I force my eyes away from him, swallowing. My head buzzing. “The shell—” I say, nodding at the locket. “My nana gave it to me when I was little. I’ve worn it every day since.”
This time he turns, eyeing the white shell that hangs suspended on the chain, pressed against his locket. Without a word, he stands up, pushing back the chair, and walks to the woodstove.
His fingers touch the chain, the locket, and I hold my breath.
Carefully, he unclasps the chain—his hands surprisingly deft—and he lets the locket slide into his palm. He looks down at it a moment, eyes heavy, then places it quickly into the pocket of his pants.
“I suppose we’ve both taken something from the other,” he says, moving back to the table and holding the chain out to me. “My apologies.”
I lift the chain, careful that our hands don’t touch.
Relief swells through me as I run my thumb across the fanned ridges of the shell, and I close my eyes, remembering Nana’s face, the softness of her smile each morning at breakfast when I still lived at home. The worry in her eyes as she waved goodbye the last time I saw her.
“I know what it is to miss someone,” he adds.
I open my eyes. My loss is nothing compared to his. He will never see his wife again, but I will see Nana again. I will get off this island and return to James. My loss is only temporary. His can’t be undone.
I nod, not knowing what to say, then slide the chain around my neck, reclasping it, and press the shell to my chest with my palm.
“Thank you for today,” I tell him, changing the subject. “For the bath, for giving me these clothes to wear and letting me stay here. Letting me sleep in your bed. It’s more than I feel I’ll ever be able to repay.”
“Aye,” he says, light returned in his eyes, a twitch at his upper lip that again makes me think how different he seems from the man I remember. But in ways I can’t put my finger on. “Couldn’t leave ye out in the cold to die.”
I lie awake and watch the rain against the window. Little trails like tears. The wind a howl. This place seems to be cloaked in a thin layer of sadness.
Inescapable. The past haunting every room.
When the light is dim, when I pinch my eyes closed, I think I’m back in Seattle. I think I hear James downstairs making coffee, the scent of dark roast filling the house. I think the pillow beneath my head is my own.
But always…
The sound of the ocean ruins the illusion. Waves breaking against the rocks outside.
And the stranger I share this home with.
A man who is both distant and cold… but also kind. Quiet. Something gentle just beneath the surface.
I push back the sheets and crawl out of bed.
I adapt—as women have been known to do throughout history when faced with unforeseeable circumstances.
The shape of each day begins to change. At first, the hours had felt sharp-edged and strange, but now their corners have softened, turned round and familiar, and I find myself moving fluidly through the old farmhouse as if it were my own.
As if I belonged here.
I rise early now, with the sun, with Clay, making tea for us both, eggs scrambled, the scent of bread rising from the woodstove. I’ve never been any good in the kitchen—James used to say my heart wasn’t in it. He thought I added too much salt to everything. I overcooked pasta when he suggested al dente. He’d usher me from the kitchen—always politely, always good-naturedly—then take over himself. In the last year, I just stopped entering the kitchen altogether when he was around. But now, there is a necessity to cooking. And it feels different here on the island, in the farmhouse—simple, nostalgic, returning to a time before our kitchens were filled with gadgets. And when I burn the acorn squashin the oven and tell Clay as much when he sits down at the kitchen table, he slides a bite into his mouth and says, “Tastes better than when I make it.” Then finishes it without complaint.
Maybe he’s just being polite, or maybe he’s grateful to have someone else cook for a change—to walk into the house, exhausted after a full day, and have a hot meal waiting for him.
I find a rhythm in the kitchen. The quiet of the wind, no TV blaring from the other room, no emails to check, no phone calls to return. Only the rise and fall of the sun to mark the days.
In the evenings, after we eat, I find a needle and thread in the hall closet. The same closet where a rifle is kept against the back wall beside an old tackle box. To keep the harriers and owls from stealing newborn chicks, he explained when I first noticed the rifle. But out at sea, without predators stalking the henhouse, the Winchester sits unused.
I make a stack of his shirts that need mending—the elbows worn through or a button missing—and I use a basic stitching pattern I learned from Nana. It’s not pretty or neat, but it’ll hold. I feel a need to keep busy, to pass the time, to contribute in some way.
I’m eating his food and sleeping in his bed. Uninvited.
And each day, we begin again. I open the doors into the barn in the afternoon, letting the sheep graze along the shore of the island where the grass grows tall and thick. The little newborn lamb has begun following me wherever I go, legs unsteady as she bounds up the trail after me. Clay says I encourage it, and maybe I do. She’s even followed me into the house a handful of times, standing in the kitchen, tail waggling, hungry for milk.
