The Boatman's Wife(17)

Lily could hear the voice at the other end of the line. It was the hospital telling them they could go collect her father.

All she wanted was to hide in her parents’ bed, pull the covers over her head and sleep forever. She had never felt so tired in her entire life. But she was tough. All the Smyth women were. She had to get up. Go to the hospital with her mom. She wanted to talk to Ryan and ask her dad more questions. She had to know exactly what had happened.



As if to mock her grief, it was a gentle fall day. As they drove to Brunswick, Lily could see gentle ruffles of blue sea matching the cloudless sky, as the sun beat down upon the road before them. Sticks and leaves were strewn in front of them, but already drying out, as a thin icing of snow was sprinkled upon the bare branches of the trees and the sides of the road. The Maine landscape looked so beautiful, it made Lily angry. As if God was taunting her. Without Connor, the sun should never shine again.

Her dad was still shaky and weak. Her mom helped him out of bed to sit in a chair while they waited for the doctor to discharge him. Lily stood back, watching her father. He couldn’t meet her eye, and there was an awkwardness about him, which was more than shock and weakness from the accident. There was something he wasn’t telling her.

‘Hey, I’m going down to see how Ryan is,’ Lily told her parents.

‘Give him our love,’ her mom said, as she smoothed her husband’s hair down.

Her dad finally looked her in the face. ‘How are you doing, Lily girl?’ he asked in a faint voice.

‘Not good, Dad,’ she said, and he flinched. She was never one to lie. She wasn’t going to start now, no matter how fragile her father looked. His behaviour was stoking the anger she already felt towards him.

Lily had learnt all about the ocean and its vagaries from her father. He had taught her to always be humble to the dominance of nature. To never attempt to push against it. And yet that was exactly what he had done when he’d not turned around like all the other fishermen had yesterday.

Why had her father kept going? What recklessness had possessed him to take the most precious thing in her life, her husband, and lose him at sea?

Ryan was sitting up in his bed, awake and alone. As soon as he saw her, his eyes began to brim with tears. It made her want to cry again, too. She’d never seen Ryan cry, and it made her feel frightened.

‘Aw, Lily,’ he kept repeating.

All the wires which Ryan had been hooked up to the night before had been removed. Lily sat on the end of the bed and leant over. She and her cousin embraced each other. All the years they’d spent together lobster fishing, culminating in this moment. The trust they had shared was deep-rooted. Of course she was so grateful he’d survived, but at the same time seeing Ryan here, alive in the hospital, made the loss of Connor even harder.

At last, she pulled back, took out a tissue and blew her nose. ‘Want one?’ she offered Ryan.

He nodded and she passed over the packet of tissues.

‘Lily, I’m so sorry,’ Ryan said, wiping his eyes.

‘Thanks, Ryan.’ Her voice came out small and tight. ‘I’m glad you’re okay.’

There was an awkward pause.

‘Did you…’ She took a breath. ‘Did you see when he went in?’ she whispered. ‘Daddy said he got caught up in the lobster trap line.’

‘It was all so quick, Lily,’ Ryan said. ‘It got rough real fast.’

‘But how did he get tangled up? Surely you were on your way back by the time the storm hit?’

‘We were trying to drop the last line of traps,’ Ryan said, not looking her in the eyes.

‘In the middle of the storm?’ Lily asked, incredulous.

‘It was only a bit choppy when we got to the gravel bar,’ Ryan said. ‘We’d gone a long way, and we were ahead of the storm.’

‘But didn’t you know it was coming?’ Lily said, astonished at her father’s stupidity. He was an experienced fisherman. He should have known better. She knew Ryan and Connor’s instincts weren’t so great. If only she’d been there, she would have told her dad to hell with the traps. They needed to get back home.

She gritted her teeth as fury began to build in the pit of her belly. Her father had been reckless. That was how it was looking to her now.

She turned to Ryan as he sat in the bed. ‘Was it my dad’s fault?’

‘No! Lily,’ Ryan said, but she could tell he was lying.

‘We know what we do is dangerous,’ Lily said to Ryan. ‘I mean you, me, Daddy, but Connor wasn’t a fisherman. He shouldn’t have been there.’

She didn’t have to say it aloud. They both knew getting tangled up in the lobster trap line, no matter how bad the weather, was a rookie mistake.

‘Has your daddy been interviewed for the Coast Guard report?’ Ryan asked her. ‘Ray George was in earlier, asking me questions.’

‘Yeah,’ Lily said, chewing her lip. ‘He was interviewing Daddy last night.’

Ryan sighed, closed his eyes. He looked worn out.

‘Look, I’ll let you rest,’ she said. ‘Your mom coming in?’

‘Yeah, and Lou and Angie,’ Ryan said faintly. ‘They just went home to change their clothes.’



When Lily returned to her father’s hospital room, the doctor was there doing a last check-up.