The Gilly Salt Sisters (22 page)

“How would you know?” She stretched her back along the tree, wishing Whit would leave, but he just grinned and stepped even closer.

“Because I know all about you Gilly girls. Remember when”—he slid his thumb lower on her neck, down to the spot where her pulse beat—“you caught that fish and made me throw it back, and then you hooked your hand? I bet you’re not so tender-handed now.”

“I am, actually,” Claire said, wrenching her neck away from his fingers, though he was more right than she wanted to let on. The fish had been a beautiful creature, Claire recalled, its belly a milky white, its scales the mottled greens and blues of a mermaid. Its gills had puffed in the palms of her hands, and its eye had been a fixed dial of panic as it opened and closed its mouth, loathing its fate but unable to do anything about it either, a dilemma Claire understood perfectly well. Whit had helped her to free the fish, and when he did, the hook had snagged in the center of her palm. Jo was the one who’d had to come over and push the barb all the way through Claire’s skin.

It had stung something awful, but Jo hadn’t cared. She’d called Claire a ninny for letting the fish go. She often called Claire names when she did something silly, but Claire knew that her sister was wrong about her, one hundred percent. She wasn’t a ninny, and she wasn’t sensitive. She just knew what to release and what to bother fighting for in life, and she was certain it didn’t involve salt. She lifted her chin. “Jo’s the one who hasn’t changed, if you want to know.”

Whit put his hands back into his pockets. When he answered, his voice could have chilled winter. “She knows why I’ve kept my distance from her.” This was news to Claire. She had always thought it was the other way around between them. But before she could follow that thread of thought, she saw Ethan stepping through the evening shadows, and her heart set up a clattering so hard she was surprised that Whit couldn’t hear it, too.

“I have to go,” she said, tearing herself away from the tree trunk and rushing out from under its leafy canopy. She could still feel Whit there, though, lurking under the restless red leaves, his gaze sticking the way a ball of sap would in her hair, snarling so
hard the only way to get it out would be with a pair of scissors and a good clean cut. No longer caring if Whit was watching, she ran to Ethan and threw her arms around his broad shoulders, pressing her face close to his chest and breathing him in. He still smelled like the sea, of places Claire would never go and things she would never witness. She pressed her nose against the side of his neck and blew against his skin, hoping to infuse him with homier smells of grass and mud and ripening pears.

“I missed you so much,” she said as he kissed her and they made their way back under the tree, where she was relieved to see that Whit was gone. She spread her hands flat against the bare skin of Ethan’s back, warm and hard from long days in the sun. She inched her fingers into the waistband of his jeans and felt him hesitate for a split second before he drew her closer.

Kissing Ethan always felt like a marvelous experiment that Claire was conducting. She unbuttoned his shirt while he slid her T-shirt higher, his other hand busy under her skirt. “Wait,” she breathed, not quite believing that she was the one breaking things off. “We should stop.” But he surprised her. Without a word he laid her down in the hollow amid the shrubbery, and when she struggled to sit up, he pulled her down against him.

“Are you sure?” she said. It wasn’t the way she had planned this moment—under the pear tree and in the open like this—but it was thrilling, too.

Ethan grazed his lips across her breasts. “I need you, Claire. I know that now.”

She ran her fingers through his thick blond hair and wondered what had happened to him out in the Atlantic, but the wind picked up and he moved over her, and then she stopped thinking at all. She leaned back onto the damp grass and the sandy earth, her hand grazing the trunk of the tree, its bark nicked and carved in a riot of communal desire, and, being young and in love, she assumed she had history trumped.

“I
’m getting married,” she whispered to herself when she woke up the next morning. She threw the covers back and walked over to her dresser mirror, wondering if she looked different to anyone else but herself. She put her hands to her cheeks, feeling how hot they were, and tried to quit smiling.

Ethan hadn’t exactly proposed the night before, but what else could their lovemaking have meant? He always said he didn’t want to go all the way until they were engaged. Actually, when Claire thought about it, he hadn’t said much of anything, but that didn’t bother her. Ethan rarely talked as much as she did. Afterward he had walked her all the way back to the edge of the marsh, his fingers squeezing hers until they passed St. Agnes. He suddenly dropped her hand, but she’d taken it back in her own. She could do that now, she reasoned.

“I won’t tell Father Flynn if you don’t,” she’d whispered, but he didn’t laugh. He never did when it came to anything religious. Claire couldn’t even tell priest jokes in front of him. She wondered if Ethan’s devotions would loosen in married life or if hers would tighten to match his. They’d rounded the corner, and the marsh had appeared before them, some of the basins shimmering, some just empty holes. In the moonlight the place looked worse than haunted. It just appeared worn out, too plain even for ghosts. Claire had turned to kiss Ethan good night but found he was already beating her to it.

“Claire, let’s talk tomorrow,” he’d murmured, his thumb tracing the outline of her jaw.

She’d tried to hide her smile. She wanted a long wedding dress, she knew, but now she supposed it would have to be ivory. “Okay,” she’d said, too happy to add anything else. He’d walked away without kissing her one last time like she wanted, but she forgave him. After all, they were going to have a lifetime of embraces ahead of them.

She was waiting for him early in the dunes the next afternoon. She bit her lips, trying to force some color into them so
they would look rosy when Ethan bent to kiss her. She hoped she would like her ring.

But something was wrong. Ethan only brushed his lips against her cheek, and he didn’t linger as long as usual. He didn’t lean over and thread his fingers along the base of her skull or pull her in tight to him. In fact, he kissed her more like a brother might a sister. Claire settled down next to him in the sand, confused.

