Chapter 37
Chapter 37
Summer 1995
Sometimes Emma wondered if she’d made a terrible mistake when she’d purchased a two-hundred-year-old house. There were dozens of things wrong with it. The plumbing needed updating, and before she’d been able to move in, she’d had to replace the roof. The house inspector had given her a long list of necessary repairs, but nothing could have held her back. She’d fallen madly in love with the house the minute she’d walked through the front door.
Emma hadn’t expected to ever live on the water again—not after everything that happened on Sable Island—but something about the little white clapboard house that overlooked Chester’s Back Harbour spoke to her. Maybe it was the fresh salty fragrance of the sea or the music of the gulls that took her back to her childhood. Or maybe it was how the floors creaked when she climbed the narrow staircase. It reminded her of her father’s footsteps in the early days, when she was young, before he’d lost his leg.
Or it might have been the scent of rosebushes that lined the back path to the water, where an old wooden bench stood under an ancient oak tree.
Whatever the reason, it had felt like home.
Since Emma’s retirement, she’d learned to take life one day at a time and relax with a cup of tea and a good book. The dishes could wait, and so could the torn wallpaper in the guest bedroom. Her grandchildren were the only ones who slept in that room anyway, every Saturday night when Emma’s daughter, Rose, went out on a regular date with her husband. Sometimes Rose felt guilty about leaving her children overnight, to which Emma replied: “Don’t be silly. I love having them. And the best thing you can give your children is a happy marriage. So go have fun, and let me enjoy my grandchildren.”
This was one such day. Rose was due to arrive within the hour with John and Annette, aged five and seven. In preparation that morning, Emma had driven to the craft store and purchased five tubs of Play-Doh and a colorful plastic mold that squeezed out spaghetti noodles. When they were done with that, she would keep them entertained by playing store in the living room after dark. It was a Saturday-night tradition that began with emptying Emma’s kitchen cupboards of canned goods and other nonperishables. Next came the creation of price tags in sticker books and the task of setting out the inventory on imaginary shelves on Emma’s coffee table and piano. They all took turns as customer or cashier.
As far as Emma was concerned, for a woman her age who loved both shopping and spending time with her grandchildren, there was no better way to spend a Saturday night. But it was only 3:00 p.m., and Emma still had some pruning to do in the yard before Rose and the children arrived.
After donning her wide-brimmed sun hat, she took the clippers out of the bin, which she would use to trim the rosebushes that were encroaching onto the stone path down to the water. She had just pulled on her garden gloves inside the front porch when she heard a car pull into the gravel driveway. At first, Emma thought it was Rose arriving early, but when she moved to the screen door and stepped outside, she saw it was a blue car she didn’t recognize.
An attractive young woman with long dark hair got out and spoke with a British accent. “Good afternoon!” She took a few tentative steps up the driveway and removed her sunglasses. “Are you Emma Clarkson?”
“I used to be,” Emma replied, uncertain.
The young woman touched a finger to her temple. “I’m so sorry. Yes, of course. You’re Emma Baxter now. You worked in the psychology department at Dalhousie University? Am I in the right place?”
“Yes.”
The woman stood speechless in Emma’s driveway, staring at her with what appeared to be a mixture of delight and fascination.
“Can I help you with something?” Emma asked. She was still gripping her hedge clippers and was beginning to feel a little impatient, because the clock was ticking and those rosebushes weren’t going to prune themselves.
The passenger-side door opened, and a man stepped out. He was an older gentleman, and Emma watched him in the blinding sunlight that reflected off the shiny front bumper of the car. Something about the way he moved was familiar, and it made her body go weak—though consciously she had no idea who he was.
Then he spoke her name. “Emma.”
The voice. She knew it. It was like something out of her dreams. Her breath came short, and she dropped the hedge clippers onto the brick steps with a noisy clatter.
“Oliver Harris,” he said, introducing himself as he approached. He paused at the bottom of her steps with one hand on the wrought iron railing. “Do you remember me?”
What a ridiculous question. Emma laid her hand over her heart. “Oliver ...” She could barely speak beyond that one single word. “I thought ... I thought you were dead.”
“Quite a few others thought the same thing,” he replied. “But here I am, still alive, which has to be some kind of miracle.”
With wide eyes, Emma stared at him, dumbstruck, until the young woman moved to stand beside him.
