THAT EVENING, I WAITED for Handel to come in on his father’s boat. I watched Mr. Johansen and his sons dealing with their catch for the day. Mr. Lorry and Old Man Boyd. I watched one of the Sweeney boys, the oldest one, chain-smoking cigarettes and looking out over the ocean like he had a lot to think about, and for a while I wondered what. Then I watched a few of my father’s former colleagues doing their rounds along the wharf and to the docks and back, making sure they didn’t see me. I watched Mrs. Lorry, too, shuffling along the boardwalk toward her husband with a paper bag of something that made his eyes light up when it and she arrived, then he bent down and kissed her sweetly.
But no Handel.
I thought he was working today.
He told me he was.
Had his plans simply changed like plans do sometimes?
Or worse: Had he lied?
The image of all that worry on Joey McCallen’s face entered my mind without permission, and the judgment and scolding of everyone else tugged at the purity of all my happiness with Handel, tugged at it in this way that threatened to unravel it.
I took a deep breath, got ahold of myself, and shooed it away.
When the sun had drained entirely from the sky, I had to accept that Handel wasn’t coming, at least not on a boat. I gave up waiting and started through town, first along the wharf, and then down Chestnut, thinking I’d take the long way home. It was a nice night. Or maybe I was thinking that if I went this route it would take me past all the street corners where Handel stood around with his friends and right near his house, too, close enough that I’d be able to see it at the other end of the block.
It wasn’t long before my efforts were rewarded.
I heard voices and loud laughter a ways down the street. My head snapped in its direction and my heart leapt when I saw that familiar long dirty-blond hair, tangling like it always did in the summer breeze. Without hesitation I headed in Handel’s direction. Relief and excitement mingled with a dash of doubt, my confusion about finding him here and not where he said he’d be pressing in on the certainty I’d come to have about him. These feelings and others stormed through me as I got closer, and with my new proximity I realized I was wrong, that the person with the long blond hair was slightly shorter than Handel, that I’d mistaken his older brother Colin for him. Out of the shadows emerged Cutter and Mac.
I halted in the middle of the street, right while I was crossing it.
Then I saw another head of long blond hair, a second one. Handel was with them. There came the raised voices, but this time I understood that it hadn’t been laughter I was hearing, but fighting words and anger, shouting that those boys were trying to hold down. It was getting the best of them, though, and ringing through the streets.
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what I was witnessing, but it left me cold. I stood there frozen, unsure if I should go forward or turn and go the other way.
They hadn’t seen me. Not yet.
But then Cutter’s eyes shifted, just a little. They didn’t have to go far to land on me. His mouth moved, forming words I could not hear, and the rest of them turned around.
Handel, too.
And the scent, that scent of something rotten and sweet, wafted toward me in the breeze.
I thought I might collapse right there in front of all of them.
Could it be coming from Handel?
I was going to be sick.
“Jane,” he called to me, and came jogging over.
The smell—it disappeared.
It wasn’t Handel.
Of course it wasn’t him.
“What are you doing here?” he asked me.
Everyone was staring at us.
“I’m walking through town,” I said, not entirely friendly. Not entirely recovered. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
“Yeah. Of course.” His eyes darted all over the place, like he was worried someone was watching, even though of course he knew more than a few someones were already doing just that.
“I waited for you down at the docks for over an hour,” I told him.
“You did?” he asked, in this way that tried for nonchalance, like it was no big deal he’d told me he’d be one place and then I’d found him in another.
That’s when I knew he was lying. “You obviously weren’t there because you were here. I thought you were working today on the boat. I guess not?”
Handel sighed. Then he finally looked at me straight on. “My plans changed.”
“I see that.”
He glanced at his friends and his brother again. “Let’s get out of here. Do you want to get out of here?”
I shrugged.
“Come on,” he said, grabbing my hand and leading me away.
The pull of him was too strong for me to resist.
The second his fingers laced through mine, I nearly melted.
Handel led me right past Cutter and Colin and Mac, who weren’t saying a single word, just eyeing us in that disbelieving way I’d seen from them on other days. I held my breath as long as I could. I didn’t want to collapse beneath that smell again.
It wasn’t long before Handel’s house came into view. Handel was two steps ahead of me the whole time, my arm stretched taut. Just before we reached the edge of his front yard, I stopped short, as though I was about to go over the edge of a cliff. Handel tugged me forward at first, but I didn’t budge, and then he came to a halt, too. Turned and looked at me. “What’s wrong, Jane?”
My heart was hammering and not in a good way. “I don’t know. You tell me.”
He let go of my hand, went searching around his pocket, hovering over his pack of cigarettes. He was dying to smoke. He was nervous. “There’s nothing to tell.”
“I think you’re lying. Don’t lie to me, Handel.”
He pulled out a cigarette and lit it. So he didn’t have to look at me, I thought. He took a long drag. Blew out the smoke. “It’s just family stuff.”
“That wasn’t just your family back there. Your friends, too.”
“I was arguing with my brother.”
“What about?”
“I can’t say.”
“Why not?”
He looked at me finally. He had that darkness in his eyes again. I hadn’t seen it in a long time. “It’s complicated.”
“I can handle complicated. We’ve already gotten through complicated. Remember?”
“Jane, don’t press me. I can’t talk about this right now. It’s long past talking about,” he added. He was pleading.
“You can tell me anything,” I said, my heart hammering harder. I was a little afraid of what Handel might say next. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t know what you’re asking to hear.”
“There’s nothing you can say that would push me away. Not now.” I took a step forward, stepped right off the cliff. Forced myself to look into Handel’s eyes without fear or worry or doubt. “I love you.”
Handel opened his mouth. He opened it, and I thought he was going to tell me whatever was on his mind, whatever it was that weighed him down, made him feel desperate and maybe even afraid. But then he closed it, without a word.
That’s when I noticed his eyes were glassy.
There were tears pooling along their rims.
My heart just about broke.
Handel Davies, crying?
I couldn’t let it happen. Just couldn’t watch it happen.
So I went to him. I went to him and put my arms around his waist and pressed my cheek into his chest. I did this until he bent his chin low and it came to rest on the top of my head and his arms wrapped around my back. We stayed there a long time. When he finally released me, without a word, we went into his empty house, empty of his mother and father and brothers, climbing the stairs to his room and locking the door behind us.
I didn’t go home that night.