The Gilly Salt Sisters (44 page)

“We should show them around,” Claire urged. “We could charge them for tours, and you could teach them about the salt.”
This year there were more tourists than ever, and Claire knew that a large part of it had to do with Whit’s new developments around town. He owned beach cottages and markets, hotels and inns, but still his balance sheet was a long way from even. If he had it his way, Claire suspected, Whit would make summer last all year long.

“
You
teach them,” Jo sniffed. “I have too much else to do.” But it wouldn’t be the same, Claire knew. She didn’t have a feel for the salt the way Jo did. She could scrape it and pile it just fine, but in her hands it might as well have been sand. It was only when Jo’s rake twirled through the brine that the stuff drew life and became the famous Gilly salt. Only Jo could put a pinch on her tongue and know if there was too much silt in it, and only Jo knew the exact moment when the flakes were dry enough to collect. She even used to be able sometimes to predict which batches would flare red and which would smoke blue when they were burned on December’s Eve.

But that summer Claire learned she could do something with the salt that Jo couldn’t. She could transform it. If the salt gained its perfect expression in Jo’s hands, it turned pranks in Claire’s. She added it to cakes, to teas, to jams, and created a whole new sensation halfway between sour and sweet.

If June was a key month for salt on Salt Creek Farm, it was also a month for ghosts. For starters, Whit had been quiet lately—eerily so. Claire was convinced he was lurking about, planning something dreadful, but she could never be sure. Jo was managing to hold off the bank, at least for now, but still, Claire’s neck was always tense, the tiny hairs on her arms always tingling.

And there was the faint presence of her brother, whom she couldn’t remember, like the kind of rain that falls so lightly on your face you’re not sure it’s really there. There were the babies she’d lost. They were more tenacious, nipping at her all day long with their tiny, unformed lips like so many hungry tadpoles. Irritating more than anything, really, except for the times when Claire would wake gasping in the night, the nerves in her belly
tingling, a grief so huge pressing on her that it was as if all the world’s lost children had decided to come to her to roost. The ghost of her mother was more of a constant memory than a phantom, the gravel-pit voice in Claire’s head that urged her to stand up straight, tie back her hair, and tell Whit to go hang himself. And, finally, Ethan haunted her. Claire knew perfectly well that his life was also filled with a ghost, but that, unlike hers, it was singular and holy. Lucky him.

Except for her visit to St. Agnes on Easter with Dee, Claire had avoided Ethan entirely. It made her heart too sore to see him. If they met in town, they nodded to each other, spoke about the weather, and crossed to opposite sides of the street. If she encountered him on the beach on her morning gallop with Icicle, she didn’t slow down, just blew by him in a cloud of hooves and sand. But as much as Claire could ignore him publicly, Ethan was so unwaveringly present in her soul that she sometimes saw his face instead of her own when she looked in the mirror.

Every time she drove past St. Agnes, she fought an urge to pull over the car, fling open the sanctuary doors, and tell Ethan her feelings, but Jo reminded her that the less she did to enrage Whit, the better, and she was right. If Whit had found out the extent of her emotions for Ethan, Claire knew, he might scorch St. Agnes black as a grave and burn Ethan up with it, and while it was one thing for Whit to threaten her, it was quite another to think of him hurting Ethan.

Icicle nickered, and she shushed him, then took his tub of water away to empty and refill, letting him drink the cool liquid before she threw a blanket and saddle over his back and fed him the bit. “Come on,” she whispered, leading him outside. She looked around for signs of Whit, but at this hour, out here on the marsh’s spit of scrubland, she was profoundly alone. She swung a foot into the stirrup and lifted herself into the saddle, finally taking the deep breaths she’d been craving all night.

She threaded her way through the dunes, turned Icicle onto the hard sand on the beach, and gave him free rein, leaning forward as
he gathered speed, comforted by the rocking motion of his canter. What would all the women from the country club say about her if they could see her now? she wondered, her hair uncombed, holes in her shirt, stripped of makeup. Would they turn their cheeks and ignore her or, worse, taunt her again about wearing rags?

