Chapter 20
Chapter 20
The noisy ringing of the circular saw cut through the air as Emma drove the Jeep into the East Station yard. She pulled to a halt, shifted into park, and turned to her father in the passenger seat.
“I promise we won’t get in the way.” She glanced over her shoulder at Matthew in the back seat. “Right?”
“Right!” he replied. It wasn’t every day a new frame was built for the East Light, not to mention a crew of workers arriving from a passing ship.
They all got out of the Jeep, and her father leaned heavily on his cane to make his way toward Kevin, the chief staff man in charge of the repairs. Three other men stood around, waiting for direction.
“Stay with me, Matthew,” Emma said when he made a move toward the table saw. “Let the men talk for a bit. Then we’ll see the equipment.”
While the men discussed what had to be accomplished that day, Emma turned toward the ocean.
“Look, Matthew,” she said excitedly for his benefit, pointing. “Here comes the tender.” The small boat was motoring fast, halfway between the ship and the shore.
“Is it the captain?” Matthew asked.
“Yes, and some of his crew. Would you like to go down to the beach and meet them?”
“Yes, come on! Let’s go!” He ran ahead.
The tender skimmed onto the sand on a powerful breaker. Two men jumped out to drag the craft out of the water, and then Oliver leaped out as well and strode toward Emma. “Good morning!”
Matthew was running back and forth, jumping up and down in front of the tender boat.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d be here,” Oliver said.
“We couldn’t possibly miss the excitement,” she replied, laughing at Matthew.
Oliver’s gaze remained fixed on Emma, and his mood was cheerful and energetic. “I’m so glad.” The members of his crew reached into the boat for a few sacks of supplies and toolboxes. “We came ready to work,” Oliver added. “Allow me to introduce you to the men.”
The crew members approached, and Oliver made the introductions. Then Matthew ran ahead, thrilled to lead the way to the station yard.
“Captain Harris! Do you want to see a dead seal?”
It was lunchtime, and the men were spread out, seated on the back of the horse cart, on overturned crates, or in extra chairs that had been brought out from the station house.
“Truth be told, Matthew, I would,” he replied. “But you’d better ask your mother first. And be sure to invite her along.”
Matthew ran into the station house, where Emma was wiping the kitchen table. “Mom! The captain wants to see the dead seal, and he wants you to come.”
Emma balled the wet cloth in her hand. “Right now?”
“Yes. Can we go? Please?”
Mrs. Jordan pulled the plug from the sink and let the water drain out. “That sounds like fun. Go ahead, Emma. I’ll take care of things here.”
Emma placed the damp cloth next to the sink and followed Matthew outside.
After viewing the smelly carcass down by the water, Emma and Oliver walked together leisurely, a short distance behind Matthew, who was playing tag with the incoming waves.
“Tell me,” Oliver said, “whatever happened to the young wireless operator who was enamored with you when I was here last? His name was Frank, I believe.”
“Yes. Frank O’Reilly. He turned out to be a good friend to me in the end. But that’s the thing about living on Sable Island. Most people only stay for a year or two. So many friends come and go from your life.” Emma sighed and slid her hands into her pockets. “He left shortly after I married Logan.”
“All hope was gone for him, I suppose,” Oliver replied, giving her a meaningful look.
She turned her face toward the wind. “Maybe so. I’ve thought about Frank many times since then. He was a decent person, and I probably would have been better off with him than the man I chose, but then I wouldn’t have Matthew.”
“Everything happens the way it’s meant to.” Oliver bent down and picked up a colorful shell, which he slipped into his pocket. They walked on.
“You know,” he said after a time, “the real reason I wanted to come back here was to see you.”
Emma shot him a look. “Me?”
“Yes. I enjoyed our conversations back then, but I didn’t realize how much until after I left. So, for a long time ...” He paused. “For a long time, I’ve regretted some of the things I said on the day I left. And I’ve also wanted to thank you.”
Two seagulls darted sharply overhead, and he looked up at them.
“Thank me for what, exactly?” Emma asked.
“Well ...” He hesitated. “After the wreck, and from talking to you, I started to think more about life and what a gift it is. Even after the war I never really understood that, but when I left here, I realized that I needed to find meaning somehow. And contentment. So, I decided to stop punishing myself over every little mistake I’d ever made, or things I had no control over, like my wife’s wishes and feelings. I was fully prepared to set her free, with no hard feelings, to pursue her own happiness. But then her father wanted to set the terms of our separation, so I let him. I decided to stop swimming against the current and just enjoy what I could out of my life, even though it’s far from perfect.”
Emma was fascinated by this. “So, you feel less burdened by the choices you’ve made in the past?”
If only she could feel that way too.
“That’s exactly it,” he replied. “But it’s funny—I’d looked death in the eye many times during the war, but it wasn’t until I spent time here with you that I truly appreciated the miracle of being alive. Do you remember our morning ride, the day before I left?”
“Yes.”
“Every moment of that day with you is etched on my brain,” he said. “Especially seeing the wild horses. Nothing was quite the same after that.”
Emma watched Matthew dash into a group of seagulls roosting on the beach. They took off frantically.
“I wish you’d told me all this when you left,” Emma said. “All these years I felt like such a fool for imagining that you found me at all interesting. Eventually I came to the conclusion that you were just being kind, humoring me the whole time.”
“Humoring you? Emma, I was amazed by you. Was that not obvious?”
Amazed?
