The Echo of Old Books(124)

I’ve just opened my eyes when I catch a small flicker of movement along the sand, a blur of dark against bright. It lasts only an instant, but I’m sure I’ve seen it. I watch, wait, but all is still. A trick of the moonlight, I tell myself. Then it happens again.

I peer into the darkness, willing my eyes to adjust. I can’t make out anything at first, but eventually I pick out an unfamiliar shape propped against the rocks that separate the beach from the road. Perhaps my neighbors have come back and opened up the house. Unlikely at this time of year, when many of Marblehead’s coastal homes have already been shut up for the season. Besides, it’s much too cold for an evening on the beach.

Curious, I go to the porch door and push it open. The sound of the sea rushes in on a gust of briny air. The shape, whatever it is, is still there, unmoving but clearer now. I step out onto the deck. My hair catches on the wind, streaming into my eyes. I shove it out of my face, my gaze still fastened on the rocks. I see it then, moonlight caught and reflected back in a brief, bright arc. There, then gone, but familiar somehow.

A flicker of memory. Fingers, long and lean, scraping back a wave of unruly dark hair. A wristwatch catching the candlelight. My heart does a little gallop. It’s madness, of course, the figment of a wishful imagination. And yet I find myself moving to the stairs, taking them carefully in the dark, clinging to the wooden rail until I’m finally standing on the beach.

The shadow is still there, an eerie presence silhouetted against the rocks. A man, I realize, with a dizzying jolt of recognition. My heels bite into the sand as I begin to walk, my progress awkward and halting. I feel rather than see him turn to look at me. There’s another glint of moonlight, a moment’s hesitation, and then he’s climbing down from his perch. He stands with his hands at his sides, legs braced wide, watching me approach. Even in the dark, I would know him anywhere.

“Hello,” he says when I’m finally standing in front of him. The word gets lost on the wind and sounds strangely disembodied in the darkness. “What are you doing out here?”

“It’s my beach. Have you been sitting out here all this time?”

“Not all. I sat in the car for a while.”

“Why?”

His shoulders bunch, then fall heavily. “I couldn’t make myself leave.”

I tell myself it doesn’t mean what I think it means, what I want it to mean, but the thrum of my pulse and the rush of the sea eclipse all thought. “It’s freezing. Where’s your coat?”

“The car.”

“Hemi, you can’t stay out here.”

“You want me to go?”

“No. But you can’t stay out here. Come inside.”

We walk back to the stairs, silent and a careful distance apart. Inside, I flip on a lamp and turn to look at him. His mouth is pinched and bluish, and there’s a whiff of cold clinging to him, a briny chill that seems to emanate from his clothes. Without thinking, I touch his face, grazing his cheek with the backs of my knuckles.

“You’re freezing.”

He stiffens slightly at my touch. “I’m fine.”

“Your lips are blue.”

“What were you doing on the beach?”

It seems an odd question after I’ve just found him sitting on the rocks. “I wasn’t on the beach. I was sitting up here, looking out, and I saw something move down by the rocks. It turned out to be you.”

“You were sitting in the dark?”

I shrug. “So were you.”

He’s about to respond when he notices the books sitting side by side on the table. He makes no move to touch them, but his eyes flick to mine and I read the question there.

“I pulled them out after you left. I was trying to decide what to do with them.”

“And did you?”

“Do you want them?” I ask, sidestepping the question with one of my own.

“No.”

The answer comes so quickly, so decisively, that I nearly flinch when he gives it. I nod and step back. “I’ll get the tea.”

He follows me to the kitchen, watching silently as I put the kettle on and prepare two mugs. For a moment, I’m back in his tiny kitchen in New York, preparing a meal while he reads the paper or pecks away at some story, and it’s as if no time has passed. But when I look across the counter at him, I’m reminded just how far we’ve come from the young lovers we once were.

His face is lined in new ways, though handsome still, God help me. I wish I didn’t see the old Hemi when I look at him, but he’s there, watching me with those guarded blue eyes, that damn hank of hair hanging over his forehead, not quite so dark now but wonderfully and terribly familiar.

I pull out the tea bags and add a splash of milk to Hemi’s, the way he used to take it. “This will help,” I say, holding the mug out to him.

He takes it and immediately sets it down. Before I can step away, he captures my wrist. “I don’t want tea, Belle.”

“All right, then. No tea. What do you want?”

His eyes cloud and he drops my wrist. “I want it to be 1941 again. I want it to be the day before I left New York, the day before you found my story notes. I want it to be before.”

“But it can’t be, Hemi.”

“No. It can’t. It can only be now. But you asked me what I wanted. I’ve spent the last two and a half hours trying to figure it out.”