The Night Mark(9)

Ty glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. A college boy had just checked her out.

Maybe the old Faye and the new Faye had something in common.

“Is that it?” Faye asked, pointing to the top of a lighthouse peeking out from the tree canopy.

“That’s Hunting Island. Pretty lighthouse. You can climb it for two dollars.”

“I think I can cover that. I’ll go tomorrow. Today I want to see Bride Island’s lighthouse.”

“We’re a couple miles out from there still. The lighthouse is on the north beach. You can see it a lot better than the Hunting Island lighthouse. It was never moved so it’s right on the water.”

“What do you mean it was never moved?” Faye asked, pausing to dig a strand of hair out of her mouth. She’d forgotten how windy it got on a boat.

“You see that long spit of sand there?” Ty pointed to what looked like a yellow cat’s tail lounging a few hundred yards out into the water.

“I see it.”

“That used to be land. And that’s where the Hunting Island lighthouse stood. Built in the 1870s, but they had to move just a few years later. The land had eroded that much already. Going, gone, almost gone...”

“It’s really all going away, isn’t it? The coast?”

“Let’s just say you won’t catch me buying a beach house.”

“It’s too bad. I always feel like a better person when I’m on the water.” The air smelled cleaner here. The water seemed purer. She wanted to strip off her clothes and dive off the side of the boat and let the water baptize her a free woman.

“The ocean is big,” Ty said. “And we aren’t. It’s good to be humbled every now and then.”

“You ever go through a divorce?” she asked.

“Not yet.”

“Trust me, I know from humble.”

“You don’t seem humbled,” Ty said.

“What do I seem like?”

“Like a woman who just got out of jail.”

Faye grinned and was about to ask him what a woman just out of jail ought to do first when Ty raised his arm and pointed.

“There it is,” Ty said, and Faye looked up from the dancing blue water to the island on their port side.

“That’s Bride Island?”

“That’s it.”

Faye studied it, not sure what she was looking for except something to justify the trip out here. From this distance, about five hundred yards from shore according to Ty, it looked like Hunting Island. White sandy beach, a line of ocean debris where the tide met the shore and a thick forest of trees. Faye picked up the binoculars and studied the trees. She saw no palms or palmettos, no pines, no evergreens at all.

“Are those live oaks?”

“I don’t think they’re dead oaks,” Ty said.

“You know what I mean.”

“They’re white oaks. Lady who owns the island owns a bourbon distillery in Kentucky. They get the trees for the bourbon barrels from here.”

“White oak? Interesting. Naturally occurring or did the owner plant them?”

“You know anything about Bride Island?” Ty asked, slowing the boat.

“Not a thing except I couldn’t find it on the guidebook map.”

“It’s just Seaport Island on the maps,” he said. “But call it Bride Island if you want to sound like a local.”

Ty turned off the boat and let it bob gently in the water.

“Where’d the name come from?” Faye asked.

“Some rich planter came over from France in 1820 or something. He sent home for a girl to marry and they shipped her over here, got her in the rowboat to bring her in. They say it was love at first sight. She was so beautiful he waded right into the water to meet her boat. And when she saw him coming for her, she got out of the boat in her fancy dress and eight hundred skirts underneath and waded out to meet him. But the water weighed her down so hard, she started to go under, and he picked her right out of the water and carried his bride to shore. So it’s Bride Island.”

“Romantic,” Faye said. “Minus the almost drowning. Don’t swim in big dresses.”

“Gets more romantic. Their kid fell out of a tree and broke his neck. The bride drowned herself. And the husband went crazy and committed suicide by burning the house down with him inside it. But he was a slave owner so you know what we say to that?”

“That ain’t right?” Faye asked.

“Nope. We say this.” Ty raised his hand and defiantly flipped off the island. Faye smiled. She appreciated the sentiment. “Legend is, if a girl swims naked in those waters, she’ll find her true love right after. But don’t do that. Lotta girls have drowned out here. Only man they meet is Jesus.”

“I’ll make a note not to do that, then.”

“You don’t want to find your true love?” he teased. “Or drown trying?”

“I just got divorced.”

Ty shrugged. “Nobody wants to be alone.”

“I do. I’m never getting married again—that’s for sure.”

“You say that now...”

Faye shook her head, tried not to smile. Had she been this sure of herself at twenty-two? Probably. She wouldn’t tell him he’d be awash with self-doubt by thirty. Maybe he was one of the lucky ones blessed with eternal certainty of purpose. Once she thought she knew it all, too. All Faye knew now was that she knew nothing except what she’d told Ty—she never wanted to be anyone’s wife ever again.