"Oh my Lord…" she said softly.
There he was, on the beach.
There he was, and her heart was suddenly beating so loudly she could hear it in her head, and her hands were clammy and her stomach was churning. There he was, and it was all she could do not to just go to him; tell him she wasn't a Geary, not in her heart; she wasn't even a wife, not really; it had aH been a stupid mistake, and would he please forgive her, would he please pretend he'd never laid eyes on her before, so that they could start again as though they'd just met, walking on the beach?
She did none of this, of course. She simply watched him as he made his way toward the house. He saw her now; waved at her, and smiled. She went to the French window, slid it open and stepped out onto the veranda. He was halfway up the lawn, still smiling. His pants were soaked to the knee, the rest of him wet with spray, his grubby T-shirt clinging to his belly and chest. He extended his hand to her.
"Will you come with me?" he said.
"Where are we going?"
"I want to show you something."
"Let me get my shoes."
"You won't need shoes. We're just going along the beach."
She closed the screen door to keep out the mosquitoes and went down onto the lawn to join him. He took her hand, the gesture so casual it was as though this was a daily ritual for them, and he'd come to the lawn a hundred times, and called to her, and smiled at her, and taken her hand in his.
"I want to show you my boat," he explained as they took the short path to the sand. "It's moored in the next bay."
"Wonderful," she said. "Oh… by the way… I really think I should apologize for last night. I wasn't… behaving… the way I normally behave."
"No?" he said.
She couldn't tell whether he was being sarcastic or not. All she could see was the smile on his face, and it seemed perfectly genuine.
"Well I had a wonderful time last night," he said, "so if you want to behave that way again, go for it." She offered an awkward grin. "Do you want to walk in the water?" he said, moving on from her apology as though the whole subject was over and done with. "It's not cold."
"I don't mind cold water," she said. "We have hard winters where I come from."
"Which is where?"
"Dansky, Ohio."
"Dansky, Ohio," he said, turning the words over on his tongue as he spoke them, as though savoring the syllables. "I went to Ohio once. This is before I took to the sea. A place called Bellefontaine. I wasn't there long."
"What do you mean when you say you 'took to the sea'?"
"Just that. I gave up the land. And the people on it. Actually it was the people I gave up on, not the land."
"You don't like people?"
"A few," he said, throwing her a sideways glance. "But not many."
"You don't like the Gearys, for instance."
The smile that had been at play on his face dropped away. "Who told you that?"
"Niolopua."
"Huh. Well he should keep his mouth shut."
"Don't blame him. He was upset. And from what he was telling me it sounds like the family gave everybody a raw deal."
Galilee shook his head. "I'm not complaining," he said. "This is a hard world to get by in. It makes people cruel sometimes. There's a lot worse than the Gearys. Anyway… you're a Geary." The smile crept back. "And you're not so bad."
"I'm getting a divorce," she said.
"Oh? Don't you love him then?"
"No."
"Did you ever?"
"I don't know. It's hard to be sure of what you feel when you meet somebody like Mitchell. Especially when you're just a Midwestern girl, and you're lost and you're not sure what you want. And there he is, telling you not to worry about that anymore. He'll take care of everything."
"But he didn't?" Galilee said.
She thought about this for a moment. "He did his best," she admitted. "But as time went by…"
"The things you wanted changed," Galilee said.
"That's right."
"And eventually, the things you end up wanting are the things they can't give you." He wasn't talking about her any longer, she realized. He was talking about himself; of his own relationship with the Gearys, the nature of which she did not yet comprehend.
"You're doing the right thing," he said. "Leaving before you start to hate yourself."
Again he was talking autobiographically, she knew, and she took comfort from the fact. He seemed to see some parallel between their lives. The fears that had threatened her that afternoon were toothless. If he understood her situation as he seemed to-if he saw some sense in which his pain and hers overlapped-then they had some common ground upon which to build.
Of course now she wanted to know more, but having made the remark about hating yourself he fell silent, and she couldn't think of a way to raise the subject again without seeming pushy. No matter, she thought. Why waste time talking about the Gearys, when there was so much to enjoy: the sky turning pink as the sun slid away, the sea calmer than she'd seen it, the motion of the water around her legs, the heat of Galilee's palm against hers.
Apparently much the same thoughts were passing through her companion's head.
"Sometimes I talk myself into such foul moods," he said, "and then I think: what the hell do I have to complain about?" He looked up at the reef of coral clouds that was accruing high, high above them. "So what if I don't understand the world?" he went on. "I'm a free man. At least most of the time. I go where I want when I want. And wherever I go…" his gaze went from the clouds to Rachel "… I see beautiful things." He leaned toward her and kissed her lightly. "Things to be grateful for." They stopped walking now. "Things that I can't quite believe I'm seeing." Again he put his lips against hers, but this time there was no chasteness. This time they wrapped their arms around one another and kissed deeply, like the lovers they'd been bound to be from the beginning.
It passed through Rachel's head that she wasn't living this but dreaming it: that every detail of this moment was in such a perfect place there was no improving it. Sky, sea, clouds, lips. His eyes, meeting hers. His hands on her back, at her neck, in her hair.
"I'm sorry…" he murmured to her.
"For what?"
"For not coming to find you," he said. "I should have come to find you."
"I don't understand."
"I was looking away. I was staring at the sea when I should have been watching for you. Then you wouldn't have married him."
"If I hadn't married him we'd never have met."
"Oh yes we would," he said. "If I'd not been watching the sea, I would have known you were out there. And I would have come looking for you."
They walked on after a time, but now they walked with their arms around one another. He took her to the end of the beach, then led the way over the spit of rocks that marked the divide between the two bays. On the other side was a stretch of sand perhaps half the length of the beach behind them, in the middle of which was a small, and plainly very antiquated, wooden jetty, its timbers weathered to a pale gray, its legs shaggy with vivid green weed. There was only one vessel moored there: The Samarkand. Its sails were furled, and it rode gently on the incoming tide, the very picture of tranquillity.
"Did you build it?" she asked him.
"Not from scratch. I bought her in Mauritius, stripped her down to the bare essentials and fashioned her the way I wanted her. It took two years, because I was working on my own."