“It’s nice to meet you at last,” she said, breaking the spell. “I’m Joanna, Oliver’s granddaughter. He’s told me a lot about you and Sable Island. We just came from there yesterday.”
Emma turned her eyes to Joanna and saw the resemblance. She had the same dark wavy hair and blue eyes. “You visited Sable Island?”
Joanna nodded cheerfully, and Emma’s eyes shot to Oliver’s. “You went there as well?”
“Yes,” he replied in that deep, husky voice that touched something painfully raw in the depths of her soul. At the same time, she was aware of a rise in her body temperature, which she’d learned to recognize in stressful situations. Emma removed her sun hat.
“It’s been so many years,” Oliver said, sounding slightly dazed. “It feels like another lifetime.”
“It does.” She wanted to be polite, but inside, her heart was icing over with the realization that the man she’d once loved with every inch of her young heart, body, and soul—the man she’d practically martyred for the past forty years—was alive and standing before her. He hadn’t been killed in an explosion on the sea, yet he had never come back for her as he’d promised.
Emma began to descend the steps and spoke cooly to him. “How is this possible?”
They stared at each other for a moment, and her heart trembled. She felt dizzy, like she’d fainted and fallen into the past. Maybe he sensed it, because he stepped forward and took her into his embrace.
Emma went stiff as he hugged her and whispered in her ear. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for everything.”
Those words—more than forty years too late—caused something to buck and kick inside of her, and she drew back in anger.
“What happened to you?” She recalled all the nights she’d spent crying into her pillow, fearing that he’d abandoned her when she’d needed him most. She’d never felt more alone than in those final days, just before she’d told her father the truth about her pregnancy.
She’d been so angry with Oliver. But then the news of his death had come ...
“I was told your ship hit a mine and there was an explosion,” she said, “and no one survived.”
“Most of that is true,” he told her. “There was an explosion, and my ship was blown halfway to smithereens. But we got into a lifeboat and made it to dry land, where we were stranded for months.”
She stared at him, blinking rapidly, afraid that her knees might give way. “Months?”
“Yes, and by the time I returned to Sable,” he continued, “you were gone. You’d reconciled with your husband.”
Emma couldn’t make sense of this. She shook her head in dismay. “No. Who told you I went back to Logan?”
“The man on the island,” Oliver said, as if that explained everything.
“What man?”
“The meteorologist. His name was ... I’m sorry. It escapes me now.”
Emma was still reeling from the appearance of her beloved Captain Harris, alive after all these years, stepping out of a shiny rental car and standing in her driveway. She took a few steps back. “Logan and I divorced after he was released from prison. He stayed a part of Matthew’s life, but that was all. And he’s been dead for more than fifteen years.”
Oliver’s face turned red, and his expression slowly darkened to a frown.
His granddaughter, Joanna, cleared her throat, and Emma realized she’d forgotten the young woman was standing there, listening to all this. The whole world, aside from herself and Oliver, seemed to have disappeared in the past three minutes.
“It’s quite hot out here,” Joanna said. “Why don’t you two go inside and talk for a while. I can pop out to the shops and come back later.”
Emma was indeed perspiring, and she needed to cool down. Or sit. Or take a few deep breaths and regain her calm. “Yes. We should go into the house.”
Joanna touched her grandfather’s arm. “I’ll be back in an hour or so?”
Oliver met Emma’s gaze questioningly, and she nodded in agreement. Everything was a blur after that. Joanna got into the car and backed out of the driveway, and Oliver followed Emma up the front steps, where she picked up the pruners and set them on a chair inside the porch. The next thing she knew, she and Oliver were standing in her kitchen.
“Would you like a cold drink?” she asked out of politeness.
“Yes, thank you.”
It was obvious to Emma that Oliver was unsettled by her standoffishness. The whole situation took her back to that day in her kitchen on Sable Island, when she was baking bread and he’d walked through her door, years after breaking her heart. For the first time. What did that make this one? Heartbreak number three? Should she be keeping score? Or would that just be cruel self-punishment?
Emma opened the refrigerator door, took out a large unopened bottle of spring water, and set it on the counter. The task gave her a much-needed moment to collect herself as she filled two tumblers with ice from the freezer, picked up the bottle, and poured.
Half-dazed, she handed the glass to Oliver, resisting a brief urge to splash the water in his face.
