Sweet Salt Air Page 4

“He loves his work. What about you, Charlotte? Who do you date?”

  “No one special. But you didn’t answer my question. Do his hours bother you?”

  “How can they?” Nicole returned. “He’s in the prime of his career. He lectures, he sits on panels, and he’s even on TV now, which is a total no-brainer since he’s handsome and articulate. They call him when they’re reporting on anything related to fetal surgery. He’s their expert.” Her fingers quoted the word.

  “So he’s in demand,” Charlotte said and couldn’t resist adding, “I’m glad. I was worried he’d have hung around here longer if I hadn’t been coming.” As tests went, it was subtle. His absence might be entirely innocent; any man would be wary of spending time alone with two women writing a cookbook. If Nicole knew about the sex, she hadn’t let on in any of their earlier discussions.

  Indeed, she seemed appalled now. “Oh no. He would have loved to see you, but he wants to be at Duke a week before the new doctors arrive, and he has to settle everything in Philly before he leaves.”

  “I’m amazed he can leave his own work for a whole month.”

  She waved a hand. “It’s for teaching, which is honestly and truly, I mean, really his strength. Hold on.” Having apparently felt a vibration, she dug the phone from her pocket, saw the screen, and picked up the call with a grin. “Hey. She did, got here just fine. What?” She covered her free ear. “I’m sorry, the ocean is pretty loud. Oh, wow, that’s great. Beijing? You should. Uh, honey, we’re just walking the beach. Can I call when we get back?” She listened for a minute, bowing her head at the end. “Oh,” she murmured, walking faster, and said something Charlotte thought was shit, though Nicole didn’t usually use that word. “Okay. I’ll call. Love you.”

  Ending the call, she stuffed the phone back in her pocket, and, head still down, strode on.

  Charlotte’s legs were longer, but she had to hurry to catch up. “Everything okay?”

  Nicole raised her head, eyes blank for a beat before refocusing. “He was invited to China. May have a conflict. It’ll be okay.” She didn’t sound sure, but before Charlotte could ask, she glanced at the sky. “It’s getting dark.”

  “Rain clouds?”

  “Or dusk.” She brightened. “Remember when we used to walk out here with the sun going down?”

  “I do.” Charlotte smiled. “We were taking a chance, going a little farther, a little farther, closer and closer to Cole land.” She squinted, trying to penetrate the fog and spot the marker. “Cecily Cole is at the top of my list. I can’t wait to talk with her.”

  Cecily’s herbs grew in the garden of her home at Quinnipeague’s outer tip, but to call her an herbalist was to understate her place in island lore. Her herbs were pure in flavor and powerful in use—and she knew how to use them, both gastronomically and medicinally. She had a way of appearing with remedies when they were needed most; this was the light side of Cecily Cole. But there was a dark side, or so island men claimed. They swore that when they suffered heartburn, it was one of Cecily’s herbs punishing them for an alleged offense to their wives. A diminutive woman with silver hair that protected her back like a gossamer shawl, Cecily was alternately loved and feared.

  “Oh Lord.” Nicole was gaping at her. “You don’t know. Cecily died five years ago.”

  Charlotte stopped walking. “Died? But she’s key to cooking here. How can we do this book without her?”

  “Her herbs are still around. Didn’t the chowder and clams taste as good as ever?”

  “Yes, but you can’t talk about island food without talking about Cecily.”

  “We can still talk about her. We just can’t talk with her. Not that we ever really could.”

  Charlotte remained stunned. As legendary as Cecily was, she had always been something of a mystery. She had come to the island at the age of twenty—or eighteen or twenty-two, depending on which version of the story you heard—after a disastrous love affair with an influential mainlander. Likewise depending on the storyteller, she had either chosen to leave the continental U.S. or been driven away, though it was generally agreed that she bought her house with a payoff from the affair. She had brought her plants with her, along with the seeds of legend, and lived quietly at her end of the island. Her interactions with islanders were limited to trips to the store for supplies and, increasingly, gifting herbs to those in need. Habitually distrustful, she did not welcome guests to her home. Rumor had it that she would put a curse on anyone who trespassed on her land.