She slowed Icicle to a trot and exhaled. She’d arrived almost at the end of the beach, near Drake’s Rocks, and she had to admit to herself that the tide wasn’t the only thing pulling at her soul. Ahead of her sat St. Agnes and Ethan. She stared down at the hard sand by the water, and it was like a blank canvas for everything that should have been. She watched as a wave came up and wiped the sand clean, but life wasn’t so tidy for Claire. She couldn’t get rid of the thoughts she was having.

Before she could lose her nerve, she picked her way up through the dunes and tied Icicle to the railing outside the church, and then she pushed open the door to the sanctuary, entering quietly, telling herself she wasn’t there to see Ethan specifically, but only to say a Hail Mary, light a candle, and leave. No harm done. Maybe he wouldn’t even be there.

But he was—kneeling in front of the altar, his hands swept out to his sides, his head not bowed as Claire would have expected, but tossed back, his neck exposed as if he were making an offering of himself. Claire hung in the doorway, transfixed. She’d never seen a man look so vulnerable before, and it struck her as nearly obscene. Or it would have if Ethan hadn’t been so lovely. She almost turned away but didn’t. Instead she cleared her throat, and he startled and spun around.

“Claire.” His voice was still thick with prayer, honey clinging to the comb. It told her everything she needed to know. A man with a clear conscience didn’t stumble over his words the way Ethan did.
Once a sinner, always a sinner
, she thought as she walked to him, already untwisting her hair along with the last scrap of restraint she still had shriveled up inside her.

L
ater she would blame Our Lady, who was faceless and therefore shameless, a very poor chaperone for mortals made blind by love, but the truth was that what had happened between Ethan and Claire was all too human, and it was all Claire’s own fault.

She certainly hadn’t entered St. Agnes with the intention of seducing Ethan. At least that’s what she told herself. But as she’d stood in front of him, she could no longer deny the pull she still felt to him, and before she knew it, she’d stepped so close that she could feel the warmth of his skin.

“Claire,” Ethan had said again, this time as a low warning. He’d tried to back away from her, but his eyes held the same questions as hers, and before he could object, Claire reached out and embraced him.

“You feel it, too. I know you do,” she’d said. “You must.” Her heart thudded as she felt him stiffen, and then a buzz of joy lit up her nerves as he wrapped his arms around her in return.
Is this how it would have been every day?
she wondered, remembering the rough thrills she’d experienced with Whit when they’d made love.
Would life have been this gentle?
She stifled a sob. Maybe then she would have been able to carry the child she’d so desperately craved.

At first it was enough simply to be circled again by Ethan, but Claire had never been a woman satisfied with what the Good Lord gave her, and so she put her lips to the side of his neck. He flinched with surprise, but soon he slipped into the past as well and lost the will to move away, and so she traced her mouth along his jaw until her lips met his, and he began kissing her back, his hands dropping from her waist to her hips, then going places no priest’s hands should travel.

“Not here,” he whispered, pulling her through the sanctuary and into the dark sacristy. Together they were eighteen again, entangled under the pear tree, and Claire still smelled of salt and Ethan of the sea.

At the outset his mouth was light on hers, but soon his kisses grew deeper. She lifted the edge of his shirt and slid her palms flat against his stomach, remembering the first time she’d done that
and how hot his skin had felt. In response he leaned her against a shelf and pressed her hips tight to his, tugging up her shirt.

“Not here either,” he said eventually. “No, Claire.” Before he could really change his mind, she led him outside, down into the dunes on Drake’s Beach, where they were hidden among the reeds, returned to the primacy of the earth, free at last from the judging eyes of God.

