Clay knows it, senses it, sees me preparing things, and he doesn’t come into the house for dinner. He stays out at the barn, working even after the sun has set. I leave him a plate of boiled potatoes with thyme and rosemary, tidy up the kitchen, then start for the stairs when I hear the front door open.
He stands in the doorway, eyes sloped down, hands in the pockets of his canvas pants. Candlelight from the three sticks I left burning on the table dance across his face—making him look golden and not quite real. “Ye leaving tomorrow?” he asks, voice measured, even—too even.
I touch the banister, my eyes hesitant to meet his. “I can’t stay here forever.”
“Ye’ll die out there.”
I understand why he says this, but he won’t change my mind, so I say simply, “I’m taking water and some food. I hope that’s okay.”
His jaw constricts, his shoulders tense down like he’s holding back a tide of frustration and fear. “Ye canna go.”
“You never wanted me here,” I point out, narrowing my eyes at him. “I thought you’d be relieved to be rid of me. To get your home back. Your life.”
The house creaks softly, always shifting, always alive. “Not like this.”
I’m surprised by the bluntness of his words. “I’ve already been here too long… too many days have passed.”
“Yer worried about yer life back on the mainland?”
“Yes,” I answer, my tone short—because he already knows this, knows I can’t stay. “I left everything I know behind—they all probably think I’m dead. I have to go back.”
“To James?”
My mouth falls open, stunned he would even ask. “Yeah, I—” I shake my head, the question peeling me open. Unmooring me. But I don’t owe him an explanation.
“Yer not going back to him—” he states, as if he knows more about my intentions than I do. “Yer going back to a memory of him. Not who he really is. Not what ye really want.”
I can’t believe he’s saying this, can’t believe the words leaving his mouth—his accent dulled, muted, each word sharpened somehow. But more than his words, I can’t believe the look in his eyes—the hurt shivering through them, the worry… the panic. Like he knows he only has a few moments left to say everything he’s been holding in. Before it’s too late. Before I slip away.
“You don’t know what I want,” I snap.
“Maybe not.” He nods. “But I know what I want.”
I squint at him, releasing my hold on the banister. “What do you want?”
We stare at each other. And it feels like the air is breaking between us. Like we are destroying it with every breath. And I realize I don’twant to hear his answer, I don’t want to know. Because I’m leaving, and his words might only make it harder.
Stay, stay, stay,my heart hisses again.
“I have to go back, Clay,” I tell him. “It’s not fair to everyone else… for me to stay, to wait any longer.”
“Fair—” Clay scoffs, tilting his head down. “Life is rarely fair. It’ll destroy ye if given the chance. So I suggest ye spend less time worrying over what’s fair for everyone else, for James, an’ more time deciding what’s fair for you.”
I don’t have any right to compare fairness with Clay, a man who lost everything the night his wife died. But I look down at my hand, at the ring, and it feels like someone else’s engagement band, someone else’s life. “It’s where I belong,” I say. Words that feel cut into my flesh.
“How do ye know?”
My eyes flinch up. “What?”
“How does one know where they belong? How can ye be so sure ye belong back there”—he gestures to the sea, to some unnamed continent in the distance—“and not—”
“And not here?” I ask, bristling.
He stares back at me but doesn’t reply.
“What do you mean?” I press.
But he turns in the doorway, walks back outside into the clear night, boots thudding down the porch steps.