  But that was rumor, and in the interest of the cookbook, Charlotte had the perfect excuse to approach.

  “I think we should go back,” Nicole said.

  Charlotte had done stories on some highly intimidating characters, not the least being a Native American on Martha’s Vineyard, who claimed to be the descendent of Wampanoag medicine men and had a trail of miraculous doings to prove it.

  Cecily Cole? She might have been an epic challenge, with the potential for information just as great.

  But it was what it was. “She’s dead,” Charlotte said. “She can’t do anything. I think we should go see if those herbs still grow.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Nicole warned. “Her son lives there now.”

  “I thought he was in jail.”

  “Not anymore. Come on. I’ll race you back.” She turned, facing home.

  “Did he dig up the herbs, or are they still there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Someone must.”

  “Well, I’m not asking,” Nicole said. “The last thing I need right now is more bad vibes.”

  Charlotte studied her face. The sky was indeed darkening, taking detail with it, but she could see tension. It seemed out of place on such an innocent face.

  Likewise, the awkwardness with which Nicole waved a hand. “You know what I mean—Dad dropping dead, our selling the house.”

  “He would have loved your doing this book.”

  “I could have used his encouragement.”

  Charlotte slipped an arm around her waist. “You have me. I’ll be right here until the book is done.”

  Nicole smiled. There may have been tears in her eyes, though it could have been the reflection of the ocean in the dim light. “I love you, y’know.”

  Charlotte hugged her. A moment later, exhilarated to be the object of something so rich, she dared Nicole with a look. They set off down the beach at a fast jog, trading the lead as they dodged obstacles in the sand. By the time they reached the house, they were out of breath and laughing.

  Their movement on the beach steps set off floodlights from the patio all the way around to the kitchen door. Nicole stopped, sniffed. “Strange,” she said and began walking toward the side garden, where a profusion of reds and pinks blurred at the edge of the beam. “I was out here this morning. The lavender was nowhere near being in bloom. It’s been way too cold. But how could I not have smelled this?”

  Charlotte hadn’t smelled it earlier, either, but she couldn’t miss it now. This lavender was in full bloom, its tall spikes clustered with purple flowers that looked too soft for the wind but apparently weren’t, since they held their form well.

  “My mind must have been somewhere else,” Nicole said. “But this is perfect.” Moments later, she had clippers and began handing sprigs to Charlotte, who was absorbing their smell to the point of stupor. Finally, Nicole stood, closed her eyes, and inhaled. “Ahhhh. Amazing.” She took half of what Charlotte held and sang softly, “Those are for your pillowcase, these are for mine.”

  “Don’t we have to dry them first?”

  “And dilute the smell? Lavender has calming properties. I’ll take it full strength, thanks.”

  Charlotte didn’t need calming—or rather, didn’t want it. She wanted to bask in the glow of hope. She was being given a second chance to prove she could be a loyal friend, which was more than she might have asked after living ten years and a huge secret apart. She had expected awkwardness, wariness, reticence—somet
hing. But her arrival on Quinnipeague had been as smooth as the ocean was not.

  Besides, after leaving New York at dawn and driving for hours, she was exhausted. If the lavender sprigs did anything beyond making her smile, she had no idea. Minutes after her head hit the pillow, she had fallen into a sleep so deep that she heard nothing of the conversation coming from Nicole’s room down the hall.

  Chapter Three

  NICOLE WAS A BUNDLE OF nerves. She had wanted to call Julian back sooner—hell, had wanted to talk with him there on the beach, but it was impossible with Charlotte along. And even when they were back at the house, what could she do? Sneak off to the bathroom to talk with him about life-and-death issues, then return to Charlotte like nothing was wrong?

  “Hey,” she said the instant he picked up, “I’m sorry. I thought she’d never go to bed. Tell me again what happened.”

