Chapter 44 #2
“Of course. But she had made the effort for me, and I didn’t want to turn down a paying gig.
My goal is—was—to pay my own way with her.
She said she needed time alone. She was drowning in everything—the responsibility for everyone’s happiness, doing the right thing for Sam, for everyone she loved, and for us.
I told her all I needed was her. She didn’t answer.
” He coughed as if he was choking. Tears streamed from his eyes.
Kate felt tense, watching him. His emotion was hot, pouring off him. She felt it on her own face, scalding her cheeks.
“I had no idea what to think,” he said, sounding as if he was about to explode.
“Maybe she’d changed her mind about us—the guilt, the pressure, was too much for her.
I’ll be honest; I was pissed. Hurt, whatever.
” The anger seemed to leak out of him. He took a deep breath and peered at Kate.
“Can you believe that? I wasted all that time feeling sorry for myself when she needed me.”
Kate couldn’t reply or even look at him.
“You hate me?” he asked. “Well, I hate myself. What if I’d gone earlier and could have stopped it?”
“Yeah, what if you had?”
“I would never have thought of what happened to her. That he could do what he did to her.” His voice broke again. “Kill her.”
“Did Pete think the baby was yours?” Kate asked. She felt sick, thinking of what he might have done to Beth if he had.
“I have no idea.”
“You just said you were pissed. You could have refused to go to Fishers Island. You must have known there would be fireworks if Beth gave him that kind of news.”
“You have no idea how guilty I feel about that. I think about it every day. What did she tell him; how did he react? What was that last day of life for her? I drive myself crazy thinking about it. Nothing you say can make me feel worse than I do already.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, her throat tight, knowing how much time she spent thinking about Beth’s last day too.
He stood up, started to leave. Her hand shot out and grabbed his wrist.
“Don’t go,” she said. “Jed, I’m just so glad my sister was loved. That she was happy with you. I believe you when you say that.”
“She was. We both were.”
“The drawing you did of her—it was beautiful. I could tell, just by looking at it, that you adored her.”
“That’s the word I would use too,” he said.
“Can I ask you—how did you decide where to pitch your tent?”
“Beth,” he said. “She took me to the island to draw flowers, but then she showed me that spot up the hill. It was private, under the pines, and she loved the sound of the brook.”
The brook.
Kate looked at his face, still streaked with tears. He had a faraway gaze in his eyes, as if everything he cared about was distant. What did it feel like to adore someone and to be loved this way?
“Can I see your ring?” she asked.
He pulled it off his finger, placed it in her palm. The metal felt warm.
“You designed it, you said?” she asked.
“We both did. The hearts were hers, the words were mine. Same line on both rings. My idea. I wanted the line to be about her, for her, and I needed it next to my skin.”
Kate held the ring to the flickering Edison bulb in the brass sconce on the wall. The line was engraved in tiny script, but she knew it well.
“It’s from a poem she used to read to me,” Jed said.
Kate closed her eyes and couldn’t speak. The words were from “West-Running Brook.” Beth and Jed were each other’s north, and the brook ran west.
“Pete thought—lots of people did—that Beth was settled, that what you saw with her was what you got, a lady who lived in a big house and dealt with high-priced art and rich collectors. She was so much more than that. She wanted to give it all up for me, go everywhere, feel everything.”
Kate was silent, thinking of the poem: contraries in love.
“She wouldn’t have given Sam up,” she said after a moment.
“No. Never. She would have fought him for Sam—we both would have.”
Kate turned the ring to see the other markings. The hearts were Beth’s, Jed had said. Under each were three dots.
“Ellipses? To be continued?” she asked.
“No. Those are drops of blood.”
Kate’s pulse quickened. She pictured the scrawled hearts on the back of the canvas and on the last page of Vasari’s The Lives of the Artists, the book at Mathilda’s house.
“Blood hearts,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, sounding surprised. “That’s what she called them.”
“Did you ever see Moonlight? The painting?”
“She told me about it. How it was stolen during that time, when they tied you up and your mother died.”
“You never saw the back of it, the unpainted side? What was drawn there?”
“No,” he said. “She never even showed me the canvas. Why are you asking about the back?”
“No reason,” Kate said, still staring at the hearts on the ring. “I was just wondering.” Then, “Where did she keep her ring?”
Jed reached into his pocket, pulled it out, placed it on the table.
It was beautiful, smaller than Jed’s. Beth had worn it. Kate picked it up. She closed her eyes and felt her sister’s passion. She turned it over and over in her hand, but Jed reached over and took it from her before she could slip it onto her own finger.