Sandcastles Read online

  John glanced out the window. He frowned and pressed his head against the glass and tried to see through the rain—there were big, muddy footprints through the side yard, leading toward his sculpture, and he caught a glimpse of a tall man hurrying along.

  “Who is it?” she asked, watching John pulling on his jeans.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Then why are you getting dressed so fast?” she asked. “I thought—”

  “Where are the girls?” he asked.

  “In bed,” she said. “We just said…they’re tired from traveling…”

  “Honor,” he said. “That guy I told you about. I met him down at the docks in Cobh. I went to do research there, to find out about the ships my family emigrated to America on. And I stopped into a bar, and got to talking to someone—he’s from Connemara, but came down here looking for work. I needed some help with the heavy lifting, and I hired him. Gregory White.”

  “He helped you?”

  “Yes, I paid him. But now he won’t leave me alone. He keeps coming back for more work, more money, and when I told him there wasn’t any more, he vandalized my sculpture. Tore off some of the branches and threw them off the cliff. Knocked the cross off, so I had to climb up and put it back.”

  “Why did he do that?”

  John shook his head. “I don’t know. Greg’s messed up. Drinks a lot. I made the mistake of telling him about the gold ring, and now he’s convinced there’s pirate gold buried on the land. He’s nuts. We got into a fight, Honor. He was screwing with my work, and I told him I’d kill him if he did it again.”

  “What makes you think that was him just now? Couldn’t it be someone else, just taking the coast path?” Honor asked, even as she started to shiver. Grabbing her robe, she suddenly felt cold, as if the wind were rattling through the windowpanes and into her bones. She felt her heart plummet. She and John had been doing so well since she and the girls arrived, and now this….

  “On a day like this?” John asked. She saw the rage building in his muscles; his shoulders seemed to double in size when he got this mad. It was never at her, but she felt it all the same. “Goddamn it. Goddamn it. If he does something else to the installation, I swear to God…The whole bar heard me tell him what I’d do to him. I warned him!”

  “John, stop it!”

  “Call the gardai, Honor. The police. The number’s by the phone. I’ve had it with this. Tell them to come to the Old Head. Ballincastle, right?”

  “John, don’t go out in this,” she said, staring into the bleak, ferocious weather. Even as she spoke, he opened the door. The wind howled, blowing papers in a cyclone around the room. John’s eyes met Honor’s, but he didn’t even speak. He just left the house, slamming the door.

  This was her life, she thought. One minute in John’s arms, and the next—if the spirit moved him, impelled him into a fifty-knot gale—left standing alone to wonder what had just happened. She heard her own words of the last moments echoing in her ears: “John, stop it—please, John—don’t!” She felt as if she had somehow become the mother of a stubborn, willful boy. What had happened to the Honor who’d climbed hills with him, stretched the limits with her own art?

  “Where’s Dad going?” Regis asked, sleepy, coming through the door in her nightgown.

  “He’s checking on his sculpture,” Honor said, picking up the phone, wishing Regis hadn’t chosen this moment to wake up.

  “Who are you calling?” Regis asked.

  “Go in with your sisters,” Honor said, covering the receiver. “Right now, Regis!”

  Looking alarmed, Regis backed into the bedroom as her mother dialed the telephone. Honor reached over, pulled the door tightly shut, just as the Irish voice answered: “Gardai.”

  “This is Honor Sullivan,” she said. “My husband asked me to call you—he’s built a sculpture on Ballincastle, at the Old Head, and he said someone, Gregory White, has been damaging it. We saw someone pass by on the coast path outside our house—John thinks it was him, that he’s here now, and he asked that you send help.”

  “What’s that name again?”

  “My husband’s name is John Sullivan, and the man is Gregory White. We’re at Ballincastle,” Honor said, edging toward the window, her heart starting to pound. She could barely see ten feet in front of the house, through curtains of rain. The footprints seemed deeper, closer. Peering over the rise, she couldn’t even glimpse John’s sculpture, couldn’t see the cross.

