The Night Mark(81)

“You believe me,” she said. It wasn’t a question. A man wouldn’t weep when told a lie, but he might when told a truth he didn’t want to hear.

Slowly, he nodded his head. He pulled his hands from her grasp and stood. She followed him over to the dock that looked out on the marshy sound.

“‘I grow old/I grow old/I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled,’” he said.

“T. S. Eliot. ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,’” Faye said. “I read that just last week at the cottage. Carrick has a first American edition on his bookshelves.”

“Eliot died in ’65. Same year Carrick did,” Pat said, kicking a pebble off the dock and into the water, where it made hardly a ripple. “As for me, I could have died when I went out to the lighthouse.”

“You said you decided against killing yourself.”

“I did. It was a foolish whim, and when it passed I wanted to ask God’s forgiveness. Despair is a sin, but I’d say it’s the sin God forgives most often and most easily. So I rolled up my trousers, waded in the water and took my rosary out of my pocket. That rosary was special to me. Carrick gave it to me before he died.”

“Silver beads? Medal that says ‘S. Brendanus’?”

“Saint Brendan, yes. Patron of sailors. I was holding the rosary, praying my way through the first decade, when my hands got a tremor. Dropped it right in the water. I dived for it. A wave hit and threw me under. I really didn’t think I’d come up again. What a nasty trick that would be for the ocean to kill me not ten minutes after I’d decided not to kill myself. But somehow I made it to the surface again. God knows I was fighting for my life. When I came up everything looked different. The sky was dark and getting darker, but the lighthouse, it was shining. I saw the light flash and I thought I had died. But then I saw the house that hadn’t been there before and the long wooden pier in the water. I saw a woman standing at the very edge of the pier, like she’d found where the sidewalk ends.”

“Did you see her face?”

“No.”

“What did she throw in the water?” Faye asked.

“Herself,” he said.

“Are you sure?” Faye asked.

“I’m sure. The water was choppy, but not choppy enough to pull a girl down off a pier. She jumped, Faye. I saw her jump into the water.”

“Why would she jump? She was finally free from her husband.”

“I don’t know. And don’t think I haven’t wondered about that every single day of my life.”

“What happened next, Pat?”

He shook his head. “I tried to save her. It was the damnedest thing. I took off swimming after her like I was twenty-five again. I knew how it felt to swim these waters when I was young and strong. I did it often enough when I was pastor here in the sixties. But before I could reach her, another wave hit me and I went under. When I came up again, the dock was gone, and the cottage, and the lighthouse was dark. I felt like an old man again. Sometimes I wish... I wish I could have stayed.”

“Did you know what had happened? Did you understand it?” Faye’s relief that she wasn’t the only one who’d been there, who’d been part of this mystery was knee weakening. She could have cried.

“I thought I’d passed out,” he said. “I thought it was all a dream. But telling myself that didn’t sit right with me. I’m not prone to denial. I went to the hospital and got tests run. They all came back clear. I wanted to believe it wasn’t real even though I knew better. On my better days I’m a man of faith. It’s easy to say you believe in miracles and signs and wonders, and that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in all our philosophies, but when something happens you can’t explain except by calling it a miracle, you can’t imagine how hard that is on your faith. Faith is believing without knowing, without seeing. But when you see...” He stopped and looked up at the sky as if seeking the face of God. She hoped Pat saw it. All she saw were clouds, but such beautiful clouds that if one believed in God, one might imagine Him or Her as a painter.

“I thought I was crazy, too, for a little while,” Faye said. “When I woke up and there was Will in my bedroom, I kissed him. I thought it was the best dream I’d ever had in my life. And then when I realized I was somehow Faith Morgan, that I was Carrick’s daughter, I thought I was in a waking nightmare.”

“Faith was not his daughter,” Pat said, his voice firm and final. “And Carrick Morgan would never lay a hand on a woman unless she wanted his hands on her. He was a good man.”

Faye didn’t tell him how much it hurt to hear Carrick spoken about in the past tense. Carrick is a good man. Carrick is, not was.

“He told you about Faith?” Faye asked.

“He did. And I can tell you a little of what I know because he told me over dinner one night, not under the seal of the confessional.”

“Please tell me anything you can about her.” Faye said her when what she meant was me. Tell me about me, she wanted to say to him.

“Faith’s real name was Millie Anne Scarborough.”

“Millie Anne Scarborough,” Faye repeated, testing the name in her mouth and finding it foreign.

“Millie’s parents were old money, but when her father died when she was sixteen, her mother discovered there was none of that old money left. No money, but plenty of debt and three daughters who needed husbands. The only way to get out of that debt was to marry the girls off to wealthy men. Luckily they found takers for all three girls. One senator’s son, one bank president and one former navy officer who’d inherited a fortune from his industrialist father.”