“Thank you.” He accepted it and sipped it thirstily. Then he set it down and rubbed the back of his hand over his forehead.
Their eyes connected.
“I’m in shock,” Emma said frostily. “I can’t stop looking at you. You’re older, but you still look the same.”
“So do you. You’re just as beautiful as you ever were.”
The flattery hit her like a brick, and she felt a fresh rush of bitterness toward him. She resented him for having allowed her to idolize him for the past forty years, for causing her to imagine that their love was something special—that he’d been her soulmate, the great love of her life, tragically ripped away.
“Don’t say that to me,” she said. “You don’t have the right, because you broke your promise.”
“I know. I’m sorry, Emma.”
“Stop saying you’re sorry. You said you’d come back for me, but you never did.”
“I did come back,” he reminded her. “It just took me longer, but I had no control over that. I nearly died on that island, and it took me months to recover. When I finally did make it back, I was told you’d gone back to your husband. That you didn’t wait for me. What was I supposed to do?”
She scoffed in disbelief. “How could you even believe that I would take Logan back? I told you I didn’t love him. All I wanted was you , and I was devastated when I thought you’d died. Now I find out that you were alive the entire time?”
Oliver frowned as he tried to explain. “I thought it would be selfish to disrupt your life again. I thought it best to leave you alone and let you move on.”
“With Logan?” She laughed indignantly. “Did you completely forget what happened between us in the rose garden? Or did it not mean that much to you?”
“It meant the world.”
“Then why didn’t you come after me? Why didn’t you at least try to fight for me?”
He stared at her a moment, blinking rapidly, before his gaze dropped to the floor. “I suppose I didn’t have any fight left in me, after everything that happened.”
An unexpected wave of pity washed over Emma. “Not even for us?”
He still did not look up.
“That’s a shame,” she said, thinking of the daughter she’d given birth to, a daughter he knew nothing about. “Because you missed out on something wonderful, and not just the life we could have had together.”
He finally looked up. “What do you mean?”
She paused because she knew she was about to deliver a heavy blow, but she had to tell him. She couldn’t keep it secret. Rose could arrive at any moment.
“When we were together in the rose garden ...” Her throat closed over a jagged lump, and her voice shook. “The reason I was so desperate for you to come back was because I was pregnant.”
He stared vacantly at her while the words floated on a rolling fog between them.
In that moment, Emma realized with a touch of shame that there was a part of her that had enjoyed delivering the news. The psychoanalyst in her questioned if she’d ever truly gotten over the old sting of this man’s first rejection of her—when he’d left her humiliated on the beach before boarding the supply ship with no intention of ever returning. Maybe that rejection had been festering inside her for years, even when she’d believed him to be dead. Maybe, deep down, she’d become just as bitter and vengeful as Abigail McKenna, and today, seeing Oliver again, she had morphed into a hissing cat with claws.
Emma felt suddenly humbled. She was supposed to be an expert in her field, but who was she to sit in rooms with broken souls and help them sort through their traumas? She knew every tool available for coping with emotional scars, and for years, she’d handed them out in her office every day.
But here stood Oliver Harris, in her kitchen, embedded like shrapnel into her flesh. She was still wounded, like every one of her patients, and she didn’t have the first clue how to use any of the tools at her disposal. All she knew was the timeworn pain of her loss, and a faint recognition of his.
Standing in Emma’s kitchen, Oliver was aware of the ocean lapping onto the beach beyond her back lawn and the sound of birds chirping in the treetops outside the open window. But he couldn’t seem to speak or move. His mind was running riot through the past forty years.
Then it struck him—what Emma had said. They’d had a child. Years had gone by, years that could never be recaptured, a whole life lost to him. There was so little time left, no way to make up for it. He was seventy-seven years old. An old man.
“We have a daughter.” Emma’s words pulled him out of a strange and cold inertia. “Her name is Rose, and she’s coming over soon. She’s bringing her two children.”
“Grandchildren.” His thoughts exploded. He had a daughter he knew nothing about.
Oh, God! What a wretched failure he was as a man! For abandoning the only woman he’d ever truly loved. Why? Why hadn’t he fought for her? Fought for his own happiness?
“Are you all right?” Emma asked, looking concerned.
He stood a moment, clenching and unclenching his fists, his body tense, his chest aching with all the could-have-beens. “I need to sit down.”