  “Would Gregory White be the same man whose life your husband threatened? We’ve been called to pull your husband off him before.”

  “Just get here!” she cried.

  Then, just before the connection was broken, she heard the voice chuckle and say “the monstrosity…” As if the person had spoken to someone standing there, speaking of John’s sculpture.

  “The what?” Honor asked.

  But the phone line was dead. She pulled her robe around her tighter. John got lots of reactions to his work; people loved it or hated it. Not like Honor’s paintings and drawings—her landscapes of the countryside and seashore around Black Hall were quiet, pretty, popular…safe. She had lost the way to her deepest forces and inspiration, but her students at Star of the Sea, where she was the art teacher, wouldn’t know that.

  Right now, hearing the police belittle John’s work, she felt her blood boiling. Should she go after him now, try to help? She wavered, leaning against the windowpane. What if he needed her? Who was Greg White, and why was he trying to destroy John’s work? Her skin crawled at the thought that her husband could be in danger. She felt the pit in her stomach, deep and terrible. The police said John had threatened his life. What kind of fight had they had in that bar?

  Oh God, she was so on edge. And she always was; this trip to Ireland had felt like a walk across razor wire. Her chest hurt; it felt so heavy, as if her heart was turning to stone. When it came to John, she hardly knew what to do anymore. She had three young daughters, and she was always worried and afraid that they would lose their father. Almost worse, she felt that she and John had lost their connection. There were moments when she didn’t think she could take it another day.

  Regis had seen her crying just before they’d come over to Ireland. She’d found Honor in her studio, bending over a handful of John’s photographs—silvery pictures of the ice caverns he’d sculpted when they were young, after a blizzard had blanketed the Connecticut shoreline. She remembered that John had worked until he had frostbite. He had wound up in the ER. Honor had wept for the young couple they had been, for her young husband who had thought he had to push himself that far, for the way he hadn’t let up on himself at all. Regis had seen her weeping and asked in a strangled whisper, “Are you and Daddy going to get divorced?”

  “Mommy?” Agnes called now, from inside the farmhouse bedroom.

  “What, honey?” Honor asked, not wanting to move away from the window.

  Outside, a siren sounded—thread-thin, it was swept away by the wind, making Honor wonder if she had heard it at all.

  “Mommy…” Agnes said again, slowly and quietly.

  “Don’t tell her,” Cece said in a stage whisper. “Regis said not to!”

  Honor turned quickly at that. She walked into the bedroom shared by all three girls—just like at home—and saw her two youngest daughters sitting on Agnes’s bed.

  “Where’s Regis?” she asked.

  “That’s what I wanted to tell you,” Agnes whispered.

  “But we’re not supposed to,” Cece said. “Regis said not to.”

  “Said not to tell me what?”

  “Don’t,” Cece warned, looking at Agnes.

  “She went out to help Daddy!” Agnes blurted out.

  “No,” Honor said. “Please, no.”

  Honor was frozen. She heard the siren again, or thought she did. Doubting her hearing, she couldn’t ignore the feeling in her blood. It was cold, as if her heart had started pumping ice, and she knew before she knew.

&n
bsp; She ran to the window, then to the door. Pulling it open, she felt the storm’s force flatten her against the wall. She was barefoot, dressed in her robe, but she ran outside. Her feet sank in the cold mud. The younger girls were right behind her, beside her.

  “Get back inside!” she ordered them.

  “We’re scared!” Agnes shrieked. “Don’t leave us alone!”

  She grabbed their hands. Breathless, they ran toward John’s sculpture. It had looked like an ancient castle against the sky, but now she couldn’t see it at all. Driving rain and fog obliterated everything, blurred the rocky cliffs, the green hills. Even the sheep looked like clouds blowing off the sea. Honor heard another siren, and had to jump back with the girls, allowing the police car to pass on the narrow road, blue lights flashing.

  “Mommy, what’s wrong?” Agnes cried.

  “What’s happening?” Cece wailed.