Ethan laid her down in the sand and leaned over her, hesitant, his eyes flickering, and Claire could tell he was experiencing a moment of doubt, the way he might an instant of physical pain, but she reached between his thighs and a passionate glaze soon replaced the questioning expression in his eyes. She smiled, believing she had won, but in this matter she was too hasty. She got what she’d long desired, but it wasn’t the same as what she wanted.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” she murmured against Ethan’s bare chest after their lovemaking, but he said nothing. Claire waited a moment and then had to ask. “Is this…? I mean, have you ever…?”

“No.” His voice was curt.

She curled her body tighter. It was the answer she was expecting, but receiving it felt worse than she’d anticipated. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, immediately wishing she hadn’t apologized—because, really, she wasn’t sorry. God might have a claim on Ethan, she reasoned, but hadn’t she staked out his heart long ago? She was the lost tribes, the call of idols in the wilderness, the scrap of a prayer flag flapping in the ruins of a temple. Didn’t Ethan know that?

He rolled onto his back and stared straight up at the sky. “Claire, what have we done?”

She scowled. “You seemed to want this as much as me.”

He put his hands over his face. “I didn’t seek this.”

“Does that make a difference?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never committed a sin of this magnitude before.” He paused. “My superiors aren’t very pleased with me.”

Claire frowned, confused. “But I thought you said you’d never—”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Not because of this. How could they know about this latest of my failings? No, it’s because I’ve been plagued with other doubts that have nothing to do with you. But, Claire, you’re a married woman. You belong with Whit.”

At the mention of Whit’s name, Claire felt her lips freeze, stung into a state of perfect numbness.

“He came to see me yesterday,” Ethan said out of the blue, and Claire sat up, alarmed.

“What?”

“Claire, he still calls you his wife.”

She ground her teeth, silent.

“He warned me to stay away from you and your sister. I don’t know what I should do,” Ethan finally said.

Claire blinked back tears. The answer was obvious to her. She didn’t think she should even have to say it. “You could leave the priesthood.” She stroked his chest. “We could go somewhere neither of us knows, and nothing ahead of us but the future. A rocky island in the shade. Remember? We could be just like we are now.” She held her breath.

Ethan’s voice, when he spoke, was low. He refused to look at her. “God’s eyes are everywhere, Claire, not just on sanctified ground. And besides, I made my choice, never mind my doubts. I’m a man who honors my decisions. You know that.”

She swallowed a sob. “What was this, then? A little nibble of forbidden fruit? A jaunt down memory lane?”

Ethan covered his face again. “I don’t know. Do you think I was planning this? Do you understand the enormity of this transgression?”

She scrambled for her clothes, shaking sand out of them as best she could. “I understand perfectly,
Father
.” She paused, her knees quivering. “I’ve sacrificed, too, you know. You have no idea. After Jo was burned, after you left.” She wiped a tear from her cheek.
“Why did you really come back here, Ethan? Was it just because of Father Flynn, or did it have something to do with me?”

Ethan gathered his own clothes. When he spoke, he wouldn’t look at her. “I didn’t want to come back, Claire. I tried everything to get them to send me anywhere else.”

She thought about this. “Maybe this is supposed to be our second chance. Maybe Father Flynn knew that. Maybe that’s why he sent for you.”

Ethan let out a huge sigh. “I don’t know, Claire. I’m going to have to pray and see what my heart tells me to do. I need time to sort this out. I wish I could tell you what you want to hear, but I can’t.”

“Why can’t we just stay like this?” She gestured at the sand around them, but he didn’t have a response.

“Claire,” he said eventually. His voice was as familiar to her as the thudding of her own heartbeat.

“Yes?”

He reached out and caught her wrist. “Before you go, I need to tell you that Whit said something else I didn’t like when he was out here yesterday.”

She pursed her lips and waited.

Ethan paused, as if wondering how to continue, then sighed. “He said if you wanted to go back to a life of salt, that was fine with him. You could even take Dee with you. But then he reminded me what happens when salt gets into old wounds.”