shook his head and said, as though defeated by exhaustion, “Why must you always hide from me, Ruth?”
“I wasn’t hiding from you, Cal.”
“No?”
“I was just evading you. Hiding from you is futile.”
“You always blame me, Ruth,” Cal Cooley lamented. “Stop smiling, Ruth. I’m serious. You always have blamed me.”
He opened the door of the truck and paused. “You don’t have any luggage?” he asked.
She shook her head and got into the truck.
Cal said, with dramatic fatigue, “If you bring no clothes to Miss Vera’s house, Miss Vera will have to buy you new clothes.”
When Ruth did not answer, he said, “You know that, don’t you? If this is a protest, it will backfire in your pretty face. You inevitably make things harder for yourself than you have to.”
“Cal,” Ruth whispered conspiratorially, and leaned toward him in the cab of the truck. “I don’t like to bring luggage when I go to Concord. I don’t like anyone at the Ellis mansion to think I’ll be staying.”
“Is that your trick?”
“That’s my trick.”
They drove toward the wharf, where Cal parked the truck. He said to Ruth, “You look very beautiful today.”
Now it was Ruth who sighed dramatically.
“You eat and eat,” Cal continued, “and you never get heavier. That’s marvelous. I always wonder when your big appetite’s going to catch up to you and you’ll balloon on us. I think it’s your destiny.”
She sighed again. “You make me so goddamn tired, Cal.”
“Well, you make me goddamn tired, too, sweetheart.”
They got out of the truck, and Ruth looked down the wharf and across the cove, but the Ellises’ boat, the Stonecutter, was not there. This was a surprise. She knew the routine. Cal Cooley had been ferrying Ruth around for years, to school, to her mother. They always left Fort Niles in the Stonecutter, courtesy of Mr. Lanford Ellis. But this morning Ruth saw only the old lobster boats, bobbing. And a strange sight: there was the New Hope. The mission boat sat long and clean on the water, her engine idling.
“What’s the New Hope doing here?”
“Pastor Wishnell is giving us a ride to Rockland,” Cal Cooley said.
“Why?”
“Mr. Ellis doesn’t want the Stonecutter used for short trips anymore. And he and Pastor Wishnell are good friends. It’s a favor.”
Ruth had never been on the New Hope, though she’d seen it for years, cruising. It was the finest boat in the area, as fine as Lanford Ellis’s yacht. The boat was Pastor Toby Wishnell’s pride. He may have forsworn the great fishing legacy of the Wishnell family in the name of God, but he had kept his eye for a beautiful boat. He’d restored the New Hope to a forty-foot glass-and-brass enchantress, and even the men on Fort Niles Island, all of whom loathed Toby Wishnell, had to admit that the New Hope was a looker. Although they certainly hated to see her show up in their harbor.
They didn’t see her much, though. Pastor Toby Wishnell was rarely around. He sailed the coast from Casco to Nova Scotia, ministering to every island along the way. He was nearly always at sea. And, though he was based directly across the channel on Courne Haven Island, he did not often visit Fort Niles. He came for funerals and for weddings, of course. He came for the occasional baptism, although most Fort Niles citizens skipped that particular procedure to avoid asking for him. He came to Fort Niles only when he was invited, and that was seldom.
So Ruth was indeed surprised to see his boat.
On that morning, a young man was standing at the end of the Fort Niles dock, waiting for them. Cal Cooley and Ruth Thomas walked toward him, and Cal shook the boy’s hand. “Good morning, Owney.”
The young man did not answer but climbed down the wharf ladder to a neat little white rowboat. Cal Cooley and Ruth Thomas climbed down after him, and the rowboat rocked delicately under their weight. The young man untied his line, seated himself in the stern, and rowed out to the New Hope. He was big—maybe twenty years old, with a large, squarish head. He had a thick square body, with hips as wide as his shoulders. He wore oilskins, like a lobsterman, and had on fisherman’s tall rubber boots. Though he was dressed like a lobsterman, his oilskins were clean and his boots did not smell of bait. His hands on the oars were square and thick like a fisherman’s hands, yet they were clean. He had no cuts