over my face. I had nothing to wipe my nose with, unless I actually took off my bra, and I wasn’t doing that again.
“Here.” Something soft was thrust into my hands, and I took it. Gray’s T-shirt. Damp with sweat, and I was glad of it. I mopped up, then clutched the shirt in my hand and said, “Yeh. Well. So, that happened.”
“It did.” He then put a hand under my elbow and helped me to my feet. Normally, I wouldn’t have needed help. Today, I was rocky. He said, “That’s a lot of pain to carry. A lot of fear. Reckon it needed to come out. Come on. We’ll go see the sea. We’ll let it blow it all away. And we’ll think about what to do next.”
28
Visitors
Gray
What do you do when all you want in the world is to hit somebody, and he’s not there to take the punch?
I was meant to watch myself for signs of inappropriate emotion. Of uncontrollable anger, especially. Well, I had it. I didn’t know what to do about it, so I jogged along the earthen track with Daisy, looked at the sea and the sandstone cliffs and the arch in the rock, listened to the pounding of the surf, smelled damp grass and salt air and a storm coming, and tried to breathe.
Daisy said, “It’s nice here. Thanks. And I’m better. I needed to do that, I guess.”
“Good,” I said. “But that’s not all of it.” Around the corner, down the track, and there it was ahead of us. An arched concrete tunnel.
She said, “Oh.”
I said, “Yeh. Touch the wall through here. It’s dark. Slopes down. Go carefully.” I’d have taken her hand, but I wasn’t sure if it would help, so I didn’t. She wanted to be normal again, to be bright and strong and decisive, that was clear.
We stepped out into the sunlight, and she sighed and said again, “Oh.”
The sea was foaming up nearly all the way to the cliff face, the tide just on the turn, but the waves were gentle here in the protection of the arm of rock that jutted far out into the sea, with the natural arch at its end, and the water came forward with a hiss onto the gleaming sand and retreated again, leaving scallops of foam. On the farther edge of the scooped-out section of coast, a silver waterfall plunged down the fern-studded cliff and fell with a spatter into the sea.
“You could be anywhere,” Daisy said. “It’s the ends of the earth.”
I said, “It’s a special place. A hidden place. You could bring the girls, maybe. The mountains and the sea, those are my places. Where I can send my troubles on their way and come back lighter.”
She said, “You’re cold, though.”
I was wearing an ancient pair of Highlanders-blue rugby shorts, and that was all. She was still holding my shirt. She was one of those women who’d always insist on washing your shirt before she gave it back. “Nah,” I said. “I’m used to being cold. Rugby, eh. You told me your secret, and I told you mine. Let’s walk over to the waterfall. There’ll be rainbows.”
“Not so much of a secret,” she said, “since everybody but me apparently knows,” but she came. Not caring that her feet were getting wet. She was about the least fussy woman I’d ever met. I’d have liked her to be a bit more fussy, actually. I’d never been much for romantic gestures, but I’d have carried her across wet ground. I’d have done that gladly.
“I’m reminding myself,” she said, when we were watching the waterfall splash into the receding curls of foam, “that Gilead doesn’t know my surname. So why do I feel like the hair’s rising at the back of my neck?”
“Dunno,” I said. “Maybe there’s something you don’t know you know. We thought of my truck’s number plate, but the sun wasn’t up yet, and you were heading for that fence, and for your father, flat to the boards. Unless he’s got ice in his veins, he wasn’t looking at number plates, he was diving for cover. But maybe your uncle shared your surname. Maybe that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I don’t think he knows,” Daisy said. “I don’t think I ever told him. I just said ‘Daisy,’ I think. Not sure, though. It’s been too many years. And it’s not as if Gilead has outside contacts, or my father, either. It’s not as if they have any power out here.”