B000FC1MHI EBOK (34 page)

Alex Brier came by wondering if Julia had any pictures of the burned-out car. While he was there, he pulled out the newly printed
Island Gazette
and pointed to three of her pictures. All were on the front page, with
Photo by Julia Bechtel
beneath each. She smiled and felt vaguely embarrassed—they were only snapshots. But Molly leaned over to look and said they were fabulous, and Ian leaned over to look and agreed, and Noah, who regularly read the weekly, broke away from Joe Brady, reached for the paper, and said that they were the best pictures the
Gazette
had printed in ages and that he hoped Alex was paying her what she was worth.

Matthew Crane approached, took a seat near Julia, and listened to the talk. He looked better than he had—less tired, more involved. Julia was pleased. He wasn’t elderly. There was plenty of life in him yet.

And still Julia wanted to be with Noah, wanted to talk about what had happened that day. If she had felt an urgency after the accident to be heading somewhere, she felt it even more acutely now. At one point, seeing Monte in one of Molly’s expressions, she thought to call him to talk it through, but immediately vetoed the idea. Monte wouldn’t understand. He didn’t have the patience to listen to Julia’s problems. He was a glib answer man.

She didn’t want Monte. She wanted Noah.

He looked at her often, and she had to settle for that. Though they sat with coffee long after the meal was done, a group remained there— as well as a sense of safety and comfort in the company of friends. In time, the friends wandered off, but even then Julia had no time with Noah. She was Molly’s mother, and Molly wanted her back at Zoe’s for a little while, at least.

So Julia went. She found her father bored with the book he was reading, and she talked with him. Mostly she sat on the bed with Molly, who wanted to talk about what Kim would do with her life, what Molly should do with her life, and what Julia would have done if Molly had died in the explosion.

“Don’t even
think
those words,” Julia scolded.

But Molly was determined. “If I died, would you leave Dad?”

“That’s an awful question.”

“Mom. Answer me.”

It was something Julia didn’t want to discuss with Molly, but they had reached a better place in the last two days, a grown-up place, and while Julia could never forget that Molly was her child, there was something to be said for honesty between adults. Molly could handle it. She, too, had grown since she had come here.

So Julia said, “There was a time when you were younger when I would have done most anything to hold my marriage together. I don’t feel that way any longer. You’re grown. You’re strong. I have a feeling that whatever I decide to do, you’ll understand. You may not be happy, but you’ll understand. So your being here or not is no longer the issue.”

“What is?”

That was the question of the night. Julia thought about it driving back to Hawks Hill, thought about it as she put her wedding band on the counter and showered, brushed her hair, and climbed into bed. She thought about it as she lay in the dark.

The issue was not Monte. She had spent twenty years trying to please him—trying and failing and trying again. As she lay there, miles away from him physically and emotionally, what he wanted no longer mattered. What mattered now, at last, was what
she
wanted.

Who am I? Who do I want to be?

At that moment, only one answer came. She might attribute it to the fact that she was in Noah’s bed, but that hadn’t been a factor when she had first seen him washing his boat. She had been physically drawn to him then—and again at the trap shed—and again when she had seen Ian and him out on the ocean. She had been drawn to him all evening—and yes, that might have been because of the danger they had faced that afternoon. Danger stirred the senses. It also fed into thoughts of mortality, which fed into thoughts of limited time, which fed into thoughts of splurging.

Wanting Noah didn’t feel like a splurge. It felt like a necessity. And it had little to do with talking. She needed to be held. She needed to know that if she died, she would be missed. She needed to be
loved
.

The telephone rang. It was the land line, on the nightstand not far from her head. Her insides quickened.

“Hello?”

“I just turned onto the road to the house,” he said in a voice that was husky and low. “Tell me to stop.”

She couldn’t do that. Yes, she was Monte’s wife. But she was also Julia. Julia was a woman whose obedience was stifling, whose loyalty had been ignored along with her needs. Julia was a woman who wanted. Yes, she did.

Her heart was beating loudly, but not so loudly that she couldn’t tell when Noah disconnected the call. Out of bed in a flash, she ran up the stairs. She opened the door just as headlights appeared and lit the gossamer nightgown she wore, so innocently purchased in Camden. Barefoot, she stood on the threshold until the truck came to a stop. The headlights went off, but their glow hung in the fog, and Julia didn’t hesitate. She had spent a lifetime waiting for others to act.
Who did she want to be?
She wanted to be a doer.

She reached the truck just as Noah climbed out, and in a heartbeat her arms were around his neck as fast as his circled her back. The sheer relief of it made her cry out. Her mouth was still open when it found his, and he didn’t hesitate here, either. The way he devoured her lips said he was as hungry as she.

Cushioned by mist, they made love against the side of the truck, and it was like nothing Julia had ever known. This was pure adult lust, dire adult need. She didn’t think about Monte; he had no place in a world that smelled of balsam, spruce, and salt air. Like the explosion of the
Amelia Celeste,
the darkness offered a passage from one life to the next. In that darkness, her world was alive with sensation. She was so consumed by it that no single detail registered—not Noah’s hardness and heat, not the breathy sounds between kisses, not the rasp of a zipper— only the larger realm of desire. Braced against the truck with her legs around his hips, she barely felt his entry when her insides burst into spasms. Stoked further by his own climax, the spasms went on and on.

