The Night Mark(88)

Yet for all the damage the storm bender had done, it was a lovely morning to be alive. The rain was nothing but the gentlest drizzle now, and the air smelled so fresh Faye felt clean just by standing in it and breathing it in. June 21 was less than a week away according to the kitchen calendar. Almost officially summer. Oh, it would get hot here this summer. Hotter. But cooler again in autumn. Would it snow on the beach in winter? She couldn’t wait to find out. And she would find out, because she would be here. Because that house with the shutter askew and the seaweed hanging off the roof was her home. A little bruised, a little battered, but home.

Dolly headed straight to her bedroom, collapsed onto the bed and fell asleep in seconds. Faye stood in the doorway smiling at the sleeping girl. It was there that Carrick found her, and she leaned against his chest.

“How is she?”

“Exhausted,” Faye said. “But alive and well, thanks to you.”

Carrick put his arm around her and rubbed her back.

“I want a daughter,” Faye said. “Just like her.”

“Well, you can’t have her. She belongs to someone already.”

“I’ll fight them for her,” Faye said. Now that she’d returned, she knew she’d come back as much for Dolly as she had for Carrick, as much for Carrick as she’d come back for herself.

“She’s a little wild for me. Look what she did.” Carrick turned and showed her the back of his neck and the bloody fingernail scratches deep in his skin.

“Oh, no, you poor thing.” Faye tried to sound sympathetic but ended up laughing at him instead. “Let’s go in the bathroom. I’ll clean those cuts up.”

She put a chair by the bathroom sink and tried not to stare as Carrick shucked out of his shirt and undershirt. In her abject terror, Dolly had left sixteen scratches in Carrick’s neck, shoulders and back. Faye counted them all. She also counted the tattoos on his back. Seven of them—all birds.

“This isn’t fair,” Faye said as she ran cool water onto a clean strip of linen cloth and pressed it against the dried blood on Carrick’s shoulder. She washed off the blood, put iodine on the cuts. “I’m the one who should be leaving fingernail scratches on your back.”

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” he groaned, rubbing his forehead. “You’ll be the death of me, woman, if you say things like that.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Ignore me. Tell me about the tattoos. What are the birds?”

“Swallows,” he said. He had an entire flight of swallows on his skin, fluttering from shoulder to shoulder and shoulder to hip. Seven of them total. They made a C-shaped curve from his upper back to his lower back, red and black and yellow birds.

“They must have hurt,” she said. She couldn’t imagine how much getting tattooed with a World War I–era tattoo gun hurt. A whole damn lot, probably. Standing in front of him, she gently pushed his head down so she could put iodine on the cut along his hairline.

“Nobody but a fool joins the navy hoping to avoid pain.” Carrick rested his forehead against her stomach. Will would do that, too, when she rubbed his shoulders after a long road trip. But the thought came and went, fluttering away like a swallow returning home. She didn’t miss Will right now. She didn’t miss missing him, either. She remembered him, but without the pain of loss. The wound had healed and left a scar, but the scar didn’t hurt.

“I wouldn’t think so. Does it mean anything you have seven of them?”

“You get one for every five thousand miles you sail. I was in the navy a good long time.” Carrick pushed up the edge of her shirt to bare a couple inches of her stomach. He pressed a soft kiss against her side.

“That’s my rib you’re kissing, Chief Morgan,” she told him as she dotted the iodine on the cut.

“No, ma’am, that’s Adam’s rib. He said I could kiss it.”

“I loved that movie,” Faye said.

“A what?” Carrick asked, confused.

Oops. Adam’s Rib wouldn’t be out for another almost thirty years.

“Nothing. Tell me more about your swallows. You traveled thirty-five thousand nautical miles?”

“Thereabouts.” He lifted her shirt a little higher, kissed her again. Faye shivered with pleasure.

“That’s the entire world, Carrick.”

He shook his head. As he did, he blew warm air across her bare stomach.

“What are you doing?” she asked, shivering with pleasure.

“I was thinking about taking you to bed before I remembered I’m not supposed to do that. What are you doing?”

“I think I was arguing with you about how big the earth is while cleaning up your cuts.”

“The earth is about twenty-two thousand nautical miles,” he said. “I was nearing my second circuit when the war ended. Not that I minded not getting that eighth swallow. Three years on the Kentucky was long enough for me. Are you done yet?” He held her by the hips while Faye screwed the lid back onto the iodine bottle and pretended not to notice his roving hands. Now this felt like a marriage. How many times had she been attempting to do boring and important tasks like putting away dishes or paying bills while Will would kiss her neck or rub her ass or whatever it took to get her to give up her work and go to bed with him? Which was what she wanted to do all along but it was always much more fun making him wait for it.