Between Here and the Horizon(12)

Carrick had parked the taxi in what appeared to be the parking lot of a dock. The concrete underfoot was cracked and buckled all over the place. Small two-man boats lay on their keels in a makeshift dry dock close by, rusting, sprouting shoots of ryegrass out of their hulls and weatherworn decks.

I’d lived by the beach all my life, and yet I had never smelled anything like this before. The air was filled with salt and brine, raw and powerful at the back of my nose.

“You’re on the six-forty crossing. I’ll carry your bags down to the boat, Miss. Do you think you’ll be fine from there? Better for me to get going back to the city, see.”

Thanks to the fresh, snapping breeze that was tearing in over the water, I was wide-awake, but my brain slowed down so rapidly that it felt like it was almost in reverse whenever I tried to understand the words coming out of Carrick’s mouth. I nodded, throwing my purse strap over my head. “Of course. Thank you.”

The boat service to Causeway Island was more fishing trawler than ferry. Wet plastic seats. Slick deck, with diamond plate panels drilled to the floor for grip. Rusted handrails, painted over so many times that a rainbow of colors were visible in the lengths of steel that had been scraped here and there—festive bruises to the ship’s décor that made me smile.

The old guy captaining the ship was surly, toothless and unfriendly. He didn’t say a word as I got onto the boat, and he still didn’t speak as we sat there, pitching to and fro while he apparently waited for more passengers who never came. It was close to seven o’clock by the time he abandoned his post and gunned the boat’s engines, pulling out of the tiny harbor. Port Creef disappeared behind us, to be replaced by a swathe of gunmetal gray water, frosted with white peaks.

The ride was short and choppy. God, I felt so sick. Turned inside out, to the point that I considered leaning over the side of the boat and puking at one point. Wouldn’t have gone down well, though. The wiry guy behind the wheel at the front of the boat kept casting shifty glances in my direction, as though he was expecting half as much from me and was prepared and ready to throw me overboard if he needed to.

The Causeway emerged on the horizon, a smudge of color, dark and black. The island wasn’t a charming swathe of land that rose gracefully out of the ocean like the arched hump of a whale; it was the angular bunched muscle, tendon and bone of a clenched fist, punching its way toward the sky with a defiance that seemed at odds with the lazy, quiet way the people who occupied its surface generally went about their day (according to Google). The color of the sky was still bleak and promised rain, but in spite of myself I couldn’t help but find a savage beauty in the place.

On a shore of ocean-rounded rocks and coarse sand, an old man named Hilary was waiting for me. Dressed in a prim suit with a deep purple tie, there had never been a man so out of place in all the world. He didn’t look like he belonged here, in this strange, wild, mystical place, but then again I’m sure I didn’t either. “I see you made it safely, then, Miss Lang.” He took my huge hard case luggage, packed to the point of bursting with clothes and books, and carried it off easily in the direction of a mud-splattered Land Rover that was parked twenty feet away.

“Looks that way,” I agreed. I wasn’t too sure if I meant it, though. Part of me felt missing, like I’d carved out a chunk of my heart and forgotten to bring it with me on the flight from California.

“Ronan and the children are already up at the house. If you like, we can drive around the island and I can point out where the amenities are before we head back there. You won’t be expected to start work until tomorrow, so today’s all yours. You can sleep if you’re jetlagged, or you could go for a wander, have an explore or whatever.” It sounded like the idea of exploring the island bored the back teeth off him.

I opted for a quick tour and then back to the house. Sleep wasn’t on the cards after dozing all the way from the airport in the back of Carrick’s taxi, but the effort of being on the road for so long had wiped me out. Lying on my bed, reading and relaxing in the quiet, sounded perfect right now.

Hilary showed me where the local grocery store was, the post office, the bank. He drove me from what he called the Church Quarter all the way across the other end of the island—a grand total of twenty minutes in the car—to a town called Richmond, to show me a beautiful, sweeping lake there. After that, he announced that it was time to go back to The Big House.

“The big house?”

“That’s what everyone calls it, the Fletcher’s place. It’s been in the family for generations. Real old Irish estate money, apparently. A lot of people from the island used to be employed there back in Victorian times. Cooks, service staff, groundsmen, that kind of thing. No one’s been living there for a long time now. I think the residents are still in shock when they see the boss tearing around on his motorcycle.”

Huh. Ronan was old money. That explained a lot. He exuded an air of entitlement that went beyond his position as director of the Fletcher Corporation. He wasn’t New York businessman arrogant, as Mom suspected. He was wealthy third generation Irish landowner arrogant. And where the hell did he even get a motorcycle out here?

I was nervous about seeing him. Nervous in a strange, girly way, which was absolutely crazy. He’d been shitty to me in my interview. He’d managed to strip me down and somehow make me feel less than an inch tall in a period of fifteen minutes, and still his looks and his confidence unsettled me. I shouldn’t let it happen, but every time I remembered him entering into his office and sitting down at his desk in front of me, I was helplessly undone. Six months I had to live in the same household as him. Six months was a long time. I was either going to be helplessly in love with the * by the time mid-April rolled around, or I was going to hate him more than anyone else on the face of the planet.