Anxious Hearts Page 4

  Gabriel muttered a curse.

  “Father—”

  “Enough!” Basil held up the horseshoe with his tongs, twisting it back and forth in the air to inspect it. “There. Another perfect shoe. Gabriel, bring the horse around to the …” He waved a gloved finger toward the back entrance.

  Gabriel, silenced, walked toward the large doors on the back wall, past the boy operating the shoulder-high bellows used to fan the hell-hot fire that Basil had kept alive for four years running, burning coal harvested from the marshes. The fire was hot enough to melt metal, and the marbled, pocked skin that covered Basil’s forearms and neck proved it was hot enough to melt flesh, too. The boy, drenched and sinewy, looked up at Gabriel through dusty, tired eyes, slowing the bellows for a moment.

  “Attend!” Basil shouted at the boy. “Fire!”

  “Monsieur,” said the boy. He inhaled deeply, rose to his toes, and extended the bellows-handle over his head, then thrust downward to the floor, sending oxygen-rich air into the forge to feed the devilish heat.

  Gabriel pushed open the back door. There were two horses in the courtyard, Eulalie and one of Notary Leblanc’s massive workhorses, Nog. He was a tall horse with colossal feet, bred to work in the hayfields. His back was speckled black and gray with a shorn mane and cropped tail. He whinnied and shook his massive head with a sputter. Gabriel grasped Nog’s rein and led him lumbering into the shop, where Basil stood with a freshly shaped shoe. Gabriel stroked Nog’s nose while Basil raised his back leg and held the shoe against his hoof. “Perfect,” he said, drawing a nail from the pocket of his apron.

  “At least someone here knows what he’s doing,” came the voice from the doorway. There stood Jean-Baptiste Leblanc, the notary’s son, tall and expensively dressed, the glowing forge lengthening his cheekbones and his shadow. Jean-Baptiste was still unmarried, despite his good looks and his family’s wealth. With a dozen horses in their employ, the Leblancs were Basil’s best customers.

  “Master Leblanc,” said Basil. “Welcome.” He motioned to a bench at the side of the shop, a motion that Jean-Baptiste ignored.

  Gabriel was wary of Jean-Baptiste. He knew that Jean-Baptiste, like every man in Pré-du-sel, desired Evangeline. Even now, just hours before their wedding, Gabriel knew that Jean-Baptiste coveted Evangeline, and he fixed his eyes on his rival. Tomorrow, he told himself. Tomorrow she will be mine, and there will be no more threats from him, or anyone.

  “I’m sorry, Monsieur Lajeunesse,” said Jean-Baptiste, indulgently enunciating each sound in Basil’s name. “I’m afraid I have been eavesdropping unintentionally. Did I hear something about ships? My apologies, but what nonsense is this?”

  “Just nonsense, as you say,” said Basil. “There are no ships. Today is not the day.”

  Jean-Baptiste pulled his head back and squinted at Gabriel. “I see,” he said. He turned back to Basil.

  Basil wiped his brow with his scarred forearm. “Come, Gabriel. Hold Nog’s bridle and steady him. We must shoe this horse for young Leblanc.”

  eva

  We’ve been driving up Boot Cove Road for fifteen minutes now, or maybe more, and we’re not really driving anyway, it’s more like speeding, heading east, listening to an old Led Zeppelin song. Gabe wants to get to Quoddy Head before sunset so we can watch the stars come up over Passamaquoddy Bay, even if it means doubling the speed limit the whole way.

  “I’ve never seen a cop out here,” he says.

  Gabe’s car isn’t fancy, just a secondhand sedan with a bench seat and electric windows. The baby-blue hood doesn’t match the rest of the body, which is chocolate brown.

  Gabe looks different today, grown-up and serious, hair pushed back from his broad forehead, light whiskers sprouting from his angled jawline. His eyes smile in unison with the corners of his mouth as he hits the gas again. Yesterday he qualified as cute. Today he’s handsome.

  “I like your car,” I say, thinking how stupid I sound when I do. I look at his hands, clasped together with fingers locked, dangling over the top of the steering wheel. He drives with his wrists.

