Chapter Eight
I’ll draw a bath,” he announces as we stomp into the house, shedding our damp clothes beside the front door, then hanging them to dry from wood pegs over the stove. As if this were our routine. As if we’ve done this all before.
He walks to the kitchen sink and pulls out a metal bucket from underneath, filling it with water, then moves past me to place the bucket over the stove.
“You don’t need to do that,” I answer. “It’s too much work.”
He turns but won’t look at me. “Ye have a bath while I start dinner.”
Maybe it’s because I helped him in the garden that he’s being so agreeable. So generous. But I can tell that he doesn’t want to make a big deal of it, so I nod and thank him.
He hoists five steaming buckets of water up the stairs to the bath, dumping them into the tub until it’s full. “Ye’ll find whatever ye need in the cupboard.” He nods at the bathroom vanity, then pauses, looks at me a moment, before turning in the doorway. “I’ll leave ye to it.”
He seems uncomfortable. Maybe it’s the image of me sinking into the bath, unclothed.
A woman in his house who isn’t his wife.
Who is, by all means, a stranger. But I wait for the sound of his footsteps to fade down the stairs, before kneeling and opening the cupboard doors.
Inside, I find a glass jar filled with sea salt, dried lavender, and something green, maybe rosemary.
This was his wife’s, of course. I can’t imagine he would use such things when he bathes.
The salts are something she probably made herself—salt from the sea, boiled down, and herbs grown and tended by her own hand.
I unscrew the metal lid and inhale. I nearly tip over, I nearly let out a tiny sob.
I hadn’t realized how much I’ve craved the feeling of something familiar.
A scent I know from home—herbal and floral.
I pour a small amount into the bath—not wanting to use too much—and I watch the salts sink and dissolve as I strip out of my clothes, then step into the warmth.
Tears start falling. Silent, wordless.
I let them fill the tub.
Dirt and sweat and relief.
I run my hands down my face, my arms, ridding myself of a layer of garden soil.
I tip my head back against the edge of the tub and breathe in the humid air, savoring the weightlessness.
The clean, civilized feeling of my skin.
And a sense of hope stirs in my gut, a certainty that I will find a way off this island. That everything will be okay.
Someday soon, I will lie in my own tub, on the second floor of my rented home—cars speeding by outside, hot water running straight from the faucet, bubbles spilling over, James downstairs opening a bottle of wine he brought home from the café.
Someday soon, this will all be a memory, a story I will tell at dinner parties: the time I survived Saltwell Island.
But all too soon reality finds me, the water growing tepid, my skin starting to prick with gooseflesh. I rise, wrapping one of the gray towels around me and drawing in a final breath—filling my lungs with lavender—before stepping out into the hall.
But Clay is there, moving away toward the stairs. Beside the bedroom door, I see that he’s left a fresh pair of clothes.
“Thank you,” I say.
His eyes flash back to me, and he nods before continuing down the stairs.
I dress in the bedroom. The clean pair of linen slacks are softer than the others I’d been wearing, and a dark tan color.
The light green sweater is surprisingly delicate, draping easily across my shoulders, as if it were made for me—something I’d wear back home.
These must be her good clothes. The ones he didn’t want me to wear before. Kept safe in a drawer, perhaps.
I can smell the potatoes boiling in the kitchen, but I hear Clay’s footsteps on the stairs and the slosh of water being poured into the bathtub once again. He’s preparing a bath for himself.
We will both feel the comfort of clean skin tonight.
While he bathes—something that takes half the time of my bath—I finish preparing the potatoes and steam the handful of clams he gathered from the shore earlier in the morning, seasoning it all with sea salt and fresh thyme from the garden.
I’ve just set the table with two plates, two forks, and two cotton napkins, when he enters the kitchen—hair still damp, eyelashes glistening, dressed in wool slacks and a white cotton shirt. He looks relaxed, a softness about him I’ve never seen before, and I can’t help but smile.
He brushes past me, expressionless, and picks up the large bowl of potatoes, placing it at the center of the table. But when he sits across from me, his features pull together, looking from me to the table, then back again.
“What is it?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Nothing.” But I can see a shiver in his eyes, a thought, something he won’t say.
“Did I forget something?” Maybe I did something wrong with the clams, the potatoes. Maybe I used the wrong silverware, or I’ve disturbed something of his I shouldn’t have.
