Chapter Nine
Dean sat cross-legged on the end of the dock, watching the sun rise.
The Sound was rough now at the changing of the tides. Waves slapped against the old sailboat that bobbed alongside the dock. The lines creaked and moaned.
He heard the sound of motors in the distance, and he smiled.
The fishing boats were going out. They were too far away to see clearly—they were, as always, hugging the coast of Shaw Island on their way to Haro Strait—but Dean had seen it all a thousand times, the battered, rattrap boats, made of painted wood or aluminum, setting out for the day.
How many times had he and Ruby stood on a dock somewhere, watching Rand’s boat chug out to sea?
She’d always squeezed Dean’s hand at the last moment, when the Captain Hook rounded the point and disappeared.
He had known, without her ever having to tell him, that she lived with a tiny bit of fear that one day her father wouldn’t return.
Dean had taken his watch off when he arrived on Lopez Island, so he wasn’t sure how long he sat there. All he knew was that by the time the sun gained strength and heated his cheeks, he’d been there long enough.
Tiredly, he got to his feet and turned around. To his right, the old family sailboat bobbed wearily in the tide.
The mast—once a bright white—had been discolored by the endless rain and pitted by the wind. Red sides had been scraped down to bare wood in a dozen places, and the deck around the big metal steering wheel was hidden beneath a layer of blackened, slimy leaves and green-gray mold.
Of course, that was when he heard her voice: Let’s take out the Wind Lass, Dino, come on!
He closed his eyes, remembering Ruby. In the beginning, he’d flinched at every memory, held his breath, and waited for the images to pass, but then the memories had started to fade, and he’d gone in search of them, reaching out like a blind man.
Now he understood how precious were his memories of first love, and he treasured both their pleasure and their pain.
He grabbed the line and pulled the boat closer to the dock, then stepped aboard. The boat undulated unsteadily, as if surprised to be boarded after so many lonely years.
He had always felt free on this boat. The flapping sound of sails catching wind had buoyed his spirits like nothing else.
He and Eric had spent so much of their youth on the Wind Lass.
On these teak decks, they’d spun dreams for a future that stretched out years and years.
Though neither of them had ever said it aloud, they’d both imagined growing old on this boat, bringing wives and children and grandchildren aboard.
Dean loved to sail, and yet he’d walked away from it, let sailing be part of the life he’d left behind . . .
Obviously Eric had done the same. The Wind Lass could have been docked in Seattle, a stone’s throw from Eric’s house, and yet here she sat, untended and untouched.
And suddenly Dean knew what he needed to do.
He would restore the Wind Lass. Scrape the old paint away, strip the wood and re-oil it, scrub its every inch. He’d take this forgotten, once-loved boat and return it to its past glory.
If he could get Eric out here for an afternoon—just that, a single afternoon—maybe the wind and the sea could take them back in time . . .
Ruby woke to the smell of frying bacon and brewing coffee. Snagging yesterday’s leggings off the floor, she pulled them on underneath her long nightshirt and hurried through her morning bathroom routine, then padded downstairs.
Nora was in the kitchen, maneuvering the wheelchair like General Patton along the front.
There were two cast-iron skillets on the stove, one with steam climbing out.
A yellow crockery mixing bowl sat by the empty skillet; a metal-handled spoon rested against its side.
She smiled up at Ruby. “Good morning. Did you sleep well?”
“Fine.” She stumbled past the wheelchair and poured herself a cup of coffee, adding sugar and cream.
After a sip, she felt more human. Leaning back against the cupboards, she saw that her mother had made bacon and pancakes. “I haven’t eaten a breakfast like this since you left us.”
It was obviously an effort for her mother to keep smiling. “Do you want me to put an M-and-M face on your pancakes like I used to?”
“No, thanks. I try to avoid carbohydrates layered with chocolate.”
Ruby set the table, then dished up two plates and sat down.
Nora sat down across from her. “Did you sleep well last night?” she asked, pouring syrup in a tiny puddle by her pancakes.
Ruby had forgotten that her mother dipped each bite of pancake into syrup. The quirk reminded her of all the bits and pieces of their common life; the things that inextricably bound a mother and daughter, whether Ruby wanted those ties or not. “You already asked me that.”
Nora’s fork clanged on the plate edge. “Tomorrow I’ll remember to wear a Kevlar vest under my nightgown.”
