The Shape of Night(81)
“What you did?” I look at her tired, perplexed face and I think: Here is yet another way I’ve harmed her. Not only did she lose Nick, she thinks she lost me, as well.
“Tell me the truth,” she pleads. “What did I do wrong? What did I say?”
I think of how the truth would destroy her. Confession might help me heal, might relieve me of this overwhelming burden of guilt, but it must be my burden alone. When you love someone as much as I love her, the ultimate gift I can bestow is ignorance. Captain Brodie has forced me to face my guilt, to atone for my sins. Now it’s time for me to forgive myself.
“The truth, Lucy, is that…”
“Yes?”
“It’s my fault, not yours. I’ve been trying to hide it from you, because I’m ashamed.” I wipe my face but I can’t keep up with the tears that keep trickling down and soaking my hospital gown. “I’ve been drinking too much. And I’ve ruined everything,” I sob. The answer is both honest and incomplete, but there is enough truth in it to make her nod in recognition.
“Oh, Ava. I’ve known about it for a long, long time.” She wraps her arms around me and I inhale the familiar Lucy scents of Dove soap and kindness. “But we can do something about it, now that you’re ready to let me help. We’re going to work on this together, the way we always do. And we’re going to get through this.” She pulls back to look at me, and for the first time since Nick died, I can look her in the eye. I can hold her gaze and also hide the truth, because that is what you sometimes have to do when you love someone.
She brushes a strand of hair off my face and smiles. “Tomorrow, I’ll get you out of here. And we’ll go home.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Unless you have a good reason to stay in Tucker Cove?”
I shake my head. “I have no reason at all to stay,” I tell her. “And I am never, ever coming back.”
Thirty-One
One year later
A widow and her two children now live in Brodie’s Watch. Rebecca Ellis bought the house in March, and already she has put in a vegetable garden and built a stone patio that faces the ocean. All this I learned from Donna Branca when I called her three weeks ago, to find out if the house is available to be photographed. My new book The Captain’s Table is scheduled for publication next July, and because the book is as much about the place as it is about the food, Simon wants to include photos of me at Brodie’s Watch. I told him I didn’t want to return, but he insisted these photos are necessary.
Which is why I now find myself riding in a white van with a photographer and a stylist, headed back to the house I fled a year ago.
Donna told me that the family’s been happy living in their new home, and Rebecca Ellis has had no complaints whatsoever. Perhaps the captain’s ghost has finally departed. Or perhaps he was never there in the first place, except as a figment of my imagination, conjured up by shame and guilt and far too many bottles of booze. I have not had a drink since I left Tucker Cove, and the nightmares are less and less frequent, but I am still nervous about returning to Brodie’s Watch.
Our van climbs the driveway and all at once, there it is looming above us, the house that still casts a long shadow over my dreams.
“Wow, what a gorgeous place,” says Mark the photographer. “We’ll get some great shots here.”
“And look at those huge sunflowers in the garden!” pipes up our stylist Nicole from the backseat. “Should we ask the new owner if I can cut a few for the photos? What do you think, Ava?”
“I’ve never met the new owner,” I tell her. “She bought the house months after I left. But we can always ask.”
The three of us climb out of the van, stretching away the kinks that have settled in during the long drive from Boston. Unlike the misty afternoon when I first beheld Brodie’s Watch, today is bright and summery, and in the garden, bees buzz and a hummingbird swoops past on its way to a mound of sweet pink phlox. Rebecca has transformed what was once a front yard of weedy shrubs into floral drifts of yellow and pink and lavender. This is not the forbidding Brodie’s Watch that I remember; this house beckons us to step inside.
A smiling brunette emerges from the house to greet us. Dressed in blue jeans and a T-shirt emblazoned with MAINE ORGANIC FARMERS, she looks like just the sort of back-to-earth woman who’d plant exuberant gardens and happily dig in the peat and manure all by herself.
“Hello, glad you all made it!” she calls out, coming down the porch steps to greet us. “I’m Rebecca. Are you Ava?” she asks, looking at me.
“I am.” I shake her hand and introduce Nicole and Mark. “Thank you so much for letting us invade your house.”
“I’m pretty excited about this, actually! Donna Branca told me these photos will be in your new book. I think that’s pretty cool, having my house featured.” She waves us toward the front door. “My kids are spending the day at a friend’s house, so you won’t have them underfoot. The house is all yours.”
“Before I bring in the gear, I’d like to walk through it first,” says Mark. “Take a look at the light.”
“Oh, of course. It’s always about the light for you photographers, isn’t it?”