This was one such day. Rose was due to arrive within the hour with John and Annette, aged five and seven. In preparation that morning, Emma had driven to the craft store and purchased five tubs of Play-Doh and a colorful plastic mold that squeezed out spaghetti noodles. When they were done with that, she would keep them entertained by playing store in the living room after dark. It was a Saturday-night tradition that began with emptying Emma’s kitchen cupboards of canned goods and other nonperishables. Next came the creation of price tags in sticker books and the task of setting out the inventory on imaginary shelves on Emma’s coffee table and piano. They all took turns as customer or cashier.
As far as Emma was concerned, for a woman her age who loved both shopping and spending time with her grandchildren, there was no better way to spend a Saturday night. But it was only 3:00 p.m., and Emma still had some pruning to do in the yard before Rose and the children arrived.
After donning her wide-brimmed sun hat, she took the clippers out of the bin, which she would use to trim the rosebushes that were encroaching onto the stone path down to the water. She had just pulled on her garden gloves inside the front porch when she heard a car pull into the gravel driveway. At first, Emma thought it was Rose arrivingearly, but when she moved to the screen door and stepped outside, she saw it was a blue car she didn’t recognize.
An attractive young woman with long dark hair got out and spoke with a British accent. “Good afternoon!” She took a few tentative steps up the driveway and removed her sunglasses. “Are you Emma Clarkson?”
“I used to be,” Emma replied, uncertain.
The young woman touched a finger to her temple. “I’m so sorry. Yes, of course. You’re Emma Baxter now. You worked in the psychology department at Dalhousie University? Am I in the right place?”
“Yes.”
The woman stood speechless in Emma’s driveway, staring at her with what appeared to be a mixture of delight and fascination.
“Can I help you with something?” Emma asked. She was still gripping her hedge clippers and was beginning to feel a little impatient, because the clock was ticking and those rosebushes weren’t going to prune themselves.
The passenger-side door opened, and a man stepped out. He was an older gentleman, and Emma watched him in the blinding sunlight that reflected off the shiny front bumper of the car. Something about the way he moved was familiar, and it made her body go weak—though consciously she had no idea who he was.
Then he spoke her name. “Emma.”
The voice. She knew it. It was like something out of her dreams. Her breath came short, and she dropped the hedge clippers onto the brick steps with a noisy clatter.
“Oliver Harris,” he said, introducing himself as he approached. He paused at the bottom of her steps with one hand on the wrought iron railing. “Do you remember me?”
What a ridiculous question. Emma laid her hand over her heart. “Oliver ...” She could barely speak beyond that one single word. “I thought ... I thought you were dead.”
“Quite a few others thought the same thing,” he replied. “But here I am, still alive, which has to be some kind of miracle.”
With wide eyes, Emma stared at him, dumbstruck, until the young woman moved to stand beside him.
“It’s nice to meet you at last,” she said, breaking the spell. “I’m Joanna, Oliver’s granddaughter. He’s told me a lot about you and Sable Island. We just came from there yesterday.”
Emma turned her eyes to Joanna and saw the resemblance. She had the same dark wavy hair and blue eyes. “You visited Sable Island?”
Joanna nodded cheerfully, and Emma’s eyes shot to Oliver’s. “You went there as well?”
“Yes,” he replied in that deep, husky voice that touched something painfully raw in the depths of her soul. At the same time, she was aware of a rise in her body temperature, which she’d learned to recognize in stressful situations. Emma removed her sun hat.
“It’s been so many years,” Oliver said, sounding slightly dazed. “It feels like another lifetime.”
“It does.” She wanted to be polite, but inside, her heart was icing over with the realization that the man she’d once loved with every inch of her young heart, body, and soul—the man she’d practically martyred for the past forty years—was alive and standing before her. He hadn’t been killed in an explosion on the sea, yet he had never come back for her as he’d promised.
Emma began to descend the steps and spoke cooly to him. “How is this possible?”
They stared at each other for a moment, and her heart trembled. She felt dizzy, like she’d fainted and fallen into the past. Maybe he sensed it, because he stepped forward and took her into his embrace.
Emma went stiff as he hugged her and whispered in her ear. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for everything.”
Those words—more than forty years too late—caused something to buck and kick inside of her, and she drew back in anger.
“What happened to you?” She recalled all the nights she’d spent crying into her pillow, fearing that he’d abandoned her when she’d needed him most. She’d never felt more alone than in those final days, just before she’d told her father the truth about her pregnancy.
She’d been so angry with Oliver. But then the news of his death had come ...
“I was told your ship hit a mine and there was an explosion,” she said, “and no one survived.”
“Most of that is true,” he told her. “There was an explosion, and my ship was blown halfway to smithereens. But we got into a lifeboat and made it to dry land, where we were stranded for months.”
