bag, throwing it down next to the Jeep while he crawled out of the car.

“Listen, Jill,” he started to say.

“No. You don’t get to ‘listen Jill’ me. You were Jay’s best friend, but you don’t get to take over where he left off. He was always there for you no matter how many times you screwed up and this is how you repay his legacy and his memory. No. I don’t think so.”

“You got a bit of a temper, don’t you?” he mumbled.

“Guess you didn’t know that about me. Well, here’s another fact you may not know: you’re not Jay. You’re not even a tenth of the man that he was.” I paused for a minute. “I don’t know what the hell was going through your head last night. But I do know that I want you to go into my house and get your stuff and leave. I don’t want to see you again,” I said and started down the driveway away from the house.

“Where the hell are you going?” he shouted after me.

“I’m going for coffee and you better be gone by the time I get back.”

“Or what? You are clearly some moody emotional widow who didn’t know which way was up last week and now you think you have it all together?”

I caught sight of the curtains moving in the front window. Lanie and Stella were watching.

“I was grieving my dead husband. Remember him? Or did you forget about him when you started making a play for his wife. Think with your freaking head,” I said, pointing to my head as I turned again to walk down the driveway.