The Watery Part of the World - Michael Parker [67]
One moment, however, remained untainted and clear. Out one afternoon to milk her errant cow, wading into the water, the sound sucking her under, Daniels holding her there while the tide washed from her the hopeful fantasy that Whaley had returned to his wife and children. Thereafter she knew without doubt that Daniels had come for him, that he would one day come for her. She’d readied herself that night, though she’d tried to buy time by hiding the portrait behind the bureau. The space above the hearth she avoided looking at as vigilantly as she had when it was filled with the likeness of her, for the ghost of that portrait—a rectangle against which the whitewashed walls had darkened with soot—terrified her nearly as much as the portrait.
Fifteen years passed, then twenty. Perhaps he was dead, Daniels. No, she would know if he were dead. She would feel it as she had felt, finally, that day she’d gone after Nora, Whaley’s death. Her father, her legal rightful husband, Joseph—if they had passed on to some other sphere (and surely her father had by now, likely Joseph as well), she had felt nothing of it. She could not even summon shame over the nothingness she felt about the man who had groomed her to be the most highly educated and socially adept lady in America. Stray phrases of Latin and occasional snatches of Beethoven notwithstanding, that part of her life had been eclipsed by the long wait for Daniels to come for her at last.
One of the boys or Amanda Jane came by daily to check on her, but it was Hezekiah, living right behind her, upon whom she depended the most. He’d given up fishing for carpentry and most days was just out back of the house carrying on with his hammering and sawing. Two or three times a day he’d come to the back door and peer through the baggy screen down the hallway to where she sat in the parlor. More often than not he’d find her dozing. If she were awake and heard him she’d say one of two things:
“How many times do I have to ask you to come round front?”
Or: “Is that my coffin you’re slapping together out there?”
Sometimes Violet would send Hezekiah over with something she’d baked or some leftover from their table as it was clear that Theo rarely bothered to eat unless someone brought her something by. Theo would always ask Hezekiah in to sit. No ma’am got to get back over to the house, he’d say. One day she would not take his no.
“Sit a bit. Please?”
It was winter, clouds hugging the coast to where she could not see thirty feet. She heard the sea but all that was visible was the final roll of water on sand, the part that delivered and took away.
“Right much a mess out there today,” said Hezekiah.
Theo did not respond. Weather was not what she wanted to talk about. For weeks she’d been waking in the night to feel Daniels in the house. She heard his boots on the floorboards in the kitchen. The smell of his rum breath would linger in the hallway.
“There’s but one thing on this earth left for me to do,” she said.
“Yes ma’am,” said Hezekiah, nodding. His words were not pitched in the interrogative, but in agreement, as if by agreeing he would not have to hear what that one thing was. His presence since Whaley’s disappearance had brought such rewards: even