The Shape of Night(18)

    And forgetting. Most of all, forgetting.

The salt air makes me hungry and I tear off a piece of bread, smear it with Brie, and eat it in two bites. Devour a few olives and wash it all down with another glass of wine. By the time I finish my meal, the bottle of Rioja is empty and I’m so drowsy I can barely keep my eyes open.

I stretch out on the blanket, cover my face with a sun hat, and tumble into a deep and dreamless sleep.

It’s the cold water lapping at my feet that awakens me.

Nudging aside my hat, I look up and see the sky has darkened to violet, and the sun is dipping behind the boulder. How long have I slept? The rising tide has already brought the water halfway up my little beach, and the bottom edge of my blanket is soaked. Hungover and groggy, I clumsily gather up the remains of the picnic, stuff everything into the basket, and stumble away from the water. My skin feels hot and flushed, and I desperately crave a glass of sparkling water. And perhaps a splash of rosé.

I scramble up the path to the top of the cliff. There I pause to catch my breath and I look up at the widow’s walk. What I see makes me freeze. Although I cannot make out the man’s face, I know who is standing there.

I begin to run toward the house, the empty wine bottle clattering and rolling around in my picnic basket. Somewhere along the path I lose my hat, but I don’t turn back to retrieve it; I just keep running. I bound up the porch steps and burst through the front door. The carpenters have left, so there should be no one in the house but me. In the foyer, I drop the picnic basket and it lands with a clunk but I hear no other sound, only the beating of my own heart. That drumbeat accelerates as I climb to the second floor and move down the hall to the turret staircase. At the bottom of those steps I pause to listen.

    Silence upstairs.

I think of the man in the painting, the eyes that looked straight at me, only at me, and I long to see his face again. I want—I need—to know that he is real. Up the steps I climb, setting off a series of familiar creaks, the glow of twilight lighting my way. I step into the turret room, and the scent of the ocean sweeps over me. I recognize it for what it is: his scent. He loved the ocean and it was the ocean that took him. In its embrace, he found his eternal resting place, but in this house, a trace of him still lingers.

I cross the tool-littered room and step out onto the widow’s walk. All the rotted boards have been replaced, and for the first time I’m able to walk out onto the deck. No one is here. No carpenters, no Captain Brodie. I can still smell the sea, but this time it’s the wind itself that carries the scent, blowing it in from the water.

“Captain Brodie?” I call out. I don’t really expect an answer, but I hope to hear one anyway. “I’m not afraid of you. I want to see you. Please let me see you.”

The wind ruffles my hair. Not a cold wind, but the gentle breath of summer, and it carries the scent of roses and warm soil. The smell of land. For a long time I gaze at the sea, as once he must have done, and wait to hear his voice, but no one speaks to me. No one appears.

He is gone.





Eight


I lie in the darkness of my bedroom, listening once again to mice scurrying in the walls. For months, alcohol has been my anesthetic and only by drinking myself into a stupor have I been able to fall asleep, but tonight, even after two glasses of whiskey, I’m not the least bit drowsy. I know, somehow I know, that this is the night he will appear to me.

Hannibal, who has been slumbering beside me, suddenly stirs and sits up. In the walls the mice fall silent. The world has gone quiet and even the sea has ceased its rhythmic murmur.

A familiar scent wafts into the room. The smell of the ocean.

He is here.

I sit up in bed, my pulse throbbing in my neck, my hands ice cold. I scan the room, but all I see is the green glow of Hannibal’s eyes watching me. No movement, no sound. The smell of the ocean grows stronger, as if the tide has just swept through the room.

Then, near the window, there is a swirl of darkness. Not yet a figure, just the faintest hint of a silhouette taking shape in the night.

    “I’m not afraid of you,” I announce.

The shadow drifts away like smoke, and I almost lose sight of it. “Please come back, Captain Brodie!” I call out. “You are Captain Brodie, aren’t you? I want to see you. I want to know that you’re real!”

“The question is, are you real?”

The voice is startlingly clear, the words spoken right beside me. With a gasp, I turn and stare straight into the eyes of Jeremiah Brodie. This is not merely a shadow; no, this is a flesh-and-blood man with thick black hair silvered by moonlight. His deep-set eyes focus on me so fiercely that I can almost feel the heat of that gaze. This is the face I saw in the painting, the same rugged jaw, the same hawkish nose. He has been dead for a century and a half, yet I am looking at him now, and he is solid enough, real enough, to make the mattress sag as he sits down on the bed beside me.

“You are in my house,” he says.

“I live here now. I know this is your house, but—”

“Too many people forget that fact.”

“I won’t forget, ever. This is your house.”

He eyes me up and down and his gaze lingers for a tantalizing moment on the bodice of my nightgown. Then he focuses once again on my face. When he touches my cheek, his fingers feel startlingly warm against my skin. “Ava.”