“But you ignored me that night at the party,” she reminded him, having never forgotten the hurt. “I thought I’d done something wrong, or that I’d insulted you somehow. Then you left me feeling mortified the next morning because of the things I said to you.”
He looked down at his shoes as he walked. “I hope you can accept my apology. I should have handled that better.”
Emma thought about everything. “I suppose you were right, in a way. You told me I was a child, and I was. I had no experience in the real world.”
He glanced down at her. “But you have it now.”
“Oh yes,” she said, with a bitter laugh. “More than I ever wanted. I have firsthand knowledge of lies and betrayal and criminal court, and now I understand why some people become so bitter and jaded.” She started walking again. “So maybe it was a good lesson for me, because I won’t get into trouble like that again. I’m much more cautious. Far less trusting.”
He regarded her intently. “It makes me sad to hear that.”
“It shouldn’t. Clearly, I had a lot to learn. I was so preachy before, giving people advice, thinking I knew everything. I was arrogant to imagine that I could sit in a classroom, get a degree, and counsel people about how to cope with their traumas, when I’d never experienced anything remotely traumatic in my own life.”
“You lost your mother on the day you were born.”
“Yes, but I have no memory of that—at least no conscious memory—and I had a wonderful childhood, relatively speaking.”
“Because of your friend Ruth,” he said.
Emma was surprised that he remembered Ruth’s name after so many years. He wasn’t lying about everything being etched on his brain.
“Are you still in touch with her?” he asked.
“Yes, we write to each other, and I take Matthew for a visit every summer. Ruth was with me in Halifax when Logan was arrested. We were staying at her house because I went to the hospital to deliver Matthew. Speak of the devil ...”
Her son came running toward them. “Can we go back now? I’m hungry.”
“You just had lunch,” Emma said.
“Can I have a snack?”
She laughed and rubbed the top of his head. “I think I saw a cookie jar in Mrs. Jordan’s kitchen. Maybe if you ask nicely ...”
“I’m always nice, Mom.” Matthew took off toward East Station.
“Oh, to have that energy,” Oliver said wistfully, with amusement.
“Tell me about it. Shall we head back as well?”
They turned to retrace their steps back to East Light.
At the end of the day, when all the gear was packed up, Oliver’s dread felt like a vise grip in his gut. He didn’t want to leave. He wanted to spend more time with Emma. There were so many things he wanted to talk with her about. He wanted to hear more about her marriage, her father’s long recovery, what Matthew had been like as a baby.
He sent his crewmen down to the tender boat but held back to say goodbye to Emma and her father. Anything to stall the inevitable.
“We made good progress today,” John said, “thanks to you and your men.”
“They enjoyed every minute of it,” Oliver replied.
Emma, her father, and Matthew got into the Jeep, and Oliver shut the passenger-side door for John. He stood at the open window for a moment, looking at Emma behind the wheel. He still wasn’t ready to say goodbye.
She turned the key in the ignition, and the engine sputtered to life.
“Hop in,” John said. “We’ll give you a ride down to the beach.”
A reprieve! Oliver smiled and got into the back seat beside Matthew.
It was a bumpy ride in the back of the Jeep, and Oliver held the grip overhead as he bounced on the seat. Emma drove slowly through a narrow passage of thick bayberry bushes while swallows chirped and darted above them. When they reached the open beach, she shifted into a higher gear and sped up on a direct path toward the tender boat, where his men were standing around, waiting.
She pulled to a halt, shut off the engine, and got out. She thanked Oliver’s crewmen and shook their hands while her father remained seated in the Jeep. Then she turned to Oliver.
“Well ... thank you again. It’s too bad you couldn’t stay longer. I would have loved to show you the rose garden. It’s grown up quite a bit. You wouldn’t recognize it.”
Oliver contemplated how badly he wanted to go with her to the rose garden, and that’s when he knew: the feelings he’d wrestled with years ago had never died. They were as strong as ever, perhaps even more so after certain life experiences and deeper self-reflection.
It had taken Oliver seven years to return. Seven years to think about their week together and drum up the courage to see her again and face what could have been if he’d been brave enough to love her when he’d had the chance.
And there it was—the truth of it all. He’d always regretted walking away from something that could have been beautiful. At the time, he couldn’t fully comprehend how important it was to grab hold of happiness while you could, and hang on to it. But he understood it so much better now. He’d been through a war and a shipwreck. He knew how fragile life could be. Perhaps a part of him hadn’t believed he deserved happiness. He’d lost so many people who mattered to him. Sometimes he still felt guilty for being alive when others were not.
But he was not without hope. Getting to know Emma, and leaving her behind, had taught him something about a life squandered. And he’d squandered enough. Seven years’ worth.
Oliver checked his watch. “I still have some time.”
“Are you sure?” Emma replied. “You don’t have to stick to your schedule?”
“We do, but we don’t have to raise the anchor until sunset.” He strode to his crewmen, who stood around the boat. “Change of plans, gentlemen. Take the supplies to the ship, unload, then come back for me in an hour, down at the west end.”
The men cheerfully agreed. They dragged the boat to the water’s edge and hopped in, and Oliver pushed them farther out until they floated. Then he ran back in, splashing through a shallow incoming wave.
“Let’s go,” he said to Emma with enthusiasm, and got back into the Jeep.
A short while later, back at Main Station, he said goodbye to John and Matthew. Then Oliver got into the front seat beside Emma. She told Matthew she’d be back in an hour, shifted into first gear, and steered toward the beach and the rose garden to the west.