Chapter 15
Chapter 15
The month of October brought cooler temperatures and a shift in hues from lush green to golden brown as plant life fell into dormancy for the long winter ahead. The Eaton’s Christmas catalog arrived, and the following month, extensive orders were placed for the Christmas Boat in December.
As the holidays approached—and Emma’s condition as a newlywed continued to deliver all sorts of new pleasures, day and night—she found it surprisingly easy to forget about her old dream of a university education. With each day that passed, her interest in psychology retreated one step further toward the back of her mind while marital bliss and the anticipation of motherhood advanced to the front.
And of course, Emma was pleased that her father was delighted to see her settled at last. Thanks to Logan, her departure from the island had been postponed, perhaps indefinitely, and for that reason, in her father’s eyes, his new son-in-law could do no wrong.
During that first Christmas of 1947, Emma adored being a wife, had never been happier, and saw no reason why anything should ever change.
It was not until early January that Emma began to show. It was only a small bulge at first, but by that time, Logan knew every curve and contour of her body. One night, he kissed her belly and looked up at her lovingly. “I want to raise our child here on Sable. There’s nowhere better than this, don’t you think? It’s like the world’s best-kept secret.”
Emma laughed and ran her fingers through his wavy golden hair. “You’re a special man to feel that way. Most men can’t bear to be so far from civilization. Did I tell you about the two men from the Belvedere who stole a lifeboat and rowed into a storm to escape?”
“You did.” He crawled over her on all fours, kissed her on the mouth, and then toppled onto the mattress beside her like a felled tree. “Clearly, they were mad if they were willing to leave the famous Sable Beauty behind.”
Emma laughed and turned her head on the pillow to look at him. “Where did you hear about that?”
“In the staff house, my very first day. When the others saw you drop me off on the beach, they couldn’t wait to tell me your nickname.”
“What else did they say?” she asked uneasily.
“Nothing you need to worry about. It was all good, I swear.”
They lay beside each other, flat on their backs, gazing up at the ceiling.
Emma shook her head. “I don’t know whoever came up with that. As far as I know, no one has ever admitted to it.”
“Good thing,” Logan replied, “or I’d have to have a word with him, because you’re mine now. I don’t want anyone else coveting you.”
Emma rolled to face him in the dim moonlight that filtered through the window. “I like that you’re jealous.”
Logan faced her as well and stroked a lock of her hair away from her forehead. “I was serious about raising our child here. How would you feel about that? Would you be willing to stay? We could continue our work with the horses and do other types of research here.”
“Like what?”
He shrugged. “Anything. The seals, the sparrows, the stuff that washes up on the beach. Or how the grass and plants keep this giant sand dune from washing away.”
“You have the mind of an academic,” she told him, feeling intrigued and fortunate, but also saddened that he might not reach his full potential on Sable. He’d once dreamed of being a college professor.
“I suppose,” he replied and rolled onto his back. For a long while, he lay there thinking, and she wondered if he had any regrets.
“I never imagined I’d end up in a place like this,” he said, “so remote and secluded. I want to make the best of it.” He glanced at her. “I mean the most of it. So few people have been here, and it’s such a unique place. It needs to be documented.”
Yes. She felt the same.
As for regrets ... that night, she had none.
He rolled to face her again and kissed her softly on the mouth. Her body tingled all over.
“I think you were right that day when we got engaged. It was fate that you came here when you did.”
Suddenly, Emma thought of Captain Harris and wondered if she would still be pining away for him if Logan hadn’t landed on the beach the previous spring. Not that there weren’t still moments when the captain entered her thoughts, but the image of him floated away whenever Logan walked into the room. Every time he kissed her, she thanked the heavens that he’d rescued her from that lonely and hopeless abyss she’d fallen into. Along with her father’s accident, it would always remain a low point in her life, and sometimes she wished she could erase it fully from her memory.
In February, when Emma’s condition became obvious to everyone on the island and she began to let out the seams on a few outfits, her father decided that the time had come for a delicate conversation.
“I’ve been waiting for the right time to talk to you about something,” he said one morning at the breakfast table when Logan was out on patrol.
“All right . . . ,” she replied hesitantly.
Her father rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m not sure how to begin, exactly. I’ve never talked to you about this before.” His obvious struggle to find the right words persisted until he finally sat back and folded his arms. “We need to discuss what happened to your mother when you were born.”
Emma’s stomach dropped, and the air in the room became thick, almost difficult to breathe. She’d always wondered about the events of the day her mother died. How long had the labor lasted? Did she pass quickly, or was it a slow, painful death, hours later? Or days? And was it Emma’s fault? Was it something she’d done in the womb that had caused trouble? Would her mother have survived with a different child—a boy who was more fearless and ready to be birthed faster?