“Nae… no.” He lifts his eyes back to me, mouth settled into an easy line. “Ye just… that scent, lavender, is it?”
I nod.
“It reminds me… it smells like—” His voice breaks off. “It’s been a long time.”
“I’m sorry if—maybe I shouldn’t have—”
He shakes his head, smiles at me—barely, like his mouth isn’t used to the movement. “It’s… nice. I forgot how much I’ve missed it.” He nods to himself. “It reminds me of another time, summer days when the light stays long in the sky.”
I don’t know what to say. I’m quiet for a moment too long. “When did you last… I mean, when was it summer here, last?”
He exhales, using his fork to slide several potatoes onto his plate. “Hard to say. Months. But it’s not summer exactly, there are no seasons on the island. It’s the tide that decides the weather.”
I can tell he tries to speak more clearly with me, in words I understand.
His tone flattened, taking on a steady American lilt.
“What do you mean?” I ask, filling my plate with potatoes and several clams. I feel hungrier today than I have in days, working in the garden, and the soak in the tub has renewed my appetite.
“A year or so back, the island blew south. The air warmed, the sea too. I stayed for a couple weeks before the tide, or fate, sent me back north.”
“You have no control over where you go?”
“Nae.” A tiny smile edges along his lips. “To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.”
I stare back at him.
“It’s somethin’ my father used to say.”
His life has been at the mercy or cruelty of the sea. And I can’t imagine what he’s seen out here. What he’s lived through. Alone.
“Have you ever wanted to leave the island?” I ask. “Return to the mainland, to Scotland?”
His eyes settle, calm and thoughtful. “I dinnae belong in that world… yer world.” His voice is level, sure. “I’ve seen parts of it, when the island runs aground, an’ I know there’s nothing for me beyond this place.”
He spears a bit of potato, chewing quietly, and I watch him from across the table. I wish I could see more of his face through the scruff of his beard, maybe I’d be able to decipher his meaning when he speaks. So much of him is unreadable.
“Do you ever feel lonely?”
Wind rattles the window above the sink, then falls quiet. “We’re all alone inside ourselves,” he answers. But there is no sadness in his words, no melancholy. As if he was simply stating a fact, benign and harmless. A quiet truth.
I glance briefly to the locket hanging beside the stove, shivering in the firelight. “I’m sorry,” I say. “For taking it all those years ago. I was just a kid. I didn’t know what it was… what it meant.” I hope I sound earnest; I hope he can hear the regret in my voice.
He doesn’t turn, doesn’t look at the locket, but he nods. “Aye, I knew it would find a way back here eventually.” When his eyes lift, there is a sudden quiet in him—pensive, thoughtful. He is a man who has seen the far edges of the ocean, a man with nothing to prove. And nothing left to lose.
“How did you know it would come back?”
He leans back in his chair, considering this. “It belongs here,” he answers, his tone plaintive, infused with memory. “The island is…” He hesitates, searching for the words. “It grips yer heart an’ winnae let go. Anything taken from this place will always return.”
I think of the years that have passed since I first stepped on the island, how desperate I was to forget it. But it was always there, at the center of my chest like a second beating heart that begged to see the island once more.
To return.
Maybe I would always find my way back here. The island wouldn’t let me go.
I force my eyes away from him, swallowing. My head buzzing. “The shell—” I say, nodding at the locket. “My nana gave it to me when I was little. I’ve worn it every day since.”
This time he turns, eyeing the white shell that hangs suspended on the chain, pressed against his locket. Without a word, he stands up, pushing back the chair, and walks to the woodstove.
His fingers touch the chain, the locket, and I hold my breath.
Carefully, he unclasps the chain—his hands surprisingly deft—and he lets the locket slide into his palm. He looks down at it a moment, eyes heavy, then places it quickly into the pocket of his pants.
“I suppose we’ve both taken something from the other,” he says, moving back to the table and holding the chain out to me. “My apologies.”
I lift the chain, careful that our hands don’t touch.
Relief swells through me as I run my thumb across the fanned ridges of the shell, and I close my eyes, remembering Nana’s face, the softness of her smile each morning at breakfast when I still lived at home. The worry in her eyes as she waved goodbye the last time I saw her.
“I know what it is to miss someone,” he adds.
I open my eyes. My loss is nothing compared to his. He will never see his wife again, but I will see Nana again. I will get off this island and return to James. My loss is only temporary. His can’t be undone.