  “It’ll be all right once I get the hood painted,” Gabe says. “I bought it last week from the want ads on the back page of the Lubec Lighthouse.” He pats the wheel and smiles, a sideways smile. “It’s a birthday present for myself.” He speeds up even more.

  “You gave yourself a birthday present?” I ask. “Who does that?” I’m trying to flirt, but just as I smile we hit a pothole and he turns to look at the road and doesn’t see.

  “I do,” he says, swerving into the oncoming lane to avoid a shredded tire on the roadside. “I always have. Every year.”

  “OK,” I say. I want to say “That’s weird,” but I don’t, because he probably won’t think that’s flirting. Instead, I say, “Well, you made a great choice.” I roll down my window. “What else did you get for your birthday?”

  Gabriel looks over at me, his blue eyes tender, hazy. He scrunches his brow and shakes his head. “Just this.”

  “Come on,” I say. “Nothing else?”

  Gabe shakes his head. I see his notebook on the dashboard, sliding back and forth as the road winds toward Quoddy. I watch it, hoping it slides off the dashboard and onto the seat, splitting open for just a moment so I can glimpse inside. “What about your brother?” I ask.

  “He got a Mercedes,” he says.

  “What?”

  “My brother. For his last birthday. He got a Mercedes.”

  I’m angry at whoever gave Paul a birthday Mercedes and gave Gabe nothing. Which, I’m guessing, would be their father, Mr. Basil Lejeune, Esq., the only lawyer in Franktown. He considers Paul, the big hockey star, his family’s only real success story, after himself, of course. Quiet, scribbling, second son Gabe doesn’t deserve a Mercedes. “No, I mean how is he doing?”

  “What?”

  “Louise told me he was sick or something. Is he going to be—”

  I can’t even finish my question before Gabe turns up the Led Zeppelin song on the radio. Loud. “Many times I’ve lied …,” he sings. He rolls down his window and speeds up, the wind blowing his mop of hair back into his face, plastering it against his cheek. He disappears behind it. “Many times I’ve wondered …”

  I just sit and look out the window at the ocean appearing and disappearing through the pine trees in flashes of infinity.

  Quoddy Head appears in the distance. Gabe takes hold of the steering wheel with his left hand and slides his right hand over on top of mine. He feels warm on my skin. I turn my hand over and grasp his.

  Gabe doesn’t talk to me, and somehow it’s OK. I don’t want this drive to end.

  Gabriel

  BASIL AND GABRIEL, IN MATCHING WAISTCOATS of navy broadcloth fastened with bone buttons, ascended the bec in a loose fog that floated between the star points like gossamer, like the antique shawl of lace and linen that would flow softly from Evangeline’s head and drape over her breast tomorrow, like the skirt of ancient silk that would whirl around her as they danced in the orchard.

  “I see no ships,” said Basil the blacksmith with a breath of relief and a scoff of superior bemusement. “In a lively fog such as this, light from the ships would find shore. I see none.”

  Gabriel had seen the ships. He knew they were there. But because he’d rather not have seen them, because his world was only complicated by them, because more imperative than his need to be heard was his need to be married tomorrow, Gabriel lied, “I must have been mistaken, Father. You are right. There are no ships.”

  Basil and Gabriel dismounted and tied up the horses at Evangeline’s wall. They approached the door and Basil raised his hand to knock. “No ships.”

  “Ah, but there are,” said Benedict, who opened the door before Basil’s hand made contact. He stood, bent, at the doorway. “I have seen them. Welcome, welcome.” He stooped to bow to his guests, soon to be relatives. He teetered, just catching his balance with one hand on the doorframe and the other pressed onto his cane.
“Evangeline!” he called faintly, his voice scratched and wearied by seventy winters. “Our friends are here.” He smiled. “Our family, I mean.”

  “Ships?” Basil repeated. “Are you certain, Benedict?”

  “Yes, old friend,” Benedict replied. “My angel has shown them to me. Four ships, or perhaps more. Evangeline!” he called again wearily. “But they are friends, these ships, I am certain of it, as certain as I am that you, young Gabriel, and you, Monsieur Basil, are friends of ours.”

  Benedict moved feebly aside, revealing the warm light of the house behind him.

  “If there are ships, they mean ill,” Basil uttered. “I surmise evil. Benedict, please. Show me these ships.” Basil pushed Gabriel aside and took the old man by the arm. “Come. Show me.” He guided Benedict onto the doorstep.

