The Gilly Salt Sisters (42 page)

C
laire just about scared the piss out of Dee when she jumped out of the shadows in the barn. Dee knew perfectly well that three women shut up together—one of them pregnant and cranky, one nursing a broken heart and a grudge, and one who was half french fry—couldn’t be a good combination, especially when they were all there because of the same man.

But she was wrong again. Claire wasn’t out to get her. She just wanted to help.
You need a friend
, she said, coming up close to Dee and slipping her white fingers around the girl’s wrist, right over her pulse, the same way Whit had. She pulled Dee out of the barn and down the dusty lane.
And I know the right someone.

For a blind moment, Dee worried that Claire was taking her into the dunes for a private beating, so she was relieved when the place they stopped at turned out only to be St. Agnes. The last of the handful of Easter worshippers had left, and Father Ethan Stone was just stepping out of the rectory. He blushed hard when he saw Claire, but he didn’t take his eyes off her either, Dee noticed. Claire grew as fidgety as a grasshopper in Ethan’s presence, and he wasn’t much better. He blinked at Claire.

“Hello,” he said, adjusting his collar like he wanted to remind her—or maybe just himself—of his vows. On her part, Claire was shameless. She stretched her neck and tugged on her braid, biting her bottom lip.

“Happy Easter,” she said. Dee felt as if she were watching a girl her own age instead of a woman of thirty-one. In contrast, the Virgin shone behind Claire in a little patch of sun, keeping all her secrets to herself.

“Oh.” Dee startled herself by speaking out loud, understanding blooming in her brain. “You brought me to see the Virgin.”

Claire regarded her. “Who did you think I meant?” Dee didn’t answer, but Father Stone smiled, and Claire raised her eyebrows at him.

He wasn’t born a priest
, Dee said to herself.
And if Claire keeps it up, he won’t stay one for long.
Which, if you asked Dee, would be a general service to womankind. A man that fine shouldn’t be locked away in a musty old church, she thought. Claire put her hands on Dee’s shoulders and pushed her past Father Stone toward the sanctuary door. Dee raised her own eyebrows at him, the way Claire had.

“This is women’s business, Ethan,” Claire called over her shoulder. “We need to borrow the church for a little while, if you don’t mind.” And, the Lord bless him, the man scrambled out the door like he couldn’t wait to get away. Dee didn’t catch his reply, but if it matched the heat in his eyes as he stared at Claire, she thought that was probably for the best.

Inside, she halted, struck dumb by the light bathing the Virgin, her gaze getting stuck on all the strange things about the painting: the gray fishhooks scooped along the hemline, the open eye painted on the palm.

Dee followed Claire up the center of the church’s tiny aisle. Dee was in trouble and needed someone on her side, she knew, and maybe Our Lady was really good for it. She kind of covered all the bases. She was holy, but human, too. Dee had never really thought about it before, but the Holy Family was a lot more like a
regular family than she’d ever given them credit for. Their problems were pretty familiar—unexplained pregnancy, a rebellious son, his weird friends. She looked at her own situation in comparison and thanked her lucky stars that when she died and went to judgment, at least she’d get herself some resolution. Poor Jesus just got himself resurrected. His troubles never ended. One day he’d even have to return again, to judge the living and the dead, but hopefully that was still a long ways off.

Claire crossed herself and slid into a middle pew, and after a moment Dee did the same. They were silent for the longest time, both of them facing the altar, as if they were passengers on a perilous mountain road, unwilling to take their eyes off the twists and turns unfolding in front of them. It was worse than actual church. Finally Claire cleared her throat and got right down to the heart of things.
“Why?”
she cried.

For a moment Dee panicked. For such a little word, “why” sounded pretty big. What was Claire asking about? Dee wondered, her brain racing lickety-split. The times Dee had snuck into her room lately and tried on Claire’s wedding ring? Or the fact that she hadn’t been completely forthcoming about how far along she really was in her pregnancy? As if to prove a point, the baby kicked her just then, and she shifted, not wanting to call attention to it. She bowed her head. No. She knew exactly what Claire was asking when she asked the question why. She wanted to know about Whit. Dee didn’t have anything to offer her but the truth. She held it out, her voice wavering. “I thought maybe he really loved me.”

“I suppose you thought you loved him, too,” Claire said, her lips barely moving, her shoulders straight. For the first time, Dee realized that Claire always held herself as if she were on the back of a horse—upright, ready to yank the reins if she needed to. Dee wondered if that came naturally or if it was a by-product of life with Whit. She considered Claire’s statement. Had she thought she loved Whit? That question was easy to answer. It was the easiest one, in fact. “Yes,” she admitted. She shifted her bulk. If
Claire was going to ask her questions, she figured, she was going to do the same. “And what about you? Did you love him when you got married?”

Claire’s head snapped up. “What?” She didn’t pronounce this word the way she’d said why. This was an accusation, a
How dare you?

Dee eased an inch to the left on the pew. “It’s just that… well, I heard all about how you once loved Father Stone, and I wondered if you loved Whit like that, too.” She balled her hands back into fists and held her breath.

Claire seemed to weigh Dee’s insinuation, but when she spoke again, it wasn’t to address questions of her own past. She leaned forward, and her voice got so low it almost flickered. “I know you’ve been going through my things,” she said. “Next time you snoop, you might want to close the curtains.”