  Honor was scared, too. Trembling, she held the girls’ hands. Small rocks on the road cut her feet. The blue lights sparked up ahead, showing the way. She scanned the hillside for John’s sculpture, but couldn’t see it—until they rounded the corner, and she saw the trunks and branches toppled over, lying on the ground at the very edge of the cliff. The gardai had clustered at the precipice, looking down.

  “Regis!” Honor cried. “John!” Then, “Girls, stay here—right here!”

  Dropping her younger daughters’ hands, she tore across the field. Breathless, she stopped at the brink. Daggers stabbed her eyes—silver knives of wild rain. She couldn’t bear to look. The cliff was ninety feet high; the wind blew her back, and she had to inch her way forward. Weighted with dread, she made a superhuman effort to look down the jagged cliffs falling to the sea.

  Expecting to see everything she loved crashed on the rocks ninety feet below, she gasped to see the narrow ledge just twenty feet down. A man’s body lay crumpled on the rock, blood spreading from his head. Regis, her lips blue-white with shock, stood beside his body, a woman officer’s arms around her. John looked up at Honor, his blue eyes sharp with rage, meeting hers just as the gardai snapped handcuffs on his wrists.

  “John,” she called down the ledge.

  “He tried to kill Regis,” John said.

  “But what—”

  “He tried to kill my baby,” John said. “So I killed him.”

  “Don’t say anything else,” Honor said.

  “It’s too late,” an officer said, shoving him. “He’s already proved he has a history of violence, and fifteen people heard him threaten this man. The fall didn’t do that to his head. You heard him. That’s a confession.”

  They led John and Regis up the narrow path from the ledge to the hillside, past the destroyed sculpture, and Honor grabbed Regis, her sobs a muffled keening as the wind shrieked in their ears and the rain pelted their faces, and John was taken away.

  One

  Six years had passed, and sometimes it seemed he was gone from their lives forever. It hadn’t happened all at once: first they had seen him as often as they could, but as time went on, the visits had dwindled. He always wrote letters to the girls, and they to him. But for Honor, it was another story. She had stopped writing to him over a year ago. There was so little she felt she could say to him now.

  So when Honor woke from this particular dream before dawn that late summer day, she felt stunned and couldn’t get back to sleep. She felt the fresh salt air blowing through the window, climbed out of bed, looked in on her sleeping girls, fed Sisela, the cat, put the coffee on, and walked through the vineyard to the beach. Summer vacation was winding down, with school looming again in September.

  The stars were still bright in the sky, bits of white fire in a field of dark blue. Honor stared up at them, shivering in the early chill. Wide awake, she tried to call back the details. What had startled her out of sleep? The real-life wedding plans of her daughter Regis filled her waking hours with lists and worries—but last night’s dream had taken her away from all that.

  It had been a John dream. She felt it in her skin, before remembering the details. The press of his hand on her back, his lips against her ear, telling her a secret. In the dream, her mouth had been about to smile. Until the end, the sound of his voice had prompted everything in her body and spirit toward happiness. The dream might have been of Ireland; it might have been in that farmhouse bedroom, the moment before everything ended. She wanted that feeling of closeness back more than anything.

  Barefoot, she walked across the cool, hard sand to the water’s edge. Her white eyelet nightgown brushed her ankles as she splashed into the shallows. She startled an egret standing among the rocks at the end of the beach, and it took off with slow white wings, reminding her of something graceful and prehistoric.

  The tide was outrageously low. Honor looked up at the sky, remembering that there had been no moon last night.

  “New moons and full moons do crazy things to the sea,” John had said one night long ago, when they’d walked along the edge of the waves. Last night it had seemed so real—every word and touch coming back to her now. They’d been twenty-three years old, and so in love it hurt.

  In her dream—and during the real walk, twenty-two years ago, when she had first started teaching at Star of the Sea—it was twilight, dawn’s opposite, when the sky was taking back all the light, pulling it up from the waves, the sand’s hard silver. John had his camera out, as always, ready to capture it all. And walking on the beach, he was safe for once. There weren’t too many risks he could take on a warm summer night, with Honor holding his hand.