  “My left leg went numb,” he said quietly. “I was just getting up to leave at the end of a team meeting.”

  At the hospital, in clear view of doctors and nurses who knew him. Nightmare.

  “I sat down again and picked up my cell, like I had a call, while everyone else left. The numbness let up after a few minutes, but my leg’s never done that before.”

  “Maybe it just fell asleep,” Nicole said hopefully. “That happens to me all the time, and if it went away—”

  “It was numb, Nicki. Not asleep. Not trembling. Plain-out numb. That means this medication is not working.”

  “Maybe it just needs more time,” she tried.

  “It’s been three months. It either works or it doesn’t.”

  “Maybe the numbness is a side effect of the drug itself. You often have those.”

  “Numbness isn’t a side effect. It’s a symptom.”

  “But it’ll pass.” She had to believe that. He saw the best doctor, took the best drugs.

  “New symptoms are not a good sign.”

  “Did you call Peter?” Peter Keppler was a neurologist. His office was in New York, where they could visit him without Julian’s world knowing.

  “He says it could be a fluke, but, cripes, this is getting scary.”

  Julian had multiple sclerosis. The MS diagnosis had come four years earlier, and though he felt near-constant fatigue, his symptoms, mostly blurred vision and tremors, remained intermittent and mild. Still, the diagnosis was devastating for a surgeon who was not only entering the prime of his career, but in a specialty where the tiniest wrong move of the scalpel could damage a fetus.

  So, with the ink still wet on his diagnosis, he had stepped back from the work that he loved. When he scrubbed up now, it was to teach other surgeons the technique for which he was known. No one questioned this; it was a natural progression in a brilliant career. Nicole knew that, but it was little solace when she saw how much Julian missed not doing the work himself. Saving the lives of unborn children was heady stuff.

  But there was no choice here. If he had continued to operate knowing he was impaired, he would have risked not only patients, but reputation and self-respect.

  The key was controlling the disease, to which end he had tried every gold-standard treatment, but nothing had slowed the frequency of his symptoms. Adding to Nicole’s own misery was his insistence on secrecy. Since no one at the hospital knew, she wasn’t allowed to tell her friends, her personal physician, even her mother.

  “Peter is the best, Jules,” she said now. “There’s always something else to try.”

  But he was discouraged. She could hear it in his murmur. “We’re running out of options,” he said, and he would know. An academic at heart, he had read every theory, every study, every paper there was to read on MS.

  Nicole had married a positive guy. She didn’t know what to do with this one. “I’m flying home tomorrow,” she decided.

  “No. You need to be there.”

  “I need to be with you.”

  “I need to be alone.” He had said that before, and no matter how he tried to soften it, it hurt. “I love you, baby, but sometimes I’m so concerned about you that I can’t think about what I need to do. Right now, I need you there doing your book.” There was a meaningful pause. “You haven’t told her, have you?”

  “You made me promise not to,” Nicole charged, releasing her frustration in this peripheral way. “Do you know how hard that is? I mean, talk about awkward. There were a dozen times when it would have been totally appropriate to share it—like when I realized I hadn’t told her Cecily Cole was dead, which has major impact on this cookbook, but I must have been so preoccupied each time she and I talked that I hadn’t said it. I mean, who’s she going to tell, Jules? She doesn’t know anyone you know. She can be trusted with a secret. Same with the kids.” His son was eighteen, his daughter twenty-one. “It’s been four years, and we see them a lot. Don’t you think they’ll be hurt when they finally find out?”

  “So I should tell them now and have them terrified that I’m going to die—or worrying that they’ll get it someday? There’s no test to tell them that. What can they do?”

  “Support you. Support me.”

  He didn’t answer, simply said a despondent, “Well, I just wanted you to know about the leg.”

  “I want to help, Julian. What can I do?”

  “There isn’t much.”

  “You’re my rock,” she warned, only half kidding. His solidity was one of the first things she had loved about him. He knew what he wanted and made it happen.

  “Rocks don’t have tremors. They don’t go numb in front of a roomful of colleagues.”