“What am I supposed to do? Be like Caroline—pretend everything is fine between us?”
“My relationship with Caroline is not for you to judge,” Nora said sharply, looking up at her.
“You’ve always thought you knew everything.
I used to think it was a good trait for a girl to have, but there’s a dark side to all that certainty, Ruby.
You . . . hurt people.” Ruby saw her mother swell up with anger, and then as quickly fade into a tired thinness.
“But I suppose it’s not entirely your fault. ”
“Not entirely? How about not at all my fault?”
“I left Caroline, too. It didn’t make her cold and hard and unable to love people.”
Now that pissed Ruby off. “Who said I couldn’t love people? I lived with Max for five years.”
“And where is he now?”
Ruby pushed back from the table and stood up. Suddenly she wanted distance between them.
Nora looked up. There was a gentle understanding in her gaze that didn’t sit well with Ruby. “Sit down. We won’t talk about anything that matters. I’ll comment on the weather, if you like.”
Ruby felt like a fool standing there, breathing too hard, showing exactly how deeply she’d been wounded by her mother’s remark.
“Ruby Elizabeth, sit down and eat your breakfast.” Her mother spoke in one of those voices that immediately turned a grown woman into a child. Ruby did as she was told.
Nora took a bite of bacon. Her chewing was a loud crunch-crunch-crunch. “We need to go grocery shopping.”
“Fine.”
“How about this morning?”
Ruby nodded. Finishing her last bite, she stood up and began cleaning the table. “I’ll do the dishes. We’ll leave in about thirty minutes?”
“Make it an hour. I have to figure out how in the hell to do a sponge bath.”
“I could lasso your leg and lower you into the bath like an anchor.”
Nora laughed. “No, thanks. I don’t want to drown naked with my leg stuck up in the air. The tabloids would have a field day with that.”
The remark took a moment to sink in. When it did, Ruby turned back to the table. “I wouldn’t let you drown.”
“I know. But would you rescue me?” Without waiting for an answer, Nora spun around and rolled into her bedroom, shutting the door behind her.
Ruby stood there, staring at the closed door.
Would you rescue me?
The Benevolent Order of the Sisters of St. Francis had first come to Summer Island during World War One.
A generous donor (who had no doubt lived a life that imperiled his immortal soul) had granted them more than one hundred waterfront acres.
The sisters, who were equally high-minded in spiritual and business matters, had opened a general store next to the dock that would become the ferry terminal.
On the rolling acreage behind the store, they’d built a sanctuary that tourists never saw.
They raised cattle and owned the most profitable apple orchard on the island.
They wove their own cloth, dyed it with extracts from their own gardens, and hand-stitched it into brown robes.
Their sanctuary was open to any of their order, as well as to any woman who sought refuge from an unhappy life.
Such women were welcomed into the fold and given that precious commodity so missing from the hectic, violent outside world: time.
Here, they could don the clothing of their grandmothers, do the simple chores required of subsistence living, and commune with the God they felt they’d lost.
On Sundays, the sisters opened their small wooden chapel to their friends and neighbors.
A priest from the monastery on a nearby island conducted quiet services in Latin.
It was a humble church, where no one minded the cries of bored babies or the emptiness of a collection plate when times turned hard.
Theirs was still the only store on the island. Ruby pulled the minivan into the gravel parking lot behind the “He Will Provide” grocery store and parked beside a rusty pickup truck.
She helped Nora into the chair. Together they made their way down the rickety wooden boardwalk that connected the town’s three buildings.
Wisteria grew along the posts that supported the roof’s overhang and festooned the upper timbers with fragrant white flowers.
Here and there along the boardwalk were benches, handmade by the sisters.
Later in the tourist season, those seats would be filled by people waiting for a ferry.
Ruby came to the store’s screen door and pulled it open. A bell tinkled gaily overhead as they wheeled inside. The murky store was long and narrow, built like a shoe box.
Light pushed through the twin windows and illuminated a small desk with a cash register on it.
Beyond that, layered wooden bookcases held carefully arranged dried goods.
A small freezer offered all manner of island-raised meat—beef, chicken, pork, lamb—and a refrigerated case held vegetables grown on the sisters’ own land.
The nun at the cash register looked up at their entrance.