Even when they faded to a pleasurable pulse, she refused to let go, and he seemed fine with that. With remarkable grace, keeping her legs around him and her head tucked into his neck, he got them into the house and down the stairs, but she would have expected no less of a man who so easily hauled traps from the sea. Laying her on the bed, he put the lamp on low and, in the warmth of a golden glow, drew the gown over her head—and Julia thought she would die. His eyes were as hot on her as his hands and mouth had been. When she worked at his clothes and got them off, the reward was heavenly. His body was long and hard, spattered with hair, warm with sweat, and trembling with arousal.

It began all over again, only this time was different. This time she could see him, and the pleasure was even more intense. She could see his mouth on her breast, could see her own hands on his belly, could see the joining of their bodies. He said sweet things that set her on fire, and they found a rhythm. Moving with it, they shifted and sped, and her eyes were open, mating with his until the very end, when the surge of sensation was simply too much.

Lying with him in the aftermath, her cheek against the damp hair on his chest, she did think of Monte, because what she was sharing here was like nothing—
nothing
—between Monte and her. Monte didn’t say sweet things. He issued orders, like
Move your hips,
or
Open your mouth,
and there was always the self-involved
Yes, yes, yes
. He never said her name. She often suspected that he was imagining she was someone else. They always made love in the dark.

Who am I?

Monte would have said,
My wife.

Who am I?

I am Julia
. She couldn’t possibly forget, because Noah said her name over and over. He was making love to Julia. His eyes were on her the entire time.

Who am I?

I am a woman
. She couldn’t forget that either, because he used his hands and his mouth to recognize everything about her body that was different from his—from her breasts to her belly to the warmth between her legs. Blossoming as a woman, she grew bolder. She answered his daring with a daring of her own. There was no judgment or shame, only the joy of being alive.

Who am I?

I am appealing.
Monte had let her forget this, perhaps as a justification for his affairs, but Noah didn’t let it go for a minute. Everything about him spoke of how appealing he found her, from the trembling of his limbs to the hammer of his heart to the sweat on his body and the heaviness of his sex. And then there were those husky groans. After the fourth or fifth, he simply laughed.

“What?” she asked, looking up at him.

“I don’t believe it, you’re so incredibly sexy.”

So was he, she decided, and told him so—and they did talk about other things, though the physical had them enthralled. It was a celebration of life, filled with passion and heat, and they pushed it as far as it would go. Things that had given Julia pause with Monte were deeply satisfying with Noah. He didn’t have to urge her to open her legs or use her mouth; she did it naturally, did it because she wanted to, did it because she needed to be closer, always closer to him. By the time dawn approached, she knew more about this man and his needs—knew more about herself and her own needs—than she had learned in twenty years of marriage to Monte.

“I have to go,” he whispered. They were spooned together. Now he turned her in his arms. “Ian will be waking.”

She nodded. Ian would be waking. The world would be waking.
She
would be waking.

He kissed her once, then again. With a groan that this time very clearly said,
I don’t want to leave,
he tore himself away. He sat on the side of the bed to pull on his pants. Rising behind him, she snaked an arm over his shoulder and across his chest. The other hand fingered the ropy tattoo. It undulated over muscle as he dressed.

“It’s a hemp chain. Know why?” he asked quietly.

“No. Why?”

“Because we are.”

“Are what?”

“Chained. Chained here. Not physically. But emotionally. We’re lobstermen, born and bred. We might leave, but it’s never for long.”

It was a warning. He didn’t look at her as he said it, but silently finished dressing in the predawn light.

She watched without rising. Reality loomed, which wasn’t to say that guilt held her down. She didn’t regret what she and Noah had done. Like so much of what had happened to her this summer, it was empowering. The fact that it had happened, though, made her a different person. That was the reality she had to face now.

He started for the door, stopped, and returned. Catching her up, he held her tightly for a long minute before very gently setting her back on her knees on the bed. He stroked her cheek. The look in his eyes could only be called yearning, and it took her breath away.

“I love you,” he whispered.

He took more than her breath with the words—took her whole heart; and it wasn’t fair—she wasn’t free, the timing was wrong. She would have told him that if her eyes hadn’t filled with tears and her throat closed up. He took it in and gave her a fierce kiss, then broke away and went up the stairs.

She came off the bed and, pulling the sheet free, wrapped it around her as she ran after him. She reached the front door, but he was already starting the truck, and it was surely for the best. All she could do was watch him through tears, fog, and rain.

She stayed until neither sight nor sound of the truck remained, then slowly closed the door. Back in bed, she wrapped her arms around his pillow and held the scent of him a bit longer, but she didn’t sleep. Everything about her body screamed of Noah, but her mind was off on its own trip, headed in the direction she knew she needed to go.

Rising, she showered, dressed in her nicest clothes, put on makeup. Putting on her wedding band was harder today, but she did it. She was still Monte’s wife.

She made the bed, neatened up, and packed her things. From the leather pocketbook that had been rescued from the bottom of the sea, she took her key ring and the two envelopes—one with photos she had taken so many years before, the other with the papers she had more recently, painstakingly gathered—and put them in her new bag. She sat in the kitchen with a cup of coffee until the hour was decent, then cleaned up, locked the door, and drove to Zoe’s.

The rabbits were starting to stir. After pausing to scratch Ned’s ear, she walked down the row of cages. The misters puffed, but other than the occasional wren song in the meadow or the more distant cry of a gull, all was still. She went first to Gretchen, but found herself more interested today in the babies. One by one, she held them, amazed at how they had evolved from leggy little things into warm handfuls of fur, eyes, and ears. Life passed. Things grew. Within weeks, these babies would be taken from their mother and placed in homes far away.