Dee rubbed the pew’s fine wood, her fingertips searching for a crack or cranny in which to hide. She was damned if she’d cry in front of Claire. “What do you want from me?” she finally asked, but before Claire could respond, the answer came swelling up through Dee like the vibration of a huge bell, so powerful she wondered that half the town couldn’t hear it, too.
Your baby.

She sat back, breathless. Of course. It was so plain. Claire was exactly the kind of person who wanted all the things she didn’t have—children, Whit when he’d belonged to her sister, Ethan when he belonged to God. And Dee bet that Claire didn’t care how she got them. She folded her hands around her belly and stood up. “We can go now.” The baby gurgled and twisted, and Dee laid a hand on top of it, as if to reassure it for the first time that everything was going to be fine, even if she wasn’t sure that was true.

“Did you get the answer you needed?” Claire’s voice jabbed behind her like a spade plunging into earth. Dee squared her shoulders and steeled herself. She wasn’t going to let Claire—or anyone—dig into her. Not anymore.

“Sure,” she said. “For now.”

B
y the end of June, summer had finally started unfurling itself in earnest, a bright flag that had been rolled too tight during winter. Eelgrass, pea blossoms, climbing roses, ticks, mice, and even moles poked their dim noses up out of the blessed black dirt and took a sniff of the new season. As if in celebration, the first crust of salt formed early on the eastern basins, turning the ponds from plain mud puddles to pools frosted with delicacy.

Jo couldn’t enjoy the bounty, however. Her savings had run completely out, and once again, as the bank had predicted, she’d fallen behind on the payments. Whit had made good on his word, too. He
did
have friends at Harbor Bank, and as bad luck would have it, they agreed with Whit’s view of the situation.

“You have a reasonable offer on the property, Miss Gilly,” Mr. Monaghy had said through the telephone two days after her latest letter from them. “It is our honest advice that you take it. To tell you the truth, we don’t really
want
the property, but we’re beholden to follow the rules of the loan. We view this offer as a win-win situation for all parties involved.”

“I wasn’t aware that this was a game,” Jo had snapped. “The answer is no.” And she’d slammed down the phone.

Jo gazed out toward the horizon now, at a point that should have been mysterious and vast but which, down low in the belly
of the marsh, was merely a dot of unrealized potential. She turned her face back to the salt ponds. If she was going to dig her way out of her hole of debt, she was going to have to pay attention to the resources at hand. This spot of earth could be fertile in the right circumstances, Jo knew. In fact, the outer banks of the Cape had once been famous for their salt. Now her farm was just the last ghost of that fecundity. Put like that, Jo thought, the marsh seemed less a historical relic than an undiscovered treasure. Funny how perspective worked, she mused, climbing over a crumbling levee and lowering herself even further into the bog. It wasn’t until you were on the verge of losing something that you saw it for what it really was.

“I
t looks like snow.” Dee was balanced on a narrow levee, blinking against the late-afternoon sun, her belly fully swollen in the last stage of her pregnancy. Jo thought she’d never seen anyone so pregnant, and in fact she hadn’t.

Claire had been furious when she’d found out how far along Dee was in her pregnancy, but Jo wasn’t surprised a bit. A child built like Dee could probably keep a huge amount under her belt, Jo thought, before it would start to show. She wondered what else Dee hadn’t told them about. With her it could be almost anything. Once Jo had caught Dee coming out of Claire’s room.

“I was… I was just looking to see if I could borrow an old blouse,” she’d stammered, but hadn’t Jo just given her a pile of extra clothes the day before?

“Better take one of mine,” Jo had said. “And if I were you, I’d give my sister a wide berth.” Even though Claire was civil enough to Dee, greeting her with cold nods or single words, Jo still couldn’t be sure she wasn’t cooking up a plan for revenge along with all her sweeter confections. Jo sighed now and wiped her brow, regarding the basin in front of her.

“Are you sure I should be doing this?” Dee asked her. “It feels like I’m going to pop any second.”

Jo continued to rake. “This is the best crust of the year so far.” Her voice grew softer. “Once there were salt works all up and down this coast. Did you know that? When I was little, there were even some of the old vats left. They were empty and half rotten, of course, but still there.”

Jo dipped her finger into the bowl of flakes she was accumulating and offered a pinch to Dee. She waited for Dee to put it in her mouth, and then she decided to give the girl a test. “Quick,” she said, “without thinking, tell me your first memory.”

Dee closed her eyes, and a smile crept over her round face. “My mother singing before I fell asleep.”

“Who do you love?” Jo asked, praying that Dee wouldn’t say Whit and sighing with relief when her hands simply circled her belly. So far Dee’s heart seemed pure, but Jo had covered only the past and the present. The future was open to interpretation.

“What did you think you’d find here?” she asked, and with that, Dee’s eyes flew open, hooded and suspicious.

“What do you mean?” she said, but the salt’s spell was broken, Jo saw. Dee wasn’t going to tell her more. Jo handed her a wide wooden bowl. If she couldn’t get answers out of Dee, at least she could get some help. “Hold this steady,” she said.

Dee couldn’t possibly screw
that
up, she thought. Right after the spring flood, Jo had tried showing Dee how to work the sluices, but she and Claire had ended up hauling her out of one of the inundation pools by her armpits. When Dee had attempted the process again in early May, she’d come back to the barn bleeding from her thumb, one of her boots covered entirely in mud. Jo never did figure out what had happened that time. It was astonishing, really. She’d never met anyone so clumsy. When the baby was born, Jo thought, she and Claire might have to string up a safety net under its tiny little bones.