Dark Tides. Celia Ashley

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Caleb drained the remnants. “And what did you dream about me?” he asked, his voice muffled against the back of his hand as he wiped pulp from his lip. “Something that might help me, do you think?”

      Leaning against the doorframe, Meg let the book slide to her waist as she tried to recall. “I don’t remember, exactly,” she said, unable to find the details. “I had no recollection of having dreamed at all until I saw you. Only then did I know I hadn’t dreamed of Matt this morning, of all mornings.”

      “Matt?” he echoed, his face contorting. “That was your husband’s name?”

      “It still is his name,” she answered. “He didn’t suddenly become nameless just because he died.”

      “I…of course not.”

      Meg nodded, the tiny movement tossing her bangs into her eyes. She blinked at the intrusion of hair into her lashes, at the sudden moisture blurring her gaze. She had to stop talking, lest she let loose something she would regret.

      “You should rest for a little while,” she said after a silent interval. “I’ll put a towel and some more clean clothes for you in the bathroom and turn down the spare bed. I suppose lying down won’t do you any harm, even if you do doze off. I’ll wake you up regularly, if it comes to that, to make sure you’re okay. You can shower and do whatever you need to do while I’m gone.”

      “Gone?” he said, rising from his seat, disheveled and wounded and wearing her dead husband’s clothes. “Where are you going?”

      “After I get you those things I promised,” she said, “I’m going back to the beach. Maybe something else washed up besides you.”

      * * * *

      The sun had come out, heating the sand beneath her feet as she walked up from the shoreline. She’d seen no evidence of shipwreck, no clothing, no wallet, no personal items at all except for a leather watch band, which, by the looks of it, had been in the ocean far longer than Caleb Hunter.

      Halfway between the tide and the steps leading to the house, Meg sat in the sand. She drew her knees up. Curving her hands around her ankles, she stared out to sea, to the rocky channel, the lighthouse, and the horizon that stretched to forever, a boundary almost indistinguishable between ocean and sky. Thinking of the vastness of the ocean, the unknown depths, the lonely, lonely stretches of open water, she felt light-headed and frightened. She had never fully understood how men so loved the sea they gave up all for her. Well, not men in general. She didn’t particularly care about the motivations of the sea-faring sector of the population. Only Matt. Matt who would always have been a wanderer, perhaps would have been destined to drive a truck over the road or something similar had he been born and raised somewhere inland rather than within the surging, siren call of the tides.

      A year ago today—a day very like this one, the sun bright, temperature mild after a foggy morning—she’d answered a knock on her front door. The dying leaves on the bushes, flanking the entrance, had flamed gold in the afternoon light. The edge of Dan Stauffer’s badge affixed to his shirtfront had glinted with fire as he stood beside the Coast Guard officer. Dan had watched her closely as he delivered the news, expecting shock, no doubt, and sorrow, despite the nearly two years Matt had been gone. Or perhaps he’d merely been looking for confirmation, in some fashion, of the wild rumors circulating about Matt since he’d left her and moved farther up the coast to continue his fishing operations.

      Fishing…right. The rumors spoke of more than fishing. Hearing them, she’d been saddened more than surprised. She’d prayed they weren’t true. Restless, discontented Matt with his rash schemes and his silent, smoldering rages, a criminal? She would have expected proof to be easily uncovered, if even half of the stories circulating had any basis in fact. Now, of course, none of them would ever know. The investigation had stopped with Matt’s death. As for the pain and useless, stupid guilt that had punctuated the last years of married life? Well, it seemed to her Matt’s death had only made it worse.

      Lifting her face to the late autumn sun, she thought of the stranger she had left in her house, giving him free rein to go where he pleased, to steal from her if he chose, to lie in wait for her return. He could be shamming memory loss. The only thing he couldn’t lie about were his injuries. Or the look in his eyes. The images she had seen there appeared in her own mind with such vivid clarity.

      Confusing images nevertheless, images that could give him no peace. She did not believe him to be lying, did not sense any danger in his presence. But could she trust herself anymore? Trust the innate sense she had relied on so often in her life? She had not seen Matt’s ship going down. Had not seen it at all, yet it had, vanishing into the dark depths of the ocean.

      With a sigh, Meg yanked her ankles closer, gazing toward the horizon. Always capricious, the sea. When she chose to give up her carefully guarded secrets, there was no telling where they would come ashore. Ever.

      In the town, at its highest point above sea level, stood a single stone cross with a brass plaque beneath. Every year new names of the sailors who did not return were added to the plaque. If she walked far enough up the beach, she would see the tip of the cross and the spire of the church at Church and Center Streets. Somewhere northeast of the town, and many nautical miles out to sea, lay Matt’s body, or what remained after the creatures of the deep had finished with it. Lying with the others, bones scattered to the ocean floor for degeneration by the salt and the relentless motion of the water. She didn’t like to think of it, didn’t like to dwell on Matt’s fate, his drowning. She hoped for his sake that everything had been over quickly, that one moment he’d been alive and filled with the hope of survival, and the next done, finished, drowned, without ever feeling any fear between.

      Yet, he would have understood his chances and faced the inevitable with the harsh philosophy coloring everything he undertook, all the choices in his life. Fear might not have been a part of it. In later times, before the end, he used to tell her that the act of living itself was a risk, that pain and death were always right there waiting. As if she needed reminding.

      She lowered her lids against the glare of the sun. The constant sea breeze tugged at her hair, loosening strands from the barrette at the back of her head. She breathed in and out, evenly, deeply, trying to banish the emotion pushing toward the surface. Gulls circled overhead, crying in the wind, waiting for a scrap or two of food she did not possess to offer. The waves crashed against the wet sand of the shoreline, curling and foaming, the beach empty, as it often was at this time of year. Late October weather could be unpredictable. Freak storms came up without warning, and the month was often too warm for the cold and ice and bitter winds that gave sailors and fishermen pause to return to hearth, home, and safety.

      “Oh, Matt,” she whispered. She pressed her forehead onto her knees, squeezing her eyes shut. Always going after what he wanted, no matter the consequences. Conscience be damned. Once, he’d possessed a gentler soul. She hardly remembered that man anymore.

      She heard Caleb coming through the sand a few minutes later, a hitch to his step, the drop to his knees next to her causing a deadened thud of reverberation in her hips. He smelled ridiculously like her lavender soap and detergent, making him familiar to her when he should not have been at all.

      “Are you all right?”

      At the tone of concern from this wounded, troubled man, Meg bit her lip, willing herself not to weep. She would not. Not for everything she’d lost, for everything she’d bartered away in an attempt to keep a man who had not wanted her after all.

      “I expect I’m a good deal better than you are,” she said.

      To her surprise, Caleb chuckled in response. СКАЧАТЬ