“Before I say anything, you should know that last night was amazing,” he began. “It was everything I thought it would be. More, even. If I was looking for a sign, Claire, I swear, I would have said that last night was it.”

She blushed and stared down at her tennis shoes. In the daylight she couldn’t believe some of the places she’d let him put his mouth and where she’d put hers. She reached up now and brushed his hair, wondering when they could be together again. “I love you,” she said.

He pulled her hand away. “Let me finish. I have something very difficult to tell you.”

Her heart quit pounding. It quit doing anything at all. It was a frightening sensation, really, like dying on the spot without going anywhere. Above her she watched clouds rearrange themselves.

Ethan bent forward and leaned his head against his knees. “You know how important church has always been to me, but what you don’t know is that for months now I’ve been debating joining the priesthood. The only thing stopping me was the thought of having to give you up. I even applied to a seminary, but I never heard from them, and then this whole season when I was at sea, all I could think about was you, and I figured it was a sign. Last night I thought I knew exactly what I was going to do: propose today. But after I dropped you off here, I stopped into St. Agnes to see Father Flynn, and he gave me this.”

He pulled out a folded letter embossed with seals and a crest. Claire took it from him and then realized she was trying to read it upside down. Ethan turned it around for her. It was an acceptance
letter from a seminary. Ethan had applied in February, right around Valentine’s Day.

“I don’t understand,” she mumbled through numb lips, ignoring the print in front of her.

Ethan sighed. “Claire, being with you was as wonderful as I always thought it would be. It was even close to prayer, but when Father Flynn gave me this letter, I realized that it
wasn’t
prayer, and I really think I’m called to that path.”

She buried one hand in the sand. “You think or you know?”

“I know. Believe me, Claire, this is just as hard for me as it is for you.”

She choked back a sob. “I doubt it.”

He hung his head. “If I go, I have to leave next week.” His finger underlined a phrase in the letter. “They’re willing to give me a full scholarship. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime.”

There was nothing to lean on in the dunes. No boulder propped in the sand, no split logs. Just sand and spiky grass. Claire bent over her own legs. “Where?”

Ethan took a breath. “California.” It was so far that it sounded final. His voice softened. “Be honest. You wouldn’t be happy if I stayed and went out on the boats every year with my uncle and my dad. You’re about as suited to a life of fish, Claire, as you are to one of salt.”

She squeezed her hands into fists, trying to get her blood to circulate, but it didn’t help. Her fingers were freezing.
All this time
, she thought,
I was never really first with him
. That was the thing that hurt the most. She’d spent her whole life trailing in someone else’s muddy footsteps, she realized: her mother’s, her dead brother’s, Jo’s. Not to mention the entire scraggly line of Gilly women before her. Even the poems that Ethan loved so much were just someone else’s words. She stood up and dusted off the seat of her overalls.

“I have to go.” She wished she could have said it the way she felt it. She wished she could have poisoned the phrase. But it came out as a lament. She wanted to hate Ethan, but she couldn’t, and that made her want to hate him more.

He folded up the letter, shoved it back into his pocket, and then stood up, too. “I could come back later.”

“For what?”

Ethan’s eyes swam. “Come on, Claire. We should talk about this more. Just because I’m choosing this path doesn’t mean we shouldn’t stay friends.”

She ground her teeth. “That’s exactly what it means, Ethan Stone.” Her blood was flowing high again—a reassuring tide that was spilling up and out of her. “You’ve no idea what you’ve just done.” Tears were already leaking down her cheeks. Before more could fall, she turned and ran.

By the time she reached the salt barn, every element on earth was clashing inside her—stone and wood, water and ash. And the only one of them she wanted to entertain was fire. She kicked the barn doors open, making dust devils, and entered the dark of the place, rummaging in the broken barrow for a packet of cigarettes she’d hidden.

Jo’s voice materialized out of the gloom. “Goddamn it, Claire. Where have you been? The ponds need scraping.”

The first match didn’t take. Her hands were shaking too badly. Same for the second one, but the third one was the charm. Perhaps too much so. The air in front of Claire flared with sulfur and nicotine, and then there was another flash, a bigger one down where she’d thrown the charred match. The dust in the barn began dancing.

“What is that?” she tried to say, wondering if her grief was making her see things, and then realized it was smoke. She turned and saw a rush of flames clawing across the floor, blocking the door, trapping her in the back corner of the barn. She tried to breathe, but her lungs felt like they were on fire, too. Suddenly she focused. She still had the lit cigarette in her hand. Stupidly, she threw it down, and it started a new line of tiny flames.

She tried to call to Jo, but her lungs were closing up and she couldn’t get the sound out. Then she thought she heard Jo yelling something. What was it? Her vision started blurring. It probably
included the words “I told you so,” Claire thought. It would be just like Jo, who spent her days patrolling the squared-off hollows of Salt Creek Farm, to want to maintain boundaries at a time like this. Claire’s knees started to buckle. Clearly, Jo’s rules were a line Claire was never going to toe, just as she was never going to do a lot of things—leave this stupid marsh, marry Ethan, make her way out of this burning barn.

“Claire!” She heard her name again just as the first flames roared back toward her. Her legs gave out entirely, but for the first time in her life she found that she wasn’t stuck in Jo’s footsteps. Instead she was cradled in her sister’s arms, and then she was pitched through the air, free.

“Jo…” she tried to choke out, but there was a huge crash, a fountain of spitting embers, and she ran out of oxygen. In the distance she heard a siren, and then she turned her head as the barn came down, throwing her hands up over her eyes, unwilling to watch any more of what her broken heart had wrought.