Chapter 20
Hemlock Cove, Maine, the place of my original birth, is a two-and-a-half-hour drive away. Tiny flurries dot the air when we’re an hour outside the little harbor town, and when I start to smell salt in the air, it’s begun to snow in gentle earnest.
I suck in a breath when we pass a wooden sign that reads Hemlock Cove, something stirring deep within me.
Through the gathering of the falling snow, the unending horizon of the vast ocean appears, and the streets shrink to narrow cobblestone.
A looming structure appears as we drive farther into the little town, and when it takes shape through the cold fog, I realize it’s a lighthouse.
A sharp and brutal longing seizes me.
“Your father was its keeper,” Hayden says, watching me. “He tended the lighthouse, ensured safe harbor to all.” There’s a tiny pause. “He was a good man.”
This is all so much. It feels strange to mourn a life I have no memory of, to long for a man who’s been gone for centuries.
As we pass the clinking sailboats bobbing in the choppy waves, the charming little storefront windows that sell locally made fudge and soap and fresh-baked bread, I fall more and more in love with this town, its symphony of ocean waves and seagulls, its moody scent of woodsmoke and fog, the briny cling of the air.
“Was I happy here?” I whisper. It’s still so strange, asking someone else to tell me the inner workings of my heart.
I don’t think I’d be okay with trusting anyone but Hayden with such knowledge.
He cradles the weight of that knowledge; even now, he falls solemn and doesn’t answer until he pulls into a tiny parking lot along the harbor and turns off the car.
“The happiest,” he says quietly. “We both were. For a time.” Before I can ask him to elaborate, he shoves open the driver’s door and gets out.
My breath wreathes me like a halo when I step out into the cold, white day. Hayden rounds the car to brush snowflakes from my dark hair, my eyelashes. There’s a melancholy to him here, more than usual, at least, a grief in his gaze he either won’t or cannot hide.
“This was once all forest,” he says. Behind him, a swirl of snow-bitten wind shoves a row of sailboats against each other, clanging and clattering over the slap of the water. Seagulls are diving in the water, crying for their meal.
The most stunning thing, though, is the lighthouse.
The great lamp at the top has switched on now that the snow has darkened the sky, the fog of the sea grown thick with ice.
It sweeps in a circle, and I imagine my first father sitting there, drinking something hot, all wind-chafed skin and steely eyes.
Did he have a beard? Did he like Hayden?
“Behind you.” Hayden points. I look up, find the sorrowful blue of his gaze has gained amethyst edges when he looks over my shoulder. “Behind you is where I saw you for the first time.”
I whirl around. There’s a shabby, tiny shed meant to be a paying station. It looks perpetually closed. Beyond that is a small shop that sells fishing equipment and live bait, a brick road that winds up a hill lined with colorful houses.
“I can’t picture it,” I whisper. He moves beside me, my shoulder brushing his arm.
“Your father took his supper in the forest every afternoon. I’d wandered down from Canada, lost. A mess.
” Hayden presses his tongue to the inside of his cheek, rueful.
“I was thirsty, and he was so strong. I could feel his heart beating miles away. But that day, I guess, he’d forgotten his lunch pail at home.
You brought it to him. The flutter of your pulse was so sweet, a surprise.
You surprised me,” he says, voice distant.
“Why didn’t you drink from me?” I look up at him, but he doesn’t meet my eyes. He looks ashamed.
“Have you ever been chased by a barking dog? Running only makes them hungrier for the hunt. They say that sometimes, if you turn around and sprint right at it, it stops, confused. Occasionally, it’ll flee, surprised.
” Hayden turns to me. “Here I was, top of the food chain, and here you were, this little flower of a human, with your soot-covered face, floppy ribbon, and big silver eyes, coming right up to me, one of the deadliest predators on this earth. You told me I looked hungry. You offered me your apple.” His laugh is thick, and he wipes a hand across his mouth.
“Like I said, you surprised me. You often do.”
I look back at the pay station, the handwritten sign fluttering in the wind. Closed. Does it count as me if I can’t remember? Hayden shoves his hands in his pockets and jerks his head toward the sea, where a sidewalk moves steadily uphill toward the heart of downtown.
The wind swirls around us, but I know he can’t get cold, so the hunch of his shoulders is something else. The body language of vampires is not easy to translate; they like it that way. Especially my vampire. But I’m learning, and in the set of Hayden’s muscles, I can see it: Grief. Guilt. Shame.
I jog to catch up, then walk beside him.
“Where are we going next?” I ask.
Hayden’s eyes drop to the sidewalk, flick to the weather-worn brick road. “You got me a job assisting your dad at the lighthouse. Every day, you’d meet me at day’s end, and I’d walk you home.” His gaze finds me, that shining, mournful blue. “This is where you first fell in love with me.”
“Oh,” I say, the knowledge so overwhelming, I stop walking for a moment. I look at the snow-covered brick street, wondering if I can see our history in the cracks in the red. Impulsively, I drop to a squat, press both my palms to the freezing road, close my eyes.
The weight of our bodies formed this road. The weight of our love.
I open my eyes to find Hayden looking down at me, his eyes glistening.
