She took the pie and walked back to the Reverend’s. By now the staff knew her; she was privately referred to as the pregnant Owens medical student or the red-headed one and they waved her on, thinking she might take after her aunt Franny, and no one wished to defy her. Do what you want to, do what you will, none of us will stop you if you bring no harm to others. Antonia went directly to the dining room, emptied now after a very early dinner hour. It was only half-past four and still bright outside, but here it was later than anyone might think. Antonia grabbed a plate, along with a knife and a fork.
The Reverend was already in bed, mortified to be seen in his robe. “I thought you’d disappeared, Annie,” he said accusingly.
“I went home and made the pie.” Antonia cut him a small slice. “How does this bring my sister home?”
“She’ll know it was made with love and she’ll find you.”
“Jet told you this? You’re sure?”
“She said love was the most important ingredient.”
The pie had been made with love, that much was true. Antonia, terrible cook and levelheaded medical student, would do anything she could to locate her sister. She tried the pie, and found it wasn’t half bad. In her ninth month she was hungry all the time.
“Are you ready for your life to change?” Reverend Willard asked.
“No.” The baby kicked her, and Antonia knew she had better be ready. “Maybe,” she said.
“Greatest thing you’ll ever do,” the Reverend informed her. Antonia thought about how he had lost his beloved son; he had never gotten over it, because no one can get over such a loss, and yet here he was, being kind to her. If he kept this up, she would be on the brink of tears. Then he ruined it by saying, “If you get married, I’ll officiate. So you’d better hurry up. I don’t have that much longer.”
“There is no wedding in the future,” Antonia told him, thinking about her strange dream in which she wore a white dress. “I’m not involved with anyone,” she said in a firm tone, and yet her tongue burned, as if she were telling a lie.
“Fine,” the Reverend said. “Have it your way.”
The pats of butter inside the pie had melted and were running over the rim of the plate. When she first came to visit him, all those years ago, Jet had told him that butter melted in a house when someone was in love. He’d been a grouch in those days, but he always liked to hear Jet’s stories. He hadn’t believed in love. He’d lost his wife young, and had ruined his son’s life by refusing to accept Jet Owens. Now he was open to everything and anything. He wasn’t even the same person anymore and when he thought of the man he’d been, locked alone in his house, filled with so much regret he could barely speak, he pitied that fellow, and was grateful for the day when Jet Owens came to knock at his door.
“I think I’m exhausted,” he told Antonia.
She straightened out his blanket. “Just remember you’re not dying while I’m watching over you,” she told him. “Don’t even think about it.” She sat beside him and took his hand. She had decided to stay until he fell asleep. Sitting there quietly, not rushing around as she usually did, she could feel the baby settle inside her. Heart of my heart. My darling one.
She began to hum a song, one that came to her unexpectedly while she sat there beside the Reverend in the fading dusk, the scent of apple pie perfuming the air.
The water is wide. I cannot get o’er it.
“Jet used to sing that,” the Reverend murmured.
It was in equal parts a love song and a lullaby, a tune so old no one knew when it had first been written. Jet had sung it to Sally and Gillian when they were young, and then to Antonia and Kylie. It was a traditional folk song, handed down through the generations, one Maria Owens first heard in a field in England three hundred years earlier. Antonia sang it in the hush of the retirement home, for by now the hallways were dark, and everyone was asleep, but that didn’t mean people didn’t dream of ships and of dark water and of someone they loved too dearly to lose.