  “They make the high tides higher and the low tides lower,” Honor said. “Flood tides, neap tides…”

  “With the right wind,” he’d said, stopping to stare out at the water. Crouching, holding his camera to his eye, adjusting the lens. “A flood tide will fill the marshes, overflow the banks, come all the way up to the door. And a neap tide, like this one, will uncover stretches of sand that have been underwater all year.”

  She heard the shutter clicking as he took his pictures. When they were children, and her family stayed at Hubbard’s Point and his stayed on the grounds of Star of the Sea, the two homes had been connected by this same wild, long barrier beach—of her dream, and the one she walked right now.

  After a winter storm, an especially low neap tide had revealed timbers from a Revolutionary War ship. Honor, John, his sister Bernadette, and their friend Tom had found it, reporting it to the nuns. A local archeologist had scrambled to collect data, but after three days, when the tides returned to normal, the ship had disappeared.

  “Do you think anyone ever came back to find that ship?” she asked.

  “Probably, but those treasures don’t count. I only want the ones I come across by accident.”

  “Right, like those ice fields you climbed Mount Robertson to photograph last winter. And the bear den you practically crawled into—”

  He gave her a look, shook his head. This was their dance—John courted danger to be closer to nature, get the shots he wanted, and Honor teased him about it. She’d never tell him that it was one of the most exciting things about him, and that sometimes she felt that as long as he came home safe, she wouldn’t really want him to stop.

  He handed her his camera. It felt so heavy, and she held it carefully so she wouldn’t drop it. She watched John, barefoot, his khakis rolled up, his hair windblown, bent from the waist, picking up what looked like wild stars.

  Moonstones.

  Far out on the tidal flats, long submerged, uncovered only by the grace of the new moon, the pebbles were smooth, iridescent white, no bigger than her fingernail. They lay on dark sand, catching the last light, shimmering like fallen stars. She wanted to paint the scene as Van Gogh would, the year he was in the asylum—with streaks of midnight blue and gold, and magic swirling through the night. Inspiration was a type of madness, and she loved how crazy and inspired she and John could be together.

  When John finished scouring the tide line, he came back to her.
Took the camera from her, slung it over his shoulder by the strap, put his arms around her. He looked into her eyes, his blue eyes shining, his mouth breaking into a smile. He had always had a face full of secrets, but that night he was wide open, all hers.

  “Honor,” he said.

  “John,” she answered.

  Holding her, he rocked her, back and forth gently, as if they were moving with the tide itself. She felt as if they were part of each other; they’d always been that way, ever since they were kids. He kissed her, turning her into salt water, liquid and surging. And then he fumbled for her hand.

  “Honor,” he said again.

  Then, “Love, honor, and cherish.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “That’s what I’m going to do,” he said. “Love and cherish you, I swear….”

  She knew but she didn’t know. She had loved him so much, for so long. Was this the moment she had always dreamed of? On the beach they loved, barefoot and sandy, with their pants rolled up and wet?

  “Will you marry me?” he asked, taking her hand, filling it with the moonstones he had just gathered.

  “Oh, John—”

  “I can’t afford a ring yet,” he said. “But I love you, Honor. I’ll love you forever. Will you marry me?”

  “Yes, John!” She clutched the moonstones, flinging her arms around his neck to kiss him, overjoyed that he’d asked her here, on their beach, between their houses, knowing what stones symbolized to him, to his family. They lay on the sand, tucking the moonstones into a pocket of his camera bag, talking about the life they would have, the places they would go. He’d be careful and always come home to her—better yet, she’d go everywhere with him. They would have lots of kids, and they’d all grow up on the beach, right here.

  “We’ll teach them about the tides and the stars,” he said.

  “And art. They’ll be photographers and sculptors like their father.”

  “Painters like their mother.” He paused. “Will we get married at the chapel? At Star of the Sea?”

  She nodded excitedly. “We can walk to our wedding!” As the new art teacher, she had a house on the campus.