Chapter 23
Chapter 23
On New Year’s Eve, the great room was alive with laughter and singing as the staff men gathered around the piano, where Emma’s father played a continuous parade of popular tunes from the ’30s and ’40s. One of the crewmen had visited earlier in the day to hang streamers from the ceiling and drop off a basket of noisemakers.
But Emma was in no mood for singing or blowing horns. She’d been feeling down since Christmas Day because Oliver had not yet returned, nor had she received a letter from him. She tried to remind herself that letters often went astray en route to Sable, and it certainly wasn’t easy for anyone to arrive exactly on schedule. Sometimes, if the weather was foul, the supply ship could be detained for a week or more. And no doubt, Oliver had much to do in England to arrange his affairs before his return.
So she did her best to remain optimistic, which wasn’t easy under the circumstances, because she’d been feeling sick in the mornings for quite some time, and her monthly was long overdue.
There was no point sticking her head in the sand. Clearly, she was expecting, but what could she do about her anxieties except to wait for Oliver to arrive?
Shortly before midnight, the wireless station chief popped the cork on a bottle of bubbly and poured drinks for everyone in white paper cups. The clock struck twelve. Her father played “Auld Lang Syne,” and with arms about shoulders, swaying from side to side, everyone sang along.
Emma remained in the kitchen, watching from afar. She’d been so tired lately, sapped of energy, always wanting to nap in the afternoons. The fatigue made it difficult to stay awake and share in everyone’s high spirits.
Turning away from the party, she grabbed her wool coat from the hook at the back door and ventured outside, down the wooden steps.
It was a mild winter night. The fog was thick with the salty fragrance of the sea. There was not a single breath of wind, but the damp chill caused Emma to gather her coat collar tighter about her neck as she left the noise of the party and crossed the station yard to head toward the high dune over North Beach. She climbed to the top and paused, slightly out of breath, and looked out at the ocean. The fog was thick, and the night was dark. She could barely see the waves. She could only hear them.
Emma’s heart squeezed painfully in her chest. Why hasn’t he come?
With bone-deep despair, she sank to the ground, sat back on her heels, and clasped her hands together in prayer. Please, God, keep him safe and send him home to me. Oliver, hurry if you can. I couldn’t bear to be disappointed again. Not with our baby on the way.
The sand was cold, and her knees grew numb. Emma rose to her feet, faced the ocean, and listened to the surf breaking on the beach below. A chill rippled down the length of her spine, so she turned away and walked down the steep slope to return to the warmth of home.
By the time she arrived, the party was over, and everyone was saying goodbye in the station yard, wishing each other a happy new year. She joined them and pretended to be jovial.
A week later, the January supply ship arrived.
There was no letter from Oliver.
In early February, the temperatures plummeted. Sable became a landscape of sparkling silver and a symphony of crackling ice as the frozen marram grass faced the harsh North Atlantic winds on the high dune.
No mail arrived for Emma in February either, and still, Oliver did not come.
The bitter cold days were spent indoors with Matthew, teaching him arithmetic and the science of the clouds and universe and assigning him household chores and good books to read. Emma did her best to hide her anguish from him, but each night, when she slipped into bed, she burrowed deeper into her old den of mistrust.
She began to believe that Oliver had changed his mind. Or perhaps he never had any intention of returning. Maybe she was the most gullible woman on the planet and he was a Casanova with a woman at every port.
Night after night it was the same—until on one occasion, Emma tossed the covers aside and sat up on the edge of her bed. Restless and alert while others in the house were sleeping, she chewed at her thumbnail.
What a fool she’d been in the rose garden. So easily seduced. Had she learned nothing from what happened with Logan?
Laying a hand over her long-suffering heart, she tried to settle her anxieties—which were always at their worst at night—and quietly rose to her feet. She tiptoed across the braided rug to where Matthew slept in his small bed soundly, beneath a heavy blue-and-white-checkered quilt. His face was like an angel’s—sweet, round, and peaceful. The sight of him spread a blanket of calm over her soul.
Thank God she had Matthew. If not for him, she might have stopped believing in the kind of love that lasts forever.
As for the child she carried in her womb, she knew she would love it too, just as much as she loved Matthew.
Emma tucked the quilt around him to keep him warm, then tiptoed back to her own bed. As she slid beneath the covers and stared up at the ceiling, she wondered if perhaps this had always been her fate: to enjoy the love of her children but to be denied the love of a man.
