Evidence of Life - By Barbara Taylor Sissel Page 0,26
I know he was upset.”
“He’s worried, honey. He wants you to be the way you were. I told him grief has its own timetable.” Abby’s mother reached out to pat Abby’s hand.
“I should be driving,” she said.
“No, this once, you can let me.”
Chapter 7
At the marina, they walk along a pier between rows of moored boats. They’re all different sizes, mostly crisp white, trimmed in red or green or blue, like rows of Spectator shoes. Nick carries the cooler with their picnic supper in one hand, the other rests lightly in the small of Abby’s back. She’s aware of sea birds wheeling overhead, the gentle slap of water against the pilings under their feet, the jostling of boats caught in their moorings. The slight shift and tilt of their masts gives the impression of impermanence. She’s anxious. What if she falls?
But Nick’s hand is there as if he intuits her unease, a solid prop beneath her elbow, as he helps her over the side of a pretty blue-and-white boat, then hands the cooler to her. Abby manages to hold herself steady, but when she goes forward, he says why doesn’t she sit in the cockpit, and she thinks, there. Now he’ll know she’s ignorant. She had no idea that a boat had a cockpit. Planes. Planes had cockpits.
She sits down, putting the cooler beside her. He frees the knot that tethers the boat to the dock, then steps around doing other things. She would like to help, but she has no idea how. The wind picks at her hair, whipping it across her cheeks and eyes, and she pulls it away, tucking strands behind her ears.
Nick finds her gaze from where he’s standing on a step above her. “You’ve never been sailing before.”
“No,” she admits, and her heart pecks at her ribs, a nervous bird. She loves the look and sound of water but from the shore. Her pale skin only burns and peels. She never tans. Nick looks as though he was born tan.
He tells her it’s okay. “When there’s a good wind like today, I can usually single-hand her with just the jib.”
She nods. Should she ask, what’s a jib? Should she worry about his use of the word usually?
“You’ll see when we get into open water.” He jumps down beside her, and within seconds, she hears motor noise. She hadn’t expected that, and she’s thankful. They clear the dock area but are still within sight of land when Nick begins unfurling a sail. “This is the jib,” he explains, “and these ropes are the halyards.” He lets the thick cords play through his hands.
She shades her eyes, watching the white canvas-sheeting rise.
“People think sailing is hard,” Nick says, “but for me it’s as easy as breathing.” He grins at her. “Stick with me, kid, you’ll make first mate in no time.”
She’s laughing when he cuts the engine, then a hard wave slaps the boat, and she grabs the railing. Nick is there instantly, sliding his hand beneath her elbow, telling her to relax, to flex her knees. “I’ve got you; I won’t let you go,” he says.
Abby loses focus. Her whole awareness is consumed by her sense of him, the feel of the calluses on his palm, the slow, confident pitch of his voice near her ear. And then it happens: she unlocks her knees as he’s instructed and all at once the boat’s rhythm takes her, and it is as if her body has become unjointed, as fluid and formless as the water that surrounds them. And she smiles, feeling thrilled. Nick gives her elbow a jubilant squeeze. He bends to tie a rope onto a metal cleat. The little boat catches the wind now and leaps ahead, slicing through the water almost as if it weren’t there, as if they were flying.
She tips her face to the sky. The blue seems without end, translucent, an inverted fragile cup, the blue of a robin’s egg. The blue of June. Endless blue with hours of daylight left in it. She thinks Nick is right, the predictions for evening thunderstorms were mistaken and she is relieved. Soon he has guided them into a secluded cove. Abby opens the cooler to find one long-stemmed pink rose, a thick lush bud with petals that are just beginning to unfurl. Lifting it out she looks up at Nick to find him smiling down on her.
“I wanted to thank you for coming with me,” he says.