Now that Emma was expecting a child of her own, she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear any of that. There was a temptation to cover her ears.
Her father met her gaze, and she felt exposed and defenseless, as if she were staring down the long barrel of a gun. Outside it was snowing—not the pretty, fat snowflakes that fall gracefully on a windless day and make the world feel like a snow globe. These were the small icy pellets that stung your face in a bitter gale. They sounded gritty against the window. She thought of Logan out there, riding on the beach, and braced herself for a different kind of sting.
“I might as well dispense with modesty,” her father finally said, “and be frank about it. What I’m about to tell you won’t be pleasant to hear, but I need you to be informed so that you can make the right decisions for yourself.”
Emma wrapped her hands around her coffee cup. “I’m listening.”
“Everything was fine during your mother’s pregnancy,” he explained. “She was young and healthy, and we were confident in the woman who lived at Station Number Two, who had delivered babies before. Her name was Jane, and she came to the house when your mother went into labor. But you were in the wrong position, and the labor seemed to go on forever. She was in the bedroom with your mother for ten hours.”
“I was breech?” Emma asked, having witnessed enough horses birthing foals on the island to know such things. More importantly, it didn’t help her feel any less guilty about her mother’s death.
Her father went pale, and he spoke shakily in a quiet voice, as if talking about it might send him back physically to the horror of that day. “I wasn’t in the room, but I was told that your leg came out first, and Jane had to work hard to deliver you. She did, thank goodness, but it was a long and complicated process, and afterward, your mother ...” He paused and swallowed over the rising of his grief. “I was told that her womb didn’t contract like it should have. When I was finally allowed into the room, there was so much blood ...” He stopped and looked away.
“Take your time,” Emma gently said.
He nodded but charged ahead, speaking fast, to be done with it. “We only had a moment or two together, and she knew she was dying. She told me to take good care of you and that she loved me ...” His voice broke, and he squeezed his eyes shut.
“Go on, please,” Emma said, desperate to hear the rest of it.
He met her gaze. “What I’m trying to tell you is that childbirth doesn’t always go smoothly. Sometimes there are complications, and I’d like you to consider going to Halifax to give birth in the hospital, where there are doctors who can perform a cesarean delivery—or do whatever else needs to be done if something goes wrong.” He grabbed hold of her hand across the table. “I don’t want to lose you.”
Snow had accumulated on the windowsill, and Emma stared at it pensively. She found herself pondering all the forces necessary to place it there—the drop in temperature, the cloud vapor in the sky turning to ice crystals, and gravity pulling those snowflakes to the surface of the earth. Nature was a mysterious power that she didn’t fully understand, and over which she had no control. Living on Sable Island had taught her that at a very young age.
She sat back, laid both hands on her belly, and rubbed in a wide circle. “It was always such a mystery to me,” she said, “how she died, exactly. I don’t know what I imagined ... it was always something very vague.”
“I’m sorry to tell you about it. I don’t want to scare you, but I felt you should know. And I don’t know if it’s a hereditary thing ... or just bad luck.”
Emma thought of the Belvedere suddenly, getting caught in a storm in the worst possible place, and a man dying. What was that, if not bad luck?
“Where would I stay?” she asked. “Do you think Ruth would take me in?”
“I’m sure she’d love to have you,” her father replied, “and she lives near the hospital. There isn’t anyone I would trust more.”
Emma considered it. “But what about Logan? I don’t want to leave here without him. I could be there for a month or more. Could he come with me?”
Her father pushed his spectacles up his nose. “It’s possible for me to amend his contract to allow for it. I’d suggest going on the next boat in March, a few weeks before your due date, just to be safe.”
Emma nodded. “Thank you for telling me all this.”
That night at the supper table, she and her father, together, explained everything to Logan and outlined the plan for her to give birth on the mainland. Emma assured her husband that they would both be welcome at Ruth Montgomery’s home in Halifax. They would stay until the baby came, then board the next available supply ship back to Sable Island, where they would return to the life they loved and raise their child in this paradise they called home.
Logan agreed that it was the right thing to do, but he was quiet after supper. That night, he stayed up late in the great room. He did not come upstairs to bed until after 3:00 a.m.
A few nights later, after Emma’s father went to bed and left her and Logan alone in the great room, she looked up from the book she was reading. “Have I said something wrong? Or done something? You’ve been quiet lately.”
Sleet pelted the windows like a spray of pebbles, and the rooftop creaked and groaned in the wind.
“Everything’s fine,” he replied.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. I’m just tired,” he explained, and went back to his reading. Within seconds, he looked up again and spoke irritably. “Honestly, Emma, I don’t know how much longer I can keep up these early-morning shifts. They’re hell in this weather.”