If this was the way it was meant to be, she decided that she could survive on her own. She’d been doing it for years, without Oliver or Logan, with only the love she shared with Matthew and her father. It had been enough—more than enough—and another child would only bring greater love into her world.
Emma considered that for a profound moment, then rolled to her side, rested her cheek on her hands on the pillow, and watched Matthew sleep. The love she felt for him was infinite like the cosmos and the constant, traveling waves on the ocean. The steady sound of his breathing finally lulled her into a peaceful slumber.
The following morning, Emma woke at dawn. Her bedroom windows were cloaked in ice. Sleet pelted the glass. Matthew still slept, so she rolled to her side and faced the wall, curled up in a fetal position, and tugged the covers over her ears to stay warm.
As she lay with her hand on her belly, she knew she couldn’t go on like this much longer, hiding her secret. Keeping it from her father was tearing her apart, and now she was beginning to show. Very soon, she would have no choice but to tell him the truth.
Or perhaps the time for truth and honesty had already come.
“Now you have me worried,” her father said from his chair in the great room that evening.
Emma had just settled Matthew into bed for the night. She’d come downstairs, taken a seat on the sofa, and told her father point blank that she had something important to discuss with him.
“I wish I could tell you not to worry,” she said, “but I don’t think you’re going to like this.”
He removed his glasses and set them on the open book on his lap. “Continue.”
With her earlier bravado long gone, she forced the words out. “I’ve been keeping something from you, Papa. Something that relates to Oliver Harris.”
He frowned. “What is it? Nothing bad, I hope. Is he all right?”
“I have no idea,” she replied, “because I haven’t heard a word from him since he left in September.”
Her father spoke with sympathy. “I understand how that must make you feel, but, sweetheart ...”
“How could he just disappear like that and not even write?” She covered her face with her hands.
Her father reached for his cane and rose from his chair. He limped around the coffee table and sat down beside her on the sofa, where he took her into his arms and rubbed her back. “You know what the mail is like here. Sometimes we get letters six months old. And Oliver is trying to arrange a divorce, which can’t be an easy thing, especially if his father-in-law wants to avoid a scandal. It might take time.”
Her father was right, but time was not on Emma’s side. She had very little of it to spare when her baby was growing bigger in her belly every day.
“But it’s been months,” she said. “We should have heard something by now.”
“Yes,” her father replied. “I’ve been wondering about it too, but we can’t lose hope. Oliver is a good man.” He wiped a tear from under her eye. “No matter what happens, just remember that you have Matthew and me and a home here, where you’re loved. It’s a good life, and it’s all yours.”
She wondered miserably if it might be time to wake up and face reality. “You think he’s not coming back?”
“That’s not what I said.”
Emma wiped a tear from her cheek and fought to pull herself together. “I hope I’ll still have a home here after I tell you what’s been happening, because you’re not going to like it.”
Her father’s expression darkened with concern. “I’ll always support you, sweetheart, no matter what. But you need to tell me what’s wrong.”
Despite her tears and apprehensions about how her father might react, it would be a tremendous release to confess the truth. So she let it all out. “I love Captain Harris. I’ve loved him since the day I met him, and when he came back here and proposed to me, I thought all my dreams were coming true.” She paused briefly and wiped her runny nose. “And we ... we were intimate.”
Her father drew back slightly. “What are you saying?”
She kept her eyes downcast, until at long last, she managed to get the words out. “I’m pregnant.”
The world stopped spinning. Her father didn’t speak. He looked away, then stood and returned to his chair.
“Please say something,” Emma pleaded.
He blinked a few times. “I don’t know what to say.” He rested his forehead on his knuckles. “Is this why you married Logan? For the same reason? I always wondered about that.”
Emma couldn’t form a response.
“And is this why Captain Harris offered to marry you as well?”
“No!” Emma shouted, resenting the implication that she had tried to trap both men. “He proposed to me before anything like that happened. I thought we were going to be together, and I loved him. Please don’t hate me, Papa, or him either. He still has no idea I’m pregnant.”
But that was a lie. Emma had written several letters to Oliver and shared the news of her condition. She’d pledged her undying love and admitted that she was desperate for him to hurry back. Why in the world was she defending his honor when it was quite possible that he’d already abandoned her?
Emma shut her eyes and reminded herself that, since Logan, she had trouble trusting people. Maybe it was possible that Oliver was simply delayed, along with his letters, and she needed to continue to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Or maybe something terrible had happened.
In the end, she supposed she defended Oliver to her father because she didn’t want him to think her a fool. Nor did she want to think it of herself.