Chapter 9: The Seawall

"Not here," I said.

"Mara."

"She's at the top of the stairs. Not here."

Lawrence looked past me at the dark staircase.

Then he nodded once.

"I'll be on the seawall," he said. "I'll wait."

The bell jangled and he was gone.

Hattie didn't say a word to me.

She went up the stairs, scooped Poppy off the top step, and carried her back to bed.

She sang the song about the fishermen's wives that she'd sung to me when I was twelve and wouldn't stop crying.

I stood in the bakery among the boxes for a long time.

Then I took off my apron and went out.

Front Street was empty. The bars had closed. A single truck idled outside the fish co-op with its lights off.

The seawall ran along the bottom of the street below the inn.

It was a long curve of granite blocks with the harbor on one side and the inn's lawn on the other.

Lawrence was sitting on it with his legs hanging over the water.

His shirt was white in the dark.

I sat down two blocks away from him.

Granite still warm from the day.

Neither of us spoke.

Out on the water, a bell buoy rang every time a swell lifted it.

"I stayed," he said finally.

"What?"

"At the church. After everyone went to the parish hall. I stayed in the front pew."

He was looking at the water, not at me.

"My mother sent people back to get me. I sent them away."

"The organist left. The minister left. The janitor came at nine and swept around me."

"Lawrence."

"He was very nice about it. He said, son, I have to lock up. And I said, she might still come."

The buoy rang.

I pressed my hands flat against the granite so hard it hurt.

"I'd have waited all night," he said. "He had to walk me out."

"I'm sorry."