When he tried to speak, his voice shook. “I can’t believe it,” he said, wishing overwhelmingly that he had the power to turn back the clock. If only he could return to that day on Sable Island when he’d surrendered to his sorrow. If only he’d been stronger.
All he could do now was apologize. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here for you.”
Rose reached for his hand and regarded him with warmth and forgiveness. “You didn’t know about me,” she said. “But you’re herenow. That’s what matters. And I feel blessed.”
“Me too.”
“I can’t wait for you to meet my children,” Rose added. “Would you like to come outside and say hello?”
He glanced achingly at Emma, who wiped a tear from her cheek. “Yes. I’d like that very much.” Then he stepped forward and followed his daughter out the front door.
An hour later, with Rose’s wise words still echoing in her mind, Emma walked beside Oliver down the stone path to the beach.
Who knows what he’s been through? To be honest, Mom, I’m a little shocked at how you’re so quick to judge him.
Again, Emma found herself thinking about poor Abigail McKenna and how she’d not been able to let go of painful things. She’d let them fester and never confided in anyone, or sought help. Emma wished she could go back there, knowing what she knew now, and understand Abigail better, perhaps help her work through her pain. But sadly, there was no going back.
“I’m sorry,” Emma finally said.
“For what?” Oliver asked.
“That I was so angry with you when you first arrived.”
“You had every right to be,” he replied. “I broke my promise.”
She glanced up at his profile, still as strikingly handsome as ever. “But you were told something that wasn’t true. And you’d been through a terrible ordeal, and probably other ordeals from the war that I know nothing about. So ... whatever your reasons were for going home to England, I can’t judge you. And I certainly don’t believe youdeservedto miss out on the life of your child. That’s too great a punishment.”
They reached the bottom of the path and paused at the stone steps that led to the rocky beach.
“You should be proud of Rose,” Oliver said. “She’s an incredible young woman. You raised her well.” He descended the three steps, then turned and looked up. “But I’ll never be free of my regrets. I shouldn’t have given up on us that day.”
He offered his hand to her, and when Emma looked down at his open palm—at all the lines and calluses that were so familiar to her, even after all these years—she wanted to cry her eyes out. Why had this happened? What had either of them ever done to deserve so much bad luck and disappointment?
But it wasn’t all bad, she supposed, as she placed her hand in his and stepped onto the beach. At least not for her. She’d raised two beautiful children, and their love had always been enough. More than enough. It was Oliver who had been deprived, an ocean away from his daughter. And despite her own perpetual heartbreak, she pitied him deeply.
He let go of her hand and bent to pick up a flat stone, which he rubbed between his thumb and the pads of his fingers. Then he threw it like a spinning disk that skipped six times across the surface of the water.
“Well done,” Emma said, impressed.
“That was a perfect skipping stone,” he replied.
They walked in silence for a while, and Emma felt like she was back on Sable Island. Today, she was reliving an experience from her youth—the emotional and intellectual exhilaration from her walks on the beaches with Oliver, when it was all so new. It was as if he had stepped out of the past and reminded her of the young girl she used to be.
But it was Rose—older and wiser than her years—who had reminded Emma of who she truly was: A psychologist. A lifelong student of the human condition. Emma had felt that calling long before she’d ever met Oliver Harris on that fateful day, when he was pulled from a deadly shipwreck and dragged onto her shore.
She wished that her younger self could see who she had become: a retired psychoanalyst with a triumphant career behind her, a cozy house on the sea, and grandchildren who kept her busy and entertained. She wished that she could have known, back then, how beautifully her life would turn out. She might have spent less time crying over what she couldn’t have.
“You know,” Oliver said as they strolled leisurely along, “for years I fantasized about what our lives might have looked like if I hadn’t hit that mine.”
Emma raised a hand to shade her eyes from the sun. “I did the same thing,” she confessed.
They continued walking, and she breathed in the pungent but pleasant aroma of kelp on the rocks at low tide.
“I don’t know whatyouimagined,” Oliver continued, “but I always liked to think of us getting married and having children and living on Sable Island. I even thought that I might become superintendent one day, when your father retired.”
“That would have been a nice life for us,” she replied. “I sometimes dreamed about the same thing, but I knew it was just fantasy, because even if you had come back that Christmas, the lifesaving station was doomed.”
Oliver bent to pick up another flat stone and skipped it across the water. “We would have survived that,” he said. “Because I also imagined supporting you to get the education you’d always wanted. I saw us living in Oxford or Cambridge.”
