The Night Mark(74)

Hadn’t Miss Lizzie said most of the furniture in her room came from the lighthouse?

“Dolly...” Faye ran her hand across the wooden surface, worn smooth by time and faded by wear. Dolly’s sewing table. Tears burned Faye’s eyes, and she could barely swallow. Dolly had been real, hadn’t she? She couldn’t have been a dream. Why would Faye’s subconscious have invented a teenage Martha Stewart to be her friend and teach her how to make peach pie? No, surely Dolly was real. She needed Dolly to be real. Dolly had sewn her a pair of linen pants. No figment of her imagination had ever sewn her pants before.

Faye wept as she ate, and she didn’t know why, other than she was homesick, so homesick, but she was already home and it was the wrong home.

When Faye finished eating, she took a shower. She stayed under the water for so long that when she emerged her feet and fingers were wrinkled as raisins. She dried her hair with the blow-dryer, and it felt like a luxury. Everything did. Air-conditioning and hot water in the shower that didn’t have to be rationed because it wasn’t rainwater stored in a cistern. The sandwich from the fridge. The blow-dryer. Face moisturizer. Towels fluffy and soft and smelling of Downy fabric softener.

Back in her room, she pulled the heather-gray Sox T-shirt out of her suitcase, the only one of Will’s shirts she’d kept. She put it on and crawled into bed and waited for sleep. She knew then that whatever she’d been through, whatever had happened, it hadn’t been a nightmare. Maybe a dream, but never a nightmare. How could it be a nightmare if she wanted to have it again?

Faye slept but did not dream. In the murky light of almost morning, during those last gray minutes between dark and dawn, Faye remembered the turtle. Two nights and ninety-four years ago, she’d been woken near dawn by a soft knock on her bedroom door.

“Carrick?”

“Open up, love. Someone here wants to meet you.”

“What? Who?” she’d said, and opened the door to find Carrick standing with his hands cupped in front of him. He opened his hands, and on his palm sat the tiniest little green turtle she’d ever seen.

“Say hello,” Carrick said.

Faye gasped and covered her mouth with her hands. She looked up at him.

“Is that a loggerhead turtle?”

“The beach is full of babies tonight. Want to see?”

“Do I want to see baby loggerhead turtles? Are you crazy?”

“I guess that’s a yes.”

“Oh, my God, yes yes yes. Grab the lamp before they’re all gone. And give me that little guy.”

Faye cradled the baby turtle in her hand as Carrick found the kerosene lamp and lit it. It felt so weird, the turtle did, wiggling and wriggling on her palm.

“I love him so much,” she said, following Carrick out of the front door and down to the beach, the lamp slinging light back and forth as they walked. She could have started crying any second. She was frazzled from sheer happiness. A baby loggerhead turtle. She was holding in her shaking hands a baby loggerhead turtle. “Now I know how Kristen Bell felt with that sloth.”

“Who?”

“Nobody. I’m going to name him George.”

“You can’t keep that turtle,” Carrick said.

“Yes, but I can still name him.”

“There they are...” Carrick pointed the lamp toward what looked like nothing but a dark blur against a light blur. Carefully, watching every step, they walked toward the blur. Faye saw the hole in the dune and the baby turtles creeping out of the hole and onto the beach.

“Keep an eye out for birds. They eat the babies,” Carrick said. He turned the lamp down as their eyes adjusted to the darkness. Faye gently set little George onto the sand next to one of his or her siblings. Like a tiny windup toy, it wriggled across the sand, its flippers barely leaving any tracks as it followed Mother Nature’s orders to get into the water right away.

“Amazing...” Faye smiled so wide it hurt. “I wish I had my camera.”

“I thought you’d want to see them,” Carrick said.

“You were right. They’re so little and sweet. I just want to keep them all.”

“For turtle stew?”

“No,” she’d said forcefully. “And don’t you even joke about that.”

Carrick chuckled when she punched him in the biceps.

In silence they watched the babies until it seemed all the turtles had escaped the hole in the dune and disappeared into the ocean. Faye took the lamp and looked inside the abandoned nest. One last turtle was trapped at the bottom. She pulled him out and walked with him into the water ready to let him go. Something stopped her.

“Faith?” Carrick called out.

“Here,” she said, turned around and walked back to him. “You put him in. Since you found the nest. You can let this one go.”

“Come here, turtle stew,” he said, and took the baby from her hand. “You wouldn’t even be one spoonful. Better throw you back until you’re worth eating.”

He walked over to the water and waded in, letting the turtle go about ten feet from shore. Nothing happened. No waves. No magic. Carrick came back to her and picked up the lantern. The yellow light from the lamp turned the sand into gold dust all around them. And in that moment, that lovely little moment that meant nothing to anyone in the universe but the two of them, Faye had fallen in love with Carrick.