I know he’s hurting, but I wish he’d let me hold him.
Wish he’d hold me. But I remind myself that this is new for him too.
This is the first time I’ve known about my past lives.
The first time he’s not needed to hide his grief from me.
I’ll help him carry that burden.
When we reach the top of the hill, Hayden points out a metal bench overlooking the harbor, the cliffs farther down the waterline, the ungodly beauty of the horizon, the expansive stretch of the sea.
“This was just a couple of wooden crates back then,” Hayden says, running a hand across the iron back of the bench. “But it was comfortable enough.”
I wipe snow off the metal so I can sit where he and I once sat two hundred years ago. On the backrest of the bench, there’s a peek of gold through the snow. I wipe it clean to reveal a small inscription engraved on a gleaming plaque.
For my heart, my Rose, who would have wanted you to share her favorite view.
“Hayden?” I turn to him, heart high in my throat. An ocean wind tosses his thick dark hair as he blinks down at the inscription, clears his throat.
“We came here even on rainy days. Hell, probably especially on rainy days. Even when you couldn’t really see it, you loved watching the sun set.” His voice is rough and quiet.
“What about you?” I ask, hungry for details. “Did you love watching the sun set?”
Hayden lifts his eyes to mine. They roam my face, and his lips curve up.
“I loved watching you,” he says. “I…” He turns away, hunching into the wind, continuing his walk toward town. “Come on. Something else I want to show you.”
Hemlock Cove is as historic as they come, nearly every building preserved from the eighteenth century, a brass plaque mounted on every brick wall, a tiny summary of its history. The stirring in my chest grows.
Hayden stops us in front of a small, colonial brick building. The wooden sign swinging above the door reads Hemlock Cove Maritime Museum. He’s looking up at the sign, his brows furrowed, his jaw clenching.
“I’m sorry I’m so…” He shakes his head, making a frustrated sound. I reach out, tentatively take his hand.
A strange part of me is envious. I, of course, am being flayed by the pain of what we once had and lost. The agony on his face is my agony too, as his witness.
But at least he has these memories. At least he knows everything we ever whispered to each other. The little jokes, secrets, moments are lost to time for me.
And those are the moments that are sometimes the most precious. I don’t know Hayden’s pet peeves. I don’t know if he finds slugs gross but doesn’t mind earthworms. I don’t know if he prefers snow or rain. If he likes spring or summer.
I’ve never known Hayden in the spring or summer.
There’s so much I don’t know.
“Don’t apologize,” I end up saying, unsure how to say the rest. “Show me. I want to know as much as I can, Hayden. Please show me?” He lets me hold his hand, squeezing my fingers as we enter the museum.
Hayden pays for us both and walks us to a section labeled Local Artists. He walks us past old seafaring equipment, old pewter cups, and preserved household things. He walks us past a gallery of portraits, straight to a painting in the far corner, one not terribly remarkable at first glance.
The title is simple. Winston, the placard reads. Oil on canvas. Unknown artist. Painted circa 1821.
The painting is of a brown-haired girl, in a plain woolen dress, standing in the doorway of a salt-soaked wooden house on a cliff.
In the ocean fog, the girl cradles a gray pigeon to her chest, pressing a kiss to his small head with her eyes closed, her cheeks a blushing peach.
In her other hand she clutches a small, unfurled note.
On the horizon, the silhouette of a lighthouse looms over the ocean.
The stirring in my chest spreads, exploding into longing and fondness and ache. I’m suddenly having a hard time breathing.
“Recognize her?” murmurs Hayden, his lips brushing my ear, and then I do. I do, I do, I do.
“Is that really me?” I scrabble for his hands behind me, and he takes them, squeezing my fingers just north of too hard.
“And Winston,” Hayden says, pulling me against his chest. “Your father kept a dovecote at the lighthouse, pigeons meant to send us warnings of sudden storms, dangerous winds. I tended to them, and Winston was your favorite.” I feel him drop his forehead against the top of my skull.
“He was the one that carried our letters back and forth from your house to the lighthouse, sometimes several times a day. Drove your dad nuts. Your neighbor was an artist, and you were there all the time, learning how to mix pigments, find new colors.” He pulls back to look down at me.
“You’ve always had a knack for that sort of thing. Bringing beauty to life in the world.”
“Winston,” I echo, trying not to cry.
“I know,” Hayden says faintly. “For the longest time, I wanted this painting for myself. Went to auctions, tracked it down. But as soon as I had it, I…” He steps away from me, and even though he has no body heat, the air is frigid in his absence.
“I wanted to share you. Letting others fall in love with you felt like a tiny resurrection. I…”
I want to turn around, touch his cheek. But I can’t look away from the joy in my face, my lips on Winston’s tiny feathered head.
I wish I could remember the warm flutter of his bird heart against mine.
I stare at the note in my painted hand. What had Hayden written to me?
There are a thousand notes I don’t know, a million words of love I’ll never hear.
“Come on,” Hayden says, more composed. “You’ll like this next place very much.” I’m about to ask him how he knows, but of course he knows.
It’s because once, a very long time ago, I already told him so.