The Pilot's Wife_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [45]
Was Robert Hart telling the truth? she wondered. Was he glad she’d bolted? “Have they gone?” she asked.
“No.”
“And?”
“They’ll be all right. They have to do this. I don’t think they really expected you to say anything.”
She rested her elbows on her upraised knees, clutched her hair into a ponytail.
“We do need to have a funeral,” she said.
He nodded.
“Mattie and I need to honor Jack,” she said. “Mattie needs to honor her father.”
And she thought suddenly that this was true. Jack should be honored.
“It wasn’t suicide,” she said. “I’m sure of that.”
A gull screeched down at them, and together they looked up at the bird that was circling overhead.
“When I was small,” she said, “I used to think I wanted to come back in my next life as a gull. Until Julia told me how filthy they are.”
“The rats of the sea,” Robert said, stubbing out the cigarette on the sand with his foot. He slipped his hands into his pockets and seemed to hunch even more deeply into his coat. He was cold, she could see that. The skin around the eyes had gone papery and white.
She removed a strand of hair from her mouth.
“People in Ely,” she said, “they say never live on the water. It’s too depressing in the winter. But I’ve never been depressed.”
“I envy you,” he said.
“Well, I’ve been depressed, but not because of the ocean.” She saw now in the strong light that his eyes were hazel, not brown.
“But it’s hell on windows,” she added, looking in the direction of the house. “The salt spray.”
He crouched down near the sand, where it was warmer. “When Mattie was little, I worried about being so close to the ocean. I had to watch her all the time.”
Kathryn gazed at the water, contemplating the danger there.
“Two summers ago,” she said, “a girl drowned not far from here. A five-year-old girl. She was on a boat with her parents and got washed overboard. Her name was Wilhelmina. I remember thinking that was such an old-fashioned name to give a girl.”
He nodded.
“When it happened, all I could think was how treacherous the ocean is, how quickly it can snatch a person. It happens so fast, doesn’t it? One minute your life is normal, the next it isn’t.”
“You of all people should know that.”
She dug the heels of her boots into the sand.
“You’re thinking it could have been worse,” Kathryn said. “Aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“It might have been Mattie on the plane.”
“Yes.”
“That would have been unbearable. Literally unbearable.” He brushed his hands together to get rid of the wet sand. “You could go away, you know,” he said. “You and Mattie.” “Go away?”
“To the Bahamas. To Bermuda. For a couple of weeks, until this dies down.”
Kathryn tried to imagine being in Bermuda right now with Mattie, then shook her head.
“I couldn’t do that,” Kathryn said. “They’d take it as true about Jack. They’d see us as running away. And besides, Mattie wouldn’t go. I don’t think she would.”
“Some of the relatives have gone to Ireland,” he said.
“And what? Stay in a motel with a hundred other families who are out of their minds? Or go to the crash site and wait for the divers to bring up body parts? No, I don’t think so.”
She felt around in the pockets of her parka. A used Kleenex. Coins. An outdated credit card. A couple of dollar bills. A tube of Lifesavers.
“You want one?” she asked, holding the Lifesavers forward. “Thanks,” he said.
Tired of crouching, he sat on the sand and leaned back against a rock.
He’ll ruin his coat, she thought.
“It’s beautiful here,” he said. “Beautiful part of the world.” “It is.”
She stretched her legs out in front of her. The sand, though wet, was oddly warm.
“Until this goes away, the media is going to be relentless,” he said. “I’m sorry for that.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Even I’ve never seen anything like that scene at the gate.” “It was frightening.”
“You must be pretty used to a quiet life here.”
“A quiet, ordinary life,” she said.
He had his elbows hooked around his knees, his hands clasped in front of him.
“What was your life like before this?” he asked.