  “Being a rock is a state of mind. You’re usually upbeat.”

  “So maybe I’m human,” he snapped, but eased in the next breath. “Oh baby, I don’t want to argue. I hate it when I get like this. It’s just that I don’t understand my body. I don’t know why I react negatively to the best of the meds. Shortness of breath, high blood pressure, stiffness—so we change meds, or I take another pill, cut out salt, stretch more, add yoga. I can’t operate. Barring a miracle cure, I won’t ever operate again. So what’s left? My self-image. I want to be seen as healthy, at least. But the longer this goes on, the greater my chances of being publicly exposed, and once that happens … pffffhhh.”

  “You’ll always be able to teach,” Nicole said, though her eyes had filled with tears. “You can do research and write papers. Your mind is brilliant. That won’t go away.”

  She must have said something right, because he seemed to regroup. “I know,” he said. “I just feel weary sometimes.” He took a breath. “Not the kind of future you expected, huh?”

  No. It wasn’t. She tried not to go there, but it was hard not to—hard not to google MS and read about its progression; hard not to think about Julian being there in not-such-a-long time. MS didn’t kill. It disabled. Sometimes badly. And as his wife, she was totally helpless.

  “Let me come home,” she begged again. “You’re all alone with this. At least I know.”

  “I don’t want pity.”

  “I have never pitied you,” she shot back. “That’s such an unfair thing to say. But I could cook, do errands, pay bills—”

  “Paying bills is my job. My income may be down, but I’m still the earner here. Don’t rush me into a wheelchair, Nicole. I’m not debilitated yet.”

  “I didn’t say—”

  “You focus on your business, I’ll focus on mine.”

  “That’s not how a marriage is supposed to work.”

  He was silent for a time, then sighed. “Oh God. I didn’t ask for this. I’m just trying to deal.”

  “So am I. I love you.”

  “Love can’t cure tremors. Let me concentrate on what will, okay? Talk later. Bye.”

  * * *

  “Later” was twenty minutes. Nicole had spent the time sitting on the bed, alternately rocking forward and back, side to side, trying to soothe the shakes inside and to think of something to do. When her cell rang, she jumped.

  “I’m sorry,” he said
quietly. “I shouldn’t take it out on you.”

  Her eyes filled again. “I’m just trying to help.”

  “I know. But this is the hardest thing I’ve ever faced. I grew up wanting to be a surgeon. I never wanted to be anything else.” They had talked about this before. Each time he started, she let him vent. “My father is still operating, and he’s sixty-eight. I know, I know. He’s in orthopedics. It’s not fetal. But it still requires a steady hand. Me, I was supposed to have another twenty years. I was supposed to discover newer forms of in-utero intervention. This was just supposed to be the start.” He was silent. Then, “You there?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re very quiet.”

  Nicole might have said that he had already made his mark with a breakthrough technique, which was more than most surgeons ever did—and as for his father, he would know that getting MS was not Julian’s fault, but Julian refused to tell him, too, so he was without that support as well.

  Right now, he was feeling self-pity. He had a right, she supposed.

  “Nicole?”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  He sighed. “I guess there isn’t much you can.”

  Lately, that was the state of their marriage, which was nearly as upsetting to Nicole as MS.

  “My patients could teach me about dealing with illness,” he murmured. “The frustration, the fear. I never knew. It’s humbling.”

  Nicole knew about frustration and fear. For four years, her mantra had been It’s okay, something will work, there are new treatments all the time. But it was starting to sound empty. She knew what the future could hold, and it wasn’t the illness that terrified her most. She could deal with the illness. She just wasn’t sure Julian could.

  “Beijing will be great,” she tried by way of encouragement. The invitation to speak there was a coup.

  He was suddenly hesitant. “Should I be that far away if something goes wrong?”

  Timidity was new. Not a good sign. “You’re speaking at a hospital. Peter can get the name of an MS person there.”

  Julian was quiet. Then, “So, was it great seeing Charlotte?”