“Of course.” Emma directed him to the kitchen table, helped him onto a chair, and sat down across from him.
This news had hit him like a death, a loss he would mourn forever. There would be no peace for him after this. No superficial contentment, which had become an adequately comfortable bed for him since he’d reconciled with Mary. But now, there would only be regret.
“What’s she like?” he asked. “Our daughter, Rose?”
Emma’s expression warmed, which provided some consolation, because at least she was happy in her love for their daughter.
“She’s a beautiful person,” Emma said. “Smart, kind, generous. She was a schoolteacher until she had her first baby, and she’s been a stay-at-home mom ever since. Her husband works in construction, and he’s a good man. A good father. They have a cozy home.”
“That’s good,” he replied, empty of breath. “Do you have any pictures?”
“Yes.” Emma stood, left the kitchen, and returned with a framed photograph. “This is Rose and her family, last year when they took a trip to Cape Breton. That’s David and their two children, John and Annette.”
“John. Named after your father?”
“Yes. He passed away in ’89. It was standing room only at his funeral.”
Oliver looked up at her wearily. “I’m so sorry. What did he do after he left Sable Island?”
Emma sat down at the table again. “First, he retired with a government pension. Then he married Ruth, the woman I once told you about who was like a mother to me. That was a happy occasion. But Papa liked to keep busy, so he went into local politics.” Emma stood up again. “Let me get some photo albums. I’ll show you more pictures.”
Suddenly Oliver was back in Emma’s kitchen on Sable Island, with the smell of bread baking in the oven and a deep hope for reconciliation—or of friendship, at least—after a hurtful goodbye in the past. Here they were again, slowly reconnecting. He hoped.
She returned with an armful of photo albums, and Oliver was grateful to spend the next half hour at her table, flipping through plastic-wrapped pages that covered most of the past half century. They included Emma’s early life on Sable Island, but Oliver was most interested in the pictures of Rose, from her birth to the present day.
There was only one picture of Matthew with Logan. “Did they see each other much?” Oliver asked.
“Not really,” Emma replied. “Logan moved back to Saskatchewan when Matthew was ten, but they wrote letters, and Logan came to visit every few years. But I think the main reason he stayed away was because he was afraid of my father.” She gave Oliver a telling look. “Papa was very protective of us.”
The sound of a car rolling onto the driveway caused each of them to look up. Oliver realized how warm and humid the afternoon had become. Cicadas were buzzing loudly in the yard, and he was perspiring.
“I wonder if that’s Rose.” Emma stood to look out the front window. “Yes, it is.” She hesitated. “Oh, goodness. Would you mind waiting here while I talk to her first? This is going to be a shock. I’d like to prepare her.”
“I understand.”
“I’ll bring her in afterwards,” Emma promised him reassuringly.
He nodded, and she walked out the front door.
Almost immediately, he stood up and moved to the living room to watch from the open window. Outside, two rambunctious children spilled out of a blue minivan and tore across the front lawn to a tire swing in the shade of the trees.
A woman got out of the driver’s seat. Dear God. This was Rose. His daughter. Strikingly beautiful, with a face like her mother’s, and dark hair like his.
“I’m so sorry, Mom,” she said. “They’ve had too much sugar. They’ll probably crash early, though.”
Oliver stood in a stupor, his body and soul drenched in awe as he watched Emma hug her daughter and whisper something in her ear. He wished overwhelmingly that he could have held Rose as an infant, seen her as a toddler ... a child ... a young woman. He’d missed everything—her first words, her wedding day. What had she been like all her life? Had she always been this happy, like she was outside in the yard today? His heart was a bottomless well of questions and wishes.
Emma and Rose stepped apart. Rose looked directly up at Oliver in the window, and his heart throbbed agonizingly. He reached a trembling hand to the back of an upholstered chair to steady himself on this staggering wave of sorrow.
“He’s been alive all this time?” Rose asked, keeping her voice low.
Emma watched her daughter’s expression and knew she had not yet fully comprehended everything this would mean for her—that there was a man with whom she and her children would need to become acquainted, and it might cause confusion, anger, and hurt. But Rose had always been careful to think things through before reacting emotionally.
Emma glanced over her shoulder at Oliver in the window, and he retreated.
“This is unreal,” Rose said. “Are you okay, Mom?”
