The Night Mark(54)

“You said you have bourbon?”

“Don’t tell,” he said. “Want some?”

“Sure,” she said. Carrick ran his hand along the inside of an unused feeding trough and pulled out a flask.

He handed it to her. Faye eyed it before unscrewing the cap and taking a sip. It hit her right between the eyes and she coughed.

“Good stuff,” she said, handing him back the flask. “Where’d you get it? Hartwell?”

“Hartwell?”

“Dolly said he’s a bootlegger. That’s why she’s scared of him.”

“Makes sense. I found this in the house after the Landrys moved out.” Carrick took a sip and then another before hiding the flask in the trough under some old hay. “But you didn’t hear that from me.”

“I didn’t hear a thing,” she said. Nanny butted Faye’s leg with her head. “I am not drunk enough for this.”

“Would you like some help?” Carrick said.

“Yes, please.”

Carrick chuckled softly, shook his head.

“As I live and breathe, I never thought I’d be teaching a girl in her underthings how to milk a goat. Where’s the bucket?”

“Here,” Faye said, handing him the bucket. “And it’s hot out. Why should I wear all my clothes when no one but you can see me and it’s summer in South Carolina?”

“There’s a good answer for that.”

“What is it?”

“Put your clothes on and maybe I’ll remember.”

Faye rolled her eyes, laughed back and in her laughter realized she forgot for a split second he wasn’t Will. Only Will had ever made her laugh so easily. Only Will had ever made her so comfortable with herself. Only Will knew how to tease her so that she felt better about herself, not worse. A rare gift, and it seemed Carrick had that gift, too.

“Ahem. The goat?”

“Right. Where’s the bucket?”

“In your hands,” she said.

“Right,” he said. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“We have to wash the bucket.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” Faye said. She followed him into the house and watched him pour bleach into the bucket and swish it around. It smelled like a swimming pool but she supposed that was better than contracting some sort of hard-core 1921 bacterial infection.

“Hands,” Carrick said. She put her hands over the sink, and Carrick rinsed them with chlorinated water. At least in 1921 they knew about bacteria and sanitation. Better than trying to survive in 1821.

“Feels like I’m scrubbing in for surgery,” Faye said.

“Surgery?”

“Oh, you know. Doctors have to scrub their hands and arms before performing surgery. So I hear,” she said hastily.

“Ah, well, I’m cautious as a rule. My sister died of tainted milk. Killed her and her baby.”

“I’m sorry,” Faye said. “That’s so awful.”

“I hadn’t seen her in years, but it still hurt to hear.”

“You have any other family?”

He shook his head. “Not anymore. Nothing closer than a cousin or two out there somewhere. Mam died so young, and Dad, he never remarried.”

“That’s hard. I’m sorry. And you never got married?” She cringed inwardly. Surely Faith would know something like that. She shouldn’t ask so many questions. But how would she survive here if she didn’t?

“I’d planned on marrying Violet, but you know how it was. The flu took down more nurses than anybody in ’18.”

Flu. 1918. Faye racked her brain. That was the year of the Spanish flu pandemic, wasn’t it? Of course a flu pandemic would target nurses. It sounded as if Carrick had lost as many people he loved as Faye had. Even more. Job, Father Pat had said. The man who lost everything. And yet, unlike Job, Carrick still seemed to have kept his head up.

“It’s very hard to lose someone you love. I know how hard.”

“I don’t know if it was love, really,” Carrick said. “But we got along well enough.”

Carrick picked up a dish towel and wiped her hands with it. She let him do it even though she could have done it herself.

“Did you love him? Marshall?”

“I married him,” she said. “Maybe I did at one point.”

“You know it was your mother that wanted the match.”

Another clue.

“No,” Faye said. “I didn’t love him. But I loved someone else once, before him. And I lost him. And I lost myself when I lost him. And when you’re lost like I was, lost at sea, it felt like...”

“Any port in a storm?” Carrick asked, smiling.

She nodded, tears in her eyes.

“Any port in a storm,” she said.

“You’ll be safe in this harbor,” Carrick said, nodding around him. “Safe from him.”

“He won’t look for me here?” Faye asked.

“He might,” Carrick said. “But it’s me he’ll find. It’s me he’ll find, and he’ll wish he never looked.”

Faye kissed him on the cheek. She hadn’t meant to but she did it.