and I’ll see she gets it right away.”
“Thanks, but no, thanks—she’s my wife, Evelyn!”
“If she hadn’t been so insistent, I wouldn’t have promised.”
Insistent. Determined to stay away from him. To hide so he’d never find her. Too bad, Lucy, he thought grimly. This time it’s not going to work. “If I’m to move from Vancouver, if I’m to divorce her, then I have to see her first. You surely must understand that.” There, he had said it. He had actually used the word.
“Oh, Troy,” Evelyn said faintly, “has it come to that?”
“I’m tired of being in limbo. Neither married nor free,” he replied implacably.
“I do understand that your position’s untenable.” There was another of the long pauses that were quite out of character for Evelyn. Then she said slowly, “I believe Marcia’s in touch with Lucy—you might try her… Oh, there’s my doorbell—I’m going to a play with some friends. I’ve got to go, Troy.”
Marcia was the eldest of Evelyn’s three daughters. Marcia and Troy rarely saw eye to eye on anything. After saying goodbye to Evelyn, he dialed Marcia’s number and made a huge effort to modulate his tone. “Marcia? Troy here. I wondered if you would give me Lucy’s address. Evelyn was busy when I called her.”
You lying bastard, he told himself. But it’s all in a good cause.
One of Marcia’s virtues, in Troy’s opinion, was her supreme incuriosity about other people’s lives. “She’s staying on an island off the coast of Nova Scotia,” Marcia said. “Let me think…Shag Island—that’s it. Near Yarmouth. She’s working at a guest house called the Seal Bay Inn. Sounds like the end of the world to me, but you know Lucy—she always was a bit off the wall.”
If Lucy hadn’t decided on impulse to go sailing for four weeks in Tortola, he, Troy, would never have met her. “Thanks,” he said and, not above pumping her, added, “Have you seen Lucy lately?”
“Goodness, no. You wouldn’t catch me going on a smelly old fishing boat to some godforsaken island. Not my thing at all. She’ll be home in a month or so; I’ll see her then.”
“What took her there, do you know?”
“She got laid off at the bookstore where she was working. A friend of Cat’s knows the couple who runs the inn—they needed someone for the summer, I guess.” Marcia yawned. “The sort of harebrained scheme Lucy loves.”
Cat was Lucy’s younger sister. “Well, thanks for the information, Marcia. Should you be talking to Lucy, you could forget we’ve had this conversation—okay?”
“Whatever you like,” Marcia said indifferently. “If you were to take my advice, Troy, you’d cut your losses as far as Lucy’s concerned.”
“I may just do that.”
“Well,” she replied with patent surprise, “I’m very glad to hear it—I think she’s behaved deplorably the last couple of years.”
It was one thing for Troy to think that, another to hear Lucy’s sister say so. “She lost her child, Marcia.”
“So did you. But she’s the one who’s been running away from her responsibilities ever since.”
He could feel his throat closing with the old pain, and in his heart of hearts he recognized the kernel of truth in Marcia’s judgement. “Thanks for the address,” he said huskily. “Don’t work too hard.” Very carefully Troy replaced the receiver in its cradle.
One of the many things which had distressed him unutterably in the last six months he and Lucy had lived together had been watching her withdraw from people, from her clients and her friends—she who had always delighted in the company of others. She was a certified massage therapist, and had worked one day a week after Michael was born to keep her hand in; after he had died she had lost all interest in her job.
In Ottawa she’d worked in a chain bookstore, an impersonal milieu that demanded nothing from her in the way of intimacy. And now she’d retreated still further, to spend the summer on an isolated island.
Shag Island. He’d get Vera to make a reservation under a false name at the Seal Bay Inn and this time next week he’d be face to face with Lucy. In the meantime he’d get in touch with the institute and tell them he needed a little more time to make his decision.
After that, whatever happened, he’d have to get on with his life.
AS TROY strode down the long concrete wharf in his rubber boots, his canvas bag slung over one shoulder, the sea wind tugged at his hair; Seawind had been the name of the sloop he’d been skippering in the Virgin Islands when he’d first met Lucy.
A tangle of dried seaweed cracked under his boots. He glanced down, his nerves strung tight as catgut. He might look just like another tourist on holiday. But he wasn’t a tourist. His only reason for being here was to go and see Lucy. Although this time not in an immaculate yacht. Unless he was mistaken, one of the workmanlike Cape Islanders clustered at the very end of the wharf was going to take him to his destination.
From the flat deck of a boat called Four Angels a man of about forty with a weathered face called, “You goin’ to Shag Island?”
“That’s right.”
“Come on aboard, then. Hand yer gear down to Gus, and watch yer step.”
Although Gus looked about fourteen, he swung Troy’s heavy bag down on to the deck with agility. Troy climbed down the metal rungs set into the side of the wharf and felt the gunwale dip under his weight. Four Angels was even less prepossessing up close than she had been at a distance—her anchors rusty, her deck stained with the debris of years of fishing. But as Clarence, her skipper, introduced himself he gave Troy a broad smile, his blue eyes twinkling. Her engine started with a well-bred purr and she backed between two other boats into the open water with a precision Troy could appreciate.
There was another man sharing the deck with him, an elderly man with a crop of salt-white hair. Troy smiled at him and said, “My name’s Troy Donovan. Are you staying at the Seal Bay Inn as well?”
“Hubert Woollner.” A pair of eyes as fierce as a falcon’s stared at him beneath bushy brows. “I own my own place on the south end of the island. Near the lighthouse.”
“Come on, Hubert,” Clarence interjected. “You own the whole darn island, from the lighthouse to the cliffs—tell the truth, now.”
“Steer the boat, Clarence, and mind your own business.”
Hubert had spoken without rancor. Clarence chuckled. “You are my business. The way fishin’ is these days, it’s a good thing I got this here ferry service to fall back on. Gotta feed the family somehow.”
“The boat’s named after Clarence’s family,” Hubert said to Troy. “A touch of poetic license.”
“Named
