“His name is James.” Even to my own ears, the words sound thin, tasteless. “He asked me to marry him just before I left.”
Clay lifts an eyebrow. “Why did ye leave, then?”
“I needed to see the island.” I clench my hand closed. “I needed to see if it was true, if this place was still… if it was real.” Air slips between my lips, a shaky exhale. “If you were real.” I turn, and he’s watching me. Eyes bottomless like the sea. Like we’re both trying to calculate the strange fate that brought me back here after all these years.
“The sea has a way of setting things right,” he says. “Ye’ll find yer way back home, to where ye belong.”
I nod, forcing a smile.
His words are meant to comfort, but they stir up something else I can’t quite pinpoint.
“Rain coming,” he adds, tipping his eyes up as drops begin to explode against the dark soil. “Best head in.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
I’ll draw a bath,” he announces as we stomp into the house, shedding our damp clothes beside the front door, then hanging them to dry from wood pegs over the stove. As if this were our routine. As if we’ve done this all before.
He walks to the kitchen sink and pulls out a metal bucket from underneath, filling it with water, then moves past me to place the bucket over the stove.
“You don’t need to do that,” I answer. “It’s too much work.”
He turns but won’t look at me. “Ye have a bath while I start dinner.”
Maybe it’s because I helped him in the garden that he’s being so agreeable. So generous. But I can tell that he doesn’t want to make a big deal of it, so I nod and thank him.
He hoists five steaming buckets of water up the stairs to the bath, dumping them into the tub until it’s full. “Ye’ll find whatever ye need in the cupboard.” He nods at the bathroom vanity, then pauses, looks at me a moment, before turning in the doorway. “I’ll leave ye to it.”
He seems uncomfortable. Maybe it’s the image of me sinking into the bath, unclothed. A woman in his house who isn’t his wife. Who is, by all means, a stranger. But I wait for the sound of his footsteps to fadedown the stairs, before kneeling and opening the cupboard doors. Inside, I find a glass jar filled with sea salt, dried lavender, and something green, maybe rosemary. This was his wife’s, of course. I can’t imagine he would use such things when he bathes. The salts are something she probably made herself—salt from the sea, boiled down, and herbs grown and tended by her own hand.
I unscrew the metal lid and inhale. I nearly tip over, I nearly let out a tiny sob. I hadn’t realized how much I’ve craved the feeling of something familiar. A scent I know from home—herbal and floral. I pour a small amount into the bath—not wanting to use too much—and I watch the salts sink and dissolve as I strip out of my clothes, then step into the warmth.
Tears start falling. Silent, wordless.
I let them fill the tub.
Dirt and sweat and relief.
I run my hands down my face, my arms, ridding myself of a layer of garden soil. I tip my head back against the edge of the tub and breathe in the humid air, savoring the weightlessness. The clean, civilized feeling of my skin. And a sense of hope stirs in my gut, a certainty that I will find a way off this island. That everything will be okay.
Someday soon, I will lie in my own tub, on the second floor of my rented home—cars speeding by outside, hot water running straight from the faucet, bubbles spilling over, James downstairs opening a bottle of wine he brought home from the café. Someday soon, this will all be a memory, a story I will tell at dinner parties: the time I survived Saltwell Island.
But all too soon reality finds me, the water growing tepid, my skin starting to prick with gooseflesh. I rise, wrapping one of the gray towels around me and drawing in a final breath—filling my lungs with lavender—before stepping out into the hall.
But Clay is there, moving away toward the stairs. Beside the bedroom door, I see that he’s left a fresh pair of clothes.
“Thank you,” I say.
His eyes flash back to me, and he nods before continuing down the stairs.
I dress in the bedroom. The clean pair of linen slacks are softer than the others I’d been wearing, and a dark tan color. The light green sweater is surprisingly delicate, draping easily across my shoulders, as if it were made for me—something I’d wear back home. These must be her good clothes. The ones he didn’t want me to wear before. Kept safe in a drawer, perhaps.
I can smell the potatoes boiling in the kitchen, but I hear Clay’s footsteps on the stairs and the slosh of water being poured into the bathtub once again. He’s preparing a bath for himself.
We will both feel the comfort of clean skin tonight.
While he bathes—something that takes half the time of my bath—I finish preparing the potatoes and steam the handful of clams he gathered from the shore earlier in the morning, seasoning it all with sea salt and fresh thyme from the garden.
I’ve just set the table with two plates, two forks, and two cotton napkins, when he enters the kitchen—hair still damp, eyelashes glistening, dressed in wool slacks and a white cotton shirt. He looks relaxed, a softness about him I’ve never seen before, and I can’t help but smile.
