Page 32 of Love Bound

"That's enough for me." There’s a thin treble of victory in his voice.

"Your bar is really low," I say.

"You don’t even have a bar. There is no bar."

It's because Allison set it, I want to tell him. She's gone, the bar is gone.

The mystery of us is gone.

***

Two days later, I wake to my weather radio cackling about a pressure system and an ice storm bearing down on the shore, south of Bar Harbor all the way to Portsmouth and north to Orono. I grab a pair of jeans, cross the hall, and look out one of the guest rooms to the ocean. Dark gray clouds lay heavy across the sky, pulling the sea into thousands of whitecaps. Mist, not fog, has left everything wet. A wind kicks up and I can tell it's beyond blustery. The railing out my window is coated with a thin sheen of ice. A line of thirty or so seagulls sits huddled on the spine on the roof of the back deck. When another lands, I slip on my pants and am just turning from the window when a small, bright red dinghy chugs by.

It’s Claire, her hand on the rudder. I pull back from the window and stand just far enough to watch her.

Cutting the engine, she floats the dinghy to the public landing. She’s layered with a black turtleneck, dark tan oilskin, heavy gloves, and I can see green rubber boots with fleece liners poking from the top. Her hair, bundled under a thick black wool hat with a pom-pom on top, is barely visible.

Bringing the small red boat alongside the floating dock, she threads a heavy rope through a cleat. Balancing carefully, she climbs out with a brown satchel with her. I can't see her stroll up the access, so I step away but then there she is again, walking on a little trail across the edge of the backyard, head down, arm gripping the medical bag.

I pull the thin drape across the window, ashamed to be watching her. She stands on that ledge of granite and pulls off her hat, and that mane of gold hair tumbles down, catching the wind. Taking off her gloves, she runs a hand through her hair and stares at the sea for a minute or two.

Later, while driving to the hardware emporium ten miles inland, I realize I’m picturing her again—her back mostly to me, her coat flapping, hair streaming, the curve of her face making me notice just how beautiful she is.

***

Getting the boards up proves to be a struggle. The metal ladder keeps shifting in the wind, but the blue tarp breaks loose and starts flapping around. It’s really gusting now, and I have to get up there and close the six-inch hole in the roof. The clouds are so thick the day has turned dark.

I decide not to try to lift any plywood—it's just too dicey. I cut a small piece; anything larger could act like a sail and blow me off the ladder. Once I get up there, I’m all by myself. No seagulls. Just me and the clouds.

And then the ice starts.

First, it tap-taps against the roof, then I feel it on my shoulders and hair. Ice slides down the back of my windbreaker.

After hauling up a small bag of tools and the sixteen-inch square piece of plywood, I grab a small a crowbar and start prying off more shingles, just to get a better sense of what I'm dealing with.

It's worse than I thought. Unzipping the windbreaker, I bend down in the poor light, realizing I should have worn something heavier. Ice is everywhere and sticking. The hole is also bigger than I thought, and I have to go back down and cut another piece.

The wind shifts just as I stand. Turning around, I bend over again, my back to the wind, hair in my eyes, trying to match the teeth of the zipper. Just as I get it to catch, and straighten, another gust hits hard, billowing the jacket, throwing me off balance. Instinctively, I look at the edge of the roof and what I could grab.

The gutter?

Slipping, I try to catch myself by stepping back away from the edge.

But there’s nothing there.

Chapter Nine

Claire

By now, I can dock a boat in my sleep, but the bay is rough this morning and it’s all I can do not to be sick. I don’t know how Laurel did it. Being the captain of her own lobster boat at eighteen, she was smart not to be out on a day like today. I only went as far out as the last boat moored in the bay, a mid-sized Sedan Bridge. I loop the rope over and under a cleat and climb out.

Putting down an animal is never easy, and Petunia, the little yippy, orangey, Pekinese-Chow mix was a fixture in her owner's life. Folks come up from Boston or New York, bring their animals and then their little friends get sick. Sometimes half my work in the summer is putting animals down on boats. This girl was sixteen years old and I'd been treating her off and on for years for a bad heart, with a misshapen leaky valve. Her partner in crime, Bobby Millan, was a crusty guy in his late sixties, a retired police officer who liked to be called a retired policeman. He came from a long line of them.

But he wiped his eyes.

So did I.

Now, I walk along the edge of land, the wind wrapping around me and pulling in all directions, and I stand on that flat platform of granite. Slipping off my dad's wool hat, I feel the cold, brisk air scrub me. All that sadness. It was necessary but hard, and I’ve never gotten over the odd mystery of having a living being looking into my eyes one minute and then, in the next, they're gone.