Chapter Twenty-seven, Losing the Moon

She shivered, freezing. She reached down for the Irish quilt on her bed and felt her bare leg and a slippery piece of material. She opened her eyes to a filtered and fogged light. Damn, Phil had forgotten to turn the bathroom light off. She moved to stand and go to the bathroom but fumbled, landed on hard, cold wood.

Memory flooded in with the icy realization of where she was and why. She lifted her hand to her neck, grabbed the diamond cross in a flash of awareness: Oystertip, the house, Nick.

The languid memory of his touch washed over her; the pure lovemaking they had once again found in each other still throbbed through her.

“Nick,” she murmured. His face was soft in the early-morning light—a mix of moon and predawn sun coming in the one window where he had kicked out the plywood the night before, a lifetime ago. Morning approached—she had a class, she had a job, she had a family.

A family: Phil, Molly, Jack. Their pure belief in her sent her to her knees; she bent to the ground with the full knowledge of what she’d done. She fumbled for the flashlight that she remembered had fallen to the side of the sleeping bag. She groaned, found her hand on a hard object and lifted it: Nick’s shoe. She dropped it and searched again for the flashlight. She found it, grasped it like a lifeline and flicked it on. The room lit up like a tank of water.

She was dizzy. She pulled her crumpled sweater from under Nick, covered him up with the sleeping bag and his flannel shirt. She took extreme care not to wake him as she found her corduroys where they’d been flung on the wooden floor. She turned the flashlight off, moving with a panic-flooded mind, a bilious taste of guilt filling her mouth. So this is what it feels like to be an adulterer—a filthy adulterer who’d momentarily found freedom in rationalizations. She couldn’t catch her breath in the underwater feeling of guilt, she dressed as quietly as possible.

Where exactly was she? What time was it? She grabbed Nick’s donated coat and staggered to one side of the living room. She had to leave here, leave what she’d done. It couldn’t have happened. Amy Reynolds wouldn’t have made love to another man. She slid the coat over her shoulder, remembering Nick’s hands slipping it off, feeling his hands all over her body. She stumbled to the front door; it was locked. She began to sob and trip through the house, looking for a way out, any way out. Then she remembered the window he’d pried open. She flung herself over the windowsill and fell into the spiked bushes outside.

She’d never been so cold, so empty, as though no blood ran through her veins. I didn’t do this. I didn’t do this. She began to half-run, half-stumble toward the boat on the beach, to escape from Nick, from herself.

She fell onto the sand, searching in her mass of whirling thoughts for a solid resting place, for a decision. She jumped into the grounded Tender. Its tip was buried in the sand as its hind end bobbed in the waves. Her hand shook violently as she held the flashlight over the ignition to find the keys. None.

She leaned over the back of the boat, lifted the rear seat to see if he’d hidden them in the empty well. She shook with fear and cold, and the flashlight fell from her hand, plopped into the sea with a lone splash.

“No!” she cried out and dipped her hand in the icy water, grabbing at only liquid as she searched for the key. Desperation and panic mixed with the freezing air and sea. She found nothing inside herself of courage or sustenance as she stumbled back onto the sand. She was a coward—only cowards ran away. She wrapped her arms around her middle, attempted to find a way out, a solution, and found she was unable to command anything of herself but shame.

She grabbed the chain Nick had given her. It snapped, gave way and she threw the chain and cross—evidence of her sin—to the sands she’d wanted to save, to the island whose salvation she had convinced herself was a decent reason to bring them back together.

She looked up to the black bowl of sky and spied the full moon—bloated and high above her, half-hidden behind a cloud-distended sky. This time she found the moon she thought she’d lost, and she swore that amid the owl’s call and the frog’s marsh-song, she heard it mocking her with its obvious resplendent presence, saying, “I’ve always been here.” And now she followed it.

The clouds separated to impart the full light of the moon, and she never looked away as she followed. She vaguely sensed the brush of cordgrass, the sinking squish of mud and then the hard crack of shells. She ignored the cold, the harsh path, and the fear kept at bay by the light that led her through thick underbrush. She followed the moon until a cloud diluted its beacon and allowed her to stop, rest—just for one minute.

Piercing morning sunlight sliced through Nick’s eyelids and he rolled onto his side, not wanting to wake up and face another day without Amy.

He shot straight up, fell to his side in the tangle of sleeping bag, confused, clothes half on. He glanced around the room as quickly as he could with his eyes still bleary, his thoughts sluggish. She was gone. He stumbled to his feet. Where was she? How the hell had he slept through her getting up? He hadn’t slept soundly in almost thirty years, and he had to pick now, with Amy sprawled across his body. And yet he knew why he had finally, blessedly fallen into this sleep—because she’d been there, across him, on him.

He groaned, tripped as he tried to pull on his jeans, fell onto the floor, sending a searing pain through his hip. “Damn, damn.”

He yanked on his shirt and sneakers and began to call her name. He looked down—her clothes and boots were gone; the other flashlight was gone. He yanked on his coat and moaned.

He shouldn’t have allowed them both to fall asleep. He had been prepared for her flash of shame and guilt when the light came in. He’d prepared what to say—but now she was gone.

He fished in his pocket and found the boat keys. He jumped out the open window and screamed her name. He glanced around like a skilled hunter, checking the ground, spying broken frozen grass. He followed the footsteps to the beach, but then they led back toward the marsh, away from the maritime forest and the house. Oh, God, not the marsh.

Dread flooded him; his toes were numb, his hands quivering more from fear than cold. The moon was still descending even as the sun rose. Nick pulled his coat sleeve back from his wrist: five thirty a.m. She could have been wandering for hours.

He followed her dented footsteps until he reached the soft ground of the marsh where her tracks were camouflaged in the thick grasses. There was nothing else to track.

He jogged back to the boat to find his cell phone, staring at it even as he understood what he must do with Amy lost in the marsh of a barrier island, a maze of dead ends and false exits inhabited by cottonmouth snakes and alligators. Red wolves lived in the thicker parts of the forest, and if she headed the other way—toward the sea—the oyster beds were like razors, sharks played in the shallow surf, and more alligators roamed the tidal stream emptying into the sea.

He punched 911 and closed his eyes on his own fear and tears, feeling as if he were in one of his slow-motion dreams where he could not run, could not correctly dial the phone.

The phone rang and rang; the echoing sound rubbed his nerves raw until the operator answered and he told her there was a woman lost on Oystertip Island and to send the Coast Guard.

He found he remembered the Hail Mary from his childhood, and he uttered this prayer over and over. On his hundredth or maybe thousandth one, sirens blared across the beach; boats pulled up and disgorged men in uniforms, walkie-talkies squawking from their belts.

Sporadically and in broken sentences, Nick told the uniformed men which way he believed Amy had gone. Questions and answers came like gunshots in the flashing lights of the boat, in the beacons they carried.

Nick rattled off Amy’s home phone number, which he’d long ago memorized. He began to follow the men with the radios and medical kits through the woods.

Nick swiped the Coast Guard officer’s hand off his arm. “You can arrest me, but I’m going. I lost her . . .” Nick choked on a sob. “Let me find her. Now.”

Nick pushed his way through the woods, calling Amy’s name, this time not reaching for a prayer but for the remembered feel of Amy in a sleeping bag next to him.