“Yes, I can only imagine.” Hoping to lift his spirits with a reminder of their passionate summer together, she grinned flirtatiously. “But there was a time when you enjoyed them. Remember?”
“That was different.” His snappish tone caused her hackles to rise.
Emma cleared her throat and dispensed with any romantic inclinations. “Why? Because you were happy then? Are you not happy now? Because you’ve hardly spoken to me the past few days. What’s going on?”
Logan shut the magazine and huffed. “I’m happy,” he said, “but in case you haven’t noticed, it’s the middle of the goddamned winter, and like I said, those beaches are pure hell, frozen over. I don’t see you riding Willow at dawn, like you used to.”
Emma closed her book also and gave him her full attention. “You’re right. I don’t ride in the mornings, but do I need to remind you that I’m seven months pregnant?”
He waved a hand dismissively through the air, as if it were nothing of importance, which rubbed her the wrong way, because her nerves were already raw with anxiety about her approaching labor and delivery.
“How can we fix this?” she asked, focusing, as always, on a solution, not the problem, because she didn’t want to argue. “Is there a way you can get a later shift? Could you talk to Joseph?”
Logan responded petulantly. “I’m at the bottom rung when it comes to seniority.”
“Yes,” she replied, “but the night shifts are shared equally among the senior men. They all take turns. Maybe Joseph would consider that. It wouldn’t hurt to ask. Or I could talk to my father ...”
“No!” He slapped his magazine down on the coffee table. “For Pete’s sake, Emma. I don’t want any special treatment because you’re my wife. I’d rather drown myself.”
Having grown up on an island surrounded by shipwrecks, words like those didn’t sit well with Emma. “Please don’t say things like that.”
He stared at her with a fraught expression, then picked up his magazine and went back to reading.
In the hopes that some affection might help Logan express himself better, Emma slid closer on the sofa and rubbed his back. “I only want to help, darling. If there’s something that’s making you unhappy ...”
“Stop it.” He slapped her arm away. “There’s nothing wrong. I’m just tired of this godforsaken island. There’s nowhere to go. Nothing to do. We’re all trapped here.”
His response was like a slap in the face, and Emma was confused, because he’d been so keen and determined, initially, to raise their child on Sable.
But then Emma strove to remember that he was not the first person to experience the adverse effects of isolation, especially during the long, cold winter, when it became necessary to remain indoors most of the time. Others struggled as well, and not just during the winter. She thought again of those men from the Belvedere who had stolen the lifeboat. And Abigail often showed signs of depression and anger. She became resentful in bad weather and didn’t always behave rationally.
As Emma slid away from Logan, she wondered if her experiences watching others come and go from the island was the catalyst that had sparked her interest in psychological therapies.
Not that it mattered now. There wasn’t much point thinking about it, because a university education was not in the cards for her—not currently, at any rate. What mattered today was her husband’s happiness and well-being, and his future ability to be a good father to their child. She only wished there was something more she could do to help him.
As Boat Day approached, Emma saw no improvement in Logan’s mood. Though he’d been granted a generous leave of absence from his posting and was bound for Halifax—a city of restaurants, theaters, and new people to meet—he grew increasingly quiet and distant in the days leading up to it. Emma wished she could better understand the source of his depression. Whenever she suggested they talk about it, he withdrew further and implied that she was henpecking.
Finally, Boat Day arrived. Two full weeks before Emma’s due date, she and Logan boarded the Argyle and settled into their cabin. Having learned to tread lightly with her husband, she avoided saying anything that might upset him and instead fell into the habit of overcompensating with light and cheerful conversation, always with a wish to lift his spirits.
“Isn’t it wonderful,” she said, “that we’ll get to spend a few weeks in Halifax? I’d love to walk through Public Gardens at some point, but I’m not sure if they’re open this early in the spring.”
Logan had packed a rubber ball for some reason. He lounged back on the bottom bunk, threw his feet up onto Emma’s suitcase, and tossed the ball repeatedly against the bulkhead.
Emma moved into the small bathroom and unpacked her toiletries. “Ruth lives in the South End,” she said, “only a few blocks from the hospital, and she’s quite close to the Gardens.”
Logan offered no reply.
“She’s a wonderful cook,” Emma added, putting on fresh lipstick in the mirror, then dabbing her nose with some powder from her compact.
Emma wondered wearily how many times she would use the word wonderful before the day was out.
The ball continued to hit the wall, and Emma worried that someone in the next cabin might complain to the porter. But she said nothing about it. God willing, when they reached the mainland and Logan stepped onto the wharf in the big city—and he heard honking car horns and the wail of police sirens—the psychological effects of his isolation would recede, and his mood would improve.