The Night Mark(46)

“To bed,” Faye said. “He sleeps during the day and works all night.”

“Sleeping all day and working all night doesn’t sound like much of a life to me. If I’m going to be up all night, it sure as sin ain’t going to be for work,” Hartwell said, his smile widening. He wore his grin the way other men wore a gun.

“It suits me fine,” Carrick said.

“Better you than me.” Hartwell slapped Carrick on the back and the two of them set off.

Once they disappeared from view, Faye returned to the kitchen to finish her breakfast. The eggs had gone runny and the bacon cold, but it still tasted better than anything she’d let herself eat in a long time. Lard and sugar and butter and eggs—the four food groups of traditional Southern cooking.

Dolly had finished eating, washed her own dishes and put them away. Faye didn’t see her anywhere, so she assumed she’d gone upstairs to work or hide. Faye didn’t blame her for that. She’d hide from Hartwell next time he came to visit, too.

Faye put her dishes in the sink and stared blankly at them. She didn’t see any dish soap anywhere. She felt guilty for taking her automatic dishwasher for granted all these years. When she got home, she’d get on her knees in the kitchen of the Church Street house and kiss Miss Lizzie’s dishwasher.

If she ever got home.

Outside the house, Faye heard the sound of male voices calling back and forth to each other. She heard an engine start and the sound of a boat on the water zipping away.

Good riddance.

Carrick came back in the house through the back door. She glanced at him over her shoulder as she ran water over her plate.

“How hard did you hit your head last night?” Carrick demanded, coming to stand by the sink.

“I didn’t hit my head last night,” she said. “Or if I did hit it, I don’t remember doing it. Which could be the case if I hit my head.”

“You told Hartwell you were engaged?”

“I don’t want him out here sniffing around Dolly or me. Did you hear what he said about her?”

“I heard. Arrogant shit,” he said, shaking his head. “Sorry.”

“You can swear in front of me. I am engaged to a sailor. I’ve heard salty talk before.”

“I wish you’d told me before you told Hartwell that was your story. I looked like an ass out there with my mouth hanging open.”

“It just came to me when he asked me to go to Charleston with him. I’d rather go swimming with sharks than out with him.”

“He’s not that bad,” Carrick said, and she gave him the cockeyed stare she’d given Will when he claimed something “wasn’t that bad” that was, in fact, “that bad.” Like when he’d come home from a road trip with a “not that bad” bruise the side of a cantaloupe on his back courtesy of a ninety-two-miles-per-hour wild pitch.

“All right, he’s that bad,” Carrick conceded.

“He scares Dolly. Does she know him?”

“No idea. You better ask her what she knows about him, then.”

“Me? Why me?”

Carrick gripped the ledge of the green tile of the kitchen counter and shrugged. “You know, it might be a female thing.”

Faye rolled her eyes.

“I’ll talk to her,” she said. “After I do the dishes. You finish your breakfast.”

Carrick nodded and went to the table.

“I’m sorry,” she said, wiping her plate with a wet rag. “I didn’t mean to let my real age slip out like that.”

Carrick stabbed at his eggs with his fork.

“Not your fault. We got nothing but lies lying around here. Easy to trip over one.”

“I tripped,” she said. “I’ll try not to trip again.”

She dried her dishes and put them away as Carrick finished his breakfast. When he was done he tossed his plaid napkin on the table and leaned back in his chair.

“It was smart,” he said.

“What was?”

“You telling Hartwell you were engaged to a sailor. Men can be out to sea for months, for years. And Hartwell seems like the gossiping sort. Once it gets around town you’re engaged, we won’t have to worry about suitors showing up. It was smart, even if you did catch me off guard.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I heard a story about the sister of a lighthouse keeper who was engaged to a sailor. He shipped out and never came back. She waited for him all her life.”

“Was that in a book you read?”

Faye started to say no but then thought better of it. Last year she and Hagen had gone to Savannah on a four-day vacation. He’d wanted to cheer them both up after a failed intrauterine insemination treatment. They’d played good tourists on that trip and had taken a carriage ride around town. The tour guide had pointed out a statue of a woman, the lighthouse keeper’s sister, who’d greeted every single ship that came into port by waving a white towel at them in the hopes her beloved was on board and returning to her. By 2014 the woman was a local legend. In 1921, she was someone Faye could have tea with.

“Yes, I read it in a book a long time ago.”

Carrick stood up and brought his dishes to the sink. Faye tried to take them from him, and he gave her yet another confused look.