It was just like her daughter to think of others before herself. “Yes,” Emma replied. But truthfully, she felt like a leaf floating and spinning on the wind. She took hold of Rose’s arm. “Let’s take a walk around back.”
Together they strolled past the children at the tire swing and reached the sloping lawn that overlooked the water. It was a hot, humid day, and the harbor was flat and still, a perfect mirror that reflected the evergreens on the far shore.
“Mom,” Rose said urgently. “You must have fainted when you saw him. And where has he been all this time? Please don’t tell me he had amnesia and only just remembered who we are. My God. What does this mean? What does he expect is going to happen?”
Clearly the situation had begun to sink in, and for that, Emma was glad. “I don’t know, and I’m trying to be sensible. I want to think of you and the children and give you the chance to get to know him, if that’s what you want.”
They both faced the water and said nothing for a moment while they watched a sailboat in the distance.
“But before we start any of that,” Emma finally said, “there’s something you need to know.”
“What is it?”
Emma faced her daughter. “You’re welcome to spend time with him. I would never discourage that, but I might need to set some boundaries.”
“In what way?”
Emma felt herself retreating into a state of sensible caution, which she should have employed all those years ago. “I can’t do this again,” she said. “I don’t think I can allow him into my life.”
Rose regarded her with concern. “I’m surprised to hear you say that. The way you’ve always talked about him ... you said he was the great love of your life and that he was the most handsome man you’d ever seen, and you had a soulful connection that most people could only dream about. Now here he is, back from the dead, and you don’t want to see him?”
“No.”
Rose shook her head in disbelief. “Then please explain it to me. Was all that made up, so that I’d feel good about who my father was?”
“No, of course not,” Emma replied. “It wasn’t made up. But I said those things when I thought he had a good excuse for not showing up that Christmas.”
“Because he was dead ? That’s a pretty high bar, Mom.”
“Don’t be facetious,” Emma said scoldingly.
“I’m not. But have you talked to him about what happened? Asked him why he didn’t come?”
“Of course I talked to him. He told me he went back to Sable Island eventually, but some idiot told him that I’d gotten back together with Logan, which wasn’t true. But he believed it and left. Seriously, I don’t understand. He knew how much I loved him. I thought it was clear when we said goodbye that final time.” She paused a moment and exhaled sharply. “Oh, it doesn’t matter now. All that matters is that he turned straight around and went back to his wife in England.”
“The one who cheated on him?” Rose asked incredulously.
“Yes.” Emma glanced back at the house and wondered if Oliver was watching them from a different window. “The bottom line is ... oh, I don’t know what I’m saying. All I know is that there’s been too much water under the bridge for him and me. He’s put me through enough hell. I can’t do that again.” She faced Rose. “But it’s different for you and the children. He’s your father and their grandfather, and I think it’s important that you at least meet him and decide for yourselves if you want him to be a part of your lives.” She stood up a little straighter. “As for me, I’m done with that. I just want to be on my own.”
The air was windless, thick, and muggy. Rose lifted her long hair off her shoulders and fanned the back of her neck with her hand.
“Really, Mom, you should hear yourself. You said the exact same things about Logan. You told me there was too much water under the bridge, but you understood that he needed to be a part of Matthew’s life, but he’d put you through hell. Yada yada yada.”
“Rose,” Emma said with a note of impatience. “This is more complicated than that.”
“Damn right, it’s complicated,” Rose replied. “So maybe you should go back in there and talk to Oliver some more before you hit the reject button.” She waved her arm toward the house. “Who knows what he’s been through? Two shipwrecks and a wife who cheated on him. Not to mention the Second World War. You’re a therapist, Mom. A PTSD expert. To be honest, I’m a little shocked at how you’re so quick to judge him.”
“I’m not judging him,” Emma replied, feeling defensive.
Rose backed off a little. “Maybe not, but you’re not trying to understand the situation either.”
For a moment, Emma fiddled with her locket and found herself thinking again of that day on the beach when he’d left her humiliated and heartbroken the first time.
Why did she keep going back there in her mind?
Oh, she knew why. Ever since that day, she’d been internalizing the grief from every single loss in her life.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll talk to him some more. It’s not like I can avoid it anyway. He’s standing in my kitchen, waiting for me to introduce the two of you.” She turned to Rose. “Are you ready for that?”
“Yes.” Rose glanced back at the house. “I want very much to meet him.”