  Together, as quickly as old Benedict could move, the pair of widowers stepped out onto the stony path that led to the edge of the bec, arms locked. “We are in no danger,” Benedict said cheerfully. “Perhaps they intend to trade.”

  “Show me the ships,” was Basil’s grim response.

  “Perhaps the crops have failed in the New Colonies,” Benedict offered. “Perhaps they are here for help.” He continued to gesture as the old friends walked on out of Gabriel’s earshot.

  Gabriel turned back to the doorway. There, with the fiery light flickering behind her, stood Evangeline. His eyes softened at the sight of hers, blue and black and green together, so deep and dark and yet so filled with light. He wanted to enter those eyes, to gain access to her very soul through them.

  She smiled. “Gabriel.”

  His greeting never reached his lips, so entrancing it was to hear her say his name. “Come,” she said next. “Let us walk with our fathers.” She started up the path.

  Gabriel followed Evangeline, who followed Basil and Benedict up the rocky path to the top of the bec and the star-speckled sky beyond. He watched her legs bend and sway as she negotiated the rocks in her soft moccasins. Gabriel adored her.

  Benedict and Basil shuffled to the edge of the bec. “We should be able to see them from here,” Benedict wheezed. He waved a finger toward the bay. “Somewhere.”

  “There,” Basil said grimly, pointing at a grouping of lights flickering in the bay. “There.” He stood, legs planted territorially onto the ground, arms held out from his sides, defiant and statuesque. But even from his position ten paces away, Gabriel could see Basil’s hands tremble.

  “New Colonies,” Gabriel whispered to Evangeline as they approached their fathers.

  “By God, it is they,” Basil said, his voice low but strong, audible above the wind on the swirling bec grass. “We will fight them. They will not take us. They will not take our people. They will not take this land.”

  “Basil, old friend,” Benedict said, taking the blacksmith’s elbow. “Surely they are not here to attack us. We have nothing they want in our simple village. The New Colonies are the richest in the world, and they have no need for us. They must mean well. They did not kill the last time they were here.”

  “They did not kill?” Basil snapped. “Have you forgotten those starved into death? They killed my wife! My second son! As sure as if they shot them.”

  Gabriel stepped forward. “Father.”

  “We will fight them,” Basil said. He turned away from the ships and stared back at Gabriel. “We will fight them, Gabriel. By the memory of your mother, and your brother, we will resist.”

  All stood in silence for a moment.

  “Basil,” said Benedict, piercing the wind with a pleading voice. “Please, reconsider. Let us not greet these outsiders with aggression. Perhaps they mean no harm at all. Let us welcome them.” He paused to catch a breath. “Whatever is to come, we are safer unarmed.”

  Basil exploded. “Naive!” he shouted. “Would you give away our homes? Our names?” He strode down the path toward the house. “Gabriel!” he shouted.

  “Basil, old friend,” said Benedict, struggling to keep up. “Stay and have some cider. Perhaps you are right.” He turned and winked at Evangeline. “Basil!”

  Basil stopped abruptly without turning around. Benedict caught up to him, took his arm, and together they walked back to the house, arm in arm again, Basil growling curses against the tyranny of the New Colonies.

  Gabriel turned to Evangeline, then back out to the bay. He felt her hand slip into his. It was a comfortable fit, her skin warm and soft between the calluses, his pulsing with blood. He closed his eyes, squinting behind his eyelids to force a picture of forever, of her and him. His temples throbbed with love.

  “You are my greatest friend,” Evangeline said to Gabriel. “And tomorrow you will be my husband.” Evangeline took his hand and brought it to her cheek, letting his thumb brush her lip, where he felt the humidity of her sigh, understanding through his fingertips that this being, this unbearably beautiful being, trusted him. “Oh, Gabriel. Whatever happens, promise that we will be together. Forever.”

  “My beloved,” he whispered.

  eva

  I don’t know why I am surprised when Gabe tries to kiss me. But he does, full on the lips, when he drops me off in front of my house, and I am surprised.

