Pushing her empty plate aside, she stood up, her head light with bubbles and excitement. Cookie returned to his favored spot, a small basket in one of the windows where he could, should the mood take him, imagine a hunt of the local gulls without having to move too far. For now, he seemed content to have a good wash and settle in for a rest. Replacing the wish in the basket, Elizabeth raised her glass in the air.
“Here’s to us,” she said, looking at Cookie and thinking of Tom. Her eyes flicked to the door; should she look already? The excitement swelled inside her like a great big inflatable balloon. Even though she knew that a reunion was never in the cards, she had always wondered if one day he might just knock on the door and be standing there with the crocus in his hand rather than left on the doorstep. Especially this year, the fiftieth and most important, as she could see it. That would be her wish this year, she thought, just to have him back. But if those wishes were all they had left, it was enough for her to know that he still cared enough to come. And at least this way, she supposed, they had never suffered the difficult years of marriage, the arguing or disappointments that every couple she knew had experienced along the way. Instead they remained forever young, their relationship one of eternal hope.
Setting the empty champagne flute back on the table, she moved toward the door. Her anticipation had gotten the better of her, and she couldn’t wait any longer. The key turned with a clunk in the lock, the handle creaking as she pulled it. A gust of sea breeze picked up the edges of her silk robe as she opened the door, the chill of the air taking her breath away as she looked down to the step. But despite all her hope, expectation, and all the ways that she relied on the arrival of his gift, when she looked down there was no little flower or wish waiting to be found. This year, the step was empty.
Then
The first Elizabeth knew of the accident was when she woke to the dull thudding of her father’s boots on the stairs. The dark sky was broken by the glimmer of moonlight as it fussed at the edge of a break in the clouds. The clock ticked at her side, and she saw that it was a little after 1 a.m. Somewhere in the distance a door slammed, followed by the faintest ringing of a bell. Was that a voice she could hear too, calling out? Pushing the covers aside, she jumped from the bed, moved toward the window. As she peered into the street, she saw her father rushing from their home in the direction of the sea. His shoes were untied, the blue and white stripes of his pajamas flickering underneath the tails of his coat. There had been calls for such urgent departures in the past, but even in the direst of emergencies he always got dressed. Leaving in his nightclothes was unthinkable.
Elizabeth pushed her feet into her slippers and opened her bedroom door. With her father gone, the responsibility for her mother was left to her. Even at the age of seventeen she knew it wasn’t good for her mother to wake alone. Ahead, a thin sliver of light shone from the door of her parents’ bedroom, left ajar in an otherwise tenebrous house.
“Mum,” called Elizabeth as she moved along the landing. They tried to keep her accompanied, since the cruelty of the confusion had set in about a year ago, yet still there were unpredictable moments like this when she ended up alone. Alzheimer’s disease, her father called it. The name didn’t mean much to Elizabeth, but she hated the disease all the same. Only last month they had found her mother trying to take a boat out, with seemingly little idea about where she was and devastatingly unprepared for what might have lain ahead. Her condition was getting steadily worse, just a little bit every day; her presence in their family was like a rock ground down by the constant weight of the tides.
As she pushed open the door to her parents’ bedroom, an empty bed presented itself, the sheets turned in both left and right. Elizabeth thought she heard a noise then, something in the kitchen, perhaps. Her mother must already be downstairs. Turning to leave she almost missed it, but there, sitting alongside the chest of drawers, was her father’s black doctor’s bag. A fresh worry surfaced; he couldn’t work without his bag, and if there was an emergency great enough to rush from the house still dressed in his pajamas, Elizabeth had to do something. Not long had passed since he’d left, and she wondered if perhaps she could still catch him. Snatching up the bag, she hurried down the stairs. “I’ll be back as quick as I can, Mum,” she called, locking the front door behind her.
The winding streets of her small village were imprinted in her mind, and she used that knowledge gained through years of childhood play to get to the main road as quickly as she could. The wind bit at her ears, and through the thick coastal dark she could hear the increasing intensity of the sea breaking ground as she inched ever closer. Then overhead a bright light filled the sky, an arc like a comet, followed by the accompanying boom of a flare as it was fired from the lifeboat station. Her fears grew as half-dressed men whizzed past her, en route to answer the lifeboat’s call. Following the commotion of harried voices, she took her first steps onto the sand behind the lifeboat station. It was then that she heard the chilling shriek of her father’s cry, and saw him down at the water’s edge.
Arms flailed as a small crowd did what they could to hold him back. Mr. Bolitho and another man, whose name she didn’t know, splashed their way into the water ahead, each of them in a state of undress. Flashlights picked out a figure emerging from the water, pulling with him another person, as lifeless and heavy as a wet rag doll hanging at the rescuer’s side. His face was familiar, a young man named Tom whom she once knew from school. He had changed, grown broad in the shoulders, different from the boy Elizabeth used to know. Then her eyes moved to the body hanging limply under his arm. Her father’s bag fell from her hands as she watched her mother slip from Tom’s grip, forming a lifeless heap on the sand.
Stumbling forward, Elizabeth saw Tom pressing his mouth against her mother’s, filling her lungs with his breath. Her father was still screaming, helpless in a way she had never witnessed before. Why wasn’t he doing anything? Wet sand hit Elizabeth’s knees as she fell to her mother’s side, just as a jet of water came spluttering from her mouth.
“Oh, Catherine,” her father called as he scrambled to reach her. Her skin had been touched by ice, a sheen of glacial blue that shimmered in the light of the moon.
“Will she be all right?” Elizabeth asked as she held her mother’s hand, her skin so cold it was almost painful. Gazing upward into the crowd, she searched the desperate faces for an answer.
“She’ll be all right, miss,” Tom said. He reached across, placed a wet hand on Elizabeth’s shoulder. Somebody draped a blanket over his back, and then another over her mother. His breath was warm as he leaned in close. “But we need Dr. Warbeck.” Dr. James Warbeck was Elizabeth’s fiancé, and they were due to be married next year. Tom glanced briefly at her father, then lowered his voice to a whisper. “Your father is in shock. He’s no help here.”
* * *
James was already on his way, having woken to the sound of the flare. He was still getting used to coastal life, but it had been a busy summer for the lifeboat crew, and the need for urgency when he heard the call for help was as familiar to him now as it was to hear the trundle of buses passing his window when he’d lived in London. Dropping down onto the beach, sand filling his shoes, he hurried toward the crowd, still unsure what lay before him. Moments later he saw Elizabeth, then her father, next to her mother lying on the shore. Elizabeth’s breathing was as quick and short as his own.