  We spent two hours out at Quoddy Head watching the stars slowly fade in to fill the sky over the sea. In the height of summer the place is usually crawling with Canadian tourists, but tonight ours was the only car in the parking lot. Gabe leaned against a rock on a protected ledge out near the candy-striped lighthouse, and I leaned against Gabe.

  “Starry, starry night,” he whispered. “Paint your palette blue and gray …”

  “What?”

  “It’s a song,” he said, “about a man no one understood.” And then he started singing, quietly, in my ear.

  “No one ever sang to me before,” I said when he finished. Then, under my breath, so quietly that I don’t think he heard me, I said, “Thank you.”

  He clasped his hands over mine and told me I couldn’t get up until I’d counted all the stars.

  “That would take forever,” I said.

  “Perfect,” he said, tightening his grasp.

  Now, back at my house, Gabe parks right outside the living room window, and it makes me self-conscious, and I start wondering if Da’ can see, and I wonder if Da’ would recognize Gabe, and whether he’d remember banning Gabe from my life so many years ago.

  Gabe swings the lever into park and turns toward me. He reaches around to put his hand on my far shoulder and leans his face toward mine, smiling faintly. I look up into his eyes, those clear eyes that I know so well, and at that moment the Gabe I’ve just fallen in love with gets all mixed up with the Gabe who scribbled incessantly in that notebook of his, the Gabe I watched as a child crawl out onto a branch no bigger than he was to pull honeycomb from a hive, the Gabe who gave me his life’s savings under the docks that day, the day we hid together, away from the world, and pretended not to care that neither of us had a mother to worry, to wonder where we were, to be glad when we came home safe.

  And all of a sudden there’s just too much in his eyes and too much in my head and I freak out and pull away from him.

  And he pulls away from me.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s just—”

  “No,” he says. “I—” He looks down at the steering wheel. He whispers. “I’m sorry.”

  And I look over and see shame in his face, and also anger and fear and loneliness, and I want to fix them all, and I want him to fix me, too, and before he can say anything else I lean over and take his face in my hands and I press my lips against his and hold them there, intently, for I don’t know how long. My eyes are closed, but then I open them and realize that he is staring back at me, eyes wide in shock.

  I pull away again, already regretting the gamble gone bad. But he catches the back of my head with his hand. Holding my head steady, Gabe pulls us together and finally, after the third try, we connect. His lips crash into mine, desperate and intent and as strong as his
hands, and mine push back, more intent even than his, and we press together, and his lips become my lips, and his breath is my breath, and I don’t care where our noses are or whether I’m using too much tongue or even where his hands are. All I know is that I’ve never felt anything better in my life.

  It takes over everything in me, and I wonder if I’ve ever felt anything at all before.

  What I’ve wanted so badly that I couldn’t say it out loud was to be connected to Gabe. And in this moment, I am. I feel alive. Not happy, really, because there is so much sadness in him, in his eyes, his voice, his lips. But he is so alive, and I am so alive.

  “Home,” I say, when our lips finally separate.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  The light flickers on outside my front door. Da’ has seen us.

  “I better go,” I struggle to say.

  I climb out the passenger door, closing it weakly behind me just as Gabe says, “Wait!” He pops his door and leaps over the corner of the car, intercepting me in the headlights. He smiles, wrinkling his brow like a hound puppy and holding up his index finger. “One more kiss?”

  “But my da’,” I say.

  “One more.”

  I laugh, and he strides slowly toward me, grabbing the belt loops on each of my hips and yanking me, gently, into his embrace, warm and secure and welcoming. The embrace becomes another kiss. And I’m alive again for another moment.

  “Good night,” he says. He cups my chin in his hand and fills my eyes with his distant ocean-blues. “Evangeline.” He gets back in the car and rolls down his window. “My angel,” he says as he drives slowly away.

  I wave at the house so Da’ can see me, in case he is watching, which he probably is. Then I head across the street to Ada’s.

  I usually check in on her every evening. Not because she can’t take care of herself, but because, I don’t know, I like being around her, and she likes it, too. Tonight I am later than usual, and Ada’s house looks dark. I fish my hand into her roadside mailbox and pull out a gardening catalog, a lottery announcement, and a copy of Yankee magazine, still addressed to “Mrs. Lawrence Bouchard,” even though Ada’s husband has been dead over thirty years.